Say the thing.

The definition of pretentiousness (I may have heard it from AI) in paraphrase is something like “ apprecate something without liking that something.”

Should you read the classics? Absolutey. Can you talk about reading the classics? Sure! Can you like the classics so much that you make it your whole personality? Plenty of people do.

But should you spend a lot of time talking about the benefits of reading the classics, when you yourself don’t even necessarily like the classics?

Transformers.

I remember reading Steven Spielberg say that Transformers was a movie about a boy and his car. Steven Spielberg carries some creative gravitas in our society and I thought this point that he was making, that movies should be about simple things was worth taking seriously.

Don’t be sophisticated.

There’s an observation and a litany of jokes in music theory about the 1-4-5 chord progression. As someone who makes music themselves, something makes me insecure about writing a song in C Major or using the 1-4-5 chord progression. But also as someone with a fairly populist taste in music (I like a lot of things, but even my favorite Jazz group is the pop song covering “Bad Plus”.

At the end of the day you’re making music you like, and it’s not the building blocks it’s what you do with them. Branch out but honesty is choosing something you like the sound of. Pretentiousness is thinking you have to use unique chord progressions to be an “individual”. Fast Car by Tracy Chapman is IV – I – VI – V

Say the obvious thing.

That transformers is a show about a boy and his car is cringingly obvious. Coming out of anyones mouth other than Steven Spielberg would cause many of us to collapse into a heap of shame. No one says to their friends “I’m writing a story about a boy and his car”.

But if I have a conclusion, it’s that, it’s often said (Apparently in a quote attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes):

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

But while there is obvious truth to this, I don’t think it’s a helpful mental model for people who struggle to act on ideas. There’s no “Grand Simplicity” As Oliver Wendell Holmes implies. There are just simple things.