Jackson Dahl's Thoughts + Things - 3/10/23

A new favorite novel, a podcast about a movie you surely didn't watch, a rookie of the year YouTuber, and more!

Oh boy! How's everyone doing? Surely you didn't notice I was gone in the... 2 years since I last published a real version of this newsletter? Of course not.

To remind you: this is Thoughts + Things, a newsletter where I (Jackson) share things I've enjoyed reading, watching, or listening to (and occasionally, other verbs) recently. And with them, some thoughts to tease why they're great, why you should consider them, or how they've impacted me.

Enough for intros. Onto the recs!

Read 📖📄

Looking for Alice, Henrik Karlsson

This is a little essay that proposes a non-obvious perspective on romantic love, from someone who is self-admittedly bad at dating and yet married to his particular "Alice.” It suggests:

• there is a randomness to the pattern matching of finding your person. While learning what you like or don't is useful, over-categorizing and relying on certain heuristics when you haven't really felt it yet can lead you astray

• trying to change yourself materially to find the right person will keep you from finding the person who gets your funk

• further, that you should actually lean into your eccentricities, showing them off as quickly as possible rather than waiting to warm up to someone

• when you think you've found them, persist (within reason, and without being a creep, of course)

• and finally, that perhaps other people's opinions (which can be tremendously valuable in other categories) may actually fail you in this domain

I loved it. A few excerpts:

On "speed running authentic":

That is perhaps the most solid dating advice I have, by the way—show the inside of your head in public, so people can see if they would like to live in there.

But I do think it is a good idea, generally, and one that I have used—to speedrun relationships by jumping directly to the strange parts.

And within that, a beautiful framing of what "right" might look like:

The type of person I’m assuming we’re looking for here is 1) someone that you will find fascinating to talk to after you’ve talked for 20,000 hours, 2) you feel comfortable with them talking through the hardest and most painful decisions you will face in your life, and 3) the conversation is wildly generative for both of you, in that it brings you out, helps you become.

That is a very particular kind of conversation. You want to sample it as soon and as much as possible.

A partner in becoming might be the simplest, most powerful framing of a life partner I've encountered.

On pushing past the cache, or a framing I'm fond of for getting more out of all conversations and relationships. Henrik describes something similar with a beautiful Werner Herzog example, which he then generalizes:

He is no longer saying versions of things he has said before, he’s not protecting himself, he’s just there.

From that point on, it takes about ten seconds before he’s crying.

If you want to prompt someone to be authentic and playful and generative, you usually just need to ask them something where they have a rich experience to pull from but have never pulled an answer from that experience before. If you ask two or three increasingly detailed questions about something they tell you, you get there.

In summary:

What I’m saying is this:

1. You are born with this weird interiority that no one else can see.

2. You can’t see it either at first. But if you run enough experiments you get a sense of how that inner space behaves. In particular, you can figure out which types of people can fuse with your interiority and expand it.

3. You will not be able to explain how this fusion works. So don’t do it.

4. But when the interiorities do fuse: notice how things are set in motion.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

The best fiction invites you to live inside it. It introduces you to characters to admire, befriend, fall for, resent, or all of the above. This novel filled me up and I didn't want to leave it. I'm already nostalgic for my time with Sadie, Sam, and Marx, and I’ve already considered starting a re-read. I finished the book a few weeks ago.

I'll be the first to admit that this is a story written for people like me. And when half a dozen close friends recommend the same book to you in a matter of weeks, it's probably a sign that it's for you. It's about friendship, creation, art, games, entrepreneurship, love, and of course: the passage of time™. They're playing Jackson's greatest hits!

But it's also a gift for anyone with a desire to make something new. To bring something into the world is an act of bravery and naivete; and better yet when done through the special dance that is true collaboration. For anyone who cares about either of those two things, I think you will cherish it.

There's a chapter in the second half that thoroughly wrung me out of just about all possible emotions, nearly simultaneously: joy, sadness, anger, love, gratefulness. I hope you read this novel and are able to feel so richly, too.

I could go on and on. Some favorite quotes*:

• *and because it was so hard for me to choose, I've included an appendix below of an even longer list. There may be some very light spoilers but nothing essential. If you read all of those and don't want to check out this book, then it's probably not for you!)

On the difference between head and heart:

To be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.

She was intelligent, but her intelligence didn’t get in the way of her enthusiasm.

On pushing through:

There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.

On range:

It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.

On intimacy:

To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back—I know you won’t hurt me, even though you can. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love.

The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.

“Love you, Sammy,” Dong Hyun said. “I love you, too, Grandpa.” For most of his life, Sam had found it difficult to say I love you. It was superior, he believed, to show love to those one loved. But now, it seemed like one of the easiest things in the world Sam could do. Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.

