Here’s looking at you looking at you, kid

“You have a face for copywriting,” is a joke radio people like to tell, probably.

When you make it your job not to have a name (not one you can really put to anything in writing)—why have a face?

Launching this business in 2022 put a mirror up to the rolodex of faces I have. Some schmooze. Some hand-scrawl impossibly deep and impossibly dumb headlines into black chapbooks. Some do taxes on time (barely). All these faces are growing a “look you straight in the eyes and don’t even have to smile I’m that stone-cold cool maybe I’ll even smoke this cigarette oh wait this is a pen” kind of stare.

I can tell my work and writing and thinking are taking on that ferocious quality again.

I started stalk…lowing a copywriter/poet named Cole Shafer who sells a brass coin with a “700 lb tiger-in-miniature” on one side and on the flip in all caps: “LET THE TIGERS THOUGH THE DOOR.”

I keep it by my bedside table. “Let the tigers through the door,” I whisper to myself in the morning.

In January, I booked this photo session with Lila Streicher, a photographer I’ve admired for years and years. She captures an artist’s (and a cat’s) soul.

This was hard to do, to schedule a photoshoot for you, and look yourself and your business dead in the mirror. Then be in front of the lens in your art deco dream pad, in 3 equally absurd outfit changes, the flowing red gown really taking the cake.

I went into mini self-doubt spirals. Before the shoot, during the shoot, seeing the sneak peeks, waiting for the edits.

Then, I got the photos and thought, “Who is this confident b*tch?!”

I enter a fugue state.

“Bad Mother F*cker” reads Samuel L. Jackson’s wallet in Pulp Fiction.

Peggy Olson walks by in the hallway with a cigarette hanging from her mouth holding a Japanese octopi erotica woodblock print.

Let the tigers through the door.

It’s hard to step into, much less see in real time, new versions of yourself, especially as a solopreneur. Every day, you’re peeled apart from all sides. Ever blooming (onion).

When you take you by surprise, nothing hits like it. Example, picture this: me spooning David Ogilvy on a hardwood floor in a red gown, just like one of his retro ads.

I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do with these photos in a professional capacity, but it will be immaculate vibes. They’ll be showing their faces in a retool of this new site (brandstorytell.com). Log on to know immediately: Oh, this business owner is one fierce weirdo.

Word up, Holmes.