Bird by Bird

"What is the kid digging for? The stuff. Details and clues and images, invention, fresh ideas, an intuitive understanding of people. I tell you, the holder of the lantern doesn't even know what the kid is digging for half the time- but she knows gold when she sees it." By Anne Lamott.

Paul Cézanne

It makes sense to not make sense, because Cézanne said so. "Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible." (written to Emile Bernard)

Lewis Carroll

If I had a world of my own,
everything would be nonsense.
Nothing would be what it is,
because everything would be what it isn't.
And, contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn't be.
And what it wouldn't be, it would.
You see?

Nietzsche

We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way- not at all or in an interesting manner.

Mark Rovner

3 timeless principles of good cause-related communication
-heart
-simplicity
-story

Heart: engage your community from a place of passion and compassion. Facts matter less.

Simplicity: if you can't tell your brand story to a 9year-old it's no good.

Story: the root of all: "Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives..." Reynolds Price

Marvin Minsky

“If you understand something in only one way, then you don’t really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we’ve connected it to all other things we know. Well-connected representations let you turn ideas around in your mind, to envision things from many perspectives until you find one that works for you. And that’s what we mean by thinking!”

...
that's why we have to love metaphors

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

David Foster Wallace

I've gotten convinced that there's something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn't have that much to do with talent, even glittering talent.... Talent's just an instrument. It's like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn't. I'm not saying I'm able to work consistently out of premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved. I know this doesn't sound hip at all...But it seems like the one of the things really great fiction-writers do- from Carver to Chekhov to Flannery O'Connor, or like the Tolstoy of "The Death of Ivan Ilych" or the Pynchon of Gravity's Rainbow- is "give" the reader something. The reader walks away from the real art heavier than she came into it. Fuller. All the attention and engagement and work you need to get from the reader can't be for your benefit; it's got to be for hers. What's poisonous about the cultural environment today is that it makes this so scary to try to carry out.

David Foster Wallace

There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.
— Jack Kerouac

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love that is the soul of genius." Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

thinking about

making art... reaching consciousness?

i still need to process that more, but it has been on my mind a lot.

edit (1/15)- "The capacity of art to feed our souls and assist the process of awakening is widely acknowledged. What is art if not transformation and refinement of energies? Raw materials are transformed, uplifted into a refined state, guided by human consciousness and creative imagination. Experiences are distilled from a personal, intimate, and highly subjective realm into universal expressions of our shared humanity, becoming soulful affirmations for others. The spacious perceptions of artists — expressing their longings, their agonies and bliss — are imbued into their works, creating a resonance in the viewer where feelings are intensified and thought evoked. Certain frequencies of vibration — carried by colors, shapes, lines, word patterns, and musical tones or melodies — can correspond to those same frequencies within ourselves. When painters, poets, musicians, or dancers distill their experiences to an essential core and express a refined sensibility, viewers find that those same qualities within themselves are activated, stimulated, and awakened. Why else is it that a line from Rumi or Rilke, music by Bach or Beethoven, or shapes and colors by Rothko or Pollock can create such an intense response? The making of art is, at its best, a disciplined practice; of refining word patterns, finding subtle relationships of form and color, or fine-tuning movements of the body, which may heighten wakefulness, increase mindfulness, and cultivate an opening of the heart. Creativity encourages a widening and deepening sense of being — for both the artist and the viewer." David Ulrich

"culture doesn't really beg people to pursue a career in the arts... you need to let people know what you are doing."

good advice?

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there

Hadewijch II, 13th Century