The Card Never Heard Your Song

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If you’ve been drafting a newsletter in your head for months, Rock Your Newsletter is a $5 quick guide to actually launching it, imposter nerves and all.

THE TIP. In 1975 Brian Eno and the painter Peter Schmidt printed a deck of cards called Oblique Strategies. You pull one when a session stalls. One says “Honor thy error as a hidden intention.” Another says “Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities.”

Every studio has the hour where six smart people argue over a snare sound. (It is ALWAYS the snare, y’all.) The cards were the fire exit out of that room.

What I love is that the card has no clue what you’re working on. It never heard your song, so it can’t be wrong about your song.

No argument there.

Your own judgment, you’ll argue with that all night, and by eleven o’clock your judgment is a lying bastard who mostly wants you to quit and go to bed.

You don’t need the deck, either. Grab whatever paperback is closest and crack it anywhere. Read the first full line on the left-hand page, then make your next move on the draft like that line came down from somebody who outranks you.

Most pulls are garbage. You get a guy watering his horse in chapter nine and your song is about a divorce.

Water the damn horse.

What’s the weirdest thing that ever got you unstuck? Hit reply and tell me, the weirder the better. ~ J.D.