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About Craig
Books & Essays
Talks
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Podcasts:🎧 On Margins & SW945
Newsletters:📩 Roden & Ridgeline
Header image for Electric Bike, Stupid Love of My Life
Electric Bike, Stupid Love of My Life
Reflections on eighteen months of electric bike ownership
My electric bike sings, emits a nearly imperceptible hum from its tiny motor. I
love its song. A song of peace and magic. Has money ever bought as much delight
as the delight of an electric bike?
The first time I rode one was nearly a decade ago, in Kyoto. The electric bike
I rented was huge and unwieldy, but that tug of its motor never left my mind. I
went to climb a hill and it felt as if a giant had gently placed his hand on my
back and pushed me forward. That stupid smile has been on my face ever since.
Two years ago I rented another one. This one smaller, lighter, the motor more
powerful. I was convinced. This is the way. Eighteen months ago, in the heart
of the pandemic, I committed and bought my first electric bike and have never
looked back.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Indulge me — a summer afternoon: Soaring down the coast, the ocean to one side
and a strand of old pines to the other. The afternoon sun beats down but it
feels cool and there’s something irrationally stirring — downright emotional —
about the efficiency of this dumb machine beneath my body. The motor looks too
small — just a black cylinder on the hub of the wheel. And yet it moves. It
sings that song. A subtle hum. A beautiful hum. It makes me want to ride and
ride, ridiculous distances, nonsensical distances. I don’t want to get to where
I’m going because I want the ride to last longer. I want to linger in this
space as long as possible, this space of smooth and efficient movement through
the world, gliding in near total mechanical silence, just the sound of rubber
on the pavement, wind in my ears, breaking waves, salt, the smell of pine. This
is what electric bikes do: They drive you insane with the poetry of the world.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A strange trio A few of my old bikes: A mamachari, carbon fiber road bike, and
Kalavinka
#So Many Bikes
All my standing life, I’ve biked. As a kid I rode a K-Mart Huffy to a rusted
nub and then managed to nab a Haro Group 1. As an adult, bikes have been one of
my few material indulgences (unwittingly, organically). In the past twenty
years alone I’ve owned some fifteen bikes. I’ve had aluminum and carbon Bianchi
road bikes. I’ve had steel Kalavinka keirin bikes with gorgeous head badges.
I’ve had folding Dahon and Birdy BD-1s. I’ve had a handful of beloved brandless
throwaway mamacharis — shopping bikes — that have proven hearty and fun in
their own ways, and have each died uniquely. I’ve gone out of my way to get a
handmade Arrow cruiser from a builder in Ogikubo. I still have a custom orange
Moulton that I’ve modified into a single-speed city bomber that goes remarkably
fast while floating atop its simple suspension.
And on and on — bikes. Why? Because as any bike lover will tell you, to be
ensorcelled by the bike is to crave one and only one thing: More bike. Each new
bike is like riding once again for the first time. Exploring a city on a
mamachari is different than a BD-1 is different than a Moulton. All thrilling.
The bikes change, and so, too does your relationship to the pavement. My love
for bikes has no categorical allegiances; if it has two wheels, and pedals, I’m
interested. I want to ride them all.
A Moulton Tiny, but fast, nearly flawless as a city machine — a Moulton with
converted stem, Sugino cranks, coaster brake
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Summers in most of Japan have never been easy. The temperatures England flirted
with in 2022 are temperatures Tokyoites have contended with for centuries (and
now contend with ones even higher). Crushing heat coupled with suffocating
humidity. A three-shower-a-day kinda summer. Watch an Ozu film and observe the
languid and supine impulse of its inhabitants during summertime scenes — that’s
not affect, it’s survival. In Japan’s August, you simply can’t walk a block
without losing most of your moisture.
Bikes have always helped. A bicycle generates a microclimate with minimal
effort. Standing on a street corner you may be soaked, but on a bike, the wind
whooshing past, you are crisp(er) and dry(er). An electric bike only amplifies
the effect.
When I was a child I dreamt of having a personal helicopter. Powered by my feet
and a bit of magic (certainly not gasoline, oddly, thinking back on it now). I
imagined quietly gliding over the city in this tiny contraption, floating from
home to video rental shop to diner, stopping by a friend’s house along the way.
An electric bike gets me most of the way to this feeling.
