Talent alone is like simply having access to cool tools: access without practice does not independently confer greatness. Discipline and repeated effort are much more vital, and those are traits that most people are unwilling to invest in adequate measure to rise above the masses.
Read MoreMECHANISMS
Endless pursuit of the perfect tool with a perfected set of skills can get in the way of actually doing good work. Make something, and your skills will automatically improve simply by using them. Constant evaluation of artistic processes other people may have employed can similarly impede our ability to actually see what those artists are trying to do creatively.
Read MoreTHE CURATED LIBRARY PROBLEM
Even as I try to selectively calibrate my attention and interests to suit time and energy, the compelling pull of interesting materials tempts me like a rodent that stumbles upon a bag of shelled walnuts. Unable to resist, the hapless creature cannot help but gobble up one more, often resulting in a bellyache.
Read MoreWhat Happens When I Hear The English Beat
Sensations of all sorts are new in everyone’s adolescence, no matter where or with whom you lived at the time, and the geologic pressure of successive years piling up fossilizes memory. Intense moments of sensual, visceral pleasure become reinforced with subsequent mental recollection, which is why we can conjure our teenage years in sparkling detail and cannot recall what we made for breakfast this morning.
Read MoreWHAT I TRY TO REMEMBER
Art is the reason to preserve life in the first place, to fortify our shelters and our camp, to share sustenance with others around the fire. Art is the reason we exist. We exist to create; creation becomes the over arching beauty worth pursuing in a finite life; beauty is the reason to endure.
Read MoreOne Day in Santa Fe
In the era before smart phones or even PDAs, data either resided in your brain or as marks on paper. I obviously hadn’t memorized a stack of numbers, and my notes weren’t with me. Things will happen that even the best plans will not be able to forestall. It’s not that a person can’t allow themselves to feel frustrated or even angry about circumstance. It’s that an experienced person can learn how not to let those feelings completely overshadow everything else.
Read MoreTRANSFORMATIONS (or, Why an Essay about the First Gulf War appears in a Blog about Creativity)
Performers on stage? Soldiers ready for battle? Protesters lining the streets? That’s the thing about moments of transformation. There are usually multiple, simultaneous forces at work. In this month’s blog post at 1AU Global Media, we consider moments of transformation, when real world events intersect with lives pursuing creative expression.
Read MoreSHIELDS UP!
Artists and accountants are not always motivated by the same forces, but there are often more crossover forces between artists and accountants than first glance might suggest. Clearly this is a matter more about aesthetics; I cannot fathom a life in accounting, but I’m sure glad I know a good one when I need her to sort things out. Success for artists, accountants, and everyone else too, is often a function of figuring out how to get something completely done.
Read MoreI've Often Toyed with Sigmund Freud
Ideas crash and careen like seedlings caught in unpredictable zephyrs, often slapping uselessly into unexpected obstructions. Most seeds die, but the few that thrive are the ones that have a chance of catching our attention.
THE NOVEL
You can’t be doing something else when you’re reading a novel. You must do your own imagining. You also can’t check out periodically while you’re in the process of reading a novel. The moment you do, you’re not reading!
Read More