
Sprezzatura - nreece
http://sivers.org/sprezzatura
======
vibhavs
That's a great word. It's really fascinating how certain words need a
sentence-long definition when translated from other languages to English. So
much is captured in one word!

And that's an incredible TED talk. I recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it
that they watch it when they have a chance.

The best part in my opinion: "That's not what my creative process is - I'm not
the pipeline! I'm a mule, and the way that I have to work is that I have to
get up at the same time every day, and sweat and labor and barrel through it
really awkwardly. But even I, in my mulishness, even I have brushed up against
that thing, at times. And I would imagine that a lot of you have too."

~~~
vijayr
That is one of the _best_ TED talks I've ever watched, and I've seen it many
times. I read her book, "Eat Pray Love" and googled her, when I came across
the TED video. If anyone reading this hasn't watched the video yet, please do.

~~~
diN0bot
can you explain more of the appeal?

(apologies, but i am going to explain my opinion here before waiting for you
to answer. eit.)

i stopped watching 75-85% of the way through. i couldn't take all the "you
know"s, "like"s and "um"s.

i'm not sure if the content wasn't appealing to me, or if her explanation was
unexciting.

when i see great art or learn something awesome i feel something lift inside
me. i have an emotional connection. this drew a blank.

i was a little surprised, since the blog post made sense to me. i agree with
other commenters who mention have this fuzzy concept but not seeing it
discussed in public much less defined.

for a "best" TED __talk __i'd
recommend[http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke...](http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html)

she's a good speaker. there are other excellent speakers, too.

maybe the "worked on 8hrs a day for 6 weeks" build up raised my expectations,
but she sounded nervous, laughed at her own unfunny and irrelevant jokes, and
didn't create anything wondrous or lifting inside either my heart or my head.

~~~
kringz
Perhaps it would be difficult to understand what she is talking about if you
had never experienced similar personal dilemmas...

~~~
lux
Indeed, the struggle with the process of creation, the fear of rejection,
misunderstanding, failure, is at the core of many artists. I look at
entrepreneurialism and hacking as forms of art too, so the topic is very on
point here in my view.

But back to that vulnerability. As an artist, you can connect to that
immediately. It's moving to hear another artist talk that openly and honestly
about something so central to their existence. One of my favourite things she
said was about being a mule. We're all mules. And we can be proud of the
effort, of continuing to show up, regardless of the result.

I'm a fairly hard-line atheist (I am open to _actual_ proof ;), but there is
something mystical about the eureka moment during the creative process.
Sometimes it is a wave that comes at you when you hope to be ready, and you
just try to catch it while you can. And several times I remember feeling the
way she described the dancer becoming something more. I've seen that dancer
before. Anyone who's created art for long enough has touched that, but as a
logical person I'm almost ashamed to get that out-there describing my personal
experiences. Hat's off to her for having the guts to do so and do so that
openly.

------
fizx
Somehow, it's fabulous to have words for concepts you've fuzzily known about
for a long time.

------
rabidgnat
The TED talk mentioned reminds me of "You and Your Research" by Richard
Hamming: <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>

Hamming asserts that people who have done great work fail to "plant acorns."
They chase another great revelation instead of stepping back to the
fundamental level where they started, and spend the rest of their life only
working on great problems, not useful subproblems. I see no reason an artist's
success would be different.

------
jamesk2
As someone who as explored both "creative" pursuits such as art and the
technical pursuit of coding, i explain to my techie but creatively challenged
friends that pursuing art is like hacking your brain's kernel while it is
running. A bad line of code can bring down the entire OS. It might be why
traditional creatives have the reputation of being unstable. You can't really
take your brain offline and debug if something goes wrong with refactoring
your aesthetic assumptions. If a creative is hacking their visual identity,
they can get to look pretty weird through the major releases and might require
several dot releases to look "right."

But then we encounter the creative coder. Those people are freakiest of all
and for that we are all better off.

------
fnid
I'm not sure I like the idea of inventing external imaginary beings that grant
us extraordinary powers for no other reason than _it makes it easier_ to
accept those powers.

