“Fail early and get it all over with. If you learn to deal with failure, you can raise teenagers. You can abide in intimate relationships. And you can have a worthwhile career. You learn to breathe again when you embrace failure as a part of life, not as the determining moment of life.”
Rev. William L. Swig
Stanford 2007 Baccalaureate Celebration
Check out this amazing performance of singer Imogen Heap, layering tracks over each other live.
See more photos in the Flickr photoset
Tucked away at the end of a long private road at the base of the jagged edges of Stags’ Leap cliffs in Napa Valley is the first, last, and only building in North America designed by Austrian artist Frederick Hundertwasser, the Quixote Winery. As a participant of the Taste3 conference, I recently had the privilege of touring this architectural delight. Here are a few highlights.
Hundertwasser was a singularly unusual man. An environmentalist, a nudist (he gave a press conference in the nude on at least one occasion), a ladies man (he died in his 70s on the QE2 on route back from Asia with his 20-something Japanese girlfriend), Hundertwasser was a wildly distinctive artist (think of mash-up of Klimt and Gaudi), whose works spanned from prints to public housing to postage stamps.
“Most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.
This vicarious participation is able to mask, at least temporarily, the underlying emptiness of wasted time. But it is a very pale substitute for attention invested in real challenges. The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere. Collectively we are wasting each year the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness. The energy that could be used to focus on complex goals, to provide enjoyable growth, is squandered on patterns of stimulation that only mimic reality.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Excerpt from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
We have a pomegranate tree in our front lawn, pretty close to the sidewalk. Although we live on a quiet, sheltered, cul-de-sac, that doesn’t keep people from driving by, hopping out of their car, nabbing a few poms and speeding away. Last year we woke up one morning to find half of the tree stripped – basically all pomegranates within reach.
My goddaughter Piper sings the Barney Song.
Twice.
