Kevin Maistros
After two posts about the future, I should clarify that I do intend to enjoy it.
I’m not building all this so I can attend a more sophisticated meeting.
At some point, there should be a guitar, something good to eat, and a person laughing so hard they cannot finish telling the story.
I have a strong personal interest in that last part. I’d quite like to hear the ending.
I’ve written about the conditions that let people create, and about keeping people at the center of the systems around them. There is a reason for both.
I want there to be more life available once the work is done.
And, preferably, while we’re doing it.
An extremely advanced afternoon
Here is a future scenario I find compelling.
There’s a guitar nearby. Nobody has asked it for a release strategy.
Someone is making food. Someone else has started a story in the middle and is now backing up to explain a person we haven’t met yet. We’re going to be here a while.
A dog has arrived with a ball and a clear understanding of what everyone should be doing.
I admire that level of focus.
A song comes on that somebody hasn’t heard in years. They remember the feeling immediately and the lyrics approximately. Their confidence is unaffected.
Someone picks up the guitar. Another person joins in. The first attempt is a mess, but there’s something in it, so they try again.
Then someone does the wrong thing in exactly the right place, and everybody looks up.
There it is.
We can keep that.
Maybe it becomes a song. Maybe it becomes a story we tell later. Maybe the afternoon is all it needs to be.
I like making room for all three possibilities.
I also like the part where somebody eventually remembers the food.
I like things
That sounds like a small declaration. It deserves more room than I’ve sometimes given it.
I like a guitar part that makes me reach for something to tap on. I like a voice getting a little rough at the exact moment a perfect note would have meant less. I like finding a song that makes the next ten minutes feel different.
I like the unnecessary second verse of a joke. A terrible impression performed with unreasonable commitment. The moment someone who seemed intimidating reveals a very specific, very ridiculous enthusiasm.
I like being surprised by people.
Put me near a dog with a ball and an impressive portion of my vocabulary becomes, “Where is it? Where’s the ball?”
Often while I’m holding it.
A fine day for language.
I like the kinds of conversations where nobody is trying to establish who is the most interesting person. Somebody remembers something. Somebody disagrees about the details. By the end, the story has acquired a weather event and an uncle who may not have been there.
I like knowing there are still things I’m going to love that I haven’t encountered yet.
A song. A place. A person’s laugh. Some small, strange habit that becomes familiar enough to miss.
That is a good reason to remain curious.
It’s also a good reason to leave the house occasionally, despite the excellent work being done by chairs.
A community should be pleasant to belong to
We spend a lot of time describing communities by their purpose. What they build, what they believe, what they make possible.
I also want to know what it feels like to spend a Tuesday with them.
Can you ask a question without getting a performance of how obvious the answer was? Can you bring an unfinished idea without having to defend your entire existence? Is there someone who remembers how you take your coffee?
Does anybody laugh?
I want the kind of creative company where the person who came to help move equipment eventually mentions that they play something, and someone makes space for them to try it.
Where a newcomer’s first introduction isn’t their follower count.
Where people can work hard, take the work seriously, and still enjoy each other.
That last part cannot always be scheduled. You can leave time for it, though. You can avoid filling every pause. You can notice when a useful conversation has become a good one and allow it to continue.
You can also order enough food.
A surprising number of grand visions would benefit from someone checking whether everybody has eaten.
When I imagine a different kind of home for creative people, these are part of the details. The record matters. The people making it should get to have a good life around it.
Success would be someone finishing a project and staying a little longer because they like the company.
Or going home happily, knowing there will be room for them when they come back.
Music with my name on it
Some of the music I’m making will live under my own name.
I want it to have this much room.
There will be things I remember differently now. Things I still don’t understand. Affection, bad timing, curiosity, grief, and moments that were funnier than they had any right to be.
There should also be songs that make you want to move before you have an opinion about what they mean.
One song might hurt. Another might flirt. Another might exist because I found a rhythm I couldn’t leave alone.
I have no intention of making every track arrive carrying a chair for a serious conversation.
Some of this is simply what I like. Some of it is what being alive has felt like to me. That can include laughter in the middle of something difficult, or a surprisingly good day that doesn’t need to apologize for arriving.
I’d like people to hear affection in the way I notice things. The details someone else might pass over. The small decisions that make a person themselves. The pleasure of being around someone whose company you don’t have to earn every five minutes.
A song can hold that.
It can hold the version of you that forgets to be impressive because you’re having a good time.
I’d like to hear more from that guy.
He probably needs to finish a few things first, but we’ve been discussing it.
Let the good part count
I know how easily everything can become preparation for something else.
Finish this, then breathe. Solve that, then go outside. Get through one more complicated chapter, and perhaps we can authorize a pleasant evening.
I have participated enthusiastically in this system. The paperwork is exhausting.
There is meaningful work I want to do. I also don’t want to become so practiced at holding everything together that I forget what loose time feels like.
An afternoon with no particular destination. A meal that takes longer because the conversation is good. Playing something badly until it becomes something worth playing again.
I want to be present for those things while they’re happening, rather than recognize them years later as the life I was trying to make room for.
Joy doesn’t have to finish a larger job before it counts.
A good day is allowed to be a good day.
So is a good ten minutes.
Somebody laughs. The dog gets the ball. A chord does something unexpected. For a moment, you’re exactly where you’d like to be.
I want more moments like that, for more people.
No further explanation required
I said at the beginning of this little run of posts that I’m not especially good at ordinary.
I may owe ordinary an apology.
What I don’t like is being told to flatten everything interesting about being alive until it fits a sensible description. Ordinary life itself is full of things that refuse to cooperate.
People are funny. Affection is strange. Music can rearrange an afternoon. A dog can organize several adults around a ball and still somehow be the most dignified person present.
There is plenty here.
That’s the future I’m trying to leave room for: useful work, good company, curiosity, and enough freedom to enjoy what we’ve made possible.
At some point, I’d like to stop describing it and be in it—with people I care about, a half-finished song, and nowhere more important to be.
The afternoon was the point.
— Kevin
P.S. The umbrella works for shade, too.