Picture this: a three-year-old boy, sitting wide-eyed in a dim theater, his small hand in his mother’s, gazing at the flickering screen where worlds unfold before him. For hours, he’s transported, and when the lights come up, those characters follow him home, filling the quiet spaces of his childhood. This boy is Al Pacino, the … Read more
Here’s a video where John Mayer improvised a song on a livestream—and it’s marvelous watching this. If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s definitely worth a few minutes out of your time to see how he’s conjuring this out of thin air: Also, even at his level he says it still “requires a stupid bravery”. … Read more
Jerry Seinfeld co-created the most successful show in the history of television, and after nine seasons they offered him $110 million to do one more season—and he said no. Years later, Howard Stern asked him why he didn’t accept the offer, and his answer was beautiful: The love affair between the people that were making … Read more
One of the great musical collaborations of recent times had quite a funny origin. Sting and Dominic Miller created incredible songs together, including Fields of Gold, and Shape Of My Heart. But Miller almost screwed it up. He was a musician in London at the time, and got invited to audition with Sting, who at … Read more
Many of Mozart’s piano pieces tend to be to pleasantly rippling along. I imagine them very befitting for the salons of Viennese aristocracy, where life is easy and privileged. But his Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major, played by Fazil Say is wonderful. It still has that Mozart-feel, but there’s a dynamism to it, … Read more
Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art has been so influential to my life and my pursuit of prolific practice, that I naturally went down a Pressfield rabbit hole, reading nearly everything written by the man himself, a lot written about him, and watched dozens of interviews. The more I learned about him, the more … Read more
We all hurt. We all feel pain. I sure know I do, and if you’re reading this and you think you’re not, then you’re kidding yourself. (Or you’re enlightened, but then why the heck would you be reading this?) That’s not to say that life can’t be beautiful. I love life. But the pain is … Read more
Charlie Kaufman has written movies like Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anomalisa, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and others. What I love most about Charlie Kaufman is the depth of his thinking, and how his art expresses truth. The following are quotes from a BAFTA lecture he gave on 30 … Read more
In 1978 Brunello Cucinelli founded a luxury fashion brand in Italy, but what’s most remarkable about him is his life’s story. He grew up as the son of a farmer, leading oxen over the fields. He also fondly remembers the Italian cafes, where people would drink coffee at two in the morning, play card games, … Read more
It was the year 2001, and System of a Down were working on Chop Suey—which would become one of their most iconic songs. Serj, the songwriter, didn’t have words for a certain section of the song. He was in the library of his producer at the time, Rick Rubin, and Rubin told him: ”Pick some … Read more