Own your time
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) “Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people.” —Prince It was 1987, and Prince had very little left to prove after an astonishing four-year burst of creative work.
He’d already delivered a monster hit record with Purple Rain, spinning out five singles. Its companion concert film played a key role in redefining how records could be marketed and who you could reach with them. It also was a lot of fun to watch.
Then he made two more studio records: each selling reasonably well. If that weren’t enough, it seemed he had spare time to pen two additional hit songs recorded other artists. He even managed to squeeze-in a directorial flop with the film Under a Cherry Moon (but let’s not talk anymore about that one).
By the end of that four-year period, Prince could have given critics and fans more of what they wanted.
Instead, he released Sign o’ the Times.
It’s an odd record: a mish-mash of funk, soul, psychedelic art and pop, rich with baked-in homages to James Brown, Joni Mitchell and Curtis Mayfield, among others.
Here’s how Spin magazine summed up their first listen back in 1987: “He takes a left, a hard left, and he does it laughing. Sign o’ the Times sounds so loose it could be nothing but outtakes—except nobody else’s outtakes would sound so strong, rock so hard, swing so free.”
Thirty years later, it’s still one of my favourite albums of all time. Not only because it’s still such deft pleasure to listen to: Sign o’ the Times also teaches the value of being true to your craft and owning your time.
Take what inspires you and pull it apart. Be willing to sink deep into your sources rather than just stick to some narrow output defined by the expectations of others. Don’t be afraid to wander off the path.
Nineteenth-century French culture, by way of Charles Baudelaire, coined a term for this: flaneur.
It’s still relevant today. More than just by adhering to its traditional definition—to walk the streets without a set destination—it invites you to be intellectually curious about where your ideas come from.
Go wandering there, too.
That’s how we are each able to make layers out of the kaleidoscope of ideas and influences that inform our work. It’s how we make new things that are our own.
It won’t happen by accident. You must choose this for yourself.
You owe it to yourself the treat time as your time. Nobody but you gets to decide how you’re going to spend your creative capital in life. So be willing to wander a little on your own terms.
Very best, Patrick
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