Michael Dean
@michaeldean
Michael Dean
The swan in the lake is more than an Instagram photo prop, it’s a tool for you to imagine the consciousness of another being. What’s it like to be a swan? The person who sees the swan as a compositional elements through a grid of thirds might miss this thought experiment.
I’ve been noticing that paragraphs are stronger when they close on showing instead of telling. The power of closing on an image is that it requires reader visualization and interpretation. It’s active, it’s open-ended, and it creates a draw to the next paragraph in search of some kind of resolution.
Telling on the other hand is logical, revealing,
... See moreon writing and EA: flow
Fucking gerunds! “A gerund is a verb in its present participle form (root verb + “ing”) that acts as a noun in a sentence.
How would you use commas here?
a) long, fucking cold winters …
b) long, fucking-cold winters …
c) long, fucking, cold winters …
d) long, cold fucking winters …
e) long, cold-fucking winters …
f) long, cold, fucking winters.
Try writing a whole page left-handed.
obliques and handwriting
quaternity — yesterday I wrote about four poles; I was seeing it as an overall map of virtues, but it’s also a micro-concept that’s fractally lodged in other virtues. Take kairos: “up” is the ability to perceive the field, “down” is knowing the opportunity of an action, “right” is the ability to flow into it, “left” is the technical skill required
... See morealchemy and
The “2D plane” is the plane for making sense of 1D linear arts (writing) or 3D spatial arts (architecture). It’s a middle ground where you can diagram to see the relationships between things. In the case of 1D>2D, you are “upshifting” to see patterns that aren’t visible. In the case of 3D>2D, you are “downshifting” to reduce complexity into
... See moreOscar Wilde quotes on leisure:
“Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”
“
quotes and
What’s the difference between wisdom and philosophy? (Saw this as a prompt for a writing competition… and it’s in the context of AI). Where philosophy might be abstract, external, and machine-possible, wisdom is hard earned. Wisdom is a kind of slow intelligence; no matter what you know, you have to apply it, misuse it, and grok the implications in
... See more