Mehtaphysics ॐ

I was asked by The Exonian to write an op-ed piece reflecting on life since graduating from Exeter in 2010, and any tips I have for this year's graduating seniors. The following is what I came up with. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Very strong PG and James Altucher influences. Thanks to my friends Dan, Hanif, and Caroline for reading it. 

I dropped out of college to start FamilyLeaf, a Y Combinator-funded startup. More info here. 

I have always been one to take risks, but they've never seemed very risky to me. I came to Exeter from Seattle just for senior year, against my parents' best judgment. I picked my college program just for the three required semesters of study abroad. I gave up a killer summer internship to work on my own web projects. I took a leave of absence after my first year-and-a-half at NYU to run a funded startup. I don't plan on going back anytime soon.

 

Here I'll share a few lessons I've learned since leaving Exeter two years ago. As a graduating senior, you're blessed with unusual wisdom for your age. You're in for decades of learning. You're one of the only high school audiences in the world who reads that last sentence and smiles knowingly. 

 

Your Harkness skill set might make it easy to coast along and get good grades. Resist the urge to just go with the flow, academically or socially. If most of your friends are doing something, it's probably too easy and you should do something different. 

 

The most important goal in college is simple: find out what you want to do with your life. This might happen much more outside the classroom than in it. Indulge your interests.

 

Live in an exciting city, but don't let it make you edgy or jaded. Live in a beautiful suburban town, but don't become complacent. 

 

There are no certainties. You'll grow to define yourself less by how well you adhered to the status quo and more by how you defied it, majestically and with permanence.

 

Most people wait for the right opportunity to present itself. The adventurer, the inventor, the entrepreneur, the artist is always on the lookout. They know their limitations, and purposefully defy them.

 

Take the time to self-reflect. Understand what you want to accomplish, even if vaguely. Learn from how others got there, and recognize that your path will be different. Try to hit a perfect mix of floating down life's river, and decisively aiming for something. 

 

Work forward from promising situations. Look at your available options, and choose those that will give you the most possible freedom moving forward. Don't shoehorn yourself. 

 

Make things. Please, make things. Extrapolate "make" as broadly as you'd like. Just don't lead a life of pure consumption. It's easy to mistake consuming as growing -- the more you know about cultural touchstones or esoteric subjects, the smarter you'll feel. It's nice to feel smart. But when you wake up each day, do things. Write something, run somewhere, sketch out an idea. Do something new every day. It will make the days pass more slowly. It might bring you love and contentment. 

 

Be in awe of the infinite beauty of the world around you. Take public transportation.

 

Your qualifications don't matter; your books don't matter; your body doesn't matter; your friends don't matter; your successes don't matter. Your conversation with yourself matters. Your choices matter. Remember that you are going to die.

 

And when you recognize a moment approaching its natural ending -- seize it. Don't look back.

I managed to make it out to Morocco briefly last semester while studying in London, and among all the sights, sounds, and smells there's one indelible image I can't seem to get off my mind. I'll just let the story speak for itself:

A friend and I were winding down from a long day of exploring the souks, and we ended up and getting wrapped up in conversation with two English-speaking guys -- who I later found out made money as tourist guides, getting referral fees every time they brought an American lured by his or her home language to try out a favored restaurant or riad. We followed them to a nearby bar of theirs to just sit down and chill, and I noticed two of their friends on a padded bench, disinterested in the beautiful evening action around them and wrapped in a smartphone screen.

 

The main guy was looking down into his Samsung smartphone running Android, and the ubiquitous American top 10 pop song "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO was blasting from his phone. It seemed a little strange, because the music at these steamy Moroccan bars was all traditional and atmospheric, and the most American music I had heard on the trip was blasting out of used electronics stores. "Party Rock Anthem" didn't exactly fit within the ambiance.

But then I noticed his friend, a slightly lighter-skinned young man with curly hair but a similar leather jacket on, lean over and jab at the screen with his index finger sequentially in time with the beat. The video wasn't actually a music video, it was just images of the song's lyrics. The main watcher was trying to follow along. He already knew the lyrics from hearing the song dozens of times, but he matched sounds with the words he was seeing on screen. 

