On interesting
Cultivating a point of view, finding ideas, understanding what Interesting is.
On interesting
The power of pattern recognition:
As I read, as I do my work, as I go about my days, the word ekphrasis continues to come up. I read it everywhere: in edits on a piece I’ve written about an artist’s documentaries, in Instagram captions, on podcasts. I’ve certainly encountered it before, probably in college, but I... See more
“When you’re working on a project, you may notice apparent coincidences appearing more often than randomness allows—almost if there is another hand guiding yours in a certain direction.” — Rick Rubin
an Information Billionaire
Dana Gioia on Becoming an Information Billionaire (Ep.119)
Tyler Cowen describing Dana Gioia, Ted Gioia’s brother
As a teenager, I read guitar magazines not because I could play guitar or was a particularly talented musician but because I liked the technicalities they would explain. Regular music magazines talked about everything around the music; I wanted to get inside it. I haven’t played a violin in years but I still long to get inside the music, to inhabit... See more
Alicia Kennedy • On Turning 39
Alicia Kennedy on tempo
Reminded me of when I described to Dad the feeling of wanting to be “in the sound” at the Meschel N gig.
Expression is compression
It takes 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. So whenever I feel like I don’t have enough ideas to create something meaningful, I go collect more experiences and spend time processing them by writing and talking to friends.
Even writers who work full-time spend most of their hours away from the keyboard. Full-time
... See moreConstraint + format = creative forward motion (inspired by Russell's On Interesting)
Rereading is training, practice for remaking and unmaking—and, yes, razing—the world. Rereading draws your best thoughts close, keeps them at the ready, prepares you to think thoughts with them, prepares you to act with them at hand. Your favorite reads are your armor and your weapons and your shelter all in one. What have you gathered about you?... See more
Mandy Brown • The case for rereading
“The process of making art is the process of becoming a person with agency, with independent thought, a producer of meaning rather than a consumer of meanings that may be at odds with your soul, your destiny, your humanity, so there’s another kind of success in becoming conscious that matters and that is up to you and nobody else and within your
... See more“I am only interested in people as long as they are unpredictable to me. If I can predict what you’ll do or say, I’ll lose interest in you rapidly. If you can keep regularly surprising me in some way, forcing me to actually think in unscripted ways in order to respond, I’ll stay interested. It’s reciprocal. I suspect the people with whom I develop
... See more“If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.
Though we can’t change what it is that we are noticing, we can change our ability to notice.”
— Rick Rubin The Creative Act