On how to grow an idea

• Introducing a long delay between when you do the work and when it is shown to the world. Annie Ernaux writes about this in A Simple Passion, a memoir about how she becomes obsessed in a banal way with a man who is having an affair with her—the thought that others will read th

The “idea” isn’t a finished product with identifiable boundaries that one moment sprung into being—one of the reasons artists so hate the interview question, “So what was your inspiration for this?” Any idea is actually an unstable, shifting intersection between myself and whatever I was encountering. By extension, thought doesn’t occur somehow ins

interesting ideas normally come from the slow accumulation of related thoughts, questions and ponderings.

I think that “doing nothing”—in the sense of refusing productivity and stopping to listen—entails an active process of listening that seeks out the effects of racial, environmental, and economic injustice and brings about real change.