Quickening

I love this observation by Ira Glass on creative work:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Via nefffy.

Faye Wong - Dream Lover (Chungking Express)

Just flopping about my couch and earnestly fawning over everything. This world is made up of love stories, y’all.

Afghanistan’s former president Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated yesterday while attempting to negotiate peace with the Taliban — a morally obscure strategy supported to absurd extremes by an America that’s pressed for time.

Terry Glavin’s take on this crooked path in today’s Ottawa Citizen is crystal:

In Washington, London and Brussels, the whole point now is to convince “war-weary” electorates that capitulation is compromise, that the whole nightmare was brought about by stupid neo-conservatives, and that the problem is an incorrigibly violent and uncivilized Afghan people in whom we need not see the basic human rights we ordinarily recognize in our fairer-skinned selves.

Stand up, Terry.

The machine at work spit out this beaut of a can today. That bottle at the bottom indicates how cold the liquid is. This design is one of six of Coke’s Canadian summer 2011 promotion.

Pretty much.

deleteyourself:

Greatest sweatshirt I’ve ever seen.

Talking Heads - This Must Be the Place

All day listening party.

Subtle degrees of domination and
servitude
are what you know as love.

But love is different
it arrives complete -
just there -
like the moon at the window.

Seek only that of which you have no clue.
Desire only that of which you have no hope.

This is not the Oxus River or some little creek.
This is the shoreless sea.
Here, swimming ends always in drowning.

- Maulana Rumi via Sufi Geek.

I know everyone says this, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true: Rumi is the antidote for everything. Even if he doesn’t always make you feel better.

Photo by Bruno Bernardi.

Last week at choir we sang Wham! At choir. Wham. I live for this.

The rest of our repertoire is on Soundcloud.

Miguel - Girls Like You

So catchy.

A touching piece on David Hume and the greatest love of his life. I like to think that there is great courage in reasoned passion.