Gapingvoid

worship ye…

Hugh MacLeod — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:06:12 +0000

lifestyle refugee

Hugh MacLeod — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:35:58 +0000

creepy eel guy

Hugh MacLeod — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:09:57 +0000

“random new york”, 1998

Hugh MacLeod — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:31:33 +0000

I drew this one in early 1998, during my first months of living in Manhattan.

I liked all those intense, late-night random conversations with all sorts of equally random Manhattan people– especially at first– but of course, after a while they all start to sound the same.

This is the kind of drawing one does sitting on a New York barstool, when one is not liking one’s day job nearly well enough. That was my situation at the time, anyway.

If today I met my younger self from back then, I’d say to him, “You’re just paying your dues, Kiddo. Frickin’ get over yourself…”

life is too short

Hugh MacLeod — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:33:22 +0000

[Cartoon inspired by my friend, Mark Earls aka @herdmeister…]

i wanted wings

Hugh MacLeod — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:49:41 +0000

Like I said in IGNORE EVERYBODY, “When your dream become reality, they are no longer your dreams.” This drawing is all about that…

the daily beatings don’t stop. ever.

Hugh MacLeod — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:46:42 +0000

Mark has a fun post over on The Lateral Action Blog, “Lose Touch With Your Inner Whining Artist”:

It’s quite simple, really: People who spend a lot of time listening to their Inner Whining Artist get the shit beaten out of them by the world in general on a daily basis.

And as long as IWA plays a plays a significant role in your life, the daily beatings don’t stop. Ever.

Thank Christ for that.

writer’s block

Hugh MacLeod — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:31:10 +0000

apple store

Hugh MacLeod — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:45:37 +0000

i feel new again

Hugh MacLeod — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:06:06 +0000

[“Untitled 091101″. Ink on business card. Drawn earlier today.]

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks at gapingvoid Central. Sometime during September, I started drawing in earnest again, back in my original, no-frills ink on “Back of Business Cards” format. We’re talking 2–3 hundred of them in the last month.

I felt the need to get back to my roots– back to something simpler, back in touch with the “Utterly Basic” sensibility I had when I was living in New York– no other reason.

Plan to be seeing more of these efforts posted online soon. Very exciting!

I’m just so happy right now. I feel new again. Seriously.

don’t worry about being an artist. just worry about getting the work made.

Hugh MacLeod — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:59:44 +0000

A very respected journalist once told me, “I’m always telling students, if you want to be a journalist, for God’s sake don’t be a Journalism Major. Study something else, like The Classics or Architecture. That means when you start looking for work, you’ll be bringing something to the table besides ‘Shop Talk’.”

Great, great advice. And what’s true for aspiring journalists is also true for artists. We get so fixated on our own shtick– and the shtick of our peers, and whoever is in fashion that week– that we close ourselves up to the very kinds of experience that will make our work deeper, richer and more interesting in the long run, and “Talk Shop” instead [And bloggers are the worst. Why? Because it’s so much easier for a blogger to write about social media than it to write about something more original. I’ve been as guilty as anyone.].

Then again, it’s hard to make a significant body of work long-term, unless you’re totally obsessed and single-focused. Besides eating, drinking and screwing, Picasso didn’t do much else with his time, except make art.

On this subject, the best thing I’ve heard recently came from the composer, Phillip Glass, who my Twitter buddy, Hazel Dooney quoted recently: “I have one secret. You get up early in the morning and you work all day. That’s the only secret.”

My advice? Don’t worry about being an artist. Worry about getting the work made. If you’re any good, the rest will follow. Rock on.

turning down the volume…

Hugh MacLeod — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:02:06 +0000

Recently I did something dramatic: I got rid of my Blackberry, and I started leaving my computer at the office.

So now I am without (GASP!) Internet access 12–16 hours a day!

The “Always-On Culture” had been feeling oppressive for a while now. Finally I decided to do something about it. Basta.

The biggest benefit so far is; I’m drawing a hell of a lot more. This is, after all, what I get paid to do, and what I’ll be remembered for. Nobody will ever care how many Twitter followers I had or how SEO-optimized my blog was.

The Internet liberates us from so much; it’s our duty not to become again enslaved by something else.

new moleskine drawing: “tried meaningful”

Hugh MacLeod — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:54:18 +0000

Just finished this new Moleskine drawing: “Tried Meaningful”. You can see the enlarged image here. Let me know what you think!

[See more like this over at the Moleskine archive.]

“the moment”

Hugh MacLeod — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:09:19 +0000

Simon Thornhill is a good friend of mine. He and his lovely wife own The Troubadour in London, the legendary restaurant and nightclub. Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan played there, back when they were still unknown. The Thornhills bought the place from the previous owners a few years ago.

