a life alive

It was literally a two-second conversation,” says Lyons. “He pulled me into a room and said, ‘So, just want to let you know you’re the president.’ I was like, uh, okay. Alrighty then. Then I put my head down on the table, took 10 deep breaths, sat back up and was like, ‘Okay, do I need to do anything different?’ And he was like, ‘No, just keep doing what you’re doing.’ I’m like, ‘Okay,’ and we walked out of the room. That was it.

So what I finally decided was, art is simply inevitable. It was on the wall of a cave in France 30,000 years ago, and it’s because we are a species that’s driven by narrative. Art is storytelling, and we need to tell stories to pass along ideas and information, and to try and make sense out of all this chaos. And sometimes when you get a really good artist and a compelling story, you can almost achieve that thing that’s impossible which is entering the consciousness of another human being—literally seeing the world the way they see it. Then, if you have a really good piece of art and a really good artist, you are altered in some way, and so the experience is transformative and in the minute you’re experiencing that piece of art, you’re not alone. You’re connected to the arts. So I feel like that can’t be too bad.

I probably worked harder than anybody else I saw,” he said. But there was, he thought, a core psychological component as well: “I searched out something that I needed to do. It’s a job that’s filled with ego and vanity and narcissism, and you need all those things to do it well. But you can’t let those things completely swamp you, either. You need all those things but in relative check. And in relative check for me, if you ask some of my friends or some members of my family, might not be considered in check to them! It’s in relative check as far as people who do what I do. But you need those things, because you are driven by your needs out there—the raw hunger and the raw need of exciting people and exciting yourself into some higher state. People have pursued that throughout the history of civilization. It’s a strange job, and for a lot of people it’s a dangerous job. But those things are at the root of it.