42: Celine Nguyen - Nurturing Your Mind in Public

[00:00] People want to make things, the more things they consume. I think fan fiction, which I have a deep love for, it's like people read this work that inspires them so much. They feel so moved by it that they're just like, I have to write about this. A lot of fan fiction writers end up becoming novelists themselves. You say, as a human being, intellectual discovery and gratification are your birthright. The term birthright for me indicates that it is something that everyone should do. Like, not just if you're a scholar, not just if you're an academic or a critic or a journalist, [00:30] worldview. This newsletter titled No One Told Me About Proust, and it was my argument for [00:35] There's this great work with modernist literature. It's 3,000 pages long. I think this is one of the best books I've ever read. And I want to make a case for it that is not like, oh, this is a very important book. This is very long. This must be read. And what I want to do is transmit a love for literature, but kind of in a new market context or to people who are socialized with different values. So I was kind of like, you know what people love today? They love gossip. They love understanding the weird intricacies of people's sexual and romantic lives. Proust has that. [01:05] 3,000 pages. I think there are certain things where it's like the reason you put them off is because you have overthought them or they are so kind of like psychologically load-bearing. You're afraid of failure. You're afraid of getting things wrong. And so sometimes the only way you can start those things is by seizing the moment and being very impulsive. Being impulsive and being spontaneous is actually a skill. And also like you might choke up if you try to plan it out more. So it's like you're understanding your own psychology and you're like the only way I will do this thing,

[01:35] Welcome to Dialectic episode 42 with Celine Nguyen. I discovered Celine by way of her writing. She wrote a piece at the tail end of last year called Writing is an Inherently Dignified Human Activity. And in it, she makes the case that writing, reading, cultivating a life of the mind is something that all of us should aspire to. [02:05] for developing almost a personal curriculum of sorts to spend her nights, weekends, mornings, studying literature, writing, and persuading people to spend more time paying attention to it. Celine also takes criticism very seriously, and the way she writes about [02:21] literature, whether it be lighter things or very heavy things like Proust, as an example, is amazing. I'm not sure I'm ready to take the plunge just yet, but I was fairly persuaded. Celine has a great piece on the idea of research as a leisure activity. It's sort of this self-developed curriculum for growing, for learning, for expanding yourself. We had a conversation about all of this, both the consumption side and also the writing and the persuading side of things. We had a fun [02:51] She is parasocially convincing people to care more about writing and reading and to do so with... [02:57] rigor and with intensity. And she makes a strong case that you can expand the market for the things you care about, especially if they are more virtuous. It's exciting to imagine a world where more of us, whether or not you create content about it or not, are taking our intellectual developments as seriously as we might take other hobbies or professional life or personal life. And what I really love about Celine's approach is she writes about it and talks about it in a way

[03:27] hour or 10 in a week to spend time on things like this. I feel quite grateful that I get to do this with Dialectic. And even so, I think I was quite inspired by Celine that I can be much more deliberate about my own intellectual growth. And that, by the way, this can be really fun as much as it can be important too. I hope you're inspired to, first of all, read more of Celine's writing. She writes her sub-stack, Personal Canon, as well as literary criticism all over the place. And I [03:54] dive deeper into the amazing richness that comes from exploring great writing and exploring great ideas. Whether they are 3,000 word novels written 100 years ago, or simply whatever you can get your hands on to start exploring. As always, the transcript and all the links will be available on my website, dialectic.fm, in this case, slash Celine-Nuin. And if you enjoyed the episode, please give it a like, thumbs up, five stars, wherever you are, and please subscribe. All that [04:24] receive new episodes in the future. I'd also like to thank Notion, who is the presenting partner of Dialectic. There's a cool moment in this episode where Celine brings up Notion, her former employer, she was a product designer there, and is doing so in the context of sort of my criticism that technology actually, technologists tend to lack historical context or attunement to that, to references to what came before. And she rightfully points out that there are technologies and technology companies who do, Notion certainly being one of them. I think the way that Ivan and the team [04:54] to a lineage of everyone from Alan Kay to other folks exploring how these tools can be a bicycle for the mind, how they can expand us. And it was really cool to have Celine bring that up. I think it's worth calling out that Celine and I spent some time in the conversation talking about tools and note-taking and systems. And she rightfully points out that the most important thing is the actual work, whether that's your published output of a blog post you're writing or an essay or something. And I think it's been cool to see how Notion as a tool has evolved in the right direction

[05:24] their Notion databases as remarkable, encyclopedic, super complex note-taking systems. But I also appreciate how Notion has really leaned in in the past year, year and a half or so, focusing on helping you do the most important work and expand on it, get it published, get it shipped, whatever that might be, and spend a little less time with all of the tinkering. Thanks to Notion AI and Notion Agents, as well as redesigns like the new Sidebar, they've really made it a lot easier to [05:54] As much as I love to tinker and explore tools like this, it's really great to use a tool that has, from a value standpoint, an orientation towards actually helping me focus on things. [06:04] the real work and not all of the infinite ways I might be able to optimize things. If you haven't explored Notion in a while, I would highly recommend you check it back out. You can find more at notion.com slash dialectic. With that said, here's my conversation with Celine Nguyen. [06:19] Celine Wynne. [06:21] Thank you for being here. Thank you. I'm very excited. Live in London. Many things to speak with you about today. I think I want to start with... [06:29] Something that we chatted about the first time we met and that people [06:32] one is one of the things I really admire about the way you have created this kind of [06:37] thing you do online and in your life, which is for lack of a more precise term, cultivating a life of the mind. I have a quote from you to start us off. You say, as a human being, [06:51] Intellectual discovery and gratification are your birthright. Nothing is more worthy and more self-actualizing than taking your interests seriously and pursuing them as far as you can go. So I want to ask, what is so virtuous about pursuing this life of the mind?

[07:11] Uh, [07:11] It's so interesting to hear you read that back, because I remember when I wrote those words, I had this feeling of like, maybe there's something pretentious about the lofty language of saying like intellectual activity, intellectual fulfillment is your birthright. But I think I also feel very strongly that. [07:28] I don't know how to describe it. It is so meaningful to draw from your own subjective experience and draw from all the things you've learned and encountered in the world and kind of construct a worldview. Like I think with everyone has within them some kind of philosophy for what they think is right about how they treat others, how they treat themselves, what meaningful work is. And I think that kind of constructing a life, you're constantly taking in inputs to learn more about your own point of view. And then articulating that out is just, [07:57] maybe the most meaningful thing people can do. And I also think it's something that, I mean, the term birthright for me indicates that it is something that everyone should do, like not just if you're a scholar, not just if you're an academic or a critic or a journalist, or these people who are conventionally seen as intellectuals, but everyone has a right to participate and kind of produce their intellectual worldview. [08:20] Why is the, I think almost everyone would relate to the [08:25] again, for lack of a better way of putting it, like consuming art, like, or some kind of, [08:30] whatever. Um, [08:32] cultural information or intellectual information, whatever. But you added that second part, and I think that's obviously something that you seem to care a lot about. In your context, reading and writing. Why is adding something back so important?

[08:46] Well, I think some of it is... [08:50] Well, I have this kind of instinctual explanation, which is just I think people want to make things the more things they consume. So I think fan fiction, which I have a deep love for as a kind of genre of work, it's like people read this work that inspires them so much. They feel so moved by it that they're just like, I have to write about this. I'm full of ideas. I'm like, what if this character did this? Or like, what if, you know, what if this thing happened instead? [09:20] because I think people see them as lesser forms of creativity, but I see it as like, someone is responding to this work, and then kind of like doing this like small accessible thing. And then that builds the framework for them doing these bigger things. Like a lot of fan fiction writers end up becoming novelists themselves. A lot of people who just start by tweeting like, oh, I love this essay. It really spoke to me. Eventually, they're like, wow, I really liked all these essays. Like, I really love this quality. Yeah, yeah. And [09:48] I think like when you find things in the world that you admire or even things where you're like, this could be a bit better. At some point, you're like, what would it mean for me to actualize my standards and for me to produce something? So I think very naturally people. [10:00] consume things than they try to create and i generally feel that people need more encouragement to go from the kind of like tentative bits of creation to the like okay no i'm taking it seriously i'm not just going to like doodle something or like draw something uh that's inspired by someone else i want to create my own new work and they kind of grow their ambitions that way i love that you brought up fan fiction too because it's one of the most um

[10:26] like egalitarian or like, um, accessible forms of creation or like, or like wide forms of creation. And I also think there's something telling that like, [10:36] it usually is plugged into these incredibly popular immersive worlds, you know, Harry Potter, whatever, Star Wars, that, [10:43] to your point, are just so enamoring to people that they... [10:49] Like, [10:49] are they're, they're sucked in to use that metaphor again. I want to, I want to talk about a specific kind of cut on a lot of what you just said, which is, [10:57] Creating a scaffolding for yourself. First, you say this is the about page of your newsletter. Personal Canon. This is a newsletter about trying to live a meaningful, intellectually engaged, self-actualized life. It's about how to take your intellectual, artistic and literary aspirations seriously, as we were just talking about, especially when you're no longer in school or academia, but have an urgent, unstoppable desire to keep on learning, making growing. [11:22] There's a second quote you have on autodidacts, which I liked what you say. I truly think that autodidacts are responsible for all that is good and great about alternative culture or in the discourse of our times, people with, quote, autistic special interests. But I kind of hate that term as it implies the desire to autodidactically develop expertise in a field and share it with others is an unusual desire instead of a deeply human one. And there's two, I think. [11:46] thread from each of those. First, the comment about academia, which is obviously everyone has a version of quote unquote, a life of the mind, or at the very least a kind of a structured learning for some amount of time. And then they graduate high school or they graduate college or they graduate grad school and they're spat out and like, it's kind of over. And you're like, oh, I'm in the real world. And the real world is not constructed around pure intellectual fulfillment. Correct. There's no curriculum. And so I think the thing I'm quite interested in is

[12:16] and how he writes about the early lives of geniuses. This is something Henrik writes about, too. I've talked about with him, where they have this, a lot of things. They have crazy tutors, and they have all these things. But a huge part of it is actually their sort of self-directed exploration and study. And... [12:30] You seem to be really, however implicit or explicit, [12:34] Deliberately creating somewhat of a curriculum for yourself to become the intellectual person you want to be. [12:42] I'd love to just hear you talk about [12:45] what you've learned about doing that. Obviously, it's not always super explicit. And sometimes it's just you have the newsletter as a container. But what is it like to kind of think about creating something like a curriculum for yourself? [12:56] Mmm. [12:58] Okay, I... [13:00] I feel like it was not a very structured process. So this is sort of me trying to [13:04] maybe reflect over the last five to ten years and be like how did i get started with this [13:09] I think a lot of it came about because... [13:12] So I remember right after undergrad, [13:14] I had a really long train commute. I was on the train like two hours a day, and I needed some way to fill out the time. And this is really silly, but I didn't want to pay for a more expensive phone plan. So I had four gigabytes of data for a month. And so I was like, I can't spell on Instagram all the time. Okay. So this was... [13:30] This is like 2016? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I was like, I need to do something that's like loads data. Could be data limited. Like I haven't thought about being media. Anyway. Yeah. So out of constraints arise creativity. It was like text very, very cheap. I can just download a bunch of Kindle books and spend my train commute that way. Wow. But I think I also felt this.

[13:52] I think a lot of my early learning experiences were driven out of insecurity, frankly, where I had kind of left undergrad feeling like feeling the strong sense that there are so many things I didn't understand that were unfinished that I, you know, I hadn't had this kind of fully realized intellectual experience I wanted to have. [14:10] You also notably did not study literature or English. No, I did not. So I studied computer science and communication design. But yeah, my courses were very focused on the craft side of it and the technical side of it. I was obsessed with the history side of things, like the history of computer science and programming languages, the history of graphic design, aesthetic theory. But I hadn't gotten that much into those areas in undergrad. [14:40] Thank you. [14:40] This was also, you know, when Trump was running for president the first time. And so there are a lot of conversations happening around like, what is the nature of American democracy? What is the nature of political polarization? And I had this strong desire to kind of historicize those things a little bit and understand like, what is new about our time versus like, what is maybe this continuous kind of like thrust of like political change and discourse happening over the course of the 20th century to the present. [15:10] as much as they wanted to about the world. I want to stop you for a second. A lot of people had a swell around something like Trump is a great example. And most people... [15:19] were [15:21] incredibly reactive and like very like trapped in the,

[15:25] present for lack of a better term and freaking out on Twitter and all like obsessively following everything. [15:34] Why do you attribute that impulse to be like, I want to contextualize this in like that is a much, much wiser perspective to have when you were 23 or 22 or whatever. Like, I'm curious if there is anything, maybe that's just something you've always done. And you've always had an inclination towards the historical. Yeah. [15:53] I don't know. I think I... [15:56] I think I feel really, I feel an internal discomfort if I don't fully understand something. So I feel like when people invoke terms like totalitarianism or fascism, I'm like, wait, what does that mean? And when people do these debates where like this is or isn't fascism, I'm like, how do you tell? [16:12] So I think there's this kind of like... [16:14] Maybe like meticulousness or anxiety. You do the reading. I mean, there's a meta theme that will come up over and over again, but you are definitely someone who does the reading, actually. But I think even in a non-political domain, it's like I am really obsessed with like runway and like high fashion stuff. And then when I read, people say things like, oh, this designer just took over at Christian Dior and he's kind of remixing the codes from the early Christian Dior culture collections. And like, what are those codes? What do they look like? [16:44] website where they have a lot of the Met Museum publications from the Costume Institute. They're researching fashion designers and their early histories, and you can download PDFs. And I remember scrolling through them just to understand what was happening.

[16:58] in the post-war era that influenced fashion design today. So I think I'm always obsessed with like going back and understanding what people are referencing. [17:06] This is a theme that's come up with a few people that I maybe have talked about with other guests is – [17:11] I think technology and fashion are interesting on this axis to compare because they're opposite ends of the spectrum of how much they have to innovate or how much innovation is happening. And so what I mean by that is like technology. [17:26] largely new to new science. It's just like new innovation is just coming out of the faucet. And as a result, [17:32] you don't really have to look backwards very much because there's just like truly useful new novelty. And fashion is the opposite of the spectrum where like there's very little actual innovation. And thus everyone in fashion is like deeply ingrained with references and historical context and going back to the Dior thing from the 60s or whatever. And I do think that's something that... [17:52] you [17:53] is in shorter supply on the internet now broadly and certainly in shorter supply in the like technology kind of circle end of the world. [18:01] Okay, this is Billy... [18:03] This is interesting because I actually I almost disagree with you. And OK, here's here's my reason for why. One is that I think some of the best technologists working today are actually very saturated in historical references. I think that Notion, for example, I know this is like a sponsor, but I also work there. Yeah. [18:22] I don't know, I have a deep affection for the company and its origin story. I think so much of Notion's history was shaped by the fact that the founders really cared about understanding, like early computing ideas and understanding, you know, what are all these visions of technology and computers and the Internet and how they shape our way of thinking that were not realized in the past? And can we use new technological opportunities now to actually realize them? So I think some of the best technologists actually really understand the past and really understand it as a source of innovation.

