Five pieces
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) Five things for your consideration today:
(1) Nothing we create comes from nothing. Each thing we do or make in this life embodies how we interpret our experiences and emulate those of others. Sometimes we are at our best, most creative selves when we invite others to notice and reflect on simple, observable facts of this world. As philosopher Alan Watts reminds: “The sound of the rain needs no translation.”
(2) Choose a sense of agency for yourself. This means you frame your choices about how to act and how to feel in a manner that doesn’t depend on others. In her excellent book of advice Letters to a Young Artist (I’ve given a copy to my daughter, Kathleen), Anna Deavere Smith reminds us that this deliberate approach to creating our life’s work has a way of producing better outcomes and deeper resiliency in ourselves: “The feeling of agency,” she says, is one that teaches us “that if everything were to fall apart, we could find a way to put things back together again.”
(3) Write your rough notes by hand. I do this especially when I’m at the creative brief stage of a project. It’s at this point that I’m defining the problem I’ve been hired to solve and identifying the constraints within which the work is going to be done. In other words, this is where I start with specific, definable facts and begin to make abstract connections to create something. It’s slower than hammering mindlessly on a keyboard: that’s exactly why it works (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/28/why-students-using-laptops-learn-less-in-class-even-when-they-really-are-taking-notes/) .
(4) All things are transitory. We all know this and yet it’s one that bears repeating because it’s a lesson that counsels as much as it comforts. A wise yogi shared this one with me: “Clouds of good fortune. Clouds of misfortune. Each gathers on your horizon. Each passes over. Each disintegrates. Hard to tell them apart.”
(5) Break your thoughts into pieces. Brion Gysin’s cut-up technique employed in his paintings and prose influenced William S. Burroughs who influenced David Bowie who influenced Radiohead (especially on their majestic Kid A album): “Cut up everything in sight,” he wrote, “make your whole life a poem.”
Very best, Patrick
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