What is this thing called Love?

I'll meet you at Saint Jardim at 5:30 p.m.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ What is this thing called Love? I'll meet you at Saint Jardim at 5:30 p.m. ​ --------------------------------------------------------------- Housekeeping: My spoken-word album will be dropping soon. If you haven't yet, please [give me a follow]() over on Spotify (just click the follow button in the top left hand corner). I will have more to share with you in due time. --------------------------------------------------------------- A great writer and editor by the name of Ben Cake once gave me the following piece of advice while editing a poem I had written on the subject of love... You only get so many moments in life to write about love, use them wisely. It was Ben's gentlemanly way of saying that love is sacred and beautiful and the writing that attempts to do it justice should be treated with a tremendous amount of care. I scraped the poem. Last Friday, I released another poem, a spoken-word poem, about love and the loss of love that––I am very proud to say––passed The Cake Test. It's titled Faraway. You can listen to it [here](=). While I'm tempted to spend the remainder of today's newsletter writing about love, I'm going to resist that temptation and write about an interesting conversation I recently had on the subject of creativity instead. Well, I take that back, I'm going to open up this piece writing about love but I won't remain on that subject for long. So, please bear with me. I've never had difficulty falling in love. It's the staying in love I can't seem to figure out. I know this makes me sound like a heartless monster––and I suppose I am––but I can't imagine I'm alone in my experience. Love is so goddamn hard that anytime I see an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand down the street, I want to fall to my knees, burst into tears, kiss their feet and then hand them a medal. Most of us spend our lives falling in love, falling out of love and doing a great deal of healing, loathing, medicating, soul-searching and self-sabotaging in between these two extremes. For as long as I can remember, I've been enamored with love. My first crush was my babysitter. Her name was Mallory. Despite the fact that I was only seven years old and Mallory was nineteen, I had made up my mind that I was going to marry her. I remember one day confessing my love for Mallory to my mother and her telling me we could revisit the subject when I was eighteen. It was a clever punt. Mallory smoked cigarettes like they were going out of style. She never let me catch her doing this smoking but the smell clung to her hair and her clothes like Chanel N°5. I remember she came along on vacation one year with us to Florida to give my parents a break from being parents. One day I snuck into Mallory's room while she was reading by the pool and found a glass packed with so many bent-over cigarettes it's a wonder the fire department wasn't busting down the door. Eventually, Mallory got pregnant and had a shotgun wedding with her boyfriend (whom I loathed simply for the fact that Mallory loved him). I not only attended their wedding but served as the ring-bearer. This only added insult to injury. While Mallory ended her tenure as our babysitter––because she had a child of her own to raise––she left me with a lifelong love for the smell of smoke on a woman's clothes. I've been reading a lot of Eve Babitz lately. She was a visual designer and a writer who lived, worked and dated in Los Angeles back when Los Angeles was peak Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s. She wrote this beautiful excerpt on smoking... Having quit smoking, I knew what she meant. Unless one is in the exact right mood, it's impossible. Smoking has been so glamorous for so long, all those matches, those pauses, the lipstick on the tips––the smoke itself curling its casual way through the most nerve-wracking moments. To me, smoking might be the most attractive activity a woman (or anyone for that matter) can do. Yet, the irony in this attraction is that if I were to fall in love with a woman who smoked, I'd want them to stop the disgusting habit immediately. Perhaps there is a metaphor in there for love. Where people fuck up tragically in love is that they fall in love with someone and then immediately attempt to make them someone else. This begs the question: Why even love them in the first place? After taking some time off dating, I'm casually dating again. I've italicized the word casually because I'm really just looking to have interesting conversations with interesting individuals. If the spirit takes us somewhere beyond the realm of dialogue, then splendid, but that's not necessarily what I'm after; at least not now. Last week, I was meeting someone at a haunt called Saint Jardim in the West Village. It was our first time having ever met, so I stood outside on the corner of West Tenth and Fourth Street awaiting her arrival. I scanned the hundreds of passersby for a face that matched the face I had seen on the screen of my phone––finally, I spotted her. She ran across the street and hugged me as if she had hugged me several dozen times before. I hadn't been hugged like that in some time and I felt my body give. It was as if something in me broke and then melted like an icicle that had fallen from the lip of a tall roof on a particularly warm winter's day. What I noticed first about her was her right eye––which was half red and half blue––the result of some fabulous genetic mutation. We spent the six hours that followed drinking, eating and talking about art, music, literature, religion and, of course, creativity. She's wildly creative but not unlike so many creatives, she struggles to commit to any one form. She's a photographer (the real kind, with an analog camera and all). She's a painter. She's a baker (who draws faces and flowers and clenched fists on sourdough loaves). She's a writer, too. Our conversation got me thinking about the difference between originality and mastery. While it's certainly important to hone in on a set of creative skills, I think it's disadvantageous to limit yourself to just one. Unless, of course, you're seeking mastery. It's a very good thing, for example, that Georgia O'Keeffe dedicated her life to painting. She painted more than 2,000 works of art. That's a lot of art. However, it's worth noting that O'Keeffe was after mastery. She was seeking to be a master