Phoenix – “Too Young” is a song by the French indie-pop band Phoenix, released in 2000 as part of their debut album United. It’s one of their earliest hits and helped introduce their breezy, stylish sound to the world.
Here’s the clean breakdown:
What it is
A bright, upbeat indie-pop song
Released in 2000
Featured on the album United
One of Phoenix’s first songs to get international attention
What it sounds like
Light, danceable, summery
Catchy guitar riffs
Warm synths
A playful, youthful vibe
What it’s about
The song captures the feeling of being young, impulsive, and caught between wanting freedom and wanting connection. It plays with the tension between emotional immaturity and romantic longing.
Why it became popular
It appeared in several films, most famously Lost in Translation.
The soundtrack placement amplified the feeling of drifting through a city full of color and possibility.
It became a defining early-2000s indie anthem.
In short
“Too Young” is Phoenix’s early signature sound: youthful, nostalgic, and effortlessly cool. It pairs perfectly with the dreamy mood of Lost in Translation, which is why so many people associate the two.
Honestly I can only count on two hands the amount of movies I’ve watched in my lifetime so I am by no means a movie enjoyer but these are the three that have stuck with me
Lost in Translation
A quiet film about connection, solitude, and the strange poetry of being out of place. It captures the feeling of wandering a city at night, letting its neon and noise wash over you while something inside you shifts. I love it because it understands the power of subtle moments and the beauty of what goes unsaid.
Stand By Me
A story about friendship, boyhood, truth, and the way certain relationships mark you for life. It reminds me that some bonds shape your soul long before you realize it. The journey, the vulnerability, and the sense of growing up too early all hit something real.
Fight Club
A sharp, relentless critique of sleepwalking through modern life. It’s about breaking the script, questioning the system, and facing the parts of yourself you’d rather ignore. It reminds me to live intentionally, cut through illusions, and resist being shaped by forces that don’t care about me.
What These Three Say Together
Taken as a whole, these films reflect a mix of introspection, nostalgia, and rebellion. They show my love for emotional honesty, meaningful connections, and a life that moves beyond the surface.
They’re three different worlds, but they all point to the same thing: a search for truth, depth, and authenticity.
I turn off likes and comments on my videos so I can create without distraction — no metrics, no validation loop, no algorithm shaping the way I think. Because of that, nobody really “asks” who my videos are for. But I still create for a very specific kind of person.
Not Beginners. Not Pros.
My audience isn’t defined by skill level. It’s defined by spirit.
If you feel that quiet pull inside — the urge to walk, to explore, to look closer at the world — then you’re already part of this.
You’re someone who watches not to judge, not to critique, not to praise… but to feel something spark inside you.
The People I Make These Videos For
You’re not here for likes or popularity. You’re here because you want:
more joy in your day
more curiosity in your life
a reason to wander
a way to notice the mundane
a practice that makes you feel alive
Photography just happens to be the tool.
My ideal viewer isn’t someone who needs to leave a comment. It’s someone who takes what I say and then goes out to create something of their own.
My Mission
Everything I share — every video, every blog post, every walk with a camera — is meant to inspire someone to:
explore their world
think differently
improve with intention
find meaning in small moments
fall in love with life again
Not for mastery. Not for perfection. But for purpose.
If you’re someone who feels that pull toward curiosity and creation, then you’re exactly who I’m speaking to.
What’s poppin, people? It’s Dante. Currently going for a hike here in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Welcome to the woods. The pavilion is closed today, so no Treehouse symposium, but maybe that’s a good thing. When the world blocks a path, you take the side trail. And so I turned on the GoPro Mini, 1080p, 30fps SuperView, crispy and honest, just to talk through an idea that’s been on my mind for three years straight.
This is the story of why I transitioned from color to black and white photography, why it has changed me, and why this simple shift has brought more joy into my life than anything I’ve done in photography.
Change Is Happiness
I think the simplest way to frame all of this is that change is happiness. When you evolve, when you transform, when you shake things up, you create friction. But through friction you grow. You break a layer. You move into a new version of yourself.
