“We have an idea that art is self-expression—which historically is weird. An artist used to be seen as a medium through which something else operated. He was a servant of the God. Maybe a mask-maker would have fasted and prayed for a week before he had a vision of the Mask he was to carve, because no one wanted to see his Mask, they wanted to see the God’s. When Eskimos believed that each piece of bone only had one shape inside it, then the artist didn’t have to ‘think up’ an idea. He had to wait until he knew what was in there—and this is crucial. When he’d finished carving his friends couldn’t say ‘I’m a bit worried about about that Nanook at the third igloo’, but only, ‘He made a mess getting that out!’ or ‘There are some very odd bits of bone about these days.’ These days of course the Eskimos get booklets giving illustrations of what will sell, but before we infected them, they were in contact with a source of inspiration that we are not. It’s no wonder that our artists are aberrant characters. It’s not surprising that great African sculptors end up carving coffee tables, or that the talent of our children dies the moment we expect them to become adult. Once we believe that art is self-expression, then the individual can be criticized not only for his skill or lack of skill, but simply for being what he is.”

“Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.”

My high school English teacher once told me that I had “the rage to write.” I didn’t know what he meant then, but I think I do now.

In college, I’ve tried my best to put myself outside of my comfort zone and take STEM classes, many of which do not come naturally. There were semesters in which I resolved to focus solely on math and CS, but even then, I found myself spending hours reading long form essays and articles and furiously typing paragraphs into my phone notes while walking back to the Quad. At a certain point (when my father told me, “I never thought you’d actually finish your CS degree, you’ve always been a much better writer”), I decided to own that rage and declare an English secondary.

Simply put, writing is how I process and iterate my thoughts; how I prefer to engage with new ideas; and how I connect with others. As a Korean adoptee who played competitive basketball and was raised by white parents with a pizza store in a majority-Hispanic town, my experiences have led to the firm belief that we’re all more alike than we are different. But I’m also adamant that our differences – perceived or actual – are the facets most worth exploring.

When it comes to writing, I don’t view similarities and differences as mutually exclusive; rather, I see them as complementary forces, two boxers exchanging punches and parries in a twelve-round dance.  Appealing to shared values and experiences helps readers understand the stakes of your writing, affirms their feelings, and assures them that your thoughts and emotions are being conveyed in good faith. And that trust can be leveraged to poke and prod and challenge readers where they may have empathic blindspots. At its best, writing is simultaneously an articulation of universal truths and exposure therapy to new ideas.

At Harvard, I’ve become a much more astute reader, learned how to process epic poems, and improved dramatically as an essay writer when it comes to analyzing fiction. But I’m not quite where I’d like to be with regards to personal prose. Writing is a courageous act, and my sword is not sharp enough to venture into the darkest part of the woods. I conceptualize my thoughts as “thought loops.” In their raw form, they are ever-expanding and increasingly derivative. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. Their existence is at once my greatest strength and greatest weakness as a writer. At my best, I have novel thoughts and can quickly flip through turns-of-phrase, skillfully hopping between and navigating through different thought loops to suit my needs. The tightening gyre, as I like to say. However, at my worst, my thoughts are jumbled and unpolished. My love for “rhythm” has a tendency to turn into rambling. I struggle with concision (as evidenced by this letter). It bothers me that I have not developed a process to reliably navigate these tendencies.

When I was a kid, writing made me feel less alone. Now, it expands my universe. I want to be better at both as a writer. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” I know I have something to say, but I’m not quite sure how to say it. I’d love the chance to hone that craft in my last semester of undergraduate study. Thank you for your time and consideration!

My Best,
Sam

On November 10th, after the San Francisco 49ers’ defensive end Nick Bosa sacked Baker Mayfield during the 49ers’ game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, another defensive lineman, Leonard Floyd, came over to Bosa and gently butted helmets. Then Floyd bent his elbows at his side and began to sway, in a kind of cross between a shimmy and a shadowbox, and gave Bosa a little encouraging punch. A third teammate, Sam Okuayinonu, ran over to join in. Bosa used his right arm to clear some space, craned his neck forward, and arrhythmically jerked his arms and knees. He looked like a man with a rod in his spine doing the twist, or a robot trying to walk through a wall, or a constipated chicken—or like Donald Trump, when the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” comes on.

TM: You talking about putting pressure on a single image lets me naturally segue into my favorite moments in your pieces, which is when you compare athletes to animals—whether that’s Nikola Jokic as “more giant squid than great white shark,” or Kevin Durant as a “fawn.” 

…

TM: I now feel unable to look at Kevin Durant as anything except a fawn. You also have other, nonanimal mini descriptions of people: Zion Williamson as “a linebacker crossed with Baryshnikov,” or Daniil Medvedev as “a character from Dostoevsky.”

My absolute favorite is tennis star Andy Murray as “a walking existential crisis.” [Laughter] When I read that, I thought, that’s exactly the feeling Murray evokes every time I see him. And you captured it in a single phrase. That line also captures what I find so compelling about tennis, which is that it seems so psychological. Does that appeal to you as a tennis writer?