Authenticity

That’s my big learning of the year: understanding the way someone’s interior life translates to what they make. When I first started writing this Substack, I was possessed by the sense that I had to figure out “how to do it.” Which other Substacks do I like, which other Substacks are popular, what do they write about, how do they make it work. It’s... See more

You never called Eight Sleep a mattress company. Instead, you pioneered a new category of ‘sleep fitness’ by positioning it as a ‘sleep fitness brand.’ Tell me about the decision-making and strategy behind this.

ZATARAIN: We were not intentional about our positioning for the first five years of the company because we didn't even know what brand... See more

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

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learning how to write was very much like learning how to live: it all begins by listening to your inner voice and honoring it.

Living is as much a craft as is writing. There are rules and frameworks one can follow, but ultimately, one must define and cultivate one’s own style.

Voice isn’t only about what you sound like and what you say; it’s also about how you deliver it. As Rebecca Solnit describes it, a writer’s voice is “something of the personality and the principles of the writer, where your humor and seriousness are located, what you believe in, why you write, who and what you write about, and who you write for.”

Donald Glover in an interview with The New Yorker: “Authenticity is the journey of figuring out who you are through what you make.”