Stories

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." -Hannah Arendt

kinesics

Others rely
on the "science" of reading body language known as "kinesics." They
may tell you that whenever a woman crosses her legs she's defensive, if a
man hooks his thumbs in his belt he is making a sexually suggestive
statement, and someone who looks away while talking to you is being
dishonest and evasive.
All I can say is, "It's not that easy." I've seen every technique imaginable
attempted in the courtroom by those who want to read jurors and
witnesses. But I've never seen any form of rigid or simplistic analysis
work consistently and reliably. And no short cut to understanding peo
ple or predicting their behavior will work any better for you outside the
courtroom.
As you read on, you'll find we typically identify many possible meanings
that can be attributed to particular characteristics, not just one.
Don't get frustrated by your natural desire to want to be told that a particular
trait has a specific meaning. Instead, recognize that throughout
the balance of this book, as in life, there will seldom be one clear sign
pointing to the ultimate answer to someone's personality. Instead, each
clue may point in ten directions, and therefore be of limited value in isolation.

people reading: compassion and achievement

Compassion

The closer people are to the compassionate end of my personal hardness
scale, the more they tend to be generous, fair, sincere, affectionate,
gentle, family-oriented, forgiving, and understanding of human frailty.
They are inclined to give other people the benefit of the doubt and are
more inquisitive and patient than people who lack compassion. They
may have a harder time coming to a decision than those who are less
compassionate, but only because of their desire to do the right thing.
They don't want to hurt anyone, so they are unlikely to be dishonest.
They tend to believe that what goes around, comes around.
People who fall on the uncaring end of the scale tend to be more critical,
intolerant, unforgiving, harsh, punitive, and self-centered. They are
also frequently more analytical, more likely to scan the facts and make a
quick decision. By the same token, they tend to be more judgmental, impetuous,
and inclined to act before all the information is in. Their motto
frequently seems to be "What's in it for me?"

Achievement

Over the years, after paying particularly close attention to this characteristic,
I have found that people who have achieved their goals tend
to believe in personal accountability and responsibility. They tend to be
more compassionate, supportive, at peace with themselves and others,
and optimistic. They also tend to be more forgiving, hardworking, and
industrious.
Those who have not achieved their goals often have a victim mentality.
They can be quick to place blame on others and may be bitter, angry,
negative, pessimistic, and vengeful. Usually, they are less industrious and
more critical and cynical than achievers.

Dimitrius

'Mis libros no enseñan nada

...solamente describen'

E.C.

On Dostoievski's Art

Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Art is considered to be Bakhtin’s seminal work, and it is here that Bakhtin introduces three important concepts. First, is the concept of the unfinalizable self: individual people cannot be finalized, completely understood, known, or labeled. Though it is possible to understand people and to treat them as if they are completely known, Bakhtin’s conception of unfinalizability respects the possibility that a person can change, and that a person is never fully revealed or fully known in the world.

Second, is the idea of the relationship between the self and others, or other groups. According to Bakhtin, every person is influenced by others in an inescapably intertwined way, and consequently no voice can be said to be isolated. In an interview, Bakhtin once explained that, "

In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding—in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others.

As such, Bakhtin's philosophy greatly respected the influences of others on the self, not merely in terms of how a person comes to be, but also in how a person thinks and how a person sees oneself truthfully.

Emphasizing the positive

Emphasizing the Positive - Erickson was dyslexic as a boy, and was both colour blind and tone deaf throughout his life. He claimed that these sensory 'disabilities' helped him to focus on aspects of communication and behavior which most other people overlooked. This is a typical example of emphasizing the positive.
Erickson would often compliment the patient for a symptom, and would even encourage it, in very specific ways. In one amusing example, a woman whose parents-in-law caused her nauseous feelings in the gut every time they visited unexpectedly was 'taught' to puke spectacularly whenever the visits were especially inconvenient. Naturally the parents-in-law would always sympathetically help her clean up the vomit. Fairly soon, the annoying relatives started calling in advance before turning up, to see if she were 'well enough' to see them.
The subject of dozens of songs, 'emphasizing the positive' is a well known self-help strategy, and can be compared with 'positive reformulation' in Gestalt Therapy.

