THE GAP by Ira Glass
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THE GAP by Ira Glass
The pianist whose fingers seem supernaturally nimble, the presenter whose message seems viscerally compelling, and the artist whose paintings seem impossibly realistic all wield the same magic: they’ve invested more time than you’d expect.
It's so frustrating when you have good taste, but your taste exceeds your abilities. I’ve been feeling this so much the past year. If you find yourself in the midst of the mud, I urge you to let the gap between where you are and where you want to be inspire you instead of be an excuse to beat yourself up. I aspire to Isak Dinesen’s way: work a litt
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“Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It
... See more“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste,” says public radio personality Ira Glass. “But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer.”
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Glass focuses on the gap that often exists between taste and ability—especially early on in a creative career. It’s easier to learn to recognize what’s good, he notes, than to master the skills required to meet this standard. I can see brilliance in the epic three-minute tracking shot that opens Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, but I would hav
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In the more than fifteen years since then, I have had one constant theme in my work: “To watch good animation, and then to make something that surpasses it.”