Becoming a Magician (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Becoming a Magician (2018)

autotranslucence.com

69 pointsherbertl14 comments

Okay, I love this article, but I literally couldn't finish it until I found an example of Sanatan Dinda's art. Here's an entry from the 2015 World Bodypainting Festival, the first year he won (I believe): https://i2-prod.irishmirror.ie/incoming/article6063257.ece/A...

Here are some tweets by the author with the pieces she's talking about in the article (as well as her own for comparison): https://twitter.com/utotranslucence/status/10745039697354629...

It's funny, looking at the piece of Sunatan, for me it's clear there's a lot of knowledge that comes from outside of the bodypainting world. It's maybe not as perfect as some other in the technical sense, but there's art in there. That change everything. And clearly, Jess is very good in comparison, but it's not the same vibe at the end. And it's not subtle either.

She's right : surround yourself with the great. Marvel and despair. Work relentlessly and do... but be curious also. You have to nourish yourself to move in interesting direction.

Funny, looking at those pictures greatly reduced my interest in the genre of body-painting, if that's what world champions look like. They certainly have technical expertise, but nonetheless to my eye they are both ugly and off-putting by the ubiquity of their political subtext. And it's not even politics that I necessarily disagree with! But political cartoons are not improved if you paint them on a human body.

A lot of cliché and propaganda.

We are in the end of a destruction phase, the left, progressive are about change and destruction of order and renewal but they now have monopoly over almost everything.

The next step is the rediscovery of order, tradition, beauty, natural laws, religion.

The artists are at the tip of the process, we will start to see more and more flip back.

Have you seen this: https://youtu.be/j800SVeiS5I

Sorry, but that video is also bad. The whole point is that not everything needs to be a campaign ad.

(Additionally, the video is twice as long as it needs to be. By minute 4 I was bored and scrubbed ahead to see if he was going to do something other than beat the dead horse some more. The turn into the antithesis finally happens around minute 10, at least 5 minutes after it should have been over.)

(author of the essay here) I agree bodypainting can be garish (one of the reasons I no longer do it!), but the reason all those pieces were political is that every year the championships have a theme and that competition on that day the theme was literally 'propaganda'--so that was the theme the artists had to work with. Other years the theme is very different--I competed in years where the themes were rebirth, evolution, sources of power, transformation etc--idk I can't remember exactly, but they were generally set months in advance.

"Magician", is that "lucky girl syndrome" for HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35026446

I'm glad you mentioned this. Sarcasm (and grift) aside, this intersection and practical application is a topic that's caught my curiosity. (I posted both!)

I read this every year or so. So beautifully written. Explores so well this urge to not just be good, but to become a magician of your art.

> Not only is any sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic; any sufficiently advanced technologist seems like a magician. In order to write the new version of this life description, I need to imagine a version of myself who, by definition, I cannot understand. If I understood her she wouldn’t be magical.

> The way to extraordinary growth and changes often involves a fundamental ontological or ‘lens’ shift in how you see the world. Magicians are wearing not just better, but fundamentally differently shaped lenses to the rest of us.

Marvelous is word I would like to use.

"Magicians are wearing not just better, but fundamentally differently shaped lenses to the rest of us. And regardless of your skills and experience, it is likely that you are a magician to someone else."

----

something so beautiful

Deserves more than a poem

but this cage in My house

I won't never be home

I love you, being right

why do i make it so wrong

cut into my songbird

in search of the song

“Seek out magicians and absorb their magic by proximity” is a great piece of advice.

i thought you just needed to remain a virgin until your thirties...

Isn't that a wizard?

Though I prefer Spivonomist's definition there: wizard is to wise as drunkard is to drink.

Leaving open the question of the fuckard...

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