entryways

how we reveal our inner worlds to each other

we all hold an internal shape that reflects our innermost desires and curiosities. a landscape formed by childhood obsessions, books that rewired our brains, fears we're still working through. this inner architecture doesn't always show. we project to the world a simplified facade.

if you imagine yourself a house, our foyer is the first space that newcomers encounter: our job title, fashion sense, opinions about the city. these impressions aren't necessarily wrong, but they are incomplete. like compressing a 3D object into 1D, a triangle, circle, and square all look like a line. complexity gets lost upon compression.

conversations are entryways into another person.

henri matisse, 1919

summer in the city is a whirlwind of brushing shoulders with people, at parties, galleries, and rooftops. inevitably you bump into familiar strangers who you immediately connect with, those that you develop almost a platonic friend crush on. you get the sense that, given the right conditions, this could be someone you'd become good friends.

but sparks fade fizzle fast. what matters more is: how do you move past the entryway?

the first conversation is like being invited into someone's home for the first time. you're lingering by the door, unsure whether to take off your shoes. most people never get past this point.

they talk about the weather. their job. the subway delays. it's safe—politely treading water. we can consider this foyer talk: lowest-common-denominator small talk. no one gets wet. no one goes deep.

but sometimes, with the right question, with the right person, something shifts. you notice their eyes light up when they talk about their latest pottery class, or they soften upon mention of their parents. you hit a core value, a dream, a fear. you're invited into someone's interior.

enter the living room of conversation: where values live, opinions unfold, and quirks start to show. this is a room abound with doors and doorknobs, accessible entry points for the other person to grab onto, turn, and enter into the flow of thoughts. think of these conversational affordances as openings within a conversation that make it easy for others to participate.¹

picture yourself as an archaeologist in these moments. dig, not to expose, but to illuminate. you brush away dust gently, reverently. what's the common ground? more interestingly: where do our worlds misalign?

as this foundation deepens, a new kind of door opens — one into another’s interior world.

a conversation with a close friend feels something like crashing on their couch unannounced. you show up disheveled, carrying the weight of a long week or an unspoken thought. but they know your language. you speak in shorthand.

these are the conversations we live for — shared spaces that cultivate aliveness. it's at this point there's no distance between interiority and what we externalize.

some people make you feel like you're breathing cleaner air just by being near them. their presence clarifies you, because they're fully themselves and they model what it looks like to have integrated edges. they elegantly move through the world with a vivid interior and a language that matches. - maja, how to become real

art as a map of interiority

my favorite moments in the city have been attending a friend's performance, an event they host, a book reading. artists are fascinating characters: deeply individualistic, with an interior world that spills out onto a canvas, a page, a stage. witnessing their work is like getting a shortcut into their inner wiring.

at a photo gallery i recently held with a friend, we asked our friends to share pieces related to their identity. something i uniquely love about photography is how it reveals not only what you see, but how you see. details reveal themselves under the guise of a third-party; someone pointed out how much i played with negative space and spiral form in my images, and i spotted small details in other’s work: two grandmothers playing badminton in the blurred background of a travel shot, tucked just out of focus.

the beautiful part about creation is how it's a conduit for externalization. the art you create is a map of your interiority, and when shared, it lets us glimpse the strange contours of each other's minds.

standing in that room of photos, something became clear: as precious as our interiority is, it doesn't fully form in isolation. only by externalization, by entering into social relationships, can we develop the interiority of our own person.²

remind yourself of this in your most withdrawn moments, when you circle some false self-truth alone in your room. it’s easy to spiral inward, to sit with your own feelings and construct a neat, self-contained narrative. but too much comfort becomes solitary confinement.

we need thought partners — people attuned to our prickly edges and soft spots — to help reshape the stories we tell ourselves. friends as both mirrors and sculptors to our internal shape.

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may-june updates

• it’s been a while ! took a break from writing to focus more on reading + photography. some of my favorite reads:

  • the idea factory - an excellent deep dive into bell labs

  • the trouble with friends, a new yorker article by weike wong

  • blockchain chicken farm - case studies on the influence of technology on rural china

  • a streetcar named desire - a play from the 70’s

  • searching for outliers - a blog post by ben kuhn, generally speaking to process > outcome

• in may i travelled to sf/las vegas. in july i’ll travel to san diego/la/chicago. august, likely a trip to sf, again. lmk if you’re around!

• if you missed my last post, i touch on relevant themes of forging connection and spaces for co-creation. see more below:)

1. a favorite substack on how good convos have doorknobs

2. src