Make it brief

• - In common with most brief therapy practitioners, Erickson was entirely uninterested in analysing the patient's early psychological development. Occasionally in his case histories, he will briefly discuss the patient's background, but only as much as it pertains to the resources available to the patient in the present.

INTERVIEWER: You don't feel that exploring the past is particularly relevant? I'm always trying to get clear in my mind how much of the past I need to consider when doing brief therapy.

ERICKSON: You know, I had one patient this last July who had four or five years of psychoanalysis and got nowhere with it. And someone who knows her said, "How much attention did you give to the past?" I said, "You know, I completely forgot about that." That patient is, I think, a reasonably cured person. It was a severe washing compulsion, as much as twenty hours a day. I didn't go in to the cause or the etiology; the only searching question I asked was "When you get in the shower to scrub yourself for hours, tell me, do you start at the top of your head, or the soles of your feet, or in the middle? Do you wash from the neck down, or do you start with your feet and wash up? Or do you start with your head and wash down?"

INTERVIEWER: Why did you ask that?

ERICKSON: So that she knew I was really interested.

INTERVIEWER: So that you could join her in this?

ERICKSON: No, so that she knew I was really interested.

-Interview with Erickson quoted in Uncommon Therapy by Jay Haley.

Shocks and Ordeals

Shocks and ordeals

Erickson is famous for pioneering indirect techniques, but his shock therapy tends to get less attention, perhaps because it is uncomfortable for us to hear such uncharacteristic stories about an inspirational and gentle healer. Nonetheless, Erickson was prepared to use psychological shocks and ordeals in order to achieve given results:

When the old gentleman asked if he could be helped for his fear of riding in an elevator, I told him I could probably scare the pants off him in another direction. He told me that nothing could be worse than his fear of an elevator.

The elevators in that particular building were operated by young girls, and I made special arrangements with one in advance. She agreed to cooperate and thought it would be fun. I went with the gentleman to the elevator. He wasn't afraid of walking into an elevator, but when it started to move it became an unbearable experience. So I chose an unbusy time and I had him walk in and out of the elevator, back in and out. Then at a point when we walked in, I told the girl to close the door and said, "Let's go up."

She went up one story and stopped in between floors. The gentleman started to yell, "What's wrong!" I said, "The elevator operator wants to kiss you." Shocked, the gentleman said, "But I'm a married man!" The girl said, "I don't mind that." She walked toward him, and he stepped back and said, "You start the elevator." So she started it. She went up to about the fourth floor and stopped it again between floors. She said, "I just have a craving for a kiss." He said, "You go about your business." He wanted that elevator moving, not standing still. She replied, "Well, let's go down and start all over again," and she began to take the elevator down. He said, "Not down, up!" since he didn't want to go through that all over again.

She started up and then stopped the elevator between floors and said, "Do you promise you'll ride down in my elevator with me when you're through work?" He said, "I'll promise anything if you promise not to kiss me." He went up in the elevator, relieved and without fear - of the elevator - and could ride one from then on.

-Erickson quoted in 'Uncommon Therapy' by Jay Haley.

Acerca del aislamiento

'Porque quien se ha acostumbrado a confiar únicamente en sí mismo y se ha separado del todo, como una unidad, habituando su alma a no creer en la ayuda humana, en los hombres y en la humanidad, no cesa de temblar ante la idea de perder el nimio poder y contacto que ha adquirido.'

Zósima, en Los Hermanos Karamazov

On misconceptions.

"I said what I said, I did not say what I did not say"

Korzybski

indirect communication

Kierkegaard's authorship was written behind the mask of several pseudonymous characters he created to represent different ways of thinking. This was part of Kierkegaard's indirect communication. Kierkegaard wrote this way in order to prevent his works from being treated as a philosophical system with a systematic structure. In the Point of View, Kierkegaard wrote: "In the pseudonymous works, there is not a single word which is mine. I have no opinion about these works except as a third person, no knowledge of their meaning, except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them."

Kierkegaard used indirect communication to make it difficult to ascertain whether he actually held any of the views presented in his works. He hoped readers would simply read the work at face value without attributing it to some aspect of his life. Kierkegaard also did not want his readers to treat his work as an authoritative system, but rather look to themselves for interpretation.

