Authenticity
What does it mean for something to be 'authentic'?
Keely Adler and
Authenticity
Donald Glover in an interview with The New Yorker: “Authenticity is the journey of figuring out who you are through what you make.”
What I want to say most is that I am not an improved or better version of myself than I was a year ago because that is no longer a goal — but I am a truer version, a closer-in version, a more expansive and open version, a less clinging-to-certainty version, and that, to me, counts for a lot more than seeking to endlessly upgrade myself.
the goal is not to optimize yourself, it’s to get closer to yourself
Honesty is a strange aesthetic criterion to prioritize. Great confessional art was never about accurately representing reality, but about giving voice to the process of experiencing it—how we feel, not what we’re feeling, making lucid that which usually eludes full expression.
Dirt • Dirt: The Decay of Lying...
A big breakthrough for me – life as a whole – came when I figured out that making solid progress on creative work, and enjoying the process rather than hating it, is in large part a matter of being willing to be who you actually are.
Confessional art can be beautiful, and it can be terrible; either way, to love it only as a representation of what we already know is to deny it, and ourselves, a much richer complexity. Pop music is where fantasies are played out, turned into mansions and lived in, where five hundred people can tumble out of a clown car and every dream comes true.
... See moreDirt • Dirt: The Decay of Lying...
“I think one of the marks of maturity […] - is the willingness to be seen exactly as I am.
As we grow more settled and mature, we become less hidden to others, more transparent to ourselves as well as to each other.
With this growing authenticity comes a deepening of intimacy with each... See more