In the past eighteen months I’ve put several thousand kilometers on my electric
bikes. It feels like cheating in every best possible way. I live in a seaside
town south of Tokyo and traffic can get ridiculous, its ancient roads sized for
horses, not cars. The electric bike swoops between and alongside these stale
processions of heat and burning fuel. Drifting behind a gas-powered scooter or
moped feels like observing some Victorian contraption — inefficient and loud
and clunky and burdensome and pollutant. And not much faster (often much
slower) or more useful than an electric bike.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A Vanmoof and a BESV My friend's S3 and my BESV (the X3 looks like a slightly
smaller version of the S3)
#Electrics
I own two electric bikes. My first purchase was the strangely named BESV PSA1 —
which is a smaller wheeled (20"), rear-wheel drive machine, with mostly
off-the-shelf components allowing you to customize it to your liking. ^1 And
then, because I was so enamored by the BESV — so seduced by its small motor of
umph, so wanting more and different electric bike experiences — I went and
picked up a front-wheel drive Vanmoof X3 — the smaller-wheeled brother (24") to
Vanmoof’s (quite frankly) giant S3 — just a few months later.
I love them both like damaged brothers, because both of these bikes are flawed
in frustrating ways.
The electronic brain on the BESV is as dumb as they come.^2 The settings reset
each time you turn the bike on. The acceleration curves feel unrefined —
herky-jerky, you might say. Its app is the worst app I have on my phone — badly
designed, nearly functionally useless, clearly engineered without love. And
yet. Despite these flaws I put hundreds of kilometers on this thing in the
first month. The front and rear suspension turn every road to glass, and are
even fine for dirt trails; I find myself hunting down paths through parks I’d
never otherwise think about. Suddenly every hilly road is a thing demanding to
be explored. Up up up the little machine yells, and you follow its command.
Guests who stay at my studio are given the BESV to ride. We take it down the
coast. It never fails to amaze. One friend felt compelled to pet it upon
dismount, saying, Good job, buddy, so quick and deep was the affection for the
thing.
The Vanmoof is much smarter — the brain and software within it are refined, the
app good, the acceleration curves smooth — but the bike is all custom
components, and they aren’t the highest quality at that. The automatic shifting
mechanism on mine failed twice in the first two months, requiring shipping the
bike to the Vanmoof store.^3 The seat post bolt broke off in the post. The
original plastic pedals felt cheap and flimsy (pedals are one of the few things
you can swap for your own). The aluminum frame is too stiff for the speed the
bike generates — it can feel like you’ve been rattled to death after a bumpy
road. (And stiffness mitigation by lowering tire pressure seems to only
increase possibility of puncture.) But, more than all that, the design of the
bike has a dangerous fundamental flaw: The bottom bracket is simply too low.
Of all my many, many bikes, I’ve never had a pedal bottom out. On this Vanmoof
X3? Dozens of times. Most critically during a turn at speed — the pedal hit the
pavement, jumped the bike sideways, and sent me flying. It’s the only bad crash
I’ve had in decades. So I’ve had to modify the way I ride — no pedaling into or
out of turns, hyper awareness of deviations in lateral road slope — because,
despite all this, I can’t stop riding this stupid thing. It sings — that hum.
It is joy. I reach for it daily and it takes me around the peninsula and makes
me happy to be alive.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
BESV @ Lee's Bread, Oiso I've written about three electric bike rides for
Papersky Magazine: Misaki, Oiso, and Yokosuka.
Allow me to share a dirty secret: More often than not, at midnight I can’t
repress the impulse — I have to take a bike out. Out the bike comes and
together we head into the empty streets of my town and hum our way all over,
visiting temples in total silence. There are no cars. Often no people. It feels
illicit — this slipping around town, this sliding into temple parking lots in
the shroud of the night, looking at their old beams, feeling ten years old and
grateful for both the ability and awareness to be doing just this very thing at
this very moment.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I’ve long since posited world peace could be achieved if you bought everyone in
the world a bike, but now I want those bikes to be electric. I want everyone to
feel this silliness, this punch-drunk stupidity of pure love, this sense of
cheating the rules, the norms, this sense of ever-present delight. At our
worst, humans mindlessly consume, sear the earth and each other, fill our
bodies with poisons. At our best we invent electric bikes. Batteries have
gotten more efficient, motors smaller and more powerful. The last decade has
brought great efficiency to these machines, and the next ten years will only
double down on these gains. Electric bike numbers are up, year over year over
year. Tremendously so. Those who know, proselytize. We can’t help it. The charm
is too great. The game non- zero sum. The more people who know, the better the
world. It’s a wild notion, this sense of goodness to be had if you just reach
out for it. Goodness with no real downside. Like solar panels or wind turbines,
electric bikes are machines that buoy the spirit and the earth.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Buy the best electric bike you can within your budget. Stretch if possible.
