Good Life Project - Milton Glaser | Make Things That Move People [Best Of]

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

Iconic artist, designer, and New York Magazine cofounder, Milton Glaser's (http://www.miltonglaser.com/) work has been seen everywhere from the halls of global industry to, social movements to local pubs, the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center. He was the visionary behind the legendary I ♥ NY logo, designed and given for free as an offering to the city he loved when it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in the 70s. The generation-defining, rainbow-haired Bob Dylan poster? Glaser, too. And, thousands of other works that have moved millions of people and defined moments, industries, and generations. Over our 8-year history, Glaser has become the single most-referenced and, arguably, most revered guest. His work changed us, and so did our time with him.Milton Glaser passed away on Friday, June 26th at the age of 91. On his birthday. So, we wanted to share this “Best Of” conversation from our 2013 archives in honor of his life and impact, and as a powerful prompt to nurture the creative impulse that exists in all of us. To make meaning. To play. To live with purpose and joy.You can find Milton Glaser at:Website : https://www.miltonglaser.com/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/miltonglaserinc/Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/geneenrothttps://www.facebook.com/MiltonGlaserInc/h-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So over the history of this show spanning eight years, more than 500 guests, two years filming on location and a crew, and now more than six years as a podcast, I have been asked one question over and over and over. So who's your favorite guest? So when you do what I do, you learn quickly to dodge the answer to that question. For one, you can't win. For any name he dared to offer, you're simultaneously snubbing hundreds, and if I'm blessed to keep doing this long enough, thousands of other people. But more importantly, if you're really paying attention, truthfully, there is no such thing as a favorite guest.

I don't do this to be entertained or to fall in love or to make new friends or to have favorites. I do it because I love doing it. And because it's a bit like my living laboratory, it's not about who I like best, but rather who I have learned from, who has left me changed. And on that level, what I've come to believe is you learn something if you allow yourself to remain open from every single person. As it is on screen, as it is in front of a mic in a studio on location, so it is in life. But as I sit here today, having just learned of the passing of a man who has become, as our producer Lindsay often reminds me, the single most referenced guest by me in the history of the show, Milton Glazer, I can admit to one truth. Over this same span of time, much as I have been profoundly inspired and

humbled and awakened and learned more than any book or school or course of study has taught me, there have been very few guests who, when they walked out the door, left me thinking to myself, I'd live their life. Milton Glaser was at the top of this very short list. Born and raised in the Bronx, he discovered what would become his life's work. And never in his 85 or so years of building on that veered from it to make things that move people. Those are the words he shared with me. As soon as these words were offered in that classic Glazer rasp. I could feel every cell in my body come alive with resonance. Me too, I felt. Me too. My whole body just sang with recognition and resonance.

Me too, Milton. Me too. Glazer's list of accomplishments in the world of design and media and education, the stuff of legends. Launching a design agency, Pushpin Studios, in 1954 with a bunch of friends who he graduated Cooper Union with, he would change the face of commercial illustration, of art and design. The famed iHeartNY logo, he did that. A tribute to the city he loved so fiercely

at a time when it was on the verge of bankruptcy, of crumbling underneath him. Glazer wanted to do his part to help people reimagine it, to see it the way he knew it to be, the way it was in his heart, which probably explains why he was also a founder of New York Magazine. That iconic Bob Dylan rainbow hair poster with more than 6 million copies in print, Glazer again. Thousands of other works of art, posters, brands, products, packaging, restaurants,

you name it. Glazer was behind so much of it. And Milton's work, it's been seen everywhere from the halls of global industry to local pubs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the George Pompidou Center in Paris. In 2004, he received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum Lifetime Achievement Award. He received the National Medal of Arts Award from President Obama in 2009, the first graphic designer ever to be given this honor. The man had his own typeface, Glazer Stencil. But that brilliant mind and the artful hand and the impact that they would have

didn't stop at making, though. He also taught. For more than five decades, he shared his wisdom, his lens on everything from life to art to beauty, to work, to love with thousands of students, many of whom have now gone out into the world to make their own lasting marks. And it wasn't just this devotion to craft, to making meaning, to the creation of and noticing of beauty, to his commitment to teaching and giving back to the work,

