This time though, I went on a research binge. I wanted to find strange, colorful animals you can find off screen and under rocks and water. I verified each of my specimens through Encyclopedia Britannica or natural history museum entries (though Wikipedia usually had the most information), and found a whole zoo of sculptural creatures to share with you.

1. The Striped Tenrec

It’s like a bumblebee hedgehog, family Tenrecidae. They’re closer to the size of shrews and live in Madagascar and the surrounding islands. Very punk rock Sonic. I would probably need to paint a regular hedgehog next to one, which could work in the curio-cabinet style I’ve been into. Or it could look like I forgot how to paint a hedgehog.

2. The Blue Sea Slug

Or, Glaucus atlanticus. These guys are teeny, around 3 cm, and float upside down along the Brazilian coast. They eat venomous underwater floaters like the man o’ war jellyfish, and take on their venom. The venom provides a powerful defense and painful sting to the touch. They have several different types and names like blue dragon, blue angel, and sea swallow. I love the coloring for a painting.

3. The Picasso Beetle

Speaking of coloring, wow. This guy gets a mention for the color palette alone. Sphaerocoris annulus is an African beetle that grows to be about half an inch long.

4. The Pink Fairy Armadillo

This one isn’t a play for Texas or an honorary Dolly dillo, as far as I can tell. It’s a very real 6-inch mini armored piglet native to Argentina. It is in the armadillo family, not a pig at all, and called Chlamyphorus truncatus. I love the idea of them but they’re kind of unsettling to look at. One for the list but not for a painting.

5. The Orchid Mantis and Spiny Flower Mantis

Hymenopus coronatus and Pseudocreobotra wahlbergi are more well-known ostentations of nature. The dramatic coloring and size is in the females among mantises, and they can change color to brown to blend in off-season. Apparently people keep them as pets.

6. The Glass Squid

The transparent glass quality would be so interesting to apply to other animals in a painting, which is why this squid caught my eye. Teuthowenia pellucida is the most naked an animal can be, showing all its organs and googly eyes. A special flashing organ under their eyes mimics sunlight reflections for further camouflage from deep-sea predators.

7. Valais Blacknose Sheep

You’ve probably seen these Ovis aries (sheep). They look too cartoony to be real. In case you thought you were good enough in life, they have their own society and haven’t invited you.

I’d want to contrast these with a dangerous creature in a curio painting, or add floating ribbons to play up their charm even more.

8. Leafy Sea Dragon

I look for these at every aquarium, they’re so fascinating. Phycodurus eques are seahorses plus a miniature kelp forest. They’re native to Western Australian seaweed beds, and are a protected species. The periwinkle color below is one of my most-used paint tubes right now.

I make no promises to these creatures.

I can’t promise any of these creatures will appear in my next finished piece. Typically, I’ll choose a dozen or so reference photos, animals, and symbols and combine them in different ways over several sketches. The glass squid and mantises seem promising, but I thought for sure I would include an albino panther last time, and she’s still waiting.

The design is probably the hardest part to get right in a painting. Since I don’t really do backgrounds, the flow of the piece relies totally on visual balance of the shapes and colors in the foreground.

I hope you find a cool bug and a cute dog this week. If there are other strange creatures I’ve missed, reply and let me know. I already know about jackalopes. ♡

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Instead of doomscrolling, find a weird creature.

Regardless of my total banality in this one detail,

I still enjoyed a fabulous 90’s themed sleepover party and an accidental joint-birthday cocktail hour. And a pool day with a sunburn, and a vintage market sweep that scored a pair of gorgeous architectural Tory Burch platform heels that should have been $350. I got them for $70 (smugly).

Anyway I won’t do the “things I’ve learned in my 34 years” because that’s corny and living longer than Jesus doesn’t make me a guru. But the best part of my birthday was an unexpected showering in verbal affirmation that left me feeling glowy and grateful, and made the episodes of mental self-criticism I’d had earlier this summer into a total passé weather event.

There’s nothing so like casting a spell as writing down gratitudes. So, with Dolly as my witness (grateful for her, as is the whole of heaven and Earth, amen), here are my gratitudes from the past year.

Creative feats and accomplishments are not what my life is about anymore, and it’s a huge relief.

I don’t have a productivity leech on my brain anymore. There’s no story that says, this is the standard for productivity, and you must produce to make meaning.

The whole idea of productivity is completely made up. It’s a cultural religion that everyone accepts and lauds and prays to, and to me it looks like a work of fiction.

I’ll naturally keep making things and doing things, I’m like that. I need to support myself and I like moving forward. But there’s no timeline. My days aren’t measured in productivity. My outputs are totally nonlinear. I rest a lot.

As far as I feel now, my life is about every interaction through every minute of the day I’m in.

All those dreams, goals, ideas, and accomplishments are just fuel to get me around people. When I want to go to conference for business, that’s about a random conversation with Patty Miller from HR who needed to tell someone her kid just overcame cystic fibrosis with the newest medication. When I have a bad year, that’s actually about getting closer to the people I’m forced to lean on. The whole operetta is about the relationships, and I’m only fooling myself if I miss the smallest moment being really present with someone in favor of worrying about goals.

I can’t even describe how thankful I am to be freed up mentally and emotionally to just be with people and not worry about time or magnum opuses or optics or shoulds.

I had someone I love very much call me crying this weekend, and I’m telling you.

I stopped everything. I texted to say I’d be late, stalled my ride to a party, and sat in my car in 107° with the struggling AC to just be there like the gold medal of friendship was descending from the sky. Those moments are why I’m on the planet.

The rest is fun experiments, outfits, random rage, sculpting balance into my body as best I can, and wonder at being alive to feel the full spectrum of emotions and thoughts.

I’m also thankful for a natural tendency to be excruciatingly thorough in my thinking. It means I can focus on fun instead.

In my natural state, I don’t really ‘dance through life.’ I mull through existential questions and treat radical responsibility like a candy. The win is that I don’t fall for silly headlines or trends or two-faced people very often. The cost is that I can be too serious and isolate myself.

This natural “System 2” thinking bent means that introspection and cleaning up after myself happens on autopilot. For contrast, I get to purposely tend to joy and find ways to make things fun instead. I’ve made a good habit of whimsy and silliness and doing whatever feels good, after vowing I’d never live in frozen anxiety again.

I’m told this is a very Virgo trait. It feels lucky to me, because I get the guardrails of rarely missing warning signs in life, with the constant prompt to chill out and enjoy my day. That practice is why I started this newsletter. Vivid Candor is a weekly draft of deeper thinking mixed with simple, unassuming happiness.

I’m thankful can show my edges now too, plus these eighteen other things 🌹 💅 ✏️ 🍵

It’s really nice stop nicely sitting through passive aggressive or let-me-fix-you sentences. These days, I’ll call it out. I may snap. It’s so wonderful. There are my edges, right there, if you push them, you will get heat.

I’ve never been able to do that before, and I can do it now without being harsh or feeling bad. It’s magnificently satisfying to no longer allow controlling passes in the teeny ways we do to each other, even well-intentioned. I think most women reach their middle thirties and realize they do, in fact, bite.

The other raindrops-on-roses in my life are things like…

…collectible color palettes, arranging flowers, friends who pick me up from my place for adventures, finally settling on a new direction for my marketing business (coming very soon), writing on paper with a #2 pencil, and helping my brother and his partner figure out how to move here.

My weekly hip-hop classes are a riot. Tidying my place a little every day, nail art, sore muscles, group chats, oat milk matcha lattes, unlocking my art studio door, and the absolute fashion show of stylish toddlers that womp around the food truck patio next door. The ample time I have to take care of my body, and learning more about hypermobility / Ehlers-Danlos (I had no idea? For so long?!). I’m thankful for how many people check in on me and me on them, and how many people will absolutely go with the silly themes I come up with for events.

That’s eighteen!

Bless you for reading all of that. And in all likelihood, happy birthday to you too. 💜

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Think of as many things you’re grateful for as you can and write them down. Have a little espresso shot of wow-I-AM-going-to-be-okay!

