Salman Ansari
@salmanscribbles
embracing my inner polymath — writing, drawing, coding, playing
Salman Ansari
salman.io
One consequence of everything feeling thin & flimsy, is that it's really hard for complex emotions to form. They feel like sand slipping through my fingers, and won't manifest or grow roots.
For an emotion to successfully manifest in my mind, it has to be either super simple or super strong. This goes for both happy & sad emotions.
I still feel a lot of joy, love, and gratitude, because those emotions are really simple. They don't require a lot of intricate structure.
I have a harder time feeling anticipation, romantic love, a crush that gives me butterflies, "fun", anger, irritation, sadness, grief, loneliness, surprise, melancholy, and most other emotions.
I no longer pray—
now I drink dark chocolate
and let the moon sing to me.
now I drink dark chocolate
and let the moon sing to me.
Status and the Illusion of Progress - More To That
moretothat.com
“status is one of our greatest poisons. Because the pursuit of it is the very antithesis of knowing yourself. Anytime you play a status game, you take on the perspective of an outsider looking in, judging who you are based on whatever metric or position you’re chasing. You give credence to the belief that you’re not enough, and that there’s something you need to achieve to finally accept who you are. But of course, any chase of this nature has no end, given that your very participation in this chase means that self-acceptance isn’t possible.”
Writer and illustrator A. Kendra Greene on becoming an artist by listening – The Creative Independent
A. Kendra Greenethecreativeindependent.com
A poet asked me to illustrate a book, and I realized I don’t think I’m an illustrator—I think I’m a bookmaker.
I can relate. Since illustrating my own book, I’ve spent a lot more time drawing, and this has brought up opportunities to illustrate other peoples’ books. But it just didn’t feel right. I want to tell stories, and often they come to me in words as well as drawings, and I like to show both. I think that makes me more of a multimedia storyteller, than what we might think of as an illustrator.
MIYAZAKI: They are trying to shorten childhood, which is the best time of one’s life. I’m afraid the world of children changes when they learn how to read and write. From what I saw of my own children, when they didn’t know how to read and write and didn’t yet have the ability to grasp abstract matters, they were so free in making wonderfully inven
... See moreHayao Miyazaki • Turning Point: 1997-2008
In an age where attention spans have shrunk, just enough to handle the brevity of TikTok videos. Commitment is measured in minutes. We’ve taken the sacred and turned it into a sampler. Spirituality has become a bizarre buffet. A little of everything….mindfulness, a little bit of mantras, a pop of psychology, a sprinkle of astrology—and we call it spirituality. Add to that a dash of Zen, a spoonful of Krishna, a whiff of Jesus, topped with a sprinkle. Of Rumi and a side of “I read The Secret once.” Voila! We call it “my own spiritual path.”
In reality, it’s more like spiritual fast food—convenient, quick, comforting… and utterly devoid of nutritional value.
In a culture of constant busyness, finding the time to read can be challenging.
Here's a list of some excellent SHORT books you can read in just a few hours: https://t.co/4UN6C1FrWJ
This Nonprofit Wants To Use AI To Understand Animal Communication–And Two Billionaires Are Backing It
Phoebe Liuforbes.com
I love the idea of being able to speak with animals. I am suspicious of the billionaire motive here.
The Earth Species Project has largely run on donations from billionaires, in part thanks to its cofounders’ roots in Silicon Valley. Raskin met Hoffman when he was working at Mozilla designing Firefox and Hoffman was on the board. He first floated the idea of the Earth Species Project to Hoffman in 2015. Hoffman is “fascinated by the philosophical implications of what happens when it’s not just humans that have culture and have language, and what that means for the shift in the relationship between humanity and the rest of nature,” Raskin says.
I think that being an artist ultimately is about searching for a kind of freedom, a freedom of spirit, and a freedom in making. The moment when that is possible comes at different times for different people. You should never give up, because being an artist—there’s no one path to it. It’s not like some other fields. If you’re an artist, you’re alwa... See more
When it comes to creativity, optimize for freedom