I have a favorite statue and a favorite building (Yes, I know I am a fully grown man. No, I do not have a favorite color). They both sit within a 1.5km radius in real life, and within 15cm on my living room wall.
I won’t be able to exactly tell you what it is about them that I love.
What I do know is that when I look at the Notre Dame, my heart feels a certain solidity, a certain grandeur and a certain sense of beauty. I love every inch of it - the flying buttresses (what a strange name for such a solid artifact), the rose windows, the entire front facade (did you know it was made intentionally asymmetrical? Because the builders believed only Heaven and God could be perfect). 1
The Winged Victory of Samothrace was probably one of the first statues I saw at the Louvre. As I was ascending the grand staircase, it filled my vision. It was the first time I had ever laid eyes on it, and had no context at all. Even without reading the plaque, I felt like I was on a boat and an angel had just descended on the prow, setting the boat rocking back and forth. So vivid was the feeling, that even today I can close my eyes and be transported there in an instant.
That’s what well-crafted creations do to you - you may not be able to explain exactly what moves you when you experience them, yet you just know that someone has put a lot of thought and care into bringing them to life. Good craft can come from anything a human creates - writing, art, music, or even a website that’s thoughtfully made. 2
There’s a word for this skill - of identifying good craft - and I did not know it applied to me, until my ex-boss noted “DB has Taste” in my performance review. I was flattered - I thought he was complimenting me on my pens. But then he explained that whatever I wrote, whatever I commented on - showed that I recognized what “good” was, that I had Taste. My notes and briefings to him were well structured, and showed him what he needed to know - in that particular, limited context.
Where did that Taste come from? I have been reading, and highlighting passages that resonated for some time. I maintain a commonplace notebook for notes and words I’d like to integrate into my writing, and into my life.
Yet — I struggled to really produce anything outside of that limited work context. The same Taste that made me stand in front of the Winged Victory for 10 straight minutes kept me from writing a single paragraph for years.
One Saturday morning at the 6pc club, Utsav and Chuck held up the mirror. They showed me how some of the biggest creators today sucked at the beginning - go back to the earliest videos of Ali Abdaal, or MKBHD - and see for yourself. They showed me how you have to put in the work, you have to show up everyday - to get anywhere meaningful. You cannot hope to be a virtuoso when you write your first piece of music. “You cannot edit an unwritten book”.
They made us take the pledge that is now letting me create, develop my own craft, and develop my Taste a little more.
I am a beginner, and I will suck in the beginning. I will be okay with it. The world does not care anyway.
Of course, I still have mixed feelings when I read great stuff - part of me is blown away (how the heck did this person do this), part of me is jealous and a little insecure (when will I write like this?).
I have now started writing more - first for myself - and then putting out my work. I see some things have started to shift. I realize I think better as I write - in fact, I do not realize what I wanted to say until I sit down to write. I think what happens is that pieces keep churning in my head in the background with the scaffolding I build (I typically start with a map of contents and connected / disconnected thoughts in a file), and once I sit down - a piece kind of flows out.
Before I sat down to write this piece, I had no plans to incorporate Notre Dame or Winged Victory at all. “On Craft” had been buzzing in my head for bit - yet as I started writing, they slipped in almost organically. I’d like to think this is some evidence of my quality graph nudging upward. Who knows.
Footnotes
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One of my favorite bits of trivia links one my favorite game series to the Notre Dame. When the spire and roof burnt down in 2019, Ubisoft (creators of Assassin’s Creed) gave €500,000 for reconstruction, as well as shared their maps and plans of the cathedral to help with the effort - they had mapped it for AC Unity. Paris repaid this during the 2024 Olympics - by having one of the torchbearers dress similar to Arno the Assassin. ↩
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I’ve also saved a collection of extremely well-crafted websites that partially inspired me to write this post. Bartosz Ciechanow has made some incredible explainers in the past, and people have rightfully asked him to be put into an Internet Hall of Fame if ever there is one. His blog perfectly captures the magic of what the Internet can do. A few other recent websites that made me pause - map of Middle Earth, Claude Code explained, How Browsers work, The Last Quiet Thing ↩