Reflections on photography, art, beauty and the natural landscape.
Comedian and filmmaker Mike Birbiglia's "Six Tips for Making It…." are spot-on – here's the final one:
6. CLEVERNESS IS OVERRATED, AND HEART IS UNDERRATED
Plus, there are fewer people competing for heart, so you have a better chance of getting noticed. Sometimes people say, “One thing you have to offer in your work is yourself.” I disagree. I think it’s the only thing.
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A significant aspect of many creative efforts may be understood in this way :
“And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.”
– T.S. Eliot
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Groundbreaking television producer Norman Lear on his creative perspective:
I always saw every day as a production. When something is over, it is fucking over and you are on to next. The hammock between them is living in the moment…
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.
If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to do an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
…Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
— Chuck Close
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Reflecting on our school years with a colleague, we wished we had been less afraid of "failure" and better able to recognize it's value in the larger context of life. This is especially true in creative fields where the idea of one right answer has little relevance.
Here's an excerpt from a Seth Godin blog post that nicely sums up our conclusions:
Don't curse the dead ends and the failures. They're the key element of the work you're doing.
We find our way by getting lost. Anything other than that is called reading a map.
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Enjoyed this provocative observation by author and artist William Blake:
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way… [S]ome scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.
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I came across this telling observation by artist Frida Kahlo on one of our ongoing themes, honoring the creative impulse and the importance of keeping it distinct from one's intellect:
The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to,
and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.
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Martha Graham's advice to fellow choreographer Agnes de Mille who, despite public success, was struggling to reconcile her feelings that she should try to exceed what she'd accomplished rather than being satisfied with her present achievements:
"…this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you."
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Here's a telling observation from comedian Louis CK that has relevance to every creative endeavor:
When you thwart what’s real about you in order to keep creating content for financial need, you’re just not gonna make it. You’re not gonna keep going. You have your number. It’s very dangerous to be liked by more people than should like you. It’s bad for them, and it’s bad for you. There’s gonna be a shock down the road for them, or you’re gonna dilute yourself and take yourself to a place where you can’t live with who you are. I think that you make an honest account of who you are and you live with the results. The results will be appropriate to who you are… If you’re saying things just to piss people off, then I don’t know why do it. If you’re saying things just to please people, that’s a short-lived victory. But if you just say the things you believe, and the things you like to say, and that mean something to you — if you stay close to the gut — then everything will work itself out.
[via jkglei]