It's the same mechanism used on Milton Erickson's open trance work and Coetzee's dialogues on Elizabeth Costello to create contraposition and tension.

lógica y física

*la razón no constituye el ser del universo, sino sólo uno de los seres del cerebro humano. sólo un margen, sólo un espectro.

*la neurociencia de hoy argumenta que nuestra 'razón' está siempre subordinada al intercambio químico del momento y a la estructura neural ya existente, que es dependiente de nuestro estado emocional y de nuestro mapa cognitivo previo y que nuestros mismos dialogos internos alteran tanto al mapa como a la química.

*Emoción y razón están conectadas en un bucle cerrado que se alimenta y perpetua a si mismo.

Elizabeth Costello

She no longer believes very strongly in belief... Belief may be no more, in the end, than a source of energy, like a battery which one clips into an idea to make it run. As happens when one writes: believing whatever has to be believed in order to get the job done.

“Recently psychologists have dramatically revised their ideas about how hypnosis works, and the modern theory is that of social compliance. Broadly, this means that there is no altered state when you are hypnotised – no trance, no sleep, and nothing mysterious at all. Hypnosis simply works because the subjects believe it will.

Q. Can scientists develop strategies to help people be more positive?
A. There is a study looking at the health effects of gratitude journals that help a person identify the events or experiences in their day that they are grateful for and write them down. If you do it in a systemized way, it prevents the [good feelings] from being thrown out from the gestalt of the day.

Tenía razón cuando pensaba:
‘aprenderé a sentir miedo’
‘un arte que me servirá
para ganarme la vida’.
Todo puede suceder
en la mente de un niño
y todo tiene un precio. Hoy
vuelven a aparecer
de entre las sombras,
no una imagen,
sino los cuerpos
de los siete ahorcados
como guindajos
que entrechocan
y hace sonar el viento.


Yolanda Pantin

Examination at the Womb-Door

Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death.
Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs? Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death.
Who owns these questionable brains? Death.
All this messy blood? Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death.
This wicked little tongue? Death.
This occasional wakefulness? Death.

Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.

Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.
Who owns all of space? Death.

Who is stronger than hope? Death.
Who is stronger than the will? Death.
Stronger than love? Death.
Stronger than life? Death.

But who is stronger than Death?
Me, evidently.
Pass, Crow.

Ted Hughes

de nada vale buscar moral

es una empresa inútil tratar de averiguar si una gran obra literaria hace más buenos o más malos a sus lectores, porque la manera como un poema, una novela o un drama opera sobre una sensibilidad o un carácter varía al infinito, y mucho más en razón del lector que de la obra.

la literatura

La literatura no hace ni más felices, ni más buenos, ni más malos, a los lectores. Los hace más lúcidos, más conscientes de lo que tienen y de lo que les falta para colmar sus sueños, y por lo mismo más insumisos contra su propia condición, más desconfiados frente a los poderes espirituales y materiales que ofrecen recetas definitivas para alcanzar la dicha, y más inquietos y fantaseadores, menos aptos para ser manipulados y domesticados

history is made of actions not of thoughts

'what I think, what you think, who gives a damn? what's going on in my head is irrelevant as long as I act upon the world. history isn't made of inner dialogues, it is made of fights, encounters and turmoil.'
nechaev

nausea: words as map, experience as map.

In nausea sartre fails to point out that the experience of the world itself is not it's essence or 'existent' but barely another level of representation of it.

Bad faith

Bad faith (where one denies one's total freedom, instead choosing to behave as an inert object)

Self-deception.

We are always radically free to make choices and guide our lives towards our own chosen goal. We cannot escape this freedom, even in overwhelming circumstances. For instance, even an armed mugger's victim possesses choices: to hand over his wallet; to negotiate; to beg; to run; to counter-attack; or to die.

Although we are limited by our circumstances these cannot force us, as radically free beings, to follow one course over another. For this reason, we choose in anguish: we know that we must make a choice, that it will have consequences, and that some choices are better than others. But for Sartre, to claim that one amongst our many conscious possibilities takes undeniable precedence (for instance, 'I cannot risk my life, because I must support my family') is to assume the role of an object in the world, merely at the mercy of circumstance - a being in itself rather that is only its own facticity.