I'll end this extended recommendation with my friend Andrew's review of the book, which may be the most persuasive bit of all:

the first thing I did after finishing this book, before texting anyone or writing this review, was return it early to the library, because I want whoever is waiting for it to start it yesterday. grateful for stories like these, and their creators. a perfect novel in every way.

Shoutout libraries. And shoutout Andrew's newsletter, which you should read.

---

Watch 🎥 📺

Dodford's Features on Donald Glover & Nardwuar

A recent discovery of clever storytelling and a reminder that some of the best of the form is, at its core, careful curation. Dodford is a new YouTuber and superb editor (visual, sampled clips, sound, music) whose content is wildly outperforming his subscriber count (<70K subscribers and 1M+ views on these videos).

I loved his features on two of the more fascinating non-traditional entertainers: the multi-hyphenate phenom that is Donal Glover (Childish Gambino) and the niche, but cult-beloved hip-hop historian and interviewer, Nardwuar.

Dodford's snap editing style and depth (that impressively mirrors some of Narduar's own) creates some of the best short-form biographic content I've seen. That's all you need to know, whether you're a fan of both or haven't heard of either. You'll be drawn in.

Babylon (& Reel Friends, a new movie Podcast)

I'm cheating a bit here: I'm partially recommending the best film of 2022 (in my controversial estimation), and partially recommending the podcast I recorded with two good friends about it. I'll be a periodic co-host of that show—Reel Friends—which is anchored by a close friend, movie lover, and Amp Radio Host, Laz.

Most of you have probably not seen Babylon, and I'm not sure I will or need to be the one to convince you: it's a controversial, fairly crude, and "incredibly" long (sigh -- it's shorter than Avatar: Waterworld). And even then, it's really only likely to be enjoyed by some subsection of movie lovers. If I had to try, I'd describe it as a mix of Boogie Nights and Singin' in the Rain. …I know. At a minimum, Damien Chazelle & composer Justin Hurwitz continue to show a combination of cinematography, editing, and score that made me love Whiplash and La La Land and dazzle just the same here.

But! I did want to share this episode with those who saw the film or are crazy enough to listen anyway. I especially enjoyed our conversation in the second half about where "movies" are headed: as a medium and as a commercial art form. If you have thoughts, please share -- I'm sure the dozen of us could nerd out for a while.

I'll leave you with my favorite Letterboxd review of the film from Jacob Knight (shoutout, if you aren't tired of me preaching adoption of the best and perhaps only joy-inducing social network):

"...you will dine with angels and ghosts."

(At the risk of revealing and reveling in my screener privilege too much to make a point, I’ve watched this five times already, and have turned on the first 30 minutes probably ten times because it’s the most dynamic, “look ma, no hands!” filmmaking of 2022. My personal theory is that the experience of LA LA LAND losing Best Picture in such spectacular fashion and then FIRST MAN tanking made Damien Chazelle so angry that he actually had to prove himself again, so he wrote and directed an acidic love letter to movies that doubles as a screed against the actual business of movies. But in the end, the continuum of pop art marches on and will forever make men smile, even as the things they love slowly kill them. A stone masterpiece and my favorite movie of the year.)

---

Listen 🎧🎼

GameCraft Podcast

Another podcast hosted by a friend of mine! But don't worry, my friends are talented. And this time, it's the ever-brilliant and curious Blake Robbins paired with, quite literally, arguably the most legendary investor in the history of the games business: Mitch Lasky.

Blake joined Benchmark Capital last year and he and Mitch (whose primary tenure at the firm included investments in Discord, Snap, Riot Games, and That Game Company, to name a few) launched this 8-episode limited podcast series on the video game business. I'm hardly the first person to rave about it, but it's a better-than-MBA in the commercial and strategic side of video games, how they've evolved, and where they might be going.

If you work or invest in or around games, are just curious, or read Tomorrow and decide you’re going to follow in Sam and Sadie's footsteps, GameCraft needs to be queued up.

---

A Quick Note Before You Go

I'm sorry for the very long gap in editions of this newsletter. I hope most of you at least have some recollection of who I am and why you signed up.

But I do hope the rest of you enjoyed this, and find at least one of these recs to be worth your time. Content can be a distraction, and that is great! But sometimes it can push us to lean in: inward, forward. Toward reflection, inspiration, curiosity, depth. That's why I started writing these (or so I think. I guess it's been a while).

Please share any feedback, questions, or similar paragraphs of gushing and favorite quotes from Tomorrow. It's a blast to hear from you. You can tweet or dm me at @jacksondahl.

Until next time.

---

Tomorrow Highlights, Extended

Philosophy & Games

You aren’t just a gamer when you play anymore. You’re a builder of worlds, and if you’re a builder of worlds, your feelings are not as important as what your gamers are feeling. You must imagine them at all times. There is no artist more empathetic than the game designer.