This weekend, I got to watch that magic happen for some of my favorite people in the world.

My brother Dande and his partner visited Austin this past weekend.

Dande’s express intention for the weekend was to show Nik around Austin for the first time and explore the idea of moving here from Atlanta next summer.

Nik runs a branch of his family’s 50-year-old custom leather belt business, Waddell Leather. He’s worked craft fairs and markets selling the belts at near-cost prices for years, focused more on the craft than on the business. My brother is more and more involved in the business side, imagining collaborations, pushing for luxury items, and finally realizing that Austin would be a better market for custom leather belts.

As the two of them say, they’ve been selling leather goods in the “moonshine and raccoons” South, not the cowboy South. Walking around South Congress, it was easy for the two of them to see the demand for Southern-style handcrafts and apparel.

We had a marvelous time all weekend, but the most impactful part for the two of them was a scene I never could have planned.

After picking them up from the airport on Friday, we went to a sushi hand-roll spot for lunch.

It’s called Uroko, in Springdale Station. I don’t usually see people I know there. When we sat down, my friend Martin waved from the next table.

While I was catching up with Martin and his co-working squad, he told me he’d just started working on a new project earlier that week. He was working with Trovador, a luxury custom hat brand here in Austin. I know Ryan, the founder and craftsman of the brand, but I don’t have his number. I wouldn’t have thought to take Dande and Nik over to his shop.

As I told Martin about my guests for the weekend and their leather brand, he said we should stop by Trovador. I didn’t put together why we would, aside from hanging out in a beautiful space. We finished our lunch and went on our way.

Then, on Saturday after Barton Springs, Martin sent me a message.

“Hey, I asked Ryan if he’d be interested in talking to Nik about the leather brand, he totally was. Want to stop by the shop?”

So we got ourselves together and headed to the hat shop, where I introduced Ryan to Dande and Nik.

Little did I know:

• Ryan had started to get more inquiries for corporate events, hat experiences, and pop-ups than he could cover, and was looking for other western makers as vendors.

• He also wished he hadn’t been alone while starting the hat shop, and wanted to build community for early makers.

For almost three hours, Ryan, Nik, and Dande jammed on leather sourcing, laser cutting, breaking into the luxury goods market, western-chic designs, audiences and events, and the latest boot, hat, and belt trends. They had a BALL together.

Sunday afternoon on our vintage shopping circuit, the boys raved about all the possibilities for the leather brand in Austin.

They said Ryan had mentioned mentoring them, which amazed me. That whole side quest was a complete accident. What if it launches their plans to move here?

I can imagine a Vivid Parlor with a custom belt station, maybe a Dolly and Cash theme. Parlors are so much easier with Dande running event coordination, I love having him. I don’t like to bet on uncertain possibilities, but it would be beyond wonderful if they moved here.

The plan is for Dande and Nik to come out for the month of March and pack in as many markets, pop-ups, events, and collaborations for the leather brand as they can. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• I’ve found one of the best ways to spark serendipity is to talk about your interests. Where could you mention an intention and follow the breadcrumbs?

Mom and I were stopped in the middle of a tiny country lane in Galway, with stone walls set so close to the lane that driving felt like riding in a mail shoot. The car’s electrical system blitzed, locking the car down and sticking us there in the rain to wait.

Then we met at least half of the town.

Of the sixty or so cars that passed, at least twenty slowed down to check on us. A couple of neighbors stopped to test the car battery and bark at Hertz for us. One arrived in a reflective coat to put a cone behind our car and check the battery (again). We used his home address as our location.

One of the neighbors, Callum, passed by again an hour later, and carted us to his house with his kids running around to give us a restroom break. He made us tea and toast to take back to our car. Once cyclist stopped, and a mom with her whole family, and an entire line of cars leaving church.

“Once you’re sorted, head up the road to Monk’s and get yourself a pint!”

After three hours, the new car came, and we drove straight to Monk’s. That’s the first time I’ve had whiskey for brunch, on my first day in Ireland.

Across the whole country, the land is gridded with low stone walls made by hand.

The pastures and herds roll off into the mist toward the nearest shoreline, just like the land would’ve looked hundreds of years ago.

Ireland only became its own nation in 1922 though, with a hard history of Catholic and Protestant warring, famine, and long ago, viking raids.

Dublin began as a Gaelic settlement in the 500s AD, called Dubh Linn. We drove across the country to spend a few days in the city, which is now around the size of Boston or Austin. We had high tea, explored gardens, saw live music at a few pubs, and shopped.

Generally, we were tourists. Over the week we stopped in towns around the southern coast before heading back up to the Shannon airport.

Playing tourist was worth it to see some of the oldest medieval art and book-making lore in the Western world.

The Book of Kells was written by four main scribes, and illuminated by at least three different artists. These monks created the book as a masterpiece Latin transcription of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The book was hidden, protected, stolen, and recovered, and has been at Trinity College in Dublin since 1661.

The art is mesmerizing and mysterious. The detail would be impossible without a magnifying glass, but magnification tools were not invented for another 500 years.

Preserving knowledge in books and manuscripts is part of Ireland’s oldest traditions, dating back to the monasteries that protected Greek and Roman works during the fall of the Roman empire. Trinity College is one of the world’s leaders in text preservation and restoration, with a library of hundreds of thousands of preserved works.

The oldest fragments of papyrus in their collection date back to the 200s BC, including an Egyptian calendar and a snippet of Plato’s philosophical dialogue, Laches.

“Luck of the Irish” is an ironic American fabrication.

I was curious about the tropes of Irish luck, leprechauns, and fairytales, but you won’t find references to luck in Ireland outside of tourist trinkets. Those stories came from Irish miners in America in the 1800s. In the midst of racial prejudice, several of the most successful miners were Irish. The ‘luck of the Irish’ stereotype started then, as a refusal to credit the people group with mining ingenuity at the time.

The stereotype is ironic to the history of Ireland, which can be seen as centuries of brutal bad luck and unrest.

The fairies of the land were more like ominous ancient guardians.

According to ancient texts, there was a people called the Tuatha Dé Danann, or the people of the goddess Danu. They were thought to be ruling sorcerers of Irish lands from beyond recorded history.

When the ancestors of the Irish people invaded, the Tuatha Dé Danann lost the war and relinquished the land above ground. They then moved underground, into the caverns and mounds. I imagine them slowly sinking into the ground like dark pillars, with glowing eyes and regal faces glaring southward.

They were not considered ‘nice’ or ‘good’ like in fairytales. They became the Aos Sí, the people of the mounds, and they left solitary trees, fairy circles, and small hills of earth behind them that modern farmers and builders still won’t touch.

My last name, Ward, has Gaelic roots. It means “the bard.”

Seems appropriate. Visiting these old places and staying off my phone for a week felt cleansing. The pressures of modernity feel fictional in the face of knowledge transcribed 2,000 years ago, while viking raiders assaulted the base of your tower.

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Imagine transcribing the most important parts of your knowledge to protect it. What would you record? How would you adorn it, to pass on its importance?

When I think back in time, back to one, two, and three generations of women in my family, their stories give me perspective.

By 33, my grandmother had been married for 14 years.

She lived with my grandfather on several acres of land, with a house boat in the summer. He had a laminating business. She only ever worked briefly as a secretary before becoming a homemaker. She wouldn’t let my mom and aunt wear jeans until they were fifteen, or until she couldn’t stop them, whenever that was.

My mom has always been a nurse, and she’s always worked full time. I didn’t find out till adulthood that my great uncle paid for me to have braces and go to dance class.

I told her the other day how proud I am that she’s becoming more assertive about what she wants and needs. I thought about everything she’s been through and felt absolutely spoiled.

I’ve had my struggles, but I’ve never had to endure raising three (unusual) kids on one income while my church quietly hinted that I’ve ruined my life by divorcing. I haven’t ever looked at a child I adore more than anything in the world and made her believe it will all work out when I didn’t know if it would. And then, found a way to keep her in tutus while dealing with breast cancer.