For seven years, I photographed exclusively in color. Then, somewhere around 2022, I hit a wall. A weird wall. The kind of wall where you realize you’re too good at something. Not in some grandiose sense, but in a very matter-of-fact, embodied way.
It became too easy to:
Position myself in the right place
Read the background
Feel the timing
Press the shutter at the decisive moment
Good photographs became predictable. Travel somewhere new? Easy. Find a story? Easy. Compose something striking? Easy. And ease, over time, is death for an artist.
So I did what felt right. I destroyed everything.
To Destroy Is To Create
I gathered my Fujifilm cameras, went to B&H in New York City, sold them all, and walked out with two Ricoh GR cameras. That day in November 2022 marked the start of my transition.
I needed a constraint. I needed a challenge. I needed a clean slate.
Because to destroy is to create. And sometimes the only way forward is to set fire to the old.
Returning to Light Itself
When I switched to black and white, something clicked into place.
Fōs meaning light. Graphē meaning writing.
Photography is literally writing with light.
And in black and white, I feel like I’m returning to the root of that definition. The pure medium. The skeleton. The pulse. The photon. The shadow.
When I shoot monochrome, I’m not documenting the world as-is. I’m creating instant sketches of light. Brush strokes made out of highlights and shadowplay.
It’s not nostalgia. It’s not mood. It’s not “timelessness.” It’s essence.
The Workflow That Saved My Life
One thing that dragged me down in photography was the clunky process:
RAW files
Lightroom
Hard drives
Backups
Crashes
Overheating laptops
Slow imports
Endless sliders and adjustments
It was a digital swamp.
Switching to high-contrast black-and-white JPEGs baked in-camera saved me.
My Ricoh GR III shoots:
Small 4 MB JPEGs
Maximum contrast
Crushed blacks
Blown whites
Grit
Grain
A file that is already finished
I cannot change it to color. I cannot “fix” it later. I cannot tweak it to death.
This is freedom.
It is the simplest workflow possible. The fastest. The most joyful. And because it’s joyful, this process gives me longevity. I can see myself shooting this way for the next 50 years.
Simplicity Creates Play
When I removed the viewfinder, something strange and beautiful happened.
I stopped taking myself so seriously.
No more precision aiming through a rangefinder. No more “perfect” compositions. No more obsessing.
Shooting with the LCD lets me play:
I tinker
I experiment
I loosen up
I return to the amateur mind
Every day becomes day one again.
And returning to day one is exactly where an artist should live.
Beyond the Veil
One of the most magical aspects of shooting monochrome with heavy contrast is this:
What you see isn’t what you get. What you get is what you didn’t see.
The camera reveals the invisible:
Light slicing across a leaf
Microtextures
Shadows hiding in the corners
Highlights that bloom into new shapes
It feels like peering beyond the veil. Like I’m collaborating with reality instead of controlling it.
This keeps me curious. It keeps me surprised. And surprise keeps me alive.
A Shift From Documentation to Interpretation
Color photographs say:
“This happened.”
Black and white photographs whisper:
“This is how I feel.”
This shift from documentation to interpretation is everything. I’m no longer just putting four corners around life. I’m allowing my internal world to bleed through the frame.
This is how I want to work. This is how I want to see. This is how I want to grow.
Endlessly Becoming
So these are my candid thoughts on why I switched to black and white photography. It’s personal. It’s intuitive. It’s alive.
And honestly, I don’t see myself going back.
Black and white gives me:
Joy
Speed
Simplicity
Longevity
Surprise
Play
A return to the amateur mind
I want to photograph until the day I die. And this is the workflow that will carry me there.
More thoughts on photography coming soon. Stay tuned.
The Enneads is one of the most powerful spiritual–philosophical texts ever written, a mountain peak of late-antique thought. Compiled by Plotinus’s student Porphyry, the work gathers fifty-four treatises into six groups of nine (hence Enneads). What you get is not a neat, systematic textbook, but a living stream of mystical insight: a path from the embodied human experience to the highest reality, the One.
