“I L O A T H E nostalgia.” That’s how Diana Vreeland starts her book. To me, it’s the best way you can start a book. The best way you can start anything. John Cage said in 1966: “The past has no trouble, no lack of people who are going to make love to it.” I reproduced this line on Schubert Apartments, one of my Musical Interludes or music-related postcards I produced in 1997–2004. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll mail it to you with a handwritten, personalized message. Somehow in this pandemic we yearn to touch something, someone.
But back to Ms. Vreeland. In 1936, being the editor of the magazine Harper’s Bazaar, she launched a column called why don’t you? The dictum was not the only revolutionary element of the column. Alexey Brodovitch, the art director and pope of graphic design, decided to set the column on a slant, at a 110º angle. We have seen text on a diagonal ad infinitum, but before 1936, nobody had done anything like that except the Russian graphic designers who created posters for the Bolshevik Revolution and thereafter.
My late business partner used to pose another important question that incites creativity: why wait? Artists engage in their own private journeys through hard work and inspiration. Creativity happens when you least expect it, when you are totally free from regulations and prejudices, and when you act fast. Jeff Bezos, from Amazon, said: “Being wrong won’t kill you, being slow will.” Obviously he is thinking as a business man. But invention and subsequent profits also depend on swift, unfettered creative acts. So during this Historic Interlude due to Covid-19, why don’t you? why wait? why not?
— New York City, 6/27/2020