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Art. Work.
Ask a room of kindergartners who here is an artist and every hand goes up. Ask a room of adults and you’re lucky to get one.
Somewhere along the way we decided art meant paintbrushes and guitars. Everything else became work: instructions, checklists, outcomes you could predict. That second kind of work is exactly what machines now do well. What’s left is the part that was always art. Making something that might not work and sharing it with people anyway. A song, a pitch deck, ten slides for Monday’s meeting.
I’ve spent twenty-five years on both sides of that line. I toured as a musician, sold radio advertising, helped build the content operation at Slacker Radio, and today I run content and programming at LiveOne.
The best work I’ve seen came from people who could think like an artist and an operator at the same time.
That matters more now. When everyone has the same tools, the edge is how you think: your judgment, your taste, and the nerve to put something real in front of people.
Red Threads is where I write down what that looks like. One idea a week for builders, artists, founders and leaders. Some weeks it’s a way of seeing a problem. Some weeks it’s a question to take into Monday: am I following the manual right now, or making something that didn’t exist yesterday?
The point is to see your own work more clearly, and to help you turn on lights for the people around you.
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Red Threads is published as part of Tandem Studio, where I advise on content and media. Tandem also produces Slackers, the podcast I co-host with Jonathan Sasse.