We need our vocals autotuned and drum machines keeping perfect time.

We need our sitcoms laugh tracked and talk shows beefed up with “Applause” signs.

We use writing apps like Hemingway to murder any extraneous syllables.

We need our brows botoxed and photos filtered. Cheesy fake smile for the cameras! Blur those wrinkles so you look like a sultry Big Foot!

Because heaven forbid we are forced to endure anything “pitchy,” a lagging beat, a joke that doesn’t land, a split second of silence, anything less than supreme enthusiasm, an extra adjective, crow’s feet, or wrinkles. We want perfection!

Except we don’t. We all see through it. Those robotic music tracks lack soul. Faces look most attractive when they can still express human emotions. We see the difference between fake/genuine smiles. Curb Your Enthusiasm (laugh when you want) is way funnier than Big Bang Theory (you laugh now!). Plastic surgery doesn’t make people look young, it just makes them look like they’re wearing a mask of a younger version of themselves. And imagine if you suggested the Hemingway app to Ernest Hemingway himself. He might have started choking you.

So why all this nonsense? Fear. We’re afraid of displaying our faults or anything that reeks of mistake. So we choose the compression of fakery as a way to get over. I lie and you lie and then we all pretend we don’t see each other’s lies.

But there’s another way: Wabi Sabi.

Cracked enamel
A few steps on my own Wabi Sabi journey:

I have a chipped front tooth (second grade/gym class). For years, I had a cap on it and my teeth looked perfect. And then one day I was in Peru, the altitude was screwing with me, I sneezed super hard, and I looked in the mirror and noticed my cap had fallen off. There I was, face to chipped tooth with what I really look like – and without access to my dentist for another month. So I lived with it. And by the time I got home, I just figured it was how I look now. No one really cares anyway. It’s “character,” I figured. Omar has his scar, I have my chipped tooth. Pop goes the weasel.

Then my hair started falling out. I’m a cool dude, can’t have that…right? So I started taking Propecia and buying shampoos that promised “regeneration.” Then I began wondering: When was this ever gonna end? Do I really want to spend the rest of my life subscribing to this coverup? Eventually, I said screw it and grabbed the clippers. Honestly, I miss my hair. But that was then and this is now. Time marches on and I’ve only got time for so many fights.

Another one: I recall recording vocals back when I was in a band. On our final attempt to record an album with a “hit,” we really labored over the vocals. The result of seeking perfection? Foreignness.

When we made that last record, our aim was to make something that would get us signed and on the radio. We wanted to get rid of our rough edges (and our day jobs) so we hired a producer who’d made hits before and owned a studio filled with expensive gear. My hit-or-miss vocals were a big obstacle for radio airplay so he repeatedly punched in and out while I sang, going syllable by syllable in an attempt to get them perfect.

Upon completion, I sent the mix of the new album to an industry bigwig who really liked our previous record. He didn’t respond. I finally got him on the phone and asked what he thought. “I’m not sure what this guy did to your vocals, but they don’t sound like you. You guys had a weird charm on the last album. This just sounds generic.” I hung up dazed. It took so much effort to achieve that polished sound, aiming for rough and raw would have been so much easier.

True rock ‘n roll is about leaving in the rough edges and capturing the raw emotion of the moment. The mistakes are the interesting parts; that’s what makes it you. Wrong notes, in moderation, are the right ones. Leonard Cohen: There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

Beauty in imperfection
So it makes sense that right around then, I stumbled onto the concept of Wabi Sabi, the Japanese notion that there’s beauty in imperfect things. “Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry. Keep things clean and unencumbered but don’t sterilize,” writes Wabi Sabi guru Leonard Koren. Beauty is doomed to disappear and that’s okay. Instead of fighting it, we should recognize how things frequently become more beautiful as they age and fade.

In this summary of Wabi Sabi, art historian Anne Walther paints an evocative picture: The beauty of withered things. Age leads to elegance. Rust as signifier. An impression of peacefulness. Harmony, purity, respect, and tranquility. Cups intentionally made to be distorted and irregular because each object must be unique to have its own charm. Celebrating the passage of time and its sublime damages. Respecting nature as much as you fear it. The beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

Any creator/artist (or art appreciator) can get something from this philosophy. It involves emphasizing subtle details, even if they’re noticed only by the most vigilant viewers. It’s about close examination, small doses, simplicity, minimal features, and quiet authority. Bottom line: The “interestingness” of a piece has nothing to do with its complexity.

Walther also explains Wabi Sabi’s origin story involving Sen no Rikyu, a sixteenth century Zen monk.

According to the legend, the young Rikyu, eager to learn the codes of the ancestral ritual of tea ceremony, went to find a recognized tea master named Takeeno Joo. The latter wanted to test the abilities of his new apprentice and asked him to take care of the garden. Rikyu cleaned it from top to bottom and raked it until it was perfect. However, before presenting his work to his master, he shook a cherry tree and sakura flowers fell on the ground. This touch of imperfection brought beauty to the scene and that is how the concept of wabi sabi was born.