at painting. I'm not sure all of us are after mastery nor do we have the God-given talent to achieve mastery. If we don't have the desire or the capability to achieve mastery, the next best thing is originality. Mastery is picking a skill and working really hard at that skill until you’re one of the best in the world. Originality, on the other hand, is picking several skills and working pretty hard at each of those skills until you're fairly competent in all of them; and then combining them to create an entirely new style or form. At some point in the night, she unearthed a pack of cigarettes from her purse. They weren't any ordinary cigarettes. They weren't the pack of American Spirits I keep on my person for such occasions. No. Her cigarettes were these thin Parisian cigarettes as beautiful and as delicate as the wings of hummingbirds. They smoked quickly and just barely, like a tiny fireplace that can't decide if it wants to catch fire; allowing for just enough smoke that it could be considered smoking but not so much that you finished the cigarette feeling as if a cat had just defecated in your mouth. We walked and smoked in the rain, ducking under doorways when the mist became drizzle and then ducking back out when the drizzle became mist again. Later, we took the train from Manhattan to Brooklyn where I was to rendezvous with some friends at a bar called Black Flamingo. We hugged one another goodbye in a park next to a dozen or so teenagers playing football beneath a field painted yellow with floodlights. As we walked in opposite directions, I remember feeling both light on my feet and a bit lonely in her absence. I think my generation––and the generations beneath my generation––believe the love of their life is waiting for them right around the corner and this makes it difficult to commit to the face right in front of us. We've also grown old enough to see that love is a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways and when it cuts the wrong way, it shears to the bone. These days, I'm incredibly cautious about how much of my heart I'm willing to give away––I save the best of me for my friends, my family, my craft and myself––and the women I've met as of late seem to share this same sentiment It's this strange dance of wanting more but not necessarily wanting to give more. While I'm certainly lonely at times, I'm also the happiest and most centered I've been in a very long time; and so when these evenings lead to something or nothing, it hurts less than it did once upon a time. Men tend to believe that women need saving. I've always been the opposite in that I've believed that women could save me. I thought for a long time that if I could somehow convince a woman to love me––be it my beautiful chainsmoking babysitter Mallory or the women who've come after Mallory––I would finally convince myself that I'm worthy of love and wake up one day to find that I no longer hurt. At thirty, I'm goddamn proud to say that I've realized I'm fully capable of saving myself and so now my relationships with women––and everyone for that matter––tend to be more honest. And, right now, the honest to God truth is that I'm really just looking to have interesting conversations with interesting individuals, while occasionally looking over my shoulder, mid-smoke, in hopes to catch a glimpse of that spirit I mentioned earlier. If love is anything like art, what I am after in this season of my life isn't so much mastery but originality. It's not perfect. But, for now, it's enough. By [Cole Schafer](​ --------------------------------------------------------------- Words you will fall in love with How come sugar ain't sweet like honey? On the topic of love, I run a creative copywriting shop called [Honey Copy](=), where I write words that are so pretty, they'll make your soon-to-be customers trip over themselves like it's 1954 and Marilyn Monroe just stepped into the room. We're about as busy as we've ever been. But, if you have a cool project that could use some ink, don't hesitate to reach out. [DELICIOUS](=) --------------------------------------------------------------- Mess with the bull, get the horns A mental and emotional balm for fear You are scared. I am scared. We all are scared. While humanity might not collectively share precisely the same fears, there are a few fears that seem to come up again and again. - Fear of rejection - Fear of death - Fear of failure - Fear of embarrassment - Fear of disease - Fear of loss - Fear of heights - Fear of intimacy Like black mold, fear grows in dark, stagnant places. Our natural reaction to fear is to conceal it, hide it, sit with it, mull it over and ignore it. But, this causes the fear to compound into something akin to phobia. The only remedy for fear is to take it head-on, the way the bull takes on the matador. One of my best friends, [Zach Janicello](=), once told me that baby bulls begin charging within days of being born. This isn’t because they are angry or spiteful. It’s because they are scared. We must face that which scares us like the bull: head-on, face-to-face, up close and personal. We must trample the weeds, to make room for the roses. [STAMPEDE]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Too much pie Could memorization be hazardous to creativity? ​ Save for impressing strangers at parties, being able to recite a bunch of facts isn’t all that useful. Why? Because we live in an age where facts can be found in our pockets in less than 30 seconds. On this note, I love the story about Albert Einstein being asked how many feet are in a mile. The genius drew a blank... Why should I fill my brain with useless facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book? If you are doing creative work––and I consider Einstein’s work to be creative––you’re far better off getting good at generating ideas rather than memorizing facts. Memorization requires an exorbitant amount of cognitive energy. If you were to spend your days attempting to memorize every digit of PIE after 3.14, you would have very little mental bandwidth available to generate new ideas. Because ideas are original, they can’t be birthed from memory. They’re birthed from thinking, yes, but a sort of detached thinking that looks more like play. [DAYDREAM](=) --------------------------------------------------------------- [[linkedin]​]() ​ [Update your email preferences]( or unsubscribe [here](​ © 2024 The Process 113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205