The Creative Mind

“Listening is how I started. I didn't start when I was a piano player. I didn't start as a composer. I started as a listener.” RIP

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is... See more

Bob Dylan on the otherworldliness of creativity (2004) “I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written.” It is reminiscent of how mathematical discoveries tend to speak themselves—not to the experienced—but to the young. Show more

I now understand that sometimes we have talents in precisely the areas that are most challenging to us. Strikes me that this is far more normal than being a total natural or a supernatural savant.

If you feel like you do your art in spite of yourself, you ain’t alone, welcome to the club.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

— Robert Hughes, 1996