I don’t remember mom whining once when she was sick.

I’ve experienced a partnership where I felt adored and honored and graciously carried when I’m down. How often has she felt that?

Did her mother, or her grandmother ever experience a love like that? I’m not sure.

I don’t think it’s been very long that we’ve had the tools to fully work through painful places in relationships and heal, instead of coping around them. How did they do it?

One of the times I spoke to an audience, I asked them to raise their hand if they felt “behind” in life.

More than half of the audience put their hands up.

When I think of my mom, and my Nana, and then of her mother painting gorgeous creekside scenes and sewing socks during the Depression, I think my timeline has been “ahead” since my dream ballet barbie bedroom when I was six.

My parents stood on chairs and stenciled pointe shoes and ribbons around the top of my walls, and my teeny little trundle bed creaked when I bounced into it. I would wait in bed on Saturday mornings, the best day there is, until one of them came in my room to lean over me and whisper we’re all having breakfast. I remember feeling antsy under the covers and stubbornly staying put until the bacon smell and my brothers hollering finally spilled into my room to draw me up into Saturday.

I wonder if that sense of ‘feeling behind’ has to do with having children and providing enough for them.

In 1965, a single income could support owning a home and having a family. Today, the median age of a first-time home buyer is 40, and a rent or mortgage, childcare, and healthcare would take about 60%-75% of the median income for a couple in the States. The whole timeline has shifted economically.

Again, I think about the absolute luxury it is to choose not to have kids and not to be subject to that timeline. In 1902, I would have had five or six children by now, probably only 4 of them surviving, if I survived.

My mom wouldn’t have survived with my brothers and I back then. Or at least, not together with us.

What a luxury to go to Ireland with her now, in a flying contraption?? And enjoy the romance of cliffs and lore and fairytales and 200 year old pubs, and see her fulfilling a dream. We’ll sit on a wall built in 1250 and pull the little plastic zippers on our raincoats. The view that looked everyday to the Anglo-Norman settlers may turn our souls over.

In honor of this profound luxury, I will not write to you next week.

My mom has the best years of her life in front of her, I think, and many of them, but how many more times will I spend a full week adventuring with her? So, I’ll take my newsletter week off next week and shower you with trite travel photos the second week in August.

If we find a fairy circle, you may never hear from me again. Mom and I will happily trade in our plastic zippers for laurel crowns from Oberon and Titania.

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Think about your parents’ timeline, and their parents’ timeline. What perspective do they provide?

The exhibition is called Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses. This week’s edition covers her otherworldly creations and inspiration from nature.

Van Herpen’s designs are inspired by coral, fossils, micro biology, space, insects, magnetic fields, and mycelium.

Her creations look like couture from the future, made for aliens and moving with the wearer like an extension of natural forces.

Van Herpen was the first designer to showcase a 3D-printed garment on the runway. Her team finds materials in the strangest places, from bioluminescent algae to prosthetic dragon skin used in film costuming.

The show flows through rooms of her collections and their associated inspiration. The above pieces were found in the room of bones and fossils, the coral and sea creatures room, and the cosmos room. The orange piece is a creation drawn from solar flares and looping nebulae.

The space room featured mannequins defying gravity and a video of a skydiver falling in one of Van Herpen’s gowns.

I ogled over 140 gowns and 20 art pieces, with videos of her runway shows and images of the many celebrities who love her work.

Many of the garments seemed to be intended as sculptures, with pieces that moved and fluttered on mechanical dials. The sketches above look more like couture gowns for red carpet occasions.

Cross-pollination and niche inspiration

One of the interesting things about the designer is the way she works with other artists and industries. She’s worked with architects, biologists, kinetic sculptors, and aerospace engineers to bring her creations to life.

In the Morphology of Fear section, one sculpture showed a grid of glass boxes with 3D printed rods inside. Each box was the canvas for a living Asian fawn tarantula, decorated in intricate silk. A webbed gown stands nearby, mimicking the theme.

Iris van Herpen’s genius comes from following her taste across disciplines and collaborations.

What if art mixed with biology? What if fashion mixed with magnetic forces? The crossover and fascination with nature made me wonder what subjects would be worth combining in my art and writing.

Also, naturally, I’ve been inspired to add to my bucket list. What kind of event would be worthy of wearing one of her pieces, shy of shadowing Lady Gaga? A cosmic gala, or a beetle ball…

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• What disparate subjects interest you? If you were to combine them, what kinds of creative projects could result?

Fitting myself into 5 trendy frameworks and swapping them socially on cue feels mechanical, like handing out my Pokemon card and hoping it plays well with yours.

Why would I need to know my letters and numbers when I live in a body? It gives me cues all day long about who I am, or at least, about the next thing to feel and do.

Psychology and brain chemistry are far more interesting.

Where do personalities come from?
How do moods happen?
In the middle of constant change, what do physical and emotional cues tell you about how to support your system?

Here are a few brain mechanisms that have grabbed my attention recently (warning, some pop science is involved).

1. System 1 and System 2 Thinking

System 1 thinking is our automatic, impression-based thinking. It’s more narrative driven, and believes the headline of a situation. Our brains naturally run on System 1 thinking because it burns far less energy than System 2 thinking.

System 2 thinking is more ground-up analysis. It’s the active editing mode, where we look past the story or first impressions and consider all the information available. It’s slower and requires more energy.

Most people live in System 1 world, with the benefit of making faster decisions and saving mental space. The cost of constant System 1 reliance is being gullible or suggestible based on how we want things to be, instead of looking more deeply at how they are. Making fast decisions in the wrong direction is a risk with too much System 1 reliance.

Leaning too much on System 2 thinking can create slowdown and over-analysis. The cool thing though is that System 2 thinking works like a muscle: the more you do it, the more natural it becomes, and if it’s paired with a bias for action, you end up getting practical feedback fast and having a high filter for nonsense stories that don’t add up to reality.

Thinking clearly under stress

Under stress, the brain naturally wants to conserve energy with System 1 thinking. Higher-stakes situations often need deeper thinking, and if the brain isn’t used to operating in System 2, it may treat that kind of deliberation as a survival risk. Most people who perform well under stress have a bias for action and a lot of practice feeling safe in System 2.

This somewhat oversimplified binary is the main topic of the book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Later research showed more nuance, for example, that someone who spends a decade thinking about a complex topic could likely process topical problems with a “System 1” approach.

Still, I found the distinction between narratively-driven and ground-up research thinking to be useful in how I understand my work and the people in my life.

Stare at the ceiling instead

When you walk through a perfume shop, each table usually has a small tin of coffee beans. The beans are for a contrasting scent to florals and musky smoke, so you can keep testing scents without everything muddling into a headache.

Open focus seems to do this same thing for the brain.

Staring out the window or looking at nothing in particular gives the mind a chance to reset processing power and shift internally. As hard as it is to look at nothing instead of looking at a phone, our brains prefer the rest.

Of course there are exceptions, staring at the ceiling at night with anxious insomnia isn’t restorative. But taking breaks to look out the window, at a landscape, or at nature seem to help creativity and processing power.

So what?

A hundred years ago, you could rely on your family and community narratives to feel secure and make sense of the world. News arrived in small doses, and what mattered most to you probably mattered to your spouse, coworkers, and friends.

Now, the narratives are all fragmented. In the void of consistent cultural structures or one big narrative, the brain defaults to whatever headline or gossip feels the most gratifying. Algorithm addiction and drift can do numbers on an overly System 1-reliant brain.

At the same time, System 2 takes time to get used to. Open focus and mind wandering are more important, as the breath between bouts of heavy processing.

There is a quiz to explore your “Need for Cognition” which gives a sense of how comfortable you are relying on System 2 styles of thinking. It’s about as insightful as any other personality test, as in, you probably already know how much you like to think more deeply about things.

