play the game where you have edge

conversations on the periphery

thank you J for inspiring this idea

Hilma Af Klint, no. 5

We live in a world of inefficient markets. Every day I see a niche company where I’m like how big can that market possibly be? It turns out: the market is massive. Worlds and sub-worlds run beneath its rails. I quite like that constant reminder that possibilities are much deeper than they originally appear. There’s a similar thrill I feel when I go down some thematic rabbit hole in a book or essay. When 1 thread unravels, 20 interesting tributaries come up. Ideas flow down into lovely peripheries. The more research you do, the richer the world becomes.

This is a type of edge. Knowledge in obscure or weird places. Knowledge before the rest of the world wakes. J and H are quant traders and edge is their currency. J always tells me you can find surprising value tucked away in hidden corners of the world if only you have the courage to look. To excavate. But to do that you have to develop your own taste and perspective. You have to know what you think amidst all the surrounding noise.

A misconception most people have is that edge is pure intellect or a well defined ‘skill’. Edge is far more amorphous than that. It can be willingness. Or doggedness. Edge can be density of networks, consistent levels of energy or faith or patience. Edge can be perceptiveness: sensitivity to environment. Edge can even be a higher-than-average pain tolerance.

We often forget that love can be an edge, and perhaps it is the most powerful edge of all.

Many artist’s biographies and documentaries are really comforting to me for that reason, because they demonstrate how craft is a sort of higher compulsion. Devotion beyond convenience. Often, that’s what creates breathtaking art. Or art that you can’t help but look and look and look at with something stirring in your heart. I can’t help but admire the obscure artist, photographer, musician, seeking to capture the tiniest detail, the shard of light, the right contortion or control of instrument. Sometimes the instrument is the body. I’m interested in the moments in which art is made is when one makes decisions, slow or instantaneous, that imbue intense care into the work. How the viewer feels it. When the rational brain cracks open and emotion emerges, pure and whole.

Many of us are thrown into games we don’t even like playing. At some point, one realizes the only games where you can get edge or flow are the games that you custom-make for yourself.

I like this idea of love as edge a lot, and I have absurd faith that following the feeling will take me where I need to go. Play the game where you have edge is another way of saying: play the game that you love.

We get stuck in a holding pattern when we believe there’s only one path, or two, instead of those millions of paths that fork and diverge based on our individual strengths and characters. In some worlds you’re happy and curious and feed the parts that make you fully and idiosyncratically yourself. The parts that seek beauty and truth and goodness and knowledge in obscure corners of the world. The parts that are earnest in creativity and work. In others, you’re miserable playing games of mimetic desire. Even if you won the game, you’d wouldn’t even like the reward. Both worlds exist, of course. That’s both the burden and the blessing. You are both game-maker and player. The path is one of self-design.

What I’m Reading/Watching This Week

Recently I watched Beyond the Visible, a documentary on Hilma af Klint, one of my favorite artists. In it, she’s described as alienated among professional artists at the time, including friends. She was painting abstract as early as 1906, predating many of the abstract artists traditionally credited with pioneering the Abstract Expressionism movement. Her work was spiritual and symbolic. A delightful fusion of biology and soul. In the early 1900s, wider discoveries in society like quantum theory and wave particle duality were emerging. To Hilma, this confirmed material and spiritual worlds were interconnected. There were planes of experience we couldn’t access through sight alone: those granted the gift of seeing things more deeply can see beyond form and concentrate on the wondrous aspect hiding behind form … that which is called life.

Now she is a celebrated artist all over the world, though much of her art remained in secrecy and isolation for much of her life.

Other books!

• Morphotropic by Greg Egan, a biology sci-fi

• The timeless way of building by Christopher Alexander (which I’m writing about soon!)

  

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