The Charlie Kaufman speech deals mainly with self-consciousness around writing movies. As a note of encouragement, he reminds his audience that our brains turn our lives into stories all the time, in our dreams. The advice which follows does not apply solely to screenwriting:

“What is it that allows us the creative freedom in our dreams that we don’t have in our waking lives? I don’t know, but I suspect part of it is that in our dreams we are not constricted by worry about how we will appear to others. It’s a private conversation with ourselves, and if we’re worried about it, this becomes part of the dream. I think if we were better able to approach our work this way, the results would be different.”

The myriad reckonings we’re desperate for might be cultivated in the kind of safe space Kaufman describes. Not a literal dream state, but somewhere where you don’t feel watched or compelled to perform. Somewhere private, or where you’re listening to one person at a time rather than a ton of little representations of people all at once. Somewhere where the discomfort of moral responsibility can’t be mowed over with the stimulus of an outrageous story. Where, if you’re disturbed to come upon a transgressive thought of your own, the next move is to pick it apart, rather than to go online and project an image of yourself as perfectly evolved.

Whatever you need to do to create that space for yourself, do it this year. Do it now. Fight the new pace of thinking designed to keep us in Facebook fights and make Facebook more money. Resist getting so wound up by every story that you accelerate off a cliff into apathy. Lengthen the circuit between a candid thought and your anticipation of how it will be received, a circuit constantly shrinking in fear. Try your ideas out with people you are not desperate to impress, so there’s less ego clouding your discussion.

Constantly weighing in on moral conflict is now thought of as an extension of every waking second, but really, it is half of our waking seconds, and they could be utilized to reach a far deeper level of thought and far more informed actions. Because this new time zone we’re on is insidious, countering it will not be one cathartic event. It will take a long time, because it’s hard to unlearn the reflex of clinging to the thought that is the nearest by; to give up the illusion of certainty and the purity of moral righteousness. It will be anticlimactic, because it’s not as tangible as typing out some words and hitting send. But it will lead to more tangible change. I really believe that.

Other things I read which helped me think through all of this but which didn’t fit in anywhere as excerpts: “The Braindead Megaphone” by George Saunders, “Good Old Neon” by David Foster Wallace, and “The Year the News Accelerated to Trump Speed” by Matt Flegenheimer. Utopia can mean lots of other things, of course, but this is what’s on my mind, now. Send in your own ideas—in writing, illustration, photography, collage, video, comics—at our Submit page. And thank you, as always, for being here.

Love, love, love,
Tavi