it was the choices that he made about who and what mattered to him. The deep sustained commitment to living life on his terms and never allowing himself to be boxed into anyone else's expectations in any domain of life. To working and playing and spending time with his wife, Shirley, who he wed in 1957 and to whom he remained married until the day he died at age 91. On Friday, by the way, which was also magically in classic Glazer style, his birthday. When a friend of mine reached out to

me back in 2013 and mentioned she was actually an old friend of Glazer's from back in their ashram days. And would I like an introduction? I nearly fell over. Yes. Yes, please. A few months later, I found myself along with our film crew. We were filming back then in the front room of Glazer Studio, setting up for a conversation that I never wanted to end, nor did the crew. We were transfixed. We'd have stayed longer, but time was tight. He was deep at work on a new show for a museum. Did I mention he was 84 at the time. During this wide-ranging conversation, we talked about his astonishing

journey to the teacher who validated his choice of happiness over safety, about what drives him to continue to create, how he chooses who and what to work on. We talked about the difference between the urge to make and the desire to create beauty, the role of formal art education, and the difference between a calling and a career. We also had a fascinating conversation about the role of computers and technology in art and design and how it's affecting our ability to create. He has a very unusual take. He actually uses computers almost every day, but he never actually touched them. You'll have to listen to understand this take. The depth of his generosity of thought left me not only re-examining my own choices, but yearning to reconnect with something that laid all too dormant for me for

far too long. My own desire to make not just media, but stuff and meaning. To work with my hands and be able to step back and say, yeah, I did that. My brief time with Milton Glaser left me changed. It not only planted the seeds, but also offered a model of what a re-imagined life might look like. You may not know Glaser's name, but if you've been alive and paying attention to the world even remotely for more than a hot minute, you and your life, your heart, your mind have been touched either directly by his work and very likely by the work of the thousands of artists, designers, educators, makers, and founders, many of whom would become his students and then carry on that legacy of making things that move people. Never bound by the ideas and insights of this

giant, but rather inspired and invited to step into their own truths, to make their own things that move people, to create beauty, however defined, through the lens of their own beating heart and their own shared mind. And so with kind of a heavy heart, but also really alive in celebration of his life and legacy, I'm so excited to share with you this best of conversation. You will notice that the audio quality is a bit different, not quite our studio quality. This, as I mentioned earlier, was actually filmed on location and fittingly, joyfully, towards the latter parts. You'll also hear the sounds of little children laughing in the background. Glazer Studio, it turns out, where we filmed, it was a standalone townhouse that

abutted the playground for a local New York City public elementary school. On any given day, you could open the window and hear the energy of these little kids fill the studio. And as we would learn on this day, that was part of the magic, part of the magic. I hope you enjoy this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

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Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need them. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So we're sitting here today in a room surrounded by incredible art, incredible design, probably years and years of work. And it's interesting to me because I almost don't know where to dive in.

But one of my curiosities is where did this all come from? And I'm curious, you know, when I think about your body of work, going way, way, way back before there was a body of work, what were you like as a kid? Where does the seed of this come from? Are you going to continue to ask me questions that can't be answered? I'll do my best. I have no idea where it comes from. The only thing that I do know is that after a while,

you begin to realize, A, how little you know about everything, and, two, how vast the brain is and how it encompasses everything you can imagine, but more than that, everything you can't imagine. And what is perhaps central to this is the impulse to make things, which seems to me to be a primary characteristic of human beings, the desire to make things, whatever they turn out to be. And then, supplementary to that is the desire to create beauty, which is a different but analogous activity. So, the urge to make things probably a survival device, the urge to create beauty is something else,

but only apparently something else, because as you know, there are no unrelated events in human experience. Beauty, I've said this before, but beauty and the creation of it

is a survival mechanism. There's something about making things beautiful, and we sometimes call that art, that has something to do with creating a commonality between human beings so that they don't kill each other. And whatever that impulse is and wherever it comes from, it certainly is contained within every human being I've ever met. Sometimes the opportunity to articulate it occurs.

