Dean Kissick, Writer

Dean Kissick is a writer and a contributing editor of Spike Art Magazine, who recently wrote the sensational essay "The Painted Protest" for Harper's Magazine.

APOSSIBLE™ is a non-profit bringing psychologists, technologists, artists and creatives together to explore how technology can better support creativity and human fulfillment. In this ongoing interview series we’re discovering what people value, what makes their lives fulfilling, and what kinds of relationships to technology they already cherish.

1. What is a ritual, practice, or routine in your life that is important for your psychological wellbeing and/or fulfillment? Why?

The first thing I thought of was running, going for a jog. I don't have any rituals in my life, really. As Byung-Chul Han would say, we live in this society without rituals. The closest I have though, is the practice of going for runs regularly. That's my main form of exercise.

I always jog outside, I think that's important, I'll never do a treadmill or anything. And I'll try to vary routes. It's a really good way to explore your environment. I think that's an important part of it, aside from the exercise, just getting lost, getting out of your routine, going to places you normally wouldn't go. If you're not worried about doing a ring, you can really strike out in any direction and end up in all sorts of crazy places.

Since I've been back in England, I've started running without listening to anything which has been very good, and I'd highly recommend it. More recently, I started going without my phone. Which connects to something I'd like to do generally, to be without my phone. Before, I'd probably only do that when going to get coffee or small chores, but now I'm going on these long runs without the phone.

One last thing I'll say about this is, I think it's good to go quite hard. Not always. But to be quite exhausted when you finish, collapse on the grass for a bit, look up at the sky. I'll have that crazy runner's high. It's a kind of a healthy drug. Trying to achieve a real euphoria, four or five times a week.

2. What is a human-made creation that brings out the best in you? Why?

The things that came to mind are coffee, wine, art, literature, music, cafes, restaurants and cities. And I realized, well, these are all the same kind of thing, but getting bigger and bigger. So I'll go for cities. Not any one particular city. But the city includes the coffee, the cafe, the arts and the museums, and culture, and of course it has people. It has society.

I grew up in the English countryside. I always dreamt about moving to London, which I did when I came to university. Then I wanted to go to the States. I wanted to go to Los Angeles and eventually New York. I was always drawn to this idea of the city. A place that where you can be who you want. I was always interested in the luxury of it, the aspirational quality, the ambition that comes with it. But also the harshness.

New York is my favourite city at the moment, but part of the thing about New York is it's very harsh. It can really destroy you. But I like that about cities. They really push you and inspire you. You have everything but it's a hard place as well. I like the hugeness of it, the anonymous experience, the alienating, intimidating experience. And then it's up to you what you make of it.

Of course it's not all good. There's ugliness to it, there's banality to it, but there's something about it. I just feel thrilled by this creation we've all made together. How can one not be inspired? So much of the discourse recently is about how terrible it is to be alive, and how what a curse humans are upon the planet. But when I think about the lives we could lead in this place, I find it incredibly thrilling and impressive.

3. When do you cherish the slow or hard way of doing something? Why?

I rarely cherish the hard way of doing something. I guess I write in my notebook or it would've been nice if we could've had this conversation in person, rather than over the phone. Slower forms of meeting or writing or thinking. But I don't actually think they're harder. We have these time saving devices now, and they're supposed to be easier, but it’s harder to think as clearly, or communicate as clearly through screens. It can be an uncomfortable environment.

But I think slowness is good. Like I said, I like walking, my mind can really wander. Not walking the quickest path but going different routes. Being more of a Flaneur, getting lost in the city. I was doing a call with a fashion photographer yesterday, and he was talking about what he described as a tyranny of time. The speed at which everyone wants everything, the speed at which people want to work, and the amount you have to work, everything's been sped up. It’s been bad for creativity. It’s the speed of everything, that he thinks, necessitates doing everything with reference. Rather than taking more time to come up with something more nuanced or original.

4. What is something you appreciate or long for from the past? Why?

I long for the past constantly. I don't like to be too nostalgic, because we live in such a nostalgic times. But I still, of course, long for the past. Specifically canonical, exciting moments in art or culture. The one I thought of naturally was Renaissance Florence. Times of great modern artistic, musical, literary activity. You just have this great concentration of brilliant people, making and creating, lots of rivalry and stuff. It must have been thrilling to live in a time like that where what you do gets reinvented by the day. You see your peers working on things that you've never seen before. And when the world, your conception of the world, and world itself, has been absolutely transformed.

I think we are in a similar period now, in a sense, but those changes aren’t reflected in the established cultural forms at all. There's not really any place in mainstream culture or mainstream media to have a positive perspective on the changes going on now. We probably are living through a more dramatic shift this century than even those times — in terms of our relationship with reality, where we conceptualise ourself and our identity. But this transformation has not been met with a similar explosion of creativity.

Or you could say creativity is happening in different places now. But it’s not producing these great masterpieces, or brilliant artists. Or we're not aware of it yet. My instinct is that that kind of model is gone. We have a different model now. But what I'm longing for is this moment when you could have a Da Vinci or Debussy or someone like that. One person creating one singular object that is going to be like nothing else that came before. A transcendent beauty.