How to turn Existential Dread into Something Productive
An absurd journey through fear, creativity and content creation
You may have noticed that something is breaking. I’m not sure if it is a conspiratorial world order or perhaps a long inherited sense of reliance on people in positions of power, but the bails of straw are weighing heavily on the camels back. A whirlwind of political positioning, fear based headlines and moderate agitation seem to be spilling out of the corners of our collective consciousness and lubricating the space between us.
Despite the car horns, and internet chatter, there’s a beauty to this well-oiled machine. While the marker graffiti calls on us to “Eat the Rich,” and the endless wars slip to the back of our minds as more pressing matters draw our privileged attention to more personal problems, there are rays of sunshine peering through the clouds. There is hope.
Not the kind of hope we are sold in fairytales and fantasy books, but a rough, grungy, messy kind of hope that exists in flashes of inspiration and serendipitous human connection.
A Russian man taps me on the shoulder asking for a photo of him at the corner of a rooftop. Upon obliging he types away into his translation app the following:
”I have always wanted to come here and get a photo. I am very grateful for you helping me. You helped me make a dream come true.”
Hope.
Sitting in a full auditorium I watch art puncture the comfort zones of eight hundred strangers. Giant inflatables, trampolines and an endless stream of liquified poop fracturing the space between the world out there and the world in here.
Hope.
An older woman touring her out-of-town friends through the city streets with a gleeful smile and vibrant energy that radiates out into the wind and rain around her.
Hope.
It doesn’t matter how dark the sky or how grey the clouds of change, hope has a funny way of revealing itself to those who are willing to look for it. It is from this sense of hope that I continue to work away on the series What Do You Mean. With more cardboard than cutlery in my apartment, it’s safe to say the world of these strange characters has begun bleeding into my everyday life. An at times relentless fascination with meaning, childhood nostalgia and the channeling of existential dread into something productive.
In truth, there are many nights where I lay awake wondering what the heck I am doing with my life. I worked hard to graduate from a top tier school, to pursue grants and opportunities that make me feel like I should be contributing in some profound way to global causes and at the very least funding the recovery of my own, and my families, financial insecurities. But here I sit, covered in poster paint and chunks of shredded cardboard, sticky an absurdly large chef’s hat to my forehead…
Following on from the launch of episode 1, we spent countless days trying to expand the concept of What Do You Mean into something that could be serialised. A show that could capture internet audiences with its absurdity and yet still wrestle with relevant topics that made it’s chaotic ramblings valuable.
This was a particularly difficult episode to create. At every point of the process we had to come up against our own internalised fears and existential insecurities. Is it funny enough? Is it too weird? Are we losing plot (conceptually and personally)?
The resulting episode is an intriguing one. Proof that the process of creation is just as valuable, if not more valuable, than the final product. We were forced to face ourselves. To lean into our discomfort and rapidly iterate on creative impulses. We had to reshoot scenes, and redevelop characters. We had to accept short-fallings and also stand up for our own ideas so as to not let outside inspiration dilute our creative ambitions.
The truths I am coming to understand on a much deeper level through this process are as follows:
Making things is hard, but we are designed to do hard things. The true test of our perseverance and self-confidence comes from our ability to see an idea to its completion (this includes strategically marketing it).
The best channel for existential dread and fear in a world that profits off our overwhelm is to make art. Art allows us to step both inside and outside ourselves. It creates this duality of self that rapidly exposes the ways in which we are holding ourselves back. It fractures our preconceived ideas of who and what we are, and it forces us to grow.
We cannot look for the life we want in big dreams and structured goal charts. We must first find it in the minuscule moments of everyday life. A full moment, is much more valuable than a full schedule.
Patience is a virtue. I know that’s cliché but it holds tremendous truth when you set out to make something new. Ideas cannot be forced. Parts of a project cannot be rushed. Attention has to be earned. Everything has its natural cycle of existence, and if we try and force anything or rush towards an end goal, we run the risk of throwing ourselves out of sync with the natural order of things.
Taking time away from a project is just as valuable as spending time on it.
I am honestly proud of what we have been able to create with episode 2 of What Do You Mean. It’s by no means perfect, and there are so many things I want to improve as we develop the concept in pursuit of a third episode, but I am actively trying to ground myself in the belief that the process will reveal the project. I am trying to be more hopeful and more celebratory of the small moments that make life so radiant. I am trying to sink into the child-like innocence and awe that make being human feel more normal.
It would mean the world to me if you gave the new episode a watch. Would love it if you shared it with those in your life you think would enjoy it, and welcome any and all feedback.
With weirdness,
Zed