The Principle of Infinite Pains: Legendary Filmmaker Maya Deren on Cinema, Life, and Her Advice to Aspiring Filmmakers

Notes on Practice
 1. A refusal to allow your audience to typecast you is wise art strategy. Making it difficult for your audience to pin down you or your work is also resonant for longevity.
 2. Our creative work, or the roles we play in it, are not defined by the stereotypes society places on us. Part of meaningful art is throwing a wrench in the works and forcing people to be surprised.
 3. Make your work with whatever materials you have on hand. The obstacles to perfect resources and equipment can be a never-ending road to making anything.
 4. Timing is everything—from when to show the work in progress, decide to stay or leave, end a body of work, or sever unproductive creative relationships.
 5. Sometimes you have to engage with support outside your creative network, since artists are oftentimes operating at capacity.
 6. The path of being an artist is one of de-conditioning the roles we were born into and representing in our work who we really are.
 7. The art or artists you are magnetized by are usually different from the work you are good at or meant to make—and that is a good thing. Influences do not have to be direct lines; they are usually zigzags.
 8. Just because you have an art degree or training should not prevent you from making art in all forms and manifestations—and better yet, embrace those even deemed cliché or “not art.”
 9. Having a respect for art history and placing its influences within your work helps the viewer connect the dots, but it’s also important to define and/or critique history as well.
 10. Teaching is meeting people however they are with however you are. #notesonpractice #williamjobrien