Salman Ansari
@salmanscribbles
embracing my inner polymath — writing, drawing, coding, playing
Salman Ansari
@salmanscribbles
embracing my inner polymath — writing, drawing, coding, playing
Kafka urges the young man to stay present with his difficult emotions:
Just be quiet and patient. Let evil and unpleasantness pass quietly over you. Do not try to avoid them. On the contrary, observe them carefully. Let active understanding take the place of reflex irritation, and you will grow out of your trouble. Men can achieve greatness only by surmounting their own littleness.
I relate to this energy of audience, I used to get it from teaching, and now in a remote world I feel the deep lack of such energy infusion in my life. The days feel more empty and dull, more of a drag.
The reward of that one hour on stage is the highest potency nutrients that you could possibly imagine when it’s good, so you keep going back out because you want to get that. It’s not about adulation. It’s really not. It’s the exchange between yourself and the audience. So, I don’t know how to manage those things, those needs with the practicalities, the desire not to take more than I give. It’s tricky.
This is the sad, but perhaps logical, endpoint of the anonymity problem. If fans don’t know anything about their favorite artists, does it matter if they even exist?
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