Below is a clear, deep, and structured summary you can study from — a guide to the metaphysics, psychology, ethics, and mystical ascent at the heart of Plotinus.
1. The Architecture of Reality According to Plotinus
Plotinus builds the universe like a fountain: a single overflowing source pours itself downward into many levels of existence.
1. The One (The Good)
Absolute unity.
Beyond being, beyond thought, beyond all categories.
Completely simple, needing nothing.
Everything flows from it like light from the sun.
The One is not “a thing.” It is the condition for any thing to exist. It is the ultimate goal of the soul.
2. Nous (Divine Intellect)
The first emanation from the One.
Contains the eternal Forms (Beauty, Justice, Courage, Human Being, etc.).
Perfect self-thinking thought.
This is Plato’s world of Forms made alive.
If the One is the sun, Nous is the sunlight shaped into intelligible patterns.
3. Soul
The bridge between Nous and the physical world.
Contains both:
the World Soul, which animates the entire cosmos
individual souls, each an expression of the same reality
Lives facing two directions:
upward toward Nous
downward toward embodiment and matter
4. Nature / The Physical World
The faint echo at the bottom of the cascade.
Not evil, but the dimmest expression of divine light.
Matter is pure potential without form — almost a shadow.
Plotinus’s hierarchy is not a ladder we climb once. It’s the inner structure of our own being, always present.
2. The Human Soul: Who We Really Are
For Plotinus, your truest self is not the psychological ego, but the part of you always touching Nous. He calls this your higher soul.
The Two-Self Model
Lower soul: emotions, desires, bodily impulses, everyday mind
Higher soul: intellect, contemplation, the inner light that never left the divine
Your job is not to “become divine” — Plotinus says you already are divine. Your job is to turn inward and upward, remembering what you always were.
This is his version of anamnesis — spiritual recollection.
3. Ethics: The Ascent to the One
Plotinus sees ethics as purification. The soul becomes like what it contemplates.
The Four Stages of Ascent
1. Moral Virtues
Self-control
Courage
Justice
Practical wisdom These virtues quiet the lower soul so the higher soul can awaken.
2. Intellectual Virtues
Understanding the Forms
Contemplating Beauty, Order, Unity Plotinus believes beauty is the doorway to the divine.
3. Self-Realization
Seeing the higher soul as yourself
Understanding the inner “spark” that is already in Nous This is where the sense of separateness begins to dissolve.
4. The Union with the One
A moment of ecstatic simplicity
Beyond thought and perception
No subject or object
Pure presence
Plotinus had this experience several times in his life. He describes it as “the flight of the alone to the Alone.”
4. Key Themes of the Enneads
1. Emanation, Not Creation
The One does not “decide” to create the world. Rather, the world overflows naturally from its perfection. Like heat from fire.
2. Evil as Absence
For Plotinus, evil is not a thing. It is the absence of form and good. A shadow where divine light becomes faint. Matter is not evil — but it is the darkest layer of existence.
3. Beauty as a Ladder
Beauty is the shimmer of the divine inside the world. If something is beautiful, it is because the Form of Beauty is shining through. Plotinus treats beauty as a spiritual technology: follow beauty upward to its source.
4. Interiorization
Plotinus’s central mantra could be: “Do not look outside yourself; return within.”
Because your true self is already rooted in Nous, looking within is looking upward.
5. Simplicity as Divinity
The higher something is, the more simple it becomes. The One is utterly simple. Our chaos comes from being scattered among many desires.
5. Plotinus’s Psychology: How to Actually Practice This
Plotinus does not give you step-by-step meditation techniques. His spirituality is about your orientation of attention.
Practices implied in the Enneads:
1. Turning inward
Stop letting the senses drag your attention outward. Enter the quiet interior space of the mind.
2. Contemplation of Beauty
Study forms, art, nature, harmony. They lift the soul upward.