Before that, Simon was an officer in The Black Watch, perhaps the most respected Scottish regiment in the British Army. He’s tough as nails, but a bit of a hippie, too. If you ever visit Earl’s Court, look him up. He’s terrific company.

I don’t know what we were were talking about that night in The Shackleton Room, but somehow the conversation got on to the subject of young Army officers. Some of the kids I went to high school in Edinburgh with ended up joining Regiments straight after finishing their exams, so Simon’s previous life wasn’t a world completely unknown to me. These kids sign up at age seventeen or eighteen, take their two-year training at Sandhurst, and the next thing you know, they’re in the field, armed to the teeth, and giving orders to experienced Sargeants and Corporals twice their age.

I don’t know about you, but I would find that REALLY intimidating. Those young kids must have cojones, I’ll tell you that. I was telling Simon how terrifying I thought it it must be, to be a kid barely out of school, with all the men FAR more experienced than you under your command, holding you in the traditional squaddies’ contempt reserved for all new, young officers.

“Yes, that certainly happens,” said Simon. “But then you finally have what they call in the Army, ‘The Moment’. The Moment when you stop trying to be your men’s new best friend, and actually start to lead them. That’s when you REALLY become an officer– not before, when you receive your commission.

“That happened to me when we were on a night exercise. I had only received my commission a few months previously. Things were going terribly wrong, nobody was doing their jobs. Everything was in shambles. Finally I had my ‘Moment’. I just pulled my finger out, and firmly said to the men, ‘I’m in command, you’re not, you will do as I say or I will have you all up on charges, Boys. Now fucking go do your jobs.’ Somehow they knew I wasn’t joking.

“And so they went off and obeyed their orders, without any fuss. A few of them were easily ten or fifteen years older than me… The thing is, they might not think much of the young kid giving them orders at first, but at the same time, soldiers do want to be led.”

As with Simon, I think we all need to have that “Moment”, eventually. That moment when we stop futzing around and actually start behaving like proper adults. That moment when we actually start acting like “Officers” commanding our own lives.

I remember mine. I didn’t think too much about it at the time, but over the years I realized just how key it ended up being.

I was a young freelance advertising creative, living in London, meeting a friend for a drink at my regular Soho watering hole, The Coach & Horses.

The bar was crowded and noisy that evening. The barmaid was a young, pretty Chinese lass, who’d only been in the country a short while, who spoke pretty good English, but not great.

I asked the barmaid for a glass of wine for my friend, and for me, a gin & tonic with FOUR slices of lime. I even held up four fingers to help make it clear to her.

So the poor barmaid ended up bringing me back five drinks– my friend’s glass of wine, with FOUR gin & tonics, each with a SINGLE slice of lime. Oops. We’re talking a round that I suppose easily exceeded thirty or forty dollars.

A simple misunderstanding, I guess, plus like I said, her English wasn’t very good. I told the barmaid about the mix-up. “No, I asked for a SINGLE gin & tonic with FOUR slices of lime” etc.

Up until that moment, like any young pub drinker, I probably would then have just asked the barmaid to take the surplus three drinks away, and add more lime slices to the remaining gin. Easy. But I didn’t.

Instead, I asked her, “Will this mistake be coming out of your wages?”

“Yes,” she replied. I already knew enough about the bar’s owner to know that she wasn’t lying.

The thing is, unlike here in the US, the people working in London pubs don’t work for tips, mainly because nobody really tips there. You might get five or ten dollars a night if you’re lucky. They get paid by the hour, usually minimum wage, in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Hence London bartenders tend to be really, really poor. The mistake the barmaid made would be, for her, extremely expensive. Two-three hours’ wages or so, maybe even more.

“Never mind,” I said. “Just put three more limes in one of the glasses, and I’ll pay for the other three gins as well.” Which I did.

Then it was just a matter of finding three random people in the bar who were not above accepting free gin & tonics from a total stranger with an American accent. This being The Coach & Horses, that took all of twenty seconds. “Cheers, Mate!”

A year or two before that, I would’ve just probably allowed the young barmaid to take the hit. “You made the mistake, not me, not my problem” etc.

London was being kind to me at the time; life was good. Whereas this young Chinese girl was living thousands of miles away from her family, and probably doing so very close to the poverty line. So I chose to take the hit instead of her. I know I didn’t have to, I was perfectly within my rights, but…

I didn’t want to be that kind of person anymore. I really didn’t. So that was my “Moment”.

And every enterprise I’ve ever started or been involved with, had its Moment as well. That moment where you finally decide not to cut corners, not to make excuses, even if you can get away with it. Even if 99% of other businesses wouldn’t have bothered.

