Daedalus Howell's Blog

A young person recently asked me what they should write to make money.

“Checks,” I said.

Then I had to explain what a checkbook was. About halfway through the history lesson, I could tell I had lost them. So I offered a more contemporary answer: Due to market forces well beyond our control—everything from artificial intelligence to declining literacy, with even The New York Times leaning into vertical video—they needn’t worry too much about making money as a writer. 

Problem solved.

And yet, opportunity appears to be everywhere. Say the right thing, the right way, on the social-media platform du jour, and you stand a chance of going viral, attracting an agent and scoring a book deal.

But that’s a lottery, not a career plan. We may all have access to the same tools and algorithmic mojo, but access is not agency. There are two sides to every gate: the gatekeepers and the gatecrashers. I think we know which side we are on.

You want to be a writer? Write.

It is that simple, though not necessarily easy. It helps to develop the skills peculiar to the vocation: observation, solitude, curiosity, nerve, resilience and the ability to continue working when no one appears to care. A creative life is ultimately a lifestyle choice, and like any walk on the wild/mild side, it can be as fraught as it is rewarding.

Of course, it would be wonderful to become a successful practitioner of one’s medium, a cause célèbre or, ideally, both. I bet. Develop enough gravitas and eventually the mere mention of your name may confer a little esteem by proxy upon whoever drops it. Your work expands into books, appearances, adaptations and ancillary products. You become, basically, an economy unto yourself—in short, an institution.

But that is not the point. It is merely one possible result.

The point may not even be the work itself. It is the identity, and the particular lens that identity gives you: a way to see the world differently and, conversely, to be seen differently by the world. Sometimes in a spotlight. Sometimes by the dim candle in the Parisian garret of your mind.

Call yourself a writer. Call yourself an artist. Call yourself Ishmael. But choose something, then inhabit it fully.

Live long, die fast and leave a beautiful corpus.

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“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” observed motivational speaker Jim Rohn. Well, hell. I spend much of my time with “creative people,” a professional hazard that explains quotidian lunacy of my life. It’s not me, it’s them—I’m just the sixth wheel, suffering the agony of their influence.

What I need is an organizing principle to direct our collective energies into a premise more productive than bailing our dinghy of untested talents as it founders on oceans of coffee and wine.

By providence, this week coincides with the 110th anniversary of Dada’s announcing itself to the world by way of a… wait for it…. Manifesto.

This is what we need.

A manifesto is not just a rallying cry—it’s a strategic guide for organizing your creative community into a movement. It’s the first step to “manifesting” a functioning scene. Or it’s a formal pronouncement of one’s descent into madness. Only time will tell.

Like a corporate mission statement, a proper manifesto codifies a group’s purpose but with heaps more swagger. Consider the Dada Manifesto (PDF):

“Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it,” wrote poet Hugo Ball in 1916. He was wrong. Dada didn’t take until artist Tristan Tzara rebooted the manifesto two years later, thus anticipating Hollywood’s current business model by a century.

George Maciunas’ Fluxus Manifesto (born from a magazine project that never materialized), includes this mandate: “PURGE the world of dead art…” though it’s the malingering dead artists who’ve made it difficult for new artists to emerge.

Some manifestos endure, others are ephemeral. Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto advocated for the eradication of men and capitalism, and, in practice, Andy Warhol—but all of them survived. The so-called “Presto Manifesto,” conjured by a cabal of magicians, was literally a puff of smoke. 

Your manifesto need not be particularly long or read like an academic screed. The seminal document of the Dogme 95 filmmaking movement amounts to a 262-word “Vow of Chastity” that prescribes what they and their acolytes will and, mostly, won’t do in the course of their filmmaking. Signed in Copenhagen in 1995 by filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, it also conveniently provided cover for the lo-fi production value of their films.

So perhaps it’s time to write your own. Not because the world is clamoring for another declaration of principles, but because it’s clarifying to state in plain language what you believe, what you reject and what you’re willing to devote your finite allotment of days to pursuing.

Gather your fellow weirdos. Declare your intentions. Start a club. Invent a movement. If enough of us do it, perhaps we can celebrate with a Manifestival—a gathering devoted to impossible ideas, dubious proclamations and wildly overconfident mission statements.

