I never really understood art.
"if no art makes you feel anything, make your own art and feel something"
But Hakone’s Open-Air Museum has put lead in my pencil.
Me missus mentioned “I don’t really understand art”
And that’s ok I thought? Art doesn’t HAVE to be understood. It can be interpreted how you see fit.
On one sculpture, my missus blurted (god bless her soul) “this is just a blob? I could create this?”
And I don’t believe she’s objectively wrong.
But has she created that? No.
Will she create that? Unlikely.
So that’s the thing. An idea is worthless. Execution is where it matters.
Instead of a blob, I saw the logistics, craftsmanship, and manhours behind it. Sourcing materials, crafting together, countless late nights putting this momentous effort together. And if you see a blob? That’s completely fine!
Art is what you make (of) it. Don’t like art? Create some!
I try to live more and more by this each day. If I don’t like something, I try change the world to fit my will [I realise this might sound wank and arrogant, but it’s true. Shy kids don’t get sweets. Ask for that promotion. Ask that girl out for a coffee. The downside is often very fucking limited. With the upside being infinitely beyond your imagination. Seems like a good trade to me.]. I whinged about no interesting podcasts focused on Asia-Pacific. So I created one.
Now, I find no one does authentic golf gear where actual blood, sweat and tears go into creating the art that it deserves to be. So I started OKKA.
Things don’t just happen. People make them happen.
Look around. Seriously. Look around you right now.
Everything you see is someone’s life’s work.
The iPhone you’re likely holding was Steve Jobs’ life’s work.
The components that make up an iPhone are all individual people’s life’s work.
We are surrounded by art, success, and people’s life’s work.
Jim McKelvey: Yes. This is an idea - so, everything you see in the world is I like to think of it as a sea of success. So, I'm sitting in the studio right now and I'm looking at a microphone. Well, somebody had this idea for this microphone and somebody had to then build it and there were other competing designs for microphones that didn't make it into your studio, OK, and every molecule in this room, including you and me, like we competed for molecules biologically, right? Our parents somehow survived and yours did and mine did. How it happened? Peace me but it did. If you look at that, everything in the world is a winner to get its atoms into existence and you may sit there and say, well, this is a crummy coffee cup that I'm holding and it could be better to handle, it could be more comfortable than all this other crap.
But the fact is that coffee cup won. You don't know the explanation but you know it's the winner. So, you are surrounded your entire life by nothing but winners.
Barry Ritholtz: It's so funny you say that because I have a pet theory that says everything you see is survivorship bias
JM: Yes.
BR: And because you're surrounded by winners, you don't see the millions of losers and iterations and failed attempts that went into trying to build that, […]
BR: They don't see the 51s or the millions that failed before that.
Hakone’s Open Air Art Museum also led me to Picasso. I knew of him, yeh. But wasn’t familiar with his work and story. But DUDE GOT SHIT DONE.
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. At his death there were more than 45,000 unsold works in his estate, comprising 1,885 paintings, 1,228 sculptures, 3,222 ceramics, 7,089 drawings, 150 sketchbooks, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs.[100] The most complete – but not exhaustive – catalogue of his works, the catalogue raisonné compiled by Christian Zervos, lists more than 16,000 paintings and drawings.[101] Picasso's output was several times more prolific than most artists of his era; by at least one account, American artist Bob Ross is the only one to rival Picasso's volume, and Ross's artwork was designed specifically to be easily mass-produced quickly.[102]
Even if we only count the 16,000 paintings and drawings, over his 78-year career (28,489 days!) this means he was going better than one every two days. Get after it!
So when in doubt, get it out.
I am fully prepared, if I want to make beautiful artistic, expression-filled golfwear, I’m gonna have to fail. And fail A LOT. But there’s beauty in that! I’m in no rush to the finish line of true, tranquil artistic expression.
One of my pieces- slow down, take it easy was inspired by this tweet:
One of the most perilous illusions is that your real life has not yet begun, that your present existence is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that will fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you hurried through was in fact the one to your death.
So enjoy the present. Get funky with it. Let loose. You don’t have to be dead to be stiff.
