Kyle's inspiring person project
9am — 9.45am
Kyle wants to be highlighting inspiring people that he knows and meets. There’s a multimedia element to this, probably with a newsletter at it’s root, but which would also draw on his video work.
Most of our conversation this morning centred on his friend Jessey Nelson who, in 2019, decided he wanted to make skits and short films. He started by inviting 12 friends to dinner and saying “we’re starting a sketch comedy group”, thus Smashed Potato Kids (SPK) was born.
Kyle is very inspired by Jessey’s creative arc. Seeing it’s potential to be inspiring and useful to a broader set of people, he’s seeded the idea that Jessey could start a project to reflect on the last five years of his creative work. Jessey, having built up a substantial body of work, has the credibility to talk usefully and authentically about the creative pursuit, and there’s also potential for this self-referential work to germinate those ’1,000 True Fans’ for Jessey and SPK, further propelling/sustaining his core creative projects.
You was inspired by the world, allow the world to be inspired by [you].
The conversation reminded me of the last track, Note to Self, of J. Cole’s 2014 album Forest Hills Drive. After the 3m25s of the track itself, Cole dedicates 11 minutes to spoken credits in which he thanks God, fellow artists, producers, musicians, mentors, et al.
What always stuck out to me starts around 6m15s. Cole gives thanks to the younger artists signed to his label who, by being inspired by him, are allowing him to re-witness his own journey and then re-inspiring him in the process.
Y’all, it’s really gon’ be great to watch y’all grow
I’m appreciatin’ watchin’ y’all grow more than– more than we did, man!
I get to relive it all again and actually appreciate it this time
Lifting others up allows us to better appreciate our own journey and success, and by doing that it enriches our own creative work. Cole has revisited this several times, including in interviews,
Seeing Cozz about to drop his first project and remembering what that was like. Seeing Bas go on tour…
[…] I realize that, even if I never produce a record for someone who’s signed to me, the real pleasure of having a label is watching somebody start from ground zero and get to level one, two, and three. These dudes are trying to get to 100. It’s mad rewarding for me to see.
The value of a project like this lies in its specificity. Kyle used novels as a metaphor here. A novel is so specific in its particulars, in its context, and it is through that specificity rather than in spite of it that its message emerges.
The instinct we often have, to try to actively generalise an idea, to make it useful to more people, or to situate it in an over-broadened context, almost always dilutes it down to nothing, leaving you with meaning-free filler.
And it disrespects the audience. Speak truth, and let the audience draw out the irreducible and apply it in their own context, don’t try to do it for them.
Kyle then opened another feeling that came from this experience. Jessey was very taken with Kyle’s idea and immediately began to take control of it, more than Kyle had expected, so he had to reckon with the feeling of losing control of his own idea. All of a sudden he was imagining Jessey taking his idea and running with it, making a success of it, with Kyle left to watch from the sidelines.
This isn’t going to happen, Kyle knows Jessey isn’t like that, but still the thought comes, and it’s a normal human experience that we can all relate to in some way.
I reflected that in that instance, Kyle’s Very Inspiring People Project had inverted. Having gone out intending to find and document inspiring people and their work, he had in fact inspired the inspiring person.
We both love the metaphor that a rising tide lifts all boats and, drawing on the idea of seeding widely again, we determined that this concept getting away from him in this way is almost certainly a good thing. Heck, Jessey and Kyle’s friendship emerged from Kyle working with a broad set of people and their projects, and it was the connection with Jessey that really emerged as the substantial outcome of that — the other collaborations didn’t yield nearly so much. For Jessey to go away and riff on this, try out ideas, find success in it, reach an audience etc. will give Kyle much more to work with as he explores how he wants to develop his angle, his project to document these inspiring folk.
I also invoked the Pets vs Cattle analogy used in software development/deployment, as a lens for considering when to scale-up (pets) vs when to scale-out (cattle). Periods of scale-out can cycle back to scale-up when the right archetype or avenue has begun to emerge.
