Finding Bliss in Creativity
Aftersun
One of my fixations throughout life has been finding bliss in creative works. My level of interest has ranged from pure obsession to minor hobby, which is about the level I’m at here in the toddler-parent, make-money era.
But I think my moderate interest level isn’t just because of a lack of free time or even because I’m middle-aged and seen a lot. We seem creatively stagnant right now. I do a deep dive on this topic in an upcoming video for The New York Times. However, as you’ll see, there’s still lots of amazing work being done.
Here’s my question for you: where are you finding bliss in creativity? Or are you not finding much?
I’ll start. Here’s some of the amazing things I’ve experienced in recent months.
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Aftersun is a masterpiece
The Make Art Not Content YouTube channel is something bold and different
The Bizarro Elaine Dance is a seriously hot remix
I thought Dune 2 was just as great as everybody else
Sidenote: I saw Alex Garland’s Civil War and it was fine. Click the link to read more. (Get more articles like that via the Everything is a Remix newsletter, another weekly newsletter that focuses exclusively on creativity.)
Overall, and very oddly, I’m finding the aging medium of the novel the most exciting right now.
I recently read Nathan Hill’s The Nix, a sweeping, 2000s-style novel, what now gets called “white-guy fiction” (David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Don Delillo, etc). I fit that demo! Hill’s book is a lighter, poppier version of that style, with a tight, propulsive plot.
Literary science fiction is the most stunning. I recently read and loved Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, much of which is written from the perspective of highly intelligent spiders. You read that correctly.
But the 800-pound gorilla in sci fi is Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem trilogy. I read the first book and was floored. I intended to savor the series and slowly make my way through it. Then I plowed through The Dark Forest, which is much more of an intense page-turner than the first book, and continued a fast pace through Death’s End, which I’m about a quarter of the way into.
The brilliant thing about the series is the way it creates utterly baffling mysteries and then resolves them in a fascinating and entirely satisfying way.
What about the Netflix series?
I’m sorry to say, but it’s weak tea. If you’ve read the books (all of them, because it does adapt sections of all three), then it’s a fun companion.
If you’re never gonna read the books for whatever reason, the series is good but doesn’t capture the magic of the books. Read the books, then watch the series.