Articles

What Children Know That Adults Forgot

The common version says: children are creative, and adults are not. Creativity is a magical substance, like pixie dust, that children have in abundance and adults have lost. The solution is to recover it — through workshops, or techniques, or permission-giving exercises that try to coax the inner child back out. This misses the point entirely, because it treats creativity as something the child possesses. The child doesn't possess anything. The child is simply in a condition where a particular obstacle hasn't arrived yet.

Why Music Moves You Before You Think

The body was preparing to move to a beat that hadn't arrived yet. And the participants weren't moving at all — they were sitting still, listening. Their bodies were dancing before their minds had processed a single note.

Art Is Not a Human Invention

If art is a human invention — a product of culture, leisure, and cognitive surplus — then it's optional. Nice to have. A decoration on top of the serious business of survival. This is, broadly, how modern societies treat it. Art is the first budget to be cut. The first subject removed from the curriculum. The thing you do after the real work is done.

The Best Work Happens When You Disappear

The story is usually told as an amusing anecdote about rock and roll. But it describes something that anyone who has made things — music, writing, art, design, even a well-timed joke — will recognise. The best work doesn't feel like production. It feels like reception. Something arrives, and you happen to be in the room when it does.

Who Is the Creator?

A few months ago, an AI-generated image won first place at a state art competition. The artist — if that's the right word — had typed a prompt into a machine, refined it over several hundred iterations, and submitted the result. The judges didn't know. When the truth came out, the reaction was swift and split down the middle. Half the internet said it was cheating. The other half said it was the future.