Authenticity
What does it mean for something to be 'authentic'?
Keely Adler and
Authenticity
“I tell this to my students: It's not about copying me or my logic systems. It's about allowing yourself to be yourself.”
–Frank Ghery
Pretty much everything in life is like this: there are some ways you can show up that just feel better. And when you show up for the truest and most beautiful version of your life that you can imagine, you feel excited and alive.
Ava • Not Disappointing Myself
“It seems to me,” the puppeteer Jim Henson (The Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, etc.) said, “that each of us expressing our own originality is the essence of our art and professionalism.” Don’t hide it. Embrace it. Express it. Manifest it through your discipline. Say it out loud
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
Meanwhile, a fixation on honesty continues to pervade popular arts discourse, music included. Indie scenesters have historically been the ones to agitate most over authenticity, but in the golden age of confessional pop music, the aesthetic concern with honesty isn’t limited to subculture anymore. Direct access to artists’ personal lives seems more
... See moreDirt • Dirt: The Decay of Lying...
Swept up in the Instagramization of the 2010s, the contemporary poetry world saw an exaltation of ‘honesty’ as an aesthetic priority. Poetry not as craft, but as ‘outlet,’ with the goal not of developing ourselves and enriching our understanding of the world, but of sitting more comfortably with how we already were and what we already believed.
... See moreDirt • Dirt: The Decay of Lying...
instead of asking:
how can i be more like them?
ask:
how can i be more like me?
how many versions of me do i occupy? where do they live? how do they grow? what will they bloom into? what rituals do they practice? how do they... See more
