On Steve Jobs and Communicable Secrets
Oct. 22nd, 2011 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraLike everybody else who haunts the Internet, I’m obsessed with Steve Jobs. Can’t wait till the Isaacson bio comes out.
I supposed what obsesses me the most is that Jobs had a communicable vision.
You figure most people have no vision at all. There’s no secret welling up inside them, struggling to express itself. This is probably the best way to be, a psychology conducive to enjoying life.
The rest of us have some compulsion to take random strangers on tours of our inner landscapes, to hijack casual bystanders and force them to find the same portents in the haphazard shapes of clouds that we do. This is an extremely uncomfortable way to live. We believe that we’re on a mission from God! Even if we don’t actually believe in God. An inherently frustrating drive because most of us don’t succeed in crafting the contextural lens that lets other people see the reality we see.
Jobs did. Of course his success owed as much to luck, to fortuitous circumstance – right time, right place – as it did to force of personality. But there’s no denying the force of that particular personality either.
Jobs’ particular genius was synthesis. I recognized the effects of all those acid trips when I read that it was the Cusinart that actually inspired the look of the iMac – that’s the one thing LSD will do for you, loosen the lay lines of those neurological junctions so that it’s possible to pick up inspiration from anywhere.
Reading over what I’ve written here, it doesn’t make much sense.
That’s because, unlike Steve Jobs, I don’t have a communicable vision.
Else?
Been on a reading spree – finished Scott Spencer’s Man In the Woods. Amazingly well-written, amazingly well-plotted – the last paragraph of the novel actually gave me chills, it was so inevitable and yet so unexpected. But Spencer has never written a truly three-dimensional character in his life and so his novels have no core and are never very memorable. Spencer is kind of a cautionary tale for literary stylists – at a certain point, all those brilliant mannerisms throw readers out of a book. If you must use them, ration them -- like maybe one dazzling metaphor or unexpected wordplay every 500 words or so.
I supposed what obsesses me the most is that Jobs had a communicable vision.
You figure most people have no vision at all. There’s no secret welling up inside them, struggling to express itself. This is probably the best way to be, a psychology conducive to enjoying life.
The rest of us have some compulsion to take random strangers on tours of our inner landscapes, to hijack casual bystanders and force them to find the same portents in the haphazard shapes of clouds that we do. This is an extremely uncomfortable way to live. We believe that we’re on a mission from God! Even if we don’t actually believe in God. An inherently frustrating drive because most of us don’t succeed in crafting the contextural lens that lets other people see the reality we see.
Jobs did. Of course his success owed as much to luck, to fortuitous circumstance – right time, right place – as it did to force of personality. But there’s no denying the force of that particular personality either.
Jobs’ particular genius was synthesis. I recognized the effects of all those acid trips when I read that it was the Cusinart that actually inspired the look of the iMac – that’s the one thing LSD will do for you, loosen the lay lines of those neurological junctions so that it’s possible to pick up inspiration from anywhere.
Reading over what I’ve written here, it doesn’t make much sense.
That’s because, unlike Steve Jobs, I don’t have a communicable vision.
Else?
Been on a reading spree – finished Scott Spencer’s Man In the Woods. Amazingly well-written, amazingly well-plotted – the last paragraph of the novel actually gave me chills, it was so inevitable and yet so unexpected. But Spencer has never written a truly three-dimensional character in his life and so his novels have no core and are never very memorable. Spencer is kind of a cautionary tale for literary stylists – at a certain point, all those brilliant mannerisms throw readers out of a book. If you must use them, ration them -- like maybe one dazzling metaphor or unexpected wordplay every 500 words or so.
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Date: 2011-10-22 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-10-23 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-22 08:02 pm (UTC)Yeah - Jobs had a load of luck on his side - but he also answered the bell when his chance came. Boy, did he answer it. My big fear is that I'll get the opportunity and won't be ready. We must always be ready. I just don't feel ready right now. Which of course, is the ideal time for the luck lightning to strike. Goddammit.
Greeeat advice in that last paragraph. Lots of writers I know are so clever with the mannerisms. So many are the smartest guys in the room; quick with the turn of phrase and trenchant observation. But you're sick of them after a page and a half. Its like cooking - its better to layer the flavors for subtle, lasting effect than it is to add a shitload of chilis and cumin and call your flavors Bold and Forward. Its the difference between an artist and a crafstman.
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Date: 2011-10-23 12:41 pm (UTC)It's taken me a looong time to wean myself away from stylistic tricks. I grew up reading Tom Robbins, not Hemingway.
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Date: 2011-10-22 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-10-23 10:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 10:42 pm (UTC)I had no idea people loved Steve Jobs so much. Must confess I am a little creeped out by the cult of personality around him, and by Apple's near-total fusion of hip, forward design sensibility with overpriced consumeristic disposable-society let-them-eat-cakery.
But:
A friend of mine who works at Apple said this: the company looked to him as a leader in a way that is rare for CEO's these days. I suppose I can respect that. Know what I want to know, though? I want to know what his relationship with the board was like.
I need a board. Want to be a trustee?