[18:52] And I would say with fashion, I mean, one of the interesting things about fashion is that there's this built in structure for novelty where like classically every fashion house has to produce two runway collections a year. It's the fall, winter and the spring, summer. So everyone who works in fashion, they're truly on the grind. [19:10] You know, they have to constantly come up with new ideas and they have to constantly figure out this tension of like, we're supposed to like, you know, maintain something about the brand DNA, the house DNA. We need to continue things forward. But then also we need to come up with a new idea. [19:24] This is a great point. I think we probably agree... [19:29] I appreciate you checking me. First of all, I think we probably actually agree more than, [19:33] it may sound like. I also think like, I guess part of what I'm really trying to drive at is that, um, [19:39] Maybe I just don't know enough about fashion, but... [19:41] Uh, uh, [19:43] Coming up with new things typically involves archive diving. Yeah. Because you can't, maybe Gore-Tex happens or whatever, but there's actually very little new substrate in there. [19:55] in fashion. I think you're right, by the way, about some of the best technologists doing this, but I don't think it's... [20:00] super culturally embedded like p and part of what i mean is even just like maybe we're going way too off track here but like even just um [20:09] in terms of how people talk about things. Yes, there is certainly a class of human-minded lineage of Alan Kay, whatever. And I'm really gravitated. There's people I've talked to a lot of product designers, but like, I don't think that's common. And I certainly don't think most technologists are running around talking about all their references. And I do think maybe it's a little bit almost surface level, but I do think that's much more common in other things, whether it be fashion or art or so on. I think to your point,

[20:37] Technology would really benefit if there were more people like Ivan or whatever. Yeah, maybe to try and synthesize. There's almost this sense of like the default mode in technology is you're only looking at the future. And the default mode in many other domains. Like I think literature is definitely that. Like fashion is definitely that. You kind of privilege the past and you privilege tradition by default. Yes. Like in... [21:00] In fashion, if you say like, oh, our brand has been around for 100 years, that's assumed to be good. In technology, if you're like, this company has been around for 100 years, people are like, so they were probably better in the past. You're so it's so right. And they're irrelevant now. Right. So I think maybe like. [21:16] Whatever discipline you're in, it's always worth figuring out almost what is the default orientation towards the past, present and future? And like, where can I find this edge? Is the edge in like finding the historical references? Is the edge actually being really optimistic about the future when everyone else is kind of afraid of it? And it's like, let's sit down. I love that frame a lot. [21:33] It's also so true. It's like, yeah, literally, brand in general, like areas that prize brand, it's like the more Lindy, the better. Totally. Anyway, I diverged us, but you were talking about kind of like... [21:49] building the early beginnings of being able to sort of maybe in an unstructured way form this curriculum for yourself. You were talking about kind of post-college. [21:58] Oh, yeah. I don't know if there was another thought there. Oh, yeah. So I put myself on this grind of like, I was commuting for two hours a day, five days a week. I was just like churning through Kindle books. The San Francisco Public Library was just full of really, really good books. And oh, the other thing about a lot of public libraries is that you can request the books that they don't have. You can just submit a little form. So I feel like I was constantly looking around and like, I'd read a book. I would go into the notes.

[22:28] referencing and be like, okay, maybe I should read these people and these people and these people. So you start with a single entry point, which is maybe a book that someone tweets about, and maybe they're doing this kind of condescending way. It's like, everyone would understand the world better if only they understood this book. Because I am very easily chastised as a person. And I'm so like, I don't know, I think I have this positive form of intellectual insecurity where I'm always, or maybe epistemic humility, where I'm always like, okay, I don't know [22:58] on that. I have to understand what's happening. And then I'll read that book. I'll read the books that [23:02] You're like nerd snipeable in this domain. Maybe it's a way. Pretty much so. Yeah. And I can just like enter into these like weird little funnels where right now I'm reading a lot about Taoism. And I don't really know how it ended up here. But this has been like the theme of my Q1. I wish you were reading Zhangji. I was going to recommend you. The author Ken Liu has a new translation of the Tao Te Ching. Okay, cool. Ken translated part of the three body problem. Oh my God. I think I have a galley copy in my email inbox. It's all from the publisher. I should read it. [23:32] He splices in Zhuangzi essays and other things, and he'll just kind of write random side notes. It's a very, like, this isn't that deep kind of trend. He takes it seriously, but he doesn't take the whole part of it. The playfulness. Yes, which is nice when you're engaging with them. [23:50] Anyway. [23:51] Yeah, I do think a key part of having your curriculum for yourself is actually being very playful and lighthearted. [23:57] Because I think something that maybe stops people from kind of cultivating their own intellect or education is this kind of like, maybe like neurotic rigidity where they're sort of like, I have to learn things the right way. I have to start with the right text. I need to have the right opinions and the right interpretations. And that's very scary. And it also prevents you from kind of almost like responding to a work and being like, OK, everyone says this book is good, but what if I don't get it? And what if that's not a sign that I'm dumb, but it's just a sign that the prose quality

[24:27] written for specialists and it's not accessible. What if I want to read about this thing that everyone says is kind of pointless, but for some reason I'm drawn to it and I'm having some response. And if I take my interest seriously, I can understand the nature of that response. I think just being like very playful and just kind of instinctual in a way, like very spontaneous, which is very much, I think, a Taoist, like Zhuangzi thing as well. It's just like, you're interested in this thing, just like channel in that direction. [24:53] A version of this, or at least a part of this, that I think relates very much to what you just said is this amazing idea. I don't know if you quite, I think it maybe actually comes from that Arena channel, but it's research as a leisure activity. Carly in the Arena channel. There was this bit where you said, I find myself turning this phrase, research as leisure activity, over and over again, especially as I plan out what I want to read this summer, what I want to write, and who I want to be at the end of the season. [25:23] um [25:25] First of all, like, yeah, what is that planning like? [25:27] Um, to the extent it does become more structured, explicit. And then I'm very specifically interested in what goes into like who I want to be at the end of the season. [25:36] Okay. [25:37] Okay, well, a few thoughts on this. One is that [25:39] I am always coming up with very elaborate plans and then they completely dissenter your head. That's the point. Time passes. Yeah. It's like the plan is this kind of like you plan in order to daydream, to set an intention, but then you have to be responsive to what happens as time passes. And so at the beginning of this year, maybe I was like, I want to read a lot more poetry because I think poetry is the place where you have the greatest compression of poetry.

[26:04] I guess like style and information. That makes sense. Like with poetry, like every word is chosen so deliberately that there's like no chance for, I mean, [26:14] There's not really any fluff. There's a lot of decision making involved. There are all these like small aesthetic encounters that can happen just in terms of like a poet breaking a line at a certain place. [26:24] And I just wanted to understand more what it means that like that level of [26:29] discipline and style at this very deep craft level so i was like i should read more poetry and then i wanted to read more about like chinese philosophy and the zhuanze but that was just because a friend gave me a copy of the zhuanze as a birthday present so i was like okay i guess i'll read that and i became quite obsessed [26:44] Um, [26:46] I think... [26:47] I think a lot of these plans start out with some intention, like the poetry thing. There's this plan of like, I want to become a certain kind of writer. And so I think this is the direction that will help. I think there I think nonfiction plans are maybe a little bit easier to understand this framing of who you want to be. Like a lot of the nonfiction plans. [27:06] reading I have right now, I think, is thinking about this question of [27:10] This sounds so lofty, but right now we're in this moment of incredible technological change in a people. Associated with that are all these concerns people have around what an ideally equitable future looks like. And last year, I was very interested in what this looks like in an artistic and creative context.

[27:40] models available. So I'm very interested in this question of like, what do we want the future to look like at a time of technological upheaval? [27:48] And in order to answer that, I'm like, OK, look at the Victorian era and how people thought about the Industrial Revolution. I could think about. [27:56] There's this book called Inventing the Future that talks about like why have left political movements failed to fail to achieve their aims? And like, what would an alternative path look like that embraces technology and progress instead of kind of clinging on to the past? [28:12] I don't know. It's just like there are these questions or there are [28:16] these intellectual questions or these kind of like very craft-based, skill-based concerns. And from there, I can kind of assemble like, oh, these are the books I've heard about. These are the sources. These are the historical periods or ideas or intellectual traditions. And I just put that in like an Apple Notes or something, or I journal extensively about it. And I text all my friends and I'm like, I'm thinking about this. If you have any resources, let me know. And then two or three weeks in, I like start reading something random. And there's a part of my head that's like, [28:46] and maybe I complete like a quarter of it or something, but I'm also constantly being distracted in a productive way by new ideas. [28:55] The specific language of who I want to be at the end of the season is like, a lot of people are like, I got to get more educated. Maybe at the point we were talking about earlier, or maybe I should have more curriculum or I should study more. I should do the research. Even part of that answer, it's like you were kind of describing like things you wanted to get more up to speed on or more educated on.

[29:16] to be. [29:17] Mmm, yeah. [29:18] Well, I guess the who I want to be part is... [29:23] So I should say, I think my most embarrassing reading trait is that I love self-help books. I've probably read like every bad to good self-help book out there. Although I think of this genre as very capacious. So I'm reading right now, the mathematician Bertrand Russell has this book called The Conquest of Happiness. And I would say it is his self-help book about maybe like his approach to mathematics, but also his understanding of what makes for a happy and meaningful life. [29:49] I think you've made the point, by the way, that philosophy, what's the point of philosophy? It's to help you live a better life. Yeah. There's a lot of philosophy that's around these metaphysical questions of what is truth? What is beauty? But then the parts that are like, [30:04] We have this one life. [30:05] It's for many of us briefer than we want. The people we love in our lives, not to be morbid, but we have very limited time with them and we don't know how long that will be. So. [30:15] it really, really matters how you spend your time. And it really, really matters what kind of person you are and all of your actions and your behaviors and in the things you're trying to produce in the world. [30:26] I think this question of self is... [30:30] I don't know. [30:32] This kind of feels like this aspect of... [30:35] I'm trying to describe this thing that is so innate to how I view the world that I'm struggling to come to... It's like a tacit knowledge kind of shaped thing almost. Yeah, or this kind of implicit assumption that structures my life of like...

[30:51] I think life is about continual self-cultivation. And so learning is definitely one of the most powerful ways to do that. I think another thing is thinking seriously about what impact you want to have on other people. [31:05] And that can be in a large scale way, but that can just even be in a small way of like, [31:10] I don't know, like you you compliment someone, you like give someone a very sincere compliment of like, I don't know you. I read your blog posts. I thought this was really meaningful and this was really profound. Everyone is looking to be seen and kind of understood for their ideas, their point of view. And that feeling of recognition is very valuable. [31:29] And so I think that one of the best ways to relate to yourself and to relate to others is to constantly be developing your intellect, which is a way of developing your relationship to others, your relationship to the world and how you want to act. And to yourself. Yeah. I don't know if that's too cheesy. I don't think it is at all. Yeah, that's really lovely. [31:48] on the kind of noted research specifically, you talk about [31:52] Um... [31:53] You're kind of comparing it to research in the academic sense or the whatever scientific sense. You say as much rigor as necessary. [32:02] How do you attune to how much rigor is necessary? [32:07] Ooh. [32:08] It's all made up. Like, it's just for you. So, like... [32:11] Yeah, so I think sometimes... [32:14] There's like a very classic [32:16] definition of rigor, which maybe occurs out of an academic discipline, which is like, in order to rigorously understand something and do research in that domain, you have to have done, in the humanities, it's often like five to seven years of a PhD. You need to have read like it's

[32:31] the 200 most important books in your discipline. [32:35] I think that that is obviously a very important form of rigor because it produces a kind of specialist knowledge that is not possible without that background. And then there's another form of rigor where it's like, [32:47] If you are someone who... [32:49] you know, is really interested in a certain historical period or a certain philosophy, your goals may be different than someone who's publishing an academic paper. And what you may want to do is just like be really rigorously thoughtful about like quoting the parts that most that you're most interested in and summarizing a book or an argument that you're drawing from. And you want to be extremely precise with language when making your own claims. But you might not need to do this thing of like, oh, I need to like survey 200 [33:19] or something. Yeah. Yeah. And I think just like, [33:23] I think people can land at the wrong level of the rigor axis, if that makes sense, where it's like maybe they pressure themselves into thinking they need to do like a super high level rigor for something where the audience, the aims, the impact that making the work will have on themselves. You just don't need to be that intense about it. And then some people can be like. [33:42] I mean, frankly, quite sloppy. I'll just start this argument, but I won't define my terms. [33:46] So just calibrating the right level of rigor for your intended objective. Yeah, and I guess over time you're building, on that last point, you're building more of a sense of when you are being sloppy or when you're taking the shortcut or whatever. [33:58] Yeah. [33:59] There's another part of this, which is like, I think interesting in the backdrop we were talking about earlier and wanting to always kind of go back into the historical context and so forth. We were talking about how relevant something should be almost. You say, I'm convinced that research should respond in some way to matters of urgent concern today. And then separately...

[34:17] You were talking to Jasmine Sun about there was this segment of the conversation. We're talking about like the ways we can get caught up in these sort of like artificial trends that come from TikTok and places like this. I think you call it you framed it as a bait for cultural criticism, like bots listening to music. And like, is this a real trend? Like, is this really happening? It feels like it's going to increasingly happen. I think you said it was like almost like pro wrestling, like we're conscripted into this fantasy of like a thing happening. And so. [34:44] especially as someone who's like going way back and reading all this kind of historical literature or whatever, and who is grounded in all these things that we were just talking about. This is very relevant. Like what is inside that original statement of like, [34:56] research oriented towards urgent matters of today without getting like lost in this [35:00] I guess it's a question about balance, basically. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. [35:05] Well, I... [35:06] This is a big question, but I have some maybe like provisional thoughts or inroads in. [35:12] One thing is that I think so, I think of intellectual labor as a very social practice. I think there's this idea that to do intellectual labor, you have to retreat to a cabin in the woods or you have to like retreat to the proverbial ivory tower. And like thoughts just kind of come directly from like your mind out into the world. Walden Ponding. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I just feel that the best intellectual work is actually highly relational and highly networked.