 

His friend spouted words of encouragement during the breaks in the song. First in Moroccan Arabic, but after he noticed I was watching intently he switched over to English: this apparently was how he himself learned English over the past year. And knowing English fluently was a major life upgrade for him. Now he was dating a Moroccan girl who was leaving to study and work in Canada. And he was able to converse flawlessly with tourists, leading to a new income source as a street guide.

 

The first lesson is one to app developers who want their new product to change the world in some material way: teaching English to Moroccans with an android app is a noble goal, but you really need to know (and might be surprised by) how people are solving the pressing need today. In this case it was something I would have never expected -- these young guys were literally learning through the YouTube app on their smartphones by following along with lyrics videos. Nothing can replace venturing out into the field and figuring out what users actually want.

 

The second takeaway is just pure amazement. I'm so surprised that people are using technology this way, and that Moroccan twenty-somethings are streaming American music videos on tiny handheld devices that almost all of them possess. And surprisingly, many of the guys we met didn't just have one mobile phone: they had two, three, or even more, with a whole suite of different SIM cards from different providers to save dirhams. The classy bros in LMFAO might be enabled more to help teach eager young Moroccan men than Khan Academy, Rosetta Stone, or even their own government. And that is a true revolution in education.

That was Seattle City Councilman Tim Burgess remixing Wiz Khalifa's "Black and Yellow" at last night's Candidate Survivor event. And it wasn't even the most ridiculous thing at the quasi-political event.

 

If you ever wanted to see a bunch of old part-time politicans proclaiming their support for marijuana legalization and rapping in Japanese, Candidate Survivor was crafted for you. It's organized by the great organization Washington Bus (who I've been volunteering with at the Capitol Hill Block Party and elsewhere) and Seattle stalwart indie newspaper The Stranger. It was essentially a debate, talent show, and popularity contest all rolled into one. Skinny dipping was admitted to, cookies were made and thrown out on stage, and 60+ year old councilpeople talked about sexting and danced around to disco music.

 

The pictures on the "Hella Bus" blog are great, so check them out. And man, this city council is refreshingly liberal. When there's 0/20 people on stage who are against same sex marriage, and our mayor is actively advocating marijuana legalization, I'm glad to be living in Seattle. The biggest arguments were about tunnels and trains -- they were functional and economic in nature, rather than emotional or partisan. I was happy to see the different breeds of progressive, rarely noticed in national politics.

Other cities should learn from Candidate Survivor and lighten things up. The humor and playful competition make our political system feel in touch, active, and actually likeable. We need more of that.

Wesley, Dan, and my latest project has eclipsed everything else we've done over these past few months: Where My Friends Be?

The growth and press have been ridiculously exciting. As I write this, we have 30,000+ registered users and 3.25 million+ friends "mapped."

Here's my attempt to catalog all that's been written about us:

• Featured on Mashable. This started it all, and about 30 seconds afterwards our servers crashed. Hard. Here's Wesley's account of the ordeal, and we learned a ton about scalability and PR. 
• Reposted to CNN.com
• Featured and interviewed on Seattle King 5 Evening News. This was a total surprise, and I had to skip class to run back to my dorm and get interviewed on Skype. Don't tell my profs.
• Posted by a French tech blog that led to many more French posts: here are a few... here's one in Turkish. And one in Japanese. There's a few in Spanish, but I can't find them right now...
• A post we're proud of for this quote: "there's a difference between getting there first, and doing it right."
• It's taken on a life of itself in the Twittersphere, check out this tag: #wheremyfriendsbe
• Very proud of this one: a post about our "nicest fail page ever"
• Dan has written a three-part gripping account of the whole experience.

Hopefully this is just the beginning!

A couple weeks ago, I went to a Todd P.-organized concert deep in Brooklyn. It ended up being shut down by the cops, which was a surreal experience in itself, but I had a chance to get introduced to the Smith Westerns. They're from Chicago, really young, and have a knack for catchy melodies.

