#104: Three (+1) Things that got me thinking

🎵why make art? + 🧭 your true subject +❓figuring out what you want

Bonjour everyone!

I haven’t sent a post since November 2022, but haven’t stopped thinking about why we do the things we do. This post isn’t me resuming regular posts; I’m fine with sporadic at this time in my life. It’s me wanting to share Three Things that made me think about intrinsic motivation. It feels good to be here!

Here are the headlines:

1. Daisy Jones & The Six

2. Heather Lanier’s essay

3. Eleanor Gordon-Smith in The Guardian

+ An Asics ad

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1. ‘It’s more pure’

I enjoyed reading Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & The Six a few years ago, and I loved watching the series. (The songs have made me dig my ukulele out of storage, and sing louder and more often than I had in a long time.)

This particular scene from episode 7 is what made me come here to share with you all. Singer-songwriter Daisy and her friend (and fellow musician) Simone are speaking to art for art’s sake advocates at a party on a gorgeous Greek island:

MARY: Petros won a big prize for his poetry. Four years ago? Stopped publishing after that.

DAISY: Why’d you stop publishing?

PETROS: I didn’t. I just say “no” to the moneymen. But still, I write every day.

SIMONE: How do people read it?

PETROS: Come to our house! The door’s always open.

SIMONE: Sorry, I don’t understand. Isn’t the whole point of making stuff for it to be seen, heard, you know, shared?

GIORGIOS: No, no, the point is in the making, my dear. That’s where the joy is. Our job is to stay in a state of grace. Everything else is just applause.

PETROS: He’s right, you know. Never let other people tell you whether your work has value because then, they own you. Now I write for myself. For my friends, for the waves. It’s more pure.

Later, Simone tells her friend:

Daisy, I know you. You don’t write music just to write. You need to be heard, you need to connect.

PS: I couldn’t find those scenes on YouTube, so here’s a scene of hearing and connecting:

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2. ‘it never works to run from ourselves’

In her essay Embrace Your True Subject, writer Heather Lanier describes the meanders of assembling her poems into a book (now published under the title Psalms of Unknowing).

I finally asked a question every artist probably needs to consider at some point in their lives: What if the thing I’m trying to bury is the thing that needs to come forward?

Her insights will certainly resonate with writers, and I believe they also apply widely—to career decisions, to parenting choices, maybe even to low-stakes fashion picks.

It turns out that it never works to run from ourselves—not in regular life, and not in art-making, either. […] I like to think all our good ideas come from our inner wisdom—that faithful compass inside each of us.

Embrace Your True Subject

PS: Heather Lanier also wrote this gorgeous essay, published in 2017 by Vela Mag, that I urge every parent (or every person, really) to read.

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3. ‘when you feel most like yourself’

In her weekly column for the Guardian back in November, ethicist Eleanor Gordon-Smith advised a reader who asked: “How do I figure out what I want? I feel like I am good at achieving goals that I care about, but I’m hopeless at deciding what goals to pursue.”

Gordon-Smith starts by clarifying the question: figuring out what we want is not the same as asking what we should want, or how to have an ideal life.

The question of what you want is separate to both. It’s about asking when you feel most like yourself. When do you feel at ease; like you have both feet firmly planted on the floor? When do you feel like the best of you is showing up in your interactions? When are you proud of yourself in that deep, lamp-in-the-soul type way?

[…] So much opportunity can turn into the imperative to never waste any.

But one way to absolutely guarantee wasting it is to let optimisation be the enemy of good. The upside is that once you pick something, anything, things often get more wantable the more you commit to continuing to want them.

It’s not that you got the decision “right”, just that once you’ve made it, you can finally cease looking at life with evaluative eyes, and live it instead.

This reminded me of philosopher Ruth Chang’s take on choices and commitment, which I wrote about here:

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Bonus

Here’s an ad by sportswear manufacturer Asics:

I don’t feel the obligation to exercise to look a certain way, but I do feel I should exercise to achieve a certain state—more relaxed, more functional, less something or another. (Obviously, they’re selling shoes and clothes here. But still, touché.)

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Thanks for sticking around and I really hope you’re well. xx