Rilke's words of wisdom

“It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed. It is shyness before any sort of new and unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

The Futile Pursuit of Happiness

''We don't realize how quickly we will adapt to a pleasurable event and make it the backdrop of our lives. When any event occurs to us, we make it ordinary. And through becoming ordinary, we lose our pleasure.''

It is easy to overlook something new and crucial in what Wilson is saying. Not that we invariably lose interest in bright and shiny things over time -- this is a long-known trait -- but that we're generally unable to recognize that we adapt to new circumstances and therefore fail to incorporate this fact into our decisions. So, yes, we will adapt to the BMW and the plasma TV, since we adapt to virtually everything. But Wilson and Gilbert and others have shown that we seem unable to predict that we will adapt. Thus, when we find the pleasure derived from a thing diminishing, we move on to the next thing or event and almost certainly make another error of prediction, and then another, ad infinitum.

NY Times Article

I realize #eh

You have to believe in something. It can be life, luck, love, destiny, yourself, your purpose, or even God. If you believe in nothing, there is no effort, no desire and no hope for anything better.

INTEGRITY.

in⋅teg⋅ri⋅ty
[in-teg-ri-tee]

1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
2. the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.
3. a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of a ship's hull.

Outliers

"The striking thing about Ericsson's study is that he
and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals," musicians
who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction
of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any
"grinds," people who worked harder than everyone else, yet
just didn't have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their
research suggests that once a musician has enough ability
to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes
one performer from another is how hard he or she works.
That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't
work just harder or even much harder than everyone else.
They work much, much harder."

"The emerging picture from such studies is that ten
thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level
of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in
anything," writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin. "In
study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction
writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master
criminals, and what have you, this number comes up
again and again. Of course, this doesn't address why some
people get more out of their practice sessions than others
do. But no one has yet found a case in which true worldclass
expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that
it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to
know to achieve true mastery."

"[...]achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity."

From Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers.

Don't expect too much of yourself.

The main thing is not to set out with grand projects. Everything starts at your doorstep. Just get deeply involved in something...You throw a stone in one place and ripples spread.
-- Robert Moses

I have nothing to say and I am saying it.

In the realm of art, just as in life, you are either a leader or a follower. Leaders make new paths and point toward new ways for artistic expression. They are the minority and the followers the majority. What is new and original and controversial today becomes the standard by which all subsequent art is perceived and created, and if not the standard, then at least a factor. Leaders create art that demands a new perception, a new understanding, new values and a new language to be assimilated. Originality has no known reference point and as such is inaccessible to the majority who do not wish to reconsider their views and expand their perception, who prefer to remain safe in the rehashed predictability of today's art and not be open to art that makes way for the tomorrow. Such is the nature of man. Whatever is not understood must be rationalized, and rationalized in the most convenient way for oneself. All art that looks to the unknown and the untraveled is dismissed in the beginning, until it is (usually reluctantly) accepted, because times change and nothing stays still no matter how much man wishes for things to remain the same. Today's artistic pariah may very well be tomorrow's genius.

yup.

Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact.

It’s very difficult to inspire a belief in others that you don’t believe yourself.

[...] taking pills reminds you that you have a chronic illness, a deadly disease, and you don’t want to be reminded.

Henry Miller's words of wisdom

“Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.”

“An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”

“The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.”

“Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.”

“In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.”

“If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.”

“If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.”

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

“In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.”

“If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.”

“Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.”

“Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'”

“Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.”

“Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.”

“We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.”

“The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.”

“There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.”

“Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.”

“True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.”

“We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.”

“What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.”

“Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.”

“Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.”

“Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.”

I realize #idontevenknow

Conventions are for people without imagination.