[35:42] or like trading ideas or like kind of encountering this like big ferment of other people's innovations. And then they use that to drive their own. And I think because I believe in intellectual work as social, I also think that it and social and embedded in human relations, I also think that has to be embedded in the relationship you have with other people today. And in doing so, you think about like, what are the concerns that other people have in their lives? What are they worried about? What are they anxious about? What are they excited about? [36:12] that the best way to do work that really resonates i mean i've been talking so much about history but like the thing that resonates is bringing history into the present or like taking these kinds of like [36:22] ideas that seem like they're just trapped in a book, they're a little bit more abundant, and connecting them to something that people care about now. [36:29] I actually have a great example of this. And I think it also gets at this question of like, how do you do like cultural criticism or like on trend writing that's like a little bit more grounded? [36:40] There's this political scientist, Henry Farrell, who I really, really love. I think he's so brilliant. I love his newsletter. But I think this was like a year or a year and a half ago when Elon Musk was just like running a mock on Twitter. [36:59] be seen as such a genius when he also seems a little bit childish online. And Henry Farrell kind of made this point where he was like, Elon Musk is a prophet trying to do a priest's job. And he talked about how founders are often people who have this intense charisma and this original thinking. And that's

[37:17] is what makes them successful at starting things. But then there's a different kind of skill set needed to like run things or just like be good at like PR and comms. And that's a much more... [37:27] you're a little bit more cautious, you're a little bit more safe. I think this kind of, to me, this is the more interesting framing of the founder mode. Yes. Debate that was happening around that time. But Henry Farrell said he was drawing from this book by the sociologist Max Weber, which is about the routinization of charisma in the... [37:47] Christian church and all these like early religious structures where you have a prophet who is intensely charismatic. And then you have all these people that come after and turn that original kind of, you know, like that original movement into something that's very durable, mass for centuries. But to me, that's so cool. It's like, who is reading Max Weber directly? But now because Henry Farrell is connecting that to like, you know, what Elon Musk is doing on Twitter today. And it's not a gimmick either. Like that makes so much sense. That's like such [38:17] I was so excited. I was like, wow, I need to get into sociology. I need to get into Max Weber. Like when you can also take the past or like take these ideas and make them relevant to the present, you're kind of. [38:28] infusing the culture, I think, with a love for learning and a desire to, like, go to those sources and learn more. So I think it's also a beautiful way to transmit, like, what research and intellectual inquiry can do. [38:41] It's also a way to be very... [38:44] as you said, like grounded in, in what's real and, and, um, and paying attention and attuned to the real things that are happening to real people, but not be like trapped in this

[38:54] utter reactivity that feels like it dominates so much of our, like when you, when you live your life through a screen, it's just like, [39:00] it's like my like i have when i'm on twitter brain i literally have to like downshift for 20 minutes to be able to read a book because my mind's just like buzzing and your nervous system is very activated because you're going like idea after idea after idea it's like very much the neil postman amusing ourselves to death thing where it's like you're constantly shifting between topics the serious the name and you should calm yourself down one and it turns out actually that mode is not very effective before we started talking recording we were talking about effectiveness and it's like [39:30] or this kind of weighing between... [39:34] the ideological, almost the emotional of like caring a lot about what's happening, but not like getting sucked in too much that you can't really do anything about it. And I think that like that just rules so much of the – [39:46] the social media mindset is like, what? [39:49] And by the way, I love that you made the point up front, which is like it's not also about like going up to the ivory tower. [39:55] And like... [39:56] It's including yourself. Yeah. Yeah. There's this Nabil was tweeting about something, Nabil Kreshi, about like comparing all the AI stuff now to like Rome research and the whole kind of like over optimizing of tools and processes and stuff.

[40:26] you to synthesize and integrate. It's like a reply to that. You say, in 2021, I updated my Zettelkowski every day. In 2026, I barely touch it because I externalized most of my notes in public-facing writing. [40:38] I love it. It's like such a just good reminder. But yeah, like what, how has the writing changed how you read and take notes? [40:49] Okay, well, I really I will try to connect this to effectiveness, which we were discussing before. So [40:55] So maybe some context. So in 2020, I made the decision, which seemed kind of [41:01] dumb or risky at the time, but I think was so intellectually satisfying, which is like, I quit my job, which was in tech. I went to art school to study history. And in the run-up to that, I was like, okay, I know very little about history. I've never taken a serious college-level history class. I need to prepare myself. And so the month before I began, and then throughout my MA program, I was just taking so many notes. And I was doing them in Notion. And I was just being very meticulous about, I'm going to color code the different themes. I'm going to, like, [41:31] organize like different pages for like this topic, this topic, this term definition, stuff like that. I'm going to link between pages. So I had this very neurotic note taking system. And I think at the time I'd come across, you know, there's this guy, Sanke Aarans, who has this book titled How to Take Smart Notes. And I think that's what really popularized this SettleCaston idea of like, you take a lot of these like, little atomic notes, and then you try to figure out the themes and the connections between them.

[41:59] One of the interesting things about his book is that he talks about a specific scientist or no, sociologist, a scientist. [42:07] Nicholas Lerman, I think, who used the Zettelkasten system to just be incredibly prolific in his research. Like he published so, so much. And so the whole promise of note taking in that book is like you take notes because you're producing some intellectual outcome. Yes, effectiveness. Yes. And then when I was reading a lot of like academic self-help books when writing my dissertation, there's one called How to Write a Lot by Paul J. Silva. And he's just like, [42:37] Your job is to write things. You can't just collect knowledge. You have to be putting things out there. That's where we started the conversation, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. And so... [42:46] I think I began to think of note taking as like, it's just like this intellectual infrastructure armature to help you produce an outcome. It's not the goal in and of itself. And so I've gone through all these different note taking systems where, you know, [43:01] Before I started writing my MA dissertation, I was kind of obsessively cataloging things. I was also using Arena. That was actually so effective for me. I had this channel that was titled A Leisurely Path Towards My MA Dissertation. And whenever I came across something interesting, I'd throw it in there and I'd just be like, inspiration will merge. I'm out of something here. [43:20] I think I'm really obsessed with these different software tools because I think they do change how you can research and collect information. [43:27] So I was collecting all this information and then I start doing my dissertation and I just kind of like stop taking notes because I have this draft. And every morning what I do instead of like taking notes in some isolated place, I open my draft and I'd be like, what am I trying to do? I'm trying to glue like this reference to this reference. I'm going to put them in the same sentence. I'm going to like write some sentences that don't make sense. I'm going to rearrange them.

[43:49] Yeah. [43:50] It's not that I have fully abandoned note taking, but I think what I've realized is that people can really polish [43:57] their note-taking systems as if they're the end game. And I see them as like preparatory work. Like you're taking notes in order to think about what you want to say. But for me, that can also happen through like texting friends and being like, I'm reading this thing and I'm really excited and I don't know what to do with it. Or like I journal pretty extensively and my journal is just like the least optimized thing possible. It's handwritten. I first sub. Always. You have some, you have very [44:27] like when you're reflecting on starting the blog and stuff it's cool to see that yeah yeah i i really enjoy it but like [44:34] I also do this thing where I have a table of contents for each of my notebooks and I have an index at the end. It's like this is where I quote this source or this person. It is so slow to do that by hand. Sometimes I'm like, why is this not why am I not doing it in a computer? But the point of writing it is that I'm trying to think through writing. So the goal isn't to optimize it. The goal isn't to make this the most searchable thing possible. I just need to get to some new level of awareness. [45:01] So that's how I use paper notes. That's how I use texting friends about what I'm working on. And then... [45:07] If it produces some written artifact, like if I produce a newsletter or a book review or something like that, then I'm very happy. And I'm like, all my ideas end up being contained by the work. By the time I finish an essay.

[45:20] Like that is the summation of like my entire subjective experience while working on it. [45:26] I really, really like that. It also reminds me, I can't remember the name. I might have it somewhere in my notes, but there's this, I think her name maybe is Annie something. And you were talking about how she was translating something from Greek and she uses this word like a hesitance or an interval. Oh, and Carson. And she has, she's using the physical lexicon. She has to literally go every single word she doesn't know. And it's, it's reminds me of what you were saying, which is that [45:51] That space, that air gap, there's something like you don't want it to be fully optimized. Yeah. [45:58] Yeah, I think there's this aspect of... [46:01] Well, one thing I'm very fascinated by is like when it is important to go slowly or do useless things or things that take way more time than needed. I remember that in Carson, and I think I really love it because what she's explaining is that the inefficiency of having to look up all these translations by hand and do all these things like that is how you are training your mind. And at the end of the day, it's like your mind is the instrument that is producing all these intellectual and artistic and creative outcomes. [46:31] that cultivates the mind in the optimal way. [46:34] So I read so many things where I'm like, like in the middle of working on an essay, I tend to off road dramatically and I'll have this list of things I'm supposed to be reading for it. And I'll go like, oh, but someone just told me about this book and I'm really into it. Or like, I just want to read this magazine that I've had on my shelf for ages. And I've often found that the things that seem like distractions from the work, I end up pulling something out of those that end up.

[47:00] going into the like real essay. And there's this real feeling of serendipity where I'm like, I'm reading this thing that seems useless, but there's like some beautiful framing, some beautiful idea. Like you can just harvest so much out of life if you're very open and receptive and you're not like, I need to stay on task. Like this is the topic. This is the curriculum. This is like where I go. Yes. Yeah. It's funny. [47:21] it's almost as though there are three things that you could optimize for. One is the actual work as you described. The second is yourself, your own growth, your own mind. And the third is like the external tool and perhaps the, the, [47:35] fallacy or the mistake many people today make, especially people who like to [47:39] play with cool tools is they're [47:42] It's like that's the worst – the tool is the worst one to optimize for. Yeah. Like shape it around either the work or around at least making your – I mean, I think you probably make a case that actually even the work, all of that is in service of like to your earlier point, becoming the person you want to be. I am curious like, again, less about optimizing for the tools and more about the work. Like you – [48:02] your output is a sort of a scaffolding or a tool in and of itself in the sense of at the very least you're [48:09] monthly-ish, um, what I read series. Like, [48:14] is a very specific container that you, you at this point are very used to, but you also like, know is coming. Um, and so I am curious, like, I would imagine knowing that it's, [48:26] Zhuang Jie is going to appear in the [48:29] January, 2026, what I read column is changing how you're reading.

[48:34] To some degree? Yeah. You notice that? [48:37] Yeah. Okay. This is really interesting because you're making me realize the monthly. So these like monthly newsletters I do, they're like everything I read in January, February, things like that. Well, one is like, I actually skip a lot of months and I always feel self-conscious about it. And I hope that no one notices, but sometimes I'm like, this is not the time to synthesize or like be external. This is the time for me to kind of like be internal and figure out what I'm trying to do with my reading. But I originally began those newsletters because I had, [49:07] Shit. [49:07] force myself to publish once a week. And I was just desperately scrabbling for ideas. And I was like, okay, I'll just do this. It seems easy. Just a roundup of what I'm thinking about. But I guess it is me externalizing my note taking and trying to come up with these bigger thematic containers. Because the first few newsletters were just kind of me like info dumping, like I read this and I read this and I read this. And then naturally, because I was reading so much good writing, like [49:37] and an end, a narrative thrust, an arc, I started thinking like, okay, I can't just like dump a list of like book summaries. I need to come up with these bigger thematic arcs. And so I think I'm kind of training myself as well to like out of disparate sources, find a way to tie them together into a bigger theme. Just like, what am I thinking about now? What are some of like the bigger connections between these things? So I think it has definitely changed how I read because I end up trying to like

[50:06] glue things together more. Yeah. [50:09] Like right now, I'm still reading the genre. I'm moving through it very slowly, but I'm reading the genre. I'm reading this book by Nick Cernichek, and I forgot the other author, Alex Williams, maybe, Inventing the Future. What else am I reading? There's this psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips. You're reading all of these things at the same time. [50:26] Yeah, because I can't concentrate. So I was reading one in the tube over here, and I was reading one at the cafe before it. This is a slight total sidetrack, but I think we have, like, how many, on average, how many books are you reading at one time? [50:42] Um, [50:43] I don't know, because some of them I will also abandon for, like, two weeks at a time, and then at the end of the month I'll be like, oh, I need to summarize it. I kind of do this, but I don't – I read far less than you do, and I finish far, far, far less than you do, and people think I'm insane. They're just like, you have to pick one book at a time. That's not why you're finishing anything. Well, you need books for a different mood. Well, so – okay. But, like, okay, different – like, are you compartmentalizing? Is it spatial? Is it environmental? Is it, like – [51:06] How do you hold it all? [51:08] Oh. [51:09] I don't know. I think... [51:11] Okay, well, [51:12] I have this theory, which may not be true, of like... [51:15] One of the conditions of contemporary life, if you're on your phone a lot and looking at algorithmic feeds a lot, is you're just like skipping between. Context changing, yes. Yeah. And it's just like. [51:25] I think people who look at algorithmic feeds a lot, you just become used to that context switching. Like your brain gets comfortable with it. And maybe we have this kind of like shifting mode of attention compared to people in the past. There's this art historian, Claire Bishop, who has this really amazing book, Disordered Attention. That's one of the other books I'm reading at the moment. But at the very beginning, she's like, everyone says that sustained attention is better and very distracted attention, where we're jumping back and forth between things, is bad and it's worse.

[51:55] what if we stop stigmatizing that form of attention and we start thinking about how it has shaped contemporary art? [52:01] So I really like it because it has that kind of provocative contrarian instinct without being really reactionary and rude, basically. But I think... [52:11] switching between books is this way to give yourself novelty, perhaps, even though like give yourself novelty while also trying to attain depth. Because I imagine both of us are like we don't want to be like Twitter brain and constantly zooming around between like tiny bits of input. But we're also so shaped by that. And so maybe it's like we dip into one book in the morning, in the afternoon, like when we're feeling very energized, when we're feeling a little bit lazy. And that's our way of just like constantly gaining novelty while still committing to reading. [52:41] the committing to reading part like what causes you to like rubber band because my issue is and again i'm just a [52:47] I have a lot of issues and I'm a far less dedicated reader, but like I just start lots of books and don't finish any of them. [52:53] And like, you're juggling all these balls and you're also not really dropping them. And by the way, I'm sure you stop books if they're not good, but like, [53:01] Yeah, well, this is interesting because I feel there's this very much like external versus internal. [53:06] Obviously, I read a lot, but I don't know if I have this hierarchy where I'm like, I'm a more dedicated reader than other people. I would imagine that we are similarly dedicated as readers probably in the sense that we both care about our intellects. But my craft is writing, and so it's like I'm really oriented towards that. I'm sure there are things that you or other people who read less, it's like there's this other thing that I need to constantly have as input in order to refine my craft. That's generous. Yeah.

