I just saw this older post and I re-read it. I believe every work I wrote even more now, with the passage of time. Please have a read and let me know what you think. Sadly, I also think I was a better writer back then......ah well....
https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2010/11/passion-is-in-risk.html?fbclid=IwAR3Xv-i9BlzHdBqTbJH8bSfQUBOGXbA6K_00o4p68ZM4YyMXJ8wfVpqXhlA
6 comments:
Thanks Kirk,
Very good blog to repost. Re “better” writer, do you mean style or content?
If content - well I doubt every post you wrote previously would be as reflective, contemplative and lucid. As you stated, it takes practice. So sometimes you just need to keep chugging out words (Mike at TOP explains it better) even if it’s more a diary of events than great insights. Fear not, the insights are still there!
Re style, there are days when you are just as lucid, and days when you get defensive, combative and will belittle others, even if in a generic sense. I prefer the former. The latter is not “telling it like it is”, it’s easy & it’s lazy. If you want an opportunity for improvement, find a better way to do it civilly, in the same way you ask people to comment here.
Lastly, and this thought just occurred to me, so no chance to mull it over first. Would it be fair to say that the objectives of art have always been the same? The materials and methods change, but the striving, struggling, passion & risk endure. If so (& I’m not convinced), that’s what makes it easy to write about gear - especially digital consumer goods - because they’re always changing. There’s always something new to write about. Nevertheless, it’s one thing to do a product review and assess features in isolation, it’s quite another thing to explain how one uses said products/features in the context of the passion & the risk, and what it enables you to achieve.
Phew, that’s enough for an early Sun morn pre-caffeine. Many thanks again for the re-post. Hope you enjoy the break from travel & get those laps in.
Cheers,
Not THAT Ross Cameron
Nah...the writing quality hasn’t suffered in the least.
There’s only so much one can write about art. I remember when you decided the blog would no longer concern itself with gear. Only with the art of photography. That lasted about a week. Maybe two. And with good reason: you can only spend a certain amount of time navel-gazing about art before everything begins to look like lint.
So true. While I was in Dubai I was sitting with some friends in the Irish village pub. I, a designer and photographer, and they sound engineers and musicians.
I asked one of them if he was still producing his own music, but he admitted he wasn't producing much, but wished he was.
I told him youth is filled with risk, and creativity, because they go and in hand. The risk, as you get older, is that you why away from risk and lose that creative spirit.
Great read, and I have kicked myself a few times for not taking that last step forward as well.
A good read, thanks. I'm now going to head outside to do something nuts (or vaguely nuttish).
A good read,
you gave me food for thought.
And I think you are right.
There is mythology and folklore proving you right.
In Sweden we have the Neck living in streams, waterfalls and bottomless ponds.
A musician sitting at a stream might hear the Neck playing his violin through the sound of the water, and if he dares to ask to learn the art the Neck will ask a price and if passionate he will promise anything.
When after a night out he comes back to his village full of new music, he will find that his beloved drowned falling into the stream to be the Neck's bride.
[ If the idea interests you, check e.g.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neck_(water_spirit) ]
In the never ending discussion on what art is, perhaps one of the answers is "disciplined love".
Thanks. A nice reminder, and a lesson that you obviously have internalized.
As for the writing, well, you're 8 years older, things have happened, life has shifted, as it often does, and what you write and how you write have changed along with it. Not better or worse, just different. What I see is more "flow" and less fussing with polish. Conversational, if you will.
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