CUT YOUR TEETH is a column of daily open letters written by Taylor Barnes on art, advertising, copywriting, business, brand, narrative, design, culture, life, and forging your creative palate. And other things. Whatever feeds me during the day of writing is what you’ll read.
Might delete later.
I’ve been a writer for a long time. A copywriter, still long… but less than writing in general. A creative, since I opened my eyes. Maybe even from the womb. An artist, always. Perhaps in the cycle before me, whether that was crafted by intelligent design, or God, or evolutionary circumstance that’s too complex for me to understand but always grabs ahold of me in a way where I have no choice but to fucking listen so what’s the point? So many of us are, you know. You, too. You’re an artist. A creative. A writer. Musician, maybe? Painter? Filmmaker? Director? Entrepreneur? The ambitious creator-of-all-things-you-love-more-than-air that no one can copy but everyone will try? You know this already, so I don’t need to tell you, but I’m going to anyway—why, oh why, the fuck are you still following trends? Why are you pursuing the algorithm? For quick wins? Shots to the moon? A rush of golden dopamine so sexy and sweet it runs like gold in the bristling caverns of your brain matter? You’re hardwired—down to the bone, your DNA, the billions upon billions of cells and atoms and all the other fantastical things that make you who you are—to make, make, make. To be, be, be. To create without rules, without laws, without the tethering of other’s demands. Experts will try to convince you that you have to follow trends to survive. I disagree. I’m going to prove it. In my way. And so will you. You’ll flip off the trends and channel your own path because you realize sooner or later that you have no choice, and the most remarkable artists that ever lived—from business to the classics and beyond—never, ever, gave a single fuck about short-term trends and limited beliefs. They radically pursued who they were. They created who they were through action. They never gave up. They pushed, and failed, and kept going. You ill do the same, because you are designed to breach the world’s open arms and feed its insatiable earth with creations and thoughts and ideas and concepts that only you, as your individual self, can create. You’re not a fucking trend, so stop acting like one.
If this burns you to read as it did for me to write, good.
Don’t let that warning eat you alive without a result.
— Taylor Barnes.
Welcome back, Taylor.