The brain doesn’t operate on just two systems, but the framing does help to consider: At this very moment, how strong is my BS meter? How susceptible am I to un-researched outside narratives? And on the other side, how likely am I to miss the forest for the trees?

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Next time you’re waiting for something, relax your visual field. Let everything go fuzzy and sense everything around you, instead of scanning a screen.

• Spend a day with an unreasonably high filter for nonsense. When you see or hear something unfamiliar or sensational, think a few layers deeper about why it might not be true. What do you catch?

This week’s edition is a photo journal of how he revolutionized Gucci and partly inspired the style of my artwork.

I have probably 400 lbs of magazines.

I’ve been subscribed to W Magazine, Vogue, and Bazaar for at least a decade, after finding a glitchy site that let me get them as a cheap bundle for a year at a time. I’d cut out the full-page photography for art reference material and keep folders of clippings.

Around 2016, my clippings folder started to hold Gucci spreads. From 2016-2022, Gucci was my scrapbook darling. I loved the style so much that I turned the pages into two 30x40” mixed media collages:

The Luxury of Whimsy and The Luxury of Joy, mixed media and acrylic, 2024

Then, in 2023, something changed. Gucci’s print ads collapsed back into luxury minimalism and sad beige, totally lifeless by comparison. What happened?

This weekend I accidentally found out that Alessandro Michele was the creative director from 2015-2022, and famously saved the brand with a hairpin brand pivot: “Nonconformist, romantic, intellectual.”

Gucci appointed the unknown accessories designer to creative director as a Hail Mary.

The brand was floundering at the time, selling safe designs and minimalistic, forgettable aesthetics. Michele completely blew up Gucci’s vibe, turning every spread into a joyful menagerie. Geek chic, tigers, velvet, pattern mixing, party scenes, all ages and sizes of people, tigers, space, and mermaids were all in the palette, with sexualization turned down to 5% and whimsical surrealism turned up to 95%.

Here’s what Gucci ads looked like before Michele:

And after…

These painted pieces above were a collaboration with artist Ignasi Monreal. I’ve dreamed of a collab ever since 😍

The late 2010’s market loved Michele’s work so much that he nearly tripled Gucci’s value, from 3.9 billion to 9.73 billion.

During his tenure, Gucci doubled-down on the new enthusiasm from younger, digitally native generations. They leaned into social media and heavily influenced late-2000s fashion, representing 62% of the profit for their parent company, Kering.

Gucci had been growing at such a rapid rate that when the growth rate slowed slightly in 2022 (still valued at $10 billion), Kering executives pushed Michele to lean more into the quiet luxury trends returning to the market post-Covid. Michele refused to compromise his expressive vision, and stepped down in November 2022.

Gucci appointed Sabato de Sarno after Michele, who immediately pivoted the brand back to sleek, stealth wealth luxury. Gucci lost the attention of the younger audience Michele had captured, and the brands revenues have dropped 21% year over year.

Gucci’s aesthetic since 2023. Yawn.

Michele became the Miranda Priestly of Valentino in March 2024,

which makes it nearly impossible to share the influence his work has had over my own art and taste. A thank you note would likely be buried in the second assistant’s coffee order receipts.

Alessandro Michele, can I have an interview?

Looking back at my most recent pieces, my style leans more and more into fashion, strange scenes, and loud colors. I’ve been audibly scoffing at minimal luxury spreads in my favorite magazines for years now, only to find the numbers and narrative back my Gucci maximalist-fixation.

Maybe Valentino needs an artist collaboration…

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Who are the heroes of your taste? They don’t have to be fashion or art icons. Film directors, philosophers, creators, TV characters, and authors can all count, so long as they express a worldview that resonates with you.

I’ve spoken to seven Zachs in the past two weeks, and there are at least 10 within my familiar circle. This edge-weighted phone book phenomenon (EWPHP) hasn’t occurred for me in any other city.

As a parallel exploration, this week’s newsletter is about dark matter and gravitational lenses.

Like Austin’s gravity for Zachs and their permutations,

gravitational lenses are a dramatic expression of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. They happen when a supermassive object, like a galaxy, has such a strong gravitational pull that it warps the light from objects behind it.

The warping often looks like specks of light in a halo around the distant galaxy, and sometimes like a ring (called an Einstein ring). Something about the lens effect magnifies the light from the objects behind the supermassive galaxy, so telescopes can see even farther into the past.

Distortions like these help us research the strangest part of space: dark matter.

The Euclid Telescope launched in 2023 to assemble an “atlas” of visible space. Instead of mapping small parts of space in great detail, it’s assembling a picture of 2/3rds of our view of space over six years.

Screengrab showing the “atlas” map of our visible galaxy with the Milky Way running through the center. The blue areas are those that Euclid will capture and map.

The strategy is to map distortions in light and radiation across millions of galaxies to track patterns. The patterns will show where dark matter exists in space, and hopefully, how it holds galaxies together when they should be flying apart.

Dark matter doesn’t reflect or emit any light or radiation, so the only way to find it is through gravitational disruptions.

The weirdest part is that visible galaxies don’t randomly drift, they hang out along invisible “filaments” of dark matter tension.

If I were the telescope looking for dark matter, it would be like tracking all of the Zach hangout spots in Austin to find patterns of invisible pull (invisible Logans or Jonahs. Or Claudes, the most likely).

An image of the Horsehead nebula taken by the Euclid telescope. Photograph: Esa/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NAS/AFP/Getty Images

This atlas of space will be useful to solve a significant gap in our understanding of reality.

It turns out that everything we can see and measure only accounts for about 4.9% of reality.

In terms of the amount of energy in the universe, 95% is dark matter or dark energy. This staggering statistic is why Euclid was launched: we really want to understand dark matter and dark energy.

I would estimate that anyone named Zack would account for about 4.9% of the people in my immediate community at this point, meaning all of the rest of you are dark matter/dark energy and we should definitely hang out more to fix that. Why are you not named Zach? What does it all mean?

Departing from the EWPH phenomenon, how crazy is it that everything we know is under 5% of reality?

How could we possibly have a measure of control over our lives, with a statistic like that? And how poetic is the paradox that we do have some ability to orchestrate our lives, in this vast void of inexplicable forces?

It helps me live more vividly to contemplate how orderly my life is in comparison to supermassive forces, and how my circumstances seem to flow with a certain inexplicable balance in spite of everything I can’t control. Even when I feel out of control, invisible filaments seem to pull the story along.

I have to conclude that worry is the most useless waste of energy imaginable, as there’s no way I have more than 4.9% of the information impacting my story at any given time.

Comparing mundane coincidences to an atlas of all of the space we can see is totally absurd. Sorry Zachs (et al). And, when over-seriousness is trending, wonder & absurdity are a welcome alternative.

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Sit with the idea that everything we can see or measure makes up 4.9% of reality.

That’s not what this week’s newsletter is about. But I do appreciate the friends who reached out to check why my writing was suddenly so sterile. 😅

This week’s newsletter is about Don Bluth films.

Don Bluth was an animator at Disney in the 1970s.

After Walt Disney died in 1966, the company moved in a corporate, budget-cutting direction that frustrated the artists.

Back then, Disney had a strict policy that only male animators could hold key creative roles, while women did the copy work of tracing their images and filling in preset colors. In the midst of Bluth’s vexation with an increasingly limited creative scope, he started teaching the women back-up animators and others who wanted more freedom. He hosted workshops out of his garage, at a house he bought in Culver City.

In 1979, Bluth resigned from Disney and took 10% of the animation staff with him, including all of the female animators at the time.

They formed their own studio, attracting the attention of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas as investors. Their second film, An American Tail, grossed $47 million after a $9 million production budget. It broke box office records at the time for an animated film on first release, disrupting the norm that only classic fairytale reruns by Disney could perform so well.

Bluth’s movies also changed the direction of storytelling for family audiences.

He introduced more complex and heavy emotional themes to a genre that had been strictly G-rated fantasy. Covering grief, permanent death to characters, scarier villains, and social themes like immigration and poverty, he expanded the emotional scope of animation at the time.