[53:34] It might be incrementally true, but I also just, I'm like this with everything. [53:38] I'm juggling lots of balls and balls are falling. Well, I think it's like... [53:44] Maybe to go back to effectiveness, though, I think like if you're ambitious, you're like constantly doing a lot and like, [53:50] you care about the quality of your work and you feel this keen sense of like, oh, this thing could be so much better if I put like 100% of my time, this thing could be better. But it's like, in the [54:01] it's very satisfying to try to do a lot of things and to learn from all of them. I don't know. I have this feeling that like some of the balls can drop, but there are a few things that you like absolutely never let yourself drop. Right. [54:12] And you have a version of this that is remarkable. With the podcast, I've created something, which is, it's kind of like a harness or a container that, like, [54:21] maintains the intensity in the places I want it to go. And it's probably a little less, but like, [54:27] it has more of a binge shape when I'm prepping for an interview or something. But it, these types of things back to maybe the curriculum idea, uh, [54:33] do or even think about it as research, like do kind of like, [54:38] contain the liquid in the cup or something like that. Yeah. Okay. I really like this metaphor because I've been thinking about, um, [54:47] I really feel writing for me is this container of, I maybe described it before as this like container of subjectivity, where it's like the best work I've done is my attempt to try to synthesize [54:59] This sounds insane, but it's like every thought, every book, like every conversation, like every feeling of excitement, every feeling of like anxiety or despair, discouragement that I've had like over the course of writing that I put it into a piece.

[55:14] I think that the reason why, like, [55:18] writing and like producing an output is so meaningful compared to just like note taking and isolation is that you're, [55:25] In the writing, you're kind of like, what are all the ideas I've come across? What do I care about in the world? Like, how can I come up with some conclusion? And by the time... [55:35] Yeah. And by the time you finish it, you're like, this is my conclusion. And now that I've externalized it into the world, I can now carry it with me as part of my life philosophy. Yes. Like I've done written works that have changed me quite a bit in the sense that like afterwards, I was like, OK, I now very, very strongly believe. So last year I wrote this piece for this magazine, Asterisk, that's based in the Bay Area. And the kind of clickbaity title is, is the Internet making culture worse? [56:05] People would be like, music sucks, literature sucks. People these days don't read. They have bad taste. Like everyone likes slop. [56:12] And I'm very dispositionally optimistic. So I kind of hate the idea that like people now are dumber than they were before or like the things we're doing now are worse than before. [56:21] But writing that piece was my attempt to understand why I had this like visceral, like irritation with that idea. And then through my like weird research path as I was writing it, I came to this belief of like, [56:32] I think what matters for art and culture and innovation is that people have a way to sustain their lives and have a dignified income and living so that they can do ambitious work. And now this is a thing I'm really obsessed with, right? Like, how can I do ambitious work? How can others do ambitious work? What's the funding model? So this was not an obsession I had before writing the thing. But now I'm like, maybe this is going to be a fuzzy. It hadn't taken form.

[57:02] forced to like... [57:03] Cohere into something. Yeah, and like crystallize it. There's this quote, I'm trying to remember who said it. It's one of the epigraphs from Mary Carr's Art of Memoir. But the quote goes something like, Life is a field of corn, and literature is the shot glass it distills into. [57:20] And I love that idea of like, you're just trying to like refine and crystallize and compress things. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It's so... [57:30] I bring this up a lot, but I did this... [57:32] experience where I basically wrote 30 days in a row and sent it to some people. And like, I always use the metaphor of it's like, you have to figure out like, you don't know how much toothpaste is in the tube until you squeeze it. And it's like, whatever it might be, ambitious goals, a deadline, a general feeling that you sometimes fall with subsects, whatever it might be, having some [57:54] forcing function, and that might even be too strong of language, but [57:58] something that is pushing you to creating conclusions in any medium, I think, especially writing, um, [58:04] is so profoundly different. You made this point at the very top. It's I'm taking all these things in, but also like what am I going to offer back out? And there's all the whatever, generous or service-oriented, that's all great too. But even just for yourself, being forced to actually cohere into the shot glass is... [58:22] It's so, man, I wasn't doing that for a really long time, and I don't have much to show for it. [58:28] Yeah, I think we've talked about this the first time we chatted. And yeah, when I think about my early 20s, I have this narrative, which may or may not be true, where I had all these intellectual ambitions and desires, these artistic ambitions and desires, and I just wasn't channeling them into something.

[58:58] like, envy, where I'd be like, oh, like, I want to do that work. Like, why are they doing it? Why are they getting attention? Then I was like, you know what, this is childish. I have to do the work myself. And I think shifting to that mode of, like, I will produce these conclusions. I just feel it has led to, like, so much more satisfaction and happiness and self-actualization. Like, the last few years of my life that I have been writing just feel qualitatively different than before. Like, my mind is more active. I just encounter reality with a lot more, like, cheerfulness and [59:28] you feel the same way. Like when you make things, we're like, ah, life is amazing. Yes. And it's more full. Yeah. [59:33] we've talked a lot about [59:36] the way you do this for yourself. Um, [59:39] but I know something that you really deeply care about, and a core kind of part of your project is... [59:46] helping, influencing, pushing others to do it too. There's a quote that rhymes a lot with almost the same exact idea that I started with. But you make a bold claim. You say, after two years, I'm convinced that reading and writing are the most dignified and worthy activities that anyone can do, and in fact are activities that everyone should do. [1:00:07] You've also talked about how you have a lot of young readers. You have a very diverse audience. Obviously, you have people who love or kind of like more traditional literary world, but you also have people in technology and in all these different places who maybe don't have the English degrees and the academics and so on. I think one way to describe your project, excuse me, and you might not like this at all, but is that you are an influencer.

[1:00:30] And you are very specifically an influencer, [1:00:33] You are like parasocially convincing people to read and write. [1:00:37] Like that is, and again, I don't think you would necessarily use that language, but like that is something that you are doing at the very least. [1:00:45] And so I guess on maybe push it even further and something that I suspect you definitely won't like is like, [1:00:51] On this note of curriculum, how would you react to being called or thought of [1:00:56] as a teacher. [1:00:59] Okay, well, one thing I will say is I'm actually not as offended by the influence of American terrorism. I think because... [1:01:09] I think maybe in general, I have this desire to kind of like restore the things that are considered like shameful or inadequate or unworthy. So like when we were discussing... [1:01:19] Like when we were discussing fan fiction and fan art earlier, and like this is a way that so many people have developed their technical abilities and then gone on to do original work. So I don't think it's a lower form. I think amateur research, not a lower form. It's just like something you do depending on what career you're in, you know? And so I guess with influencers and creators, it's like... [1:01:43] I think I do maybe have this snobbishness of like, there are definitely people who... [1:01:49] use the internet as a way to convince people to like buy more stuff. [1:01:53] Like, buy more stuff or like, this is not... People... [1:01:57] in this category, not necessarily influencers, but to like be more reactive towards others online or like be more just kind of.

[1:02:05] or just like kind of positive, like us versus them, like negative energy or relationship towards the world. So there are lots of different ways you can use the Internet to influence how people think and what they do. I find myself really admiring and really being shaped by people who just kind of understand that like parasocial dynamics are just, [1:02:24] how we work as social creatures and you can actually use them to encourage people to do good things right right um [1:02:31] And I guess I have this. Which is why I reach for the teacher metaphor in a way, which is like the best teachers, you write all about this, like the best of anything make you want to be like them. Yeah, totally. So there is, oh my God, there's actually this like artist, writer, educator, teacher I really admire, Laurel Schwulst. [1:02:48] But I had a Zoom call with her recently, which was, I should say, very personally touching for me because her work has really shaped my work. So for her to say, oh, I really enjoy your work as well, that moment of recognition, as I've said, so meaningful. But she was saying that when... [1:03:04] she first began teaching, I think she had gotten advice from someone else who was like, I try to teach or I try to treat all of my students as if they're geniuses. [1:03:13] And I thought this was so beautiful and generous. I know there's... It reminds me of George Saunders. He's like, there's some line about how he's... They come in already perfect or something. And he's just trying to help them a little bit farther along. That's really, really precious. This huge generosity towards others. I think... [1:03:31] I think the reason I like encouraging other people to read and write and take their interests seriously is that I really...

[1:03:40] I really reject the idea that like I am more special than other people, if that makes sense. And I think part of it is that. [1:03:48] I now kind of accidentally have this public presence where I like write a lot and read a lot. And so people see me in those terms. But for many years, I was like a nobody online. I was not like, like no one knew I was reading all this stuff unless you were maybe like watching the Caltrain or something. [1:04:03] or you were a friend of mine. No one knew I had these ideas within me. And I did not put my ideas out into the world because I felt so self-conscious. I was like, who am I? I'm not an expert. Other people have so much more to say. And actually making that transition from keeping everything inside to actually putting it out into the world and having a pretty positive reception and realizing that putting stuff out in the world is how I have met other people who are now dear [1:04:33] my work out there, getting to talk to people who I also admire, that's been so satisfying. And I [1:04:39] want everyone else to have that experience, basically. And so a key part of that is believing that the people who are your idols, they're not necessarily better than you. They've just been able to take their work more seriously. Maybe they've been luckier in some ways, but maybe they also had this motivational environment, whether it was friends, family, mentors, stuff like that, that encouraged them to do this thing. And I think I'm so sensitive to discouragement, [1:05:09] So I have this very strong feeling of like,

[1:05:12] I want to try to encourage others as much as possible. Like people are very fragile in their ambitions and if you can just be that one person who's like, [1:05:19] do your work. Like, here's what is really special about it. I think related to this is, um, [1:05:24] I mean, we've talked a lot about my newsletter, but I think a big part of my writing practice is doing literary criticism and increasingly art criticism. And there I feel that people think of a critic as like someone passing judgment. It's like, this is good. This is bad. I don't. [1:05:39] I think that's an important part of it. It's not the only framing. I think a lot of what critics do is notice things and draw out, like, this specific thing is good. This specific thing could be improved. But when it comes to encouraging other people, like... [1:05:53] pointing out, not just saying like, oh, you can do it in a general way, but saying like, this is the thing that is striking to me about your work. This is the thing that seems to be distinctive about you. Can you draw it out more? I think that's what the best teachers do. [1:06:06] Yeah, it's taking the thing apart almost. Yeah. [1:06:10] There's a quote. [1:06:11] You... [1:06:13] Cited from Alison Knowles in her book, Event Scores. Yeah. I want my work to expand the terms of engagement. I don't want people looking passively at my work, but actively participating by touching, eating, following instruction about listening, physically making or tasting something or joining in an activity. Yeah. [1:06:31] That book, if people can look up, is obviously a very, very specific version of that. But I'm curious how you think about what goes into... You were speaking about it a little bit, maybe there at the end, in the context of criticism. But what goes into making your writing...

[1:06:44] and the kind of extended work more participatory and really kind of inviting people in. [1:06:52] Okay, this is interesting. Well, what... [1:06:55] again, kind of like loose inroads into this. One thing I'm very interested in is how [1:07:03] I hate this for this. [1:07:04] So a lot of the writing and creative work and artistic work people do right now exists in a fairly punishing attention economy that is really optimized for, you know, like short, snappy, quippy, viral, like often negatively slanted things. Something I find very interesting is how you can do work that kind of puts people in touch with their kind of best instincts for the kinds of things they want to like read and watch and consume online. [1:07:34] of inviting the reader in is really holding their attention and being respectful of it. And I have been obsessed with this question of how do I write content that has the kind of absorption of clickbait content, essentially, but is actually a little bit more intellectually complex. Because at the end of... [1:07:55] My hope is that when people finish reading something I've written, they feel like they've gone through this narrative experience that has actually felt intellectually satisfying. To go back to this idea that intellectual work is really important and kind of this inherently important human activity, I think our brains need to be exercised, essentially. And if all you are doing is reading kind of low-quality stuff that doesn't really engage your full intellectual instincts, it just feels unsatisfying. It kind of feels like there's this trapped energy in your brain.

[1:08:25] this idea of like, [1:08:26] as a writer, I should respect the reader's time enough to draw them in and immediately show it as compelling. I need to give them this experience throughout. They have to be kind of engaged throughout. And then at the end of it, they have to... [1:08:40] feel like it was a meaningful way to spend their time and a meaningful exercise of their intellect and their, you know, and their interests. And you don't show it when you write about this into like you on a relative basis on Substack, right? Long posts. Yeah. I was talking to Henrik about he's kind of the inverse. He writes pretty short posts. And yet, [1:08:56] they are not any less readable. And some of that is just the quality of your writing. But you also talk about this, like, there's photos in there, and there's, like, little bullet points, and, like, little, like, you're doing these little things that I think certain people to your, it's not quite the same, but it's a little bit high and low, which is, like, I'm willing to use some of these tactics that aren't actually, and, again, I think another person would be, like, I don't know, I have this where I'm, like, do I really need to make an Instagram reels or, like, whatever? [1:09:26] works today and she'd be like no i'm i'm just gonna write 10 000 word that's like isn't debasing my work right right [1:09:33] to do all the little stuff. How to suffer. Yeah. I really, I really admire that. There is one last thing I wanted to read on this note. Um, [1:09:43] on expanding the market uh the pre-existing audience might be quite small but if you're a good writer you can make the audience for your interests bigger as the english poet william wordsworth said every great and original writer in proportion as he is great and original must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished which i know i know you love that quote that's a banger you you hit this a lot which is like it's not just about the existing and people

[1:10:13] and you [1:10:15] seem very unconcerned with that. And I think part of that is... [1:10:18] related to just like an understanding of how the internet works. But also part of that is actually maybe something you were getting at [1:10:25] a few minutes ago, which is like... [1:10:28] the amount of people who maybe currently aren't super literary in their, in their consumption could be, and you want to like invite them in and help them. But yeah, I love to hear you just talk about why, why, [1:10:40] why the market can be expanded? Yeah, so I think... [1:10:45] I think something I've been very shaped by maybe is like always having day jobs in tech startups, but then having all these [1:10:52] increasingly these interests in domains are very different, like literary criticism, art criticism, and so on. But I think in tech, there are these... [1:11:02] If you're in tech, you implicitly accept that like, [1:11:05] there may not be an existing market for your product. No one is going to say, I need a thing that does exactly this. No one's going to be like, you know what I would love? I would love like a [1:11:16] People are not going to ask for Spotify or ask for Bandcamp necessarily in exactly that definition. But once you produce some new technology or some new piece of software and put it out into the world, people kind of adapt the way they relate to each other, their work. They change their behaviors around it. So I think working in technology has given me this idea that you should not be constrained by present behavior. You should see it as possible. Yeah, you can intervene in the world and shape the way people behave.

