Greetings, everybody! I am as grateful as you are that February is over. I went outside yesterday without a jacket. We are so back.

I’m also grateful for you all. We’ve had an uptick in newsletter subscriptions this week, and that motivates me to actually get these things out.

It also helps me understand what it’s all for. But we’ll get to that.

Let’s begin.

A Letter | 2.28.25

to the sparks

I used to gaslight myself into thinking that once I got my mind around the whole thing, that’s when I would get started. I began and abandoned three different NaNoWriMos. I have a 250gb folder full of scrapped music ideas. I can’t tell you how many day one level one donuts I’ve made in Blender.

The spark to do the thing is there. But then I start thinking about what I need to do to nurture that spark—what kind of kindling is optimal, where to source the logs, what kind of placement should I aim for, do I need any kind of structure around the fire, what kinds of contingencies should I consider, do I need this fire anyway, what if I just went inside, you know what maybe I’ll just get a jacket—and before I know it, the spark has died and I’ve moved on and then I have a download folder full of abandoned Blender donuts.

I suspect you’re like me. There is something that pulls you to the canvas. To the new untitled Sublime tab. To the blank page. It tells you to paint, to frame, to build, to sculpt. It says “I bet you could.” It tells you here is a breath for your sails.

But I hope you are not like me, because when I feel that breath, I immediately ask it questions. Questions about method and endings. Questions about design and deliverables. Questions about whether it’s a good breath or not.

Friends, I think it’s all good breath.

And I have had to change the way I think about it. (Also, I am abandoning the breath metaphor and going back to the fire one. Sue me.)

I had never been a full-time creative until three years ago, and so I had no idea what making for a living entailed—not physically, but spiritually. I was used to watching my sparks die on the cutting room floor not because they weren’t valid sparks, but because I was too concerned with trying to get the whole picture of what the fire would actually look like once it was done and documented and critiqued and redrafted for a round two.

I never sat and trusted it. I never gave it little bits of paper to catch, small twigs, bigger branches. I never watched it to see what kind of fire it was trying to be. I could dig out a trench later if I needed to. I could reposition the logs. Change the fuel type. All of that can come; right now, I just need to keep this fire going.

Now watch what happens as you’re tending to that little ember: you’re learning what keeps embers alight. You’re learning what conditions it thrives in. You’re learning how to make it grow bigger or hotter. You’re learning what kinds of ground to look for or what kinds of elements to include. You’re learning how to keep it going when rain comes; you’re learning how to let it not die while you sleep.

And when this fire has run its course, you’ll remember all of it for the next spark you catch. And before you know it, you don’t have to worry about what the end result is going to be. You’ve nurtured sparks before, and you know that if you keep nurturing the spark, it is going to become exactly the thing it needs to be.

And there will always be more sparks to come after.

I hope you know that this newsletter is, in a lot of ways, me practicing what I’m preaching here. I don’t know what it’s going to be, and I don’t know how I’m going to get it there. But I have nurtured these embers before, and I know what they feel like in my chest, so I will keep feeding it until it tells me what it will become. I’m not afraid of that anymore.

Here’s to the sparks.

MUSIC | 2.24.25

lumin.

A friend reached out and asked if I wanted to work on an opener for a High School conference happening this weekend, and there is frankly nothing I love more than when people ask me to collab. I said “yes” before even hearing the brief.

The gist is he wanted something with a little bit of teeth. He referenced my sketch Daisies and said “I want strings and sub bass.”

Boy howdy you’ve got yourself a deal.

Strings are pretty much unaltered Cremona Quartet. Cremona was definitely overkill for what I needed, I just know how to use their stuff better and, frankly, it’s my favorite solo string library. I didn’t do any articulation sets or anything like that since I wasn’t going for “realistic” strings as much as, like, trap strings—they’re all just hard-set to Spiccatissimo.

Synths are mostly my own, which I built in Massive. The beginning has some Ashlight and Pharlight for atmosphere.

Drums are a kit I made and use often, which I built trying to emulate the kinds of drum sounds Lorn uses. I literally named this kit “Lorn???”

Anyway, here’s a draft of lumin.

ESSAY | 2.25.25

the blanket fort.

I called my Substack “The Blanket Fort” sort of on a whim. I would make blanket forts as a kid and wanted to feel secure, unbothered by the outside world, free to explore whatever I wanted to (it was usually Nintendo Power).

That’s sort of the rules of blanket forts. Anybody can come in, but if you come in and start disrupting the vibe, you don’t get to stay.

This week, we’re talking about how I was taught to love my neighbor as myself, but I was also taught to not love myself at all.

You can read that piece here. And if you’d like to join me there, that’s free, too.

ROLODEX |

friends.

Earlier, I talked about how I didn’t exactly know what this newsletter was going to end up looking like, and The Rolodex is kind of the best example of what I mean.

This has become my favorite part of this project, and it’s the thing I am most excited about as I allow brief glances into what the future might hold. I can try to inspire creativity, but these folks are the ones actually harnessing it.

I hope to introduce you to new friends every week, and I want to collect a database full of people that I trust to do almost anything someone could need a creative for, whether it be photography or book editing or cabinet building or music videos or screenplays or event management.

The Rolodex is bare bones right now, but I have a long list of creative friends who will soon populate it. I hope that you stick around to meet them, because they inspire me every day.

Have a great week, everyone. Happy March. Go make something.

-your pal,
hamilton.

COLE |