And it worked. His first film, The Secret of NIMH, ended up doing millions in VHS sales later in the eighties. The story is about a widowed mother mouse and a colony of rats made intelligent by lab experiments.

The animation in NIMH is absolutely stunning.

In one scene, Mrs. Brisby discovers how her husband was killed in the pages of a magic book. The animation zooms in on her moment of realization and wave of grief.

Grief and death had never been covered with such intimacy in a children’s movie up to this point. Cinderella’s father is already gone in the movie. Maleficent dies as a dragon, not a person. The scene in NIMH was like playing with noir in a squeaky-clean, sparkly genre.

What I didn’t know was that the woman who animated this specific scene was promoted to her key animator role for the emotional strength in her illustration. She was “cast” for the part in a way that other studios would have only appointed by tenure.

Her name was Lorna Cook, and she ended up being recruited back by Disney not only to be a key animator, but to be a key story architect on The Lion King. Eventually, she co-directed DreamWorks' Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, which was nominated for an Academy Award for it’s no-talking animation of animals.

Animators in Bluth’s studio, Cook is sitting center at the drafting table.

Back to The Secret of NIMH

Don Bluth’s rigor with his animation team had them adding neon inks, exploring multiple exposures, and mastering backlit animation styles that forced the industry to return to the art of animation over expediency.

You may better remember The Land Before Time and Anastasia from childhood, which also came from Bluth’s studio.

Bluth and his animators looked at watered-down media and radically trusted their taste.

Bluth’s films broke up the animation monopoly and introduced a new genre. Lorna Cook went from a slide colorist in Disney’s basement to the first woman ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature as a director.

If you still enjoy family movies, revisit one from Bluth’s list. Compared to today’s pacing and over-exposition for distracted viewers, his movies are a whimsical meditation.

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Watch any acclaimed older movie and enjoy the art of it.

• If you clicked that annoying scam email link, go change your password!

Copyright & Fair Use Notice: This publication contains copyrighted material, including film stills and screengrabs, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available strictly for the purposes of education, historical retrospective, and artistic critique. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. All rights and trademarks belong to their respective studio owners.

It’s called Carousel Reverie, an acrylic painting on wood board canvas, 30” x 40”.

When I plan each piece, I usually start with reference images and symbols that seem interesting to paint. I knew I wanted to do a carousel seahorse, and I knew I wanted to include another street-style inspired person. The design and colors come together long before the meaning arrives. I wasn’t sure why I put a thoughtful, serious looking person on a whimsical carousel, aside from enjoying the odd contrast of subjects.

Now sitting with it, the piece seems to be about the paradox of existing:

The weight of ascribing meaning to your story against the frivolity of assigning it however you want, with no rules. Or, “Life is meaningless.” (serious, existential) vs. “Life is meaningless!” (hilarious, absurd).

I vacillate between both, and often experience both simultaneously. The serious thinker and the whimsical ride, the masculine driver and the feminine surrender to the turnings of the cosmos.

The carousel could also reference the wheel of fate, carrying you around various experiences mostly without your control. Do you ride it with curiosity and joy? Or with trepidation, wondering if you’re going in useless circles?

It’s both, and the tension between the two is the source of feeling alive.

Just My Luck was a beautiful event on Saturday.

I was so proud of the way it turned out and so happy to see everyone.

And…

In a perfect expression of that tension between seriousness and whimsy, and for you to know personally about me (since you’ve read this far), the event attendance was about 20% of what I had planned. I discovered the breakdown in the marketing funnel, and now see why so much tracked traffic and interest didn’t turn into attendees. It was a ticketing page issue, totally preventable.

I did take it pretty hard… especially since the event was called Just My Luck.

But here’s the thing: like my handsome hipster on a carousel, everything means only as much of a story as we ascribe to it. Everything worked except for one very obvious ticketing page fumble, and I know exactly what to do next time. The spirit of the Parlors was honored, and everyone involved had a lovely day from what I could tell.

This is what it’s like to put yourself all the way out there though, to push the edge of sharing and take those risks. It’s part of it. The trick is to leap to the next risk with no loss of enthusiasm. ♡

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• What heavy thing could you instead assign a silly and lighthearted story? And what frivolous part of life could you assign deeper meaning? See if you can go between them and enjoy the freedom of the meaning you make.

Vivid Parlor: Just My Luck is tomorrow, June 13th!

I’ve got a few surprises…

And am shamelessly excited…

I can’t wait to see you there!

Get Tickets to Just My Luck

Get tickets to Vivid Parlor on 6/13

“Everything can change in a moment. It can all turn a corner. You’ll see.”

Last year, one of my friends had a lucky break in their career. We had commiserated together about our businesses going poorly all summer, and I remember him telling me how quickly everything can change.

I think about this quote all the time. The mind likes to look into the future and expect the most probable path, which can feel claustrophobic.

As a reminder that the improbable can change everything, I wanted to share a few stories of lucky breaks that changed history.

Penicillin was an accident.

In 1928, Alexander Fleming left for a two week vacation. He’d been experimenting with staphylococcus bacteria in his ongoing research to find antibacterial options more effective than the antiseptics used at the time.

Fleming left the staph petri dishes by an open window while he was away. He wasn’t known for his fastidiousness or organization in his lab, and most reports claim the petri dishes were left in an open clutter by accident.

After returning, he found that mold spores had contaminated the dishes and halted the growth of the bacteria. He called the bacteria killer “mould juice” and struggled to prove it’s effectiveness for the next decade. By 1940, several other scientists helped him mass produce penicillin to use in World War II medicine.

He said, “When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did.”

She sells seashells by the seashore

This phrase is said to be about paleontologist Mary Anning, who accidentally discovered some of the most important fossils of the time out of a desperate situation.

Anning’s father passed away when she was a child, which left the already poor family destitute. She had never been to school and was sent to collect oddities and shells on the shoreline to sell.

She made her first significant discovery in 1811, at 12 years old. In a time when the abundant fossil forms of England’s southern shoreline baffled locals, and social consensus excluded any possibility of evolution, Anning found the skeleton of an ichthyosaur.

Over the next 35 years of her life, she discovered skeletons and remains of some of the world’s first ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterodactyls. The discoveries confounded the 7-day-creation theory at the time, and laid the foundations for the theory of evolution proposed in 1858.

Han solo was cast by accident.

Harrison Ford had been taking meager acting roles in Los Angeles around the time George Lucas began casting for Star Wars. Lucas made his intention clear that he wanted all new faces for the films, which disqualified Ford, who had played a small part in one of Lucas’s earlier projects.

Ford had taught himself carpentry to supplement his small acting income, and was working a custom millwork project near the Star Wars casting area. Lucas asked him for a favor: would he read Han Solo’s lines to prompt those auditioning for Luke and Leia’s parts?

Ford read the prompt lines carelessly. His antipathy ended up matching Solo’s character perfectly, and he was cast for the role that would make him a worldwide celebrity.

There’s something to all these stories about intention and release of of the outcome…

In each case, the lucky subject has an interest in the field, a general intention to find or do something valuable, and misdirected attention. Also, a very clear coincidence of being in the right place at the right time.

Bring your strongest intentions on Saturday.

What is the lucky break you’re looking for? On one of the tables on Saturday, I’ll have an area to list the stroke of luck you’d most love to meet with your name. Whether they appear in this newsletter or are found by someone else at the event, you might be at the right place at the right time to hit your stroke of luck or help someone else hit theirs.

I’ll feel the most lucky to see you on Saturday. :)

Get tickets to Vivid Parlor on 6/13

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Think of the lucky breaks that would mean the most to you. Bring them on Saturday and write them on the prompt before you leave!

Upcoming Events:

• Vivid Parlor: Just My Luck is coming up this Saturday, June 13 from 1:00-5:00 pm. Two DJs, a coffee and matcha vendor with mini pancakes, a cereal bar, and a lucky charm keychain station will be there, along with a gallery of my newest work. 🍀🤞

Have you ever tried being a trickster?

