A Cherry Ghost

Below the paywall: A new era of chairmaking begins.

I hated it when adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I didn’t have an answer. I settled on “architect” because I’d read a lot about architecture. Not because I wanted to be an architect. But because our house was filled with the architecture books my parents read to build the houses on our farm.

So I could discuss being an architect with adults and not sound totally stupid.

One day, however, my best friend Chip Paris blew my mind when he was asked the same question.

Chip and I were the neighborhood shake-down artists. We sold jewelry made from bark and mulch to the younger kids (“Go see if your mom has a quarter.”) The day Elvis Presley died, we built a shrine to the King in the woods in Chip’s backyard. I was 9; Chip was 8. We charged the little kids in the neighborhood to visit the shrine and pay their respects to Elvis. We even sold dandelions to the kids who wanted to leave flowers for him.

We started a weekly newsletter that recapped all the Saturday-morning cartoons, which you could read if your mom dragged you to your aunt’s house on a Saturday morning. We photocopied the newsletter by sneaking into the office Chip’s dad had above the garage. The guy actually owned a copier.

One day Chip was asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Chip fired back: “I want to be famous.”

This is Bob Mould. Not Chip Paris (who went into PR).

Chip was serious. I was a bit stunned by his answer. Not by Chip wanting to be famous – he was so charismatic and fast-talking that he could have easily swindled a generation as a televangelist.

I was stunned because Chip taught me that you didn’t have to be a job. You could be something else. A state of being. A metaphor. A mindset. Both the question and the answer suddenly became open-ended and huge.

I could grow up and become inscrutable.

Now that I have a lot of gray whiskers, the questions have changed. The adults in the room ask: What do you want your legacy to be? What will happen to Lost Art Press? Do you have a succession plan? Will the company become employee-owned?

In other words: “What do you want to be when you die?”

When I am dead, I won’t care what happens to my intellectual property, my bank account, my name, my possessions. At that moment, there are no more responsibilities. That is one of the benefits.

If someone picks up this bright string that I found in the forest and continues to follow it, great. If not, then same answer.

But there is something I want to be when I die. It has nothing to do with the world without me. It has everything to do with my life leading up to that last moment. I think about it every day. It guides every decision I make, both business and personal. It is my worldview.

And thanks to Chip Paris, it is only one word.