I’m learning to love books again. When I was a kid I read mediocre books at insane rates. Then I moved to Canada, and the time that used to be filled with books and being outside was replaced with time spent in front of the computer. This story’s been thought a million times, and told zero because no one really wants to hear it.
When it comes to movies, music, books, and art I only have one gauge — the feeling I get afterward. Doesn’t even matter if it’s positive, as long as it’s strong. There’s nothing like watching “The Social Network” for a young coder to get a swift kick to the ass. I value movies like that because aside from making me feel more alive for two hours, they make me feel like I can be a better person in the next few.
Books are different. To borrow a quote from “The Dark Knight Rises”, a good book will make you feel a feeling in your bones. Watching a movie is acute exposure. You get a strong dose but you wake up in the morning and you’re not much closer to being Mark Zuckerberg. A book is chronic. I read books in small amounts, over weeks. Each day gives me time to process and absorb the book, even if it isn’t conscious. Each day, a little more of a good book will make its way into my marrow.
I won’t wake up one day and be Ender Wiggin the same way I won’t ever wake up and be Zuck, and that’s okay. A movie is treacherous because it makes you feel like you might.
I have a few friends who are real beer guys. They understand it, know it, drink it and love it. It’s great. I also have some friends who are indie music people. They know the bands, they go to the shows and they live and breathe indie. These guys/gals are great too.
I tried to be a guy of a thing a few times now. I tried tea, but it ended up going nowhere once I realized I don’t have the palate for it. I tried being a wine guy, but that stalled once I accepted the fact that most alcohol just tastes like bitter burning to me. I wasn’t any of those guys. Now I’m the guy who doesn’t care. Now I just do whatever I please. In retrospect, trying to be a “tea guy” without actually loving tea from the start seems stupid in the extreme. Trying to develop an interest from the top-down (i.e. declaring your love for it, and then becoming an expert) is basically just delusional.
Ever since I discovered Blogger a while ago, I wanted to be the kind of guy who blogged. I had accounts on WordPress, Vox, Pownce, LiveJournal, Tumblr, you name it. Then at some point years later, I gradually started to develop an interest in writing. I started to read more literature, I picked up some books on writing, and I started to try and apply it. My stupid attempts to be a guy who has a blog met my genuine desire to write halfway, and I suddenly feel like maybe I really will become a blogging guy. The only difference is that now I don’t care. I just like to write.
By the time I finish publishing this article, a few bands will record great tracks, a few writers will write great articles and what seems like an infinity of great TV will get recorded. At the time time, millions of gigabytes of crap with be generated along with it.
Ever since content creation was democratized by computers, the amount of great music, video and writing available to the average person has shot through the ceiling. With all this great content available, there is no need to consume anything but the very best. It’s a waste of time, and it’s tantamount to polluting your brain, the same way that fast food pollutes your body. Do not waste your time with anything but truly top-notch TV, the best books and music that makes you feel more alive.
Listening through to the end of an album you clearly don’t like isn’t being respectful to the artist — it’s silly. They never meant for everyone to like their music. This applies to all manner of content. Just because you already sank some time into an activity doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cut your losses and stop. The only exception is if there’s a reasonable chance that the quality will improve soon (i.e. it was recommended by someone with good taste.)
This is a maxim, but it’s a useful one. The Reddits and Diggs of the world try to curate the world’s best content but very quickly they start to curate the lower common denominator content instead. It’s time to take curation into our own hands, or source it from people we trust. Enough crap.
This post is about The Dark Knight Rises, and I suppose it has some spoilers.
TDKR has a lot in it worth talking about. There are a lot of intricate and important themes, but I want to talk about hope and despair. To me, the prison pit sequence was the most powerful — I was almost shaking during the scenes. It’s a literal pit. A pit where you can look up and see hope — it didn’t even need an explanation from Bane, the image is so powerful. The entire setup is worth considering.
He’s not alone. He’s sharing a fate with a variety of tortured souls with their own pains and motivations. Everyone is given a fair chance to climb out. In fact, it’s actually a very clear path. Each next step presents itself in an obvious way as soon as it is reached. The goal is always in sight. In order to escape the pit, one must make a leap. Not only that, one has to untether themselves from whatever is preventing them from pushing off with full force in order to make it. The rope isn’t fear, the rope isn’t anger, the rope is something different for each person. The consequences for failing are dire, but failing to try is… well… you can see the results around you. Broken.
This is without even getting into the pain of being at the bottom, the excruciating recovery process or any of that.
As I said, all this imagery is almost too obvious … but I loved every second of it.
I’m sorry, I still don’t like kickstarter. Following your dreams is supposed to cost you everything. That’s what the everything is for.
It’s almost the same as asking whether our children should feel the same hardships as us and build character, or be blissfully unaware. What I’m saying is, that quote is important, and it’ll be a long time before I decide whether I agree or disagree with it. For now though, I’m not on board with it. Kickstarter was never meant to be a platform for people to fund their vision quests. Hate the players. It’s a platform that brings fundraising to the masses and allows a new generation of entrepreneurs to fund their projects.
I used to do the digital equivalent of hoarding albums. I’d download entire ones, listen to them once and then feel super proud that I listened to this whole album, and I know it, and therefore I’m a bigger fan of the band than thou. Go me! A few hours ago I just said “fuck it” and stopped that whole mentality in its tracks. I made my first playlist, called “summer”.
I don’t listen to music in albums, I just skip past all the tracks I don’t like anyway. Every time. So, what I usually do, is I open Rdio and play a bunch of random music depending on my mood. My mood is mostly affected by the weather, which is mostly affected by the current season. The songs I listen to are mostly dependent on the season. So I made a playlist called “summer”. Now I’m sitting on the balcony and I don’t need to skip songs every 5 minutes. Damn, that was easy.
Being young, and feeling alive, and experiencing the world, and being part of something bigger than yourself and putting yourself out there and trying new things and understanding what’s happening around you and participating and having friends and understanding strangers and letting go.
It’s real simple. Basically, there’s three grabbers, three taggers, five twig runners, and the player at Whack-Bat. Center tagger lights a pine cone and chucks it over the basket and the whack-batter tries to hit the cedar stick off the cross rock. Then the twig runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls, “Hot Box!”; Finally, at the end, you count up however many score-downs it adds up to and divide that by nine.
On, you know, the absurdity of it all, and I suppose talent. Yep.
This post by Dave Gamache made Lifehacker today, so the idea of craftsmanship is on my mind again. I love that article for many reasons but today I found a new one. I like it because it’s humbling to know that being a real craftsman is as much a function of caring and exercising your craft as pure time and effort put into it, year, after year, after year. So, even though I’m a cocky young turk every now and again it’s good to realize how much is still ahead.
