Today I have a suggested addition to your next museum visit or gallery hop or art-viewing journey. It’s borrowed from, or at least inspired by, the recent book Get The Picture, by Bianca Bosker¹.
Get The Picture got lots of attention for taking a buzzy peek into the high-end art world, including its occasional absurdities. And that is very fun stuff. But also, threaded through the book, and animating its concluding section, is an articulation of Bosker’s evolving sense of how to appreciate art, and looking and perception in general. Some of that material has a very TAoN vibe.
Among other things, Bosker spends time as a museum guard at the Guggenheim in New York, and based on that and all her art-looking adventures, she sketches the parameters for the museum tour she would like to lead. To quote her directly:
One: You don’t have to look at everything.
Two: You do have to look at something for at least five minutes.
Three: Don’t you dare lay eyes on the wall text— that is, the...
I think freedom, ideally, is being able to choose your responsibilities. Not not having any responsibilities, but being able to choose which things you want to be responsible for.
– Toni Morrison
Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music. – Goethe
Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.
– Max Frisch
Psychology identifies two core types of happiness:
Hedonic: Achieved through pleasure, enjoyment, and satisfaction.
Eudaimonic: Achieved through meaning, purpose, and authenticity.
Hedonic happiness is associated with a focus on maximizing short-term pleasure and minimizing pain.
Eudaimonic happiness is associated with a focus on virtue or value-oriented living. It was first proposed by Aristotle, who argued that achieving long-term, durable happiness required people to live in accordance with their values and focus on a higher purpose or meaning.
"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." - Voltaire
“What’s this for?”
Says the carpenter
as he saws it off.
Japanese Senryu
the doctor has a cold
but he's eating noodle soup
and resting in bed
Japanese Senryu
the grumbler
finally stands up to leave
then grumbles for an hour
Japanese Senryu
"When nothing seems to help, I go back and look at the stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it—but all that had gone before." - Jacob Riis
When describing the origins of "Gangsta's Paradise" Coolio once said that he didn't write the song, the song wrote him.
The grass is always greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.
– @morganhousel
Steve Mesler, who in 2010 achieved his life's ambition by winning a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. Mentally, he found the victory very hard to process — that twenty years of hard work could be capped by pushing a sled down a track in a matter of seconds. He articulates the troubles he had afterwards here well, explaining how he had to "mourn" his success
“If risk is what happens when you make good decisions but end up with a bad outcome, luck is what happens when you make bad or mediocre decisions but end up with a great outcome. They both happen because the world is too complex to allow 100% of your actions dictate 100% of your outcomes.”
kenopsia: “the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet
Sonder — the realization that every random stranger has their own unique story and is living a life as complex as your own.
“Ride the horse you are given.
Let go the reins,
it is a sacred animal.
It will bring you home.
– Emerson
If other people having it worse than you means you can’t be sad, then other people having it better than you would mean you can’t be happy. Feel what you feel.
Sturgeon’s law states that 90% of everything is crap. If you dislike poetry, or fine art, or anything, it’s possible you’ve only ever seen the crap. Go looking!
Call your parents when you think of them, tell your friends when you love them.
“If they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you” and “those who live by the sword die by the sword” mean the same thing. Viciousness you excuse in yourself, friends, or teammates will one day return to you, and then you won’t have an excuse.
Procrastination comes naturally, so apply it to bad things. “I want to hurt myself right now. I’ll do it in an hour.” “I want a smoke now, so in half an hour I’ll go have a smoke.” Then repeat. Much like our good plans fall apart while we delay them, so can our bad plans.