If art begins with where we point our attention, a life is made out of paying attention to what we pay attention to.

When you find something that resonates, its use is not always immediately apparent. A line in a song might be the seed for your next coding project or inspire the title for the book you’re writing. It can be difficult to predict how something that resonates today might be useful in the future.

“Dumpster diving” is one of the jobs of the artist—finding the treasure in other people’s trash, sifting through the debris of our culture, paying attention to the stuff that everyone else is ignoring, and taking inspiration from the stuff that people have tossed aside for whatever reasons.