Steven J. Butler

artist.

[Film Updates @FilmUpdates]

Ryan Coogler was interviewed by LeBron James for @InterviewMag

https://t.co/py7T3yPpSS

[Queer Latifah ✨ @TheAfrocentricI]

I don’t know where the dance world would be without Judith Jamison. Alvin Ailey made “Cry” specially for her & all Black Women. Her legacy & what she brought to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as a dancer & director changed culture as we know it.

[Steven J. Butler @StevenjButler_]

To love is to win.

[philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_]

Whoopi Goldberg brought back the “Sister Act 2” choir to perform “Oh Happy Day” for the film’s 30th anniversary on “The View”

[Ben Vereen @BenVereen]

Broadway will pay tribute to our beloved Chita Rivera and her luminous legacy by dimming its lights for one minute on Saturday, February 17, 2024, at 7:45 p.m. Eastern Time. ❤️🙏🏾 Please join us in this moment of remembrance by lighting a candle.

[Steven J. Butler @StevenjButler_]

New era loading…

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

At a show on his Solo Tour, John Mayer confessed:

“I wait for most things to be over. I wait for this to be over to do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing...”

To counter this tendency, he implemented a rule.

“Because I’ve realized, he said,

“Everything you love and hate leaves at the same speed: Done. Done. Done. The thing you hate that you have to do tomorrow will be over before you know it, and the thing you're looking forward to tomorrow will be over before you know it.”

“So I have a new rule in my life,” Mayer said, “and the rule is:

Never wish for less time.

Waiting for things to be over is just wishing for less time. Waiting for this to be over to get to the next thing—that's just wishing for less time.”

“So wherever you go, just make a home right there and do that thing…Wherever you are, go, 'this is where it's all at right now.'

I’ve been having the time of my life because I figured that out…”

Takeaway 1:

John's realization—that “everything you love and hate leaves at the same speed”—made me think of something that Dr. Anna Lembke writes about in her book Dopamine Nation:

“One of the most remarkable neuroscientific findings in the past century is that the brain processes pleasure and pain in the same place. Further, pleasure and pain work like opposite sides of a balance.”

“And one of the overriding rules governing this balance,” she said, “is that it wants to stay level…With any deviation from neutrality, the brain will work very hard to restore a level balance—what scientists call ‘homeostasis.’ … With any stimulus to one side, there will be a tip of an equal and opposite amount to the other side.”

Pain and pleasure, good days and bad days, the things you're dreading and the things you're looking forward to—everything leaves at the same speed.

Takeaway 2:

The brain’s tendency to think about the next thing is called “prospection.”

“Our brains were made for nexting,” the psychologist Daniel Gilbert writes in a chapter titled “Prospection” in his book Stumbling On Happiness.

“When researchers count the items that float along in the average person’s stream of consciousness, they find that about 12 percent of our daily thoughts are about the future.”

In other words, the average person spends 1 out of every 8 hours thinking about the next thing, “which is to say…each of us is a part-time resident of tomorrow.”

We are constantly nexting, Gilbert explains, because of “the illusion of foresight”—the illusion that “prospection can provide pleasure and prevent pain.”

The reality is that “the future is fundamentally different than it appears through the prospectiscope.”

The reality is that (whether through the prospectiscope or in the present) everything—pain and pleasure, the things you're dreading and the things you're looking forward to—leaves at the same speed.

- - -

“So wherever you go, just make a home right there and do that thing…Wherever you are, go, 'this is where it's all at right now.' ... I’ve been having the time of my life because I figured that out...” — John Mayer

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

[Steven J. Butler @StevenjButler_]

#NewProfilePic

[SAG-AFTRA @sagaftra]

🧵 Dear #SagAftraMembers:

We did it! Our historic TV/Theatrical/Streaming strike is over as of 12:01 a.m. PT this morning. (1/14)

[ArtCenter College of Design @artcenteredu]

🚨 Exhibition Alert 🚨 An immersive experience of radically inclusive artwork, Rashaad Newsome: Hands Performance continues Newsome's exploration of mapping Black cultural production as a form of data storage and collective way-finding.
@ACCDgallery

https://t.co/4qvQhMtr0O

[Steven J. Butler @StevenjButler_]

I’ve been on this journey of “discovery”for most of my adult life and it’s mostly been good. If I’m honest, the best parts are the times when uncertainty made me realize why life is so beautiful.

