Thoughts

Mediocrity

I’m 34. I have experience, friends, and nice things. I’ve been to places and met people. And yet, I have achieved nothing.

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The weeks prior to my trip to India, I collaborated with Layal El Ghazirie on her debut book صرخة فراشه (Scream of a Butterfly). In her collection of 25 short stories, parables, and anecdotes, the promising young Lebanese author writes about marriage from the point of view of a 21 year old girl living in a society that, when it comes to the issue, suffers a crisis of identity.

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Why I Love Kanji

Tokyo

While my Japanese fluency was increasing almost by the hour, I stubbornly refused to do my kanji homework. And in the kanji sections of my exams, I’d just draw smileys and other doodles in the blanks where the letters were supposed to go. However, all that changed when I discovered the secret.

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Here we are now, entertain us.

Writing

The line does hold some significance for me. It suggests a more pressing demand: “You say this is the most fabulous dinner party in town, so here we are now, entertain us, show us what you’ve got, what all the fuss is about, the hoopla, the bragging and hype, the reason we had to leave everything else and come here.”

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Notes on Composition

Photography

This lecture introduces visual composition by drawing examples from several influential photographers past and present. I explain that the rules of composition are only called that for want of a better phrase, and am the first to insist that there are no rules — merely rules of thumb, a loose set of principles to fall back on, or better to engage with and challenge.

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Breaking the Law

Artists

When I was in London last summer, Corinne and I went to see Jude Law play Hamlet at Wyndham’s Theater on Charing Cross Road. Even though the shows were booked solid until the end of the play’s four-month run, we sauntered in like we owned the place and grabbed the last two tickets five minutes before the matinee show began.

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