Salman Ansari
@salmanscribbles
embracing my inner polymath — writing, drawing, coding, playing
Salman Ansari
salman.io
Wilderness, Solitude, and Creativity: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent’s Century-Old Meditations on Art and Life During Seven Months on a Small Alaskan Island
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org
That’s one hell of an endorsement!
Not often — a handful of times in a lifetime, if you are lucky — you come upon a work of thought and feeling — a book, a painting, a song — that becomes a fountain to which you return again and again, and which returns you to your life refreshed each time.
For me, The Little Prince has been one, and Leaves of Grass, and I Put a Spell on You, and Spiegel im Spiegel. Wilderness (public library) by the painter, printmaker, and philosopher Rockwell Kent (June 21, 1882–March 13, 1971) is another
Don’t do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be one with your work.
—Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Sojourns in the Parallel World: America Ferrera Reads Denise Levertov’s Ode to Our Ambivalent Relationship with Nature
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org
We could lament that the price we have paid for our so-called progress in the century and half since Muir has been a loss of perspective blinding us to this essential kinship with the rest of nature. But that would be a thoroughly ahistorical lament. We humans have always had a troubled relationship with this awareness — from the pre-Copernican days, when we hailed ourselves as the center of the universe, to the campaign launched against Darwin for demonstrating our evolutionary consanguinity to every single creature on this beautiful planet.
Still, something deep inside us — something elemental, beyond the ego and its conscious reasonings — vibrates with an irrepressible sense of our belonging to and with nature
Meanwhile, some of the most serious people I know do their serious thing gratis and make their loot somewhere else. My dad, whose photographs sit at the top of every Experimental History post, quit his job at the newspaper and went to work as a postal carrier instead. Why? As he puts it: “I could afford better lenses delivering mail than I could... See more
Adam Mastroianni • Surely You Can Be Serious
While I do enjoy my work in startups, I sometimes think of it as “fundraising” for the creative work I do. The world doesn’t usually fund the things it needs most (art). So sometimes you have to find a way to fund it yourself.
A More Ethical Zoo Experience: The Future Is Holographic Zoos | Born Free USA
Devan Schowebornfreeusa.org
When writing for children: Write up, not down. Don’t dumb it down. They love a challenge.
A great story about simplicity from Akio Morita, the instigator of the Walkman project at Sony:
Engineers had the technology to add the recording function to the Walkman and it would’ve cost only 50 cents to a dollar per unit. Morita decided against it. He wanted the device to have one function, which it performs very well. Walkman should only play
Creativity requires connecting the dots, and connecting the dots requires allowing time for my subconscious to consolidate my ideas and make associations. This means that, from time to time, I need to just stare out the window and do nothing.
This doesn’t feel productive, even though it is.
This doesn’t feel productive, even though it is.