The Monster We Haven't Invented Yet

Perhaps it is the radio professional in me, but I have ALWAYS loved a full-cast production of an audiobook. Harkening back to War of the Worlds or other radio shows, there is something about sound that can pull me right into a story.

Audible released a full-cast recording of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which is spectacular. Full disclosure: I was mowing the lawn while listening and jumped out of my skin at something in the book. Neighbors must have assumed I was attacked by a cobra.

I have read Dracula a handful of times, in a handful of versions. There is a very cool annotated version I read last year that looks much more like the letters and newspaper articles of the original text and is a great primer to reading Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.

The reason I come back to this book again and again is the idea that this is the first of its kind in the new world. They don’t really have a word for this creature haunting them, at least until Van Helsing arrives. The lack of a culture around vampires as a backdrop for this story is the scariest part of the book.

That part of your brain that itches when you are in the woods at night or walking down an alley after a particularly fun dinner. Imagine that part drawing for you the image of a man eating your neighbors, but you have no words to describe what you have heard or seen.

That is horror to me.

Ancient Mesopotamia had the Lilitu and Lamashtu, but they are more spirit-like, just one form that Dracula can take. Upir from the Slavic world shows up in 1047, but again, is more ghost than man-bat. So humans had things that were like Dracula in the ancient world, but no way to describe him.

It isn’t until 1725 and the death of Petar Blagojević that you get something like a real-world vampire case. Even then, it takes five years for that word to enter the English language.

In the years between, we start to give this creature a shape. John Polidori publishes The Vampyre in 1819, and Sheridan Le Fanu gives us Carmilla in 1872. These stories start building a vocabulary around the creature, turning something that once lived in superstition and whispered accounts into something we could recognize, imagine, and eventually fear together.

Fast forward to 1897, and eight days before Dracula would be released, Stoker actually produced a play version that I would imagine helped form Nosferatu in 1922. The reason there was a play was to establish copyright, and the theater where he was performing it went belly-up. That was the end of Dracula: The Musical.

I say all this to illustrate the imaginative power of human language and just how much stronger your words might be if you leave room for imagination. Or better yet, invent an idea or a creature that we don’t have a word for yet.

I was talking with a dear friend about AI over coffee and said one of the reasons I am optimistic about humans in this equation is because, as of this moment, AI is not creating as much as mimicking (at incredible speed and with incredible results), which leaves a giant hole in the world for new creation.

That gaping hole excites the shit out of me.

Three Eric’s Ago

Written by Eric Hultgren

Rob Bell has this mantra I love: “That was 5 Robs ago…”

For me, this idea sparks two things. The first is that we are always evolving. The second is that we reserve the right to change our minds.

Neither you nor I are immune to the moronic political ads in our mailboxes, our streaming shows, or our consumption on TikTok. The premise of all these ads is that “the other” has never had a good idea or done something useful in their entire life. The premise itself is just silly. The lesson, however, is caustic.

Yesterday I wrote about the Angry Girlfriend Variant of Spider-Man #14, and I might bet that if you talked to that woman today, she'd tell you that was not a shining moment for her. I might also postulate that she has gone on to make millions of other choices between now and then. Some of those choices made the world better, and still others were the result of wisdom and experience that caused her to change her mind.

As much as the internet would like to believe otherwise, she is not the sum of 30 seconds with a Sharpie, and neither are you.

That was 8 of hers ago…

What might happen to your week if you walked into Monday with the idea that you CAN change your mind?

Like many, we are working through 2027 strategy presentations. Unlike some, I am approaching them as though they are written in dirt, not concrete, able to be changed into something else as more information becomes available and markets shift like sand.

There are all sorts of military quotes for this, but the one I have always loved comes from Mike Tyson.

“Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face.”

Next week there will be punches, and while not every one of them will change you, one or two might. Afterwards, you might change your mind and become the next version of yourself, allowing you to look back and think:

That was 3 Erics ago.

-E

Perfect is not the goal

Written by Eric Hultgren

In 2019, a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #14, the comic that introduced the Green Goblin, attracted attention for an unlikely reason.

Addressed directly to someone named "Chance," the infamous Amazing Spider-Man issue has an angry message written on the front and back covers in black permanent marker.

"Go to Hell," adorns the front cover in all-capital letters. A separate message asks you to flip the comic over for further yelling.

Collectors began calling it the "Angry Girlfriend Variant” and as of today it is worth anywhere from $5000 to $100,000 depending on how much you love quarreling comic book fans.

And it's not the only example.

In 2022, a Honus Wagner baseball card, torn nearly in half, sold for $475,960. In 2023, a Fender Stratocaster smashed by Kurt Cobain sold for $596,000. Neither was remotely close to perfect.

Of course, rarity and cultural significance are doing a lot of work here. But there is something else at work.

We're living in a world where technology makes it increasingly easy to remove imperfections. We can erase blemishes, correct mistakes, polish language, reconstruct images, and generate something that seems flawless in seconds. But it leaves us yearning for something perhaps more human.

In our pursuit of making everything better, how often are we accidentally removing the very things that make it worth caring about?

Put anther way, the things we find most interesting these days are interesting precisely because something happened to them.

Further still, when does an imperfection stop being a flaw and start becoming part of the story?

There's a useful distinction between being imperfect and being distinctive.