Real perfection means leaving in a few mistakes and letting the reality of nature have a seat at the table.

Sometimes, it even means emphasizing cracks. Kintsugi is a Japanese technique for repairing broken objects with gold powder. Instead of throwing away damaged ceramics, cracks are filled in prominently so a viewer can find beauty in the passage of time.

There’s a lesson there too: You can experience trauma and come back even more beautiful. It’s not a scar, it’s a feature.

Wabi Sabi in art
Author George Saunders recently discussed Wabi Sabi while explaining the arc a work of art might follow as it progresses from “early and blurry” to “polished and precise.”

“What do I really value in a work of art?”  (Or, you know, putting one’s own feet to the fire). There is literally no wrong answer. The value lies in clarifying one’s preferences, asking, with ever-increasing intensity and honesty: “What do I like? And why?”

We might also bring up here the concept of wabi-sabi – the idea that some degree of looseness and imperfection is desirable in a work of art, if only to mimic the looseness and imperfection of real life. One of the dangers of overworking something is that it can come to feel, well…overworked: the reader/viewer may feel left out of the process, as if the artist was performing for himself or herself only. The reader/viewer may feel that the creator is so obsessed with asserting artistic control (with efficiency, with clarity, with cause-and-effect) that this sort of control has become the work’s whole reason for existence - a rather condescending stance, that is more about power and less about communication.

So, as is the case with so many things in art, it comes down to a turn of the dial.  What is polished enough for you?  What does it feel like, to you, when you’ve blundered into Too Tightly Controlled Land? What, on the other hand, does it feel like when you haven’t revised enough?

This concept resonated with me recently as I was filming my Substance comedy special which involved doing four sets on four substances (sober, drunk, high, shrooms). I kept having to ask myself questions: Why am I doing this? Do I want to do material or do I want to riff? Do I want to present honed, crafted bits? Or do I want to see what arises in the moment? What kind of comedy do I truly love? Should I strive to be in control or surrender to the moment? Do I want to retain complete control or am I willing to let go and see what happens? And which one of those is selfish and which is selfless?

The conclusion I came to – after both rough and glorious sets – is the answers are fluid. When things are too tightly controlled, it feels claustrophobic. When they’re too loose, it’s ramshackle. With standup, each moment is giving you feedback about whether you need to tighten up or let it go. You’re trying to catch a wave and see how long you can ride it. But also, it’s up to you to create those waves in the first place. It’s a constant process of dialing in what you want.

I don’t like it when a set feels completely unprepared. But I also don’t like when you pound a set into the ground until it feels lifeless. I want preparation meets spontaneity. How much? It’s shifting all the time and depends on the moment. The goal: Be extraordinarily prepared but completely open to happy accidents.You get it right by constantly adjusting to all the things that inevitably go wrong. Because were they wrong? Or is perfectionism just another form of ego?

Years ago, I wrote about Wabi Sabi and artist/maker Walt Morton replied with an explanation of why it’s so difficult for westerners to clock the concept:

A major part of wabi-sabi is celebrating randomness, mistakes, accidental juxtapositions. The fractal cracking pattern in the glaze of hand-fired pottery is very wabi-sabi, the perfect machine finish is not wabi-sabi.

In America, there is usually top-down control of the creative process from some kind of “director” who is trying to get their “vision” to manifest itself through the creative process. There is a struggle to “get it right.” It’s a fools errand, much of the time — struggling to control the creative process (nature) is not wabi-sabi. Very often you’ll see people with a fixed idea that something should be a certain way. Wabi-sabi thinking is to let a thing develop “it’s own way.” And to be OK with that. And the artist who is secure enough to give up control to the universe, to accept accidents, mistakes, unexpected outcomes, and randomness to enter the work can find valuable tools in concepts that are “problems” for most Westerners.

Trees and temples
I once visited the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. For centuries, these temples were covered over in growth. The forest had won. And then they were discovered, cleaned up (so long, forest!), and opened to the public. Visiting them is a mindblowing experience, especially the main temple which is enormous and feels otherworldly.

However, the temple site that’s stuck with me the most is the one they left wild. There, the trees have not been cleared away. Instead, they dance with the stones. The grow in, around, and through the site, evoking what it must have been like when explorers stumbled upon it centuries ago. Man meets nature; and for once, nature is allowed to win.

At no point while I was there did I wish they had cleared the trees away. Instead, I was thankful that, out of dozens of temple sites, this one was left natural. Roots and trunks were allowed to run roughshod – and it was glorious.

So now it’s time to wrap up. I could rework this essay a few dozen times, as is my wont. Iterate, hammer out all the imperfections, get every word right, come up with the perfect conclusion, etc.

Instead, I’ll just let ‘er rip and hit Send. Maybe it’ll be even better for the rawness.

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Quickies

🎯 Someone's gotta say it: "Seditious conspiracy" sounds kinda hot, like it could be the title to a Jackie Collins novel.

