coordinates: in bed as usual, but this time amongst the spotted fawns in the oak forests of Austin, Texas. A family of four deer greeted me upon my arrival yesterday.
[art] I begin today’s email in the past to point us to the patch of the sky we’re navigating to. Eames made the film, Powers of Ten, in 1977 to illustrate magnitudes of scale. Every ten seconds you see an area ten times larger.
[film] Pixar represents the pinnace of the recent past and present of animated film. I couldn’t be more thrilled to see them going into more experimental, painterly styles. Art exists to do more than replicate reality, it exists to reveal things that could never exist outside the imagination.
[ai art] It’s no accident this video follows the Spiderverse animation breakdown. We soon will have tools like MidJourney (which currently is limited to still frames) break into video. It’s a brief blink of an eye, so the clever among you will already plan for that leap. If you are an archetypal storyteller, you will soon be able to animate your tales. Culture is about to explode, and we are all about to win.
[film] At the Dent the Future conference this week, I grabbed a video of the final 22 seconds of the presentation by Alvy Ray Smith, founder of Pixar. His challenge was “why isn’t there a Pixar in a garage?” Yes, with tools like MidJourney unleashing so much creativity, inevitably there will be and quite soon at that. The question is – will it be you?
[poetry] Poet Laureate of New York, Marie Howe, delivers a heartbreakingly hilarious poem about Mary Magdalene’s seven demons. I can’t adequately prepare you for what you’re going to hear here with any amount of words. She’s a gem among gems right up there with Mary Oliver, who’s up next...
What do you want to be when you grow up?
If you’re ready to take your big creative leap, it’s way more fun to do it with a crew of other amazing wingmen. We start September 22 and will close the doors to new signups on the 31st.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Hugs from Austin,
Cris and Team Dragon