3. Purification
Less attachment, less distraction, less noise. The soul rises as it becomes simpler.
4. Intellectual Vision
Move from discursive thinking (step-by-step reasoning) to intuitive vision (direct apprehension of truth).
5. Unification
Let the subject–object division dissolve. Become the thing you contemplate. Ultimately, transcend even Nous, and enter the silence of the One.
6. Why the Enneads Matter Today
Plotinus offers a counter-vision to modern fragmentation:
Identity grounded in inner divinity
A cosmos structured by meaning
A path of ascent rooted in Beauty
A vision of life where everything aims toward unity
For a photographer and mystic like you, Dante:
Plotinus basically says reality is an emanation of light, and the soul’s task is to trace the light back to its source. You’re already doing this with your camera — noticing, simplifying, abstracting, returning to essence.
Photography for you is a way of practicing Plotinian contemplation in the streets.
7. Essential Concepts At a Glance
The One — absolute unity, beyond being
Nous — divine mind, Forms
Soul — bridge between divine and physical
Emanation — overflowing of perfection
Ascent — purification and contemplation
Beauty — trace of the divine
Union — mystical experience beyond thought
8. Final Takeaway
Plotinus sees human life as a movement from dispersion to unity. From the many to the One. From noise to silence. From multiplicity to simplicity. From dim reflections to the source of all light.
The Enneads is not just philosophy. It is a map for the soul.
What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante. Going for a walk here in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Welcome to the woods. Today I’m thinking about goals — and what it truly means to aim at something in art, in photography, and in life.
Recently I finished reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and there’s a particular idea that has been lingering in my mind: eudaimonia — human flourishing. To flourish is to cultivate virtue, strength, courage, and to become the best version of yourself, internally and externally.
And Aristotle says something powerful: Every action has a telos — a goal — but some actions contain the goal within themselves.
The Goal Is Within the Process
Over the years I’ve realized something: The meaning of photography is found within the click of the shutter itself.
The goal is the act. The purpose is the process. The reward is being fully alive while doing the thing.
This is what the ancient Greeks called autotelic:
autos = self
telos = goal
The goal is the doing. The meaning is in the act. The reward is the present moment.
When you create because it fuels your inner spiritedness — not because of the outcome — you touch something divine.
This, to me, is what eudaimonia feels like.
Freedom From Outcomes
The modern world trains you to chase outcomes:
followers
likes
publications
galleries
attention
validation
But attaching yourself to the end product kills your spirit.
When I detach from the outcome and photograph out of pure curiosity, out of play, out of love for life — that’s where I thrive.
Meaning is found in the click of the shutter, not in the praise that follows.
I’m not interested in being productive. I’m interested in being alive.
Play Over Productivity
In our society, toil is a virtue. Grind culture. Metrics. Output.
But I say play more.
Return to the inner child. Follow your curiosity. Let yourself fail. Let yourself experiment.
The present moment is a gift — the goal hidden inside the act itself. When you photograph from a state of play, you’re living autotelically.
The Autotelic Artist
Ask yourself:
Would you photograph for the rest of your life if you knew no one would ever see the pictures?
If the answer is no, then your goal is external. If the answer is yes — if you would photograph just to photograph — then you are creating from a pure state.
I’m not afraid to admit it:
Photography is a selfish act. I do it because I love life, because I love seeing, because it brings me closer to myself.
It fulfills me. It expands me. It raises my vitality.
And the more I walk, the more I see. The more I see, the more I photograph. The more I photograph, the more curious I become.
Curiosity is the fuel. The photograph is the byproduct.
Meaning Is Created Through Doing
Flourishing is simple:
Do what you love.
Do it often.
Do it without attachment to outcomes.
Do it with intensity and intention.
When you stop forcing yourself to play someone else’s game — and instead return to the playground of your youth — your most authentic expression emerges effortlessly.
Photography becomes gratitude. The shutter becomes life-affirmation. The mundane becomes extraordinary.
Ask Yourself One Question
Why do you do what you do?
