Every connection that is made anywhere changes everything everywhere.

Quality not size has power.

A boss of mine, Stewart Brand, ticked me off by saying that the bigger anything gets the more it gets like everything else. It made me made because it's true. The band with more fans is often less interesting than when it had fewer fans. The larger the organization gets, the more it gets rules like all the other organizations.

To help things be different and better, it's not enough to apply to some good goal theregular US ambition that bigger and more noticed is better. To really make things different, I have to give up the dream of the large impact--the large impact that is also flattening.

We're taught size is power to distract us from what we can do right here in our actual taller than a monkey, shorter than the sky selves. If I stay in the size of my actual self I am more likely to bring something different to the world, rather that one more variation on something we already have lots of.

The poet Philip Larkin never did any of that standard poet stuff to get lunch money like lecturing, being an artist in residence. He said, "I don't want to go around pretending to be myself." One time I thought for a while about the idea a doing a show on the radio--worthy public radio. It only took me fifteen minutes of thinking about it to be essentially thinking of imitating myself. I mean, I know what parts of me would sound good on public radio and what parts it would be prudent to edit out.

If I just hang out in daily life, being absent-mindedly who I am without a plan, I might actually bring something new to some tiny but real situation than needs it.