Usually, the more you spend the lighter the machine, the more powerful the
motor, the longer-lasting the battery. Depending on which country you live in
top speeds will differ. In Japan the bike’s are capped at 24km/h. In America,
32km/h. Some places only allow for pedal-assist — meaning the motor only works
when pedaling. Others allow throttles, blurring the line between bike and
scooter. Laws will change in the coming years as more people adopt the machines
and cities themselves adapt. This is just the start. Ten years ago it was
fairly rare to see an electric bike around Tokyo. Today, it seems as if every
parent hauling their kids is doing so electrically.
A good strategy: Find a local bike shop that will let you try out several
electric bikes. Some have front-hub motors, others rear-hub motors. Others, the
motor sits in the center, between the cranks. Each has a subtly different feel.
Going up a hill, a front-motor’d machine may skip or slip as you pull back on
the handlebars, but on flat land will feel more like being tugged through the
world.
Sure, electric bikes aren’t cheap. But I believe they’re a rare object to be
well worth the cost. This in spite of their annoying flaws, their often bad
software, their defective geometries. Because they open the world. Whatever
world may have been nearby, an electric bike brings it nearer. This is worth
more than you might estimate. These bikes sing their little songs and the smile
on your face makes you look like a village idiot, but what a wonderful idiot to
be.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A summer night: Biking home alongside a river. The air is thick with humidity
and cicadas vibrate wildly in the distance. The moon is out. My choices:
straight home along the shimmering moonlit river, or take a detour, up into the
dark mountains, doubling the distance. To my surprise, I choose the mountains
almost every time. More! That tiny child who fantasized about helicopters
yells. More of this, whatever this is. More more more. And so I feed that
impulse, an impulse generated and nurtured by the electric bike. Into the
shadow mountains we go, up, pushed by the hand of that giant, always present,
always ready to help. It is a ridiculous thing. A thing of peace and magic. An
owl hoots. The smile has never left my face.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
#Noted:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. I upgraded my BESV to an SRAM drivetrain and Paul brake levers and Klamper
disc calipers, some MKS pedals, and a set of Brooks grips and saddle and it
feels wonderful through and through. These Paul Klampers are mechanical.
The Vanmoof uses (generic?) hydraulic brakes. After thousands of
kilometers, my conclusion is: hydraulics feel nice, but they are fussy (and
perhaps Vanmoof’s chosen components are sub-optimal) and difficult (?) to
tune on your own. In the end, I just don’t think they’re worth it. Too
“delicate.” The Pauls feel as fresh today as the day I put them on, whereas
the hydraulics have required much bikeshop tuning over the course of the
last eighteen months. Were the Vanmoof more flexible, I’d happily swap out
for mechanicals. This lack of flexibility is a bummer because, unlike an
Apple iPhone, for example, where the components tend to be best of class
(think: modem, CPU, camera unit, etc), the physical components on a Vanmoof
most definitely aren’t — nor do they offer the option to pay more to get
better components. ↩︎
2. Oh, how I wish this thing was open source, hackable — because it’s so close
to great. Sadly — and I don’t know how else to frame this — it feels like
the engineers behind the software don’t ride bikes. At least not this one.
The software flaws are so fundamentally obvious, that anyone who had a)
access to the code, and b) rode the bike, couldn’t NOT fix these obvious
issues. What I really wish, though, is that I could slap the Vanmoof brain
onto the BESV body and, well, then we’d be in Electric Bike Elysium. ↩︎
3. I’ve since learned — the drive train of the Vanmoof is not to be “ridden”
like a “bike” but rather, “feathered” like a delicate sand castle — assume
the gears could explode at any moment and apply the least amount of
pressure you can; the motor is strong enough to take care of most of the
rest. In this way, the Vanmoof feels more like a moped that uses “pedal
assist” as a suggestion than a pure electric-assist bike — a smart way to
get around motorcycle laws in most countries, which I assume is the main
point. Not to say you don’t get a workout on the Vanmoof, you do, but not
nearly as much as the more classically committed BESV — which really does
require you to pedal.
