flâneur

Summer Yang

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on the atlas — 92

highlights — 470

  • My acceptance is not conditional on how you’ll modify yourself in the future.
    loving imperfection - by Ava - bookbear express
  • I understand now that I’m not necessarily interested in life-as-art-as-art—I want to maintain a healthy separation between what I write about and how I live. I’m interested in my plotless life, in conversations and presence. I don’t always have to record, to narrate. I can just let myself be here.
    no more life as story - by Ava - bookbear express
  • In any real-life situation, I would pretend I was in a novel, and then do whatever I would want the person in the novel to do. Afterward, I would write it all down, and I would have written a novel, without having had to invent a bunch of fake characters and pretend to care about them.
    no more life as story - by Ava - bookbear express
  • Life is beyond narrative, life is more interesting than the stories we tell. I spent so many years in pursuit of a good plot, but now I realize that I don’t live to collect stories—I don’t need to lean on stories in order to live. I reject the Didion premise.
    no more life as story - by Ava - bookbear express
  • Actively subvert expectations.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • Introducing a long delay between when you do the work and when it is shown to the world.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • He has surrounded himself with people whose influence is the inverse of the social pressure of normal society and his audience.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • ask what would be good ideas for someone else to explore. Then your subconscious won't shoot them down to protect you.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • Every time he acclimated to the pace of his writing, he increased the quota so he would always be overwhelmed
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • it is a rare opportunity to observe an uncommon and fertile mind in real-time.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • Work so fast that you don’t have time to self-censor.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • The zone is a place at the margin of society. But strangely enough, this fragile margin is where the ideas that make our society possible come from.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • when sitting with their thoughts they are uncommonly willing to linger in confusion. To be curious about that which confuses. Not too rapidly seeking the safety of knowing or the safety of a legible question, but waiting for a more powerful and subtle question to arise from loose and open attention. This patience with confusion makes them good at surfacing new questions
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • If he had not known the shape of his interests and aims, he would have been more vulnerable to the standards and norms of the community—at least he seems to think so.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • He was not at the mercy of the social world he entered; rather, he “used” it to “further his aims.”
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • His peers, who had been raised within the system, had not developed this feel for themselves and so were more susceptible to the influence of others.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • a state where the opinions of others do not bother them and where they reach a heightened sensitivity for the larval ideas and vague questions that arise within them.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • Pablo Picasso: “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” James Baldwin: “Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.” Bob Dylan: “To be creative you’ve got to be unsociable and tight-assed.”
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • It’s true that coworking spaces do kill off the very worst ideas, but a band-pass filter for startups is a terrible thing because they kill off the best ideas, too.
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • not [providing coworking spaces] is part of what makes YC work
    Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
  • When you go deep, probing the assumptions, looking from multiple angles, and reformulating things in your own words, the ideas become part of you. This is one of the reasons why I write. When I unpack things fully, the ideas become objects that I can rotate in my mind. The subconscious can draw parallels that it can’t if the ideas haven’t been thoroughly unpacked. There is a line from Oscar Wilde that gets at this, when he says that to write well, all you need to do is develop your mind and then write what you see. If you have thought deeply, nearly everything looks interesting.
    Be patient with problems - by Henrik Karlsson
  • The Social Network is based on The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, who writes books intended for film adaptation. “Mezrich’s books aren’t books. They’re intellectual property designed for Hollywood.” I don’t think his aspiration is unique, but his self-awareness, honesty, and playbook are.
    man's pursuit of greatness is the pursuit of a great film
  • I find it liberating to remind myself that it is perfectly ok to not know who I am or where I am going. Knowing yourself is not a prerequisite for a good life. I just need to take one step in the most promising direction, and then another—submitting to the jealous and possessive god of my life.
    Two kinds of introspection - by Henrik Karlsson
  • Any situation where you act is a possibility for active introspection.
    Two kinds of introspection - by Henrik Karlsson
  • it is helpful to learn more things and be active: improve your craft, put yourself in new situations, push yourself. How else are you going to have a sample of reactions to study?
    Two kinds of introspection - by Henrik Karlsson
  • it is more productive for me to introspect by doing things, rather than by peering into my head more directly
    Two kinds of introspection - by Henrik Karlsson
  • He is introspecting, but he’s not introspecting by meditating on his existence or talking to a therapist (though maybe he should); he’s introspecting by acting on the world. He’s introspecting by doing stuff and then observing how it makes him feel—as if he was running a million small experiments trying to figure out the composition of this object that is Nick Cave.
    Two kinds of introspection - by Henrik Karlsson
  • You don’t need to know who you are to become an artist. Art molds us into the shape it wants us to be and the thing that serves it best.
    Two kinds of introspection - by Henrik Karlsson
  • The self is not something you can set out looking for; it reveals itself gradually through the choices you make.
    Two kinds of introspection - by Henrik Karlsson