We can all choose to die. We can all choose to end. We can choose misery. We can choose happiness. There are no obligations in existence.

existence precedes essence

existence precedes essence, at the most basic level of understanding, is based on the idea of existence without essence. For humanity, it means that humanity may exist, but humanity's existence does not mean anything at least at the beginning. This concept can be applied at the individual level as well. The value and meaning of this existence—or essence—is created only later

"The world is founded upon the absurd"--Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov

nausea

Pienso qué éste es el peligro de llevar un diario: se exagera todo, uno está al
acecho, forzando continuamente la verdad.

Pero ahora se acabó; he releído lo escrito en el café Mably y me ha
dado vergüenza; no quiero secretos, ni estados de alma, ni cosas indecibles; no
soy ni virgen ni sacerdote para jugar a la vida interior.

No hay gran cosa que decir: no pude levantar el papel, eso es todo.

wasteland's

I will show you fear in a handful of dust

shady areas where no one's right.

STAR: A key concern in ''Snow'' is the desire of many Muslim women to wear headscarves to school -- an issue that raises delicate questions about where you draw the line between, say, the tolerance of religion and the imposition of religion. The current Turkish government has, controversially, attempted to assist the graduates of religious schools. Do you feel that is a legitimate cause for them?

PAMUK: Look, I'm a writer. I try to focus on these issues not from the point of view of a statesman but from the point of view of a person who tries to understand the pain and suffering of others. I don't think there is any set formula to solve these problems. Anyone who believes there is a simple solution to these problems is a fool -- and probably will soon end up being part of the problem. I think literature can approach these problems because you can go into more shady areas, areas where no one is right and no one has the right to say what is right. That's what makes writing novels interesting. It's what makes writing a political novel today interesting.

si no quieres que el arte te decepcione

mejor que no se te ocurra verlo como una profesión. por mucha habilidad y condiciones que tengas, busca el dinero y el poder en otro lugar, de manera que al no recibir la justa compensación por tu trabajo y talento, no llegues a odiar al arte.

favor experience over analysis

(bis) favor experience over analysis.

what I like about dostoievski's drama

is the sense of the absolute, the electricity that runs and burns at the surface of each and everyone of his characters.

camus

the ideomotor effect

"just as in a good dance we don't feel pushed, when the trance state is deep, no one feels like being lead on a Ouja board. One person inadvertedly leads while the others inadvertedly follow, wich allows for a flow experience. People often experience the trance state to -i.e. the Ouija board getting 'warmer'. Curiously when the backgound-biased participant who's most likely to know or fantasize about the questions asked is blindfolded the answer is much more late to arrive. "


William James

The Gestalt therapist contrives experiments that lead the client to greater awareness and fuller experience of his/her possibilities. Experiments can be focussed on undoing projections or retroflections. They can work to help the client with closure of unfinished gestalts ("unfinished business" such as unexpressed emotions towards somebody in the client's life). There are many kinds of experiments that might be therapeutic. But the essence of the work is that it is experiential rather than interpretive, and in this way distinguishes itself from the psychoanalytic.

Gestalt Therapy is a psychotherapy which focuses on here-and-now experience and personal responsibility.

Drama therapy

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Drama therapy, also known as the single word Dramatherapy outside the US, is the intentional use of theater techniques to facilitate personal growth and promote health. Drama therapy is an expressive therapy modality used in a wide variety of settings, including hospitals, schools, mental centers, prisons, and businesses. Drama therapy exists in many forms and can be applicable to individuals, couples, families, and various groups.

The use of dramatic process and theater as a therapuetic intervention began with Psychodrama. The field has expanded to allow many forms of theatrical interventions as therapy including role-play, theater games, group-dynamic games, mime, puppetry, and other improvisational techniques. Often, drama therapy is utilized to help a client:

• Solve a problem
• Achieve a catharsis
• Delve into truths about self
• Understand the meaning of personally resonate images
• Explore and transcend unhealthy patterns of interaction

Drama therapy is extremely varied in its use, based on the practitioner, the setting and the client. From fully-fledged performances to empty chair role-play, the sessions may involve many variables including the use of a troupe of actors.

