TUMBLR
A scrapbook of stuff I'm reading / looking at / listening to / thinking about...
Posts tagged "amateurs"
Jun 14, 2013
“I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself…I write as one amateur to another.
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Mar 20, 2013
“It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can. When you took the problem to a master, as we all remember, he was very likely to explain what you understood already, to add a great deal of information which you didn’t want, and say nothing at all about the thing that was puzzling you. I have watched this from both sides of the net; for when, as a teacher myself, I have tried to answer questions brought me by pupils, I have sometimes, after a minute, seen that expression settle down on their faces that assured me that they were suffering exactly the same frustration which I had suffered from my teachers. The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago he has forgotten. He sees the whole subject, by now, in a different light that he cannot conceive what is really troubling the pupil; he sees a dozen other difficulties which ought to be troubling him but aren’t.
— C. S. Lewis, “Introductory” to Reflections on the Psalms (The awesome ayjay, an expert on C.S. Lewis, tumbled this after I asked him if he knew the quote mentioned by this Amazon reviewer. Man, do I love the internet.)
Feb 15, 2013
Brian Eno on Television (1991)
Stop being so right Brian Eno. STOP. Go, like, make a 30-minute song with five soft piano notes.
Replace “TV”with “art,” period.
And yes, Brian Eno was right about pretty much everything.
(via braiker)
Dec 31, 2012
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
— Ernest Hemingway
Dec 14, 2012
“Fraudulence always seems to lie at the heart of amateur pursuits. Maybe you don’t have the right credentials, or background, or something else—other people’s presumptions—keeps you from doing what you want, so you just pretend. It’s a kind of prison break. The culture around you won’t let you out of where you are or into where you want to go. So, you pretend to be someone else, and make your move.
Dec 10, 2012
“Writers, actors, and prostitutes all face the same fundamental economic problem: they are competing with amateurs who are pretty good and will work for nothing.
Sep 06, 2010
