Relevance Is Dead

Years ago, I interviewed a painter in his late seventies who had an extraordinary body of work. I asked him how he’d managed to keep growing and making beautiful things after so many decades. His advice was simple: “I don’t try to be relevant,” he said. “I don’t chase trends. I just listen to what the voice in me is saying. And there’s always more.”

It’s good advice. First of all, in this age of algorithms, we’re witnessing the death of relevance. What you see on your phone is only what your phone thinks you want to see. Two people living on the same street inhabit totally different realities of attention. The hero your neighbor thinks is changing the world is someone you’ve never heard of. Celebrity is dead. Relevance is dead.

To which I say: great. If we’re living through the death of relevance, we can finally return to what is meaningful, moving, and true.

Nietzsche called this the untimely. To be untimely is to stop asking whether your work fits the moment and start asking whether it tells the truth. Not the truth reflected in some digital consensus, but the truth found in your own body.

We spend a lot of time doubting and overriding that truth. Sometimes we turn to yoga or somatic experiencing in order to hear the body more clearly. These practices can help, but not if they overlook the deeper cause of disconnection: our habit of lying.

We lie constantly. We lie about where we were Tuesday, how we really feel, and whether we're living the lives we truly want. When we cannot tell the truth, we cannot know the truth, no matter how much embodiment we try to practice.

In the end, the opposite of relevance isn’t irrelevance: it’s inner honesty. If you can be honest about what's trying to come out of you, you can make work of staggering beauty for years and build a life of great contentment. Just keep asking, “What's true right now?” and have the courage to live as close to the bone of that answer as you can.