The Blank Page as Sacred Space
The first thing I do upon waking these days is launch Birdhouse on the iPhone and write tweets. I face the blank page with complete trust in the Creative Source. Being still, waiting for ideas to emerge and transcribing them is a cycle of contemplative prayer.
Where do ideas come from? In one sense, they [...]
Killing Art
Chestnut Rau and Soror Nishi wrote interesting posts recently on the relative place and relationship of art, artist, narrative and viewer. I think “art” is killed or at least mortally wounded by being tied down and fixed to a single dimension. Trying to set constrained and rule-based definitions serves reason, but chokes the life out [...]
A Very Good Drug
The role of the artist is to create an Anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment. Without an anti-environment, all environments are invisible. Marshall McLuhan
Wow. The Book of Probes entered my brain like a hit of acid. It’s an anthology of “the most prescient aphorisms” from Marshall McLuhan’s life’s work.
Turning the pages has [...]
Having Genius vs. Being Genius
My experience of giving birth to a creative work typically includes long stretches of concerted effort punctuated by periods of both blissful rapture and excruciating despair. In the video below, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert shares some thought-provoking insights on how we might reframe our perception of the creative process to reduce its [...]
Art and Ego
I feel best when my creative expression is a private dance between me and my emerging work. The intimacy of the process and the authenticity of the eventual work is diminished when my attention is drawn to an imagined audience. Twyla Tharp shares a few thoughts on the topic in this brief video clip.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLzl6D8kYuY]
Consuming and Creating
Breathing in. Breathing out. Simple physical pleasures an AI cannot enjoy. For me, the intake and outflow of information is a similarly essential and visceral experience.
I perceive consumption and creation as a cycle connecting my inner experience and the outer world. When I linger too long at either pole, I feel a strong pull from [...]
