vim & vigor

www.alishavimawala.com

[embracevim]

To Anyone Who Thinks They're Falling Behind In Life

You don't need more motivation. You don't need to be inspired to action. You don't need to read any more lists and posts about how you're not doing enoug...

Love this 

[embracevim]

FAVORITE

I still remember how hard it was to convince the other students in the convocation speaker committee during my senior year to consider bringing in a comedian vs. other “serious politicians and businessmen.” 

I’ve always thought comedians have some of the best observational insights. Chris Rock. Dave Chapelle. Jon Stewart. Louis CK. Aziz Ansari. Ed Helms.

They can make you laugh, and they can make you think.

What’s better than that for your college send-off?

[embracevim]

The child sees everything as a novelty; the child is always ‘drunk’. Nothing is more like what we call inspiration than the joy the child feels in drinking in shape and color. I will venture to go even further and declare that inspiration has some connection with congestion, that every sublime thought is accompanied by a more or less vigorous nervous impulse that reverberates in the cerebral cortex. The man of genius has strong nerves; those of the child are weak. In the one, reason has assumed an important role; in the other, sensibility occupies almost the whole being. But genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man’s physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.

Excerpt from "The Painter of Modern Life" by Baudelaire (1863)

[austinkleon]

Leslie Jones on late success

Jones spent 25 years as a road comic before she became a star. Here she is in her New Yorker profile, talking about success: 

“I’m glad this whole success thing is happening now,” she said. “I can’t even imagine a twenty-three-year-old Leslie in this position. They would have kicked me off the set after two days. I would have fucked half the dudes in the crew.” She sat up and wrapped a towel around her head. “I was a less confident person back then. And damn sure not as funny.”

Filed under: success

[embracevim]

June 28, 1929 Dear family, On arriving in New York, one feels over-whelmed, but not frightened.  I found it uplifting to see how man can use science and technology to make something as impressive as a spectacle of nature.  It is incredible.  The port and the lights of the skyscrapers, easily confused with the stars, the millions of other lights, and the rivers of automobiles are a sight like no other on earth.  Paris and London are two tiny villages compared with this vibrant, maddening Babel. When the ship pulled in, I had a great surprise.

Excerpt from Federico Garcia Lorca's NY correspondence 1929-1930

[austinkleon]

Don Hertzfeldt, World Of Tomorrow (Netflix)

[embracevim]

Thank you Jack Garratt for creating music about [in my opinion] of one of the best parts of life - being able to surprise yourself. 

[embracevim]

#laterpost

[embracevim]

He believes you must play it big, wide, expansively -- the more open you are, the more you take in, your dimensions deepen, you grow, you become more what you are -- bigger, richer....

On Frank Sinatra, http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a638/esq1003-oct-sinatra-rev/

[embracevim]

I am always interested in creative process from all artists, I love hearing demos and seeing in-process drawings and productions. A finished project can feel so purposeful and effortless, but the road to get there could have been utter chaos and confusion and doubt, epiphanies and failures," Kish says. "I need to see that from others to know that no one is a god. Especially in our current generation everything seems so perfect, these perfectly curated lives and bodies and aesthetics plastered everywhere. It's nice to see what's behind that.

Kilo Kish, http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/introducing-kilo-kish-editor-at-large

[embracevim]

Remember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought to yourself, “What are the relative merits of learning baseball versus football?” You just ran around the playground and played baseball and football. You built sand castles and played tag and asked silly questions and looked for bugs and dug up grass and pretended you were a sewer monster. Nobody told you to do it, you just did it. You were led merely by your curiosity and excitement. And the beautiful thing was, if you hated baseball, you just stopped playing it. There was no guilt involved. There was no arguing or debate. You either liked it, or you didn’t. And if you loved looking for bugs, you just did that. There was no second-level analysis of, “Well, is looking for bugs really what I should be doing with my time as a child? Nobody else wants to look for bugs, does that mean there’s something wrong with me? How will looking for bugs affect my future prospects?” There was no bullshit. If you liked something, you just did it.

Mark Manson, http://markmanson.net/passion

[austinkleon]

Einstein relished what he called Gedankenexperimente, ideas that he twirled around in his head rather than in a lab. That’s what teachers call daydreaming, but if you’re Einstein you get to call them Gedankenexperimente. As these thought experiments remind us, creativity is based on imagination. If we hope to inspire kids to love science, we need to do more than drill them in math and memorized formulas. We should stimulate their minds’ eyes as well. Even let them daydream… [The] ability to visualize the unseen has always been the key to creative genius. As Einstein later put it, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe, on Einstein’s thought experiments (via austinkleon)

[austinkleon]

It is hard to judge your own work, no matter who you are. If you are successful, there is the added danger that people might not be honest. My wife, by the way, is absolutely fantastic—she has no ­respect for me. I can hand her a script and she will tell me straight out that it’s boring. And that’s invaluable.

Michael Haneke (via austinkleon)

[embracevim]

As part of his mental regimen, Wood refuses to make to-do lists, even for grocery shopping. If he forgets something at the store, he says, “I will kick myself vigorously.” He gives himself the same treatment at work. “If you make a mistake, you should not only not make that mistake again but also don’t make that class of mistake again,” he says. “That’s an exceedingly important concept to improve human performance at the individual scale.”

Lowell Wood, http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-americas-top-inventor-lowell-wood

[natgeoyourshot]

[cavetocanvas]

Don’t go to a museum with a destination. Museums are wormholes to other worlds. There are ecstasy machines. Follow your eyes to wherever they lead you, stop, get very quiet, and the world should begin to change for you. And if you see me, say something! We can talk about it together.

Jerry Saltz (via cavetocanvas)

PREACH

(via wehackmuseums)

[embracevim]

Sonali: Let's write a children's book using emojis!

Me: YES! And let's make it funny!

Sonali: Yes, Alisha. Let's make a funny book about something that is inherently funny.

Castro with the win. And the snark.