Maybe this is a good place to bring up the question: Why not just get an
electric scooter? I think it mainly comes down to flexibility and
philosophy. With a pedal assist bike (even if the pedaling required is
minimal) you simply have more flexibility in parking, in riding, in
“lightness” of transportation, than with an electric scooter. Also:
Insurance costs, maintenance, and higher base cost. And philosophically,
being able to still use the bike as a “bike” without power feels like an
aspect of these machines we shouldn’t be so quick to toss aside. ↩︎
This essay, published September 2022. Thoughts? Email me@craigmod.com.
Craig Mod, his head, floating at the bottom of the article
Craig Mod is a writer and photographer based in Japan. He's the author of Kissa
by Kissa and a MacDowell, Ragdale, and VCCA writing fellow. His essays and
articles have appeared in Eater, The Atlantic, California Sunday Magazine,
Wired, Aeon, New Scientist, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New Yorker, The New
York Times, The Morning News, Codex: Journal of Typography, and elsewhere. He
writes newsletters, oh yes, newsletters: Roden & Ridgeline.
The work on this site is supported in part by paid memberships.
Whatever you do, don't follow @craigmod on Twitter or Instagram.
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---
title: "Dispatch #1 (March 2023)"
date: 2023-03-02T12:18:17-05:00
draft: false
tags:
- dispatch
- ebikes
---
With the warm winter we've been having in NC, I've gotten to take Nev to and from daycare on the e-bike a whole bunch, which has been just fantastic. I'm wary of becoming too much of an evangelist, but it really does feel like they can replace cars for a lot of folks, and they're fun as hell.
<!--more-->
This month:
* Adventure: glamping with Claire, Nev, and Steve
* Project: rebuild shelves in bedroom closet
* Skill: [Affinity Designer](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/)
Reading:
* Fiction: [_Burner_](https://bookshop.org/p/books/burner-mark-greaney/18519742), Mark Greaney
* Non-fiction: [_The Power of Habit_](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-power-of-habit-why-we-do-what-we-do-in-life-and-business-charles-duhigg/7843601), Charles Duhigg
Links:
* [Electric Bike, Stupid Love of My Life — by Craig Mod][1][^1-backup]
* [Programming is a Pop Culture – Baldur Bjarnason][2][^2-backup]
* [Julia Cameron Wants You to Do Your Morning Pages - The New York Times][3][^3-backup]
[1]: https://craigmod.com/essays/electric_bikes/
[2]: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2022/programming-is-a-pop-culture/
[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/style/julia-cameron-the-artists-way.html
[^1-backup]: <a href="craigmod-com-ts8csh.txt">Backed up 2023-04-03 23:56:02 -0400</a>
[^2-backup]: <a href="www-baldurbjarnason-com-7p5031.txt">Backed up 2023-04-03 23:57:18 -0400</a>
[^3-backup]: <a href="www-nytimes-com-tq2xdi.txt">Backed up 2023-04-03 23:57:38 -0400</a>

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• Essays
• Newsletter
• Ebook
• Contact
Baldur Bjarnason
Web dev at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
I’m available as a consultant. I also have a book out.
21 November 2022
Programming is a Pop Culture
(What follows is an extract from Out of the Software Crisis, lightly edited to
work as a blog post.)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
So I think what happened is computing has turned into pop culture and the
universities are not helping in general, at least not in the US.
So, Cicero---anybody know a good Cicero quote having to do with the present
and past? Let's check your classical education here. So, you know who
Cicero was. He was one of those old Roman guys.
So, Cicero once wrote: 'He who knows only his own generation remains
forever a child.'
Programming and Scaling (Alan Kay, 2011)
The programming pop culture defines change—any change—as progress. Most
developers, myself included, have a fascination with novelty. If it’s new, then
it must be an improvement. You even hear this stated outright as an argument by
developers: it’s newer and therefore better. Trends in software development are
rarely based on objective observation or sensible practice. This endless
chasing of trends leads to projects being needlessly rewritten, code being
abandoned, and new projects being started when fixing the bugs in an old
project would have done the same. The stocks of the software development system
are flushed out at a moment’s notice simply because the developers found
something shinier.
Experienced developers are aware of this tendency in themselves and work to
mitigate it, but younger developers are often under the mistaken impression
that this is how software development works. Unless they can pare back this
tendency or are matched with teammates who hold them back, this tendency can
lead to immense destruction of value for an organisation.