Vivid Parlor: Just My Luck is in 10 days!
Join for dancing, art, tinkering, chats, cereal, and coffee.

Get tickets to Vivid Parlor on 6/13

“When I’m having fun, everything else happens.”

“It all gets done with almost no effort. If I’m too serious, I get nothing but friction.”

Five women sat together answering a prompt: what would happen if you shared your story more boldly?

After I shared, Ashna said, “That approach of more fun for more leverage is gold. You should write about it.” 🃏

I’d decided to have a vendor table at a women’s networking event last minute, and met dozens of passionate founders. I’d planned my whole station around a fun coloring activity, where guests could find their brand archetype and color it.

The station turned into a sort of brand-archetype-oracle-reading, which is another story. We had a ball.

Sitting at my table and waiting for the event to start, I kept feeling drawn to one of the archetype pages: the trickster, who I’d made to be an aerialist circus performer.

Since when had this archetype won me over? As a kid, I was a complete goodie-two-shoes.

It is possible to do literary criticism as an eight year old.

My dad is a professor of religion and culture and a professed-from-the-rooftops librarian. He taught my brothers and I about archetypes from the time we could listen to stories.

All my favorite female archetypes were the fearless, curious ones. The very good girls. My parents picked stories for me based on the princess and creative archetypes.

Naturally as we grow up, the archetypes change. We can morph between different ones at different times, going from nurturer, to warrior, to guide, to antihero.

The trickster is the last one I would’ve expected to be drawn to. She’s upside down, looking at things from another perspective, comfortable in chaos, and here for the fun of it.

Here are some of the tricksters you’d recognize from stories:

• Loki, the Norse god and troublemaking brother of Thor.

• Jack Sparrow, Harley Quinn, the Joker, and the Cheshire Cat.

• Coyotes in indigenous cultures. Ravens and hares appear as well.

• Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and discord.

• Hermes, who is the Loki of Greek mythology, except with a one-note “don’t kill the messenger” play.

• Scheherazade, the Persian queen who tricks her murderous royal husband with stories she tells all night.

• Circe, the Greek witch who turns her enemies into monsters and lives the way she wants.

Admittedly, there are very few trickster archetypes that are female. In the literary world, there’s been a lot of discussion about this (the main writers like to say there are no female trickster archetypes). I like Helen Lock’s take the best: The freedom you need to get up to mischief and play all the time has been afforded only to men for most of the time humans have made myths.

Shapeshifting for supernatural courage

In the past, I’ve tried on character archetypes like Wonder Woman when I feel the need to be brave. Standing with your hands on your hips for for two minutes tricks your brain into feeling more confident.

Trying on the trickster has totally different effects:

• Permission to be a little unhinged, the best tonic for the recovered perfectionist.

• Permission to be friendly without being a friend (boundaries!).

• Permission to come and go, and to keep your own counsel. Also a great tonic for the recovered people-pleaser.

• Permission to be all kinds of other interesting things besides good, mature, conscious, polite, nice, predictable, and poised.

• Inspiration to pull off audacious feats and experiments, go on side quests, and generally fill your story with more novel plot points.

• Filtering everything through the trickster criteria: is this a fun and worthy challenge? Or is it serious and full of busywork?

As a grown person, you can choose to express a different side anytime you want. Try your luck. :)

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Are there situations or times when you resonate with the trickster?

• How could the serious or stressful parts of life be more fun?

Upcoming Events:

• Vivid Parlor: Just My Luck is coming up Saturday, June 13 from 1:00-5:00 pm. It’s a creative place to be unserious in a day-party atmosphere. Two DJs, a coffee and matcha vendor with mini pancakes, a cereal bar, and a lucky charm keychain station will be there, along with a gallery of my newest work. 🍀🤞

This week’s edition is about the incredible luck that comes with more audacity.

Vivid Parlor: Just My Luck is in 2.5 weeks!
Join for dancing, art, tinkering, chats, cereal, and coffee.

Get tickets to Vivid Parlor on 6/13

An old friend from college reached out last night to catch up, out of the blue.

He sent a video of his chonky baby, shared about a trip to Columbia with his wife, and told me about his latest feat: he’d pulled off an unlikely deal to flip a poorly run company. The risk had been steep, but it paid off enormously.

The reason we became friends in college and stayed in touch afterward was because of this talent he has for pulling off audacious feats. As a senior in college, I led freshmen around campus for the first weekend. One freshman left his assigned group to join mine because we were in the same philosophy program.

After I graduated, and while he was still in school, Zach figured out a way for both of us to get the StoryBrand Guide certification for $5,000 each instead of $10,000. We formed a pretend company, played our ‘youth’ cards up to the salesperson, and asked if we could pay one fee together instead of two fees.

The StoryBrand sales guy said to us, “Okay, don’t tell anyone we’re doing this. We’ll make an exception for you.”

At the time, I couldn’t get $10k worth of credit, and in the three years out of college I’d been freelancing just enough to survive. I wouldn’t have been able to get the StoryBrand certification at all if not for Zach’s unlikely request.

During the certification week in Nashville, I remember him telling me story after story of the times he’d tested what he could accomplish by asking and negotiating. He’d run the red paperclip experiment himself as a teenager, trading his way up from a $15 pair of headphones to top-shelf sound system.

Within four months of completing the StoryBrand certification together, he’d closed a $10k contract. It took me three years to close my first $10k deal.

When I moved to Austin, he’d called me up to be a part of another scheme. He’d worked out a six-figure content deal with Walmart, promising 5 UGC photos for each of the 200 free products they had listed in a spreadsheet. He asked 30 of us to sign up to receive free home goods and clothing items in exchange for the content, and he walked away with the entire six figure amount for himself.

I was furnishing my new apartment at the time, and ended up with lamps, kitchenware, makeup, jewelry, and shoes all for free. But pulling off a six figure deal with Walmart with zero overhead? What the hell, Zach…

I’m totally flummoxed by this kind of audacity.

Surely someone has researched the insanity behind it.

Digging for clues, I found several articles from the Stanford Graduate School of Business on why more people don’t pull of audacious feats:

• We wildly underestimate how often people will say yes. People predicted they’d need to ask 50% more strangers for a favor than they actually did, across everything from borrowing a phone to soliciting charity donations.

• We’re thinking about the favor, not the social implications. When deciding whether to ask, we fixate on how big the ask is for them, but the person being asked is actually focused on how uncomfortable it would feel to say no.

• Asking directly is more powerful than being subtle. A direct, face-to-face ask puts social pressure on the other person in a way that hinting or passing along a flyer doesn’t.

• An initial no may make a yes more likely. A prior refusal actually makes someone more likely to say yes to a second ask, because saying no twice feels worse than saying no once.

• The people most likely to help you are the ones you’re least likely to ask. We miss too many shots by avoiding the people we assume will refuse.

The key distinction between lucky asks and needless risk-taking is that audacity and presumption are different.

Audacious people tend to work their way up to feel more confident in bigger requests or risks. With audacity, it’s all about testing what’s possible and being ready to take a “no” easily.

Presumption is more about overestimating one’s competence and making grand assumptions. The difference is the most clear in the Latin root of each word:

• Audacity comes from the Latin “audacitas:” a daring spirit that manifests as courage in challenging circumstances. Audacity is creative and inspiring, it doesn’t always cross known boundaries. It’s more about trying something that isn’t against the rules, but that people don’t usually do.

• Presumption comes from “praesumptio,” or, to take beforehand. Presumption feels selfish or alienating, and looks more like breaking existing rules because of some assumed privilege.

It’s delivering a cookie cake to the green room to get into a packed show, rather than cutting everyone else in line.

“To create one’s own world takes courage.”

Georgia O’Keefe was born in 1887 and lived to be 99 years old. In her 70-year career as a modernist painter, she was known for making work totally independent of the major art movements of her time.

My favorite quote of hers is, “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.”