[1:11:45] do things and i think this is something that architecture like architecture and urbanism as disciplines also understand it's like [1:11:51] you're making all these kind of like little small interventions and changes in the world. Accordances almost, right? Design is like this too, of course, obviously, yeah. Yeah, where it's like you carve out a plaza or you like kind of choose to have like slightly wider sidewalks. And as a city, you allow restaurants to like put seats out there. That is going to change the texture of your city and how people relate to each other. So- [1:12:14] Okay, yeah, so connecting this back to the idea of literature, I think I just have this sense of [1:12:21] You know, in... [1:12:22] I would say in the literary world and in academic humanities, [1:12:27] A lot of the meta discourses around what is the nature of literature, what is the nature of criticism today, tend to be quite negative. And I think there's this feeling of a lot of the existing institutions are shrinking in some way. It's scarcity, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that scarcity is real in many senses. There are very few places to publish a book review now compared to 10 years ago. There are very few excellent specialist publications like Book Forum or the London Review of Books. [1:12:57] publications that exist really struggle to make money. You know, there are a lot of tragic things about this for our intellectual world. [1:13:03] I think that it is really important to not accept that world is given and just say like, oh, the fact that all these things are shrinking means that people don't care about books. I'm kind of like, I don't know, like, what if we psyop people into caring more about books? I think that's part of my goal with the writing I do, which is like, let's not accept the market conditions as given. Let's believe that we can transmit a lot for literature to people and that we can create a new world that maybe has new institutions that support this.

[1:13:33] I wrote this insanely long newsletter last year, and I was kind of surprised it went viral because I was like, or like, I both... [1:13:40] deliberately wrote it in the hopes that like people would be drawn in but i also did not [1:13:45] did not feel that like it would have this massive reception. It was just like, this is a craft exercise. But I wrote this newsletter titled, No One Told Me About Proust. And it was my argument for... [1:13:56] There's this great book of modernist literature. It's 3,000 pages long or something. I think this is one of the best books I've ever read. And I want to make a case for it that is not like, oh, this is a very important book. This is very long. This must be read. Because I think the traditional case that people make for this is like, this is a canonical book. You have to read it. That to me feels very attached to this kind of old world and these old institutions have a certain [1:14:26] kind of in a new, maybe like in a new market context or to people who are socialized with different values. So I was kind of like, you know, people love today. They love gossip. They love like understanding like the weird intricacies of people's sexual and romantic lives. Proust has that. And that's why you should read these 300, 3000 pages. [1:14:43] It's a beautiful transition right where I want it to go. I think the Proust piece, and I want to talk more about criticism specifically later, but the Proust piece is such a beautiful example of [1:14:54] of like what you are great at, which is like being able to, you know, [1:14:59] be invitational to these things that are sort of like roped off maybe especially um there's a you in the early that piece you quote alisa or elisa gabbert who had a similar experience she says it was not just good it was as they say extremely my shit everyone says you should read proust but no one had ever told me that i specifically should read proust um

[1:15:24] there's this other beautiful metaphor you use. I think in that piece, or maybe somewhere else, you say, sometimes I discovered these books by mistake. I read Maggie Nelson's Bluets in college, for example, while taking a color theory class. I assume based on the title that would help me with my homework, which is great. But often, it was because someone I knew gently pressed a copy of the book into my hands. Which is like, obviously, it's a slightly different tone, but this [1:15:51] Just beautiful metaphor of what you're getting at. What makes a good recommendation? [1:15:56] Mmm. [1:15:57] I mean, some of it is timing. I obviously am like giving recommendations and also receiving recommendations all the time. But I think often there has to be this alignment of like the thing this book is about or the way it has been framed to me just seems to resonate with where I am in the current moment. [1:16:14] I think... [1:16:17] So I think when I try to translate that into like, how would I recommend a book to another person? I think it has to be grounded in like what the other person cares about and what they're interested in and their goals in life much more than like, what is it about like this specific book? Or I mean, obviously the book is important, but I'm trying to find the match between the potential reader's interests and what the book can offer them. Right, right. And then, you know, in this triangular relationship, there's like me as the critic trying to kind of say like... [1:16:45] you know this thing you design your life like [1:16:48] Maybe it's that you don't believe in love anymore after a big breakup. Maybe it's that you don't [1:16:54] are kind of being dragged out by your family history and you don't understand how to carve out new ways of relating to people. Maybe it's that you feel really burned out at work or you've had a bad work experience, but you want to like recover the enthusiasm to do meaningful work. It's like,

[1:17:06] trying to get at some bigger, I don't know, like subjective anxiety or hope people have in their lives and then describe how literature can... [1:17:15] match that. I guess I'm [1:17:18] I think the one thing I'm hesitant about with what I just said is that I think it's not always ideal to describe literature in utilitarian terms. [1:17:27] You know, where it's like, read this. The point you were just thinking about first, right, right. [1:17:30] Yeah, like I think... [1:17:32] If something feels like an obligation, like people can do it, but they'll kind of drag themselves through it. Just by the way, how these big books feel. Yeah. It's like, I know I know it'll be good. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's just it's long. Yeah. [1:17:47] Yeah, I think there's something about like having a social context where it feels fun, because if you're like, everyone told me I have to read this thing. I feel it like bearing down like this great burden on my life. I'm going to die having not read this like one very important thing. And I'm like going off and like reading Twitter, Instagram captions instead. It's like. [1:18:06] I don't know. I both feel that like, [1:18:09] reading great literature is something that you should kind of aspire towards and orient yourself towards, but also that it has to feel [1:18:16] genuinely fun. It has to feel like it is [1:18:19] just as fun and interesting and satisfying as the kind of like lower forms of entertainment that we're told are fun. But then at the end of the day, we're like, why does my screen time look like that? Yes. Yeah. This relates to this thing you talk about with Henry Begler and the vulgar optimism. Yeah. And this notion that like there are just these things that are like.

[1:18:40] So, [1:18:40] I don't know, you're supposed to like or whatever. Maybe back to the recommendation thing, like, [1:18:46] Do you view, I mean, maybe it's better defined as like a recommendation is a, [1:18:51] Thank you. [1:18:52] very specific thing to a specific person. Do you view, like how do you think about what goes into a good recommendation in the Proust essay sense of like more of like, I'm being, I'm shouting from the hilltops to anyone who will listen. [1:19:06] Like, you have to read this thing. Like this recommendation at scale. Yeah. Because most of the... I mean, I'm sure you're making lots of recommendations to people in your life. But I guess the recommendation's... [1:19:16] that I'm kind of more thinking about are the ways that you, and again, I realize it's like next to criticism. Um, [1:19:23] Maybe it's just like enthusiastic criticism. [1:19:25] Thank you. [1:19:26] Yeah well. [1:19:28] Hmm. [1:19:31] Okay, let me try to answer it this way. I think [1:19:34] When I began writing book reviews, I became very interested, obviously, in the history of criticism and how it's changed between different periods in the 20th century versus now. And one of the big changes people talk about is that there used to be a much more authoritative voice that people would use as critics, where it's like, [1:19:51] First person writing was like maybe slightly discouraged or seen as slightly unconventional. The critic was very much seen as an authority. And they also structurally had this position of being like more gatekeepers in the sense that like you had to learn from your newspaper's critics about new music. You could not go online and be like, who's posted something new on Bandcamp? I think for many, many structural reasons, critics are no longer gatekeepers.

[1:20:21] And I use that term in a kind of like in a non-stigmatized way. And I've seen a lot of critics I respect talk about this idea that we are moving towards a more kind of subjective first person model criticism. And the goal is not like subjectivity in the sense that it's like kind of like overly personal or overly about the critic as opposed to the book or the reader. But the sense that like. [1:20:44] Our beliefs about what's good and what's bad, those are always very personal and very situated in our own biographical context. And so... [1:20:53] When I try to recommend things to people, I actually think it helps to be very aware of why I'm drawn to a work and then trying to figure out from that kind of subjective and specific situation, what is the universal thing? Right. I think I very much believe in this. [1:21:10] path of like, you have to start with the subjective to go to the universal, or you have to start from the specific to make these broader claims. I would say the latter is also very much like a kind of historian's belief of like, you look at a very specific moment in history, you look at primary source material, and then you make some bigger argument about like, this is how the Victorians felt about technology, you know, and then maybe like, here's the velvets for today. Yeah, that's super, that makes a ton of sense. I, by the way, I would say like, all art is this too, not just... [1:21:40] Like everything. Yeah. Like anything that ends up generalizing this well, I think it has to start with something. Maybe it goes back to even just like grounding it into something that's real. [1:21:49] in the way we were talking about earlier.

[1:21:52] Hmm. [1:21:53] Thank you. [1:21:54] Yeah, yeah. Here's my gossipy... [1:21:57] hilarious enthusiasm for bruce yeah by the way everyone will like it i'm it's being chipped away i was reading nabeel's [1:22:05] review of it as well. I'm like, dang it. I might have to actually read this in my life. I will say, and what I tell everyone is that you can just start with this first volume and see how you feel. I think the idea of sitting down committing to 3,000 pages, sometimes you're like, I have other stuff to do with my life. [1:22:21] But the first volume, very different, very cute, like charming. Just read that and see how you feel. I had the trio of you, Nabeel, and Blackbird's biplane all in the same, like, chunk of time. I'm like, how? Anyway. [1:22:35] Everyone was... [1:22:36] Yeah, everyone with good instincts. They just love first. [1:22:40] Yeah, this is the thing. This is the tension, though, is I think, like, everyone reading this is like, yeah, I know. I had their thought, like, [1:22:48] I ran a marathon in the fall. Congrats. Thanks. [1:22:53] It's like, I know it will be fulfilling to run America. I think a lot of people's experience, like anything like this, like I know it will be fulfilling, but like. [1:23:00] It's just like you're at the bottom of the mountain and you're like looking up the mountain. And maybe that's why... [1:23:06] joyful, enthusiastic, light, playful prompts are so... [1:23:13] rare and useful in these types of things because normally it's just like it's not that motivating to be like I know I'm supposed to read this yeah [1:23:20] Well, maybe to go back to this kind of like, I don't know, like reading as like cultivating the self or like how to transmit it.

[1:23:27] transmit enthusiasm to people, I think one of the most effective ways to convince people to do something is to just demonstrate like, [1:23:35] why it was so meaningful to you. [1:23:37] Like maybe you do not, or like. They look like they're having so much fun over there. Yeah. And you're like, I want that. Yes. Yeah. Like maybe you see other people run marathons and you're like, oh, they carry themselves with so much dignity and confidence. I watched the New York marathon the year before and I'm like, all right, I got to do it. Yeah. Yeah. [1:23:52] Yeah, you want that subjective experience. You're willing to go through this ordeal and then you understand that the ordeal itself is actually very enjoyable. Right. Right. Which was with literature and reading. [1:24:02] It can be a very private, lonely, isolated thing for a lot of people. I think that's one of the reasons the work you do is so cool. Another version of this, or at least a related thing, is – [1:24:11] you were the one who recommended I talk to Charles. So thank you for that. I had an awesome conversation and he's got this awesome piece called here for the wrong reasons. And it, there's this kind of like, [1:24:20] space of related ideas. You talk about this guy, Jack Hansen, and the word performative. There's a line in an old Noah Baumbach movie called Kicking and Screaming, where he talks about... [1:24:33] It's like cigarettes or something. It's like an affectation became a habit. And here we are. And I'm like, that's obviously in the negative way. But I'm really fascinated by that idea. Effectively, as Charles might put it, it's like it's OK to be a poser. Yeah. Because sometimes being a poser is like the path in. Can you talk about. [1:24:50] the way that that plays out, maybe it has played out for you or for other people, which is like, [1:24:57] we don't need to get too into the weeds of like the performative literature type stuff if we don't want to, but like the ways that like,

[1:25:04] that can kickstart momentum even when you when you like don't love it yet or don't believe it yet oh [1:25:11] Okay, yes. So I... [1:25:13] I'm going to answer this maybe by referencing what I feel are like two of the most interesting public philosophers working today. So one is Agnes Clard, who has this book called Aspiration, the Agency of Becoming, which was incredibly motivating to me. It was actually the reason I quit my job to go to grad school. So it has had a huge influence in my life just in terms of like things I have done. But she talks about this idea that like people might aspire to certain things, like they might aspire to know a lot more about jazz. [1:25:43] well-informed about current events they you know all these things and like [1:25:47] The point she makes is the aspiration at the beginning is always a little bit fake. [1:25:52] Because you like if you're like, oh, I want to learn more about jazz or like, [1:25:56] I think for me, I'll try to contextualize this in my life. I was like, I want to learn more about electronic music because my friends love this. They like go to events. They bring me along. They say like, oh, like this live set wasn't good for like this and that reason. Or they're like, oh, my God, like that transition or like the kind of like way these like jungle and breakbeats. And I'm kind of there going like, I don't know what any of these terms mean. [1:26:16] When I began trying to learn more about this, I did feel like a poser because I was like, the people around me are all just kind of intuitively saying these words. They feel so comfortable. There's something extremely cringe about me going and Googling, like, what is jungle? What is the defining? You know, what is drum and bass? What are the defining traits between these things? What is a hi-hat sound? But like...

[1:26:38] You have to kind of do that cringe thing really on. You have to start somewhere. Yeah. And like the thing Agnes Clark says is that it is through this aspirational kind of like cringe aspect of like. [1:26:49] overly consciously trying to learn these things that they become absorbed and innate and you start to value these things at the beginning you don't really understand this domain and you don't really like you can't really internalize the value you just see the other people value it and you aspire towards them. [1:27:05] So that is one defense of being a poser, I guess, or kind of like being performative on the road to kind of internalizing that thing. And then the other reference I want to point up or like bring up is Xi Ting-Wian, who you've talked to. I love him as a philosopher. He has this amazing book called Games Agency as Art. And I kind of, [1:27:27] read it as like you know there's this period when gamification was a dirty word and people like gamification is the thing that software does to incentivize you to do things that are not good for you yes [1:27:37] But he is someone who loves games. And so I read the book as him being like, but what if games are good? You know, what if there's something valuable here? And one of the things he talks about is that in games, you are playing a certain constructed role and you have certain constructed motivations and also like antagonisms between people. And he makes this argument that like by playing a lot of different games where it's like in this one, you are like the spy and you have to behave in a certain way where you're like misleading other people. [1:28:07] But like in this, you get to practice. You learn about yourself. Yeah. And you like pull out a different dimension of yourself.

[1:28:14] And he has this idea that like by moving through all these different like forms of agency or kind of like these different assumed identities in games, like you just have more flexibility in your life in terms of how you can behave or how you can act. And so... [1:28:29] I think... [1:28:30] I think I feel very strongly that there's no like... [1:28:34] single self that you are born into and you just have to like stay there for life. I think this is very related to my beliefs on self-cultivation as well. It's like you can just decide like, oh, I'm someone who, or I guess I should say I specifically, I'm someone who used to be so insanely shy. I would like, I don't know, like my hands would get sweaty talking to people. If you talk to anyone from my high school, they'll be like, we never heard her speaking. [1:28:59] But at some point I was like, I'd really like to connect with people. I have to learn how to do [1:29:04] And like all these things where you're like, I'm shy or like, I'm very insecure about this or like, I'm not athletic or I don't know anything about this domain. You can choose to change those things. And when you start, maybe you're like, oh, this is very fake. I'm fighting against my instincts. I see these other people who seem to be doing it for real, whereas the thing I'm doing feels so fake. Yeah. [1:29:34] identities that like [1:29:36] fit them better. And like the fact that they had to consciously create them does not make them worse. It's telling that actually having in the games context or otherwise actually role playing. And like it's like suspending disbelief or something is what allows a lot of people to like, because if they're doing it as themselves, it's like, I'm not a X, Y, Z. Yeah.