Pop cultures favour the visual aesthetic of the day. We all know what sort of
aesthetic designers commonly favour. Small, low-contrast text, lots of
whitespace, no pure whites or pure blacks (just greys). The details vary with
fashion, but each generation of designers has a preferred visual aesthetic.
That aesthetic tests poorly; the text is illegible; the layout doesn’t have
enough contrast. The information density is so sparse it’s effectively
non-existent.
Looks pretty, though.
Coders have a similar tendency, their preferred aesthetic is just a bit
different, but as with designers, it tests horribly when put in front of
genuine users. The exact details of the preferred aesthetic tend to vary from
generation to generation. One group prefers light-on-dark text (despite not
suffering from conditions that benefit from dark mode) and unusable
hyper-complex layouts where everything is configurable. Another group goes for
ultra-minimalism where nothing is shown by default. You constantly scrub around
and hunt for a button, a widget—anything that even vaguely resembles an
affordance. This is usually not an issue if you have designers on the team. If
you’re letting the programmers design the user interface or are a programmer
designing a user interface, you need to be aware of it.
But this adherence to a specific aesthetic isn’t limited to designs. It’s also
an issue when it comes to the code itself.
The programming pop culture favours specific code aesthetics based on the
trends of the day. I’m not talking about code style or formatting. The code in
a project should adhere to a single style, simple as that. The issue is that
the programming pop culture demands that code exhibit the latest popular
aesthetics of rigour, formality, and cleverness. Whether the code actually is
rigorous, formal, or clever matters less. A few years ago, as the popularity of
the Ruby programming language peaked, a certain dynamism and trickery were en
vogue. It didn’t matter if you were writing in Ruby, JavaScript, or
Objective-C. Your code had to have a level of “magic” to it. Metaprogramming,
syntax-hacking languages to create ad hoc Domain-Specific Languages, tricks
with extreme late binding, and more were frequent topics on developer weblogs
and forums. Even a phrase like “objective-c runtime metaprogramming” will date
you to a specific generation of native app developers almost down to a single
year.
As with all of these pop culture trends in programming, this led to unreadable
code that was impossible to work with or fix as soon as it faded from popular
consciousness.
The current trend is towards the aesthetics of correctness. Everything has to
look like it has strong or static typing. It doesn’t have to really have static
typing. That can all be made up after the fact in a declaration file. It merely
needs to have the aesthetics of types. Type annotations everywhere,
implementing logic through type system trickery, and forcing any and all
dynamism out of the system in the name of correctness is the name of the game.
A part of this trend is the unpopularity of the approaches and languages that
are seen as less rigorous. CSS is dropped in favour of statically typed
CSS-in-JS approaches. HTML is dropped in favour of a strict inline XML-like
markup format called JSX. Just a few years ago, everybody in web development
hated and dropped XML and XHTML specifically because it was too strict and felt
less dynamic and flexible than HTML. At some point, pop culture will bore of
this and swing its attention back the other way.
It’s a fashion industry. Trends come; trends go. The lack of historical
awareness is considered by most to be a feature.
This rigour is useful in moderation. Static typing does prevent bugs. Usually,
they are the same sort of bugs unit testing prevents. Both have immense value
as tools to manage your software development. Currently, the fashion is to
favour static typing over unit testing for establishing a certain base level of
correctness in your code. At some point, they are likely to switch again. They
have a couple of times in the past. That you could use both at the same time
and get the benefits of both doesn’t enter the discourse. Static typing with
compile-time correctness checks has its uses. So do dynamism, extreme late
binding, and metaprogramming. Most of these approaches can be used together,
but that isn’t how pop culture works. Pop culture demands there be only one
winner at a time. Choose one, not whichever works the best at each time.
Product development can’t indulge in being pop culture. Be wary of these
popularity contests.
These issues with programming culture aren’t new.
Jamie Zawinski calls it the “Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers” model. We
can’t do much to change the nature of the field by now—Alan Kay has certainly
tried—but we can mitigate the harm done by the trend-seeking. We can work to
ensure that everybody on the team, programmers and designers, is aligned, and
have the same understanding of what matters and how to accomplish it.
For that, you need everybody to understand the context they are working in—the
works of their field and how they are received. You need to develop taste and
understanding.
