On Art,
Minecraft is a fantastic tool for having fun while creating digital art. But creating art with unlimited resources can diminish the experience. Minecraft builders, save for those undertaking “super” projects, would do well to play in survival mode from time to time. For one, there’s a unique satisfaction in creating a piece of digital art when you’ve had to scrounge for materials. For second, defending one’s project from creepers, zombies, and skeletons is much like defending one’s non-digital art. There are always going to be philistines who want to destroy, dismantle, or piss on the things that you care about. Accept that as a reality to be managed, rather than a thing to be avoided, and the experience will be that much more rewarding.
On Criticism,
Every writer a critic, and every critic a writer; that’s my solution to what Jacob Silverman calls an “an epidemic of niceness in online book culture”. Within the academic world, peer review is an essential part of the writing process. The creative sphere needs a little more of that. Granted getting published, save for writing a blog, self publication, or hooking up with a vanity press, is not easy. Once a writer has climbed that mountain the last thing they might want to hear from a colleague is that their work is wanting. But if we maintain that “critic” is the root of “critical thought” rather than simply “criticism”, we should welcome the feedback of our peers even if it’s not quite what we want to hear. In doing so, everybody grows as a creator and consumer.
Every writer a critic, and every critic a writer.
On Film,
The story of Pygmalion and Galatea is terrible; stop making movies that use it as the central conceit. I’ve met/talked to a lot of writers/artists over the last couple of years, and 96% of them are well adjusted and generally pleasant people. They can also be laser focused, incredibly determined, and passionate in ways that some folk might find surprising. This does not make them misanthropic narcissists who are incapable of holding down relationships with anybody who they have not created – I’m talking to you, Ruby Sparks and to a lesser extent Stranger than Fiction.
On America,
There are a lot of things that America does well. There is one thing America does very poorly: leaving issues of civil rights up to individual states and then a popular vote therein. Civil rights should never be a question of popular opinion, that’s why we call them rights. If they are not universal to all, then they are not worth the paper upon which they are printed. Who thinks that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US Constitution would have been better left to regional/state opinion? Such is the stupidity of putting marriage equity in a similar light.
