T.T. 46: the process of music
Some updates and brief reflections while building semi-quietly-but-also-in-public
Hola amigos,
Greetings from Berlín, El Salvador!
Life is good here.
Plans for April 8th are nearly set.
The vision is finally finalizing.
Tickets are selling well!
And people are following through…
More on that later.
But people are partying here as well.
There’s been a week-long festival!
I won’t lie. It’s been a lot of noise.
Also some “signal” over the weekend.
I’ll “circle” back to that…
But first, I think it’s actually worth embracing the “noise” of this past week — even before the “signal” — for a moment. Because it actually provided a really useful reminder for me as well, personally, and a relevant analogy for the upcoming mini-conference.
Economies are made up of people.
Humans are social creatures.
Life’s a shared experience.
And music has been a lifelong passion of mine.
Many Bitcoiners obsess about Proof-Of-Work. And I absolutely agree that the ethos of personal responsibility with low time preference makes the most sense for how I want to live my own life.
That being said… the “human action” (yes, the Austrian Economics term) of actually living involves human connection as well. Fulfillment. And yes, at least occasionally, also some fun. It’s not just work.
And the context here is incredible!
Over the past week, thousands of Salvadoran visitors came to Berlín for the annual Festival Patronale, to celebrate this mountain city’s patron saint every year… now that Presidente Bukele made the country safe for people to celebrate out in the streets so openly again.
Wholesome family fun and food in the main town square… and, just down the street, a rave every night — right outside of our Bitcoin Community Center — primarily for Salvadorans in their twenties.
Not bad for the “murder capital of the world”
Sure, it may not be ideal for deep work… yeah, it’s not optimally conducive to maximizing my writing/meeting/podcasting output… but it’s actually very cool to see.
This was right outside my office all week lol:
It’s also the type of “content” that I’ve almost completely neglected posting firsthand, especially over the past two months… primarily because I’ve been preoccupied with setting the pieces in place for April 8th. I’ve been so focused on planning ahead, day-after-day, that I perhaps started neglecting the importance of also SHOWING people what life is actually like here.
But it seemed to resonate pretty well with people when I shared this party post… so maybe I’ll do a little bit more along these lines going forward. Not necessarily for parties, but for SHOWING the cool life experiences that are possible here in Berlín more generally.
“Social media strategy” is a big part of my “job” here anyway, so it’s useful to get objective feedback through engagement analytics.
Most of my personal posts are more ideas-focused, but apparantly people also like to see the actual firsthand experience sometimes, even from an ideas-focused account:
Worth the week of dis-traction to be reminded of this point.
It’s also particularly cool for me as a lifelong music lover.
I try not to talk too much about my personal life — especially now, despite this being my personal newsletter, my main focus has to remain on the conference — but it’s relevant enough that I’ll make an exception here: music was/is actually my number one passion, long before I became a Bitcoiner… long before I moved to a new country and started getting involved in this newer way.
I started learning to play instruments when I was 5 years old… and although the instruments varied over the years (primarily violin and then guitar), I never really stopped loving to learn and play music until the lockdowns shifted my priorities toward sound money and freedom above all else.
For now, and for the forseeable future, I feel compelled to help accelerate global Bitcoin adoption. But eventually I look forward to “fix the money, fix the world” playing out, so that I can return more focus to my non-Bitcoin passions once the world’s most urgent problem is finally solved.
In the meantime…
This week was a useful reminder to actually enjoy one of my primary lifelong sources of joy.
And it’s kinda funny.
At first, I resisted that joy.
Tried to work around it.
It didn’t work well with my workflow.
I saw it as a distraction.
A problem to avoid.
I skipped almost the entire week of fun…
This is where friends help though.
Charlie — the conference co-organizer — reminded me, finally on the last night of the festival, that part of why we realized our mini-conference would even be possible in the first place is because both of us have a lot of experience going to concerts and music festivals.
A conference isn’t really that different, fundamentally.
Subtract the instruments, keep the mics/speakers/screen/stage, add some topical expertise instead of tunes… but functionally, there’s a lot of overlap.
In particular for my side of organizing things… arranging a lineup of Speakers is like arranging the schedule of artists/DJ’s at a music festival.
You confirm a venue…
You select your desired musical genres…
You invite artists who fit that theme…
And if you build it, they will come. Hopefully. The people will come, and hopefully they’ll have an enjoyable experience, sharing the good vibes together!
Wednesday night — the last of this week’s festival — Charlie and a couple of other friends here convinced me to come see it for myself. I’m glad I did.
That reminded me not to forget the “audience experience” side of things.
But — first things last — I’ve also been doing work on my side of things… the “artist/speaker” side.
Before the “noise” there was also “signal” on Sunday:
I was gonna say more about it…
We had some really cool guests come from around the country, in preparation for April 8th.
But that was right in the middle of the festival, and I’m already over 1000 words for this “Thoreau Thursday” on a Friday afternoon… and I tend to ramble, and I still have more work to do besides this.
So I’ll just link to the thread instead.
I already wrote it on X anyway, for the Economía Bitcoin account. The marginal benefits of duplicating that effort aren’t worth it when I still have plenty of other writing to get through over the next two weeks!
There’s more I’d like to say with the music analogy as well… but again, I’m just gonna wrap this Friday afternoon “Thoreau Thursday” post up for now. Ask me to elaborate some other time if you’re interested in my musings :)
And stay tuned.
The lineup of Speakers is finally almost finalized. It’s gonna be cool. Finally ready to announce over the next few days…
So yeah, back to work.
“The music never stops” indeed, Thoreau. And I’ve been listening. Now it’s time for writing, finalizing, showing… recording and sharing experiences!
Just one final bonus topic:
On a completely separate note…
A few months ago, this would have been my leading topic.
Clint Russell on Bitcoin Audible!!!
Released on Wednesday… and Clint also went on Timcast the same night. As an official Vice Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party.
A decision which Clint first announced that he was seriously considering in my own debut podcast, back on January 10th. (Same day as the ETF approval, coincidentally).
Clint’s new Timcast appearance got contentious about the TikTok bill… they didn’t get around to discussing Bitcoin at all this time, sadly. Here’s the link though anyway if you’re interested. Over 270k views so far…
That’s it for this post.
1350 final word count lol
I’ll just leave you with this week’s quote to close it out again:
“Music never stops; it is only the listening that is intermittent.”
Henry David Thoreau
JeThoreau@getalby.com
(For optional tips… no pressure)
(DIFFERENT from a “normal” email address, just FYI)
For those who already own their own social identities…
I follow back all fellow early adopters using Nostr:
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Peace, amigos.
“The global peaceful monetary revolution will not be centralized.”
Bonus:
Three relevant podcasts episodes.
The first two dropped yesterday — Friday, when I published this post — and I’m editing this because they were both so relevant.
I won’t explain further. Same for the third link, which dropped on Thursday.
Gary Clark Jr (guitarist) on Joe Rogan
Cal Newport (Deep Work) on Ryan Holiday (Daily Stoic)
Matt Odell on Bitcoin Veterans
I won’t explain.
Back to work… but trust me.
All three of those episodes are relevant enough that this post was worth editing after publishing just to add them. You’ll understand why if you watch :)
(I finally started listening to episodes on 1.75x speed these past two months to try to keep up with everything btw. I used to only listen normal speed, but this is a game changer tbh for busy people)
See ya next week!
Make it personal
Show up as who you are
That is the sound of the times
💪