"It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work." - Condi Rice (2007-01-11)

I feel I understand life better when I filter it through fiction.

Kenny Craig

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The Little Britain character Kenny Craig (played by Matt Lucas) is a hypnotist who uses his powers for trivial things, such as winning a game of Scrabble against his mother or attempting to avoid paying the entrance fee to a swimming pool. His catchphrase is "Look into my eyes, look into the eyes, not around the eyes, don't look around the eyes, look into my eyes(clicks) you're under, (after dialogue involving the situation), 3, 2, 1, you're back in the room"

Kenny Craig
First appearance	Series 1 (first series appearance)
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Stage hypnotist

The character is featured in both the radio and TV in sketches where he often uses his special hypnosis talent to get his own way, such as saving money when going out on a date by hypnotising his girlfriend into choosing food from the set menu.

It is probable that, at first, he doesn't really have any hypnotic skills at all, and that people only do what he hypnotises them to do just to make him happy. However, in his final scetches, he could hypnotise a whole audience into believing that they have witnessed a spectacular hypnotic show, which shows that his powers have developed considerably throughout the series.

His name is a combination of weight-loss guru Jenny Craig and real-life hypnotist Paul McKenna.

In Little Britain Abroad, he meets Paul McKenna in Portugal. He takes his hypnotic powers away.

""Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me

""Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment." robert anton wilson

we define based on what seems, what we experience, not on what 'is'. kant

'adress to this dull and effeminate age'

big 8==D words by Drake.

la charlatanería de nechaev

mezcla verdad, mentiras y pasión para confundir y guiar a quien oye.

un alma en borrador

antonio machado.

l. cohen:

I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order.

charm into submission

stee-mulate your mind!!

Feedback, rewriting and amnesia

Which brings us to feedback. I know, I know: showing other people your drafts is tough. Exposing yourself like that, making yourself that vulnerable, can be terrifying. It's perfectly reasonable to avoid that, to not show other people your stories, or to shy away from asking the dreaded question, "What did you think?"

That is, if you're a pussy. Otherwise, you need to suck it up. Your pride isn't relevant here. All that's important is improving your story. And for that, you need feedback. Lots of it.

Man, what I'd give for the ability to erase my memory after each draft, so I could read my own books for the first time again. It would all become so clear: where the story sagged, where the promising leads left unfollowed lay, where my characters' motivations got muddled and, oh God please yes, what the core of this goddamn story really is.

some guy at palahniuk's

the modern reader

...your audience is smarter than you imagine... younger readers distain most books - not because those readers are dumber than past readers, but because today's reader is smarter. Movies have made us very sophisticated about storytelling. And your audience is much harder to shock than you can ever imagine.

Palahniuk.

Nechaev on the Devils

On November 21, 1869, Nechayev and several comrades beat, strangled and shot Ivanov, hiding the body in a lake through a hole in the ice. This incident was fictionalised by writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his political novel The Devils, published three years later, in which the Peter Verkhovensky character is based on Nechayev.

So far I have read of Coetzee's

* Youth.
* Master of St. Petersburg.

I wanna read Disgrace and the one about Robinson Crusoe. I'll buy Disgrace this weekend.

Impressions on the Master of St. Petersburg (half book so far)

I like the Dostoievski ripoff. Great tension management. I dislike the occasionally occurring melodrama. Ingenious fiction-reality interlock. I wanna learn a bit more about Nechaev, though I consider him an idiot.

Coetzee's inner parallels

• All of Coetzee's writings are similar in that they often center on a solitary character. No direct moral is ever given, but rather situations are set up for the reader to think about. Coetzee’s aim is not to provide solutions, but to highlight problems and have the reader form their own conclusions.

  
  

Coetzee writes an hour a day.

Rian Malan wrote that Coetzee is "a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication. He does not drink, smoke or eat meat. He cycles vast distances to keep fit and spends at least an hour at his writing-desk each morning, seven days a week. A colleague who has worked with him for more than a decade claims to have seen him laugh just once. An acquaintance has attended several dinner parties where Coetzee has uttered not a single word." [1]

I think of coetzee as a dull man. Lesson to learn: even dull men can become amazingly strong writers out of dedication and self discipline.