🎯 "_____ is the Harvard of the _____" is the Michael Jordan of the ways to compare colleges.

🎯 Him: I’m not unemployed, I’m just between jobs.
Me: I get that. I’m not crazy, I’m just between therapists.

🎯 "Oh good, the DJ is getting on the mic to say something!"
-Nobody ever

🎯 Men: You know why we can’t get away with stuff anymore? Because we don’t do anything hard anymore. We used to fight wars, farm the land, and build stuff. Now we stare at our laptops, shill crypto, and play video games. “I do branding.” You do nothing. And everyone knows it.

🎯 Love how WNBA teams are named stuff like Atlanta Arson, Chicago Cougars Connecticut Feathers, Indiana Ocean, Las Vegas Faces, Washington Filibuster, etc.

🎯 Journalism 1970s: Don’t be the story.
Journalism 2020s: Be the story. Get people to know you – even if they hate you. Then start a Substack and cash in on the notoriety.

🎯 Like the 80/20 rule, the notion of "the 1%" kinda applies to everything. For example: Influencers on social media are merely the tip of the iceberg; under the surface is a massive collection of shut-ins and introverts eating alone while binge watching true crime documentaries and never outputting anything.

🎯 Reminder on work "trends": Cubicles were once the hot new thing too.

🎯 Society now: "I can connect with anyone, anywhere in the world! And I can date 12 people at once!" "OK, how's that going for you?" "I've never been lonelier."

🎯 I don't 10X anything. I just 1X things. Doing it once is frequently enough. And I'm a fan of enough.

Standup

Chicago: I’ll be headlining The Lincoln Lodge on Thursday, June 16 at 9pm. Tickets here. Come through or tell a friend.

Here are some short clips I’ve posted recently:

mattrubycomedy

A post shared by Matt Ruby (@mattrubycomedy)

mattrubycomedy

A post shared by Matt Ruby (@mattrubycomedy)

mattrubycomedy

A post shared by Matt Ruby (@mattrubycomedy)

Related to that last one and purging, I came across this quote from Black Elk on storms and terror:

It comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm.

5-Spotted

1) In response to last week’s “I appreciate you” newsletter, funny comic Myq Kaplan replied with this related piece of advice from meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein (as explained by Oliver Burkeman):

Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind—to give money, check in on a friend, send an email praising someone’s work—act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later. When we fail to act on such urges, it’s rarely out of mean-spiritedness, or because we have second thoughts about whether the prospective recipient deserves it. More often, it’s because of some attitude stemming from our efforts to feel in control of our time. We tell ourselves we’ll turn to it when our urgent work is out of the way, or when we have enough spare time to do it really well; or that we ought first to spend a bit longer researching the best recipients for our charitable donations before making any, et cetera.

2) A few weeks ago, I quoted an excerpt from Adam Westbrook’s advice to artists who strive to be interesting and original. I found that link via this issue of Josh Spector’s For The Interested newsletter. It’s one of the few newsletters I always make sure to read and if you’re a creator/marketer/solopreneur type, I think you’ll get heaps of inspiration from it.

For The Interested is a free newsletter for creative entrepreneurs.

It features proven strategies to help you grow your audience and business based on how others have done so.

It's short, actionable, inspiring, and loved by 18,000+ subscribers.

Josh is starting a new podcast soon too which also sounds like a great resource. Check him out here.

3) First she documented the alt-right. Now she’s coming for crypto. [WaPo] Nice to see someone else saying Web3 is just more techie BS.

“I kept seeing the word everywhere but no one was saying what it meant,” White said, referring to Web3…But White’s research kept bringing her back to one conclusion: Web3 was filled with a litany of scams, failures and frauds meant to separate regular people from their money…“The crypto industry has benefited from the siloing of journalism,” McKenzie said. “You have to step back much broader and get outside the industry to get some perspective on what might be going on inside it.”

4) This dispatch from an electronic music festival offers some sage advice for going out:

I ask a single girlfriend what gets in the way of a good time. “The way to kill a night consistently is when we’re all like, We’ve gotta fuck someone tonight. And everyone is out trying to get laid. I feel like people should not go out to try and get laid. They should go on dates to try and get laid. I’ve never seen a night killed faster than by three horny sad people.”

5) ‘Normal Marital Hatred.’ Couples counselor Terrence Real explores “the toxic culture of individualism” and why we need less individualistic thinking.

My book is a critique of what I call the toxic culture of individualism. That fuses with the patriarchy, which teaches us we’re not only apart from nature, we’re also above it and dominate it. This model is killing us in our relationships, in our society and on the planet. There’s no such thing as an individual. We co-regulate each other’s nervous systems all day long. We need to shift from the control model to a collaborative one, an ecologically humble model. You’re not above the system, you’re in it. You breathe it.

Thanks for reading/co-regulating my nervous system.

-Matt

P.S. Check out my other newsletter, Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian. Last week, I discussed why Goodfellas is so damn funny there.