You need research.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Bonus Alan Kay quote on programming as a pop culture that I didn’t include in
the book:
But pop culture holds a disdain for history. Pop culture is all about
identity and feeling like you’re participating. It has nothing to do with
cooperation, the past or the future—it’s living in the present. I think the
same is true of most people who write code for money. They have no idea
where [their culture came from]—and the Internet was done so well that most
people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather
than something that was man-made.
Alan Kay, Dr. Dobb’s Interview with Alan Kay
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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landscape painting or nude modelling 21 April 2021
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losing the next generation 4 August 2015
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a book that's useful to all writers 3 June 2015
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Yes, let's 3 June 2015
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the web is being torn apart 20 May 2015
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Mad Max: Fury Road 19 May 2015
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inequality in tech is a symptom of something worse 18 May 2015
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united, they attack the web 15 May 2015
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UX, design, and CSS as a parasite 14 May 2015
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an epic journey through app dev and male bodies 13 May 2015
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the glorious wonders of online reading await you 12 May 2015
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an artisanal curation of reading material 11 May 2015
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a selection of fine links and tweets for your pleasure 10 May 2015
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• Both at the same time 4 July 2014
• So I had to make an ebook cover... 15 April 2014
• So long, Readmill, and thanks for all the fish 31 March 2014
• What ebook production problems are self-publishers facing? 24 March 2014
• Many stories, many truths 13 March 2014
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• To do, to do 21 February 2014
• iBooks Author tempts you with bling 20 February 2014
• Microsoft Word is a liability 19 February 2014
• The print design mentality 18 February 2014
• Book contracts 12 February 2014
• Intermission: sorting through the banal 5 February 2014
• How to create value with a new thing 30 January 2014
• HTML is too complex 29 January 2014
• The ebook as an API 28 January 2014
• My last word on DRM 27 January 2014
• Except, except, except 23 January 2014
• A thought exercise 22 January 2014
• Losing faith in yourself 21 January 2014
• Changing your readership mix 20 January 2014
• Sex, education, readers, and futures: what works, what doesn't 18 January
2014
• The various types of readers 17 January 2014
• The unevenly distributed ebook future 16 January 2014
• Sex, violence, and stílbrot 15 January 2014
• Recipe for pundit response to Hugh Howey’s suggestions 14 January 2014
• Bling it up for education 13 January 2014
• Blogging has trained me to assume you’re stupid 9 January 2014
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4 January 2014
• Stumbling into publishing 3 January 2014
• The publishing industry's new product categories 2 January 2014
• The last two Knights and Necromancers stories 1 January 2014
• Random, loosely connected, thoughts on the future 31 December 2013
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• Old photos posted without context: Sweep After Use 22 December 2013
• The Checklist: fix iBooks image handling 20 December 2013
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• Quarantine all ebooks 17 October 2013
• The self-publisher's perspective of the ebook market 17 October 2013
• Light evening trauma 10 October 2013
• Just say no to ebook CSS and JS 2 October 2013
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• Computers are too difficult and people are computer illiterate 14 August
2013
• Why disruption goes unchecked 12 August 2013
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Style|Julia Cameron Wants You to Do Your Morning Pages
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Julia Cameron Wants You to Do Your Morning Pages
With “The Artist’s Way,” Julia Cameron invented the way people renovate the
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Penelope Green
By Penelope Green
• Feb. 2, 2019
SANTA FE, N.M. — On any given day, someone somewhere is likely leading an
Artist’s Way group, gamely knocking back the exercises of “The Artist’s Way”
book, the quasi-spiritual manual for “creative recovery,” as its author Julia
Cameron puts it, that has been a lodestar to blocked writers and other artistic
hopefuls for more than a quarter of a century. There have been Artist’s Way
clusters in the Australian outback and the Panamanian jungle; in Brazil,
Russia, the United Kingdom and Japan; and also, as a cursory scan of Artist’s
Way Meetups reveals, in Des Moines and Toronto. It has been taught in prisons
and sober communities, at spiritual retreats and New Age centers, from Esalen
to Sedona, from the Omega Institute to the Open Center, where Ms. Cameron will
appear in late March, as she does most years. Adherents of “The Artist’s Way”
include the authors Patricia Cornwell and Sarah Ban Breathnach. Pete Townshend,
Alicia Keys and Helmut Newton have all noted its influence on their work.
So has Tim Ferriss, the hyperactive productivity guru behind “The Four Hour
Workweek,” though to save time he didn’t actually read the book, “which was
recommended to me by many megaselling authors,” he writes. He just did the
“Morning Pages,” one of the book’s central exercises. It requires you write
three pages, by hand, first thing in the morning, about whatever comes to mind.