If your manifesto fails spectacularly, congratulations—you’ve honored a century of avant-garde tradition. If it succeeds, even better. Someone else will write the next manifesto explaining why yours got it all wrong.

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There comes a time in everyone’s life when they realize their lifespans—when compared to the great, yawing expanse of time immemorial and its unimaginable end—are but a nanosecond, a blip, a nothing burger trapped between infinite buns.

I was a 13-year-old aspiring Petaluma punk when this occurred to me. Some time-lord weirdo had inscribed a cosmic proviso with model airplane paint onto the fender of their car. It went something like: “If you divide the time you are alive by the time that came before you and and the time that will come after, are you really alive at all?”

Gulp. I’m not good at math and was less so at 13, but my back of the envelope conclusion was “Um, no.” Theretofore, my philosophical ruminations strayed no further than the questions I may ask myself courtesy of the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” video on the MTV. 

It wasn’t until Dead Poets Society that I acquired the script-flipping vocabulary of “carpe diem,” which inspired a relatively reckless lifestyle with enough days seized to create the alternative time line I’ve lived in since. Which is another way of saying, I’m too old for this shit. This man’s search for meaning has come to naught. Be assured, I’m not pulling a St. Augustine (the “buy now, pay later” plan of late in life reform) but I’ve concluded that searching for meaning in an era of abject absurdity is like coming in late to Waiting for Godot and whispering to your seat-mate, “Wha’d I miss?” Everything and nothing.

The answer instead, I submit, is to instead seek purpose. Not even a higher purpose. Maybe just a lower purpose. If Meaning wants a cathedral, Purpose is fine with a folding chair.

Go for something reasonable and within one’s actual grasp. For example, my purpose is surely more than running down the clock on “legacy media” (a phrase that sounds less like an industry than a diagnosis). But there’s something to be said for showing up, week in and out, and putting a few hundred words of fairly cogent English in a row to elicit the sensation of something meaningful. Make that purposeful. I did this on purpose, I swear.

At 13, I thought the point was to answer the universe. On the eve of 54, I’m reasonably pleased when I answer an email. This is not defeat but evolution. One begins with infinity and ends up on deadline and the brief hallucination that these sentences matter because somebody, somewhere, has read them.

Same as it ever was.

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Unless one counts the “Ultimate Fighting Championship Freedom 250” fracas on the White House lawn as the pinnacle of civic celebration, one might conclude that the federal government has phoned in the nation’s semiquincentennial celebration.

This is giving real every-other-weekend bad-dad-forgot-your-birthday energy. This is some gas-station bouquet, silver-anniversary-level crap. This is “I thought your mom was handling the cake” finger-pointing. This is showing up to the party late with a half-inflated Mylar balloon that says “Congrats Grad” because it was the only one left at CVS. This is the republic’s milestone birthday being celebrated with a sad sheet cake, a spork and the whiff of propane. This is a nation founded on a rocket’s red glare waving a dead glowstick from the junk drawer.

I mean, you had two and half centuries to plan this. We did a Bicentennial dry run 50 years ago and went all out. In 1989, the French had their Bastille Day bicentennial and even made little edible guillotines, and that still was in better taste than a green reflecting pool. ’70s America had Watergate, Vietnam and the energy crisis, and they still got the damn colors right.

The best it can seem to muster is a bipartisan fundraising initiative called “Giving 4th,” which is, according to its website, “a movement to establish July 4 as a new national day of charitable giving” for organizations that the government used to fund. There is something uniquely dispiriting about commemorating 250 years of self-government by passing the tricorn hat.

And look, I am not asking for a national bacchanal of tasteful excess. I don’t need laser eagles. I don’t need the cast of Hamilton rapping the Federalist Papers whilst riding a drone swarm (though that, admittedly, would be cool). But give us something. A little pageantry. A little coherence. Maybe even a little responsible governance. Is the Smashing Pumpkins playing an America’s Block Party gig in Los Angeles the best we can do? Seriously, this is real—tickets are still available for just $17.76.

Because at 250, America is no longer young, scrappy and hungry—it’s old enough to know better—and do better.

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Sunday’s summer solstice marked the exact middle of the summer season, which both starts and ends sooner than one might expect when yoked to the arbitrary calendar of, say, middle school rather than the celestial mechanics of our planet. Note to Alice Cooper: Technically speaking, “School’s out for midsummer!”

