Most things are hideous at birth.
@nikastates. I don’t know who this is, but it got the @millsbaker/Mills retweet endorsement and it strikes me as very wise.
Tag: creativity
THE NEW YORKER: Barry Michels’s & Phil Stutz’ Therapy Drawings
See also: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.” -Thomas Edison.
How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me) – Austin Kleon. Umm. Meant to get this out of the drafts pile a long time ago. Great stuff, as usual.
I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly.
Should you stay up all night gambling in Vegas? – Barking up the wrong tree
The powers that be in Las Vegas figured out something long before neuroscientists at two Duke University medical schools confirmed their ideas this week: Trying to make decisions while sleep-deprived can lead to a case of optimism.
Add in the usual required dose of skepticism required for science journalism, sure. I still think this is interesting and the risk-taking aspect seems to tie into both 1) late-night bouts of creativity and 2) survival situations. Both of which can make you feel a little psychotic in the moment and can be kind of horrifying in hindsight after you’ve regained your right mind.
Should you stay up all night gambling in Vegas? – Barking up the wrong tree
If you inspire people to make things, it just makes them love you all the more.
I have one of those food-chopper brains that nothing comes out of the way it comes in.
When I begin working on a film, it’s like standing on shaky ground. I never know where I’m standing. My only sure footing is to make the movie. If the movie moves me and interests me, I presume it will move and interest others. At the same time, if I’ve made a good movie, I try not to repeat it.
The enveloping air: Light and moment in Monet – By John Berger (Harper’s Magazine)
Like many innovative artists, Monet, I believe, was unclear about what he had achieved. Or, to be more precise, he could not name his achievement. He could only recognize it intuitively, and then doubt it.
The enveloping air: Light and moment in Monet – By John Berger (Harper’s Magazine)
The Searchers: Radiohead’s unquiet revolution – The New Yorker
Alex Ross on tour with Radiohead. I like this bit from Nigel Godrich on Radiohead’s ongoing effort to figure out their sound and musical directions. At one point,
People stopped talking to one another. ‘Insanity’ is the word. In the end, I think the debate was redundant, because the band ultimately kept doing what it has always done—zigzagging between extremes. Whenever we really did try to impose an aesthetic from the outside—the aesthetic being, say, electronic—it would fail. All the drama was just a form of procrastination.
The Searchers: Radiohead’s unquiet revolution – The New Yorker
Paris Review – The Art of Poetry No. 30, Philip Larkin
I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he’s written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading. But if it doesn’t, he shouldn’t be discouraged. I mean, in the seventeenth century every educated man could turn a verse and play the lute. Supposing no one played tennis because they wouldn’t make Wimbledon? First and foremost, writing poems should be a pleasure. So should reading them, by God.
You’re probably better off if you can tolerate, or even enjoy, your own mediocrity as long as it takes to get something made. What’s obvious to you could be amazing to others. And fortunately, whether it’s good or bad, joy’s soul lies in the doing.
Permanent style: When style becomes costume
Men who are very interested in their clothes are part geeky, petty academic and part creative, artistic aesthete. Everyone needs the former to drive them into reading and investigation, to be interested by the history and traditions of men’s attire. But everyone also needs the latter, to have the kind of mind that created these traditions in the first place.
Of course, this applies to more than just fashion.
At last R gets down again to his score, though he still has no pen which he likes.
Cosima Wagner. I have no idea who is behind the tweeted diaries of Richard Wagner’s second wife, but it’s one of my favorites. It’s a great inside view of a married couple, 19th-century upper-crust German social life, creative struggle, random dreams, etc. Here are a few other favorite excerpts.
The Wrong Stuff: On Air and On Error: This American Life’s Ira Glass on Being Wrong
It kind of gives you hope. If you do creative work, there’s a sense that inspiration is this fairy dust that gets dropped on you, when in fact you can just manufacture inspiration through sheer brute force. You can simply produce enough material that the thing will arrive that seems inspired.
The Wrong Stuff: On Air and On Error: This American Life’s Ira Glass on Being Wrong
On The Art Of Fiction – Willa Cather
Any first rate novel or story must have in it the strength of a dozen fairly good stories that have been sacrificed to it. A good workman can’t be a cheap workman; he can’t be stingy about wasting material, and he cannot compromise.
The first strong external revelation of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety of intangible duties to-morrow or the day after.
Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied, … That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good.
AllHipHop.com: With “Shooters,” did you hear the original version by Robin Thicke and just wanted to redo it?
Lil’ Wayne: Yeah, hell yeah. I heard it years ago, on his album.
AllHipHop.com: Do you think that would surprise people, like, “Weezy listens to Thicke?”
Lil’ Wayne: Fuck people.(via Leon)
Mark Larson 