{"id":2911,"date":"2014-03-23T11:35:29","date_gmt":"2014-03-23T15:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/2014\/03\/misbehave\/"},"modified":"2014-03-23T11:35:29","modified_gmt":"2014-03-23T15:35:29","slug":"misbehave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/2014\/03\/misbehave\/","title":{"rendered":"Misbehave"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Timothy Egan, in an interesting NY TIMES <a href=\"%20http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/03\/22\/opinion\/egan-creativity-vs-quants.html\" target=\"_self\">op-ed column<\/a> yesterday, examined the creative process:<\/p>\n<p><em>Here\u2019s how John Lennon wrote \u201cNowhere Man,\u201d as he recalled it in an interview that ran just before he was murdered in 1980: After working five hours trying to craft a song, he had nothing to show for it. \u201cThen, \u2018Nowhere Man\u2019 came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>An original work, an aha! product or a fresh insight is rarely the result of precise calculation at one end producing genius at the other. You need messiness and magic, serendipity and insanity. Creativity comes from time off, and time out. There is no recipe for \u201cNowhere Man,\u201d other than showing up, and then, maybe lying down.<br \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And here\u2019s how Oscar Wilde defined his profession: \u201cA writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"tpad-img-center\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/6a01156f6c1fc1970b01a5118c6601970c-800wi\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"2487\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a01156f6c1fc1970b01a5118c6601970c img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/6a01156f6c1fc1970b01a5118c6601970c-500wi.jpg\" title=\"2487\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Timothy Egan, in an interesting NY TIMES op-ed column yesterday, examined the creative process: Here\u2019s how John Lennon wrote \u201cNowhere Man,\u201d as he recalled it in an interview that ran just before he was murdered in 1980: After working five hours trying to craft a song, he had nothing to show for it. \u201cThen, \u2018Nowhere [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}