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Kurt Vonnegut shared this life advice with a class of high school students.1 it is probably worthwhile for everyone to read it at some point in their lives.
Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
there is something we might be missing by publishing original content to SN (or online more broadly), something i have to reconcile with very much in this territory--perhaps @denlillaapan can relate--which is that everything we write, draw, compose or create ultimately to be shared on the web feels like quite the opposite of what Vonnegut is here prescribing, i.e.: write something good, "Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals."
write for the self-transformation, the experience of "becoming," to make your soul grow.
one thing that inspires me about Den is how he writes and writes and writes with complete abandon. what this has shown me is how screaming into the void can be therapeutic and a little more similar to Vonnegut's advice than we would sometimes like. and if he happens to be reading this, then i hope what he takes with him is that it is this writer's hope that, notwithstanding his SN hiatus, he does not put down his pencil.
it is very tempting to ascribe value to something based on how well or poorly it got zapped, whether it 'wins' this or that contest or puts food on your table, gets mentioned in that zine or on that podcast.
don't. is what Vonnegut would say.

Footnotes

this territory is moderated
Man was that beautiful, yeeees.
I tell everyone who wants to become good at the art of writing to just... write! Write a lot, write often, write your heart out and if you have the guts, do it publicly. Not because you'll get a crowd of followers or because it'll be high enough quality but because knowing that others will see it keeps you honest!
Lovely extract from King Kurt. And I agree.
Don't worry, my writing ain't going away — can't go away. It's so ingrained in me, so deeply wedded into what it means to be me that I couldn't silence the desire for things to get out anymore than I could shut off my lungs.
Just more circumscribed and selective on SN
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In the words of the great Queen Taylor, you can’t stop won’t stop grooving?
“I never miss a beat I’m lightning on my feet And that’s what they don’t see That’s what they don’t see I’m dancing on my own (I make the moves up as I go) And that’s what they don’t know That’s what they don’t know But I keep cruising Can’t stop, won’t stop grooving…”
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complete abandon is the term. It’s so raw and unpolished, yet because it’s not finely structured, it’s uniquely beautiful
Well I don’t particularly care about the zaps I receive, but it would be nice if I could accumulate enough sats on a steady basis to buy my monthly beer nonetheless haha
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Post that monthly beer! Let us celebrate with u in ~HealthAndFitness!
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If he reads this, I hope he knows we’ll appreciate any shameless gloating of his yoga prowess on ~HealthAndFitness
There are many ways to stay plugged into SN!
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