Error: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1030 Got error 28 from storage engineError: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1030 Got error 28 from storage engineError: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1030 Got error 28 from storage engineError: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1030 Got error 28 from storage engine The Observatory Episode 124: That Thing You Do: Design Observer

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04.09.20

Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Episode 124: That Thing You Do

Jessica and Michael talk this week about how artists, designers, actors, and other creative people are adjusting their practices and dreams to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone is affected in different ways, says Jessica, but there’s a common thread:

It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, if you're living alone or with 15 people, if your industry has been disrupted or it hasn't and you never had so much work. Nothing is going to be the same.

And the only thing we have is to rethink how we might remap our expectations.

As I said to someone yesterday, you can't recalibrate your feelings. You're still you. But you can recalibrate your expectations.

Also mentioned this week:

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson Central, Essay on Self-Reliance
Helen Shaw, Vulture, In Drama School, the Spring Showcase Is Everything. Now What?
Aisha Ahmad, Chronicle of Higher Education, Why You Should Ignore All That Coronavirus-Inspired Productivity Pressure
Jenny Odell, The Myth of Self-Reliance
The Lehman Trilogy
Netflix, Abstract, Christoph Niemann
Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark (2009)
Star Slinger, Self-Reliance
Scene from "That Thing You Do!", YouTube
Maria Elena Fernandez, Vulture, If I Wrote a Coronavirus Episode
Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Larry David, Master of Quarantine
Dan Ozzi, Curb Your Enthusiasm: “The Virus”
Adam Schlesinger, Fountains of Wayne

Jessica's daily essay column, The Self-Reliance Project, focuses on what it means to be a maker during a pandemic. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox here.

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More from Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand

Episode 127: Fear and Longing
Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters; Hrishi Hirway and Mike Errico; The Quiz Broadcast; Shakespeare and Co. Project

Episode 126: Screens and Dreams
Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration; Unorthodox; My Brilliant Friend; The Affair; Anil Dash on the dangers of social media; Anna Wiener on Silicon Valley; quarantine dreams

Episode 125: Zoom Aesthetics
Zoom aesthetics and COVID-19; Kyle Chayka on minimalism; Deborah Berke on shared spaces; Jessica Salfia’s poem “The First Lines of Emails I’ve Received While Quarantining”; Megan O’Grady on artistic recluses

Episode 123: Closing Doors, Opening Doors
Looking at COVID=19: Flattening the curve, Washington Post designers Harry Stevens on visualizing social distancing, Alissa Walker on how dots are people, Stephen Sondheim at 90

Design Observer Studio Sessions
Like many of you, we’re trying to make a safe haven out of something that can feel like solitary confinement.

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