Sometimes it remains dormant for a lifetime. You just don't get the shot at it. But I've been very lucky. I imagined myself as a maker of things from the age of five. I realized that to make something was miraculous. And I never stopped. I just kept making things all my life, whatever they were, whatever category you chose to put them in. Whether they attained the status or official status of art is another story,

but that is a set of other conventions. But this desire to make things is a profound human characteristic. I completely agree. Was there something that happened at the age of five or was it a gradual awakening around then that you seem to really key in on a moment? Well, I have a canned story about that, which is why I feel reluctant to tell it again because I've told it so many times, sometimes on film. But what really happened, this was an event. My parents were going out, I grew up in the Bronx, and my parents were going out to some ceremonial occasion and left me

at home to be taken care of by my cousin, who must have been 16 or 17 years old, who came to the house. My parents left, and he was carrying a brown paper bag. And after we sat down in the living room, he said, do you want to see a bird? And I thought immediately that he had a bird in the bag. And I said, yes. And he reached into the bag, and he pulled out a pencil. And he drew a bird on the side of the bag.

And for one reason or another, I think it was the first time I'd ever seen anybody draw something that looked like the object depicted. I mean, I'd seen kids in kindergarten drawing things that didn't look like a bird. But I suddenly realized that you could create life, that you could create life with a pencil and a brown paper bag. And it was truly a miracle in my recollection, although people are always telling me that memory is just a device to justify your present, I really, it was like receiving the stigmata. I suddenly realized that you could spend your life inventing life. And I never stopped. At five, my course was set. I never deviated.

I never stopped aspiring or working in a way that provided the opportunity to make things that if you did right, moved people. Which is interesting, too, I mean, because you grew up in essentially post-Depression and then World War II in the Bronx, and there was certainly ample need to create moments that touched people and work that touched people. But also, I wonder at that time in our country's history, whether, and in your mind, whether doing this was something where you said, this is something that I could get paid for and build a career around, or this is just, this is what I need to do, and this is my service. Well, characteristically, I had a very good dynamic. My mother was relentlessly approving of anything I did and just thought everything I did was marvelous.

And my father was worried about my making a living and was very reluctant to even think that I might choose a life in the arts because he wanted me to pursue a life that would basically have some financial security. A kind of simple idea but during the Depression, very prevalent, I mean there was a time when making a living was really tough. He had a dry cleaning store, and I used to deliver orders. Very often that consisted of carrying four winter coats

up six flights of stairs and getting a nickel tip. So I couldn't imagine that a life of an artist would be much more difficult than that. At any rate, the combination of my father's resistance and my mother's support was a perfect environment because I learned

to overcome resistance and I was convinced by my mother that I could do anything. An ideal psychic environment for accomplishing something in the world. What led you to, in your mind, you're creating

art. Do you remember sort of the first glimpse of the experiences of I'm doing this for me and I love it and there's something that I'm just drawn to versus people are responding to it. It's an interesting and complicated question because I began using my drawings of a means of ingratiating myself with other my drawings of a means of ingratiating myself with other young people. I mean, I was the class artist, so designated when I was six years old.

It's funny, and all through public school, I was always the class artist. It was a funny idea, right? And I would do drawings as a kind of service activity for my friends, mostly drawings of naked girls at a time when we didn't quite know what that was. But I always saw myself as being a facilitator of other people's needs in that very primitive way. I liked the fact that I had status, I had a position in life, and I could also be of service in a strange way,

although I never thought of it as being of service. But I mean, that I did something that gave me some privilege in that group. That designation was a useful one to me in terms of developing my own sense of who I was. So when you reach a point where you decide that, well, this is something that I could potentially do beyond high school, this is something I could build my life around. It sounds like you had already, in your mind, made that decision when you were five or six. Yes.

But then you have to work out the details. Absolutely. There was no doubt in my mind what I was going to do, ever. How do you come to the place of deciding what that outlet is going to be? How do I take this? And I'm the class artist, you know, and I know this is in my soul. In some way, I have to make, I have to create. I have to make and I have to create beauty.

This is what I'm here to do. And there are a lot of different directions you could have gone with that. You could have gone fine art. You could have gone so many different directions. What led you to choose the sort of path that you've been creating? Again, you're asking questions that are fundamentally unanswerable. But I would say that it didn't matter to me as long as that categorical distinction between the arts is nonsensical. Stupid, in fact, but useful to society for one reason or another.

I might have become a painter. I might have become a dress designer. I might have become an architect. All of those possibilities. I knew I wanted to make things. And then circumstances began to intervene and interrupt that vague decision. And opportunities, which I was willing to seize, regardless of whatever the consequences.