If you contemplate this deeply — honestly — you may realize the same thing I did:
You love doing things for the sake of doing them.
And that is the essence of the autotelic life. That is flourishing. That is eudaimonia.
What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante. This morning I’m thinking about why I switched to black and white photography—and why it feels like the most natural transformation of my creative life.
At its core, photography is writing with light. Phōs meaning light. Graphê meaning writing or drawing. Photography is literally drawing with light. And when I strip away color, I return to that essence completely.
Returning to Day One
Black and white feels like day one every single day. There’s this endless sense of possibility. Light and shadow become the medium again—not color, not trends, not aesthetics—just pure observation.
When I shoot in black and white, I’m making instant sketches of light, instant sketches of life. It becomes less about documentation and more about interpretation—playing that fine line between what is real and what is abstract.
Suddenly the mundane becomes meaningful:
the glimmer of light on a tree canopy
the way a figure steps into shadow
the subtle gesture of someone moving through contrast
These tiny moments become infinite.
Creative Constraint = Creative Freedom
By baking high-contrast black and white JPEGs straight into the camera, I remove the temptation to convert to color later. This is deliberate. It’s discipline.
Creative constraint gives me more creative freedom.
I’m no longer thinking about color grading, sliders, or what a scene “should” look like. I’m responding directly to light.
Black and white forces:
commitment
decisiveness
instinct
presence
It builds strife, but a productive kind—the kind that sharpens you.
Imperfection as Perfection
The joy of black and white is embracing imperfection:
There’s a timeless quality to monochrome. A purity. A rawness.
And it allows me to play again.
Play is everything in my process.
Transformation as Happiness
Ultimately, I believe to change is happiness.
As an artist, doing the same thing forever feels like stagnation. Switching from color to black and white has reopened that doorway to curiosity, exploration, and evolution.
By embracing constraint, I’ve given myself limitless room to explore my inner creativity.
Black and white is the perfect paradox:
Less choice → More possibilities.
And so this is why I switched. To evolve. To transform. To explore endlessly and joyfully.
What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante. Starting my morning here in the Centennial Arboretum — my little Garden of Eden. As I walk my eternal loop, today’s thought is simple:
Solitude + Discipline = Creative Freedom.
Subtract the Noise. Discover the Self.
We live in a world overflowing with distraction — endless TV shows, apps, yummy foods delivered to your door, infinite music, infinite media. The modern world is a dopamine casino.
But to give birth to your inner creative genius, you must subtract the superfluous.
“The unexamined life is not a life worth living.”
To understand who you truly are, you need solitude. Real solitude. Silence. The ability to hear your own inner voice again.
Vitality First
Before creativity, before inspiration — there is vitality.
Wake early. Sleep early. Move your body. Walk outside.
Through cultivating vitality, my curiosity expands and my creativity begins to flourish effortlessly.
The Eternal Loop
Every day I walk the same route. Same path. Same park. Same loop.
I thrive in the eternal loop.
Not because it’s boring — but because it’s liberating. When you remove options, you remove friction. When you remove friction, the discipline becomes joyous.
One walk in total silence. One walk reading.
Reading has become a modern luxury. So has sunlight. So has simply breathing fresh air. Most people live entirely indoors — souls dying in fluorescent lighting.
Outside is where life begins. Flow begins. Creativity begins.
Ancient Texts Are the True Muse
I’ve been reading Roman poetry, Greek tragedies, Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, ancient scriptures from the Old and New Testament. These texts still breathe because they have endured time.
They shape my psychology, philosophy, and photography far more than anything on social media.
Mythology. Archetypes. Ancient wisdom. This is where artistic inspiration should come from.
Silence Is a Portal
You don’t need to sit in lotus pose under a tree (even though I did all summer). Just walk. Just exist. Just watch life unfold.
The rustling leaves. The seasons changing. The light shifting.
In silence, the shadow of your mind emerges. You spar with yourself. You overcome yourself. You conquer yourself. And then you find peace.