(Fortunes would seem to have been made on the journals printed to support this
effort.) The book’s other main dictum is the “Artist’s Date” — two hours of
alone time each week to be spent at a gallery, say, or any place where a new
experience might be possible.
Elizabeth Gilbert, who has “done” the book three times, said there would be no
“Eat, Pray, Love,” without “The Artist’s Way.” Without it, there might be no
adult coloring books, no journaling fever. “Creativity” would not have its own
publishing niche or have become a ubiquitous buzzword — the “fat-free” of the
self-help world — and business pundits would not deploy it as a specious
organizing principle.
Image
The book’s enduring success — over 4 million copies have been sold since its
publication in 1992 — have made its author, a shy Midwesterner who had a bit of
early fame in the 1970s for practicing lively New Journalism at the Washington
Post and Rolling Stone, among other publications, and for being married,
briefly, to Martin Scorsese, with whom she has a daughter, Domenica — an
unlikely celebrity. With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes,
fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe
yourself at 80, for example — “The Artist’s Way” proposes an egalitarian view
of creativity: Everyone’s got it.
The book promises to free up that inner artist in 12 weeks. It’s a template
that would seem to reflect the practices of 12-step programs, particularly its
invocations to a higher power. But according to Ms. Cameron, who has been sober
since she was 29, “12 weeks is how long it takes for people to cook.”
Now 70, she lives in a spare adobe house in Santa Fe, overlooking an acre of
scrub and the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. She moved a few years ago from
Manhattan, following an exercise from her book to list 25 things you love. As
she recalled, “I wrote juniper, sage brush, chili, mountains and sky and I
said, ‘This is not the Chrysler Building.’” On a recent snowy afternoon, Ms.
Cameron, who has enormous blue eyes and a nimbus of blonde hair, admitted to
the jitters before this interview. “I asked three friends to pray for me,” she
said. “I also wrote a note to myself to be funny.”
In the early 1970s, Ms. Cameron, who is the second oldest of seven children and
grew up just north of Chicago, was making $67 a week working in the mail room
of the Washington Post. At the same time, she was writing deft lifestyle pieces
for the paper — like an East Coast Eve Babitz. “With a byline, no one knows
you’re just a gofer,” she said.
In her reporting, Ms. Cameron observed an epidemic of green nail polish and
other “Cabaret”-inspired behaviors in Beltway bars, and slyly reviewed a new
party drug, methaqualone. She was also, by her own admission, a blackout drunk.
“I thought drinking was something you did and your friends told you about it
later,” she said. “In retrospect, in cozy retrospect, I was in trouble from my
first drink.”
She met Mr. Scorsese on assignment for Oui magazine and fell hard for him. She
did a bit of script-doctoring on “Taxi Driver,” and followed the director to
Los Angeles. “I got pregnant on our wedding night,” she said. “Like a good
Catholic girl.” When Mr. Scorsese took up with Liza Minnelli while all three
were working on “New York, New York,” the marriage was done. (She recently made
a painting depicting herself as a white horse and Mr. Scorsese as a lily. “I
wanted to make a picture about me and Marty,” she said. “He was magical-seeming
to me and when I look at it I think, ‘Oh, she’s fascinated, but she doesn’t
understand.’”)
ImageUnder the pines.
Under the pines.Credit...Ramsay de Give for The New York Times
In her memoir, “Floor Sample,” published in 2006, Ms. Cameron recounts the
brutality of Hollywood, of her life there as a screenwriter and a drunk.
Pauline Kael, she writes, described her as a “pornographic Victorian valentine,
like a young Angela Lansbury.” Don’t marry her for tax reasons, Ms. Kael warns
Mr. Scorsese. Andy Warhol, who escorts her to the premiere of “New York, New
York,” inscribes her into his diary as a “lush.” A cocaine dealer soothes her —
“You have a tiny little wife’s habit” — and a doctor shoos her away from his
hospital when she asks for help, telling her she’s no alcoholic, just a
“sensitive young woman.” She goes into labor in full makeup and a Chinese
dressing gown, vowing to be “no trouble.”
“I think it’s fair to say that drinking and drugs stopped looking like a path
to success,” she said. “So I luckily stopped. I had a couple of sober friends
and they said, ‘Try and let the higher power write through you.’ And I said,
What if he doesn’t want to?’ They said, ‘Just try it.’”
