Handicrafts and Sesshu I have almost never judged a work of art by first looking at its signature. This way of assessment holds no interest for me. If what I see is good, it is good with or without a seal. Whether it is a painting or a pot, you must first look at the thing itself. Yanagi Sōetsu, The Beauty of Everyday Things fameseeing
Prestige is just fossilized inspiration Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like. Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself. Paul Graham, How to do what you love fame
Spelled with a lowercase letter I used to tease John Tukey that you are famous only when your name was spelled with a lowercase letter such as watt, ampere, volt, fourier (sometimes), and such. Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn fame
Somebody is living on this beach Once, I had a dream of fame. Generally, even then I was lonely. To the castle, a sign must have said. Somebody is living on this beach. David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress famelonelinesssolitude
1,000 True Fans An Essay by Kevin Kelly kk.org To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans. A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month. If you have roughly a thousand of true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune. artmakingfame
Home Star An Article by Geoff Manaugh bldgblog.com I am a sucker for stories in which seeds of cosmic revelation are found hidden inside everyday materials, especially when those materials are architectural in form. In this case, it was “the imprint of a rare solar storm” that left traces in the rings of trees cut into logs by Vikings and used to build cabins 1,000 years ago on the Atlantic coast of Canada. …While there is obviously more to say about the science behind this discovery—all of which you can read here—what interests me is simply the idea that astral events, cosmic storms, stellar weather, electromagnetic pulses from space, whatever you want to imagine, leave traces all around us. That in the depths of our buildings, in our walls and floors, even in the wooden dowels of mass-produced furniture, there can be evidence of immensely powerful and beautiful things, and I would like to remember to look for that again. It’s been a miserable couple of years. melancholytime