Writing
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Simplify
The desire to simplify things must be present in everyone. It comes intime, when we realize our lives are finite. Time and again, the imageof Michaelangelo’s Rondanini Pieta haunts me. I remember how I admired(I still do) his first Pieta, scuplted in 1499. It must be one of themost famous sculptures in the whole world, and probably one of themost beautiful ones, too. The difference between the two works,sculpted within decades of each other, is striking, as if they hadbeen burn under the chisel of two different artists. And however muchI admire and love his Pieta, I know that he was closer to the truth(or finding himself, or God, or…
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Find Me
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MMCP: My Most Cherished Project
The closest I have come to perfection and pure unadulterated joy was through writing. It is also my futile but very delectable effort to leave something lasting for mankind. At first I wrote to entertain myself; later to entertain others. I’ve dabbled a fair amount in fanfiction, which fueled shame and guilt but today I look back at those years with gratitude, because it was through those stories that I truly discovered my aptitude for writing and my longing for it. Also, I just read a brilliant quote by Joanne Harris, who wrote on her Instagram page in July the following: „If you write, don’t be afraid to call yourself…
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On the hardships of writing
Stephen Fry, you sympathetic genius, you. “The rare words often annoy the punter, but they never think, they never stop to think about a poet’s life. A painter has oils, acrylics and pastels, turpentine, linseed, canvas, sable and hog’s hair. When did you last employ such things routinely? To oil a cricket bat or mascara an eyelid, perhaps. Come to think of it, you’ve probably never oiled a cricket bat in your life, but you know what I mean. And musicians: a musician has entire machines of wood, brass, gut andcarbon fibre; he has augmented sevenths, accidentals, Dorian modes and twelve-note rows. When did you ever use an augmented seventh…
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Enjoy the ride
If someone would have asked me ten years ago the most fundamental and most annoyingly complicated question in the world, who are you, I would have immediately started building a list of bulleted items, churning them out without hesitation. Since then, my convictions have evaporated as if they never existed. The Greeks kept repeating nosce te ipsum (know thyself) ad nauseum for centuries and Thomas Hobbes claimed in the introduction to his work The Leviathan that if you know yourself and understand your motivations, fears, and reasoning, you will understand and know everyone else. The list goes on, my favourite contemporary reference points to the tattoo on the arm of…
