The other day my high school buddy and I were reminiscing about how we went bungee-jumping a couple months after graduation. This was in 1998. After we had spent a couple of minutes recalling the tremendous rush and our general manliness we were wondering exactly how we went about setting this up. How did we find the place? As best we could remember it was the third member of our jumping group who had done the legwork. Was it a recommendation from a friend? His older brother maybe? An advertisement he’d seen in a newspaper or magazine? We couldn’t remember. All we know is that it didn’t include a google search. We had to drive up to Portland to meet these guys at a specific parking lot (I think there was a Burger King). We were to meet there, and they’d drive us across the river to the bridge we’d be jumping off. We made it to the parking lot without mapquest. We found them without cell phones. And I think we might have even been on time. Sometimes it takes a memory like this one to realize it, but the technological advances between now and then have been huge. It’s easy to think about this stuff in terms of convenience. I love the way it fosters creative inspiration.
When else in time could I have access to the thoughts of the Executive Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy? When could I, in McMinnville, OR access this sort of specific political coverage, this Do It Yourself instruction (he’s really good with finances too!), learn about this guy and be mesmorized by this all in an afternoon at my computer? Yeah, I get lost and numb my brain on the internet sometimes too. But then I stumble across this or get sucked into that and it melds with the book I’ve been reading from the library, the way the sunlight is bursting through the clouds and the memory my buddy uncovered. Inspiration hits.
I may have been inspired in 1998, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t informed inspiration. And it didn’t come from the highest office at W + K or the number crunching laboratories of Nate Silver. That information may have been around, but I’m not the type of guy who would have subscribed to the Tightwad Gazette or had the access or the drive to seek out old photo archives. It used to be that we were very restricted by time, place, and our personal associations. Now the limits are my curiosity and desire. It’s good to be alive in 2009.
Tags: stories
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