The meaning of life is to be outside on such a beautiful day

                                                       — Gertrude Stein

Musician David Byrne echoes one of the primary themes of this blog, namely that creative endeavors which succeed in engaging an audience work on a level that is separate and unique from our intellect:

Both art and music seem to bypass the rational and logical parts of the mind — rather, they are understood by myriad parts of the brain that are connected to one another. It is a different kind of understanding. The effect of this interconnection is pleasurable, ecstatic even.

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A still image from our 23rd year of capturing the midnight ball drop at One Times Square…

 

All the technique in the world won't compensate for the inability to notice.

                                                            ― Elliott Erwitt

 

This observation by composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim about the creative impulse certainly rings true for this photographer…

Order out of chaos, order out of chaos… I think that’s what art’s about anyway, I think that’s why people make art. The world has always been chaotic, life is unpredictable, there is no form and making forms gives you solidity.. that’s why people paint paintings and take photographs, and write music and tell stories…

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You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.

                                                            – Annie Dillard

 

        Don’t try to be original.

        Be simple.

        Be good technically,

        and if there is something in you,

        it will come out.

                – Henri Matisse

 

… when we have something?

Musician and composer Quincy Jones responded with a simple answer – one that every artist understands:

We simply did what gave us the goosebumps.

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A perennial theme explored in these posts is the tension between how we apprehend the world: intellectually versus emotionally – cognitive vs. pre-cognitive is how we’ve often labeled it – and we make the case that the most powerful and meaningful creative expressions are those that evoke a pre-cognitive emotional response.

Here’s filmmaker Werner Herzog weighing in on this theme, using poetry as an example:

You will find that in great poetry, when you listen or read a great poem it will occur to you very abruptly that there’s a deep, enormous truth in this poem and you feel illuminated, and you don’t have to analyze, and you don’t have to read lots of literature about this poem, you just know it instantly.

And why do you know it? Because there’s an ecstasy of truth that is in this poem.

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An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive

at a place where he thinks he's at somewhere.

You always have to realize that

you're constantly in a state of becoming.

And, as long as you can stay in that realm

you'll sort of be alright.

                                                           – Bob Dylan