Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Artists must be allowed to make bad work

austinkleon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 165 posts

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#121

Post by jfarmer »

epiccoleman wrote: post #84

I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential,…

The original video is neat. Right after this quote he plays + critiques one of his old broadcasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#122

Post by [deleted] »

epiccoleman wrote: post #84

I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential,…

[deleted]

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#124

Post by eropple »

alentred wrote: post #5

I truly think of science and engineering, software development included, as an artistic feat in part. And we can easily see how the opinion expressed in this interview easily applies to what we do. Yes, we all have periods where we should be allowed to do bad work, learn on it and eventually come out with better ideas. Yes, the "public" pressure and the focus on novelty is there (right now on HN front page: https://n…

?> Yes, we all have periods where we should be allowed to do bad work, learn on it and eventually come out with better ideas.

Most people's GitHub pages are full of this kind of junk. And in this case, "junk" is absolutely not a pejorative. It's necessary, and it can show growth if somebody's looking for it.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#125

Post by dotnet00 »

epiccoleman wrote: post #84

I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential,…

Saved. This idea has been my ethos since my early teenage years and was how I motivated myself to self-learn to code despite being laughed at by my peers because the results weren't as fancy as software made by professionals.

From this philosophy, I gained a lot of confidence in just diving into anything I was interested in, regardless of how embarrassing my early attempts ended up being.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#126

Post by dimgl »

epiccoleman wrote: post #84

I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential,…

I love this, thanks for sharing. When I was younger I used to make a lot of music. A majority of it sucked, but some of it was legitimately good. So much so that some of my friends would go out of their way to listen to it even if they had other options. Funnily enough they'd still listen even if the tracks were always super low quality (I was young and didn't know how to mix it and I didn't have any kind of equipment or resources to master it.)

My parents were the "artistry isn't a real profession" kind, and even seeing me persevering with all of these crazy constraints (like having to make music with an Intel Pentium II with no sound card) wasn't enough to convince them. After about four years I stopped making music altogether and I regret it so much. I always wonder what would have happened had I waited for the era that we're in today. Granted, my life trajectory still went in a great direction, but I miss making music.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#127

Post by spondylosaurus »

jfarmer wrote: post #121
epiccoleman wrote: post #84

I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential,…

The original video is neat. Right after this quote he plays + critiques one of his old broadcasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE

I love when he plays the old crappy broadcast. Ira's current (casual, conversational) radio voice is so distinct that you'd almost think he just knew how to do that from day one. But even people who have a signature style need time to cultivate it.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#128

Post by p_j_w »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #63

Visual art is overrated and misunderstood IMO. Artists of the past were basically human rendering engines, which was very important because we didn’t have any other kind of rendering engine and looking at artificial images can be pleasing. Can you imagine what seeing a nice painting of a person was like when you had never seen any other kind of artificial image in your life besides handmade ones? It was probably mind…

>Artists of the past were basically human rendering engines, which was very important because we didn’t have any other kind of rendering engine and looking at artificial images can be pleasing.

If this were true then the Impressionism movement would never have come after the Renaissance. But it's not, there's more to visual art than just reproducing what we see with our eyes.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#129

Post by p_j_w »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #41
nabla9 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean that it is vague. There is no context, there is only a clickbait title. If you can't parse the context from the writing, there is no context for you.

It seems like you can’t parse the context of my writing and the problem lies way deeper than your level of English.

Given that your writing supports the notion that he knew exactly why you said what you said, it seems like he can parse the context of your writing just fine.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#130

Post by soperj »

dimgl wrote: post #126
epiccoleman wrote: post #84

I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential,…

I love this, thanks for sharing. When I was younger I used to make a lot of music. A majority of it sucked, but some of it was legitimately good. So much so that some of my friends would go out of their way to listen to it even if they had other options. Funnily enough they'd still listen even if the tracks were always super low quality (I was young and didn't know how to mix it and I didn't have any kind of equipmen…

It's not too late. You can still make music!
Post reply on HN