[1:29:56] That's an example of this. Two writers, Viv Chen and Ifani Lee, if I'm not getting their names incorrect. A perfect example of the affectation becoming a habit and how you ended up getting started, as I understand it. You say they announced that they were hosting a meetup for Bay Area based sub stack writers. At the time, I was desperate to meet other writers, but I realized that it would be awkward to attend without a newsletter of my own. I wrote my first post without thinking too much about it. I remember doing final edits at the airport on my way home from New York City. [1:30:26] Impressing published as soon as I got back to my apartment two hours before the meetup began. [1:30:31] Wow. Oh, yeah. [1:30:33] I am... [1:30:34] I think one thing... [1:30:36] So one thing I have absorbed maybe again from the like tech startup world is that sometimes it's good to just create false urgency and to just like rush towards a deadline. 100%. And sometimes there's like this moment, like a market moment, like a cultural shift, and you just need to seize the moment and do something. So in this context, I had spent years, like literally years of my life being like, I want a blog. I want a newsletter. I don't know. Like maybe it's cringe. Should do it. Whatever. Viv Chen is someone who. So I think she and her friend, Anthony Lee. [1:31:06] is no longer writing her newsletter but she used to have the food newsletter uh vib chan writes a really good like very personal very like very personable very voicey uh like personal style newsletter but they [1:31:18] announced this meetup and I was like, okay, there are these two people I follow. I like their writing. I myself want to write. Maybe this is just an opportunity I should use to do this thing that I've been putting off for ages. I think there are certain things where it's like the reason you put them off is because you have overthought them or they are so kind of like psychologically load-bearing. You're afraid of failure. You're afraid of getting things wrong. And so sometimes the only way you can start those things is by seizing the moment and being very impulsive. Yeah.

[1:31:48] I've started feeling that [1:31:50] being impulsive and being spontaneous is actually a skill, like to know the right moment to just like not plan and just do something. Yes, the opening is there. The opening is there. Yeah. And also like you might choke up if you try to plan it out more. So it's like you're understanding your own psychology and you're like, [1:32:04] The only way I will do this thing, which actually is one of my lifelong dreams, is [1:32:08] is I've just seized the moment. There's... [1:32:11] Naval Ravikant of all people had this thing somewhere where he's just like inspiration is scarce. So when you have it, you have to go like, you can't be like, you can't assume I have this mantra that I try to remember, which is tomorrow. Isn't real. It's because anytime I get into the like, Oh yeah, it's, [1:32:31] It's totally going to start lifting weights tomorrow. Nope. Yeah. [1:32:37] Yeah, I also want to connect that to I love tomorrow isn't real as a concept. And this makes me think, too, of like Oliver Berkman's 4,000 Weeks, which I think. [1:32:48] I think there's also a huge influence on me. I would say like Oliver Berkman is one of those great, like very philosophically inflected self-help writers. Like he's definitely like at the top of that genre. But he talks about this idea that we think that we are guaranteed more days to live. You know, it's like if you're in your 30s or 40s or 50s, you're like, I probably have a few decades. Like there's time to do the things I want to do. [1:33:08] You don't know that, like not to be morbid, but it's like we could walk out of this room and then an accident could happen. And... [1:33:16] I think that [1:33:17] it's actually really

[1:33:19] I feel it's really important to be aware of the potential for death or the transience of life, not to be like extremely morbid and fearful, but just have this sense of like, am I, [1:33:29] doing today the things that I feel are dignified and worthy. And so that's like, I should be generous with my friends and loved ones and not be arbitrarily impatient with them, because I would hate for like the last time I interact with them to be [1:33:43] you know, just like, [1:33:44] for me to just like be impatient instead of being generous with their work. I would love to feel that like every day I'm doing something that is shaped by my intellectual instinct. So I'm reading the books I want to read. I'm working on my drafts. I imagine it feels different to encounter tragedy in life if like you're on the way to doing the thing you care about versus you've never started and that feeling of loss, you know? [1:34:07] Yes. And it is so easy to get into this mode of like the things I'm going to one day do. Yeah. [1:34:14] When I, I mean, you have this line, you say, why not cultivate a life of the mind inside the life I'm already living? Yeah. There's a... [1:34:24] It's so – if you're not, like, on edge about that or, like, really noticing the inspiration point you were making, you can just lull yourself into, like – [1:34:34] perpetually needing to be ready. Yeah. [1:34:37] There's a line you have about this and about getting started that I thought was really powerful. You say, there may be a time in your life when everything is easier. [1:34:47] But you need to start closing the gap between your taste and your execution today. Referencing that Ira Glass idea, which is so good. Read the book that you're afraid you can't understand yet. Write the essay you're not sure you can pull off. How else will you become capable of it?

[1:35:03] Why is preparation not progress? [1:35:06] Mmm. [1:35:07] I think I have... [1:35:11] So I think that [1:35:13] I think that quote you read out, I think comes from... [1:35:16] And as I've mentioned before, feeling like my early 20s were really characterized by just holding myself back. [1:35:22] for some reason, from the things I wanted to do. [1:35:24] I remember at some point I started journaling. So now I journal most days, three pages longhand. It's like the Julia Cameron prescribed length in the artist's way. But I remember journaling at some point and just thinking like, why... [1:35:37] Why am I holding myself back? Why am I doing all these things in preparation for some future? I think I had some like weird metaphor in my journal entry. I was like, I'm this horse that's been training my entire life to run a race. And I've never let myself run the race. Like, why is that? [1:35:53] I think... Once I've read everything, I'll be ready. Yes, yes, the A.O. Scott. There's this amazing essay A.O. Scott has written about Susan Sontag, and he's like, as a younger person, I was obsessed with reading all the... [1:36:05] all the books, like going to the museums, learning all these things. And then when I had finally attained this like state of perfect self-cultivation, then I could begin. [1:36:13] Um, [1:36:14] I think... [1:36:16] I mean, it's really psychologically interesting how I was in that state, how I think like many people are in that state. I certainly was with this. Yeah. Yeah. And I think like, [1:36:25] I think one of the most valuable things like people can do for others is like think about like, what are the forms of self-sabotage in your life that cause you a private level of pain?

[1:36:36] Once you have gotten over them, is there a way you can help others through that journey? [1:36:41] I think one of the most satisfying responses I get when I write my newsletter, someone saying, like, I have felt self-conscious about my own writing or artistic practice. And you writing this thing made me feel confident about beginning. I think I'm pulling them forward. Yeah, it's like. [1:36:56] It's not like I was wasting my life when I wasn't producing work, but I feel there are years of my life when I could have been doing more and I was holding myself back. And there are all these reasons why. I think for many people, it's like you internalize some skepticism someone says about you or you internalize this feeling of like, oh, like I'm not the right person or my work isn't good enough. [1:37:19] It's like helping people through that is so meaningful. Sorry, this is a very emotional topic for me. And I'm like, what were we discussing? I just need to say this thing. You answered my question. My question was why preparation isn't progress, but you answered it. Or at the very least, you gave the more important advice. [1:37:35] message, which is like [1:37:38] You have to start somewhere. That's what we were talking about earlier. You just got to get going. Please. Sorry. Maybe the other, I'm not remembering a thought I had about preparation, which is that you can prepare while doing the work. [1:37:50] Like the experience I've had with my writing, and I think is true of all creative projects, is like you can start without all the resources you need and then you kind of panic and you're like, oh, to do this. Like in a lot of my writing, I'm like, oh, I want to try to book review about these topics. But like, let's say like one of the things I want to talk about is affect theory. I actually have no clue.

[1:38:09] what Affleck Theory is, I'd better read up on that. Or like, I am writing... [1:38:14] I think I had this one essay that I feel was like really me trying to [1:38:19] reach a different level of intellectual capacity than I was able to before. Or like, I feel this about all of my works. That's why they're so long, maybe. And they like, you're feeling it continuously, you mean? Yeah. Yes. Right. As you should, I would hope. Yeah. It's like, you always want to work at the edge of your capabilities. Yes. [1:38:35] but in kind of like [1:38:37] early 2024, I had sent a pitch to this literary magazine I really love, the Cleveland Review of Books. And I was like, I want to write about conspiracy theories. And I just wrote an email that was like, there are these five books about conspiracy theories, and I just want to write about them. And then afterwards, they're like, okay, we're accepting the pitch, like send us a draft by this date. I was like, wait, I need some bigger idea other than the fact that like all these books are about the same thing. [1:39:01] And so in the process of writing that, I began researching a lot of stuff. I was like, what is the history of conspiracy theories in American politics? [1:39:11] you know, why do people believe in these conspiracy theories? What do I think is important to write about here? I don't want to just like make fun of people for like, believing in QAnon or like, I don't want to be very condescending. I want to understand like, kind of the feeling of like, anxiety or precarity or like distrust in institutions that might lead people to believe in conspiracy theories. And so I didn't have any of these ideas or questions answered

[1:39:41] I'd like write a sentence and I'd be like, I have no clue what I was saying. [1:39:44] Or like I'm making this claim and I don't know if it's like verified or sourced. [1:39:49] One of the things I wrote about was how like, you know, we off like, [1:39:55] conspiracy theories have been like both a left wing and a right wing phenomenon over time. And so then I was like pulling like, oh, here's a historical period where this happened. Here's a historical period that this happened. And my hope is that the final draft reads as like someone confidently summarizing a lot of these different claims. But the process of writing it was me starting and stopping and being like, I have no clue what I'm saying. So you do the preparation through doing the work. It's actually easier that way because it's more directed. You have a goal [1:40:25] extremely strategic so you can get that goal yes like preparation without the project you're just kind of like spinning your wheels you don't know what's valuable really you don't you don't know how to calibrate like should i read this now or later so you feel overwhelmed [1:40:37] It's kind of like the note-taking thing. There's a metaphor I like that I think connects to – like, first off is, like, you have inspiration. Seize it. Do something. Send the email to the Cleveland Review of Books. And what that is is, like, it's like throwing your hat over the wall. Like, if you want to climb the wall, throw your hat over. And then you're like, oh, shoot. Oh, I didn't – like – Like, how did my hat end up there? I have to do something. So many creative people have stories like this, which is like, oh, I – [1:41:03] I just kind of, I didn't think they would say yes. And then now I'm in it. Yeah. Oh, but...

[1:41:11] When you think back, beyond just... [1:41:16] Was it fear before that you were waiting for? Was it being afraid? Was it maybe just this lack of readiness? [1:41:26] Yeah, so I have a [1:41:28] So I actually came across a really good articulation of what I was waiting for a few years ago. So there's this magazine, Culture. They publish really good art criticism, literary criticism, fashion criticism, which is hard to find. It's very thin on the ground, but they do an amazing job. But they had this piece... [1:41:47] They interviewed nine different artists about their artistic practices. The title of the piece is something like, Want to Quit Your Day Job? These nine artists tell you how they're interviewed by Kami Feta, who's now working for Emily Sundberg. Oh, cool. But anyways, one of the last people interviewed is this artist, Chitra Ganesh. And I'm going to paraphrase. She says, like, nobody... [1:42:09] What is it? Oh, yeah. He's like, it's very easy to believe that Nordic have an artistic career. [1:42:15] there's this chosen one narrative where like someone needs to pluck you out of obscurity and catapult you to success. But the vast majority- You're discovered. Yeah. But you're discovered. Someone just like sees your inherent talent. This is a narrative that shows up in a lot of novels, especially like novels you read as a child or young adult. And I've come to really detest this joke. You mean like Merlin, the wizard or something? Like someone draws you out. I, yeah. I, [1:42:40] I, [1:42:40] I think it's like.

[1:42:41] The idea behind this narrative is that there's some inherent specialness in you and someone has to point it out and then you can begin. And so if you're someone who has not had like a mentor kind of like pluck you out and be like, you know what, you're really great. Here's an opportunity. Here's a platform. I'm going to do all these things. If you are. [1:43:00] if you've totally absorbed and internalized the chosen one narrative, you're like, I guess I have to wait. [1:43:04] until people give me permission. Yes. But what this artist Chitra Ganesh says, she's like the vast majority of success happens through the daily grind. It happens through doing your work, through networks of peers that lift each other up. She's very specific on the peers part. She's like, you don't need this like incredibly powerful person to be like, you're the one, now you get to do your work. You just have to make your work and then kind of like rise up among other people and where you're all mutually committed to each other's success. [1:43:31] And so I think a big thing for me was like I'd internalize all these ideas around like, [1:43:36] I must not be promising because I have not been plucked out of obscurity. And now I think about it, I'm like, but who would have known I wanted to write if I wasn't writing? Right. By the way, I want to be promising and young because if I'm not young, even if I'm promising, I might be running out of time and like I'm running out of time to be plucked out. [1:43:51] Yeah, oh my god, the obsession with being young. I think something I want to do in my writing is [1:43:59] I think emphasize the feeling that I wasted years of my time, not in a very like self-castigating or negative way, but because I think that this fear of like needing to get it right and be a young talent and start immediately is so terrifying for people. And it terrified me. And so I just want to be like, you don't have to do that. You can deactivate that anxiety. I think there are a lot of crafts, too, where it's like.

[1:44:21] getting older improves your abilities. Totally. You're just developing more subjective experience. Yeah. Also, everyone's cooler when they... Like, you get cooler, like, and not in the... [1:44:34] whatever, silly sense, but like [1:44:36] You know yourself better, which is way more compelling and attractive. Yeah, I think there's this fetishization of youth that I find a little bit weird sometimes culturally, because I think people so often look to the youth and be like, do they think I'm truly? Do they think I'm cringe? Like, am I like a... [1:44:51] I don't know, washed up millennial now. I'm just like, when I was younger, I looked up to people in their 30s and 40s and 50s. I was like, they're doing such cool work. And at the time I was like, I'm not doing cool work. Like, what's wrong with me? And now I realize like, they just had time. Like they had decades doing their thing. So I think it's very important to feel excited about getting older and being like, I'm going to become the self I want to be. [1:45:12] as I age. That's amazing. I love that. Yeah. The last thing, the other thought I had while you were talking is, um, uh, one of my favorite things Virgil Abloh ever talked about is like, you have to give yourself permission. You can't wait for somebody else to give you permission. Take, take it. Like that's, I mean, I guess that's the one benefit of some people when they're young is they don't know what they don't know. Yeah. Um, and that, that erodes over time, but yeah. Virgil Abloh, I should say, I have like so many like random magazines I bought just because I [1:45:42] He was like one of the like... [1:45:44] most incredible thinkers, I think. Yeah, I think he's almost best thought of as a philosopher. It's like Christopher Alexander. There's certain practitioners who are like, they do cool stuff, but the thinking was actually maybe the thing. Yeah, he's so...