 

I saw The Drums and Surfer Blood at Webster Hall during the CMJ Music Festival, and their opener happened to be some guys from Arizona/California called The Young Friends. I didn't make much of them at the time--they probably aren't much older than me. But I got their album (you can stream it here) and it's great. I actually ran into them outside this Trouble & Bass showcase I went to! That was pretty absurd.

 

Lastly, the openers for Neon Indian at Brooklyn Bowl were these guys called Prince Rama. Apparently they grew up in a Hare Krishna tribe and now make drone electro worship music? Very trippy but interesting. Some of these prayers and melodies I actually remember my grandmother singing to me when I was a child, which makes it doubly weird for me.

These guys from Perth are the coolest psychedelic vintage band imaginable. They played an amazing show last night. Kevin Parker multi-tracked his vocals, got the coolest delay/reverb sounds out of his guitar, and jammed on "Half Full Glass of Wine" to finish it off. And the crazy spinning green light was hooked up to his amp, resulting in some weird sound-wave visuals. Awesome videos:

A couple Fridays ago was the #Offline Festival hosted by Pitchfork at Brooklyn Bowl (awesome venue). I had two tickets but couldn't go because my parents were in town. I also didn't realize it was 21+, and I decided to take that angle when trying to get a refund for that $20 I never picked up from will call. The festival wasn't sold out or anything, and I started the e-mail thread before the concert, so I felt I might as well just go all out for the refund by e-mailing the ticket provider (which is what the Brooklyn Bowl guy advised me to do.) Anyways, here's the interesting thread that followed. I was quite forceful. Commentary in italics.

From: ajayumehta@gmail.com

To: customersupport@ticketfly.com

Subject: #Offline Festival Ticket Refund

Hi,

 

Hello Ajay,

My name is Jamal Mahone and I am the Customer Support Supervisor for Ticketfly. I was made aware of your exchange with Carla Deasy, the Customer Support representative who handled your case. I wanted to let you know that we sincerely regret the brevity of the response. Although I assure you that we did our best to make the case for the refund, the actual response was not the level of customer service that we pride ourselves on here at Ticketfly. In your particular situation, we do have a firm all sales are final policy. The fact is that the show was 21 and over as most shows at the Brooklyn Bowl are. This was listed on the purchase page as a result an exception could not be made. As near as I can tell you were a first time customer and to have this be your first and only experience with Ticketfly is truly unfortunate. My hope is that in the future when you have the opportunity to purchase tickets through Ticketfly, it will not be met with reluctance and it will be a positive experience.

-- 
Jamal Mahone
Ticketfly Customer Support Supervisor

 

The following post -- partially inspired by a bit Sarah Silverman did when I saw her at the Brooklyn Book Festival a few weeks ago -- contains direct transcripts of text conversations with my mom. Nothing has been altered.

Sona is an associate professor at the University of Washington and a psychiatrist at the Veteran's Affairs hospital in Seattle. She's on the left in this picture:

Bonus coda from my Grandmother at the end. Hopefully this isn't too dry to work in text format. 

*****

Mom: How is your day?

Me: my day is good! sorry I haven't returned your calls yet

Mom: No worries . Are you doing     Ok? Was your weekend busy?

Me: I am doing great and my weekend was exciting!

Mom: Wonderful. We'll connect later as I am at work and seeing patients

*****

Mom: How are you feeling?

Me: good... you?

Mom: good? I just found out I got a 5000 dollar raise.

*****

Mom: How is your day?

Me: good! how is yours?

Mom: Good? When is the concert?

Me: I think it's in a few hours

Mom: Ok cool have fun and be safe

Me: I will! how are things going at home?

Mom: Things are fine. Work has been very busy. I have been getting recertified for ect and done 15 treatments with rewarding results.

Me: awesome what is ect?

Mom: Electroconvulsive therapy (electroshock) treatment under anesthesia

Me: oh wow... isn't that the thing that poets and artists in the 50's were against? they tried to use it to cure homosexuality and stuff? 

