





For years, the four-minute mile was a barrier that nobody had broken.

Then, in May of 1954, Roger Bannister ran it in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.

Imagine the pride. The press. The free drinks. First person ever recorded doing this. A new answer to the question of what’s possible for a human being.

Then, just 46 days later, John Landy did it faster.

Same year. The next month. Barely enough time to get comfortable being the only person to ever do it.

And in the years that followed, more runners crossed that threshold. Bannister’s novel uniqueness lasted a month-ish.

But I also think about Tony Hawk landing the 900. That moment is vivid in my memory. Since then, skaters have, of course, gone further. Gui Khury landed a 1080 on the same type of vertical ramp as Tony in May of 2020. Three full rotations, compared to Hawk’s two and a half.

If I strain, I think I remember hearing about Khury doing it, but you know, it was the pandemic...

I certainly haven’t spent hundreds of hours playing Gui Khury’s Pro Skater. Maybe he got to be DLC somewhere along the way. A Fortnite skin, at least? Somebody get this kid a licensing deal.

The attention doesn’t necessarily grow with the achievement. You can still push possibility further for our species and just receive less applause.

That’s worth knowing before allowing applause to be the reason you’re doing it.

Because there’s another reward here: somebody gets to witness something they hadn’t believed possible. Then they get to try.

Which brings me to this strange new canvas we’re arguing about.



“Nothing creative can come out of AI.”

Or perhaps: “Everything I’ve encountered has left me feeling empty.”

That second statement gives me something to work with. You’ve seen beautiful images. You’ve heard catchy songs. And still, you haven’t felt much. Fair enough. I’d like the chance to make something that reaches you.

I also understand the suspicion. AI can give something a convincing finish before anyone has given it much thought. Polish becomes a questionable signal. You find yourself wondering whether the thing holding your attention has anything to offer once the shine wears off.

I wonder that too.

Someone recently said they didn’t want to spend more time enjoying something than its creator spent making it.

I understand the feeling behind that. You want your attention treated with some care.

But we love stories about classic songs written in twenty minutes. We return to them again and again for decades. 

And those twenty minutes spent by that artist might also contain years of practice, listening, heartbreak, and learning which words to reach for, and which to leave alone. Sometimes a good song simply arrives quickly.

Then we bring our own lives to it as observers, listeners. A song’s rhyming line finds us at seventeen and means something else entirely to us at forty.

What an incredible thing for those twenty minutes of work to become.

So I’ll continue to sharpen the lyrics to Junkyard Cabaret. And I’ll begin to explore what the accompanying moving images might become.

I keep thinking about the joy of someone finding it as it evolves. The long road of decisions that led to that moment of contact. And what might happen after that first impression.

What will you hear on the fifth listen? In five years?

Will a line follow you into your day? Will an image return later, carrying a little more meaning? Will you come back and find something I didn’t even know I’d put there?

Art doesn’t give us an agreed finish line. I can’t point to a stopwatch and prove I’ve moved you.

I can bring a strong, sharp vision to a chorus of helpers. I can make choices, revise them, and take responsibility for what I put in front of you.

Hold me to your standards. But I have to meet my own, too.

I’d love to reveal a possibility few had considered. And I’d love for more people to pick up this canvas and surprise me in return.

And I want to make something that keeps rewarding the attention you give it.

Something worth coming back to, long after we’ve finished talking about how it was made.





Author’s note

This piece began with my own rough draft: the four-minute mile, Tony Hawk, the strange relationship between achievement and attention, and what any of that might have to do with making things with AI.

I brought it into a conversation with Codex, an AI assistant, to think it through. That exchange helped develop the idea of making something that keeps rewarding people’s attention. I asked for a fresh draft, then revised the language, added details, and sharpened the connection to Junkyard Cabaret. AI contributed to both the thinking and the writing.

The header art and CW monogram were AI-generated, with art direction developed through that same conversation. We explored visual concepts, chose the running track becoming a record, and worked through several versions.

One particularly useful moment: the runner had halftone dots, but still looked pasted onto the image. Naming that problem helped us change the drawing itself—simpler shapes, broken edges, shared ink and paper—until the figure felt part of the scene.

That back-and-forth is part of the work you’re seeing here. I brought the initial ideas, made revisions, directed the images, and chose what to publish. The assistant contributed questions, suggestions, draft language, and generated visuals.

I’m sharing the process because it belongs alongside the piece. You deserve to know how the thing asking for your attention came to be.

Read the full conversation behind this piece