Random
when Rick Rubin said the audience comes last and art must be your diary on display otherwise it’s not art it’s just commerce …… I felt that
sigh swoonx.comThe idea of needing to "linger in confusion" reminded me of a passage I like from Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams', where he's introducing the idea of free association and quotes some remarks by Schiller: "At a point in his correspondence ... Schiller answers a friend who complains of his lack of creativeness in the following words: “The reas... See more
Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
Grothendieck knew what he found interesting and productively confusing because he had spent three years observing his thought and tracing where it wanted to go. He was not at the mercy of the social world he entered; rather, he “used” it to “further his aims.” (I put things in quotation marks here because what he’s doing isn’t exactly this delibera... See more
Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
Time for tinkering, following my curiosity, and reading about things that interest me can feel like “wasting” time but these periods tend to lead to interesting opportunities. This is because it's a way of getting in the flow with my nature and optimizing for energy first. This ends up being a great hack for avoiding starting things you’ll want to ... See more
If you want to do great work you have to interface with others—learn what they have figured out, find collaborators who can extend your vision, and other support. The trick is doing this without losing yourself. What solitude gives you is an opportunity to study what personal curiosity feels like in its undiluted form, free from the interference of... See more
Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
- Work so fast that you don’t have time to self-censor. While writing the intensely confessional My Struggle, Knausgaard forced himself to write five pages a day to overcome his tendency to freeze up in shame. Every time he acclimated to the pace of his writing, he increased the quota so he would always be overwhelmed—at one point he forced himself t
Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
This experience is common in the childhoods of people who go on to do great work, as I have written elsewhere. Nearly everyone who does great work has some episode of early solitary work. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell remarked, the development of gifted and creative individuals, such as Newton or Whitehead, seems to require a period in which ... See more
Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
“An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s AT somewhere. You always have to realize that you’re constantly in a state of becoming. And, as long as you can stay in that realm you’ll sort of be alright.”
— Bob Dylan
Avoiding feedback also doesn’t mean complete social isolation. A small research lab or a mission-driven startup can approximate a single mind and explore freely. But it does mean taking your own ideas seriously enough to see them through, even if others disagree. Even self-doubt as a form of feedback needs to be carefully regulated.