So I have to tell you this story, which is very instrumental in that decision. And even though it's sort of part of my official range of stories, it was so profound that I have to tell it just in order to express how 20 seconds can change your life. When I was in junior high school, I had the opportunity to take the entrance examination to either Bronx Science, which is a great New York school,

or the High School of Music and Art, which is another great New York school, neither of which are sufficiently appreciated for how they shaped the city. I mean, these are both incredibly important institutions in terms of New York's population and environment. And I had a science teacher who was very encouraging for me to enter into science. I was very good in science.

And he wanted me to go to Bronx Science. And I was evasive about that because I didn't want to tell him that it ain't going to happen. But the day of the entrance exam, they occurred on the same day I took the entrance examination to the High School of Music and Art. And the next day when I came back to school, he was in the hallway as I was walking down, and he said, I want to talk to you. I said, uh-oh, the jig is up. He's going to find out I took the wrong exam. He said, come to my office. Sit down. And as I was sitting there, he said, I hear you took

the exam for music and art. And I said, oh, yes. And then he reached over and he reached into his desk and he pulled out a box of French Conte crayons, a rather fancy, expensive box. And he gave it to me and he said, do good work. And I can't tell that story without crying. Because it was such a profound example of somebody who, an adult, authority figure, sophisticated man, who was willing to put aside his own desire for something,

I mean, his own direction for my life, and recognized me as a person who had made a decision. And he was, instead of just simply acknowledging it, he was encouraging it with this incredibly gracious and generous gift. And I never forgot that story. You know, I was, I story. I was 14, 15 years old. But that kind of, the thing about it

that always astonishes you in your life is that moment. It couldn't have taken more than two minutes. It was totally transformative about my view of life, my view of others, my view of education, my view of acknowledging the other.

And it was a very important moment for me. I mean, it's interesting to me also as a parent, because, you know, everyone says, what does a parent want for their child? Well, they want them to be happy. All right. But above that, I think before that, we want them to be safe. Sure. And then we want them to be happy. And I think so we have this kind of ongoing conversation in our heads.

This may make them happy, but this is more likely to make them safe. Yeah. And there's this risk that we're sort of going and and and so it's interesting when you share this story because i think of that person you're like sort of playing a similar role and saying you know what i'm choosing happiness and whatever will happen will happen well if you learn more and more that everything exists at once with its opposite so the contradictions of life are never-ending, and somehow the mediation between these opposites are the game of life. Yeah. I'm asked often, and I'm sure you also you know through your teaching what if i choose wrong

what what if i choose wrong and uh you know what if i what if that wasn't the right and and it's an interesting conversation because you know i think the more i think about it and the more I explore life, less and less I believe there is a wrong choice. You know, it's more important to choose and just see what happens. Well, it is. And you can also develop your own understanding by seeing what choices you've made. And, you know, some people you know are constantly complaining about their life understanding by seeing what choices you've made. Some people are constantly complaining about their life and the wrong choices they made. At one point you say to them,

stop making those stupid choices. First acknowledge that you make stupid choices and then see if you want to do something about it. Maybe you don't. And evidently, you don't. So be satisfied in your stupid choices. I mean, without being arrogant about it. But you realize that the first step is always, in the Buddhist sense, to acknowledge what is. And that's very hard to do.

It's very hard to do. It's very hard to do. It is. But incidentally, drawing and attentiveness is one of the ways you do that. I mean, the great benefit of drawing, for instance, is that when you look at something, you see it for the first time. And you can spend your life without ever seeing anything. No. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. better representation of being here and seeing what's in front of you than when you're this big. And if we could carry that forward, but for so many people, I feel like in some way we lose that.

Oh, we do. And you have to. I mean, I do. I can sound as though I know the answer to these things. I don't know the answer to anything. I mean, you have to constantly be attentive to what you deflect in life anything? I don't know the answer to anything. I mean, you have to constantly be attentive to what you deflect in life and what you don't pay attention to and all the things that you can't see and all the preconceptions that you do have about everything. And those preconceptions

basically blur your vision. It's very hard to see what's in front of you. Yeah. I remember hearing once when told that I couldn't draw the response that it's not that you can't draw, it's that you can't see. Everyone can draw.

