I just keep thinking about Bennett Cerf.
There’s this thing in our culture where if you’re going to make it, you have to do so while you’re young and handsome and hip. You’ve got to be one of the “Top Thirty Under Thirty”. And to do that, you often have to do one thing to the exclusion of all else.
I’m having a hell of a time picking a grad school program because everyone always says, “If you’re going to go to grad school, you have to be sure that’s what you want to do.”
And I’m looking at them, and I’m just thinking, Crap.
Because I don’t want to do just one thing. The people that interest me the most are the Bennett Cerfs, the people who go out there and do a whole bunch of interesting stuff. The people who are the writers and the designers and the musicians and the personalisties and the people making new stuff and making life interesting. That’s what I try to do every day. Play with something. Make something happen. Make something real that wasn’t real before. You know? Tell a story, make up a song, keep it new and cool.
So many of the young hip media darlings are so one-dimensional. You know why I like Ethan Hawke? Because he published books. You know why I like Russell Crowe? Because of his band. These are people who are doing more than one thing. That’s cool. That’s what I want to do.
How many aspects of me would be helped by going to, say, the NYU Master’s Program in Publishing? Some. A bunch, maybe. Design? Marketing? Storytelling? Business? Check, check, check, check. Sounds like fun.
Sorry, just thinking out loud.