“Saying “no” has more creative power than ideas, insights and talent combined. No guards time, the thread from which we weave our creations. The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know. We are not taught to say “no.” We are taught not to say “no.” “No” is rude. “No” is a rebuff, a rebuttal, a minor act of verbal violence. “No” is for drugs and strangers with candy.” - Creative People Say No— Kevin Ashton
“If we take from the liberal arts one guideline on how to inhabit an increasingly non-analog world, it should be this digital humanities mission statement: “to remain aware of the uncertain, varied, unruly terrain of human existence even as that existence gets represented in digital form.”” - Digital Humanism, Jessica Collier
“We procrastinate because, before we write, it’s all infinite possibility, but once we’ve actually written, we are harnessed, prisoners of our own limitations, our meager gifts… But then, finally, there comes a turning point. Finally, it is more difficult and painful not to write than to write. The not-writing feels untenable, unbearable. The feeling, for me, is a kind of exquisite despair. Here goes nothing, I think to myself. What do I have to lose? Pen poised over paper, the world recedes. And I remember again—seven books into this writing life and I still need to be reminded—that this is what it’s all about. One word connecting, leading, to another, then another. A thought forming on the page. An internal coherence revealed. After a good writing day, I tell myself that it shouldn’t be such a struggle. It’s so simple, really. Just sit down. Why fight this daily battle? But maybe––just maybe––the fight is necessary. Maybe the fight is where we crack ourselves open, push against our edges, shut down the voices that tell us what we can’t do, and move into the only place worth exploring, which is to say, the unknown.” - Dani Shapiro (via mttbll)
Had the most fantastic day (although I really do overuse that adjective, I’m being very sincere): spent the morning and early afternoon grinding through the inbox and ticking things off the task list, had a late afternoon support meeting with a writer who has some genuinely exciting ideas for a new project she’s working on, and this evening, I’ve just finished with the first meeting of a new community of young/emerging poets— a set of people who could actually have a serious impact on the landscape of the work that’s being done for/by young poets in London, if not nationally. To top it all, I even managed to get some writing down (and yes, I’m doing the “new poem” dance).
Of course, I’m aware that this could be defined as tempting fate, and that a grey day is often waiting around the corner to reward just this kind of ebullient outpouring of high spirits, but hey, sometimes you just have to give thanks.
“More and more I feel creativity is a commitment to what you love. When the demons of doubt take over or whenever the stress of life and work bog you down and you feel like turning in, it’s the moment you refuse to give it up that’s when creativity happens. That commitment is akin to going to the gym or similar: you ache and you hate it and you want to throw in the towel…but you head over there anyway and lift weights or run that last mile. It’s the same in all creative pursuits. It’s a privilege to do what you love, even in the little moments we have, so to cherish it is to commit to it. For it’s in the sticking with it, and with all the energies and time invested, you do get so much back. And it does bring joy, even if it’s fleeting.” - Toyin Odutola, Creativity Decoded. (via tobia)
This. And a poem, performed simultaneously. Speaking to each other. Yes.
“I see this as a delicate balance – how to make the work personal in some ways, influenced and affected by one’s vision, without being narcissistic. I tell my students making conceptual artwork all the time: nobody cares about you – that is not inherently interesting. The work has to transcend the subject, whatever the subject is. It sounds harsh, I know, but there is so much work out there, one has to set oneself apart.” - Sarah Palmer (via photographsonthebrain)
“Speak now before it is too late, and then hope to go on speaking until there is nothing more to be said. Time is running out, after all. Perhaps it is just as well to put aside your stories for now and try to examine what it has felt like to live inside this body from the first day you can remember being alive until this one. A catalogue of sensory data. What one might call a phenomenology of breathing.” - Paul Auster, Winter Journal (via elnellis)
“I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon. Demons don’t like fresh air - they prefer it if you stay in bed with cold feet; for a person who is as chaotic as me, who struggles to be in control, it is an absolute necessity to follow these rules and routines. If I let myself go, nothing will get done.” - Ingmar Bergman (via loveage-moondream)
“To be nobody but yourself - in a world which is doing it’s best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” - e.e. cummings (via thechocolatebrigade)
“Love often turns into dust. Memory remains. I like making things that are founded on the idea of how memory works and possess plainness, intelligence as well as austerity mingled with a whiff of purity. I used to wake up with the same question in my head which was blazing inside my mind: “What do you want? What is it that you want, you insufferable meaningless creature?”. I’d stand for hours opposite the mirror and I’d ask myself. Never did a sound came out for years. Then I suddenly knew. Call it luck; but I knew. It is awfully hard until you finally know and start cultivating your desires. Many people still say I was ambitious since the very beginning. It’s nonsense because I was not. I was full of desire; yes. I was passionate; But ambition is another thing. I never wanted to be “someone” or be somebody who would ache for something silently but would never take the initiative to gamble enough so as to actually make it happen. All I wanted was to create something inimitable. I wanted to beat myself at my own game. I wanted to beat my mind.” - Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, Coco Chanel: The Legend And The Life (via violentwavesofemotion)
“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
—Chuck Palahniuk, from Diary (Doubleday, 2003)
“I’ve won a few acting awards, but as with all art, it’s an endless journey.”