[1:45:58] he's like this amazing self-reflexive thinker and you like read his work and we're like okay i can apply that to so many disciplines into my own practice [1:46:06] huh? [1:46:07] You have this line about your writing. You say, my only, I think this is a tweet, my only writing strategy, throw everything that matters into a draft and somehow make it work. [1:46:17] You also... [1:46:19] like have... [1:46:20] this amazing piece on, um, actually beginning essays, like literally how to begin an essay. And you go through like the structure, you talk about deep copying, you have this, um, [1:46:31] reference to, I guess you were using Illustrator to try to copy book covers. You say the elements on the canvas were no longer disparate, lonely things. They felt coherent and that coherence felt natural and inevitable, but it wasn't. I had seen what it looked like before. I had seen the coherence happen in front of me as you were kind of like, you did have the copy quite right and then you got it into place and it kind of clicked. Can you talk about the process of [1:46:57] what it looks like to sort of like... [1:47:00] Thank you. [1:47:01] imitate and then watch it gradually cohere especially maybe that first quote of like just throwing everything like throwing a bunch of pieces into a canvas what is the practice of deep copying one of the things that's so great at the beginning's piece is you're like they use long sentences and then they go very short ones like what does that process of coherence start to gradually feel as things because because also i don't think it's like [1:47:25] The problem with the snap in the place metaphor is it almost makes it seem like it should just randomly, perfectly snap. And I think it's a little more gradual than that. Yeah.

[1:47:36] Yeah, so I guess the experience you're describing is like, when you are encountering other people's great works, there's this feeling that they have like this unity and coherence and harmony. And you're just kind of like somehow, like, I look at so much great visual design, right? Like this person's using 10 typefaces or like throwing things around. Like the layout is very chaotic, but also there's this sense of wholeness and totality to it. How did that happen? And then when I try to make my own, and like I see that in essays too, where I'm like, this essay starts off as a book review. [1:48:06] but it's actually about all these other things, or like it started off in this place, it ended here, I like learned so much, I like cried during it, like how did that happen? So other people's great work, like, [1:48:17] there's this coherence that I aspire towards. And then in my own work, I'm like, how do I attain that level? I guess there's this aspect of, um, [1:48:29] So A.O. Scott, who's this film critic, he has this book titled Better Living Through Criticism. And he talks about that phrase of like, all critics are failed artists. And, you know, obviously as a critic, he's invested in believing that's not true. But he talks about how a lot of artists, really, the thing they're doing is responding to what came before them. And they're trying to innovate on that and then come up with something new. And so he's, and like, in doing so,

[1:48:59] And so he like flips that like, [1:49:01] phrase around he says like what if we see all art as successful criticism [1:49:05] And so I think when you are trying to create your own work, I think there's often this sense of like you have this [1:49:11] tacit, like kind of like vaguely intro, like not fully defined sense of what you enjoy about other works or what turns you off. And in order to do your own work, you're trying to make that explicit. [1:49:23] almost like look at and part of that is just like looking at it really closely too whereas like um we don't know until you go line by line you're like why is this beginning of this essay so good yeah [1:49:35] It's like a... I can tell it's good, but I can't say why. Like, this is more interesting than this other essay, which I did not finish, but I don't really know. Yes. Yes. [1:49:43] Yeah, I love that. It's a really, really cool piece because it's just – [1:49:48] You do such a great job of being grounded in the mechanics and – [1:49:53] Talking about like why it lifts. Yeah. Which is cool. Yeah. Maybe to go back to something earlier, it's like the specificity or like the very close attention to a single thing or like a single technical decision, like the decision to make this sentence only five words long. And then the decision to make the next one, let's say like 20 words long, and there's a semicolon in the middle or something like that. These are like the tiny, tiny decisions that you perform like hundreds of times.

[1:50:23] incredible flow. And like, of course, everyone aspires to the flow, but you're not going to get that higher level flow unless you get really in the weeds and you look at every tiny little thing. It's like if you're doing visual design, you have to be obsessive about like, you know, am I going to like hang my quotes into the margin? Am I going to make this like 36 points or 32 points? Those tiny things actually have a massive difference in the overall composition. And you have to care so intensely about those tiny things. You have to see them as foundational to the bigger work. [1:50:53] you [1:50:54] How does... [1:50:55] your work and background in design influence your writing. [1:51:00] Mmm. [1:51:01] I think... [1:51:04] That's a good question. Well, [1:51:05] Okay, one thing I will say is... [1:51:08] There's this educator teacher I really love, Ellen Lupton, and she and her partner, I believe, Abbott Miller, wrote this book ages ago called Design Writing Research. And I was recently thinking about it. I was like, maybe this is the book that's just defined, you know, my life over the past like decade or something. But I'm not. [1:51:26] I am... [1:51:28] Oh my God, I'm so obsessed with that book. But like, they basically have a collection of essays where every... [1:51:34] essay, like the way it's designed and the form is very closely connected to the content. So they have this one essay that's about the history of typography. And the way they do it is like, they talk about like, there's this period when there are only capital letters and then lowercase was invented. And that's when they start using lowercase in the text. Or they talk about the period of time when it became more conventional to use like spaces or full stops or like when italics were invented. And then only then do they start like incorporating those into the text. So cool.

[1:52:04] But I think that book was just an amazing example of like extremely, extremely detail oriented work to achieve this broader message, which is like you're getting a history, like a history of typography and typographic innovation, and you're getting it through all these tiny creative decisions. [1:52:21] I think design as a discipline [1:52:24] cares a lot about craft and I think has this very like pragmatic way to thinking about inspiration. Like if you go to an art or design school, [1:52:34] People understand that you're kind of like drilling these fundamental skills of typographic hierarchy and color and composition. And they also understand that you just kind of like produce a lot of versions to get to a final outcome. [1:52:47] And you also care very, very deeply about process. Like design schools are obsessed with like, here's how you sketch. Here's how you collect visual inspiration into a mood board, all these things. And I guess I haven't had that much formal education in writing. I've taken a lot of like Zoom classes with writers I admire. [1:53:05] But maybe I will say that like my impression of how people talk about creative writing is that it focuses a lot more on inspiration in a way that might be kind of useless. And it focuses a lot more on like, oh, you just have your voice. You just have this idea come out of the blue. [1:53:21] I think if you're in design school, you're like, ideas don't come out of the blue. Yeah, yeah. I like grinding it out. And also, like, the perfect version does not just happen. I'm making things. [1:53:30] tons of versions i'm showing them at design crit i'm showing people like the ugly unfinished versions i'm ashamed of and that is the way chipping away

[1:53:39] yeah and i think that attitude is so great whereas i feel like with writing [1:53:43] A lot of people are afraid to share their bad writing. And like, it doesn't matter. Like your writing can be shit. It's actually better that you share the shit work as early as possible because then it has the chance to become good. Right. [1:53:54] And [1:53:55] maybe I'm a leap here, but, um, [1:53:59] you referenced this Venkatesh Rao idea of instrumental versus metamorphic writing. Yeah. And my sense is your design, in part because it's your job, is very instrumental. And your work tends to be much more metamorphic. [1:54:13] Maybe not only. Clearly, there's something instrumental in the world needs to know about Proust. But I'm curious how you relate to that. [1:54:23] maybe spectrum in the writing work. Yeah. Okay, one quick thought on Venkatesh Rao, by the way. I think he is someone who, to me, is also a great inspiration for, like, taking academic books and kind of displaying the relevance of people. Like, I think he is perhaps the reason why seeing, like, A State by James C. Scott is so popular in Silicon Valley. I actually texted a friend recently. I was like, I think I want to be Venkatesh Rao for the Tumblr girls. I think that's, like... [1:54:51] My ethos as a newsletter. Design, writing, research. Those are the two things on your logline. [1:54:57] But yeah, I think the instrumental metamorphic thing is interesting. I would say that I think it's true that a lot of my design work is more instrumental and that it's like my day job. But I increasingly feel that like in order to do really great work, you kind of want the metamorphic qualities to come in. You want to be like shaped or disciplined by the work you're trying to do. Or like in order to achieve a certain quality of work, you understand that you have to grow as a person. You need to be more patient, more thoughtful, more willing to iterate, more like

[1:55:27] But yeah, I think there's definitely a spectrum. And I would say that like instrumental stuff, you're kind of like, I just need to achieve an outcome. So a lot of emails I write, I'm like, this is to achieve an outcome, which is to let a friend and I care about them or to like, I don't know, reply to someone saying like, yes, I would love a copy of this book or whatever. Um... [1:55:46] I think like metamorphic work is something where [1:55:50] I think it often takes more time because the goal is to change yourself and like you don't change in an instant. So for a lot of creative projects. [1:56:00] I think it's really... [1:56:02] Like, again, going back to this idea that creative projects can be this container for your subjectivity. [1:56:10] I think metamorphic writing, you are a certain person at the beginning of it. You don't know certain things. You don't [1:56:15] know what your beliefs are, or you maybe have one set of beliefs. And the goal is to like, write your way to a point where like what you know, and how you see yourself and how you see the world and maybe like your beliefs and your like ethics and point of view have changed. [1:56:28] I don't know if you can do that explicitly. Like, [1:56:32] explicitly although sometimes i would say like affirmations are a way to maybe like [1:56:37] metamorphically write yourself to someone who's like more confident or something. But with metamorphic writing, it's like you're kind of venturing into the unknown. I think he describes it as like this unstable self-authorship lottery. Yeah. [1:56:51] You're like, I'm going to do this project. At the end of it, I'll be different. Don't know how it'll be different, but it could be fun. [1:56:56] Yes, it's definitely not deterministic and like almost the point is to be surprised. Yeah.

[1:57:01] Yeah, like people talk a lot about how like the best essays are ones where like the writer is like thinking on the page or they're like learning or being surprised or they're growing. And that kind of sounds like a platitude until you've actually gone through the process and you're like, oh, working on this has changed me. And that feeling is kind of like addictive enough to you. I should just do it again and again and again and see what happens next. That's very, very, very cool. [1:57:31] the blog, I guess my first question is like, [1:57:34] How has this commitment [1:57:36] very specifically of that you made two years ago, giving you freedom. [1:57:41] Mm. [1:57:43] Yeah, I actually thought that you used the word freedom because I think people see [1:57:48] I don't know why, but commitment can often be stigmatized as like it is this thing that traps you. It keeps you in place. It means you have less flexibility. And I think I'm very much someone who believes in constraints and believes that like you kind of like create the ideal constraints for yourself or in them. You can be incredibly playful and generative. [1:58:08] generative and exploratory and in fact like more exploratory than if you're just like i can do whatever i want and i think i admire this a lot in art like i'm very interested in you know like brian eno's oblique strategies and this idea of like just like create these temporary rules and see what you can do with them [1:58:24] or like the 20th century, like Fluxus art movement, where people would say like, I'm going to create these rules around how I use like chance or randomness to produce an artwork and like fun things will happen.

[1:58:34] Sorry, now I'm getting distracted. Like all these other things related to randomness was the question. The question was just how commitment brings you freedom. But I think those examples are, you know where to look, I think. [1:58:47] It's so hard. As someone who's very been very paralyzed by this, like, [1:58:53] Only prioritizing freedom means that you don't end up doing as much. The constraint actually is the source of the inspiration a lot of the time. [1:59:06] Yeah. Okay, maybe we'll propose a polemical version of this, which is that I think sometimes optionality is bad. It's like bad psychologically for you, because if you're doing something and a part of you is always like, well, I can do something else. I can change my mind. It's not permanent. Of course, it's important to not feel trapped. But if you are too aware of your optionality, then you can just sort of like, you're not really committed to the thing in front of you and you're not doing everything possible to do it well. [1:59:33] Like at some point, I think with a lot of my writing projects, I have this like vast repository of ideas that I will draw from. But once I choose an idea, I'm kind of like, this is the idea. I will do my best to make it work. And I kind of intentionally trap myself so that I can get to like the furthest point of that idea and to the best outcome. [1:59:50] And you just you finish. Yeah. Yeah. That's another thing. It's like you have to remove your optionality so you get something done. [1:59:58] Yes, yes. So you have the whole conclusion thing we talked about. Like that is... [2:00:03] Don't... Not...

[2:00:05] I don't want to say the only point is to get to a conclusion, but... [2:00:08] That's a really big part of it. Yeah. Especially if it's metamorphic. Yeah. Like so much of the value in creative projects comes from actually finishing the thing. Like you learn from doing the like last 10%. [2:00:20] Totally. Totally. And like, yeah, I definitely think I've grown the most as a writer when I've just been like, I'm so trapped in this essay and I don't know a way out, but I have to find my way out. So I have to finish this thing. So I will kind of [2:00:33] I would just like push myself to another level to get it done. [2:00:37] i think i'm obsessed with this um this metaphor just like burning the ships like you know and just like you know you arrive in the shores of troy you're like [2:00:45] We need to succeed. There's no way out. In reality, like there's probably a way out, but you just have to ignore that. You have to tell yourself there's no way out. Part of your brain needs to be turned off. Yeah. Yeah. And you will find a way. Yes. [2:00:55] On the note of the kind of how you influence people, uh, [2:01:00] It feels that a really critical part of that [2:01:04] and it's somewhat parasocial, maybe, again, not in a bad way, is... [2:01:08] You write a very... [2:01:09] I would say like intimate [2:01:12] Blog? [2:01:13] Does that feel resonant? Yeah. I think that's the goal of feeling like there's this direct address with the reader. It's conversational. I want to speak to people. What makes the... [2:01:23] What makes your writing or good intimate writing? Like, how does that happen? [2:01:28] Mmm. [2:01:30] This is interesting. And I don't know if I've decided. I mean, one thing I've been trying to figure out is like, what is the difference between intimate writing and confessional writing?