Copy what you like

July 2006

When I was in high school I spent a lot of time imitating bad writers. What we studied in English classes was mostly fiction, so I assumed that was the highest form of writing. Mistake number one. The stories that seemed to be most admired were ones in which people suffered in complicated ways. Anything funny or gripping was ipso facto suspect, unless it was old enough to be hard to understand, like Shakespeare or Chaucer. Mistake number two. The ideal medium seemed the short story, which I've since learned had quite a brief life, roughly coincident with the peak of magazine publishing. But since their size made them perfect for study in high school classes, we read a lot of them, which gave us the impression the short story was flourishing. Mistake number three. And because they were so short, nothing really had to happen; you could just show a randomly truncated slice of life, and that was considered advanced. Mistake number four. The result was that I wrote a lot of stories in which nothing happened except that someone was unhappy in a way that seemed deep.

For most of college I was a philosophy major. I was very impressed by the papers published in philosophy journals. They were so beautifully typeset, and their tone was just captivating-- alternately casual and buffer-overflowingly technical. A fellow would be walking along a street and suddenly modality qua modality would spring upon him. I didn't ever quite understand these papers, but I figured I'd get around to that later, when I had time to reread them more closely. In the meantime I tried my best to imitate them. This was, I can now see, a doomed undertaking, because they weren't really saying anything. No philosopher ever refuted another, for example, because no one said anything definite enough to refute. Needless to say, my imitations didn't say anything either.

In grad school I was still wasting time imitating the wrong things. There was then a fashionable type of program called an expert system, at the core of which was something called an inference engine. I looked at what these things did and thought "I could write that in a thousand lines of code." And yet eminent professors were writing books about them, and startups were selling them for a year's salary a copy. What an opportunity, I thought; these impressive things seem easy to me; I must be pretty sharp. Wrong. It was simply a fad. The books the professors wrote about expert systems are now ignored. They were not even on a path to anything interesting. And the customers paying so much for them were largely the same government agencies that paid thousands for screwdrivers and toilet seats.

How do you avoid copying the wrong things? Copy only what you genuinely like. That would have saved me in all three cases. I didn't enjoy the short stories we had to read in English classes; I didn't learn anything from philosophy papers; I didn't use expert systems myself. I believed these things were good because they were admired.

It can be hard to separate the things you like from the things you're impressed with. One trick is to ignore presentation. Whenever I see a painting impressively hung in a museum, I ask myself: how much would I pay for this if I found it at a garage sale, dirty and frameless, and with no idea who painted it? If you walk around a museum trying this experiment, you'll find you get some truly startling results. Don't ignore this data point just because it's an outlier.

Another way to figure out what you like is to look at what you enjoy as guilty pleasures. Many things people like, especially if they're young and ambitious, they like largely for the feeling of virtue in liking them. 99% of people reading Ulysses are thinking "I'm reading Ulysses" as they do it. A guilty pleasure is at least a pure one. What do you read when you don't feel up to being virtuous? What kind of book do you read and feel sad that there's only half of it left, instead of being impressed that you're half way through? That's what you really like.

Even when you find genuinely good things to copy, there's another pitfall to be avoided. Be careful to copy what makes them good, rather than their flaws. It's easy to be drawn into imitating flaws, because they're easier to see, and of course easier to copy too. For example, most painters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used brownish colors. They were imitating the great painters of the Renaissance, whose paintings by that time were brown with dirt. Those paintings have since been cleaned, revealing brilliant colors; their imitators are of course still brown.

It was painting, incidentally, that cured me of copying the wrong things. Halfway through grad school I decided I wanted to try being a painter, and the art world was so manifestly corrupt that it snapped the leash of credulity. These people made philosophy professors seem as scrupulous as mathematicians. It was so clearly a choice of doing good work xor being an insider that I was forced to see the distinction. It's there to some degree in almost every field, but I had till then managed to avoid facing it.

That was one of the most valuable things I learned from painting: you have to figure out for yourself what's good. You can't trust authorities. They'll lie to you on this one