Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: art

  • Theme:

    Your crafty behavior

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    1–2 minutes

    No one is forcing you to behave this way. You have chosen it.
    Our behavior is goal-oriented but often comes from two instincts:1. To establish a consistent self (this is how I am and will always be.)
    2. Protect yourself by signaling (I want you to know there is a cost to engaging with me.)

    Example: If I choose to be miserable when you ask me to work, I make it painful for both of us while reinforcing my perceived character as a means to better train you.
    Example: If you had a bad day, I would belittle your problems with my lousy life, winning at victimization while simultaneously declaring the strength to bear more than you. So, I’m always re-shaping our relationship to force you to defer to me.

  • Theme:

    Why defend (and fund) the arts?

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    1–2 minutes

    The village may pay the bard, who does not defend the village, but the bard can make the village worth defending.
    ~ Balaji Srinivasan

  • Theme:

    The power of a name

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    1–2 minutes

    By naming a thing, you create yourself in the image of the concept.
    example: Once, you would have been “sad” or “grieving,” whereas now you can be named “depressed.” Once named (a more permanent state), you will maintain, or even nurture, the named self.
    Other terms you can be named: hero, villain, victim ~ but there is no need to own the name.

  • Theme:

    The Energy of Combat vs Comrades

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    1–2 minutes

    Interpersonal conflict drains you. Anger and despair create desperate energy, which exhausts.
    The better path is to collaborate with comrades: generate creative energy, powering you for days with no hangover.

  • Theme:

    The Problem with the Hero’s Journey

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    1–2 minutes

    Fate must call you to become a hero, and you must draw forth your unique (separate and special) individuality to complete your journey.
    The question is: how do you motivate a mass of people (community or society) without falling into individualism, where every person believes they need to be the hero?Source: Acid Horizon podcast on Magical Realism

  • Theme:

    Trapped by passion

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    1–2 minutes

    You follow your passion into the art world, where your curiosity and ambition drive you to learn and grow. Soon every problem’s solution is more thoughtful art.
    Like religion or capitalism, every crisis is an opportunity to have more faith: enact more rituals, dig deeper, try harder.
    Your passion has trapped you. You have traded love for myopic fanaticism.

  • Theme:

    Transcending backward

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    1–2 minutes

    To make something onerous on purpose is to grant it value.

    To have the music streaming is easy, but the devotee transcends backward. They take pleasure in the obeisance to vinyl; investing in the cumbersome physicality and lavishing more attention until the “music” is a ritual.

    The soft, easy has become a caring, hard.

  • Theme:

    The Man You Are vs. The Man You Want To Be

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    1–2 minutes

    How do you balance strength and confidence with kindness and empathy? To be sensitive and rational tends towards acquiescent compliance: a non-heroic trait. To give up sensitivity and rationality is to become brutish.

    You only find the confidence by considerately tending to your beliefs and boundaries. You achieve heroism not by hiding behind boundaries, but by loving across them.

  • Theme:

    Striving breaks symmetry

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    1–2 minutes

    To be well-rounded implies balance and symmetry. Yet, symmetry seems antithetical to striving: the focus in one direction distending the form.
    This analogical thinking uncovers my implicit bias: mathematical shapes as models for humans contain and reduce us.

  • Theme:

    Stepping into the Cave

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    1–2 minutes

    “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek” Joseph Campbell

    Retrieving the treasure is not nearly as important as being the kind of person who takes that first step into the cave.