It seems dishonest.

~~~
tel
Are you advocating total awareness of the world? Total immersion in both
refulgent horror and terrible wonder? Constant consideration of ounce of harm
you inflict on the world around you? An unclosing eye toward this miracle of
entropy we call home? Unending empathy toward every single person you pass and
even those you never meet. Total awareness that your own personal self has
quite possibly culminated and now has only got forty years of slowly turning
to dust.

At some point you've got to shield your eyes; or, put it differently, find an
interpretation you're comfortable with and settle down. Who can claim to not
lie to themselves every day just to put their next foot forward? Even if you
can see the honor, the honesty, in living that way I highly doubt you can
survive.

If you can, write a book about it. I think David Foster Wallace tried.

Life isn't science. If you can go to a museum and enjoy the paintings, you can
embellish the way you interpret your own sight. And if you're going to do it,
why not pick a beautiful story?

~~~
fnid
I'm not advocating total awareness, though that would be cool and it is
achievable according to some philosophies. I'm advocating the pursuit of an
honest interpretation of the world. We know there aren't little trolls living
in our walls that grant us creative powers. We know that isn't true.

I believe it is possible to be aware of our impact on the world, even negative
and continue to live. On 60 Minutes tonight there was a story about a
recycling center in Colorado that was illegally shipping used computer
monitors and televisions to Hong Kong. People there disassemble them and in
doing so pollute their environment and damage their health.

But I'm using a computer. There are two monitors in this very room. My
behavior indirectly harms the world. I am aware of that. Perhaps I am adding a
bit of negativity to the world, but that doesn't mean I should choose
ignorance of that. It doesn't mean I should invent a little troll in the wall
that is actually creating that monitor.

I think it is okay to acknowledge the accomplishments of the creative. I think
it is okay to accept responsibility for the good that we create and the harm
that we inflict.

I'm advocating honesty and pursuit of truth. Sometimes that requires that we
forgive ourselves for that which we do that harms others. Those apologies can
be truthful as well.

~~~
tel
Can you say there _aren't_ trolls in the walls that grant us creativity? Can
you assume that genius still happens in a vacuum? Can you hope to describe
these things fully, attribute it to humanism? Perhaps the human achievement is
in becoming an antenna for the inspiration of our chaotic world?

I mean, no. I don't advocate intentional blindness to problems in our world. I
would even go so far as to actually advocate a greater awareness of the weight
of our impact in the world. We can learn something from knowing more what the
impact of a dollar is.

But humans are nothing if not machines for selective attention. If every time
I bought my lunch I thought about the fertilizers dripping into the ocean
causing immense algal blooms full of asphyxiated fish and oh the smell! I'd
probably starve.

If your life, the thing that puts you closest to your own understanding of
divinity, is being creative; if you honestly have to face the idea of never
being able to communicate like you did that one time not so long ago; if you
have to keep going in face of that, well, I know what I'm _not_ going to
expend my attention toward.

But even so, the speech wasn't about finding ways to ignore some nasty
personal tragedy. _It's about finding an interpretation on the charity and
capriciousness of the creative process._ What really is the best way to
contextualize the immense amount of discipline and work and training that goes
into creation that can all amount to precisely nothing without something
widely considered to be external to us?

Genius is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. Even when we can assume the sweat,
we're still might end up short one spark. What gives?

(I apologize for the waxing here, but god this is such a fascinating
philosophical question.)

------
balding_n_tired
Might I recommend going back to the source on "sprezzatura"?
[http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_11?url=search-
alias%3Dst...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_11?url=search-
alias%3Dstripbooks&field-
keywords=castiglione+book+of+the+courtier&x=0&y=0&sprefix=castiglione)

------
10ren
pronunciation (the red loudspeaker icon) <http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/sprezzatura>

It's quite hard to pronounce, but the speaker makes it sound easy.

------
stuntgoat
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470695>

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scm007
This is brilliant.

------
zackattack
Kobe Bryant is the best example of sprezzatura in sports, especially when you
see him drive to the rim with four defenders on him. Kobe also speaks italian.

~~~
petermarks
Agreed. This account of his 4am workouts and non-stop icing routine on gameday
is truly inspiring:

<http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=4068270>

I like Kobe more than Lebron more for this very reason. He compensates for his
relatively inferior size with superior work ethic.

~~~
dhyasama
His work ethic is legendary (and rubbed off on Lebron at the Olympics last
summer). FYI, Kobe is 6'5" which is exactly average for NBA shooting guards.

