To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
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To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
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Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.
~ Steven Pressfield
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It is all very well to insist that man is a “social animal”—the fact is obvious enough. But that is no justification for making him a mere cog in a totalitarian machine—or in a religious one either, for that matter. In actual fact, society depends for its existence on the inviolable personal solitude of its members. Society, to merit its name, must be made up not of numbers, or mechanical units, but of persons. To be a person implies responsibility and freedom, and both these imply a certain interior solitude, a sense of personal integrity, a sense of one’s own reality and of one’s ability to give himself to society—or to refuse that gift.
~ Thomas Merton
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I have written about this before and it is something I wish to emphasize repeatedly: efficiency and clarity are necessary elements, but are not the goal. There needs to be space for how things feel. I wrote this as it relates to cooking and cars and onscreen buttons, and it is still something worth pursuing each and every time we create anything.
~ Nick Heer, from Delicious Wabi-Sabi
Yes, “efficiency and clarity are necessary elements, but are not the goal. There needs to be space for how things feel.” Hear! Hear!
There are at least three reasons to read Heer’s points. Retro-digital photography is really a thing; the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi (appreciating beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete); A bit of hist wondering about software.
It’s the wabi-sabi that got me thinking about podcasting. I’m well-known for cutting the corner when it comes to editing the conversations I record. I’ve always looked at that as a necessity: If I tried to raise the level of quality by editing, I’d not be able to put the episodes out (or at least not as many.)
After reading Heer’s thoughts, now I’m wondering if I’m also—perhaps even more so?—drawn to the wabi-sabi of the conversations with all their blemishes, false-starts, uhm-and-ahs in place.
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The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
~ Carl Jung
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Boredom is just “What’s the use?” in disguise. And, “What’s the use?” is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put anything on the page. Put three pages of it on the page.
~ Julia Cameron
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I mentioned this book previously (in, Driveway Moments). As I read more, it became clear this book is stuffed full of useful information for podcasters. At some point, I’ll get around to organizing some sort of “resources” something-or-other over on the Podcaster Community, and Sound Reporting will definitely go in the “must read” books list for podcasters.
Almost nothing in the book is directly usable… but there’s a ton of stuff—far too much for me to quote—that I found made me think.
To be honest, a lot of it felt like, “yes, I agree” and “yes, I learned that the hard way.” But there was also a lot of “that’s a good idea” and “yikes, now I know I don’t want to do that that way.”
These chapters were particularly fertile ground: Writing for Broadcast, Story Editing, Reading on the Air, Hosting, and Booking. They contains tons of information from the professionals.
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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
~ Stephen Nachmanovitch
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Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to write my symphony.” Instead we say, “I’m going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.”
~ Steven Pressfield
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Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery.
~ William G. Simms
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Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
~ Pablo Picasso
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Creativity is harnessing universality and making it flow through your eyes.
~ Peter Koestenbaum
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“Do you have any ideas in mind?”
I was talking with someone recently, and they asked me what ideas I had in mind. I described a visual that had recently come to mind for me, and I then, as a followup to that visual, I added a few ideas as single words.
(I’m very intentionally, not being specific here…)
When I finished—it all took but a few moments—it struck me…
Dude, those single words really are the ideas I want to convey…
But that imagery? It’s exactly the opposite of those ideas. That visual is a terrible idea…
Let’s set aside the confusion I may have caused to my friend. (Although, I did point out that I saw the contradiction.)
It seems to me it’s really rare to have a moment of such clarity around something important: If I hadn’t been explaining it to another person, I might have hung onto that visual imagery.
Where are you hanging on to the wrong details?
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Because it’s elitist, an initiation into arcana. Because it’s nostalgic, rowing being a skill not much in demand in the industrial world. Because it’s fragile: The boat club is run on a shoestring, and the beat-up old boats held together by spit. Because it’s dangerous, and exercises the wits against the wind and the water. Because it’s a ritual. Because it’s redemption.
~ Barry Strauss
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[…] fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Where is the space where you hang out with other people doing whatever it is you do? I’ve mentioned this idea before, for example, Setting and scene. This is something I come back to often because it is really important to me.
And by “space” I mean a physical space, like the proverbial 19th century café with writers talking and drinking coffee. Third places are clear candidates for our scene.
What about virtual third places? All of us know each other virtually, including through various video calls over the years. But a virtual space has to be very special to be a true “scene.” In fact, I’m not sure just how special, and I’m not sure what exactly the features it needs to have…
That’s what I’m thinking about this morning:
What are the special feature of a virtual space that make it into a scene?
Here’s a few I’ve come up with so far…
:)
obviously. We need to know others are there (I see “likes” or a head-count in the video call).What else comes to mind?
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Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; Not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool—his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life.
~ Charles Eastman
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But when I do, it usually because of some deeply nerdy, cutting snark. Like this:
As someone who has read thousands of academic papers, I’ll answer those questions as calmly as possible.
NO.
~ “dynomight“, from https://dynomight.net/digits/
…and then it goes on, CAPSLOCKed, for several paragraphs. The only thing better than math-nerds, is when a math-nerd who is also a reason-nerd stomps on the vanilla-variety math-nerds. This stuff? This stuff makes the world a better place.
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Clearly the sun is up in the east already. But from here, we’re always in the shadow of this very old, very low “mountain” for at least another hour.
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Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend.
~ Nick Cave, from https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chat-gpt-what-do-you-think/
Sometimes I read things which are so clear, and right, that I nearly weep on my keyboard. (Yes, oldster, keyboard.) And then… I realize, enduring, suffering, audacity to reach beyond limitations— hey, that’s me! And then, still weeping, but I’m doing it right!
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