Creative Learning

I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here. William Gibson

Find that via his website (not found anymore…) or Serendipity35

Ira Glass advice to creatives

Robert Roriguez in 10 Minute Film School says “You want to be a film maker? Wrong. You are a film maker.” “You’ll learn more by picking up a camera and making your own mistakes.”

Or consider this, from David Bayles and Ted Orlund.

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
David Bayles and Ted Orlund, Art & Fear

To learn: Do. The rest will follow.

Think not? Consider this advice JK Rowling wishes she’d been given.

WARNING: quote what you link. The internet if ephemeral.

Comfort

A dog curled up, back against your thigh, a dog on your lap or by your feet.
The familiar food from your childhood.
Warming shower water.
Waking without an alarm, light gently coming through windows.
The ache of muscles after a good day’s work.
The mid evening light of summer, slanting across your world.
Greetings from a friend.
Shared meals on relaxed days.
The smell of dry autumn woods, of bread baking, of a meal just becoming ready.
Immersing in the familiar after a time away.
A hug.
Soft grass, clover under bare feet.
The first warm days of late spring.

And for you?

Frightful Thought

From The Art of Manliness,

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!'” –Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

TAoM asks: How would you live if you were to repeat this life, as it is lived this time, over and over again for eternity?

This is frightful. How does the prospect strike you?