I’ve explored many contercultural approaches to worklife.

One point life.
Minimalism.
Deep work.
Residencey.

They’ve lead me to a modality of work I’m exploring this semester. It is called Seasonality.

My direct inspiration for this is from the fashion world in general, and Kanye West in particular.

When coming to understand Ye’s way of life and ability to reform himself time and time again– through shows like Dissect, Jeen-Yuhs— I kept noticing the way he would completely change his living environment as he was putting out a huge piece of work.

For example, while Ye was creating My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy he isolated himself in Hawaii with many collaborative artists and worked extensively and exclusively on the album. Apparently he had everyone wear tailored Italian suits, keep the same schedule (including working out together) and had them abide by studio rules like no tweeting and no reading negative blogs.

When he recorded Yeezus he went through a period of profound inspiration from minimalist design and architecture. He discussed how a single lamp of Corbusier’s was the guiding force for the entire album. In the time of producing the album he visited the furniture section of the Louvre five times and went on tours of Le Corbusier’s homes with architects. Of course the album itself departed completely from his previous style and was a severe indictment of consumerist culture. The potency of the album was a direct result of the plunge he took into this minimalistic world.

Of course I’m noticing this pattern in 2021 and 2022 as Kanye puts out his 10th and 11th studio albums. Two years ago he was wearing blue fleece on his ranch in Wyoming and now he is clad head to toe (literally) in black leather. Kanye went radio silent on social media during the development of the album. He hosted three listening parties each which featured a stark, minimal stage design and with increasing levels of performance art each time. He literally built worlds through his stage design at each listening party. While preparing for the second listening party he rented out the Mercedes-Benz stadium and literally lived in one of the away team rooms. No windows. In these times he has also collaborated exclusively with Demna (of Balenciaga) on all of the fashion direction.

I was fascinated by the fact that in every post, interiew, and performance I saw him in from September 2021 to present day he has warn black and gray. All of his instagram posts are black. The album cover is black. Sunday service choir is wearing black. He even went as far as to set an all black dresscode for his Donda academy basketball homecoming game.

Kanye builds worlds, lives in them, and then produces an album.

His world is rich with clothing, architecture, graphic design, philosophy, music, cars, locations, and people who all add to the particular artistic vision he is putting together. The world comes first and the objects of creation are secondary.

Now this is someone whose entire mission has been to best himself, to reinvent himself, and to stay front and center in public cosciousness– even through controversy.

As a Suzuki teacher I’ve been tought to work toward a singular aim. One best practice. To find a handful of solutions that will work in all scenarios. But I wonder if we cling to that view in order to keep our world tame. We play it safe so the we don’t have to go over the edge, to really become a pure possibility of ourselves. To try yourself on.

So in the beginning of 2022 I committed instead to ‘seasonality.’ I built a world for myself and started living in it.

I want to tell you a little about my world, how I represented it, and what ‘objects of creation’ I’ve already been able to harvest from it.

Now I’m embarrassed to admit that my world this season does overlap with Kanye’s world. That either means he and I are both on to something important–some cultural zeitgeist– or that I’m incredibly influenced by him. I’m hope the truth is a little of both.

I developed this world in the first week of 2022 before I returned to teaching. I bought a moleskin notebook and a whiteboard. While brainstorming on walks and journaling each morning I honed in on the ‘insight’ of the season.

With Ye, his MBDTF ‘insight’ was that he has power. That he can live out the full expression of his wealth. Wear that Armani suit.

During Yeezus he was exploring the counter insight that consumerism is a trap and antithetical to love.

During Donda the insight was that his ego self needed to die, he needed to hold a funeral for the self.

My ‘insight’ of the season is that it is what it is. I do what I say I’m going to do. There is no distance between what it is, and what we know it is. I built a world around that insight.

The insight was coupled with a vision, or perhaps a feeling, of finding refuge in a womb made out of dark, rough stone. I haven’t been able to find an image of something like this anywhere, however it is close to the concept of space craft in Dennis Villnueve’s adaptation of Dune.

The insight and the vision evoked monasticism, crypts, rock, and smoke. Dark. Below. Organic darkness.

Historically I have been entraned by Japanese Zen monasticism. This season I was exploring dark, mystical Christianity. Simplicity. But with a European flavor. Candles, robes with hoods, chanting, crypts, repetitive prayer, and use of light felt right.

• I put together a pinterest board and spotify playlist to evoke these feelings.
• I identified several movies that fit the feelings (Dune, Terrance Mallick’s A Hidden Life, Tarkovsky’s Stalker)
• I clarified my uniform (dark, rough hewn, natural) and even purchased new clothes to identify the season (studio nicholson, 7115 by szeki).
• I named books that reinforced the tone (Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach, Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, and Oliver Burkeman’s 4,000 Weeks).
• I named philosophers who I cam back to time and time again (Meister Eckhart, Rumi).

I simplifyed my studio design, minimized my life processes, and made sure everything I touched was ‘real’ and of incredible artistic quality.
I drifted to dark neutrals and earth tones.
The camera as a metaphor for the awareness.
The journal as a matephor for the intuitive, visioning activity.
The final product being the ‘album,’ the ‘collection’ on this season’s work.

I came up with several names for this season. Kanye titled his albums MBDTF, Yeezus, Donda. Demna titled his collection Clones or The Lost Tape. But I settled just on Season 1. The title reinforces the importance of the season concept, that fact that I must go all in because I’m doing it for the first time, and that it is my one point focus right now.

Certain touchpoints helped me return back to the season insight again and again. Every time I put on my new clothes they were a deliberate change from what I have worn historically. Every time I went to the gym I listened to the same ‘season’ playlist which then reinforced the gravity of the tracks when I would write or journal with them. Every time I did my weekly review I would look back over the moodboards to get myself back in the zone. I even have a 5 minute YouTube video from Terrance Mallick I use to re-sensitze me.

Time will tell what arises from this season, but I need you to know how deliberate I was in crafting this particular world. Change your life, change your mind. Change your mind and you change what your mind is capable of. This is an extreme and deeply helpful version of pulling the ‘environment’ lever.

And it is a relief that this extreme need not exist forever. We will take it as far as it goes. But it will inevitably shift, as seasons do.