Slow Movement, The Best Essay, Style, and More
Friday, April 5, 2024
Happy Friday y’all.
Here are 10 things I found interesting from the last week or so.
1/ Ho Chi Minh City International Film Festival
To start this week's newsletter, I'd first like to share that the first Ho Chi Minh City International Film Festival starts tomorrow and will continue on through April 13th. Here's the schedule.
2/ Iowa Advances to Final Four
In case you missed it, the most-watched women's college basketball game aired on April 2nd. In the March Madness Elite Eight game, 12.3 million viewers tuned in to watch Caitlyn Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes defeat Angel Reese and the LSU Tigers (94-87). Clark absolutely destroyed the Tigers by dropping 41 points and 12 assists with 9 three-pointers.
3/ Interstellar
Three weeks ago, I made a note to listen to more movie soundtracks and try to play them while writing. This week, I want to add another to the list: Interstellar by Hans Zimmer. The film composer did a video for Vanity Fair a few years ago and proved that pretty much anything he makes turns into gold.
4/ Dali
In one of my classes last weekend, we discussed Salvador Dali's career. What a wild dude. Here's a video on the artist we watched in class: Salvador Dali: Great Art Explained.
Note: The whole Great Art Explained YouTube page is awesome.
5/ Ant Man
Two weeks ago Anthony Edwards had the best dunk of this year’s NBA season. This week I found a design by Artist Corbs that perfectly captured that moment:
6/ PHAT JAZZ STRIKES AGAIN
Last year I shared a song by DJ Phat Jazz, and last Friday he struck again with a new song: Hit That.
7/ On Slow Movement
The author Yung Pueblo wrote a newsletter this week worth sharing. It’s called “On Slow Movement.”
“In a society based on speed and productivity, moving slowly is a radical act. We get so caught up in moving at a fast pace because of a fear of falling behind. We do not realize how the need to rush is often self-imposed. We are partially motivated by what we think others are doing, but these thoughts are not fully based in reality. They are largely the creation of our own imagination. Our human habit has an attachment to hierarchy and the desire not to be at the bottom of it. The perception of hierarchy is something that we even impose on growth, healing, and wisdom as we measure ourselves against others to see “who is better” or “who is ahead.”
Yung Pueblo’s words make me think of John Steinbeck’s words,
“Don’t worry about losing. If it's right it happens — the main thing is to not hurry. Nothing good gets away.”
The whole world is telling you to hurry up. Move now or forever fall behind. Don’t. Slow down. Take your time. You’re not late. There’s no need to rush. Nothing good gets away anyway.
8/ W. Somerset Maugham on the Soul of an Artist
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
To create art is an expression of the soul. It makes your soul grow for it is the soul’s medicine.
9/ The Best Essay
Last June, when I was road-tripping across the US, I shared an essay by computer scientist and essayist Paul Graham called “A Project of One’s Own. He wrote:
“If you have ever thought about doing your own project, there are two requirements: "1) that you're doing it voluntarily, rather than merely because someone told you to, and 2) that you're doing it by yourself.”
Graham has tons of great essays on his website, and last week in March, he wrote one called “The Best Essay.” He writes:
“The best essay would be on the most important topic you could tell people something surprising about.”
His point is that a great essay is obviously well-written, but perhaps that's not what makes it great. What makes an essay, an article, a novel, or a screenplay great is that it surprises you. It's like when you read a good novel or watch a good movie: There are moments in the story where you say to yourself, "Wow, I know that feeling." All of a sudden, you're aggressively pulled into this present moment.
That feeling — the one you've never been able to put into words accurately — some other person did that for you, and for a moment, you're sitting there surprised that there's somebody else out there who experienced that same specific feeling as you did. That is incredible, and great writing can do that. It's not that the writer used the best, most advanced words or the most eloquently structured sentences. Rather, it's the fact they used the right words in just the right order to convey that feeling and surprise you. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote:
"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong."
I think the same goes for great painters, musicians, architects, and designers—yes, they are skilled, and yes, skill matters, but what matters more is that they surprise you and make you feel something real.
To read the rest of The Best Essay by Paul Graham, check it out here.
10/ Paul Graham on Style
Another note from Graham on trying to develop your own style: don't. He writes:
"If you just try to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way."
You already have a style and a way you do things. You walk a certain way. You shoot a basketball a certain way. You draw a certain way. Etc. Wes Anderson doesn't try to make a Wes Anderson film. Everybody else tries to make a Wes Anderson film. He's just trying to make a great film. He can't help but make it in his own style. That's what makes it great. Sometimes, in developing your own craft, it's not so much coming up with your own original style; I feel like it's more so along the way, shedding the layers of all the other styles that have influenced you. Remember what Miles Davis said,
"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself."
That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend ahead, and I’ll see you next week.
—Garrett
P.S. “and More!”
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