The Magic and The Madness
The Scheme, Vol 1. Ed 8.: Into the Unknown
For him, the camera was but an instrument for expressing his intense awareness of life.
ICP on Eugène Atget
Many years ago, maybe somewhere around 2010, my husband had gone to the Chelsea flea market to browse. He saw a photo that caught his eye. He picked it up, and on the back of the frame it said, “Ruby Jester.” As a photographer, he was pretty familiar with historical photographers, and this name didn’t resonate. But nevertheless, he thought the photo had something to it, so he went and got $25 cash and came back to buy it.
Later that night, as we were watching TV and eating our homemade strawberry shortcakes, fingers coated in whipped cream, he decided to open the frame. We were excited with anticipation. The frame was janky, and we could not find a trace of a “Ruby Jester” anywhere on the internet. So he slowly peeled back the layers of the frame until the back of the photograph was exposed. And there it was, “Berenice Abbott.”
A little high at the time, we thought we were being punked! I remember getting up off the couch and exclaiming, “Oh my god.” To find a Berenice Abbott print for $25 at a flea market was pure magic. And my husband knew right away, it was Eugène Atget, one of his all-time favorite photographers for whom Berenice championed in his life and death. Atget was regarded as a forefather of modern photography, taking photos around Paris in the late 1800s. They are haunting. Magical. For a young photographer who just moved to NYC a few years earlier, the moment was unbelievable for my husband.
On Saturday, after BLTs at Shopsins, we wandered over to ICP to see the Atget show that is up. What we found were the origins of the photo that now hangs in our entryway.
After talking to appraisers throughout the years, the mystery was finally solved. There it was in its original context. How the print made it into a frame stamped Ruby Jester and then to a flea market in Chelsea is a mystery we might never solve. And frankly, don’t want to.
In the midst of building a new company, I have spent a lot of time reflecting back on the moments of magic and mystery in my own life: why certain things came through out of nowhere that completely changed the trajectory of my life. I had just spent Saturday morning talking to someone about this (more on that soon). In some ways, I can look at the entire course of my life and see nothing but magical moments: getting into a Joffrey training program 2 days before graduation and dropping out of college, thereby changing the entire trajectory of my adult life. When I went back to Columbia to get my pre-med degree, I was in the School of General Studies, for the “non-traditional students.”
Nothing has served me more in life than being non-traditional. What once felt like a liability, “behind, off track,” has now revealed itself to be the gift of “seeing a different path when others don’t.”
As I have been actively fundraising for Pyramid, while building it, I am reminded of Tony Tjan’s book: Heart, Smarts, Guts and Luck.
I have thought a lot about how much luck actually plays in our pathways in life if we allow it. I have had to reckon with myself about how much I can “make something happen” and how much I should actually rely on the right things (time, people, opportunities) aligning. Luck is not without action. It is not about sitting back and waiting. There is a cheesy phrase that luck is just preparedness meeting the moment. In many ways, I think that is true.
My husband studied Atget for years as a young photographer and was able to see in that photo what the vendor and nobody else at the market could at that time. He knew the details subconsciously, and he took the action when the piece called to him.
We’re also in the midst of March Madness right now. Magic and Madness — the two polar-opposite experiences of building in the unknown.
When I think about basketball, I think about drills. I love going to games and seeing giant men tiptoe through rope ladders laid out on the floor. But there are no champions without footwork. Drills.
Drills are the tiny acts you repeat day after day to hone your skill, your knowledge, your self-awareness. We live in a time when drills are overlooked because they are full of friction, pain, and uncertainty. In entrepreneurship, we practice our drills when we repeatedly check our P&Ls, when we actively cultivate new and existing relationships consistently, and when we say no to an opportunity that isn’t aligned with our values.
Drills, when done with consistency and reverence, can make us feel alive because they can make us present to the opportunities around us that aren’t obvious. But they are hard. They, themselves, are not the reward. They are the portal into the unknown.
Atget drilled. He took his camera out daily. It changed his posture in the long-run. But he drilled. Over and over again.
When you build in the unknown, the known quantities are the drills. Luck, magic, and madness are just a result of being able to sustain yourself for things to align.
Every day, I get up and face rejection, misaligned colleagues, and a lot of uncertainty. But I can look at that Atget and remember the magic of the drills. I have had enough experience to know that grinding is what happens when the magic has been cast out of the creative act.
Do your drills. Let the magic in. Embrace the madness: the intense awareness of life.