By day, I make video content. Directing and editing, with a healthy dose of producing and writing as well. While this is super meaningful to me, especially because the videos I make tend towards signal-boosting issues I care about, I felt I needed another creative outlet. I play music, but I’m not interested in performing right now. I like writing fiction, but that’s too similar to what I do in film. What was missing was something that would be lower stakes than my day job, but still creative.
There’s an old Jewish joke: two middle-aged men, Sol and Abe, meet up at a diner.
“Sol, what have you been doing these days?”
“Well, I’ve been breeding goldfish as a hobby. It helps me relax after a long day.”
“That’s great,” said Abe. “Can I see them?”
So after coffee they go to Sol’s house to see the fish. Abe is shocked: the fish look terrible! Their tank is filthy, some of them are floating dead at the surface.
“Sol! Your fish? What’s wrong?”
“Abe, who cares? It’s just a hobby!”
Goyim tend to blanche at the idea of dead fish, but the (admittedly, morbid) point is: a hobby should be something that you care about, but that ultimately something you can forget about for a while, and it’s not a big deal.
So I figured bourbon (I worked in a bar for a while, and like it the best of the spirits) and books (I like to read) could be a good prompt to write some short musings, at least for my circle of friends and family to read that will be fun to create, more fun if it take off somehow… but also just fine if it stays something just for me.
So that’s it. That’s my impetus for this. As a theater director I worked with used to say before every performance: “If you like it, tell somebody. If you don't? Don’t say anything.”
(This is a photo from 2009, when I went to Copenhagen with my youngest brother. See the life in my eyes? Wow. So life-y)