Audacity sounds like it’s own category of art. Or, a requirement to be a truly accomplished artist. After O’Keefe and Kahlo, what do I not dare to paint?

How else could it be possible to get what we want or express ourselves more fully, in a way that doesn’t cut across others’ interests?

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• What could you ask for or offer in exchange that feels audacious? What would be worth the experiment?

Upcoming Events:

• Vivid Parlor: Just My Luck is coming up Saturday, June 13 from 1:00-5:00 pm. It’s a whimsical sandbox for being a little more audacious to get lucky, in a creative day-party atmosphere. Early tickets are almost sold out!

This one will be a day party, complete with coffee, DJs Ashton Joe and Kody Sun, and all of the fun luck-themed activities:

• A group paint-marker mural

• A station to make your lucky charm keychain

• A doodle + collage table

• Sofas in the AC to chat and rifle through secret message bottles

• Espresso martinis for the first 75 guests and Lucky Charms cereal for everyone

• At least one other featured artist, Julia Jacobsen

• We’ve got space for 1-2 more artists, reply if you’d like to participate or recommend someone!

New Art 🖼️

I’ll also show a new large acrylic painting and, for the first time at a Vivid Parlor, a series of charcoal illustrations and figure drawings.

I’ve missed charcoal drawing, and have heard that charcoal on paper matches more kinds of decor than neon butterflies and rainbow disco balls. 😅 Drawings and prints will be available for purchase, with plenty under $200.

The Lucky Theme

The science and psychology of luck is so fascinating to me. It’s a whimsical reminder that the more you’re willing to take a risk or try something new, the more often life will send you pleasant surprises.

I’d like for the experience to reset our sense of serendipity: talk to a few new people, dance the stress away, lounge with friends on the sofa and bask in cereal nostalgia. Feeling easy and happy doesn’t have to be hard, especially in an unserious space all about how lucky you are to be alive.

The Partners

Earlier this year, I decided I wanted to collaborate with other local folks a lot more for each event. For this one, the partners are worth a brand crush (and friend crush):

• All Good Things Studio, a new venue by the founders of ATX Supper Club. Shout out to Bay and Hannah for the immaculate vibes they’ve curated!

• The Y’all event app, a totally local event platform with the best branding. Shout out to Zach Giberson for helping kickstart this Parlor, and for knowing everyone ever.

• Plus, a great group of UT Austin students helping setup and learning event production with me!

Early rate tickets are halfway sold out already!

Save $10 and get a ticket now. I’m so excited to have a lucky art day with you!

Get Tickets

A couple of things happened that gave me a tart attitude adjustment.

Remembering our connection to every other human is the topic of today’s newsletter.

I should have been at the venue an hour earlier that morning

I was hosting a meetup session at a venue that isn’t open to the public. I walked up 10 minutes before the event began to start greeting guests. There were already people waiting at the door, which was oddly locked still.

The venue owner wasn’t there like the last time I hosted. I know her, so I texted her. She sent me the door code and answered all my next questions via text: The AC isn’t working, where are the tables, how do you set the music, etc.

While guests were trickling in with brand new people they’d brought, I felt so harassed. I rushed around trying to set up during the beginning of the event, when the welcome moments matter the most. Why hadn’t I been told to show up early for set up?

Once the AC finally started working an hour into the session, I texted the host of the meetup, my friend who I was subbing for. I was so irritated, and so off base:

My friend’s wife was in labor with their first kid.
Of course he hadn’t told me about setup!

At the end of the session, I shared the mixup story with everyone at the event, and the whole room changed. No one cared about the heat or the weird setup or the confusion at the beginning. The story turned a room of semi-strangers into a mushy family of aunts, uncles, and cousins in three minutes.

We wrapped up, all smiles and “can I help you with the chairs?” And I moved on to my next two events for the afternoon.

By event #3, I was dragging my feet

I’d totally run out of steam, intending to say hi to a friend at their artsy pop up and Irish exit pronto. It was at a boutique warehouse with specialty coffee, a small bookstore of coffee table books that you buy to trend-up your decor, and several curated brands that screamed TASTE in an if you know, you know, sort of way.

My friend’s shoe line was displayed like a Gucci pop up, it looked marvelous. Leather slippers with gorgeous details and bright red inner lining. The people standing around were the type that fly in from Malibu and Queens to go to Willy Nelson’s parties at Luck Ranch.

I was in athleisure feeling somewhat lame and once again, harassed. I met a lady who waxed poetic about her artistic accomplishments. I nursed an inner eye roll. I’d usually love all this? I’m being weird? I’m definitely not going to name drop all my art projects, get over it?

Making one last circuit around the warehouse before my Irish exit, I brushed eye contact with a guy who didn’t seem to be with anyone else. He didn’t fit in with all the style and vogue and money in the room. He loped from an aisle toward the bookstore with sort of hunched shoulders and awkwardly half smiled at me. I’d seen him earlier in the parking lot, he’d looked gloomy. What did he want?

I have a reflex of ignoring men who do this glance thing, at least on a first pass. It’s like a safety thing. Or I just wasn’t in the mood. I found my shoe designer friend and told him, sorry, love you, I feel ick and am going home, huge congratulations. Hugs. I turned to the door to leave.

The hunched shoulder guy was walking out the glass front of the store. He had a tote with the bookstore name. He’d been working a shift.

It hit me that he was the cashier at the bookstore. I realized he’d probably felt really weird, like the odd one just working his solo job, supposed to be a wallflower. My string of impressions rearranged in three breaths: he’d wanted to talk to someone. He had the look of just wanting to be seen as a person, and I’d totally ignored him.

I took my leave of the pop up and felt terrible. It would have cost so little to talk to him about the books, his day, anything. Something?

I made it home to my sofa to be alone, brooding.

By no accident whatsoever, this story popped up in my feed.

It’s about seeing the people who feel invisible, and connecting human-to-human no matter the circumstances:

I have no idea if it’s a true story, but I was absolutely decked by my role as part of a species that needs each other.

I’m walking around with all the serenity, security, and general affinity for other people a person could have to give. My cup is full even when I’m in a bad mood.

How many connections do I miss?

I know better than to think I exist in the world for some future grand accomplishment, that’s a load of poppycock. I’m here to be alive. I am so alive. The alivest, even. Really I am. And I withhold it? I waltz around my princess little life withholding water from people who may be in a desert? When I’ve been in the desert before?!?

Got it. Feeling bad isn’t very useful, so I felt the clean humbling, bleached to my bones, and checked on a few people I love.

On Monday, I got a photo of my friend’s newborn baby mid-yawn.

God, it’s so good to be a living human, right now.

How are you?

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Acknowledge someone you normally wouldn’t, or ask how someone is doing and really mean it. Take a dose of refreshed connection with humanity. :)

Wonder at our relentless pioneering as a species is the topic of this week’s edition.

The Habitable Worlds Observatory could launch in the 2040s

Apparently, exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) have been a part of space research for a long time. We want to find out where else we could live.

Much of what I’ve found in the 2026 innovation logs reads like sci-fi. Between the lines, I can see the questions that drive us as a species:

• Defeating death: How can we live better for longer?

• Pioneering the unknown: How can we live off-world?

• Helping others: How can we make life better for those that have less?

• Understanding life and reality: How did we get here?

• Predicting danger: What’s happening to us and to our world?

Some of the discoveries are wondrous, and some challenge assumptions about the way life works. Here are a few:

Defeating death

• Innovations in cancer research are mind blowing: a test to detect over 50 cancers before symptoms appear, personalized cancer vaccines to make remission more permanent, and drugs that target the proteins that cause cancer growth are just a few. Dana Farber Cancer Institute

• Life Biosciences makes breakthroughs in reversing cell age, and initiates trials for advanced gene therapies to lengthen telomeres and prevent multiple diseases that come with aging.

Pioneering the unknown

• NASA's Artemis II sent four astronauts on a loop around the Moon in April. The crew broke the record for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth. Even better, the crew included the first woman, first person of color, and first non-American to venture beyond low Earth orbit.

