New Year

One last thing for today. I sent out a year-end letter on Bumpspark* and posted it on the site at the end of last month. Check it.

Andrew

I met Andrew Hoover in Connecticut. He’s a singer/songwriter. I realize we all know one of those, but Andrew already has his own sound ("Nu-Blues") and he rehearses more than anyone I know. I believe he is the real thing.

Saving Face

I joined Facebook. Or rather, I've been subsumed by Facebook. I opened the box, I admit that. I voluntarily put up a page over the holidays and left the default blue question mark in cyberspace as an avatar for all that I am. (It was probably truer than any of the modifications I was to make afterwards.) Then I left it alone, and didn’t think of it again, until that first email came. “So and so added you as a friend on Facebook. We need to find out if you are, in fact, friends with so and so.” In fact? The question had the tone of a prosecutor in it. I now know why.

I’m not as closed off as Jerry on Seinfeld, who admitted he could not handle more than Elaine, George and Kramer in his life, but I am also not one of Malcolm Gladwell’s Connectors either. Everyone of the Facebook generation seems to be one of these “people with a special gift for bringing the world together.” Or maybe that is the design of the software, or, as Gladwell would put it, the virus. The first few hours of having two friends while everyone else has a median of, say, 142, has probably been enough to send some high schoolers into therapy. So you get to work, seeing how fast you can get six degrees from everybody else.

Facebook did not exist when I was at NYU. Before all this, I thought it was an accomplishment that I still got together a few times a year with eight friends from my freshman year dorm. My older sister and parents and their friends always thought this was amazing, especially as some of the eight got married and some of the eight didn’t. (Guess which of us are on Facebook.) Wizened family members will tell you that you’ll be able to count your best friends on your hand in the end. I have yet to break 100 on Facebook, and I have a lot of default blue question marks amongst them. I’m ultimately fine with that, because I’d rather they were spending the time with their kids.

If you went or are going to college in this millennium though, it is not uncommon to have two hundred of your fellow undergrads in your Facebook roster. I’m under no delusion that they are all, in fact, the best of friends. Messaging back and forth with one of the youngest on my list, I asked him about one very attractive face in his 250 plus. He said he had no idea who she was. “Cute though, isn’t she?”

Even if these people aren’t all truly friends, they are now connected. They can reach each other when and if they have something to say and that is quite something. Facebook was started at Harvard, where it literally pays to know everyone. But as Facebook zambonis the hockey rink, you might do as well staying in touch with your lab partner at Ithaca as much as anyone at the Ivys. As important as who you know now is how many you know, because you can’t predict anymore where the person you might need is going to come from. I can only imagine getting in touch with everyone I graduated with at Tisch with the click of one button and that is my loss.

There are some odd side effects though. The ego’s endless fascination with questionnaires quickly has you spilling intimate details as potentially dangerous as your social security number out on the lawn. Facebook is PR as pastime, or procrastination. One friend’s Facebook page became the nexus for pictures of her sister’s drunken shenanigans at college and her aunt’s birthday greetings and her coworkers’ gossip. This is the glimpse of chaotic freedom that ingenuity gives us right before the lawyers get involved. While having lunch with three of those eight friends from NYU recently, one of them described Facebook with another Seinfeld reference. “Worlds are colliding.” What happens when your boss decides you don’t have enough work to do because your Facebook page is so active? What if she fires you after your cousin posts video of your “sick day?”

And then there is that moment when you either find, or God help you, are found by, someone with whom you don’t ever really want to reconnect. It cools the whole experience like a flush during a shower. You realize how naked you are out there in cyberspace. I wonder what happens when the average relationship goes sour. Can you remove someone from your friend list? Does it then actually post this information on your timeline for everyone to read? “Jim is no longer friends with Carol. They, in fact, hate each other’s guts.”

I think I’m pretty much done with Facebook as a friend corral. I never became one for joining the Oregon Trail or the ninja battles or any of the other applications/spam. It is fun to see how people are doing, like bumping into one another on the street. I’d still rather get together in person and play Scrabble over Scrabulous. With the overwhelming pressure of the holidays and final papers at the end of last semester, Facebook became an easy, convenient distraction when I just couldn’t think anymore. Now it is resolution time, the beginning of my thesis year, and I’m going to do my best to utilize my laptop for the reasons it was purchased.

John

As long as I’m talking about creative people that I know, let me bring up two others. John Girouard
is an artist I met in my home away from home, the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He creates paintings with hot wax on canvas and the results reflect light like stained glass. You really have to see the outcome in person, but he posted his patented process online.

Nami

For five weeks in the summer of 1999, I crossed Europe by train and backpack. I recommend traveling alone; you are more approachable to strangers. It is easier to meet both fellow travelers and the locals. Instead of checking off a list of postcard destinations, they take you in directions you didn’t expect. You really travel.

Towards the end of that trip, I did meet my friend Nami who was working in the fashion industry in Milan at the time. The two of us took a train to Barcelona and met another good friend, Mike Bradley. Then we climbed the towers of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia and ate tapas. Don’t we look relaxed?

I first met Nami when she was studying fashion at the Rhode Island School of Design. I went to see her senior year show and was really impressed with how complete a vision she had. RISD is such a great school. There was a big house party after the show and I remember having such a good time.

Anyway, Nami emailed me today because she just released a new clothing line. It looks brilliant.

Kudos Nam.