goals
You can't look a big problem too directly in the eye
Let the goals suggest themselves
Lost purposes
So many tactics, so well entrenched
I won't get
People I'd like to meet
At least everything was important
A Quote by Mads MikkelsenMy approach to what I do in my job — and it might even be the approach to my life — is that everything I do is the most important thing I do. Whether it’s a play or the next film. It is the most important thing. I know it’s not going to be the most important thing, and it might not be close to being the best, but I have to make it the most important thing. That means I will be ambitious with my job and not with my career. That’s a very big difference, because if I’m ambitious with my career, everything I do now is just stepping-stones leading to something — a goal I might never reach, and so everything will be disappointing. But if I make everything important, then eventually it will become a career. Big or small, we don’t know. But at least everything was important.
Theory of Change
An Essay by Aaron SwartzA theory of change is the opposite of a theory of action — it works backwards from the goal, in concrete steps, to figure out what you can do to achieve it. To develop a theory of change, you need to start at the end and repeatedly ask yourself, “Concretely, how does one achieve that?”
Wittgenstein's Mistress
- I think very well of him indeed
- A perfect circle
- The Eiffel Tower
- Ceci n'est pas une pipe
- Erased de Kooning Drawing
I think very well of him indeed
When I was still doubtful as to his ability, I asked G.E. Moore for his opinion. Moore replied, ‘I think very well of him indeed.’ When I enquired the reason for his opinion, he said that it was because Wittgenstein was the only man who looked puzzled at his lectures. — Bertrand Russell
A perfect circle
Once, being asked to submit a sample of his work, what Giotto submitted was a circle.
Well, the point being that it was a perfect circle.
And that Giotto had painted it freehand.The Eiffel Tower
When the sun had gotten to the angle from which Phidias had taken his perspective, the Parthenon almost seemed to glow.
Actually, the best time to see that is generally also at four o’clock.
Doubtless the taverns from which one could see that did better business than the taverns from which one could not, in fact, even though they were all in the same street.
Unless of course the latter were patronized by people who had lived in Athens long enough to have gotten tired of seeing it.
Such things can happen. As in the case of Guy de Maupassant, who ate his lunch every day at the Eiffel Tower.
Well, the point being that this was the only place in Paris from which he did not have to look at it.Ceci n'est pas une pipe
There is nobody at the window in the painting of the house, by the way.
I have now concluded that what I believed to be a person is a shadow.
If it is not a shadow, it is perhaps a curtain.
As a matter of fact it could actually be nothing more than an attempt to imply depths, within the room.
Although in a manner of speaking all that is really in the window is burnt sienna pigment. And some yellow ochre.
In fact there is no window either, in that same manner of speaking, but only shape.
So that any few speculations I have made about the person at the window would therefore now appear to be rendered meaningless, obviously.
Unless of course I subsequently become convinced that there is somebody at the window all over again.
I have put that badly.Erased de Kooning Drawing
Once, Robert Rauschenberg erased most of a drawing by Willem de Kooning, and then named it Erased de Kooning Drawing.
I am in no way certain what this is connected to either, but I suspect it is connected to more than I once believed it to be connected to.
The cat
The cat I began to think about instead was the cat outside of the broken window in the room next to this one, at which the tape frequently scratches when there is a breeze.
Which is to say that I was not actually thinking about a cat either, there being no cat except insofar as the sound of the scratching reminds me of one.As there was, or is, no person at the window in the painting of this house.
It is still a house
Perhaps even the very house which I burned to the ground contained such examples, even though it would obviously not contain them any longer, no longer being a house.
Well, it is still a house.
Even if there is not remarkably much left of it, I am still prone to think of it as a house when I pass it in taking my walks.
There is the house I burned to the ground, I might think. Or, soon I will be coming to the house that I burned to the ground.The image of reality
Leonardo wrote in his notebooks backwards, from right to left, so that they had to be held up to a mirror to be read.
In a manner of speaking, the image of Leonardo’s notebooks would be more real than the notebooks themselves.Equidistance
Once, in the Rijksmuseum, I brought in new speakers for my phonograph. What the directions told me to do was make certain that the two speakers were equidistant from each other.
One certainly had to wonder what the person who wrote the instructions could have believed he meant by that.A strange calligraphy
Along the sand there will be frisky shadows, that will dance and fall away.
Or, if there is snow, the flames will write a strange calligraphy against the whiteness.Van Gogh
One of the things people generally admired about Van Gogh, even though they were not always aware of it, was the way he could make even a chair seem to have anxiety in it. Or a pair of boots.
The meaning of music
Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.
What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.
Good morning, Vincent
Perhaps I shall name the cat that scratches at my broken window Van Gogh.
Or Vincent.
One does not name a piece of tape, however.
There is the piece of tape, scratching at my window. There is Vincent, scratching at my window.Good morning, Vincent.
The illusion of anxiety
Or because of hormones.
And so which would not really have been anxiety at all, but only an illusion.
Even if one would certainly be hard put to explain the difference between an illusion of anxiety and anxiety itself.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.