Mom: There is a lot of media misperception about it... but I have seen how it saves lives. I'll tell you all about it.

*****

Mom: sfghfxhxggfgtxfxchbhthshdjfhxvxhsdbxchchgbbbvvxjhdxgvhfhhdttfhgshxcgntrsd. Bxsfdv cv b fv

Mom: Sorry. Bye.

*****

Mom: How is your day?

Me: great! went to the us open

Mom: Wow it must have been exciting

Me: it was! how are things at home?

Mom: Good. Ari started school today. He is very excited to have a male teacher. He seems very sincere and approachable. How are things in the dorm. It is cold here. I had to wear my winter coat to work this am.

*****

Mom: We are staying for lunch. Shall I have someone pick you up

Me: no it's not a big deal. I'm going to take a nap.

Mom: Ok. Let me know because we can pick you up or after lunch we will be going back home.

Mom: There is a microwave to heat up some food.

Mom: Did the gang find you?

Mom: Did you buy food for lunch or can I bring some?

Me: wokr up late so i'm not too hungry

Mom: The cleaning lady is coming at 930 but I asked her not to do your room

Mom: Do you want me to make a hair cut appointment?

Mom: Did you see the gang?

Me: yeah

*****

Mom: How was the dentist visit?

Me: it went well! he said my teeth are great!

Mom: Great. What are you doing?

Me: just at home. he said I probably don't need to go every six months as there's nothing wrong with my teeth

Mom: Ok. If that is what he said then it's ok. Do you feel that your teeth are cleaner.

*****

Mom: Can I pick you up soon?

Me. why's that? it's a grad party at Drew's house.

Mom: I can come to socialize with the parents?

Me: you can but you don't need to!

Mom: Ok let me know the address and we can plan to be there later.

Me: sure the address is --------- [new hampshire]

Mom: Can we come by 6:10 or so and socialize a bit. We really want to.

Me: sure. who is coming?

Mom: All of us.

Mom: Just kidding.

Mom: Between you and me is it ok if Vipul comes with me?

*****

Grandma: Hi how r      you?

Me: I am good! you've learned how to text?

Grandma: You r my 1st   VICTIM  .LOVE  you

Me: love you too!

So Allen Ginsberg, literary hero to several generations, will be portrayed by James Franco (here's a crazy profile worth reading) in the surrealistic forthcoming adaption of Howl, my favorite poem. Here he is:

In honor of Ginsberg's most iconic work becoming a trippy indie film, here's the imitation long-form poem I had to write last year for class. It was very fun to write. I still like it! There are some twisted, interesting messages in there, but don't take it too seriously. Like Howl I tried to go down into depraved depths and then come back with an infinite optimism. Check it out:

Lollapalooza 2010 was fantastic. Highlights: Dirty Projectors singing "When the World Comes to an End" in their encore, Erykah Badu's ridiculously good funk/soul band, and The Strokes' first U.S. performance in five years (I've wanted to see them live since Room on Fire came out in 2003).

I'm not going to write something up because I'd either belabor it to a pulp or go for a clean, dumb synthesis. So I'll just post a few phone images I liked. Bonus list/video after the pictures!

Lots of bonuses ahead. Click on my friend:

Here are sweet clips of The Strokes and Dirty Projectors doing their thing:

And just for kicks, here's my current reading/movie list. Thanks to Half-Price Books for being the best store ever.

• Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger -- makes me love the Royal Tenenbaums even more
• Y Tu Mama Tambien -- sex-crazed mexicans + Kerouac-style road trip
• Synecdoche, New York -- so intricate it's confused. Also heartbreaking. Watched because Charlie Kaufman wrote Eternal Sunshine.
• Jackie Brown -- Quentin's overlooked gem. Best music of all his films.
• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer -- completely destroyed me emotionally on the plane ride. But also very funny.
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz -- also hilarious and very sad. Both Foer and Diaz will be at NYU next year so hopefully I'll meet them!