Creativity As A Way Of Life:
An artist’s journal.
Below, the Creativity Journal posts for the month of December, 2023.
Visit here for November’s posts.
I remember a best-selling author (I think Jonathan Franzen) saying that when he got his new laptop he took some Crazy Glue, applied it to the end of an Ethernet cable, connected it to his new computer. Then, with a pair of wire cutters, he cut off the cable where the plastic due-hickey snaps into the port. Thus, he was able to live uninterrupted in his imaginary reality. . . Reflections on the Muse by William Blake, William Stafford and myself.
www.herondance.org/muse-blake-stafford
Visit here for November’s Creativity As A Way Of Life posts.
Setting your life’s objectives is surprisingly difficult. Knowing yourself is surprisingly difficult.
If you get the objectives right, a lieutenant can write the strategy.
- General George C. Marshall
Reflections on building your life around objectives including creative objectives as opposed to just going with the flow.
www.herondance.org/your-objectiveVisit here for November’s Creativity As A Way Of Life posts.
Art connects us to our dreams, to the things that can’t be explained with words, to the things that have touched our core, to our imaginary worlds, and even to our personal chaos. Art has something to do with the part that doesn’t want to be tamed, that can’t be tamed.
For more on the magical mystery journey of which the creative life is one manifestation:
www.herondance.org/connection-to-mysteryVisit here for November’s Creativity As A Way Of Life posts.
Reflections on the Robert Henri (The Art Spirit) dictum, “all work that is worthwhile has got to be memory work.”
https://herondance.org/memory-workVisit here for November’s Creativity As A Way Of Life posts.
Rejection
Thoughts on rejection of creative work by Picasso, Robert Henri and my own reflections.
https://herondance.org/rejectionVisit here for November’s Creativity As A Way Of Life posts.
Rodney Elrod: Why do you think writers like Pynchon, Salinger, and Faulkner go into hiding for so long?
- Getting Naked With Harry Crews
Perspectives on sensitivity, and on sensing the deeper integrity in creative work and in people from Harry Crews, John Huston, and Rodin.
https://herondance.org/sensitiveVisit here for November’s Creativity As A Way Of Life posts.
. . . few are capable of holding themselves in the state of listening to their song. Intellectuality steps in, and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect.
- Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
https://herondance.org/whisper-withinVisit here for November’s Creativity As A Way Of Life posts.
Bob Dylan On Creativity: A Different Gallon Jug In A Different Backyard
A variety of Bob Dylan (and one by Keith Richards) reflections on the creative process including this on his transition from playing the folk music of Woody Guthrie and other artists, to writing his own music:
Dylan took the song (Pirate Jenny) apart, trying to find out what made it tick. The song reminded him of Picasso’s painting Guernica. “This heavy song was a new stimulant for my senses, indeed very much like a folk song but a folk song from a different gallon jug in a different backyard. . . I took the song apart and unzipped it — it was the form, the free verse association, the structure and disregard for the known certainty of melodic patterns to make it seriously matter, give it its cutting edge.”
https://herondance.org/dylan-on-creativityVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts