June 8, 2021 | Bean Around The World UBC
“Do things. It beats the alternative.”
If you have a Brian for a friend or a colleague, you’ll consider yourself lucky.
Brian is the person who drags you out in the middle of the work day for a coffee walk. Brian is the person who will ask about your passion projects that have nothing to do with your professional life. You’ll come back to your desk with fresh ideas for both tasks at hand and life outside work, probably holding a caffeinated beverage and a warm pastry.
This coffee hangout was one of these many thoughtful chats I’ve had with Brian Wilson over the years. I met Brian at a previous job at the University of British Columbia, in my city of allegiance, Vancouver, BC. We first met in the summer of 2016, when I was starting my first out-of-college job. It was an office that revolved around its prized, communal coffee machine, so clearly, I fit right in. I had since switched teams mid-pandemic, but Brian and I went back to the cozy Bean Around the World on Thunderbird Blvd – a favourite of my old office – on a sunny but crisp June Vancouver morning.
This definitely is a much-delayed post. A lot has happened since June: In June, I was only just starting to venture out of my teeny-tiny Covid bubble after getting my first dose of the vaccine. And yet, much feels just the same, in this disorienting, heartbreaking, prolonged state of collective existence in the time of Covid. So, revisiting this conversation has me in a reflective mood, with the end of another year approaching.
The Average Band Doesn’t Make It
When you get to know Brian, one of the first things you’ll notice is the exuberance of creative energy flowing out of him. On Monday morning, he might mention a theatre performance or an art exhibition that he went to on the weekend. Maybe he’ll tell you about a screenplay he’s working on. One time – twice, actually, – Brian made me a beautiful writer’s box with prompts and activities to experiment with, which is like a Christmas present for an aspiring writer.
Perhaps Brian’s love for artistic pursuits isn’t all that surprising, if you know of his past life as a musician. “Music was the big dream when I was younger, to play shows in front of people. That was, to me, the pinnacle of success,” says Brian, thinking back to his university days when he played in a band. “If you’re twenty and you’re super hungry, you go all in and it’s a make-or-break thing. I’m not in that phase of life now, but I still aspire to some of that, sharing of creativity.”
“The average band doesn’t make it, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it. It’s just the most amazing experience to be a part of a band,” he adds. He may no longer be in a band, but through the making of art and sharing of creativity, Brian brings people together. He invites people to get together and sculpt, draw, play with the camera, and create.
“People create. It’s just what we do. I think it’s part of being human,” says Brian. “We sometimes have this exalted status for creators, but everyone is creative on some level. It’s something you nourish.”
A Beautiful Obsession
Another thing you’ll learn pretty quickly about Brian, probably even before you learn about his love for the arts, is his love for the bike – the motorcycle type. “It’s kind of an obsession for me. It’s a beautiful obsession.” Brian says sometimes when he’s on the bike, he likes to pretend he’s somewhere else. Riding through Spanish Banks on his way home from work, for example, he can easily imagine he’s somewhere further along the West Coast. Brian calls these moments a micro holiday.
On weekend mornings blessed with good weather, you will likely find Brian on BC’s breathtaking Sea to Sky Highway to Squamish. “It’s just so beautiful. You look over sometimes, and you think, wow, this is where I live. You see the islands, and you see the ferries going by, then there’s an eagle above.” Chances are, he’ll be with his riding buddies, and perhaps they’ll stop at a hidden gem of a breakfast spot before riding back into the city.
Brian also loves longer bike trips across Canada and down the Pacific Coast across the border, though these have not been easily available options during pandemic times.
On Doing Things
What amazes me about Brian is that he’s always doing things. Whether it be inviting people to get together for a drawing and sculpture session, producing a short film, or having a writing evening with a friend, Brian is doing things. Surely, he must have days when he just feels completely drained by the end of the work day. He must have times when things just get to him. What keeps you going, I ask. He laughs, and in a playfully conspiratorial tone, replies with, “Existential dread.“
“I think I’m like anybody else. I have good periods and bad periods, and there’s definitely times where I don’t produce anything,” says Brian. “But I think it goes back to my university days. I had a really great group of friends, and we kind of just helped each other do stuff. Doing stuff was really important to us. So I’ve always embraced that.”
He’s talking about his musician friends. “Looking back, whether you’re good or bad is irrelevant. We were pretty dedicated. Every week, we were practicing lots of times a week, writing our own stuff. So we just kind of developed that habit. I think there’s a reason people use the word creative practice, because it’s a practice, right? The worst thing you can do is wait for that moment of inspiration to magically deliver the finished product, because that never happens.
That moment of inspiration is phenomenal. And it’s fleeting. You still have to do the work.”
Beats the Alternative
“It’s been hard this past year not to sink into that pit of despair, the transitory life of nature,” Brian says, as we take a moment to reflect on the challenging past year that it’s been. “Death is a real thing, and it’s more real for some than others. It’s also easy to just end up there, prematurely.” By this, Brian isn’t talking about a literal premature death. It’s easy to focus on despair, he means, and let it paralyze you.
“But things do pass. They do get better, they get worse. It changes.”
Often, Brian finds himself thinking about his late grandmother. Though she never went to university or had formal credentials, she was a very practical and intelligent person, and “was just on top of things,” says Brian. “And her approach to life was really great, too.”
“It’s like wherever she was at, whatever stage she was in, that was the best stage to be at.” In the seventies, Brian’s grandparents started to go down to Arizona in the winter. Unfortunately, within the first two months down in Arizona, his grandfather passed away. “She kind of had that moment of, that didn’t turn out as expected. But for her, it was like, well, it doesn’t mean I can’t come down.”
So she continued to spend her winters, for the next quarter century until the mid-nineties, hanging out in the Arizona desert. Until one year, in her mid-eighties, she decided that she was no longer physically capable to continue this tradition, and she stopped going down to Arizona. There were other moments in her life when things didn’t turn out the way she anticipated, Brian says, but she kept on living her life.
“There was no regret there. Her one saying was, well, it beats the alternative. It was like, I don’t care what I’m doing, it’s always better than doing nothing. She died quite a few years ago, but she made it into her nineties. She had a good life,” Brian recalls.
We talk about how it’s so easy to take things far too seriously. Obviously, there are times where seriousness is warranted and even necessary, but other times, “it’ll be fine,” says Brian.
“Do more,” he says, as much to himself as to me. Do things – it sure beats the alternative.
