Nurturing The Song Within
Man does indeed know intuitively more than he rationally understands. The question, however, is how we can gain access
to the potentials of knowledge contained in the depth of us, how we can achieve increased capacities of direct intuition and enlarged awareness.
- Ira Progoff, At A Journal Workshop
Cast A Wide Net In The Pursuit Of Mastery
George Plimpton: Who would you say are your literary forbears – those you have learned the most from?
Ernest Hemingway: Mark Twain, Flaubert, Stendhal, Bach, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekov, Andrew Marvell, John Donne, Maupassant, the good Kipling, Thoreau, Captain Marryat, Shakespeare, Mozart, Quevedo, Dante, Virgil, Tintoretto, Hieronymus Bosch, Brueghel, Patinir, Goya, Giotto, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, San Juan de la Cruz, Gongora – it would take a day to remember everyone. Then it would sound as though I were claiming an erudition I did not possess instead of trying to remember all the people who have been an influence on my life and work. This isn’t an old, dull question. It is a very good but a solemn question and requires an examination of conscience. I put in painters, or started to, because I learn as much from painters about how to write as from writers. You ask how this is done. It would take another day of explaining. I should think that what one learns from composers and from the study of harmony and counterpoint would be obvious.
- Ernest Hemingway interviewed by George Plimpton in The Paris Review, Issue 18, Spring 1958.I once asked advertising legend Carl Ally what makes the creative person tick. Ally responded, "The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he (or she) never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen.
- Roger von Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head
The point: A creative person who wants to master their craft casts a wide net, particularly within their field of creative work, but also outside. We search for that tiny contrary fact or perspective that adds depth and penetrating truth to our work.
The same is true of creating a unique life, outside of creative work. The human being dedicated to creating a big, unique life studies, reflects upon, a wide variety of perspectives from Taoist hermit poets to beatniks to the disciples of Christ. A big life doesn’t just happen. You are unlikely to just luck into it. Like creative work, a big life is a craft, a study, an evolution and requires effort and sacrifice.
Below two pages from the Nurturing The Song Within Art Journal and, below that, the Diary/Planner. Both are now at printers.
You can order both here.
You can access downloadable PDFs of either by clicking on the image.
