I read things whole.

What I do is see what’s present and what’s absent at the same time — and work in the gap between them. A brand, a product, a place, a text: I read it as a single act, and I notice the distance between what it is and the more beautiful version of it I can already see.

For eleven years I built Olivers, a men’s activewear brand, from a Kickstarter campaign into a category-leading business. It was one expression of that gift. My writing at Non-Prophet — reading the oldest stories for what they still understand about how we live — is another.