creating heavy things.
making things that matter in a world that forgets fast
Hey there :)
welcome back to thoughtsfromsimon.
life has honestly been great since I last wrote - finished Project Europe (thank you for the love there) and made my way back to Austin where we took a leap of faith and signed a new office lease.
I initially had intended for this to be for a YouTube video. But got inspired to turn it into an essay. I suppose it’s sort of a open-brainstorming while I figure out how to put this concept into video form.
This is for the creatives out there.
I’ve spent the vast majority of my free time the past two weeks reflecting on this essay by Anu Atluru. This is both a massive compliment to her writing and also relieving because it means that even in a time where the internet throws everything at you–there are still pockets of well made creative pieces that actually last more than a scroll.
In this essay, Anu argues that there are two states of creation: light vs heavy mode. Light mode is what it sounds like –experimental, daily posting, creation in the pursuit of massive output. The other mode is heavy – a thoughtful, deliberate, (sometimes) pretentious act of making something that has intention embedded into its DNA.
(example of a heavy thing)
(example of a light thing)
This is the same foundation that my YouTube career was started on –the pursuit of making someone feel something, or making work that wasn’t optimized for anything but depth. But of course, along the way I’ve definitely made things from light mode. Whether it was an instagram reel or a YouTube video that I just made to fulfill a brand deal, your whole existence as an artist is a constant fluctuation between these two states.
It’s been 5 years since I started posting on YouTube, but since then it’s only become more relevant to talk about these states of output. As the world increasingly accelerates towards a state of friction-less-ness, creating light things has never been more attractive.
And so, I wanted to spend this time on writing about some interesting ideas that stemmed from this. Some of these are probably more stream-of-consciousness than anything. But hopefully they help spark something
1. You can feel the effort put into a piece of content online.
I find this fascinating - because it doesn’t make sense. Regardless of the quality of work, you can TELL if something someone made was created with love. The way they talk about their work, the way they build a world around it. You can tangibly feel effort and energy behind a YouTube video, a substack article, an album, an instagram reel, and it’s something that I believe has a real impact on how much others care about it as well.
I think of Shaffer Nickel’s American Stanza series –a film series that he spent the summer creating (shot on 16mm film). I thought the series was amazing, but what I loved way more was this video he made before posting the film series. Humans love seeing other humans be passionate about things and I often come back to this video (even over the series itself). It’s cool to care about your work. To make something you can stand behind and be proud of. There’s not many better feelings in the world.
2. Do the hard things first
For the past month we’ve been fundraising for our startup (Camp Studios). Imagine Shark Tank, but with hundreds of conversations with tech bros and entertainment executives with the most absurd backgrounds.
Some of these conversations have been energizing - champions who see what we see. Others have been absolutely brutal. But through it all one conversation stands out.
“why don’t you start an AI generative model company to make content for platforms” followed by a subtle hint that we should start with the lowest hanging fruit, rather than make films with creators.
The sentiment behind this question is genuine –for those outside the film world it can be extremely confusing to understand what we’re building. These investors are trained to always look for scale (i.e how can this make 1 billion dollars). We thought about it for a second, then answered “we’d rather start with the hardest part first then build whatever we want”
It may be naive, or delusional, but in a world where everything is only getting easier and easier (building tech tools, creating content, etc) you must start with doing the hardest things first. You must start with a series of events that almost breaks you. You must start with distributing a feature film yourself. You must start with building a brand that means something to someone. In a world where anyone can make anything, the most important parts become the parts that make you feel something. The human parts. The relationships. That’s what ends up mattering the most.
So yes, we might be starting with the most absurd, difficult, part of the equation –but these difficult things are also what makes brands stand the test of time.
3. The pretentiousness trap
There is a slippery slope when it comes to ideas like these about creating heavy/light things. Immediately you might flow to “well I should just make heavy things then. I’m not like the other people who care about views and optimize for retention”.
Being able to create something heavy is a privilege. It’s self-absorbed at times. Slightly narcissistic. It’s always so tempting to become a self-loathing artist. To become the creative that sticks their chin up above the clouds and looks down upon the rest of the playing field. I’ve done it many times before.
But damn, at times it feels nice to make a funny brainrot compilation.
The reason why people still write long essays about this topic is because it’ll never be “solved”. The longer you do this the longer you’ll begin to contradict yourself (see this tyler the creator interview). This isn’t a search for a correct answer, but a search for self awareness. To understand which state you are in now and to know that creative fulfilment lies in making heavy things.
To be okay with spending 3 months of your life animating captions for a video. To be okay with colorgrading for a week straight. To decide to go to the mountains to write a poetry book and make something you’re genuinely proud of. Because my take is that the world would be a better place if we made a few more heavy things throughout our lives.
–
This was a heavy thing to make for me. I was definitely tempted to use GPT at certain points, but powered through. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to make something for myself here. Hopefully some parts of it resonate :)
-Simon
here’s a playlist i’ve been working on
here’s a google sheet of my favorite youtube videos of all time im making for the yt vid