Hanna E Dotson
@hannadotson
Hanna E Dotson
On Marina Abramović
For the first three months, I place each student at a table with a thousand pieces of paper and a trash can underneath. Every day they have to sit at the table for several hours and write ideas. They put the ideas they like on the right side of the table; the ones they don’t like, they put in the trash. But we don’t throw out the trash. After three months, I only take the ideas from the trash can. I don’t even look at the ideas they liked. Because the trash can is a treasure trove of things they’re afraid to do.
As Anaïs Nin wrote, “When we go deeply into the personal, we go beyond the personal. We achieve something that is collective.”
Suleika Jaouad • The Book of Alchemy
My high-level advice—which supersedes everything below—is that you should decide what you want from your writing, and then completely ignore any advice which detracts from this goal. This includes advice which is practically sound but psychologically destructive when it comes to sustaining motivation.
Celine Nguyen • In Praise of Writing on the Internet
For the aspirant, there’s nothing more comforting than realizing you are not alone in trying. You’re not alone in trying to find a subject, trying to develop the discipline, trying to turn your life towards something that you can’t quite understand yet.
how to change your life, part 2: agnes callard's aspiration
Explaining creative 'Resistance': the more important a project is to your soul's growth, the more fear it generates.
TRANSCRIPT
And I'd like your reflections on it and what you intended when you said it, which is, quote, the more important to your soul's growth, the stronger the resistance will be, which for me was very counterintuitive.
We all imagine the creative process as one of, you know, being inspired. Oh, this is my soul's work. and having a ton of motivation to
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The psychological roots of status anxiety and how a good childhood enables the acceptance of an ordinary adult life.
TRANSCRIPT
and if you think about the impulse to be rich and famous and esteemed it's really a desire that gets soaked up by religions religions are saying everybody you know in in christianity every hair on your head is numbered in other words someone's really looking at you someone knows you in the way that a parent a good parent knows a child you know the
... See moreI couldn’t help but come to the conviction, right there on the bus, that one of the most important questions modern man must ask himself is how much time he is willing to spend being passively entertained.
