Re-watching familiar videos can be a kind of secular prayer

--- Laurence Scott, in his wonderful  article "In Search of Lost Time on YouTube: How the platform takes us to places where we ache to go again," The New Atlantis, Number 59, Summer 2019

In context

The digital, unbloody ease with which YouTube revives the past, so much more nimbly than its DVD and VCR predecessors, invites us to become re-watchers of the same content. Indeed, quick repetition is a main feature of our new digital aesthetics. Whereas we use GIFs — those twitchy, looping clips — as public illustrations of our feelings or responses to events, an oft-repeated YouTube video is the GIF’s private counterpart. Re-watching familiar videos can be a kind of secular prayer. There is comfort in the repetition, and the videos to which we give this repeated attention can feel deeply personal. We wouldn’t necessarily want others to know that we return to them in this way. Aren’t we wasting the time of our own lives? It’s easy to attach embarrassment or shame to the act of re-watching.

We don't want to be watched but we want to be visible

--- Patricia Lockwood, LRB podcast "The State of ... The Internet" at 20:50

In context:

And the stubbornness of the human mind, I think, because again, with all this surveillance, like, yeah we do want to be visible -- right? -- but we're being watched. We don't want to be watched but we want to be visible.

A few more

John Lanchester talking about mixed feelings about technology, around 32:39

 There's a funny thing, this shiny device has liberated us, but [...] it's trapped us too.

John Lanchester talking about early use of modems by tabloid journalists, starting at 35:58

I remember that seeming like a kind of ... magic trick, but at the same time it was in that really intermediate stage, that wonderful -- I can't remember who said it, something about technologies -- "Technology's stuff that doesn't work yet." ... Because once things really work, we stop experiencing them as technology; glasses are the thing I'm obsessive about: technology but we don't think of them as technology because they just work. But technology being in that kind of liminal state between working and not working ...

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world

--- Albert Einstein, in an interview that was published in “The Saturday Evening Post” in 1929, according to Quote Investigator. In context

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, financed by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was convinced that their conclusions would tally with my hypothesis. I was not surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would have been surprised if I had been wrong.”

“Then you trust more to your imagination than to your knowledge?”

“I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Rule 34: If something exists, there is porn of it

According to Know Your Meme:

Rule 34 is an Internet adage in the "Rules of the Internet" list of protocols and conventions which asserts that "if something exists, there is porn of it." The humorous concept is commonly illustrated through fanarts and fanfictions in which fictional TV and cartoon characters engage in sexual behavior, in similar vein to the Ruined Childhood meme.

... build something that you haven’t done before, you don’t know how to do it, and it’s kind of amateur way of doing things ...

--- Karl Ove Knausgård, in an interview with Kurt Anderson, Studio 360 interview, May 2, 2019

The blog post paraphrases the verbatim (see my transcription of the audio below) as follows

If you want to get rid of all the automatic ways in, then you have to do something from scratch so to speak and build something that you haven't done before . . . It's like you do it for the first time. And I think that's that's the best place to be in writing…. And I think Munch somehow searched for those places in his painting throughout his life.

Quote in context (my transcription)

[12:55] Kurt Anderson: And, and, you don’t just mean the overused formula that everybody would regard as, that’s been used forever, that’s a cliché; you mean, any technique or any trope or any idea that an artist just comfortably returns to in his or her own work, right? It’s all of one’s personal habits, as well, and tics.

[13:16] Karl Ove Knausgård: Yes, exactly, and its about safety, it’s easy if you find a way to do it, find a way to paint or find a way to write, and it’s works to be successful, or at least it works, it’s very tempting to just continue because [sigh] the risk of failure is enormous in doing these things, you know. So, for instance, a man like David Bowie, he should be admired so much for the courage he had to completely go somewhere else you know, every second year, since 70s and 80s. Because the risk and what’s at stake is a comfort and you know your skill, you can do it, and it’s easy, you can do it one more time, but if you do it, then you know what it is, and there’s no curiosity anymore, and you won’t find anything else, anything new.

[14:08] Kurt Anderson. Right. I’m fascinated by the common struggles and common challenges and problems of artists in different disciplines. You say, for instance, that a serious painter, quote, starts a work because he knows what he wants to do but not how to do it. And that seems at least as true of writing as painting.

[14:35] Karl Ove Knausgård: Yeah. If you want to get rid of the novel before the novel, if you want to get rid of all the automatic ways in, then you have to do something from scratch so to speak, and build something that you haven’t done before, you don’t know how to do it, and it’s kind of amateur way of doing things, you know, there’s no professionalism in it, it’s as if you do it for the first time. And I think that’s the best place to be in writing, and you can feel it in the novel. It’s not like a professional, you know, smooth, … it’s much more awkward, and I think Munch somehow searched for those places in his paining throughout his life, actually.