Leibniz’s monad concept

I am reading Didik Didik Freud by Serol Teber and Şenol Ayla and they referred to Tevfik Fikret’s lifestyle as “monadlaşmış” (monadic), describing the concept of monad as: Monad, ünlü filozof Leibniz’in bulduğu …

Writing as image making

While browsing Meg Miller's Are.na page, I was immediately drawn in by the title of her top channel: Shimmer Around the Edges: Writing as Image-making From the channel introduction, it seems Miller also noticed …

Acute perception of something immense and yet very delicate at the same time

I am reading When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, and he writes about the French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, describing his ability to concentrate for long hours: He could begin …

Bir hayal yakalayabilmek için bakmaktaydım

Sait Faik Abasıyanık’ın Semaver adlı kitabını okuyorum. Şehri Unutan Adam adlı hikayesinde şöyle bir paragraf dikkatimi çekti. Akşam oluyordu. Köşe başındaki tütüncüye uğradım. Güneş, satılmamış edebiyat …

Writing is the act of saying I

I am reading Joan Didion’s book Let Me Tell You What I Mean, and in the essay I particularly bought the book for, titled Why I Write, Didion writes: In many ways, writing is the act of saying I, of imposing …

Heidegger was an early product thinker

I am watching Hubert Dreyfus’s lecture on Heidegger and Being and Time, where he describes two modes of being for objects. 1. Readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit): When tools are ready-to-hand, they smoothly integrate …

Recollection, with all the feelings that accompanied it

While reading The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, I began to wonder about the difference between knowledge that feels like mine and knowledge that simply exists out there. Nayler wrote the following when a …

Preintellectual reality

In his book Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig argues that what he calls quality is preintellectual reality. He states that there is a time gap between subjective perception and …

Come with me down this line, and we'll get somewhere interesting

I was listening to Adam Curtis on The Adam Buxton Podcast (episode 44), where he talks about how politics works best with narrative. He says he came to this realization partly through working with Punchdrunk, the …

Shimmering images in Didion’s mind

I’m reading Joan Didion’s essay “Why I Write” in her book Let Me Tell You What I Mean. She describes how certain images get stuck in her head and how she weaves stories around them. She describes these as images …

A handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness

I read Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, and it was when Pirsig explained Phaedrus' perspective on the world that I saw my own situation reflected in the book. I read this book at a …

I, you, and we

I have been noticing for a long time now that using “I” or “you” while writing about ideas makes a big difference. If I use “you” when writing, it sounds like I am positioning the reader in the situation I am …

Conversation as a way to explore connections

I like thinking of conversations from the perspective of connections. When I’m talking, I’m pulling together the ideas that have been on my mind, ordering them in a way that might make sense to you, and sharing …

Posting a memory forward to a distant future

I am reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, and in the book Patricia tells her botany students (emphasis mine): “Billions of years ago, a single, fluke, self-copying cell learned how to turn a barren ball of …

Anchoring information to knowledge

Back in 2004, I designed an app called Musicmap. It helped with finding new albums based on the ones you already liked. As you explored the network of albums, they would neatly arrange themselves on the screen …

A worldview where everything doesn’t exist for us

I’m reading How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, and she mentions the German philosopher Martin Buber and his book I and Thou. For Buber, there are two ways of looking at the world: I–It In the I–It way of looking, I …

Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on books

I read this quote From Walter Benjamin online: Und heute schon ist das Buch, wie die aktuelle wissenschaftliche Produktionsweise lehrt, eine veraltete Vermittlung zwischen zwei verschiedenen Kartotheksystemen. …

Hidden subconscious and fleeting thoughts behind Antonia Showering's painting

I am watching Antonia Showering's interview video on YouTube. She is describing her painting process, and it closely resembles what I have repeatedly heard about other artists' works: shimmering thoughts from the …

Going back to stone

I am watching a short video on Isamu Noguchi by SFMoMA and I particularly found his remarks on the limitations of the industry relevant. If you want to live and work in an industrialized situation, you have to use …

Photographs can transcend original intentions and motivations

I am reading How I Take Photographs by Daido Moriyama and in contradiction with his previously noted statement that I should have an idea of what I want to capture, he states that I (the photographer) will …