Currently Enjoying
January 2025
There were way too many great things to recommend this month, so we're just going to jump straight in.
"I like art the most when it doesn’t mean a thing, or otherwise when its beauty or strangeness transcends its subject. Stop making so much sense. Art should do more than communicate: it should move us; it should make us weep; it should bring us to our knees." This quote comes near the end of a long, detailed piece on the state of contemporary art and what has contributed to its malaise of output. It's a valuable read for its commentary on how culture attempts to drive art and meaning while audience capture quickly dilutes any flashes of greatness.
Sometimes I read long, impossibly deep and well researched piece of writing just to come away with a simple, and sometimes unrelated idea. Epistemology in the age of AI by Scott Sumner is one of those times. Knowledge, belief, aesthetics, subjective evaluation, it's all here in full doses. My takeaway: "everyone should be an expert in something".
Chris Arnade has a wonderful travel-oriented substack, a Bourdainian glimpse of cultures across the world. What's notable to me is his commitment to exploring by foot, and the experiences and relationships he creates through this form of travel. His latest essay tackles meaning in the modern world, specifically about the characters, and role models, men naturally seek to embody.
For a break from reading, I really enjoyed this 2024 recap video from musician and producer Fred Again... It was astounding to see how dedicated he is to his craft, constantly learning, working, and listening. You look at a internationally successful musician and imagine they've "made it", but this video is a wonderful reminder that greatness is always a journey, and any outsized success is only a reflection of the quality of inputs and outputs that lead to what we see publicly.
If you're looking for non-algorithmically generated ways of finding new things to read and aren't patient enough to wait for my next monthly medley, checkout Foundation, an online, minimalistic platform for finding essays from leading tech founders, builders, and thinkers. Andrew, who is behind the project, is passionately open to feedback and hearing from users, so don't forget to let him know what you think!
I've heard your curiosity and palate for new music begins to taper in your 30's, and in the spirit of Ted Gioia I'm committed to actively fighting this trend. Fortuntely, a youtube feed that I've tuned to only show me music content makes it easy to unearth new-to-me musicians. Give this soulful Argentine singer Mel Muñiz a listen.
I never have a sense for how long to make these recommendation emails, so in fear of being too long-winded, I'll wrap up with a rapid-fire of a few more pieces to check out. A beautifully written New York Times article on the music of Schubert and the idea of silences within music. Here's a 2022 recap from the multidisciplinary creator Cristóbal. He plays with all these interesting ideas borne out through the various projects he worked on throughout the year. From Andrew Chen's piece on 10x work: "Steady routines are comfortable but add no new information, and contain no risk, and no quantity of them will add up to 10x work." And finally, A User’s Guide to Building a Subculture which was an influential read on my most recent essay.