The goal isn't to make mistakes intentionally. It's to recognize that not everything worth preserving is polished.

Because while perfection makes something easier to admire. Imperfection gives us a reason to remember it.

FROM HERE

Written by: Eric Hultgren

A moonlit Saturday evening as cool fall air chills 102,000 fans waiting for Twenty One Pilots to begin their largest and longest show to date.

Suddenly, the stadium explodes in a wash of red as every screen and every bracelet adorning those fans ignites. Tyler Joseph, lead singer of the band, ascends the second stage as nearly every eye in Ohio Stadium is locked on the main stage. As the drone of the explosion fades, the chords of “Goner” start, faint and unmistakable.

We are starting here?

There are few bands on Earth with a fandom where they might start like this. Typically, the band starts with “Overcompensate,” which sets the tone for the rest of the set. Starting with “Goner” lets you know, as a fan, this is going to be a show to remember.

I first saw this band in October of 2013 when they were touring with Vessel. It was so early in their career that I was able to let one of my Aquinas College students, who was from Columbus, interview them for a school project. (There is a video of that somewhere on YouTube.)

To go back and watch the video evidence of that show, you can easily see how we got here. In fact, I remember saying to my friend Julian that they would never play a place that small here again.

They didn’t.

So Saturday night was a culmination of 17 years of hard work, tours, and a vision. The story Tyler and Josh have been creating over those years is captured in the lore about a character named Clancy. This storyline, which puts us as fans in the Avengers: Endgame part of the story, makes a typical Twenty One Pilots show different from other rock shows.

The words rock opera really don’t capture it. Imagine if George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, and Lin-Manuel Miranda created a musical, and you might be closer.

That would make Saturday night the culmination of that story. The ending of an era.

This means my 10-year-old, who is aware of Clancy and Josh as the Torchbearer, had the time of his life. It also means the five women behind me, who grew up here, saw the band play in smaller venues than I did, and have joined what might be described as the religion of Twenty One Pilots, had their faces melted on Saturday night.

All while Tyler, against the backdrop of a car in flames, dipped his hands in the black paint symbolizing the corruption of his character. A callback to earlier tours and theatrics.

For me?

I will remember this show for the rest of my life, putting it alongside a gift of other incredible shows like Pearl Jam’s first time at Wrigley Field, Rage Against the Machine at the Roseland Ballroom, or Alice in Chains opening for Van Halen (what a time).

This show stands on its own because of the backdrop of the city. Twenty One Pilots loves Columbus, and to be able to come back home and put on a performance like that, with a 38-song set, a drone show, a fake sports broadcast (Google it), the pyrotechnics, a song with the Ohio State Drum Line, and every other Easter egg that the three-hour set held, is both hard to quantify and explain to others.

In fact, I am still sitting here on Monday morning trying to turn this into a cohesive story that conveys the dizzying heights I felt on Saturday, seeing two of my absolute favorite bands (Death Cab for Cutie opened) with one of my absolute favorite humans.

What is next for Twenty One Pilots?

I assume rest. They are playing a festival in Mexico City in November, but then the schedule goes dark, and I imagine we might have to wait some time for them to go back out on the road.

But even when they do, this is something you will never see again, even if they play Ohio Stadium again.

Because the first time you see a magic trick like that, and trust me, Saturday night was magical, it changes you and those around you.

Does it change me enough to become an Ohio State fan? There are limits to my fandom, my friends.

But it certainly changes my understanding of the last thing Tyler says at every show.

“We are Twenty One Pilots, and so are you.”

That finally makes sense to me.

Less Cymbals

Written by:Eric Hultgren

In Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart,” there are no cymbals other than the hi-hat. At every point where you expect a crash, you get a ghost note or a tom. For me, it makes this the song from the band that I go back to again and again because I find it to be such a bold choice. Jason McGerr talks about how the magic is in its imperfection, the melody he creates with that lo-fi drum sound played in quarter notes, and why that lack of cymbals creates such an incredible track.

Last night, I taught a graduate-level public speaking course called “Communicating Effectively.” It is my friend Nikki Sunstrum’s class, and she was gracious enough to invite me. As luck would have it, I have spent the past 4–5 months writing about my process for presenting for another project, which meant this was the perfect chance to try some of that work out.

Which brings me back to Death Cab for Cutie.

At one point, a student says, “I have always thought that I need to get right to the point when sharing a story, and I find myself cutting out all the details.”

I nod, understanding the question before it comes.

“But I just watched you for an hour tell story after story loaded with details. How do you know which ones stay and which ones go?”

Immediately, “I Will Possess Your Heart” leapt into my head because that is a musical version of her question. When do you decide a third of your drum kit is unnecessary to the song? When you know that instrument cold enough to break that rule.

So when do you subtract a detail?

When that detail doesn’t move the story forward.

How do you know?

You play it live.

The stories I told last night, some I have told a hundred times, and each time I learn from them. But the one thing I don’t mess with is the details that give the story shape.

The story she was interested in had a woman in it, and what you never discover about her is what she does for a living, her age, if she has children, or why she loves San Juan.

Why?

Because playing those cymbals doesn’t make the story better, give it more impact, or help it connect. They just make the story longer, and in almost every case, the story never needs to be longer.

It just needs fewer cymbals.