What was amazing to Sam—and what became a theme of the games he would go on to make with Sadie—was how quickly the world could shift. How your sense of self could change depending on your location. As Sadie would put it in an interview with Wired, “The game character, like the self, is contextual.”

he could remember thinking that the best thing about games is that they could be fairer than life. A good game, like Ichigo, was hard, but fair. The “unfair game” was life itself.

“A programmer is a diviner of possible outcomes, and a seer of unseen worlds.”

“There’s no game without the NPCs,” you tell him. “There’s just some bullshit hero, wandering around with no one to talk to and nothing to do.”

“No.” Sam didn’t believe it was possible to spoil a game. The point was not what happened, but the process of getting to what happened.

Memory, you realized long ago, is a game that a healthy-brained person can play all the time, and the game of memory is won or lost on one criterion: Do you leave the formation of memories to happenstance, or do you decide to remember?

Something I’ve learned is that when you don’t have many resources, you have to be even more rigorous with your style. Limitations are style if you make them so.”

“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”

Wisdom

“How do you get over a failure?”

“I think you mean a public failure. Because we all fail in private."

“You go back to work. You take advantage of the quiet time that a failure allows you. You remind yourself that no one is paying any attention to you and it’s a perfect time for you to sit down in front of your computer and make another game. You try again. You fail better.”

You can’t be all games and no play.

Computers are great for experimentation, but they’re bad for deep thinking.

She had thought she arrived. But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through. (Until, of course, there wasn’t.)

But honestly, it’s best not to think of the mechanics of flight while you’re doing it. Your philosophy: Surrender to the air, enjoy the view.

There is no purity to bearing pain alone.

She confessed to Alabaster, “There must be more to life than working and swimming and playing Go.” “The boredom you speak of,” Alabaster said. “It is what most of us call happiness.”

Collaboration & Friendship

He anticipated needs and obstacles before they arose. That is what a producer does, and Marx would turn out to be a very fine producer. But the best thing Marx did for them was this: He believed in them.

She couldn’t entirely articulate who he was to her. He was not Alice or Freda or Dov. Those relationships had easy names: sister, grandmother, boyfriend. Sam was her friend, but “friend” was a broad category, wasn’t it? “Friend” was a word that was overused to the point that it had no meaning at all.

they had become instant best friends in the way people can in their twenties.

Considering my many concerns about credit, it turns out that no one remembers who’s responsible for anything.

Observations

She had resisted returning there because to return to one’s hometown felt like surrender.

"When you have children, you’ll never be able to worry about a friend as much again," Dov said.

It was never worth worrying about someone you didn’t love. And it wasn’t love if you didn’t worry.

It was right that they should come to California. California was for beginnings.

Video games don’t make people violent, but maybe they falsely give you the idea that you can be a hero.

What a funny turn of phrase, she thought. Licking your wounds would only make them worse, no? The mouth was filled with so much bacteria. But Sadie knew it was easy to get addicted to the taste of your own carnage.

How quickly you go from being the youngest to the oldest person in a room, she thought.

Since she’d started teaching and become a mother, she’d felt old, but that night, she realized she wasn’t old at all. You couldn’t be old and still be wrong about as many things as she’d been wrong about, and it was a kind of immaturity to call yourself old before you were.

Intimacy, cont.

I don’t think she wants me there.” Sam paused. “I’m not good at going places where I’m not wanted.” “That doesn’t matter,” Marx said. “It isn’t about you. Just show up every day to check in with her.

Long relationships might be richer, but relatively brief, relatively uncomplicated encounters with interesting people could be lovely as well. Every person you knew, every person you loved even, did not have to consume you for the time to have been worthwhile.

“She’s nice, but she’s no Sadie. I don’t feel like anyone in the world knows me except Sadie.” “Maybe you need to let more people know you.” “Maybe.”

“And what is love, in the end?” Alabaster said. “Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else’s journey through life?”

Other Favorites

Why make anything if you don’t believe it could be great?

He gets bored with people, but it’s not about them, it’s because he’s boring.”

Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty.

One of the absolute best parts of your own job is being able to tell an artist, Yes. I see you. I get what you’re doing. Let’s do this thing.

Alabaster thrust their hands in their pockets and spit on the ground. “Now, you’ll pour me a glass of wine, and we can have a cigarette, too, and you can tell me the story of your life,” Alabaster said. “I’m pregnant,” Emily said. “Wait until we’ve decanted to begin the storytelling, if you don’t mind.”

"I get it, though. ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ is definitely more upbeat,” Sadie said. “You sort of want to kill yourself when you hear ‘God Only Knows.’ ” “That’s my favorite kind of music,” Abe said. “I call it afternoon music. You don’t want to listen to it too early in the day, or the day’ll be lost to you.” Abe put his arms around Sadie. “You’re an afternoon woman, sexy Sadie. You don’t want to meet someone like you too early in your life, or you won’t ever like anyone else.”