The Interview was all but complete when I met Jobs at a celebrity-filled birthday party for a youngster in New York City. As the evening progressed, I wandered around to discover that Jobs had gone off with the nine-year-old birthday boy to give him the gift he’d brought from California: a Macintosh computer. As I watched, he showed the boy how to sketch with the machine’s graphics program. Two other party guests wandered into the room and looked over Jobs’s shoulder. ‘Hmmm,’ said the first, Andy Warhol. ‘What is this? Look at this, Keith. This is incredible!’ The second guest, Keith Haring, the graffiti artist whose work now commands huge prices, went over. Warhol and Haring asked to take a turn at the Mac, and as I walked away, Warhol had just sat down to manipulate the mouse. ‘My God!’ he was saying, ‘I drew a circle!’
From Keith Haring’s journal:
Today I am 24 years old. 24 years is not a very long time and then, again it is enough time. I have added many things to the world. The world is this thing around me that I made for myself and I see for myself. The world will, however, go on without me being there to see it, it just won’t be “my” world then. That is what interests me most about the situation that I am in now. I am making things in the world that won’t go away when I do. If this “success” had not happened, then maybe the world would not know these things after I go away. But now I know, as I am making these things, that they are “real” things, maybe more “real” than me, because they will stay here when I go.
In the situation I am in now, I am a vehicle for these “things” I’m bringing into the world. I am not having things and making things and waiting for the world to have them. The world is waiting to have them. At 24, that is maybe a funny feeling. The things that I make are “in” the world as soon as I make them. That is also the situation I (I guess) always dreamed of: so that there is a a kind of reason for making these things and the “things” in some sense become more important than me.
The world is waiting for the things and I am the only one who can bring them these things. There is a kind of freedom in that. There is also a kind of hysteria in that, but it depends how you see the world. I only think that I want to be the one who makes the “things”. I don’t know what I want to the world to be. But only I can make these “things”.
These things that are called the works of Keith Haring.
Amazing. This is killing me. It’s so beautiful.
We were so lucky to have Haring, just as we’re so lucky to have everyone who gives anything to the world. Haring was tremendously successful, in a way that very few people ever are, but his insight applies to everyone. Make things and give them to the world. The world is waiting for them. They will live for you once you’re gone. Things could include: words you write, a song you sing, a friendship, a family, a business, a recipe, a new dance, etc.
BRB, going to make some things that only I can make.
Icons series 1990 by Keith Haring
My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can.
—Keith Haring
(via flux-rad)
I'm Jed Sundwall. This is my blog, which you can follow on Tumblr or via RSS. You can talk to me on Twitter.
