cool stuff i found #38
reality the danger itself, lessons at an art gallery, durand jones & the indications
welcome to the 38th edition of CSIF. it’s good to be back but admittedly i’m a bit rusty. for those of you who are new, i tend to write a short piece paired with 3 things i’ve curated for you to consume: 1) an essay to read, 2) visual art of some sort, 3) music to listen to. i’ll be making CSIF drops on Fridays now. but instead of a full-blown essay, i’ll share a short reflection on a quote or something that caught my attention over the week. Mondays will now be the new release day for any essays i have in the chamber.
for those who are utterly new here: welcome! CSIF is a Friday series that’s back on as of this issue. this is where i try to distill the best of whatever content I come across on the internet or IRL into a single newsletter. hope you enjoy this series.
as for today, i’d like to start off with a quote.
the quote above is by none other than Van Gogh. it's really resonated with. i feel like it has put to words a particular value that i’ve been actively embodying now for sometime. some call it agency, others call it a bias to action. let’s take a step back.
you’re facing big decision A. and big decision A is filled with baby decisions B, C, D, and they all have sub-decisions. it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and to be in one’s head. as much as deliberation feels like a practice rooted in practicality, it’s really just debilitating. being stuck in a state of paralysis doesn’t help anybody let alone yourself. but what does this mean "live"?
for me at least, i try to create a list of “known-knowns” and “known-unknowns.” ie. the stuff i know and the stuffy i need to go out to try to figure out. unfortunately, there’s also the “unknown knowns” — that which i already know but isn’t top of mind. then there's the scariest of all: “unknown-unknowns.” i can take action with the first two, but i can’t really uncover the latter two until i take action. so i figure out just enough to get started, and it’s taken me farther than if i had simply sat and tried planning things out.
imagine if i had spent all my days wondering how to bring people out to chai. where i try to methodically plan who would come, try to make the chai on my own, and so on. versus literally popping up in a parking lot or a park? yeah, i don’t think we would have gone very far.
and look, i'm not impractical to the point of saying all planning is bad. i think it's just that a lot of us are taught that planning and execution are 2 separate phases. that the nature of their relationship is sequential, and in some ways adversarial. Napoleon did once say, "Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.” there's definitely a clear delineation between the two types of thinking.
but i'd like to think they're more so in conversation with each other -- one informs the other. you plan more clearly informed by experience because you acted. you act more boldly and with more vigor because you planned. they're two sides of the same coin.
6 lessons I learned working at an art gallery by henrik karlsson
this week was a tough week because i had a lot of good essays to choose from. i’ll include them in later editions and spread them out a bit more. the reason why karlsson’s work won out this week was because i started a new role recently. this essay is henrik reviewing his time working at an art gallery, and how he turned it from a “meh” job to an ideal one. along the way, he also learns to differentiate types of artists and how seriously they take themselves from how they interact with the gallery. the excerpt below really spoke to me because part of why i’m back in a role is to fund chai and vibes.
sometimes i come across music and i have no idea how i landed on it. nonetheless, i’m so happy to have discovered Durand Jones & The Indications. i could tell you why i think this song hits, but then i’d take away from Mike from youtube who does it so much better:
Add a touch of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Carolina Beach Music and its variants (The Tymes "So In Love", Mary Wells "You Beat Me To The Punch", Barbara Lewis' "Hello Stranger", Barbara Mason "Yes I'm Ready"), some Temptations and Four Tops, along with just a hint of Sade, and you have the most beautiful Soul harmonies of the modern era. This album: American Love Call is a masterpiece. Every song has that perfect soul beauty that's been missing from music for 50 years. I can't recommend it highly enough!
- @mikebirm49
Thanks for reading this edition. Share this with your friends, your grandma, or your neighbor. And if you made it to the end of this essay and you didn’t just scroll, dm me the words “sea gets hotter” on either twitter or instagram. or leave a comment! As always,
Sincerely,
Haroon