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Philip Glass, on independence
I had an ensemble at the time. I would go out and play for three weeks. We would come back from the tour, and we usually had lost money so I had to make money immediately. I put an ad in the paper. My cousin and I ran the company, and I moved furniture for…
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Appliances vs. toys
Nonfiction writing is like making appliances. Fiction writing is like making toys. While each craft has similarities—an understanding of electronics and electrical engineering, industrial design, etc.—they have fundamentally different goals. Nonfiction writing needs to be of service to someone, whereas fiction needs to engage and amuse them. A fridge with a TV screen is great,…
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Future fables
Aesop partnered with Literary Hub to release the second season of a podcast entitled Future Fables, where each episode is a bedtime story for adults in the form of the fable. There’s a lot to like about this, from the creative premise (“What sort of fables might its namesake—Aesop, the ancient Greek fabulist—write [today]?”), to…
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Fun is fun, compromised or otherwise
The reality is nobody loves your baby (or pet) as much as you do. We were ceding our sacred Saturday night to something — to age, to a lifestyle we weren’t ready for, to an identity we didn’t claim, to having to be less drunk than we wanted to be because the children were watching…
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Thinking outside of what exists
In a world where it’s challenging to think outside of what exists, the ability to be able to conceive of something—i.e., to imagine, to put shape and form to it, to express it and find comfort with or at least tolerance for ambiguity and confusion and being misunderstood and confrontation without giving up—that’s a competitive…
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“Work on your terms, at your own pace”
Max Alper received a DM from a student who has burned out making a living as a working musician in Brooklyn. For the sake of his mental health, the student told Max he was giving up on music altogether and applying to trade school. Max responds in an excellent letter, which I’m excerpting from: Not…
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Cash for longevity, not capital
If Nintendo was a person, a week ago it would have celebrated its 134th birthday. This type of longevity is rare; as my friend Hamza observes, the vast majority of companies that make it to a public listing stage don’t make it through half that time. In his book Nintendo Magic, Osamu Inoue takes a…
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Forget what happens next
There’s something powerful about letting go of all expectations; focusing on the thing that’s right in front of you, and taking the closest next possible step. When you’re actually doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you need to shift your brain into a state that can let that happen. Success or failure is probably…
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Kirby and the power of polish
In 1991, Japanese game company HAL Laboratory Inc. was 1.5 billion yen in debt and had to bet its future on one game. It was called Tinkle Popo, featuring a rotund protagonist named Popopo. HAL Laboratory had planned to publish Tinkle Popo independently, and sold 26,000 pre-ordered copies. Nintendo—a HAL Laboratory client and investor—intervened; game…
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Finding a way, with minutes a day
These days, it feels easy to get carried away. Energy from a jolt of inspiration—or constant jolts from social media—build an idea up quickly. The problem with these grand aspirations is when its size gets in the way; when you feel like you don’t have enough time to do something, you put it off into…