The New Romantics
Mastery is fine, but you must retain the ability to think like a beginner.
Austin Kleon • Questions without answers
"The Chinese say you need three things for paintings: the hand, the eye and the heart,” says the painter David Hockney. “I think that remark is very, very good. Two won’t do. A good eye and heart is not enough, neither is a good hand and eye.”
Head, heart, hands
In a culture obsessed with speed, certainty, and specialization, Leonardo’s secret feels almost rebellious: take your time, learn widely, think deeply.
Eric Markowitz • What Leonardo’s obsession with water teaches us about longevity
Basic dynamic in life: there is nothing meaningful enough to make you happy that could not make you sad if you lost it. This is the paradox of feeling, and it’s inherent and existential. If things inspire real positive emotion in you then they are necessarily things in which you are sufficiently invested that you would feel negative emotions when... See more
freddiedeboer.substack.com • You Are You. We Live Here. This Is Now.
The people we traditionally consider to be smartest are those best at some sort of a general math / reasoning ability.
This is not what genius is.
This is not what genius is.
Alexey Guzey • Intelligence killed genius - Alexey Guzey
Which brings us back to the question of traditionalism and dynamism, and their potential interaction: if you have had a cultural revolution that cleared too much ground, razed too many bastions and led to a kind of cultural debasement and forgetting, you probably need to go backward, or least turn that way for recollection, before you can hope to... See more
Ross Douthat • The fall of the intellectual
Alas, we’re too dumb for the big ideas. Pop psychology, it is! Pass me my copy of Atomic Habits.
When I had the flip phone, I had to put in effort to get to places, to talk to people. Everything was a task. Now it’s easy to do things. I guess I still don’t like needing the crutch of a smartphone, though I couldn’t figure out how to go on without one.”
Link
You Don’t Have To Make Art
The early chorus of generative AI tools:
“Now everyone can make art regardless of their skills or tools.”
Could you not make art before? Even elephants can paint. Our ancestors created well known art by etching with a stone into the walls of the caves they called home. A kid with a box of discount crayons has no problem