conversational creativity

creativity is but an unfolding conversation

I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea.

William Deresiewicz • Solitude and Leadership

if your work is solely driven by how people respond to it, you’ll create something popular but soulless

if it’s driven by how you feel about it, you’ll create something potent but obscure

but if your work is a dialogue between self & world, it can be both resonant & true

scott • Tweet

Yin is allowing energy to flow where it will, without interference.

Yang is driving energy where it otherwise wouldn’t go.

River Kenna • Yin, Yang, Mistakes, Metis

Stop watching, start participating

Isabel • Tweet

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”

-John Steinbeck

Great works are unsettling, disorienting, they confound our expectations. In this definition, it’s almost impossible for a great work to be considered ‘refined’ at the time of its creation, because its elements are alien, they have not yet had time to have been weighed and evaluated.

Visakan Veerasamy • on scaffolding

the last line in many respects is the essence of the poet’s work, to work with the questions ‘that have no right to go away’ in the life of an individual, in the life of a relationship or marriage, and in our collective conversations in an increasingly fraught, worldwide society.

David Whyte • David Whyte

Intelligence is a form of friendship with the world. It can’t be cultivated out of fear of it.

~ Cordelia • Tweet

When I watch a Miyazaki film I can’t help but think about his attunement to the world, the presence it requires to transmute the real world into a fantastical one. That’s the interesting contradiction of writers and artists, I suppose: alienation is a necessity, but so is participation. The point of getting better is to be more in the world.