What did you learn that you can’t un-see?

A book I’m reading about sales pages makes me realise that, by the time I’m done, I’ll never be able to read anything in the same way again.

You see, copywriters are encouraged to write out long-form sales pages by hand to hone the practice. For perspective, the one I’ve written up is 42 sides of A4 paper kinda long. It took me 2 hours.

Then you work through it line by line, unpicking the stitching of its construction. I didn’t believe it, but it’s true. There’s something about holding the paper firm and making a mark with your own hand that connects the practice of writing with the grey matter in your head. Now, I can’t un-see the methods. I’ll tear apart everything I read from now on in the same way.

It got me thinking about how the things we learn can change our experience — forever.

I can’t innocently watch films anymore. I studied conceptual photography, which taught me to look for the story behind images. Now I can’t look at anything without examining the lighting, the angle, what’s in focus, and — more importantly — what’s excluded from the frame.

In a way, I guess it ruins things. When you’re “back in the kitchen watching how the sausage is made,” as Bert Cooper says in Mad Men.

In other ways, it enhances everything you do from now on. Because when you learn what goes into making something beautiful, you appreciate it all the more. On my photography course, it was a 1980s black and white photo of a Gerber Daisy by Robert Mapplethorpe. Nothing else is in the frame but the head of the daisy, which, if you look closely, is wilting.

Like he was.

Dying from AIDS.

Before I knew this, I saw petals. Nice, if you like daisies, I guess. But after? Now, that image represents to me how fragile we are in life and death. How aware we can be of our own mortality.

For Mapplethorpe, it is his representation of the emergence of an afterlife. One we’ll all make our way to eventually.

How brave.

How beautiful.

And what a life-changing perspective on grief.