• A short video about creativity versus conformity. • An interview with musician Colleen. “Stone carving taught me that the important thing is to work. My teacher started her day at eight. She worked in a very small garden in suburban Paris. No computer, no internet, nothing. I thought, This is how you get things Continue reading

• Alan Watts makes a musical analogy. • A food critic interviews himself about how he came by his views of a restaurant. “Because [chef] Jordan Kahn is playing with modes of dining that have never before been articulated. Because months after your meal, images and juxtapositions will flash through your thoughts, as vivid as Continue reading

• More structural advice from John McPhee. “Much of McPhee’s work sits at some thrilling intersection of short story, essay, documentary, field research and epic poem…He gathers every single scrap of reporting on a given project — every interview, description, stray thought and research tidbit — and types all of it into his computer. He Continue reading

• The philosophy of awesomeness. “I arrived at the view that being awesome is being good at creating ‘social openings’—moments of mutual appreciation between people when they break out of their norms and routines by expressing their individuality in a way that gets others to express theirs. Someone sucks when they reject a social opening Continue reading

• Playwright David Mamet on speaking. “People only speak to get something. If I say, Let me tell you a few things about myself, already your defenses go up; you go, Look, I wonder what he wants from me, because no one ever speaks except to obtain an objective. That’s the only reason anyone ever Continue reading

(In this image from an atelier in Kishangarh, India in the early eighteenth century, the female entertainer plucks a tempura, a drone instrument used in Indian music.) (Curious about the sound of the tanpura? Go to http://upasani.org/home/Welcome.html).     Continue reading

• An article about Facebook. (I recommend reading this in its entirety.) “Facebook’s mission used to be ‘making the world more open and connected’. A non-Facebooker reading that is likely to ask: why? Connection is presented as an end in itself, an inherently and automatically good thing. Is it, though?” • An article about Rafael Continue reading

• An article about creative work. “Resist the urge to judge your art prematurely, or to abandon it altogether. Just welcome what comes, and let it be that simple.” • An article about style and monoculture. “Since the early 1990s, Eijkelboom has surreptitiously photographed pedestrians in urban settings, for no longer than two hours in Continue reading