“Confidence is not the belief that we won’t meet obstacles. It is the recognition that difficulties are an inescapable part of all worthwhile contributions. We must ensure we have plenty of narratives to hand that normalise the role of pain, anxiety and disappointment in even the best and most successful lives.”
– The School of Life, Confidence – The Battle Against Timidity
“The topic of confidence is too often neglected by serious people: we spend so much time acquiring technical skills, and so little time practicing the one virtue that will make those skills effective in the world.”
– The School of Life, Confidence – The Battle Against Timidity
“One of the greatest sources of despair is the belief that things should have been easier than they have turned out to be. We give up not simply because events are difficult, but because we hadn’t expected them to be so. The capacity to remain confident is, to a significant extent, a matter of internalizing a correct narrative about what difficulties it is normal to encounter.”
– The School of Life, Confidence – The Battle Against Timidity
“I took the liberty of recording all his statements.”
There was a flurry, and Pierenne opened his mouth in horror.
“What of it?” demanded Hardin. “I realize it was a gross breach of hospitality and a thing no so-called gentleman would do. Also, that if his Lordship had caught on, things might have been unpleasant; but he didn’t, and I have the record, and that’s that. I took that record, had it copied out and sent that to Holk for analysis, also.”
Lundin Crast said, “And where is the analysis?”
“That,” replied Hardin, “is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Holk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications – in short, all the goo and dribble – he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out.
“Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed. There are the assurances you had from your precious Empire.”
An excerpt from an article by Vivian Gornick.
Natalia Ginzburg came from a dysfunctional family and very young she learned that self-protection required the cultivation of an inner distance from others. Eventually it took a heavy toll. In adolescence, she developed a “stony-faced” (her word) hauteur that made her feel unreal to herself, and soon enough it made everyone around here seem unreal as well. In time she became sealed into an emotional anomie that hardened with the years.
In 1938, at the age of 21, Natalia married Leone Ginzburg, an anti-fascist, and, in 1941, when he was declared persona non grata by the government, accompanied him into what was then called “internal exile” – removal to some rural area from from the urban centers. In 1943, after the fall of Mussolini, the family (by then they had three children) decided it was safe to move back to Rome – a miscalculation for which they would pay dearly. Leone went first, and five months later Natalia and the children followed. Within 20 days of the family’s arrival in the city, Leone was arrested by German police and taken off to prison, where he was tortured and killed.
Ginzburg’s armor – her haughty anomie – had been in place all this time. But now, with war on the ground – the loss of her young husband, death raining from the sky, countless children abandoned in the rubble – life shocked her into an experience she could never have imagined. Suddenly, she felt stifled inside the separateness from others she had valued all these years. No longer a protection, this deep withdrawal of hers now seemed dangerous: a threat to her own survival. Somehow, she realized, she must begin to feel connected, or at least to act as though she felt connected. She must teach herself – now! – to mimic the look and feel of unthinking, everyday, comradeship.
Ah, she has it: “We learn,” she writes with something like wonder in her voice, “to ask for help from the first passer-by.” And then, “we learn to give help to the first passer-by.” And then, at last, she finds herself – and that’s exactly it: finds herself – feeling not only saved but curiously alive through the simple act of taking part in the fellowship of suffering.
The experience led Ginzburg to the insight that dominated her work for the rest of her life. In “that brief moment when one day it fell to our lot to live when we had looked at the things of the world for the last time,” she had “found a point of equilibrium for our wavering life.” From then on, she writes, “we could look at our neighbor with a gaze that would always be just and free, not the timid or contemptuous gaze of someone who whenever he is with his neighbor always asks himself if he is his master or his servant.”
I don’t for a minute believe that this seemingly epiphanic moment brought about a permanent change in Ginzburg’s behavior. But when the war was over and the fellowship of suffering had loosened its hold on her, she remained grateful to both, not because they had destroyed her original sense of aloofness but because they had taught her that it had been in place for so much of her life. She now understood that all these years she had been a stranger to herself.
Archaic Torso of Apollo
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Over several decades Syd developed a great understanding of the creative business: “First, have a grasp of context, detail, and the rationale which makes design and image-making worthwhile to yourself and commercially, to someone else. Try not to become a ‘linear’ professional. Learn a variety of techniques, of thinking methodology and most of all, don’t become complacent. Honestly, I get scared shitless every time I start a new, big job. I read, I gather information and push the client to tell me what they want. (Sometimes they really don’t know, and those jobs are usually nightmares!) Remember details, notice how people move, how sunlight cascades over moving objects, why foliage looks the way it does (it’s nature’s own fractal magic) and how come velvet has about the same range of value as metallic surfaces but one is soft and the other is brittle. Finally, don’t assume that technique alone will save your ass. It still is the idea that wins—every time. Remember that elaborate technique and dumb story produces a demo reel, not a narrative.”
In Memory of Syd Mead: The Grandfather of Concept Design
“… And then you see space, you see
“I think I invented my path, and I really wanted to probably make it as complicated for myself as it could be.” – Goshka Macuga