  • The way Cave frames it, introspection stands in the way of art. To make art, you need to lose yourself; you need to become a receiver of whatever art wants to communicate. If you spend too much time with a therapist, for instance, building up a complex model of who you are, that model is going to limit what you allow yourself to do.
    Two kinds of introspection - by Henrik Karlsson
  • I like to think about energy expended interpreting other people as “shapes I have to hold my being in”. The further the shape from my normal patterns of movement, the more energy I have to expend.
    On social energy - by Max Langenkamp - Unruly Sun
  • The more foreign the person, the more interpretation they require, and the more narrow the affordances we can take with them. Compared to my mom, the professor is an entity with very few ‘safe moves’. I can infer from normal social convention that it’s fine to come in and sit when invited, but otherwise each move risks infringing in their way of the world.
    On social energy - by Max Langenkamp - Unruly Sun
  • “‘Good taste' is simply to have a well formed opinion, in accordance with the realities of the Good and the True.” There are tasteful and non-tasteful choices. Taste reveals its purveyor to be a good decision-maker.
    Notes on “Taste” | Are.na Editorial
  • ambition or even propensity to learn is mostly directionless but potent, and can be applied to multiple things. You don’t have to simply listen to people who believe that ambition has to be a linear, unwavering, charted path. It’s more like a meander, a slow burn, an emerging discovery
    chapters and doors - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix ꩜
  • Humanity has been slower to acknowledge the reality of psychological injury and trauma, and correspondingly slower to see the rules that govern violence in that domain. I propose that one of those rules is that you are not allowed to “just walk away.” I am not saying you can never break up or get divorced, but rather that all is not fair when it comes to these endings; you cannot simply cut people off; you are not free to leave at any time. If your life is entwined with someone else’s, then a new arrangement between the two of you must be the product of an agreement you can both live with. Als…
    Breaking Points, by Agnes Callard
  • And this is part of what we love about love: that it affords us an opportunity to lose control, to go a little crazy.
    Breaking Points, by Agnes Callard
  • You can’t waltz by yourself. When I lose you, I also lose the me I became for you. And vice versa. Which is why cutting you off, once we have grown together, is an act of violence. I am not cutting anything visible, like your arm or leg, but I am nonetheless cutting away something that is a part of you—me. This is an act of psychological violence.
    Breaking Points, by Agnes Callard
  • vulnerability is showing another person the way your specific boundaries collapse.
    being alone, being together - by Nix 🕊
  • Being alone is looking in a mirror; being with others is opening a door. You need both to see the world clearly. Every piece of writing for me is an honest attempt at seeking both. I am writing this to you, but I am also writing this for me.
    being alone, being together - by Nix 🕊
  • if you don’t live the way you believe, you inevitably believe the way you live.
    living the life you believe in - by Nix 🕊
  • Environmental pruning and withering is acute. The wrong place makes a person start to discard or hide what’s real and true about themselves, and blunt their own spikiness to fit the norm.
    spikiness - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • Great relationships rewire the way you think about yourself. They can reframe the mired narrative you’ve conjured in your head. Some people can recognize a kernel of greatness and nurture it. In the best case, relationships can enable you with agency and spirit to become more yourself.
    spikiness - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • there’s no uncertainty of what you care about, what you pay attention to and therefore, who you are.
    spikiness - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • Something quiet and insidious starts to happen if you stay in the wrong environments for too long. You convince yourself that you’re operating well or you can successfully override your uncomfortable feelings, or perhaps that you can configure yourself into what other people want through sheer brute force. It begins with people pleasing and ends with self abandonment. It fundamentally limits your ceiling, whether you actively acknowledge it or not.
    spikiness - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • To find the right distance from everything in life is the most important thing. Like God standing back from the canvas — you can’t see anything when you’re too up close. I realize I’ve been standing so close, nose-to-canvas, my whole life. I often forget to yank myself up to the surface to situate myself, give myself context. All my mind wants to do is think, when what I really need is to feel.
    the next thing - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix ꩜
  • People who constantly hoard joy for a projected future: a forecasted world where the next thing is the source of satisfaction, success, importance. How some people become obsessed with the metrics, the trajectory. The human impulse to reach a hand into the void for the next thing to grasp onto. But it’s futile because there will always be a next thing, closely followed by the next thing after that. We graduate from one wanting to the next. It’s hard to accept where you are right now when you’re always barreling towards the future, when you place joy in the future tense.
    the next thing - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix ꩜
  • wanting is a frightening thing, especially when you lack models for it, or permission or a sense that your own desires are good, valid, and satiable
    taking things seriously - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix ꩜
  • it’s such a noiseless suffering. We never disturb the neighbors with it. We collapse, but we collapse in the most disciplined way. That’s us. That’s certainly us. The disciplined collapsers.
    taking things seriously - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix ꩜
  • It’s a sort of special intimacy when you witness someone trying something, anything, in earnest. You either get me, or you don’t.
    taking things seriously - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix ꩜
  • I am constitutionally incapable of not caring. My constant wrangling used to be a source of distress, but now I think this inclination is precisely what leads a person into a them-shaped life. I’m more afraid of dispassion than I am of labor. I’m more afraid of apathy than I am of effort made painfully visible.
    taking things seriously - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix ꩜