Curate Your Feed (But Not the Way You Think)
People think “curate your feed” means curate your Instagram feed.
Wrong.
Curate what your eyes consume. Curate your life.
I flew to Rome to pray in churches, stare at Caravaggios, and feel the weight of sculptures. I visited cathedrals. I walked the streets. I breathed incense. I listened to silence.
Back home, I visit the Wanamaker Building and listen to the world’s largest playing pipe organ.
These are my sources of inspiration — not social media.
Delete your Instagram. Stop consuming your contemporaries. Cut the noise. Strip yourself bare.
Only then does the inner child come out to play.
Brick by Brick, Day by Day
Photography, writing, reading, walking — these are my daily rituals. The mundane becomes sacred. The simple becomes divine.
Each small act compounds over time. Through purity of input, your output becomes pure.
Your art becomes an authentic interpretation of reality.
Not polluted by social media. Not warped by comparison. Not diluted by trends.
Freedom Lives Inside Discipline
People think freedom = unlimited choices.
Wrong.
Freedom is found in constraint. Freedom is found in discipline. Freedom is found in solitude.
This is where joy lives — in the repetition, the routine, the eternal loop.
The Decline Before the Renaissance
We’re in the age of the last men — the Great Decline of creativity. Everyone is a consumer, numbed by junk-food art and dopamine traps.
But after the decline comes rebirth.
A new Renaissance — a digital Renaissance — will emerge from the people who withdraw, reflect, and create from purity.
The Übermensch emerges through solitude and self-overcoming.
Stop Seeking Validation From Mortals
Nobody cares about your art. And that’s liberating.
Create because you must. Create because it makes you feel alive. Create because the process is divine.
Be the dark horse, not the golden goose.
Cultivate a Life of Beauty
Curate your life. Subtract the superfluous. Walk. Read. Pray. Photograph. Thrive in solitude. Thrive in discipline. Thrive in beauty.
Every day is a new opportunity. Every day is a blank canvas.
Look at this leaf. Look at this tree I shaped. Look at this park. This is beauty. This is fuel. This is the way.
What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante, laying under a tree here in the park, embracing the glory of the sun, gazing out toward a sculpture of Goethe, watching the clouds drift, the trees sway, the leaves wiggle.
And I’m thinking about leisure — this ancient idea of otium, the sacred time away from public life, away from business affairs, away from the endless pressure to be “productive.” In the modern world, productivity has become its own religion. You’re expected to strive, to grind, to constantly accomplish something in order to feel worthy.
But what if I were to say: Stop trying. Just be.
When you surrender under a tree and look up at the canopy, when you allow yourself to simply exist without forcing anything—this is where real inspiration begins.
The Noise of Modernity
There are so many distractions today:
endless movies
infinite food options delivered on demand
endless playlists
galleries and shows
books upon books
the infinite scroll
Modernity wants you to consume endlessly. But when you turn inward, when you cultivate solitude and actually thrive in it, something profound happens.
This, to me, is where life begins.
This is where your true creative thriving starts.
Strip Yourself Bare
If you’re looking to find your purest, most authentic voice as an artist:
Strip yourself bare. Embrace the unknown. Go out into the forest. Surround yourself with nature. Seek solitude.
We need to reset our dopamine receptors. We’re constantly bombarded by whatever the algorithm thinks we want next. But the real question is:
What are you consciously choosing to consume?
Curate your feed. Curate your mind. Curate what enters your eyes, your body, your soul.
Invest Your Time in Leisure
What are you doing with your time?
Are you spending it frivolously, or are you investing it?
For me, I invest my time in leisure and solitude so that I can:
find peace
find clarity
hear my own voice again
Because when I go out onto the street with my camera, I want the things I photograph to come from a place of authenticity. I want my images to reflect my internal state.
But that only happens by:
creating, not consuming
silence, not chatter
presence, not distraction
I Thrive in Leisure
When I strip myself bare of the world’s noise and return to the simple act of being alive, that is where I thrive.