• Scientists drove a tiny sample of antimatter five kilometers down a road in Switzerland. Antimatter is the "opposite" of normal matter and vanishes the instant it touches regular matter, we study it to understand how reality works.

Helping others

• The UK’s first long‑distance robotic-assisted surgery was performed on a patient 1,500 miles away in Gibraltar.

• A UN-backed roadmap is challenging the traditional "growth-at-all-costs" economic model, advocating instead for a human rights-based economy that prioritizes social wellbeing over GDP growth.

Understanding life and reality

• Researchers described a molecule made of RNA that can essentially reproduce itself. It's new evidence for the "RNA World" hypothesis for how life began. The idea is that self-copying RNA molecules were life's very first building blocks, billions of years before DNA or cells existed.

• There are more than a few quantum physics developments, none of which make for light reading. We still don’t really know what dark matter is, reality is very strange, and we’re finding new ways to study it. More here.

Predicting danger

• Developing technologies and research allows scientists to track global ocean currents and confirm the acceleration of global warming, all to better predict its effects.

• The International Asteroid Warning Network is a global coordination system that warns us of asteroid collision threats. “International planetary defense” just sounds so Star Wars.

Tiny little people spinning on a rock in space

It’s incredible what could be possible in the next 30 years. Totally mind boggling. It all makes me wonder, though: does human nature change over time?

Will more health, security, and provision bring out the best in homo sapiens? Or will our cravings and competition still find more dramatic ways to express?

What if one day, we look back and think: Can you imagine a time when we stole from each other? Back when we died from disease? What was that like?

In all likelihood, you and I will pass 100 years old and be able to consider the timeline with all our memory and cognitive function intact (if not exported to the cloud).

If that’s the possible future, I wonder… what kinds of problems do I want to be a part of solving, potentially for the last time in human history?

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Which of these innovations charms your imagination? If your biggest problem in life right now were automatically solvable in the next 20 years, would it change how you live?

On the excruciating habit of creative deadlines

By the time all the plates were cleared away, the founders sat on one side of the table talking about AI, and the creators sat on my side of the table talking about poetry and what it’s like to need to publish all the time when you’re big on Instagram.

“That one week I posted every day, my followers grew by 300,000. But it’s excruciating to will the work to come out 7 days in a row.” Sitting in front of a phone stand, staring at a black rectangle, waiting for the muse to cross the creative void.

Joshua de Schutter is visiting Austin from Canada and working on a volume of poetry for a book deal. He’s 21 and started writing after his first poetry post went viral: a video of a Gen Z kid writing by hand.

So far, this piece is my favorite:

You know they say right before you die your brain tries to save you
And it will flash every single lived experience in front of you
trying to find a solution to keep you from death.
Isn’t that so ironic?
That not until we die to our problems,
do we realize no amount of thinking could have saved us from them.
And just as the brain has never experienced death and therefore can’t
protect us from it, you’ve never experienced life.
So what makes you think you’re gonna get it all right?
You won’t.
I promise you won’t.
Just be gentle with yourself.
When you inevitably don’t
and it will all be okay.

Both writers I spoke to were named Josh

Josh Czuba lives here in Austin. His book of short stories is called Dopamine Hole.

Here’s an excerpt I loved from of one his drafts:

I need to feel something real. Even if it kills me.
And you know, sometimes I hope it does.
Because that would be better than turning out like you.
A machine behind a screen, bound in khaki and gingham in a climate controlled cell in the sky, pretending you weren’t meant for more.
See that’s the difference between you and me.
I’m just no good at pretending.

I can’t be anything but me. Even when it hurts.
My lies are in service of the truth.
Can you say the same?
Look, I know you judge me.
But we’re fighting the same fight every day of our lives. Trying to squeeze ourselves into costumes that don’t fit. In a play that’s lost its audience.
Who are you pretending for?

Underneath the set dressing, we all want the same thing.

We want to feel the blood beneath our skin. Heart beating so fast we can taste metal.
We want to be out of breath, at the end of our rope, pushed close to death so we remember what it means to be alive.
Somewhere along the way we chose to forget that. And we’ve been pretending ever since, trying to convince ourselves we’re not sick.

But I’m gonna get better. You’re gonna see.
I’m gonna get out of here. Run far away on my own two feet til I find a place with hand hewn houses and rivers you can drink from. A place where they stare into fires at night instead of mirrors. A place with people like me.
And I’ll gather my own timber and stone and build a real life from the ground up til I can sit still in the fading light and watch the paint dry.

It was a funny scene, analog people on one side of the table and Claude Coders key mashing on the other side. Funny, but hopeful to see young people gaining traction with raw videos of even more raw writing. And writing by hand.

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• As Josh C. would say, allow yourself to get bored. See how much creativity comes out after a period of empty mind wandering.

I hear this all the time.

Oddly enough, I also still hear, “It’s hard to make friends as an adult.”

Small talk doesn’t have to be awkward or dreadful to serve its essential purpose socially. That’s the topic of this week’s newsletter.

Getting rid of small talk would be like booting the bellhop at a 5-star hotel.

The common assumption is that small talk is for superficial, uninteresting people. The unspoken complaint goes something like, “Why have we all agreed to speak on safe, hackneyed topics in a room full of new people? I don’t care about the weather or where someone is from, so why do I have to pay the social tax of discussing it?”

Here’s why: Small talk is not about the boring topic.

When you meet someone for the first time, your brain is looking for unity points. What do I have in common with this person? Do their mannerisms feel safe and familiar? Are they a threat or a friend?

Small talk is the ice breaker tax to create psychological safety in conversation with a new person.

Sure, I could check myself into a hotel and carry all my own bags. I could dump the luggage of the deeper conversation I want to have all over their lobby, before they decide if I’m the kind of guest they’d like to let in.

They could run down all the rules at the desk before they ever say, “Welcome to the stranger hotel, we’re truly pleased to host you today.”

At that hotel, guests and hosts have decided that conversational entertainment and instant connection are the only MO worth their time.

The worthy investment of well-done small talk is showing unearned, freely given interest in another person.

Even if the questions and responses are totally boring, the first sixty seconds of communication with another person can send a strong message:

“I truly am pleased to meet you, and I want to know about you. This is a safe place to talk at whatever depth you feel comfortable.”

We don’t hate small talk because it’s boring. We hate it because those 60 seconds are the peak of social anxiety.

Social anxiety is normal. The brain needs a lot of practice and repetition to confirm that nothing bad will happen if you talk to a new person. Even with that practice, some social situations click the brain right back into “no one here will like me.”

It’s so, so normal.

Imagine then, that when you meet someone for the first time, their brain is washed with social anxiety static.

The best way to push through communication while the brain has all cylinders on creating safety is to talk about familiar or automatic topics.

Familiar and automatic topics don’t have to be boring:

The usual topics are, how are you, how do you know the host, or what do you do for work. There are a few more safe topics that can work for small talk:

• What are you most looking forward to this week/this summer?

• Is there a story to this piece of jewelry? Or tattoo, or accessory, etc.

• What are your superpowers? Or, what’s a topic you know a lot about?

• What podcasts or books have you been into lately?

• What’s your favorite thing to do in (city) these days?

The other one that works well for me is, “Can I share something I’m excited about with you?” There’s usually something I want to share, and the invitation feels conspiratorial. To a new person it’s best to keep it short and follow up with a question about them, related to the topic.

Skip social anxiety, don’t skip the small talk.

Small means safe, not pathetic. Charming people are great at creating fun and safety in the first few seconds of a connection. It’s easy when you know the social secret: no one wants to feel awkward. They want to feel liked and listened to.

How much better would life be if small talk were fun and easy?

Run a 24-Hour Experiment

• Try new kinds of small talk!

Upcoming Events

• Open Studio: A Creative Hobby Hangout is tonight from 7-9 pm. Come relax and get creative in a chill hangout setting, I’ll have art supplies available.