These Things: David Foster Wallace, Watching Movies, Leonard Cohen, Ecstacy, and Chromatic Storytelling
Ecstasy, in Greek, meant to stand to the side of something. As ecstatic moment then, now, could be one where I stand outside myself. As when I’m engaged with a thing I love, like writing a poem or riding a bicycle.
When creating, it is important to understand the context of not the thing only but also the delivery of the thing. This is partly design and partly narrative (the “how” we experience the story, music, art, etc.). When bent toward a particular practice, this becomes art.
This is just to say, these things inspired me recently:
This is Water by David Foster Wallace - DFW’s commencement speech to the Kenyon class of 2005 is, in its structure, the lesson the content gets at. This is called art.
How the way you watch movies affects your life - I have not yet found a particular affinity toward the delivery of this video essay, the design of it, but the ideas and content are fascinating and sometimes it’s better to get an idea out than to watch it whither in a notebook.
11 ideas for creativity from Leonard Cohen - Mr. Cohen wrote 80 verses to his tune “Halleluia” to find the few that are the song we love.
Ecstasy is stepping into an alternate reality - Many people are talking about flow states and not in the Brandon Semenuk downhill bicycling sense, but in the sense of flow one experiences when creating a thing.
Exploring Chromatic Storytelling - I’ll be honest, this article is more than you want to know about chromatic storyelling and the use of color in film and the use of computer code to illustrate, visually, how a film works on us psychologically. But if it’s not too much, you’ll enjoy it.