What if what you wrote was a conversation?

I started a newsletter for this blog about a month ago. Out of excitement to share my work. Out of my guiding artistic philosophy: art isn’t art until it is shared. For my work to alchemize, for my writing to grow, I need to share.

I excitedly told a friend. They asked me: What do you write about? Why should someone subscribe?

I drew a blank. The writing is varied. There’s no real call to action. No marketable funnel. No niche audience.

Just essays. Thoughts. There are recurring themes, sure: philosophy, art philosophy, meaning, technology, and inner work.

But why would someone tune in? There’s enough noise out there already. What do they get out of it?

My answer won’t win me a spot on Shark Tank. No marketing award. No eye-popping pitch that’ll bring me a million followers or a billion dollars.

I came up with a first pass soon after that conversation: the blog is about art philosophy, music, meaning, and making.

And today I played out that conversation again in my head. What if I asked them:

• Do you enjoy talking to me?
• Do you feel like you get meaningful and interesting perspectives when we chat?
• Do you discover new, cool things?

My guess is they’d say yes to all three.

So, while still not the most compelling marketing pitch, there’s something there: this space is for conversation. To share ideas. To go deep together. To explore subjects that are hard to touch in the bustle of everyday talk.

When I first started writing, one of my reasons was legacy. If I die tomorrow, my loved ones can still have a conversation with me. They can hear my rambles. They can see what I was thinking.

When we exchange ideas, we interweave our spirits. When we read an author’s work, that author becomes part of us.

Conversation and reading each other’s work are processes of expansion—of dissolving otherness and letting our inner worlds overlap.

So sorry, Seth Godin, I don’t have a purple cow for you. No striking, eye-popping idea.

Just a return to fundamentals. A rebellion against the need to contort every act into self-promotion. A formal complaint in line with Byung-Chul Han’s observations of our self-flagellating, burnout society.

I write for conversation. For connection. For the practice and the ritual.

And just as we don’t need to turn every conversation into a hustle-culture LinkedIn post, we don’t need to contort art into marketing either.

We can keep it for the sake of itself.

For expression. For connection.