Everything in the world is exactly the same.
Kanye West appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2014. Seth Meyers asked him: "Tell me, what's the difference in how you approach fashion to how you approach music? Is it similar, is it completely different?" Kanye answered with a straight face: "Everything in the world is exactly the same." I think about this a lot. I can't know exactly what it means to him or anyone else, but it takes on new and deepened meaning every time I'm reminded of it (however unfortunate the source is). To me it implies that there's some universal truth that frames everything we observe and experience.
When teaching about systems theory in the context of food systems and environmental studies, I would tell my students that the question is rarely: "Are these two things connected?" The assumption is that they are connected and the more interesting and helpful question is: "How are these two (or more) things connected? How can we characterize the connection or relationship?" This concept is part of what I extrapolated from Kanye's quote.
Today I watched a Youtube video about building aerobic capacity for running, immediately followed by a video about writing creative nonfiction.
The main takeaway from the first video was that runners need to vary the stress they introduce to their bodies in order to build aerobic capacity: short sprints, increasing intervals run at threshold speeds (10K, half marathon, and marathon paces), and long distance runs. These different speeds and distances stress the body in different ways, triggering complex and nonlinear physiological adaptations that work together to increase the aerobic capacity of the runner.
My main takeaway from the second video was that writers should experiment with different styles within the broad category of creative nonfiction in order to develop facility within different structures. When writers refine their voice and ability to think through ideas and perspective on the world, they are ultimately more able to communicate and connect with others.
It's the same thing, isn't it? The speakers in both videos are saying that to increase some capacity, you need to put in some minimum amount of work that is varied and related to the desired outcome. Volume is required; write to write well and run to run well. Variation within the volume of work is also required. You need the right kind of stress, limitation, challenge to trigger the right adaptation. It makes me wonder: What's the writing equivalent of a long easy run? What's the running equivalent of a braided essay? What's the writing equivalent of a half-marathon? A 5K?
Everything in the world is exactly the same. The task, then, is translation followed by doing the work. It's a puzzle, and I love puzzles.
The extended quote:
[West]: Everything in the world is exactly the same.
[Meyers]: Alright, great. I don’t think we’re done but I think I’m going to sign off.
[West]: Meaning like, you can do comparable people like - who would you compare Daniel Day-Lewis or Phillip Seymour Hoffman to musically, or in fashion, directing, architecturally? Who was your favorite teacher when you were growing up? It’s certain people that when - that teacher when you’re in eighth grade, that this person really cared and you knew this person cared about you as a student and gave everything they had and they were meant to do that. It’s other people that were just like getting a check or something. It’s all the same. You know, for me I give you paintings, sonic paintings. I have synesthesia; I can see sound in front of me. So, when I want to do fashion, I just want to give you sculptures. So it’s like Michelangelo; the church wanted him to paint, and he just wanted to do sculptures. So the hard – the difficult thing for me that everyone doesn’t understand, I just want to be able to use marble and make sculptures. But, due to the fact that I’m a celebrity, all these different things they’re like “no, you can’t do this, you have to do this kind of line.”
So, it’s kind of the first of its kind so that’s the reason why there’s been a lot of confusion as to why I want to do it, to why is he getting so frustrated about it. It’s like: why don’t you just do music? It’s an overall creative expression. Like I have a friend, Yves Béhar, that designed the Jawbone wristband and stuff, and the Jambox and everything. As a designer, you know, he's not in a box to only design, you know, a speaker. He can design whatever he wants and I'm like, that's the type of creative expression and freedom any creative, you know, wants.
And as, you know, get really successful at one thing you start to grow, and you're like - you feel like you can do more things, and your shoe starts to get a little bit tight, and you do everything you can to get a bigger shoe so you can walk further and run faster. And people are like now in this day and age, if you don't believe it, it's like they're like "No, Kanye, you can't run faster. This is the limit that was made. This is the walls that Michael Jackson broke down for you, and Jay Z and Russell Simmons broke down for you. This is the end of it. So I'm in the process, 2013 all of the controversy about why - I'm in the process of breaking down walls that people will understand 10 years from now - 20 years from now.