Much of Scandinavia recognizes this moment with midsomer-themed festivals, which not only celebrate the longest day of the year but do so with “färskpotatis”—little boiled potatoes to apparently pair with pickled herring. We should start celebrating midsomer here. It would at least make accurate our teens’ assessment that everything is “mid.” 

They’re too young to know what’s really mid—like middle age. Which is all “mid” until you “dle.” Is your färskpotatis acting up? Of course it is. Especially when you learned that it’s 85 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. What’s this you ask? It’s how the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists gauge the imminent threat of nuclear devastation. This is the closest the clock has ever been to “midnight” in its history. What happens at midnight? We hit the Big Snooze Button and dream.

Speaking of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the midsomer I turned 12, I was in a school production of Shakespeare’s forest frolic, in which I played Nick Bottom, one of the so-called “rude mechanicals” who is temporarily transformed into a jackass with whom the fairy queen falls in love. This, naturally, set the course for the rest of my life and somehow led me here, where I realize that this column marks the 26th of 52 planned editions this year—the exact midpoint of our publishing season. Not the beginning and not the end, but the perfect place to pause and reflect on the strange dreams that brought us here.

This is the part where I should quote the Bard (“I have had a most rare vision…”), but my inner jackass insists you get Scottish folk-rock band Stealers Wheel instead:

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right—here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”

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Father’s Day is here, which means many of us will participate in the annual ritual of pretending we don’t want anything while secretly hoping someone buys us noise cancelling headphones because somebody left the “Jane Remover” on—whatever that is. 

In the days of yore on these fateful Sundays, fathers have received neckties. The next time I plan to wear a necktie will be in a casket. Everyone will say how great I look and opine, “He should’ve worn more ties.” As if that would’ve changed the outcome of my life—I know for a fact it ends the same apart from the quality of the neckwear tying my skull to my vertebrae.

Modern fatherhood has become considerably more complicated. Today’s dads are expected to be providers, caregivers, chauffeurs, tutors, therapists, life coaches and co-managers of a domestic enterprise whose operating budget would challenge a midsized municipality. We are expected to know our children’s emotional states, dietary restrictions, preferred pronouns of various Minecraft characters and the precise location of a stuffed animal last seen sometime during the Obama administration. So, basically what moms have always done.

As a Gen X father, I find this reassuring. Not because I’m particularly good at any of the above but because my generation was raised largely by fathers who communicated affection through practical acts. The ride to practice. The repaired bicycle. The advice delivered while staring resolutely forward through a windshield into the void of middle age.

Many of today’s fathers are attempting something different. We still do the practical duties but we’re also trying to say the quiet parts out loud. We’re trying to tell our kids we love them before they have to deduce it from circumstantial evidence. And if they turn down the damn Jane Remover, they might actually hear it.

Regardless, it’s an improvement. Messier, yes. Definitely more awkward. Certainly more expensive. But an improvement nonetheless.

What I’ve learned about fatherhood—finally, now that I’m facing the near-term prospect of an empty nest—is that children don’t actually require perfection—just presence. They need someone who shows up consistently, apologizes when necessary and remains available for emergencies involving homework or mysterious noises coming from the garage.

Father’s Day become a national holiday thanks to President Richard Nixon, who signed it into law a in April of 1972. A few weeks later, his henchmen bugged the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building. By July, I was born. Somehow, that last fact didn’t make the national news but it did usher my own dad into official fatherhood for which I remain grateful—not least of which because I’m here and he’s always been there. Overall, a remarkable run. Hope he likes the tie.

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Dear Class of 2026—congratulations… You did it. You survived active shooter drills, pandemics, wildfire smoke, AI plagiarism scandals and the mass psy-ops known as social media. Someone is proud of you (and if you don’t have that person, it can be me).

I once attended a graduation whereupon the guests were treated to an uneven reading of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss, as though adulthood were still a whimsical journey that includes the timeless adage:

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet

you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

Listen, kid, you’re going to do this anyway—I can guarantee it. Most streets are not-so-good streets, many are dead ends, and some—provided you know where you want to go (which you don’t)—will get you there but not in the way you think. Be wary of cul de sacs. They sound fancy but they’re dead ends in disguise.

Then there’s this damn mountain situation. 

You’re off the Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So…get on your way!

