I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.

Host: The studio smelled of paint, dust, and rain-soaked wood. Outside, the city exhaled through cracked windows, the muffled hum of cars echoing like distant waves. Inside, the light was thin and deliberate — morning light, filtered through the tall glass panes, landing gently on sketches, clay models, and tools spread across a long workbench.

Jack stood at that workbench, his sleeves rolled, his hands marked with charcoal. His grey eyes were sharp, almost cold, following the rigid lines of a half-finished architectural model. Jeeny sat on a wooden stool nearby, sketchbook on her lap, her fingers smudged with graphite, her hair loosely tied, one strand catching the light like a living thread.

On the wall behind them, written in faint pencil above the drafting table, were the words: “I don’t want to be interesting. I want to be good.” — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Jeeny: (looking up from her sketch) “It’s such a quiet statement, isn’t it? Almost austere. But it cuts deeper every time I read it.”

Jack: (without looking away from his model) “That’s because it’s rare now. Everyone wants to be interesting — loud, seen, liked. Nobody wants to be good anymore. Not really.”

Jeeny: “You sound like an old monk in a design studio.”

Jack: (smirks faintly) “Maybe Mies was one. Minimalism’s just spiritual discipline dressed in geometry.”

Host: The light shifted slightly as clouds drifted by, the shadows on their work stretching and softening. The faint patter of rain against glass set the rhythm of their thoughts.

Jeeny: “Do you think it’s possible, Jack? To be good without being interesting? Don’t they need each other — the art and the attention?”

Jack: (snaps a ruler down firmly on the model) “Good work doesn’t beg for attention. It earns it. You build a thing with integrity — line by line, brick by brick — and if it’s good, it’ll stand on its own. You don’t have to dress it up.”

Jeeny: “But people have to see it first. A building, a painting, a song — it doesn’t exist in isolation. We live in a world of noise. If you’re not interesting, you’re invisible.”

Jack: “Then maybe invisibility’s the price of honesty.”

Host: The rain grew heavier now, streaking the windows in long diagonal strokes. The studio seemed to shrink, the outside world fading into a blur of grey.

Jeeny: “You say that like you don’t care if your work is forgotten.”

Jack: “I don’t. What matters is that it’s right. That it holds.”

Jeeny: “But isn’t there arrogance in that too? To believe your sense of ‘right’ is enough, without others to see it?”

Jack: “No. There’s purity in it. The moment you start performing for applause, the work dies.”

Host: Jeeny closed her sketchbook, her eyes dark with thought. A drop of water slipped through the cracked window and landed on her page, smudging a line of graphite into a pale shadow. She didn’t wipe it away.

Jeeny: “You know, my mentor once said something similar — that good art hides behind itself. But she also said the world doesn’t reward quiet virtue. It rewards noise.”

Jack: “Then maybe the world’s wrong.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But it’s still the world we live in.”

Host: Jack turned toward her, his hands still, his expression calm but edged.

Jack: “You remember that exhibit last month? The one with the massive mirror installations and flashing lights?”

Jeeny: “Yes.”

Jack: “People lined up for selfies — not to see the art, but to see themselves reflected in it. That’s what ‘interesting’ has become. Narcissism in neon.”

Jeeny: “You’re not entirely wrong. But isn’t reflection part of what art does — show people themselves?”

Jack: “Not their image. Their essence.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “That’s harder.”

Jack: “That’s goodness.”

Host: The light dimmed as a cloud covered the sun, and for a moment, the studio felt almost sacred — a monastery of thought, of silence and craft.

Jeeny: “You make goodness sound like an aesthetic — like proportion, balance, restraint.”

Jack: “It is. Morality and design share a spine: clarity. The absence of deceit.”

Jeeny: “But art needs emotion too. It needs a pulse. Sometimes the messy, interesting parts are what make it alive.”

Jack: “Emotion doesn’t need to scream to be felt. Look at Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion — just planes, light, and silence. And yet it moves you. That’s what goodness looks like when it forgets to show off.”

Host: The rain softened, becoming mist. The city beyond was a blurred watercolor of grey and silver. Jeeny stood, walking to the window, her reflection overlapping with the outside world.

Jeeny: “Do you ever worry that being good might mean being forgotten?”

Jack: “No. Because being remembered isn’t the point. Doing something right — even if no one claps — that’s enough.”

Jeeny: “But we’re not monks, Jack. We live among people. We need connection, validation, response. Goodness without communication can become isolation.”

Jack: (pauses, his voice quieter now) “Maybe. But I think there’s a kind of goodness that speaks even when you’re silent. Like truth — it doesn’t ask to be heard. It just is.”

Host: A drop from the ceiling hit the floor — slow, resonant, steady. The sound broke the stillness like a metronome marking time.

Jeeny: “You know, when I first started drawing, I wanted to impress people. My teachers, my friends. I made everything bright, strange, loud. But when my mother died, I started sketching differently — smaller, slower. Just lines. I didn’t show anyone for months. And those were the first drawings that ever felt honest.”

Jack: “Because grief burns the vanity out of you.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s when we start being good — when we stop performing.”

Host: The sun broke through the clouds just then, pale gold spilling through the glass. It landed on the models and sketches, revealing every imperfection, every fingerprint, every human trace.

Jack walked over to the window beside her. Their reflections stood side by side, ghostly against the brightening city.

Jack: “Interesting fades. Trends fade. But good things — they endure quietly.”

Jeeny: (nodding) “Like buildings that outlive their architects.”

Jack: “Or words that outlive their writers.”

Jeeny: “Or kindness that outlives memory.”

Host: The rain stopped. The studio filled with stillness — a kind of gentle finality, like the world had taken a long breath and decided to keep it.

Jack picked up a small wooden model, rough and simple. He turned it in his hands, studying it the way one studies a thought — not for beauty, but for truth.

Jeeny watched him, her expression soft.

Jeeny: “You know, Jack… maybe being good isn’t the opposite of being interesting. Maybe it’s what happens when interesting grows up.”

Jack: (smiling faintly) “Maybe. Or maybe goodness is what’s left when everything else burns away.”

Host: The light shifted again — pure, steady, alive. The city outside hummed faintly back to life, its sounds threading through the air like quiet applause.

And in that small studio, surrounded by unfinished work and fading rain, two artists stood side by side — not chasing brilliance, not performing for notice — but quietly, stubbornly, learning how to be good.

The camera drifted back through the glass, out into the open sky. The words on the wall remained — faint, patient, eternal — as the morning light slowly erased them into memory:

“I don’t want to be interesting. I want to be good.”