It's about, can you actually see what's in front of you rather than seeing the image that has already been planted in your mind about what it's supposed to look like. Yeah. It's true. It's a shame that educationally

now I've been teaching for an awfully long time. And because of to some extent the technology, the computer, and so on, and the concern to massive programs and so on, that this most fundamental act of anyone in and out of the arts, which is a desire to understand what they're looking at, which involves looking, seeing the brain transformation, the neurological path that

moves from the brain to the hand. I mean, someone said the hand is a thinking instrument. I have a book called Drawing is Thinking. And that has been omitted from art education in most places, not in all places, at a great loss to understanding. Even when you manage the technological needs that you have to produce things for the society. The idea that drawing is a way of developing your ability to think doesn't seem to be sufficiently conclusive. Yeah. And it's so interesting for me also as a writer.

For a long time, I would do all my writing on a computer. Right. And then I would hit a point where I just kind of needed to step out. And then I started taking a little moleskin book with me. And I would just sit somewhere in a park I would go to you know bar just sit and just write longhand and at first my hand started to ache because I literally lost the muscles to be able to actually write and then what I start to realize was that that that change actually really changed my output.

What channeled through me onto the page when I was writing by hand was very different creatively than what came through my fingers onto the keyboard. And that surprised me. It really did. Absolutely. But everything changes everything. I mean, there are no independent events. I mean, I use a computer every day now. I love the computer, but I never touch it. I mean, I have somebody at my side, and I say, make that big or make that small.

But I also use the computer. Right now I'm doing a series of prints for a show I'm going to have next year, and I use a computer like a lithographic press. I spent years doing lithography. And I just think of the computer as a press that operates at a different speed. Because when you do a lithograph, you have to do a drawing, etch it, prepare a stone, transfer it to the stone, print the proof, look at the proof, and so on, all of which will take you a day. And in order to get five different color proofs,

it'll take you a month to do a print. I can do all of that in a day on the computer by simply being able to determine what color goes on what color on the computer itself rather than the old technology. But if I didn't know that old technology, the computer would be useless to me. So the interaction, also the need for speed, is a separate issue entirely.

Because in the case of work that you do on the computer, speed is a factor because it's an economic factor. But in the world of art, speed is irrelevant. So you have two very different objectives there. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I recently, there's a letterpress shop out in Brooklyn, and I recently went out there and took a class to learn how to use these letterpresses that they had to go and find from the 50s and bring in. So they had, you know, like really good machines.

And there is something so, I mean, when you sit there and you choose the paper and you lay the blocks, you know, and you ink the roller and you just let you roll it through and you roll it back and hold it up and you feel it. It's it's such a different process. And it's so you you feel it so differently and so deeply. It's it's this visceral, deep thing that's, I could spend all day writing or creating on the computer, but I won't get that. So it's an amazing thing to move back to these sort of ways to make. It is.

And the virtual world has created a very different kind of nervous system for people who spend their life in that world. And it produces a different sense of appropriateness, of time, of morality, of ethics, of behavior. I mean, I've cited this before, but I was at dinner with my wife and we sat down next to a table with four people and they each had cell phones and they were all talking to somebody outside the restaurant. That kills me. What's going on there? I mean, why would you be talking to somebody outside the restaurant and not even looking at the people at your table?

And when did that become appropriate? If you were on the telephone for a meal with four different people talking to four others outside, when I was growing up, right, it would be incomprehensible. Not only is it comprehensible now, it's unavoidable. I mean, when I was a kid, if the phone rang and the family was having dinner, you didn't pick up the phone. Right. You know?

So what shifted that perception of what's the right thing to do? And there's something really weird about it. I mean, who are all these people in the streets talking to in the middle of traffic as they're trying to cross. I mean, what is it that makes every conversation so urgent that it can't wait until they stop the crossing? I mean, I don't get it. You know, but I think what, because I agree, I think what that technology does, on the

one hand, it flattens the world, which is wonderful. I can talk to people on different continents. Absolutely. So it opens up this cultural divide. But at the same time, it often disconnects us from the people at the dinner table right in front of us. And what you were talking about, people constantly on, is that to me, the biggest ideas don't come to me when I'm working hard at getting them. They come when I step away from the work. When I'm in the woods, just when I create pauses in my day.

