The only way to prevail is to rage forward. To go berserk on the inertia. To change and molt and grow.
Go Polymath! is the official BLOG of aspiring polymath Thomas Faustin Huisking.
Month: June 2016
I recently spent some time around the world’s largest living organism(s) in Sequoia National Park. Yes, the General Sherman is very impressive, but a walk along the Congress Trail means an up close and personal experience with many trees nearly as large. I studied, touched, listened to, and smelled them. I even went inside a couple of them, because they are that big.
Ten years ago I got together with John Woong-Sae Jung and Kyu Seok Park and made a 6-song EP in a tiny studio in Seoul, Korea. We smoked cartons of cigarettes in a room without ventilation, drank energy drinks, coffee and booze, and ate cheeseburgers–a classic recipe for productivity in those days.
Coconuts for days. Wild pineapples, mangos, almonds, and papayas. Kingfish or yellowtail for lunch. Year-round low eighties. Caribbean-clear water with ample reefs. No cars. Mostly smiles. All stars visible when the sun goes down. Doesn’t that sound nice?
It’s the midsection… for women and men! Absz! Patent pending.
In the end, the Bird Collective was a democracy and my script didn’t get voted to be produced. But this main idea still gives me pause:
What line are you choosing to stand in, and how do you know it’s the right one?
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
Anyway, since I discovered this hack I’d gotten very comfortable listening at 1.5X, which sounds like the speakers are incredibly eloquent even after 6 cups of coffee. But then a couple of weeks ago I started experimenting with 2X speed, and when I found out that my new friend, Matthew, does that exclusively, I had to make the switch. Otherwise he wins.
Okay, yes, it will sound like people on amphetamines speaking very demonstratively at first. But your brain will quickly adapt, I promise. Consider how many more books you could read if you 2Xed your reading speed. Now you don’t have to.
This is like hearing a painting being made by a bunch of geniuses in real time.
I was STOKED.
I’d just gotten a call from a casting director offering me the lead role in a martial arts-driven action movie–with Tom Sizemore (Natural Born Killers) and James Hong (Blade Runner)–as a replacement for the original actor who was marooned in Asia.