Creativity

When I was younger, I was skateboarding a lot. I was listening to music and skateboarding. There were two songs, that are widely different: DJ Shadow’s “Building Steam With a Grain of Salt,” and Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.” And I remember skateboarding to them and they made me just stop. And the world felt so cool. I would look... See more

Let go of self-delusion, which is maybe the hardest thing of all to let go of. Shape the thing you’re making into a pure expression of the thing you’re making: “Cut away, strip away the unnecessary, and strip away what people expect.”

Bob Dylan on the otherworldliness of creativity (2004) “I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written.” It is reminiscent of how mathematical discoveries tend to speak themselves—not to the experienced—but to the young. Show more