- A magic spell that protects the user against advertising of all kinds. Use wisely.
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📷 Day 14| statue #mbsept
Food for thought.
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As 9/11 is commemorated again it’s worth reflecting on why some people are wary of US foreign policy. This 9/11 is also the 50th anniversary of the Nixon/Kissinger coup in Chile.
If you think human rights is all ‘liberal crap’, as Nixon did, that right there is why we remain wary.
“¡Nunca más!” 💬
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The dream is diversity
“We co-create with one another and with nature, but by the very creativity of the Universe and us in it, we cannot know what we will co-create.
Then what can guide us? Our guide can be a new founding mythic structure that reflects our full enlivenment: humanity in a creative universe, biosphere and human individual, and social lives that are fully lived and that keep becoming. The dream is diversity, more ways of being human as our 30 or so civilisations across the globe weave together gently enough to honour their roots and allow change to unfold gracefully.
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Walter Benjamin on the obsolete book
“Already today, as the current scientific mode of production teaches, the book is already an obsolete mediation between two different card file systems. For everything essential is found in the index box of the researcher who wrote it, and the scholar who studies it assimilates it in his own card file.”
“Und heute schon ist das Buch, wie die aktuelle wissenschaftliche Produktionsweise lehrt, eine veraltete Vermittlung zwischen zwei verschiedenen Kartotheksystemen.
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I have elephants
A chapter of Sarah Bakewell’s book Humanly Possible considers the life and times of Renaissance scholar Petrarch. Petrarch, she says, wrote a book called Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul (1360), which is a dialogue between three embodied figures: Reason, Sorrow and Joy. Reason’s job here is both to cheer up Sorrow and to settle down Joy.
At one point, Joy says, “I have elephants.”
Reason replies, “May I ask for what purpose?
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To build something big, start with small fragments
Building something big from something small. That’s how everything big gets built. 💬
Traditionally, a writer identifies a subject of interest and researches it, then writes about it. In the (my) blogging method, the writer blogs about everything that seems interesting, until a subject gels out of all of those disparate, short pieces.
Blogging isn’t just a way to organize your research — it’s a way to do research for a book or essay or story or speech you don’t even know you want to write yet.
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💬 “In a society that profits from your self doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act”.
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💬 “Energy moves in waves…”
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We think best when we bring opposites together
“We think best when we bring opposites together, when we realize that all these realities, one inside the other, are somehow connected. That’s how the wonder and amazement that are so necessary to both poetry and philosophy come about.” Charles Simic, Paris Review, quoted by Austin Kleon
I’m constantly amazed that something I just saw or read in one context appears again in another, completely different context. And then it appears again.
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You don't build art, you grow it
Finished reading: Dancing with the Gods by Kent Nerburn 📚
This book is advice on the artistic life from an experienced sculptor and writer. I found one section particularly striking. It contrasted two approaches to making art: that of the architect and that of the gardener.
“The architect designs and builds; he [sic] knows the desired outcome before he begins. The gardener plants and cultivates, trusting the sun and weather and the vagaries of change to bring forth a bloom.
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What I learned from Austin Kleon about sharing what you know
Learning and sharing, sharing and learning. It’s a virtuous circle. That’s what I learned, and that’s what I’m sharing.
“it’s not about being credentialed or being an expert, it’s about seeing a space open up, starting to do work that needs doing, sharing your ideas, and sticking around long enough so people show up and you can interact with them in a meaningful way and build something lasting.” Austin Kleon
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You can get a lot done by writing slowly
“People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so prolific’…God, it doesn’t feel like it—nothing like it. But, you know, you put an ounce in a bucket each day, you get a quart.”
John McPhee (quoted by Cal Newport) Journalist John McPhee rarely wrote more than 500 words a day, but his secret was the power of repetition. He did this seemingly small amount of writing nearly every day throughout his long career.