And I get concerned because we're filling every possible pause with connecting. And what is that going to do to what we're capable of creating in the world? Well, we don't know. I mean, the thing we don't understand, you never know fish in water doesn't know it's in water. We don't know what this is doing to the human psyche or to human behavior or to any of it. We know it's changing.

We know it'll be a profound change. It won't be what it was, but we don't know what the nature of that will finally be. It'll probably have some benefits and significant drawbacks, but it is just emerging. You are creating a new kind of person. Yeah, I agree. I mean, literally rewiring the brain.

Yeah. I'm curious when you look at the work that you're creating and when you start to make decisions about what am I going to do, what am I not going to do, what's important to you about what you choose to work on? What are the qualities that draw you to work or that light you up and say, this is something I want to do or be involved in? Well, that's a question that's a little more specific. I mean, so if somebody came with a project and you're a busy person. You've got limited time. And you need to say yes or no. So, you know, my curiosity is in your head.

What is it about? Is it about a project? Is it a product or work? Or is it the team or the individuals or the opportunity for you to explore something just yourself that may not be related even to it? That makes you say yes. It's a dialectic. I don't think it's one thing. I don't think it's ever one thing.

It's like, why do you like this person? Well, I like this and this, but I don't like this and this. I always say the question of human affection is so complicated. Why do you like certain people and don't like other people? You go into a room and you say, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no. You've already made up your mind who you can get along with and who you can't. And I have sort of in my book of principles or my ten principles of work, the first one is always work with people you like. And that's simple, really simple-minded, but fundamentally profound. I mean,

you can't, and this is not entirely true, you can't work with people you don't like. Sometimes there's a kind of dislike that urges you to overcome your own limitations. It becomes fuel to a certain extent. I would say that now getting work is always a combination of factors. One is, A, the first thing is if the work is harmful, I don't do it. I mean, do no harm is, I think, a principle that does not only apply to the medical profession, which is to urge people to do what is harmful

to them is something that I don't feel comfortable doing. The other thing is whether there's really an opportunity to make something good out of it as opposed to fulfilling a task. Professional life is very often antithetical to artistic life because in professional life, you basically repeat what you already know. You repeat your previous successes. It's like marketing. Marketing is the enemy of art because it's always based on the past. Not that art is always based on the future, but it's very often based on transgression. So when you do something that basically is guaranteed to succeed, you're basically closing the possibility for discovery.

So there's that. And I do jobs purely for professional reasons, because I know how to do certain things that will be effective and will work, and that serves me as a professional. And then I do jobs where I don't know what I'm doing, or I do projects where I don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing that now for a show that I'm going to have in Cincinnati next year. I decided to do a series of landscape prints, and I'm doing them on the computer in part, I'm taking drawings and then subjecting them to the computer to see if I can produce something that doesn't look as though it was generated by the computer, because the computer is a dangerous instrument

because it shapes your capacity to understand what's possible. The computer is like an apparently submissive servant that turns out to be a subversive that ultimately gains control of your mind. The computer is such a powerful instrument that it defines, after a while, what is possible for you. And what is possible is within the computer's capacity. And while it seems at the

beginning like this incredibly gifted and talented service, it actually has a very limited intelligence. The brain is so much vaster than the computer, but the computer is very insistent about what it's good at. And before you know it, it's like being with somebody who has bad habits. You sort of fall into the bad habits, and it begins to dominate the way you think of what is possible. So now, because I never touch the computer, I'm taking advantage of it. So how? By doing things that are uncomfortable for it to do.

So you have to give me more. Well, I'm treating it like it were a printing press instead of like an advanced electronic instrument. Right. I mean, it's fascinating. So it's essentially a little bit of role reversal there. You're owning it instead of being owned by it. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations,

iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him!

