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.

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview – nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.

                                                                                  ––  Stephen Jay Gould

There's a fascinating piece in the NY TIMES about the role our surroundings may exert on our creative efforts — namely that the creative process may be stimulated by a cluttered, messy environment.

Test subjects were placed in either a neat and organized space, or a cluttered, disorganized space and then asked to generate creative ideas — the results?

When we analyzed the responses, we found that the subjects in both types of rooms came up with about the same number of ideas, which meant they put about the same effort into the task. Nonetheless, the messy room subjects were more creative, as we expected. Not only were their ideas 28 percent more creative on average, but when we analyzed the ideas that judges scored as “highly creative,” we found a remarkable boost from being in the messy room — these subjects came up with almost five times the number of highly creative responses as did their tidy-room counterparts.

While cleaning up certainly has its benefits, clean spaces might be too conventional to let inspiration flow.

Musician Andrew Bird's behind-the-scenes look at his creative process (from an article in the NY TIMES)

It’s kind of a racket. When I step onstage I feel myself adopting that comedian’s posture, a shrug of the shoulders that says, “I don’t know, folks. We’re all just puzzling through it together. I’m not going to pretend to have the answers but here’s what I’ve seen."

To emerge from creative hibernation with my perfect oeuvre and
worldview fully realized feels stifling and boring. And while I’m
anything but an exhibitionist I have this perverse impulse to introduce
half-written songs and invite the trouble that it might bring. Maybe I’m
saying to my former teachers, “Look, by your standards I’m failing, but
it feels great.” But mostly it’s that I just prefer a fluid questioning
present to a fixed past.

The short essay I wrote for our 2014 calendar points out the important distinction between competence and creative expression — just because one is able to use the tools does not mean the end result is worth the effort.  This seems especially true of photography, where the tools get ever more hi-tech.

I came across an older post from Seth Godin's blog that speaks to that very same sentiment:

I spent some time a few days ago listening to a nascent band performing classic rock songs.
The first group sang a note-for-note rendition of a song by the Stones. The notes were right, but nothing else was. The singer didn’t know what the song meant. And the musicians, they just stood there. No energy, no smiles, no connection. It could have been a funeral with a great soundtrack.

The funny thing is that learning to Sing It is a lot easier than learning how to play the guitar. For some reason, we work on the technique before we worry about adding the joy.

If you’re going to go to all the trouble of learning the song and performing it, then SING IT. Sing it loud and with feeling and like you mean it. Deliver it, don’t just make it. When you answer the phone or greet me at your office or come to a meeting or write something, don’t bother if all you’re going to do is do it. Sing it or stay home.