I’ve made a habit of writing down the ideas that resonate with me, along with where they came from. You can browse them by the themes below.
- Writing
- Cognition
- Philosophy
- Language
- Creativity
- Memory
- Learning
- Photography
- Noticing
- Knowledge
- Attention
- Reading
- Communication
- Society
- Narrative
- Connection
- Perception
- Product Design
- Meaning
- Framing
- Art
- Product-design
References
All notes
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Life and art are entangledI am listening to Alva Noë talk about his book The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are on UC Berkeley’s YouTube channel. He started his talk setting by the background by describing the …
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Perception is a constructI've been reading the book The Idea of the Brain by Matthew Cobb. In the chapter titled "Inhibition," he explains how in the late 19th century we understood that the act of seeing is not merely capturing whatever …
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A way of looking but not joiningI am reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion and in this essay titled Last Words, she has written about Hemingway: The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence dictated, or was dictated by, a certain way of …
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Acute perception of something immense and yet very delicate at the same timeI 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 …
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Writing is like painting, and some moreI watched an Orhan Pamuk interview on YouTube where he explains his “painterly practice” and how writing and painting are similar to him. Pamuk explains: I think writing novels is also like painting—visual …
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Octavia Butler’s reading style is similar to mineI found out about this in Arena Annual 2020 from the article Learning Trails by Leo Shaw. I generally have four or five books open around the house-I live alone; I can do this-and they are not books on the same …
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Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on booksI 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. …
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Memory is a consistently reinforced patternI am listening to Michael Levin on Lex Fridman Podcast on YouTube and Levin just made this description which resonates with how I feel about memory. What is a memory? It is a pattern, it is an informational …
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Pleasure in lookingI am watching a YouTube video about how Monet chased an "envelope". I haven’t heard this word used in this context before. Brian T. Martin, the creator of the video, describes it as the air, the light, or the …
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Photographs can transcend original intentions and motivationsI 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 …
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Claude as a studio assistantI was looking at my friend Mert Hürtürk’s new blog, Intromert, and came across an entry titled Low Place Like Home, where he shared geometric sketches made with Processing, a tool purpose-built for artists to …
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The “we-ness” of being an octopusI’m reading The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, and there’s a section where he writes about Tibetan Maintenance Drones, the degree of independence built into them, and what it feels like to command them. You …
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Smelling as time travelI underlined this part in Kaveh Akbar’s book Martyr! about how Orkideh could smell lavender to travel to any other point in his life. I used to walk with a sprig of lavender in my pocket—smelling it, I could go to …
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Building knowledge around central themesI am reading Julie Bogart’s book, The Brave Learner. The central theme of the book is to make learning a magical, enchanted experience. To find the joy in learning. She suggests to start with putting the interest …
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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 …
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Printing articles as A5 bookletsI find it difficult to read long articles on a screen. One alternative I’ve grown to enjoy is printing them as small A5 booklets and carrying them in my backpack. This is super easy on iOS, but with the right …
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A worldview where everything doesn’t exist for usI’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 …
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From one piece to the nextI am watching a video of Isamu Noguchi explaining his work on YouTube, and the part where he explains the progression of his work felt inspiring to me. I once concerned myself with working with space. I used to …
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Hockney’s wandering eye photos
I started reading Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing. I bought this book a while ago. I was browsing the book at Dussmann, opened a random page which happened to be page 96 and Odell was talking about David …
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I, you, and weI 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 …