Y'all need a pilot? When you think about how people are being trained, there's been a lot of really interesting pushback these days against art school, formal art education. As somebody who's an artist, a designer, and a teacher, I'm curious just what your feelings are. What do you mean by pushback in this case? Meaning people saying it's not necessary. Art education is not necessary? Yeah, that sort of formal art education that... For what purpose? For in

order to, I guess, become good at your craft, become good enough so that you can build a living doing it. You have to separate making a living, which is one activity, and one that everybody has to face, with enlarging one's understanding of the world and also providing an instrumentality for people to have, as I said earlier,

a common purpose and a sense of transformation. I went up to the Morgan Library the other day, having a show of old, it's called Old Master Drawings, or Master Drawings in any case fantastic drawings I saw Cezanne there but I had never seen a pencil of watercolor

of a landscape and I was transformed I looked and my world was enlarged at this ancient age I'm still capable of

astonishment of feeling my god I've never had this experience before and that is what they are to provide the sense of enlargement and the sense that you haven't come to the end of your understanding, either of yourself or of other things. So that's why art was invented, and that's why practitioners who have occasionally the experience of making such objects feel that they are part of a larger issue than the immediate context of their life. I mean, they're part of human history. And I was thinking, for any reason, because a friend had recently died,

it's nice to feel that you left something behind. When you, which is kind of fascinating because, so I'm 47 and I'm married, I have a daughter. And it's interesting that I find myself now thinking about legacy. You know, still believing that I have many decades left to create work. Sure. But it's creeping into my every day at this point.

And it's a little bit surprising in an odd way. Well, you don't, I mean, I, I, you don't necessarily have to think of it as legacy. That sort of gives it kind of an overtone to it.

Right. But, but the idea of an overtone to it. But the idea of doing good work, right, of doing good work, I mean, there's something about that, the simplicity of that statement. And I think, I'm not sure, but I think it was Freud who said, love and work, that's all there is. And that's pretty much true. Germinating on that.

Yeah, I need to spend more time on that. That's interesting. So the name of this project is The Good Life Project. And it's an exploration of, you know, do we know what any of the pieces are? And one of the questions that I always ask when I have an opportunity to sit down with someone like you is in your experience, when I offer the term to live a good life what comes up a significant life

well first of all significant to whom i mean if you're thinking in terms of the history of the world, that's one thing. If you're thinking in terms of a family that managed to grow up and support itself and live a full life and do no harm, every life is significant. Some more than others.

There are heroic figures in history chosen either for real heroism or real importance or for some illusion of status. I was thinking about the Pope this unexpected modesty who am I to condemn another human being

you know the quote about gay people. And I was thinking, yeah, that's a good question. Who are you to condemn anybody else? We elevate these people to heroic roles or significant roles. Just another guy living, trying to make sense of getting old and dying. That's it. I mean, we're all in the same boat. But it was shocking to hear that coming from someone who'd been anointed with this false illusionistic idea that this person somehow is more knowing than every other human being. I'm sorry.

It's a self-serving delusion, but obviously useful because it persists so much. I'm curious, do you see a good life and a significant life as one and the same? I'm very suspicious of some words like that and also what they link to. I guess I feel now that you can't take anything at face value. You have to go beyond the superficiality of existing belief. My favorite quote is, certainty is a closing of the mind. And so I don't know what a good life is. A good life for me certainly has been the things that I think are important, our friendships that I have, people I love, and certainly a marriage that has endured and that continues to endure,

teaching, which I've been doing for about well over half a century, and feeling that whatever you know has a possibility of being transmitted and shared. Outside of that, I wouldn't know how to define a good life. And as you know, some people seem to be villains to some and heroes to another. I mean. Yeah. I mean, what's so interesting to me is I've asked this question now. We're over a year into this exploration. And initially, I would have guessed that after about 10, 11, 12 conversations, there would be a lot of repetition. There hasn't been.

That's interesting. It's been fascinating to me is that the lens is so unique to everybody's experience. What is the most recurring idea, though? Service is in various ways. With an idea, I am not only for myself. Yeah. Gratitude by various names. Yeah. gratitude in various under by various names yeah um there are two things that uh recur um

in different ways yeah different ways yeah well in one way certainly in terms of gratitude i feel enormously grateful for uh the life i've led i've had the extraordinarily easy life, I would say. I've benefited enormously from the generosity of others, and I've been able to live well and do what I aspire to do, make some things that I think are useful. And you have to be grateful

especially when you realize the amount of pain and suffering that the world is full of. Agreed. Completely. Well, I thank you so much for this conversation. Agreed. Completely. Well,

I thank you so much for this conversation. I'm grateful to you for your time and your, your wisdom and your, your openness. I hope the series goes well. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes.

And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him! We need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.