Hit the Books with Dan Milnor: How to Grow Without Losing Your Soul

Last weekend, I drove south to work on my ongoing New Mexico project. What project, you ask? Well, that’s a bit complicated. 

The origins of this project date back to the late 1970s and early 1980s when I experienced New Mexico for the first time. Twice a year, my mother and my siblings would road trip from Texas to Wyoming. In the middle of the drive, we overnighted at the Howard Johnson Hotel in Raton, New Mexico. The hotel had an indoor/outdoor pool connected by a water-filled plastic tube. This was the greatest thing any of us kids had seen, and anticipation overwhelmed us as the miles ticked by and we constantly pestered our mother, “How much longer?” 

Raton rests in the high desert, surrounded by mountains. It is prone to both hailstorms and incredible sunsets. From those first visits, I fell deeply in love with New Mexico. The project, which documents all aspects of life in this unique state, has continued, on and off, since then. 

Driving south this past weekend, I was listening to John Coltrane in the car. For me, Coltrane’s music is emblematic of something powerful: soul. When I say “soul,” I don’t mean the spiritual definition. When I say “soul,” I mean the emotional or intellectual energy or intensity contained in a work of art or performance. When it comes to Coltrane, I don’t just hear his music, I feel it.

This concept of soul crosses all creative boundaries and fields. Music, literature, art, film, photography, and many more activities are driven by soul—or suffer from the lack of it. Soul isn’t something you can fake or mass produce. You certainly can’t buy soul. You must earn it. Soul takes time to discover, often only after much toil and repeated failure. There is no highway you can take that brings you directly to soul. Most often, the path is narrow and built only for one person at a time, traversing it solo. This path is littered with struggles and second-guessing. 

Today’s world is driven in large part by algorithms that exert influence on our view and understanding of the world. These algorithms adversely impact us in various ways. In the creative industry, for example, social media and search algorithms demand more and more of our time while applying untold pressure on us to conform. Optimization and hacks draw us to build only what draws clicks and subs; creativity is brought into the service of what the like button demands. Following these algorithms almost always assures the artist (creator, author, human being) will never find soul because the work they produce is no longer their own. The work belongs to the entity that controls the algorithm. 
At some point, each artist (creator, author, human being, again) is faced with a decision. Find soul or meaning, or find exponential growth? Most ofte, these two paths do not play well together. I would classify this as a short-term versus long-term view.

Chase exponential growth, and you are chasing a short-term goal. Why? Because those algorithms are always learning, always changing, and always forcing the artist to run faster to stay ahead. That chase—endless and never satisfied—distracts you from finding soul. Focus too much on the chase while you are also trying to make work, and you run the risk of either making thinner and thinner work or taking too long and becoming irrelevant in a world obsessed with instant gratification. 

Now, what about the long-term view? To find soul in your work, you must disconnect from everything. You won’t find soul on the internet or on television. You won’t find it in the library or at a photo meetup. You must look inside yourself. And you must give yourself the time required to find it. Sound difficult? It is.

No one else can make this decision for you, but I’ll go back to Coltrane. Once you’ve heard soul, felt it, you can’t forget that soulful things exist. Taste things that lack soul, and the flavor turns to ash. Soul spoils us because it shows the heights of human achievement, the depths of real emotion and feeling. Soul showcases what is possible when we access our individuality. 

The next time you listen to Coltrane, read a life-changing novel, or see a painting that leaves you speechless, ask yourself: Is searching for soul—hard and uncertain as it may be—worth the risk compared with what’s lost of never trying to find it at all?

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