John Lennon famously said, “I’m an artist, and if you give me a tuba, I’ll bring you something out of it.” If you listen to this interview in its entirety, John was actually expressing insecurity about his guitar playing. He admits that he can’t play nearly as well as Chuck Berry. Still, he could make the guitar talk. He could get something out of it. No shit. He wrote the signature riff to “Day Tripper.” There is not a guitarist alive or dead who wouldn’t envy that. The point I wish to make is that artists draw as much inspiration from their talent as they do their limitations. Art is the product of the friction between the two.

Life dealt me a tuba today in the form of jury duty. Supply your own emoji, mine would be puking. Looking into the future I’m on my deathbed—my biggest regret—the eight hours of my about to be extinguished life spent under fluorescent lights, surrounded by disinterested dullards, waiting around for the moment when I would be called that never arrived. That’s a tuba blowing one long fart-sounding B-flat if I ever heard it. I could’ve robbed a liquor store in this woke metropolis and had less of my freedom taken away.

At noon, the screws allowed us an hour-and-a-half lunch break. I spent much of it taking photos of Minneapolis’s downtown skyscrapers with my iPhone SE, a pocket-sized tuba if there ever was one. I visit downtown almost every day without really noticing it. In taking these photos, I was mostly interested in reflections, the interplay between architecture and God’s light. I hope you like them. I should probably buy a better camera. I’m not John Lennon but neither was he, and I think that’s why his life was so painful.