[2:01:41] I have another question about this. Yes, yes. Yeah, I think I have this feeling of like, I actually do write a lot about myself, but I have this real horror of confessional writing where it's like, [2:01:51] I don't know, like... [2:01:52] some of it is respect for the people of my life where it's like i don't want to like [2:01:57] say all these like random gory family details, but I do want to reference my parents from time to time because they've shaped my intellectual worldview. Or like, I want to discuss that conversations I have with friends who have also shaped my thinking in a lot of ways, but like, I want them to feel comfortable with that. This could be like, as I said, I wasn't offended by the term influencer, but I think the negative aspect of being an influencer [2:02:27] militarious impact on the people around you. [2:02:29] So, [2:02:30] I don't know. I think... [2:02:32] So it's like, how do you avoid doing that kind of kind of [2:02:35] confessional, like overly revealing work, but you still have this connection to people. And maybe you produce like the positive form of parasociality as opposed to the negative form. Right. [2:02:46] Um... [2:02:47] You also talk about creating a persona on the page. And so I'm really interested in that... [2:02:54] Summwriting is trying to be like purely objective, of course. And like, [2:02:58] you've talked a lot about like the personal essay and the pronoun I and like how useful and like it's way easier to read. And like, yeah, it does seem that you are finding some way to balance that, like, even gets into ideas of like what's authentic and what's performative. And like, I think sometimes those ideas can be not worth their weight, but.

[2:03:18] Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. Okay. Invoking Performance is actually a really good way to think about this. And this makes me think of, so one is that the feminist critic and memoirist Vivian Gornick, she has this amazing book, The Situation, The Story, which I've actually not finished reading because every time I read a little bit, I'm like, wow, this is so wise and profound. And then I just feel like I'm satisfied by that thing. I have books like this, yeah. [2:03:48] Thank you. [2:03:48] is maybe like most popular and popularly known for this idea of creating a persona on the page. She's like, you are not directly transmitting your experience. You're kind of like constructing a self that can best narrate what happened to you with a degree of like understanding and thoughtfulness that will make it useful. Right. And you can't really be like fully inside the experience to write it. You have to be at a little bit of a remove and able to like narrativize. [2:04:18] So the New Yorker's feed critic, Helen Rosner, I think years and years ago, there's some like Twitter debacle where there's like some personal essay that blew up and like there's this big controversy about it. I think whenever there's a big controversy about a personal essay, it is often that it is very confessional in maybe a bad way. [2:04:36] Yep. And Helen Rosner wrote this beautiful thing where she's like in the best essay, personal essays or like essays that kind of talk about the self. [2:04:44] They're usually like a few different turns. So it's not just narrating. This thing happened to me. It often has to narrate. The first turn is like this thing happened to me and here's how I understood it and how it affected me.

[2:04:57] And then there's also hopefully I'm not misquoting her. There's also the second turn where she's like, and now, like years later, or as I'm sitting to write this or like with the benefit of distance, here's how I understand the situation and my old interpretation in a new way. [2:05:11] So you actually need this incredible level of understanding and distance to really narrativize your life. [2:05:18] and make it useful but also not have it get robotic or cold or have too much distance that's the tension right yeah [2:05:24] Yeah, I definitely have some writing projects where I've started writing them and stop there. [2:05:31] I know I said earlier, like sometimes you want to burn the ships and just get things done. But there are a few writing projects I've approached and then realized, like, I don't have that distance yet. If I wrote this, it would be too raw and confessional. And I cannot deliver a certain outcome for the reader. I myself don't understand that experience enough. So I need to wait until I have that knowledge. Yes, I think that's right. [2:05:52] There was another part of that conversation with Jasmine where you were talking about comparing social media and forums. This is funny enough, I just talked with Henrik about this too, where he's like, my blog, he talks about this, like, my blog is this like room corner of the internet or a cafe or whatever. And he's like, I'm, I don't think he used this word, but it's like, I'm the dictator of this blog. And like, [2:06:12] I know this is something you've thought a lot about, which is like, I think you framed it as like hierarchical or horizontal. And as someone who I think was used a lot of forms, I, I, I did it as well. Like the modern internet is much more like, yeah, [2:06:27] influencer person and then like everyone else. I'm curious how you've thought about, especially in light of everything we talked about earlier in the conversation about the, the thing you're trying to do, how you think about what that space can be and how it can be, not just purely that kind of one to many hierarchy.

[2:06:42] Mm, yeah. [2:06:44] This is a great reference point. Yeah, I think... [2:06:49] I think this relates to something we discussed earlier, like not wanting to see myself as more special than other people. Or rather, I have the strong belief that everyone has something special and distinctive about their worldview and their abilities. And that it is better for all of us, especially the cultural landscape, if everyone can draw that out. And I think what I like about old forums. [2:07:19] media where like in social media like if you think about twitter you have a tweet i i was seeing twitter instead of uh instead of x and i remember seeing some tweet where someone was like i will continue to dead name this website i'm gonna tell my grave i'm sorry yeah well whenever i type x i'm kind of like this it looks worse like the logo also looks worse i'm really sorry [2:07:39] I've been wrong about some things, but I'm not wrong about the name. Yeah. You're like a... [2:07:44] Oh, my God. Where is I? Oh, yeah. [2:07:46] Okay. [2:07:46] You're on Twitter. You see a tweet go viral. You go and you look at it. [2:07:51] That tweet is usually just like the way the page is designed. It's just like much higher up or like the tweet, the like replies from that person or like in the past replies of like blue checks versus everyone else. Like those are promoted much higher than like all the random people replying. [2:08:05] So there's this idea of like, there's someone who has made the expert opinion or has made the important insight and everyone is just a hanger on. Like that's how that page is designed. And then when you look at forums, it's like,

[2:08:16] everyone's like little... Blattent, yeah. Yeah, it's like everyone is equal. Like the first, like the first post in a thread looks like every other post in the thread. And I just... [2:08:28] I don't know, I really like that model. And I really like what it means of like, you can just enter into a conversation. And like your contribution as someone who's made like one post in the forum is visually treated as equal to other people's. I think that's a really important detail of how that horizontality happens. And I think especially when it comes to intellectual work, that's like, [2:08:50] Yo! [2:08:50] I should say I respect academic institutions a lot. And like in my own writing, I rely a lot on people who have spent their entire lives in academia and are coming up with these very rich insights that I then kind of like import into my own work and use in my own way. [2:09:20] grad student or someone who's like an adjunct lecturer or something like that. [2:09:24] And I think that seniority and experience have value. But I personally like really value spaces where the idea is that you can be a young person or someone who doesn't know that much and you can contribute. This might also come from like a tech backup where like I think tech's very good at this for better, for worse. But I think mostly for better. Yeah. [2:09:44] And it's really unlike almost any other industry. Yeah, it's like in tech, there's so many people who like went to a boot camp and then became software engineers. So there's not this idea of like you had to. Interns who ship things. Yeah, interns get to ship things. Every tech startup, like they really want interns to ship things. They feel that to be an important part of the culture that you can be someone who's like just started and have an impact. And so, yeah, I actually had not made that connection until this conversation. But maybe that's why I'm like, it's so important to believe everyone can make a contribution.

[2:10:14] And in fact, constructing an environment that is organized around that is the best way to encourage people to achieve great things. [2:10:21] People rise to the beliefs you have of them. That's why the thing Laurel Schultz said about treating students like they're geniuses. That's why I find it so touching. Do this with children. I talk about this with Henrik and others. [2:10:33] Children will meet you far above what you might otherwise have expected if you let them. [2:10:39] Yeah, I have often... [2:10:41] Something I try to figure out sometimes is like, I feel it took me quite a few years to attain a level of confidence in myself to put my work out there. And I've sometimes wondered, like, what is the difference between me and other people who seem to have just like found that confidence earlier? [2:10:55] And I think a big part of it is like parents or teachers who are just like overly enthusiastic in a way that's really good. [2:11:02] Like you need someone to believe in you before you are good. And that's how you become good. Right. Yes. There's pros and cons. I think there's also an element of like, [2:11:10] you have the experience of being chosen once, but then you're like waiting to be chosen again or whatever. Like gifts of childs and all, yeah. [2:11:17] I have like the reverse thing where I like thought I had nothing to say for many years. And I'm like, oh. [2:11:22] I think you have something to say. [2:11:25] The last thing on this, you... [2:11:28] To my knowledge, don't monetize your writing work at all. You have a very large sub stack, at least on a... [2:11:35] I think on maybe an objective basis, but at the very least relative basis. You wrote this about, I think maybe not actually about the subsect. Maybe it was even before that when you had first started to do some literary criticism. You said, as side projects go, it was one of the most financially unremunerative things I could have done. Intellectually, it was the most invigorating activity I could imagine, which is beautiful. You've also talked actually about...

[2:12:00] like wanting it to feel like a hobby and the value of being a critic practitioner and so on. Like, like, [2:12:05] What are the... [2:12:06] What are the good things about doing this non-commercially? And then what do you think you lose? [2:12:13] Yeah, I'd say... [2:12:15] So, [2:12:16] I think my opinion about kind of monetization and how it shapes your creative practice has shifted a lot over time, where when I started writing, I think I had this feeling of like, it was so psychologically hard for me to get started. And so in order to continue, I wanted to reduce anything that might produce friction. And I guess I'd also seen on Substack, a lot of people turn on paid subscriptions and then kind of like choke up basically and feel like they had to like write differently or like strategically also maybe they just like hurt [2:12:46] distribution basically because they started paywalling everything and there's nothing that could like go around and like be viral and be linked to so i think on a strategic level and psychological level i was like i don't want to do this i think there are lots of benefits to keeping something pure and it also i think for me it's always been very important to work as a designer and i really like the idea that through having a day job and through like working in software i get to write about software in a different way like i think you know [2:13:13] I think we're in an environment where there's a lot of slop tech criticism happening because people do not understand the technology. And so I think some of the best people writing it are kind of in this critic practitioner model. It's like Jasmine Sutton, who used to be a PM at Subsec. I think she can write so cogently about technology's impact because she's kind of been in the weeds and has been in that specific context. But I guess...

[2:13:36] One of the reasons my... [2:13:38] attitude about it has been shifting is, I think I said earlier that I've started to believe that [2:13:44] business models and monetization strategies can also be a way of expressing an artistic vision. I think the thing that convinced me in this regard is actually, you have a podcast with Nancy Strickler, and I'm [2:13:58] kind of obsessed with his career trajectory and how like so much of the things he's been working on been about like how do artists fund meaningful work yes and i think [2:14:08] when he was talking about his new project, MetaLabel, and how they built all these features where you can... [2:14:13] you can like publish something or sell product on meta label and you can create these revenue splits. It was like, oh, if you do a project and you say that we are going to split revenue equally among all contributors, that is actually part of your artistic vision. You're saying like all the contributors matter and we are going to make that real. It's going to shape the work. It's going to shape how the audience reacts to the work, all of it. Yeah. And I think especially to like working in software, I've seen like you see the difference between businesses that are ad supported or subscription supported. [2:14:43] how that shapes the kind of features that get shipped. You see the difference between businesses that rely on like, you know, many, kind of like many small businesses versus ones that are trying to get like enterprise contracts. And so I think seeing all this, I'm like thinking about money in relation to these pure ideals, right? [2:15:02] You don't necessarily have to like taint your pure ideals by thinking about money. It's just something you have to be strategic about. So it relates to effectiveness, by the way. Yeah. It's like, what is the way to make money or not make money that will best serve your aims?

[2:15:17] And sometimes what you want to do is not make money for a project, because again, for me with the newsletter early on, I was like, I just need to put stuff out there. I don't want to freak myself out. [2:15:26] Well, I'm excited to see how that evolves for you over time. I have... [2:15:30] Just a couple final things. [2:15:32] There's a... [2:15:33] It's funny in context, we're talking about [2:15:35] joy of getting older, but there's a, uh, there's a great Nabil's tweet about how doing as much as you can is a form of life extension. And you referenced it and you said, if you want to feel young for the rest of your life, start writing. [2:15:47] What does it mean to feel young and why does writing make you feel young? [2:15:51] Mmm. [2:15:52] Yeah, I think something... [2:15:54] Something I really admire in people who are older, but kind of have this like beautiful energy that I aspire to have is that they're just like very curious about things. So like my dad is in his 60s now. But OK, so whenever I call my parents, they're like on Duolingo. They're trying to learn Chinese and Spanish. And I find it very charming that they're, you know, like relatively elderly now, but they're like, it's time to learn new things. Or like my dad was like making apps in Swift and he's like very curious about vibe coding. And he's like, please explain to me how this works. Show me the projects you're doing. [2:16:24] you [2:16:24] there are a lot of people i've met where like there's um this writer who lives in san francisco mario javier cardenas who [2:16:31] I don't know. I don't want to spec that on how old he is, but he writes these incredible experimental novels. And he just seems to have this joie de vivre that comes from always having a next novel in progress and just being like, for this novel, I want to learn this. I want to think about this. I want to have these experiences. So they go into the work. And so I think I have this feeling that like if you have...

[2:16:50] creative projects stretching out into the future or if your whole life is a creative project and this practice is constantly ongoing like [2:16:57] The future is full of excitement. You're not afraid of getting older. That just gives you more time to do these things, to actuate these things. [2:17:05] Yeah. And I really have this beautiful vision of like, I would love to be in my 50s, 60s, 70s and always have a new thing going and to be able to relate to the youth and be like, what are you doing? What can I learn? What's like out there? Yeah. The best. [2:17:19] Just one final thing from book seven of Proust. [2:17:23] An hour is not just an hour. It is a vessel full of perfumes, sounds, plans, and atmospheres. [2:17:29] Why is that meaningful to you? [2:17:31] Mmm. [2:17:33] I think because... [2:17:35] You know, a lot of creative work requires playing the long game and thinking, you know, we were just talking about like what it means to project your work into like years, decades into the future. But you need to balance that with an awareness of the present moment. And I think to me, it's like the present moment is like you're talking to a friend, you give them your full attention, you're talking about an idea. That idea can make its way into like your writing or their writing or their creative works later on. But like. [2:17:58] The only way that will be useful to you later is if you fully inhabit the moment. [2:18:02] Or it's like you look at an artwork, you're reading something, it's like you are paying attention to every single thing you are noticing and the reaction that is welling up within you in relation to that. I think that feeling of presentness is something that so many religions have kind of, you know, independently rediscovered as a fundamental part of well-being.

[2:18:20] I think it's also a really important part of having a creative life. [2:18:23] I think it's where it all comes from. Yeah. [2:18:26] Thank you, Celine. This was really wonderful. Thank you. [2:18:29] So it's great. [2:18:31] Before I leave you, I'd like to thank Notion one more time for presenting Dialectic. Notion is a creative tool for your life's work, and it's built in an integrated way to allow you and all of your collaborators to work across every tool that you use, make sure you have documents of record, be able to collaborate, and again, increasingly, [2:18:48] get leverage, and in many ways, find opportunities to delegate thanks to Notion AI. The point here is not to replace the real work. The point here is not to spend all of your time optimizing and building complex systems. The point is to be able to actually focus and trust that in the meantime, you can offload the busy work to AI. You can find more at notion.com slash dialectic. And I will also link to their most recent update, Notion 3.4, where there's a bunch of [2:19:18] exciting changes. As always, thanks to Notion, and I will see you next time on Dialectic.