How good is this story? The other day I was reminded of just what Silo Number Seven was – a small place for good things. The internet has so much white noise that travels through it every day, and I’m glad I can find stories like this one that are worth holding onto.
What a remarkable piece by The New York Times! While somewhat lengthy, the story behind the visual really makes it one worth watching.
| In 1983, after years of deteriorating vision, the writer and theologian John Hull lost the last traces of light sensation. For the next three years, he kept a diary on audio-cassette of his interior world of blindness. This film is a dramatization that uses his original recordings.
Lately, I’ve been noticing that the NY Times have been doing a really solid job of bringing stories to life. It’s not just “news” as we know it, but they’re digging deeper and I really appreciate that as a viewer. Here’s the story behind John Hull here.
| John description of blindness as “the borderland between dream and memory” informed our aesthetic approach, and much of the key imagery of the film is rooted in his testimony. Throughout the diaries John recounts vivid “technicolor” dreams, his “last state of visual consciousness,” which he compares to watching films. In particular, the water imagery that recurs in the film — visions of surging waves; of being dragged into the depths of the ocean — is derived from John’s account.
Chris Hadfield has to be one of my favorite people that exist at the moment. Not only is he an astronaut, but he’s well-known for his ability to communicate powerfully and this video is no different. If you like this post, check out another one that I posted last year by Chris here.
When her site turned 7 years old, Maria Popova (founder and editor of Brain Pickings) found herself questioning how she would stay true to her focus, as the work she produced evolved. In October of 2013, she put out a great essay on her reflections and all the lessons she’s learned in “7 Things I Learned in 7 years of Reading, Writing, and Living.” It’s an incredible and focused list of small verses that have massive meaning behind it.
About a year and change later, the good folks over at Dissolve created a video surrounding the essay. Animation, orchestral music, and moving imagery really make this essay come to life – one of my favorites here on Silo Number Seven.
What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world.
[…]
Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.
[…]
Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.
Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious.
A great article by Paul Graham here.
To be honest, I’m not too sure how to describe this documentary by Ryan Reichenfeld, but I know it left me feeling something. There’s a bleakness that leads into this empty wondering — it’s interesting and resonated so well that I felt like it should be shared.
| Following Sean as he wakes up at 3:30am to cook burgers at the ‘Jack In The Box’ restaurant, skates around his hometown and goes fishing, at first Reichenfeld’s film may appear like it is about nothing much at all, but it’s this wandering, almost poetic feel that turns out to be its most affecting and resonating features.