Readers

“I sincerely believe that books don’t live until they’re read. While I think I’d write even if nobody was reading - it’s who I am - I thrive because I know the stories are being brought to life by all of you. In this, stories are a special kind of art, particularly ones written down. Each of you imagines this book, and its characters, a little differently - each of you puts your own stamp on it, making it yours. I don’t think a story is quite finished until that has happened to it - until the dream in my head has become a reality (even if briefly) in yours.

And so this book is yours, as are all of them once you read them. Thank you so much for bringing life to my work, and to the Cosmere.”

Brandon Sanderson, The Sunlit Man, Postscript

Humanity vs. Machine

Source: Twitter

See Also: Austin’s blog posts tagged machines

Build a new model

You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Buckminster Fuller

I can’t find the source to verify this is a legitimate quote, but I want to save it to research later.

To Know Is Not Enough

“What you do with what you know is the important thing. To know is not enough.”

John Rice

“There were no letter grades at Black Mountain College, nor were there required courses, set curricula, standard examinations, or prescribed teaching methods.”

“When John Rice established Black Mountain College in 1933, he sought to create a school that dissolved distinctions between curricular and extracurricular activities, that conceived of education and life as deeply intertwined, and that placed the arts at the center rather than at the margins of learning.“

“For Rice, education was registered not by grades or other standard criteria but in a heightened desire to learn and to question, which would lead students to an expanded aptitude for solving a range of problems and to a richer sense of self.”

Leap Before You Look

A Progressive Education by Ruth Erikson

p. 77

Epigraph

The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

Robert Henri

---

Epigraph from

Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act

The audience comes last.

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via Rick Rubins interview

Spicy for my brain.

Love when Hank describes pursing the work that is “spicy for my brain.”

I am also not motivated by earning money so this is actually really similar to the aha moment I felt when I started Neurokind.

Also very excited the Good Store has a single identity now. It will be so much easier to share and tell people about it. (For anyone browsing 100% of the profits go to charity. Just like Newman’s Own.)

Retire

“…for me retirement didn't mean that I stopped writing. It just meant that maybe I stopped writing when people expect me to write.”

“…retirement has meant that I don't obsess over becoming more rich or famous or more viewed or whatever. Instead, I try to focus my definition of work on passion and impact…”

I’m fascinated at the parallels here with my own recent reframe. I never experienced the amount of success that John Green has, but that pressure to always keep growing is so built into society it takes continuous effort to make another choice.

Leap Before You Look

When I started my deep dive on Black Mountain College I came across this book, Leap Before You Look by Helen Molesworth.

I haven’t bought a book that cost this much since university, but it is a beauty.

(If you’re interested in reading I’d suggest checking out an interlibrary loan or trying library at your nearest art museum.)

But compared to going back to school for a Ph.D., which I briefly considered this Spring, this book is basically a steal. 😉

Here are my notes from my first reading session.

There are a lot of threads to pull on here.

The first is a useful guidepost whilst considering the mission and direction of Neurokind.

“the aspirations of Black Mountain College: namely to inspire us in an expansive notion of the arts and creativity through close observation, physical engagement, service, and play…” Jill Medvedow

Keeping an expansive view of art and what it can do and be. It also feels important that creativity can both be of service and play which so often seem at odds with one another.

This quote took me back to my conversation with Morgan Harper Nichols and this idea that art is a form of communication.

It feels very relevant to Neurokind as platform to share experiences that may transcend or defy language.

Spaceship Earth

I have a long history with Buckminster Fuller (“Bucky”) which I should probably write a blog post about. Learning that he taught at Black Mountain College has brought me full circle and I’ve started reading this book which I bought at a library sale. It’s been on my shelf for years.

Here are some favorite bits from the first chapter.

This is probably more true now than when he wrote this in 1969. We are stuck with so many outdated systems and the process of updating them seems painfully slow.

This first sentence:

My new project, the one this research is driving, is a bit “grand.” This felt like a mentor telling me I wasn’t dreaming too big. That the world is thinking to small (narrowly.)

I think he’s talking about Paulo Freire here who, “introduced the 'banking' concept of education whereby he equated teachers with bank clerks and saw them as 'depositing' information into students rather than drawing out knowledge from individual students or creating inquisitive beings with a thirst for knowledge”. (University of Bedfordshire)

I’ve done a lot of reading on educational theory and pedagogy and all the good stuff points here. (As a nerdy sidebar it’s also an approach that feels very Merlin, “Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.")

Everything comes back to kindling our own curiosity. Even as society wants to stamp it out.

The last part reminds me of submitting my piece about Asynchronous Friendship to an academic journal The editor told me I was neither “fish nor fowl” (solely academic or solely creative).

Why do we have to be one thing or another? Why can’t artists draw from academic studies? Why can’t academics include creative works?

In the end there was more flexibility considering my work a creative piece, but it shows a weakness in academia from my perspective. And I think both Bucky and Black Mountain College would agree.