Thirty years ago, I was remembering, an eminent writer had given me some unsolicited advice.
Just look at an orange, she said.
Go on looking at it. For hours.
Then put down what you see.
– C. P. Snow, Strangers and Brothers: Last Things
Photo: anka zhuravleva
“In the old days, my thoughts like tiny sparks would flare up in the almost dark of consciousness and I would transcribe them, and page after page shone with a light that I called my own. I would sit at my desk amazed by what had just happened. And even as I watched the lights fade and my thoughts become small, meaningless memorials in the afterglow of so much promise, I was still amazed. And when they disappeared, as they inevitably did, I was ready to begin again, ready to sit in the dark for hours and wait for even a single spark, though I knew it would shed almost no light at all. What I had not realized then, but now know only too well, is that sparks carry within them the wish to be relieved of the burden of brightness.”
–Mark Strand, from “A Letter from Tegucigalpa” in Almost Invisible: Poems
Notes:
There was nothing I wanted more than a grilled cheese sandwich, and I ordered it with a coffee. I was so looking forward to a really cheesy one—a grilled cheese sandwich just oozing with cheese. I thought about it as I waited, then accepted from the man at the counter a white paper plate, with a sandwich wrapped in foil that was white on the outside and silvery on the inside to keep it really warm… I eagerly unwrapped the sandwich, but when I bit into it, it was soggy, and there was almost no cheese. It was not what I wanted, not what I had been picturing, but I adjusted myself to the reality of it. Better to have a good imagination than a good grilled cheese sandwich, I told myself.
~ Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?: A Novel
Photo: Everybody Loves to Eat
I contacted a well-known artist to discuss the possibility of drawing lessons. As a child, I used to draw all the time. It absorbed me completely. At some point, writing replaced drawing and what had once been second nature (drawing) became foreign. But the urge to draw had remained. I missed its simple and primordial pleasures…
When she asked me why I wanted her to teach me drawing, I replied, “Sometimes you just want to sit back and be led.”…The artist peered at me thoughtfully for a moment. Her blue eyes were clear and perfectly lined with kohl. Finally she spoke, with the hint of bemusement. She said the students who came to her were always full of hunger. They were seventeen-year old aspiring artists and eighty-five-year-old retired businessmen. People of mourned, mislaid, or unmined creativity. Their yearning was like the white puff of a dandelion. All she had to was blow gently and watch their creative spores lift, scatter, and take seed.
~ Kyo Maclear, Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation
Notes:
“Insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.’
That’s writing poetry, but hey, it’s also getting out of bed every morning.”
– Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey, Collected Lectures
Notes: Mary Ruefle Quote: Austin Kleon. Insanity Quote – Albert Einstein. Photograph: Stephen Shore – Uncommon Places via this isn’t happiness
It is through the individual brain alone that there passes the momentary illumination in which a whole country-side may be transmuted in an instant…Man’s mind, like the expanding universe itself, is engaged in pouring over limitless horizons…The great artist, whether he is a musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness. One does not see, one does not hear, until he speaks to us out of that limitless creativity which is his gift.
The flash of lightning in a single brain also flickers along the horizon of our more ordinary heads. Without that single lightning stroke in a solitary mind, however, the rest of us would never have known the fairyland of The Tempest, the midnight world of Dostoevsky, or the blackbirds on the yellow harvest fields of Van Gogh. We would have seen the blackbirds and endured the depravity of our own hearts, but it would not be the same landscape that the act of genius transformed. The world without Shakespeare’s insights is a lesser world, our griefs shut more inarticulately in upon themselves. We grow mute at the thought – just as an element seems to disappear from sunlight without Van Gogh. Yet these creations we might call particle episodes in the human universe – acts without precedent, a kind of disobedience of normality, unprophesiable by science, unduplicable by other individuals on demand. They are part of that unpredictable newness which keeps the universe from being fully explored by man.
~ Loren Eiseley, “Strangeness in the Proportion” from The Night Country
Image: eikadan
Making Picasso’s point visible: In 2010, MoMA curators used X-ray technology to reveal the many iterations behind Henri Matisse’s painting ‘Bathers by a River,’ on which the painter worked for eight years between 1909 and 1917.
Matisse does a drawing, then he recopies it. He recopies it five times, ten times, each time with cleaner lines. He is persuaded that the last one, the most spare, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and yet, usually it’s the first. When it comes to drawing, nothing is better than the first sketch.
~ Picasso
Despite being both a professional admirer and a personal friend of Matisse’s, he cites the painter’s notoriously methodical creative process as a betrayal of this notion that an artist should honor his or her initial creative intuition.
Read more at Brainpickings: Picasso on Work Ethic, How Creativity Works, and Why Intuitive Ideas Are More Important Than Methodical Technique
“Is this magic? A miracle? No, it’s common as dirt.
It’s how creativity works. We show up. We do our best. Good things happen.
This is the intersection of Hard Work and Inspiration.
When we say “Put your ass where your heart wants to be,” this is what we mean.
This is what being a pro is all about. It’s why we practice self-discipline, self-validation, self-reinforcement…
We master all of those disciplines for one reason: so that we can be sitting there in the sweet spot when the Muse’s rocket ship passes by. That’s how the two sides work together. Hard work and inspiration.
Diligence produces inspiration because it shows respect to the goddess.
Genius and brilliance do not earn her favor. She prefers sweat. Get your butt in to the studio. Sit down at the piano. Boot up your iMac.
See yourself as the Muse sees you. You’ll know what to do.”
~ Stephen Pressfield, “You, as the Muse Sees You“
Image Credit: Patrick Wilbanks
“Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer’s soul when he is stirred by inspiration. There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.
A few days ago I told you I was working every day without any real inspiration. Had I given way to my disinclination, undoubtedly I should have drifted into a long period of idleness. But my patience and faith did not fail me, and to-day I felt that inexplicable glow of inspiration of which I told you; thanks to which I know beforehand that whatever I write to-day will have power to make an impression, and to touch the hearts of those who hear it. I hope you will not think I am indulging in self-laudation, if I tell you that I very seldom suffer from this disinclination to work. I believe the reason for this is that I am naturally patient. I have learnt to master myself, and I am glad I have not followed in the steps of some of my Russian colleagues, who have no self-confidence and are so impatient that at the least difficulty they are ready to throw up the sponge. This is why, in spite of great gifts, they accomplish so little, and that in an amateur way.”
Source: Brainpickings. Tchaikovsky, the legendary composer, wrote this in a letter to his benefactress, Nadezhda von Meck, dated March 17th, 1878. It can be found in the 1905 volumeThe Life & Letters of Pete Ilich Tchaikovsky.
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Inspiring. Catchy thump, thump, thump rhythmic cadence. Hypnotic. Worthy 3 minute clip. A few of my favorite excerpts.
“This is an invocation for anyone who hasn’t begun to start, who is stuck between 0 and 1”
“Let me think about the people I care about the most. Like when they fail or disappoint me, I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them. Let me extend the same generosity to myself.
“If I catch myself wearing a tutu – 2FAT, 2LATE, 2OLD, let me shake it off like…”
“Let me be not so vain to think that I am the sole author of my victories and a victim of my defeats…”
“Let me remember that the unintended meaning that people project on to what I do is neither my fault or something I can take credit for.”
“Let me not think of my work only as a stepping stone to something else. And if it is, let me be fascinated with the shape of the stone.”
“There’s no need to sharpen my pencils anymore; my pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark.”
“And God let me enjoy this. Life isn’t just a sequence of waiting for things to be done.
***Note some coarse language that may be offensive to certain readers.
Live & Learn 