“What do you mean?”
“You never get to the bottom of an art. There’s always another layer of depth. Whether that be painting, or acting, or photography. Ten different people could photograph that tree right there, and there would be a different spirit beneath each of those photographs.”
“I think I’ll put that as your caption.”
“Oh c’mon. That’s nothing new. Everyone knows that.”
“Maybe so. But ten different people could explain that, and it’d be different every time.”—-
“You never get to the bottom of an art.”
This.
“To carry truth is an interesting metaphor. Language is assumed to carry meaning. But meaning fades from language the way colours fade from a photograph if too much exposed to light. Eventually there is only a very faint blur or trace.” - George Szirtes— ‘The Idea of Subject in Poetry’
Tom Chatfield How to Thrive in a Digital Age
‘from an asking, from a giving, from now on.’ - Bob Hicok
It occurs to me that at the intersection of the work I do in supporting people in the way they engage with poetry or technology, there’s a similar transition from “I don’t do this thing” to “Oh, this is how this thing can work for me…”
““If you were smoke,” he said, “you’d be the smoke
that rages from a forest fire, close
and wild and dangerous.” Here ends the quote,
but not the source of it, and me morose
because I’ve always tried to be the smoke
that billows gentle in the temple, joss
or sandalwood, the incense that’s the yoke
to help us get to god. For me, the clos-
est feeling to religion is the smoke
my body gives off when it gets too close
to someone else. And right back to the joke:
I torch the temple by mistake, confess
my smoking gun is still my one desire
for one who’ll feed the flames and love my fire.” - so much joy it hurts: Smoke, Moira Egan
that rages from a forest fire, close
and wild and dangerous.” Here ends the quote,
but not the source of it, and me morose
because I’ve always tried to be the smoke
that billows gentle in the temple, joss
or sandalwood, the incense that’s the yoke
to help us get to god. For me, the clos-
est feeling to religion is the smoke
my body gives off when it gets too close
to someone else. And right back to the joke:
I torch the temple by mistake, confess
my smoking gun is still my one desire
for one who’ll feed the flames and love my fire.” - so much joy it hurts: Smoke, Moira Egan
“Simplicity is not about making something without ornament, but rather about making something very complex, then slicing elements away, until you reveal the very essence.” -
The Story of Christoph Niemann’s Petting Zoo App : The New Yorker
This I read with both my dev and writing hats on…
Google Reader’s on its way out, and although we’ve got until July 1st, the announcement itself was enough to rattle me. Like at least half a million other RSS power-users, I went looking for ways to future-proof the way I feed my habit. I’m really hoping that Mr Reader finds a way to survive— it’s a handsome, but it’s also smart, with a buttload of support for custom url schemes that make it easy to push incoming content to wherever I need it to be for action, archiving or further attention. That said, I’ve been trialling Feedly. Not quite as powerful, but very slick. Over the past few days, I’ve found I’ve actually read more in the app, rather than bumping interesting articles to Pocket for later reading. Something to do with the layout and the space afforded to individual items…
(Screenshot from Feedly)
