Author: G. Steve Jordan

In a NY TIMES op-ed, "Homage to the Idols of Idleness", Jessica Kerwin Jenkins explores how clocks may be keeping us from experiencing the benefits of unstructured time –– here's an excerpt:

… for artists, doing nothing was a fount of freedom. [Robert Louis] Stevenson … raised a rallying cry with his 1876 screed, “An Apology for Idlers,” diagnosing extreme busyness as “a symptom of deficient vitality.” In the 20th century, Marcel Duchamp was so often found soaking in the tub at the center of his studio that he had a hanging rope installed that allowed him to open the front door without ever getting up. “Deep down I’m enormously lazy,” he said. “I like living, breathing, better than working.” (The French writer Henri-Pierre Roché said of his friend that Duchamp’s “finest work is his use of time.” Duchamp agreed.)

A recent post on Brain Pickings presents excerpts from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, including this wonderfully instructive snippet that one could argue is true for all creative endeavors:

In order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? … Think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. Think of those times when you’ve read prose or poetry that is presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a glimpse into someone’s soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least to have some meaning for a moment. This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of — please forgive me — wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious.

Another excerpt from a recent interview with National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry:

In this genre of street photography you're present in the moment. That's kind of a cliche perhaps, but your mind is occupied by the here and now. The sounds, the smells — you can really look and see things for what they are. When was the last time you went out for a walk for its own sake without an agenda?

From an interview with National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry:

Has gear choice become more of an issue?

I don't want to get too technical. I hate all of that.  "…whatever one wants to do to achieve what they want to do with photography — whether it's pinhole or a Leica or an 8×10 view camera or whatever. It's your work. It's like a poem. You put the poem on the table and you read it and no one is going to ask you if you typed it or wrote it out long hand. No one cares how long it took or how many re-drafts you did. How many pictures did you shoot? It doesn't matter. The proof is the final print."

It’s not the eyes. Anybody can see that has eyes to see. It’s what we feel and what we get out of the heart that matters. We have to convey a passion. We have to convey an understanding.

                                                                                                                Photographer John Free

In December 1868, having just turned 33, Andrew Carnegie sat down in New York’s St. Nicholas Hotel and wrote a memo to himself. His net worth was $400,000, and with prudent management he could expect $50,000 in dividends each year for the rest of his life. “Beyond this never earn,” he resolved. “Make no effort to increase fortune, but spend the surplus each year for benevolent purposes. Cast aside business forever except for others.”

Man must have an idol — The amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry. No idol more debasing than the worship of money. Whatever I engage in I must push inordinately therefor should I be careful to choose that life which will be the most elevating in its character. To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery.

He kept the memo for the rest of his life, and by the time of his death in 1919 he had given away $350,695,650, nearly $5 billion today, endowing universities, museums, libraries, and initiatives to support science, the arts, and world peace. “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced,” he wrote. “Money can only be the useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself. … Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth.”

(thanks Futility Closet)

From an interview with photographer Elliot Erwitt on the nature of photography:

"Well, first you have to notice something, then you have to put it in a frame and then, if you're lucky, you have to have a bit of magic.  Magic is something that you cannot explain because it's like humor: if you explain it, it's not funny anymore."

After readiung Ken Johnson's NY TIMES review of recent MOMA photo show , I found myself wondering if his observations could fairly be applied to quite a bit of contemporary art:

What’s …remarkable is how strenuously clever these artists try to be in representing their essentially orthodox thoughts… you may find yourself hungering for the opposite of this show’s iconoclasm: a display of unabashed and unbridled visual imagination.

"…my desire, on one level, is not to know too much — and there's no danger in that — but my desire is to fling myself into the project and make mistakes and then try to find my way of telling you what I want to tell you"

                                                                                                                        Maira Kalman

Came across some excerpts of William Faulkner's take on art, life and writing that are clearly true for any creative endeavor:

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity.