Four useful questions
When I have a problem, Johanna—a.k.a. my wife—typically solves it by asking me one of four questions.
LifeCulture
Henrik Karlsson.
Escaping Flatland — essays on creativity, agency, relationships, and the writing life from a Baltic island.
Recent essays
30 of 43A project of one’s own
William Russell Flint, 1880
How is music possible
If you take a scene from a horror movie and add funny music, the killer suddenly looks hilarious. Isn’t it strange that that happens?
The hyperlocal
Notes on art, machine intelligence, and paying attention to one’s immediate environment
Some remarks on being stuck, with digressions on David Hockney, developing style, and gardens
If something feels wrong, it is useful to articulate very precisely why that is
First we shape our feedback loops; then they shape us
Strengthening taste
On having more interesting ideas, pt. 2
Cutlery designed by Salvador Dalí
On child birth
"It is interesting how feelings have real consequences like this."
How can we rejuvenate the social fabric?
ask_another_guest
Escaping Flatland meetups summer 2026: times and places
There has been a flurry of activity in the chat over the last two months, and we now have meetups arranged in 47 cities in 22 countries!
How not to forget what matters
1. Every few months I will read a tweet, or have a conversation, that makes me feel this is important, I must remember this.
Meetups in July and August 2026: call for organizers
Going into the summer, there have been a lot of people in the chat looking for others in their local area and trying to organize meetups.
Notes on Bakhtin
La Grande Plage à Biarritz, Jacqueline Marval, 1923
Love is about being invested in someone’s continual expansion
This is one of the joys and challenges of love: the more skillfully you love someone, the more held, encouraged, and accepted they feel, the more they change.
The world reveals itself to those who travel by foot
Nothing was as scary as we thought, and everything was weirder and more friendly.
Thoughts about making a career as a writer
How you can finance your creative work and how you can find an audience and peers and mentors who help you develop.
How to walk through walls
On hacker mindset
Days are enormous
+ personal update and reading recommendations
Differently free
Me getting interviewed by Jackson Dahl
Some relationships deepen when you tell the truth and some end
I asked people to send me stories about situations where they had done what felt right to them, even though they feared social pushback.
Getting a better sense for when you’re thinking well and when you’re faking it
Notebook. On mental proprioception
The need to make art
The work was what connected him to himself.
Things that connect us to ourselves, and things that don't
Notebook + recommendations
On political power
Reflections on Robert Caro’s LBJ biography
On the preparations before writing an essay
Shooting raw footage
Being creative requires taking risks
When children learn to draw, they tend to make more and more interesting images for several years until around age five, when they learn to be boring.
Reflections on my first year writing full time
The best essays Johanna and I wrote in 2025, and some reflections on what it was like to write them.
Just and loving seeing
Notes on Iris Murdoch
When I accept myself just as I am, I change
Looking for Alice, part 4
A list of books and essays that I love
I’m purposefully not looking at my bookshelf to make sure I only pick books that I’ve thought about so much that they immediately occur to me.