Stay on the f*cking Bus

In 2004, photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen stood in front of a graduating class at the New England School of Photography and gave a speech that quietly became legendary. His advice boiled down to one strange but powerful metaphor:

“The secret of success? Stay on the bus.”

He explained the Helsinki Bus Station Theory. At the central station, dozens of bus lines pull out from the same platform. For the first mile or two, they all run the same route. If you’re watching from the sidewalk, the buses look identical.

“The bus numbers might read as follows: 21, 71, 58, 33, and 19. Each bus runs the same route for a while, but then they begin to diverge. The 33 goes north, the 19 heads southwest, the 21 and 71 continue together for a few more stops and then split.”

For young photographers, Minkkinen said, each stop is like a year in your career. After a few stops, your work starts to look familiar.

Ok, so you have been working for three years making platinum studies of nudes. Call it bus #21.

You take those three years of work on the nude to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the curator asks if you are familiar with the nudes of Irving Penn. His bus, 71, was on the same line. Or you take them to a gallery in Paris and are reminded to check out Bill Brandt, bus 58, and so on.

Shocked, you realize that what you have been doing for three years others have already done.

So you hop off the bus, grab a cab (because life is short) and head straight back to the bus station looking for another platform.

This time you are going to make 8×10 view camera color snapshots of people lying on the beach from a cherry picker crane.

You spend three years at it and three grand and produce a series of works that elicit the same comment: haven’t you seen the work of Richard Misrach? Or, if they are steamy black and white 8×10 camera view of palm trees swaying off a beachfront, haven’t you seen the work of Sally Mann?

After three years, you begin to see your work resembles the work of Rauschenberg or Irving Penn or Cartier-Bresson. You say, ‘Damn it, I am on the wrong bus.’”

So you hop off, switch lines, try again. But the new bus takes you back to the same early stops. Your work still looks like someone else’s.

The solution? He didn’t sugarcoat it:

“So what to do? It’s simple. Stay on the f*cking bus.”

Because if you sit tight, the lines eventually diverge. Your route separates. Your work develops its own signature. What looked generic at stop three becomes unmistakably yours at stop thirty. As Minkkinen summed it up:

“It’s not about work, it’s about re-work.”

That speech is now more than twenty years old. And it aged remarkably well. If anything, it feels even sharper in a world where switching “buses” — jobs, industries, projects, even identities — is easier than ever.

Generalist by nature

I’ve always considered myself a generalist. I actually enjoy jumping industries, jobs, and places. For years, my dad would remind me of that old saying: “Jack of all trades, master of none.” He didn’t mean it harshly, but it was a gentle challenge to my restless approach.

Now with kids and family at my side, the hopping around has slowed. But I still feel that itch. And yet, the older I get, the more I appreciate Minkkinen’s advice. Maybe because I had to find the underlying theme first. The thing that tied it all together.

For me, that’s taste.

The taste bus

Looking back, every project I cared about circled back to taste. I studied architecture because I wanted to train it. I designed interiors and created hospitality experiences because I wanted to apply it. I worked in marketing, communication, and copywriting — and even there, I always felt most connected to the work of the creative people: the designers, art directors, and writers. Not the number crunchers, not the analytics dashboards.

Even this newsletter I write every week is part of the same bus route. I don’t get paid for it (yet), but it’s practice. It’s reps. It’s taste, refined in public.

Staying on the bus isn’t glamorous. It’s maintenance, not miracles. But if you ride long enough, the route becomes yours.

Buses, and the irony of it

Here’s the funny part: of all the ways to get around, buses are my least favorite. I’d rather bike, walk, even crawl. But maybe that makes the metaphor hit harder. Because in real life, I’d avoid the bus. In creative life, I know I have to stay on it.

Being around forty, you either need a sunny disposition or be really bad at math to ignore the fact that half your life is probably over. I’m not there yet — my age is still lower than my (European) shoe size number — but the gap is closing.

And maybe that’s exactly why Minkkinen’s twenty-year-old words resonate more with me now than they did in my twenties: greatness doesn’t come from chasing fireworks. It comes from repetition. From re-work. From staying on the route long enough for it to be unmistakably yours.

Closing stop

So yes, I’m still a generalist. Still curious. Still restless. But I’ve found the through-line: taste. And I’m learning that the way to make it matter is not to hop off for the next shiny thing, but to keep showing up. Week after week, project after project.

Stay on the f*cking bus.

At some point, the line becomes your own.