{"id":13466,"date":"2023-02-17T11:07:38","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T11:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/?p=13466"},"modified":"2023-02-17T11:09:03","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T11:09:03","slug":"chasing-the-feeling-with-no-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2023\/02\/17\/chasing-the-feeling-with-no-name\/","title":{"rendered":"chasing the feeling with no name"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>A part of me is always chasing a particular feeling.<\/strong> Sometimes I call it \u201caesthetic resonance\u201d, though that\u2019s not the whole of it. Sometimes I might say \u201celegance\u201d, although that seems too broad and vague. It might be what Christopher Alexander called \u201cthe quality without a name\u201d, which is something like \u201caliveness\u201d, \u201czest\u201d, gusto\u201d, but more than that, beyond that. I am always searching for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I have gotten glimpses and tastes of this feeling before.<\/strong> Something of it is always present when I\u2019m doing my best work. When I came up with the phrase \u201cFriendly Ambitious Nerd\u201d as the title for my first ebook, it was there. When \u201cVoltaic Verses\u201d hit me more recently, it was there too. A sense of \u201crightness\u201d, \u201ccorrectness. I\u2019m currently writing this essay on my middle screen. I am seated at my desk. It\u2019s 833am, Saturday, February 11th 2023. It\u2019s a somewhat cool morning. My glasses are off. I have a couple of stray files on the desktops of other monitors. I have what looks like 20 chrome tabs open in another window, with a video of \u201cThe Rock vs Goldberg: Backlash 2003\u201d paused and open on youtube. Why was I watching that? Right, I was looking for a WWE-related gif to make a point about something on Twitter, and I couldn\u2019t find it, but I ended up opening loads of WWE-related tabs. Should I close them? Would that distract me from my process? I don\u2019t think so. Let\u2019s close them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A phrase I\u2019ve used when talking about trying to work with these drafts is that I\u2019m looking for \u201canimating spirit\u201d. And animating spirit isn\u2019t something that you can find cobble together from bits and pieces like Frankenstein\u2019s Monster \u2013 it\u2019s the breath of life, the spark, the sizzle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve also said before that there\u2019s a pain of being inarticulate\u2026 having thoughts and feelings that feel vague<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I think being trapped by one\u2019s inherited aesthetics can be a source of frustration, kind of like the pain of being inarticulate <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/szdiT1vF7V\">pic.twitter.com\/szdiT1vF7V<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Visa \u2708\ufe0f NYC (Feb22\u2013Mar13) (@visakanv) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/1117033304996192256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 13, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Currently listening to Paramore\u2019s latest album, This Is Why, just released yesterday. This is their 6th studio album. It\u2019s pretty good. I think it\u2019s one of those things that grows on you slowly. There\u2019s depth and nuance to it. It\u2019ll take time to learn the lyrics but they\u2019re well written so once you learn them they\u2019ll stick with you. I like how some of the sounds feel old and fresh at the same time.<br><br>I\u2019m chasing a feeling. I\u2019ve gotten tastes of it before. It\u2019s almost worse that I\u2019ve tasted it before, because I know it\u2019s real, and I\u2019m not making up something, like imagining an impossible paradise&#8230;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A part of me is always chasing a particular feeling. Sometimes I call it \u201caesthetic resonance\u201d, though that\u2019s not the whole of it. Sometimes I might say \u201celegance\u201d, although that seems too broad and vague. It might be what Christopher Alexander called \u201cthe quality without a name\u201d, which is something&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[727],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drafts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-3vc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13467,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13466\/revisions\/13467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}