Current location: On the road (headed north), Wisconsin, USA
Reading: The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud
Listening: Memories by Margaret Glaspy(if you have a moment, reply with your own 3-item status via email or in the comments)
What We Take In
I tend to believe that a balanced informational diet is important.
That means trying to engage with a variety of different sources, different mediums, different types of information, and making sure to include hearty helpings of concrete reality, compelling (not real) narrative, analysis, perspective, and anything else I feel I’m not getting enough of and which might, if left lopsided, throw off my cognitive and creative equilibrium.
I also think it’s important to consider the quantities and potencies of the information to which we’re exposed, as too much of anything—even wonderful, healthful things—can be deleterious, as can (usually) beneficial things at the wrong moment, or a complete lack of something that may leave us with blindspots if we completely extract them from our pool of engage-with-able prospects.
I tend to believe folks should have a sense of what’s happening in the world, then, but would encourage everyone to step away from the news when it’s negatively impacting their psychological wellbeing (and to keep tabs on when that line is crossed so as to better maintain a sustainable level of situational awareness, moving forward).
Likewise, I think fiction is more valuable than some people would acknowledge, but taken to extremes, spending too much time in other worlds—be they printed in trade paperbacks or streamed to our devices as TV shows—can drain us of the energy (and time) to do the things we’d like to do (and/or would benefit from doing) in this world.
The sources of what we soak up are worthy of consideration, too, as a variety of authors, producers, content-creators, and other sorts of thing-makers will tend to offer us work derived from a wider range of influences, experiences, intentions, and underlying philosophies, which in turn provides us with a diversity of inputs (rather than a collection of ideas that all seem to agree with each other and our priors, which over time flattens our capacity to imagine and understand anything beyond a relatively confined, familiar, cozy intellectual spectrum).
What we put out into the world is rightly at the core of many mullings and conversations, as our contributions to the civilization-scale idea-exchange ideally offer some combination of value, insight, and perspective to those who ingest them.
But what we take in is just as fundamental, as our capacity to make is informed and empowered by the quality and range of raw materials, the qualia and quanta, we’ve consumed over the course of our lives.
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Video Essay
This week’s video essay is about the Luddites, tea-picking in Kenya, and artificial intelligence.
I’m still getting back on the YouTube horse after many years away, so if you have a quick second and dig what I’m doing over there, a like, share, and/or subscribe would be very much appreciated (to help get the algorithms looking my way, again) :)
Interesting & Useful
The Art of the Shadow: How Painters Have Gotten It Wrong for Centuries
“Painters have long struggled with the difficulties of depicting shadows, so much so that shadows—after a brief, spectacular showcase in ancient Roman paintings and mosaics—are almost absent from pictorial art up to the Renaissance and then are hardly present outside traditional Western art.”
The Unknown Giants of the Deep Oceans
“From 13m-long (43ft) voracious carnivorous squid, to scuttling Yeti crabs huddling near hydrothermal vents, to tusked whales dwelling thousands of feet down to avoid predatory orcas, sizable marine animals new to science are still being documented every year.”
“Atlas of Landscapes in a Room is a collection of interior landscapes designed, built and displayed by landscape architects, architects, artists and exhibition makers.”
Something Else I Wrote
Outro
I’m back on the road today: Ariana was asked to teach an art workshop in Door County, so when you read this I’ll either be on my way back to the northern portion of Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan coast, or already up there, nestling into the Dome House for another few days of fancy hobbit-like living (and ambling around the area) for the remainder of the work-week.
I’ll try to take more photos as I wander on this visit, and I’ll be sharing those on Instagram (link below) if you’re keen to tag along.
Taking any little (or big) trips in the coming months? Have a dream destination that you’ve always thought about, but haven’t been able to visit quite yet? Reply directly to this newsletter or send a fresh email to colin@exilelifestyle.com and tell me about it—I respond to every message I receive and would love to hear from you!
Prefer stamps and paper? Send me a letter, postcard, or some other physical communication at: Colin Wright, PO Box 11442, Milwaukee, WI 53211
Or hit me up via the usual methods: Instagram/Threads, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or vivid, saturated landscapes.
Other things I make: Aspiring Generalist / Brain Lenses (podcast) / Climate Happenings / Let’s Know Things (podcast) / Never Not Curious / Notes On the News / One Sentence News (podcast) / You Probably Don’t Need