Yes, every graduate of 2026 gets their own mountain. Naturally, this comes with property taxes but they’re metaphorical like your new mountain. Most are made from molehills (moles not included). The operating instructions for your new metaphorical mountain are embedded in the lyrics of Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide,” the ubiquitous soundtrack of graduation ceremonies since 1973:

I took my love, I took it down

Climbed a mountain and I turned around

And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills

‘Til the landslide brought me down

Okay, Stevie, technically I think we’re talking about an avalanche. If your avalanche identifies as a landslide, cool, you do you. Mine identifies as a mudslide. Speaking of Steves, remember when Steve Jobs famously advised graduates in a Stanford commencement speech to “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Don’t take this literally (look what happened to your parents). Jobs got that line from the back of a Whole Earth catalog. The words were inscribed above an image of a country road—a not-so-good road I may add. I advise you to find another road—your own, one that goes around the mountain. Watch out for sliding debris and note that  it will take longer than you think and go faster than you thought. And don’t be ‘fraid of changin,’ that’s the part they call livin’.  

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50 years ago this year, California’s drought of 1976 was so severe that we in the burbs kept buckets in the shower to use the run-off to water our lawns and load our squirt guns.

A neighbor had a sign in their bathroom that read, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” This was read to me by an older child since I had yet to learn how to read. I was only four years old—it would be an entire year before the fledgling literacy of kindergarten, let alone Star Wars. I was still processing that my one-year-old brother was going to remain a feature of our household.

Besides epochal moments like the release of Kiss’ Destroyer album and Rocky, 1976 also saw the so-called Judgment of Paris, the now-mythic blind tasting in which California wines bested the French on their own turf, 50 years ago this week. 

This triumph permanently altered our area’s self-concept as the phrase “Wine Country” metastasized into a billion-dollar marketing concept enveloping what we used to call the Redwood Empire. Coupled with the publication of Serial, originally in the Pacific Sun, and the enduring mythos of a hedonic, hot-tubbing, bastion of primal screaming affluence across the Golden Gate was complete. The idyllic environs of the North Bay began their journey to becoming a global lifestyle brand. And the cultural aftershocks are still unfolding.

1976 was a heady year—our nation’s bicentennial year, no less—but another local event occurred that, though not as seismic and certainly not as remunerative, stood a chance at becoming as defining. 

For 14 days during the late summer of 1976, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude draped 24.5 miles of white nylon fencing across Sonoma and Marin counties. Beginning inland near Penngrove, rolling through Valley Ford and descending into the Pacific Ocean near Bodega Bay, the project reportedly cost millions, required years of lawsuits and negotiations and looked, depending on one’s perspective, either transcendent or like the world’s largest shower curtain. The Running Fence was art for art’s sake. And in hindsight, it was oddly predictive of the North Bay to come: beautiful, ephemeral, controversial, photogenic and capturing ongoing quandaries about land use and local commerce. It was the first great Instagram backdrop of Wine Country. Simpler times.

In 1976, the North Bay stood at the threshold of reinvention. The drought dried things out. The wine made the region intoxicating to the wider world. And the Running Fence stretched across the hills like a giant white ribbon wrapping the future into a bow.

A half century on, we are still sorting out what exactly arrived inside the package: prosperity, pretense, beauty, displacement, better restaurants, impossible housing costs and oceans of pinot noir. The North Bay became a place where counterculture evolved into luxury culture—at least for some.

Still, I find something heartening in the sheer audacity of that era. People here believed they could reinvent industries and identities, and much of what followed was strange, lucrative and occasionally ridiculous. But it was also imaginative. Since then, the North Bay has spent half a century trying to decide whether it’s a community or a commodity. What we become for the next 50 years, we’re choosing now. It doesn’t have to be a blind tasting.

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I have spent my entire career weathering the vicissitudes of the media game—from classified ad-eating Craigslist in the early internet to paywall snafus (“information wants to be free—oops”) to the algorithmic siphonings of social media, Big Tech’s annexation of advertising and the ever-receding mirage of the creator economy. Some will argue the future has never […]

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As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives.” But… Most self-help gurus say we do have more, maybe even three, with additional modules available for download. The melancholy Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It counts seven acts. If we’re to go with Fitzgerald’s take, that would leave us […]

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