These moments are gold dust, they really are.

Has your business had its “Moment” yet? If not, what can you do to make it happen sooner? Serious question.

[Update: Molly made a lovely point in the comments:]

more thoughts on “evil plans”

Hugh MacLeod — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:03:06 +0000

Now that my October travels are over, I’m sitting at my desk again, working on my second book, EVIL PLANS. Here are some notes:

1. The definition of an “EVIL PLAN” is, quite simply, a great idea that the world isn’t quite ready for yet, or at least, doesn’t think it is. Think of all the world-changing ideas that met resistance when they first came out. The motor car (“What’s wrong with a good horse?”). The telephone (“Hey, if someone wants to speak to me, they can damn well come and visit me at my office, or write me a letter.”). Universal Education (“We can’t have commoners learning how to read– it’ll give them all these fancy ideas they have no business thinking!”). Personal Computers (“The world is perfectly happy with $5 million mainframes, Laddie.”). Women’s Suffrage (“Women? Voting? But they’re not mentally stable enough to choose a good leader!”).

2. Everybody needs their own EVIL PLAN. Because that’s our ticket off the treadmill, the nine-to-five, the working for The Man. Being a wage slave in the post-industrial world sucks. Besides, the latter doesn’t pay very well.

3. Everyone needs to find meaning in the brief time they’re living on this planet. Besides Love– friends, family, babies, your fellow man etc– I believe the best way to achieve that is to find a way of making a living that (A) pays the bills and (B) creates something that you can believe in. We are happiest when the work we do fulfills a sense of purpose. This isn’t rocket science. This is just an EVIL PLAN to get our sorry asses out of the salt mine and on to doing something that matters.

4. EVIL PLANS are not really “Evil”, of course. Maybe “Impish” would be a more accurate term. But calling it “Evil” is really pretty “Impish”, so hey, it works. There is something rather mischievous about having something up your sleeve that will surprise everybody eventually– something that will carry “the joyfully unexpected” to a place it wasn’t before.

5. My good friend, John T Unger once said, “Probably the easiest way to create good in this world, is by starting a small business that makes cool stuff.” I totally agree. That’s how I’ve chosen to spend my life; the point of EVIL PLANS is to reach out to those who have done the same. There are MILLIONS of us. It’s damn exciting.

6. “It’s not just enough to make money. One needs Personal Sovereignty as well.” My Scottish grandfather was poor as dirt his whole life. But he died a free and proud man, and loved by countless many. One thing Grandpa didn’t like, was being told what to do by other people. Especially bureaucrats. “Wee Mannies”, he called them. Small men who used their State-given authority to push bigger men around. They never really pushed Grandpa around, though– frankly, they weren’t that dumb. As I get older, the more I realize how much I take after Grandpa MacLeod. Which is why I own my own business, which is why I would never do well in a large corporation. I don’t like having bosses. I don’t like being told what to do. Again, there are millions of people out there who feel the same. Again, it’s exciting.

7. I’m not writing a “How-To” book. A library of How-To books won’t tell you as much as the following sentence: “Work your ass off for twenty years and THEN, JUST MAYBE you’ll finally get a frickin’ clue.” Like my first book, IGNORE EVERYBODY, I’m just compiling a list of all the stuff that has helped me over the years. But it’s true– a little talent & a good work ethic goes a lot farther than a lot of talent & a poor work ethic. As a lot of my hapless, talented-but-lazy friends found out far too late.

8. I’ve been an artist, I’ve been an entrepreneur. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference– they’re far more similar than the popular myths would have us believe. A fortysomething musician sent me an email recently. He told me that, although his life for the most part has been a happy one– good health, lovely wife, great kids, good friends, nice house, etc– his career has always been a bit foggy for him, like he was never sure what would happen next. I replied, “No worries, your situation happens A LOT with creative people, even among the super-creative-successful types. The never-ending fog of being an artist.” Whether we’re talking art or being an entrepreneur, “The Fog” is always with us. There is no cure, there is only building up a tolerance. And a good sense of humor helps, as well.

9. I think human beings inherently want to do “Something That Matters”. I think it’s in our DNA. I think the people who say they don’t want do something that matters are liars. I also think having an EVIL PLAN constantly in the back of our minds– quitting our day job and opening a bar, writing the Great American Novel, whatever– is also in our DNA. EVIL PLANS is a meditation about finally waking the hell up and going off to do something meaningful.

10. Life is an adventure. EVIL PLANS is my way of proving the preceding sentence correct. And the people who want to prove me wrong? They’re welcome to try– even if they’ll probably fail. Screw ‘em anyway.