So she did. She wrote novels and screenplays. She wrote poems and musicals. She
wasn’t always well-reviewed, but she took the knocks with typical grit, and she
schooled others to do so as well. “I have unblocked poets, lawyers and
painters,” she said. She taught her tools in living rooms and classrooms — “if
someone was dumb enough to lend us one,” she said — and back in New York, at
the Feminist Art Institute. Over the years, she refined her tools, typed them
up, and sold Xeroxed copies in local bookstores for $20. It was her second
husband, Mark Bryan, a writer, who needled her into making the pages into a
proper book.
The first printing was about 9,000 copies, said Joel Fotinos, formerly the
publisher at Tarcher/Penguin, which published the book in 1992. There was
concern that it wouldn’t sell. “Part of the reason,” Mr. Fotinos said, “was
that this was a book that wasn’t like anything else. We didn’t know where to
put it on the shelves — did it go in religion or self-help? Eventually there
was a category called ‘creativity,’ and ‘The Artist’s Way’ launched it.” Now an
editorial director at St. Martin’s Press, Mr. Fotinos said he is deluged with
pitches from authors claiming they’ve written “the new Artist’s Way.”
“But for Julia, creativity was a tool for survival,” he said. “It was literally
her medicine and that’s why the book is so authentic, and resonates with so
many people.”
“I am my tool kits,” Ms. Cameron said.
And, indeed, “The Artist’s Way” is stuffed with tools: worksheets to be filled
with thoughts about money, childhood games, old hurts; wish lists and
exercises, many of which seem exhaustive and exhausting — “Write down any
resistance, angers and fears,” e.g. — and others that are more practical: “Take
a 20 minutes walk,” “Mend any mending” and “repot any pinched and languishing
plants.” It anticipates the work of the indefatigable Gretchen Rubin, the
happiness maven, if Ms. Rubin were a bit kinder but less Type-A.
“When I teach, it’s like watching the lights come on,” said Ms. Cameron. “My
students don’t get lectured to. I think they feel safe. Rather than try and fix
themselves, they learn to accept themselves. I think my work makes people
autonomous. I feel like people fall in love with themselves.”
Anne Lamott, the inspirational writer and novelist, said that when she was
teaching writing full-time, her own students swore by “The Artist’s Way.” “That
exercise — three pages of automatic writing — was a sacrament for people,” Ms.
Lamott wrote in a recent email. “They could plug into something bigger than the
rat exercise wheel of self-loathing and grandiosity that every writer
experiences: ‘This could very easily end up being an Oprah Book,’ or ‘Who do I
think I’m fooling? I’m a subhuman blowhard.’”
“She’s given you an assignment that is doable, and I think it’s kind of a
cognitive centering device. Like scribbly meditation,” Ms. Lamott wrote. “It’s
sort of like how manicurists put smooth pebbles in the warm soaking water, so
your fingers have something to do, and you don’t climb the walls.”
Image
In the wild.Credit...Ramsay de Give for The New York Times
Ms. Cameron continues to write her Morning Pages every day, even though she
continues, as she said, to be grouchy upon awakening. She eats oatmeal at a
local cafe and walks Lily, an eager white Westie. She reads no newspapers, or
social media (perhaps the most grueling tenet of “The Artist’s Way” is a week
of “reading deprivation”), though an assistant runs a Twitter and Instagram
account on her behalf. She writes for hours, mostly musicals, collaborating
with her daughter, a film director, and others.
Ms. Cameron may be a veteran of the modern self-care movement but her life has
not been all moonbeams and rainbows, and it shows. She was candid in
conversation, if not quite at ease. “So I haven’t proven myself to be
hilarious,” she said with a flash of dry humor, adding that even after so many
years, she still gets stage-fright before beginning a workshop.
She has written about her own internal critic, imagining a gay British interior
designer she calls Nigel. “And nothing is ever good enough for Nigel,” she
said. But she soldiers on.
She will tell you that she has good boundaries. But like many successful women,
she brushes off her achievements, attributing her unlooked-for wins to luck.
“If you have to learn how to do a movie, you might learn from Martin Scorsese.
If you have to learn about entrepreneurship, you might learn from Mark” — her
second husband. “So I’m very lucky,” she said. “If I have a hard time blowing
my own horn, I’ve been attracted to people who blew it for me.”
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