Blog

Laura Escudé talks about the importance of creating new music every day, even if it’s only for five or ten minutes (doesn’t matter if it’s “good” or “bad”). I’ve done this for some pretty good stretches in the past; time to start up this habit again. Laura also says, “I perform half-finished songs all the time, because it helps me come up with ideas.” You’re less likely to do that if you’re overly concerned with your creations being perfectly polished jewels.

Reading Cal Newport’s excellent (and recommended) Digital Minimalism. He coins the term “Solitude Deprivation”: “A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.” Our current “obsession with connection” (connection having always been marketed as a benefit) yields widespread Solitude Deprivation — especially among young people born between 1995 and 2012. Many members of the “iGeneration” “have lost the ability to process and make sense of their emotions, or to reflect on who they are and what really matters, or to build strong relationships, or even to just allow their brains time to power down their critical social circuits, which are not meant to be used constantly, and to redirect that energy to other important cognitive housekeeping tasks. We shouldn’t be surprised that these absences lead to malfunctions.”

Big Ears trip day one: We stayed at a delightful Air BnB in McGaheysville VA, and in the morning went around the corner to the Thunderbird Cafe — best french toast ever (big puffy donut-flavored slices). Crispy spicy home fries drenched in maple syrup. We’re in the south now, so of course Valerie had a biscuit (and strawberry jam) with her omelette. Picked up grilled cheese sandwiches at Pop’s (grilled cheese their specialty) in Roanoke for the ride to Knoxville.

From Paul Jarvis: “Lately it seems like there are very few technology features I think are good ideas. Too frequently new “features” are touted as tools we can use, when more often than not they become annoyances we allow into our lives.”

Carlos Santana says that, for him, Gabor Szabo was the “exit out” from the “BB King freeway.”

Reading Book 6 of My Struggle. Karl Ove stumbles upon the essence of Buddhism, though he doesn’t acknowledge it as such. Like Korzybski’s “the map is not the territory.”

“A world without language was a world without categories, where every single thing, no matter how modest, stood out in its own right. It was a world without history, in which only the moment existed. A pine tree in that world was not a “pine,” nor was it a “tree,” but a nameless phenomenon, something growing up out of the ground, which moved when the wind blew.”

I love Tao Lin‘s Twitter style, especially his “I recommend…” tweets. Like:

“I recommend avoiding insane culture and people who mock and ridicule other people”