Tag: Quotes

Ira Glass: Creative Work

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through. Ira Glass

The Gift of Dyslexia

When someone masters something, it becomes a part of that person. It becomes part of the individual’s thought and creative process. It adds the quality of its essence to all subsequent thought and creativity of the individual. Ronald D. Davis, The Gift of Dyslexia

Utah Phillips on Work

That’s when [Fry Pan Jack] told me – you know, he’d been tramping since 1927 – he said, “I told myself in ’27, if I cannot dictate the conditions of my labor, I will henceforth cease to work.” Hah! You don’t have to go to college to figure these things out, no sir! He said, “I learned when I was young that the only true life I had was the life of my brain. But if it’s true the only real life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition?” Fat chance! Utah Phillips

Sherry Turkle on Social Media

Social media, for all of it’s bounties—and I’m very enthusiastic of all the bounties of social media—it also gives us an opportunity to hide. We perform ourselves on social media, and that is different from being ourselves on social media. That ability to perform yourself is also an ability to hide. It leads to something that I call “Fear of missing out.” You’re always watching what other people are doing and you begin to be jealous because they’re showing their best selves and you’re showing your best self. You almost become jealous of the life you live on Facebook. You have to remind yourself that it’s your life because you’re showing your best self. Sherry Turkle

It’s Been So Long Since We Had a Parade

[Including the lyrics on this one, because they are important.]

Dear brothers and sisters,
Dear enemies and friends,
Why are we all so alone here?
All we need is a little more hope, a little more joy;
All we need is a little more light, a little less weight, a little more freedom.
If we were an army, and if we believed that we were an army,
And we believed that everyone was scared like little lost children in their grown up clothes and poses,
So we ended up alone here floating through long wasted days, or great tribulations.
While everything felt wrong.
Good words, strong words, words that could’ve moved mountains!
Words that no one ever said.
We were all waiting to hear those words and no one ever said them.
And the tactics never hatched,
And the plans were never mapped,
And we all learned not to believe.
And strange lonesome monsters loafed through the hills wondering why…
And it is best to never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever wonder why.
So tangle – oh tangle us up in bright red ribbons!
Let’s have a parade.
It’s been so long since we had a parade, so let’s have a parade!
Let’s invite all our friends
And all our friends’ friends!
Let’s promenade down the boulevards with terrific pride and light in our eyes
Twelve feet tall and staggering
Sick with joy with the angels there and light in our eyes
Brothers and sisters, hope still waits in the wings like a bitter spinster
Impatient, lonely and shivering, waiting to build her glorious fires
It’s because of our plans man; our beautiful ridiculous plans
Let’s launch them like careening jetplanes
Let’s crash all our planes in the river
Let’s build strange and radiant machines at this jericho waiting to fall.
—Thee Silver Mt Zion, “Built then Burnt (Hurrah! Hurrah!)”

New Year, 2011

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. — Neil Gaiman

Mr. Gaiman certainly has a knack for stating things well.

Controlled Information

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. —Robert A. Heinlein, “If This Goes On”

To further this notion, check out this commentary on the difference between 1984 and Brave New World.

We All Need Someone to Look at Us.

It’s an astute observation, though some of the context of his examples is lost without the rest of the book.

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories to the kind of look we wish to live under.

The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words for the look of the public. That is the case with the German singer, the American actress, and even the tall, stooped editor with the big chin. He was accustomed to his readers, and when one day the Russians banned his newspaper, he had the feeling that that atmosphere was suddenly a hundred times thinner. Nothing could replace the look of unknown eyes. He thought he would suffocate. Then one day he realized that he was constantly being followed, bugged, and surreptitiously photographed in the street. Suddenly he had anonymous eyes on him and he could breathe again! He began making theatrical speeches to the microphones in his wall. In the police, he had found his lost public.

The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. Marie-Claude and her daughter belong in the second category.

Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. Tereza and Tomas belong in the third category.

And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers. Franz, for example. He traveled to the borders of Cambodia only for Sabina. As the bus bumped along the Thai road, he could feel her eyes fixed on him in a long stare. — Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being