You tend to rebel against what you grew up with, and for me I was ready to trade in oceanic parking lots, run-down strip malls and well-proportioned town houses for squealing subways, cloud-piercing skyscrapers and cramped apartments. I realized I was too comfortable. I went to the park one day and wrote down all the various goals I had, then went back and circled the ones I thought I could accomplish in one, five and ten years. I don’t have the list anymore, but I remember writing that I wanted to start and run my own company. I saw that I wasn’t getting any closer to that goal by staying in advertising, and the hunger inside me was getting its edges sanded down by the act of coming up with a bunch of ideas to sell products, but rarely getting to affect the experience of the products themselves.

I wanted the lack of employment and stable income to motivate me to do something. I wanted credit card companies pounding at my door about unpaid debts, because it would only be a greater incentive to get out there and hustle. I left my job in fall of 2008, right when the big investment banks were on the verge of collapse. I remember going to our office near Wall Street on my last days of work and walking past news vans parked outside Lehman Brothers.

Pendulums, Tea, and Jack Cheng

tomatoes forced into sexual activities by a gang of brutal tuber AMELIE VON WULFFEN: ‘This Is How It Happened’ Published by: Distanz Format: 21 x 30 cm 56 pages, 47 color images, softcover

tomatoes forced into sexual activities by a gang of brutal tuber

AMELIE VON WULFFEN: ‘This Is How It Happened’
Published by: Distanz
Format: 21 x 30 cm
56 pages, 47 color images, softcover

The danger is that it’s just talk. Then again, the danger is that it’s not. I believe you can speak things into existence.

Jay-Z, Decoded, 2010

The nonprofit model, ‘replicates historical oppression by keeping funders in power over activists, emphasizing institution building and business practices over organizing and systemic change, and perhaps most egregious, forcing soicla justice activists to please theirfunders rather their own communities

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, South End Press 2007. In Do It Anyway: A New Generatio nof Activists, Courtney E. Martin

When software developer Brad Isaac asked Jerry Seinfeld, who in those days was still a touring comic, what his secret was, he advised Isaac to pick up one of those wall calendars that had the entire year on a single page. To Seinfeld, becoming a better comedian meant writing every day, so each day Jerry worked on his writing, he would put a big red X in the box for that day. Pretty soon, there’d be a chain of red XXXXXs and not breaking the chain became its own motivation.

There are moments when, caught up in the mental resistance that keeps us from getting started, we forget just how enjoyable the act of doing really is. When you’ve finally started and you’re engaged in the work, you think “hey, I kind of like this.” What I love about the Seinfeld calendar is that it lets you channel your stubbornness and redirect it from not starting into not missing your reps.

Jack Cheng, 30 Minutes a Day: A Memory Schedule [PDF] Pimsleur’s article in the Modern Language Journal (1967).

If you had the absolute, perfect setup, you would stop trying to change, stop dreaming of the way things could be better. Being almost there keeps you moving but with an eye peeled for a better path. The answer to the last question is always the same because the constant pursuit of perfection is the closest we ever come to attaining it.

Jack Cheng on Daniel Bogan’s The Setup 

matthieu gafsou: terres compromiseshttp://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/19153/matthieu-gafsou-terres-compromises.html

matthieu gafsou: terres compromises

http://www.designworklife.com/2012/01/25/amy-rodchester-newcastle-festival-of-dance-posters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+designworklife%2Fdwl+%28design+work+life%29

(Source: regardezunepipe, via audriejane)

(Source: eatelectricsugar, via beanfield)

AS: Can you tell us about how you came to live in New York?
ML: I came to New York to study fine arts at Pratt Institute. That was in 2005. I originally wanted to pursue painting, but I became obsessed with printmaking and the idea of publishing––making multiples and stuff. I have always been obsessed with zines, so that’s really where my interest in publishing came from.

AS: And now you do everything.
ML: Making zines forces one to be the editor, the printmaker, the artist, the intern, the whipping boy––everything. Knowing how to work every part of a magazine is what makes independent publishing so special. Working on your own publication forces you to learn everything and it’s also the best because you have the most control.

—At Home with Maggie Lee, Opening Ceremony

http://www.viceland.com/int/v18n5/htdocs/index.php?country=us

(Source: neuvisions, via les-nyc)

True, the benefits of living alone are many: freedom to come and go as you please; the space and solitude to recharge in a plugged-in world; kingly or queenly domain over the bed.

Still, as TV has taught us, the single-occupant home can be a breeding ground for eccentricities. Think of Claire Danes’s C.I.A. employee in “Homeland,” who turns her Georgetown one-bedroom into a control bunker for an ad hoc spying operation. Or Kramer on “Seinfeld,” washing vegetables in the shower or deciding, on a whim, to ditch his furniture in favor of “levels.”

Other people say their greatest eccentricities emerge in the kitchen. Eating can be a personal, even self-conscious act, and in the absence of a roommate or partner, unconventional approaches to food emerge. Drinking from the carton is only the start.

One Is the Quirkiest Number, The Freedom, and Perils, of Living Alone — NYTimes

1 in every 4 American households is occupied by someone living alone; in Manhattan, mythic land of the singleton, the number is nearly 1 in 2.

At the opening I was touched and surprised. People would come up to me with tears in their eyes. Students aged 20-21 came up to me weeping and saying, “thank you so much for making this work. I see it as a very important archive that has a risk of being lost. I’ve noticed that some people my age in their mid-20s who weren’t personally affected by a loss from AIDS feel as if they grew up in a time after AIDS. There is a real separation between those who have been affected by it and those who haven’t.

Gran Fury: Read My Lips, curated by Gran Fury and Michael Cohen

Gran Fury, “Kissing Doesn’t Kill bus poster” (1989)

Gran Fury, “Kissing Doesn’t Kill bus poster” (1989)