[Prof. Feynman @ProfFeynman]

There's no shame in not knowing things. The only shame is to pretend that we know everything. 🧠

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

In 1997, at the age of 27, Matt Damon won his first Academy Award for Best Screenplay (“Good Will Hunting”).

After Damon won the Oscar, he went home, sat down on his sofa, and looked at the award.

As he looked at it, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a heartbreaking thought:

“I remember very clearly looking at that award and thinking,

‘Imagine chasing that, not getting it, and then getting it finally in your 80s or your 90s with all of life behind you and realizing what an unbelievable waste of your life.’

It can't fill you up. If that's a hole that you have, that won't fill it.”

“My heart broke,” Damon said. “I imagined another one of me [not getting that award until I was] an old man, and going like, ‘oh my god, Where did my life go? What have I done?’ And then it's over.”

Takeaway 1:

Many rich and celebrated people talk about chasing money and recognition, getting it, and realizing that it didn't feel like they thought it would. That it didn't, as Damon said, fill the hole they had.

One of my favorite analogies for this pattern comes from Sam Hinkie.

Hinkie was asked about what he's learned from reading Robert Caro's books—about some very rich and famous people.

“I think of it like the Pacific Salmon,” Hinkie said. “They spend their whole life making this journey upstream to spawn in this one spot. And as soon as they do, they die. That's largely what Caro shows you.”

The outcome is always a tiny percentage of the total experience.

Matt Damon stood on that Oscars stage for eighty-one seconds. That’s 0.0000641% of the four years he spent working on Good Will Hunting. To let 0.0000641% of an experience determine one’s happiness or satisfaction, as Damon said, is an unbelievable waste of your life.

Takeaway 2:

If not things like money, awards, and celebrity, what should we strive for?

“When we were writing 'Good Will Hunting,'” Matt Damon said, “Ben [Affleck] and I always talked about just wanting to love it.

We would say, 'If it's just a tape on our mantel that no one ever watches, we want to love it.' We kind of stumbled into a very wise strategy, which is to try to get most of the rewards from the work itself.”

Since you control the process, the effort, the work more than the outcome, Ryan Holiday once told me,

“The work has to be the win. Ultimately, you have to love doing it. You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win and everything else is extra.”

- - -

“It's such a gift to be able to do something and to love it for the sake of it.” — Rodney Mullen

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

[Nancy Wang Yuen @nancywyuen]

Taika Waititi to Hollywood: “Stop asking us what to do, how to fix things alright? ….You f*cking broke it, you fix it” 🙌🏼

[Biggs Burke @1996Biggs]

Real ones will teach you the game,
not run it on you.

[Arlan 👊🏾 @ArlanWasHere]

It’s here! The brand new episode of “Your First Million” @franklinjleonard, founder of @theblcklst👊🏾 His take on working for Leo DiCaprio, meeting @oprah, and kickstarting the careers of countless screenwriters over the years + Hollywood’s $10B blind spot: https://t.co/Zj6sEaQ5O6

[Xavier Dagba @Xavierdagba]

Discernment is how we transcend deception.

[Variety @Variety]

“I don’t want people to think that I’m trying to make ‘elevated’ films. I think that’s a trap that I don’t quite appreciate because I, you know, I like making f---ed-up films. I like making weird movies that I’m really just not supposed to make." https://t.co/cG4ab1bxpp

[Prof. Feynman @ProfFeynman]

Do not use your energy to worry. Use your energy to believe, to create, to learn, to think and to grow.