Alexandersmap

    Category: Art

    • The Artist Is Alive

      “When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.” — Robert Henri

      Most of us take the path more traveled. We charge into marriages and mortgages and minions, motivated by money and the status of more. It takes an artist’s mind to look at the path least traveled and find it compelling, particularly when there are bills to pay and well-meaning parents suggesting you fall in line and start to climb.

      Given all that, some of us come alive later than Leonardo, who found himself a studio boy at 14. Some of us stumbled through our early days unaware of the creative forces dormant within. A sketch here and there, a well-received creative writing assignment, a teacher coaxing us to at least take a few steps down that other path to see what we find. Most of it placed aside awaiting a time when we weren’t so busy reconciling what the world wants for us over our true calling.

      But the artist is alive, hidden within, seeking expression in letters and playlists, gardening and crisply-painted walls, emails and Instagram posts. Finding a heartbeat, we begin to feed our inner artist, expanding further into expression. We’ve stumbled on the path we’ve ignored for years, wondering not where it will take us, but why it took us so long to find it.

      “I don’t want to feel as if my life were a sojourn any longer. That philosophy cannot be true which so paints it. It is time now that I begin to live.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      All of those creative forces within, bursting at the seams, seeking to be released. Creative expression isn’t a side hustle, it’s our life force trying to fly. That artist within us is alive, and strives to keep the rest of us alive too. Choose to follow the path where it leads. We may find it beautiful.

    • Golden and Eternal

      There is no need to say another word
      It will be golden and eternal just like that
      Something good will come of all things yet
      Simple golden eternity blessing all
      These roads don’t move;
      You’re the one that moves.
      — Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar, These Roads Don’t Move

      “Just a golden wash of goodness has spread over all and over all my body and mind — Simple golden eternity blessing all — Something good will come out of all things yet — And it will be golden and eternal just like that — There’s no need to say another word.” — Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

      When I realize that the song These Roads Don’t Move is already sixteen years old, I shake me head in wonder at how fast it all flies by. So much has happened in that time, and continues to at a relentless pace. Is it any wonder that we grow more philosophical and spiritual as we accumulate years behind us?

      When the world feels like it’s failing us, it helps to think in terms of eternity. The world is part of the universe and is thus timeless and indifferent to our hopes and dreams. We will one day join eternity again, once we stop wrestling with the friction of living in a concept of time. This too shall pass… and it will all slip into eternity.

      Returning to great music from our past, or returning to passages from books we once revered, or a poem that still haunts us—these are the return of wonder to our lives from another chapter on the journey. Art captures eternity in the amber of the moment, to borrow Kurt Vonnegut’s magical line, and we carry that moment through our time. Art is eternal, if fragile. We’re the ones that move. We realize the changes in touchstone moments like revisiting the past and understanding just how far we’ve come.

    • Creativity and Work

      “Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent Van Gogh

      Work without creativity is drudgery. Creativity without work is nothing but daydreaming. The optimal condition for any of us is to do creative work every day. When it all comes together, it’s magic.

      When we go through the motions in our work or creative pursuits, we quickly grow bored and look for distraction or an exit plan. When we do creative work, we imagine doing it forever. We ought to ask ourselves in all pursuits, is this enough? What more can I bring to this? The answer may drive us to make the changes necessary to be more actively engaged in creative work.

      So many people are lost in their days, either plodding through the hours or daydreaming the time away. That’s no way to live. I’ve been there myself, struggling through soul-crushing work looking for a viable escape plan. It wasn’t until the moments in my career where I brought creativity to my work that it lit a spark and illuminated my days. It’s the same with writing—when I go through the motions, nothing interesting happens. When I work through the walls I find the muse waiting on the other side.

      None of us have the time to waste on meaningless activity. Bringing work to our creative pursuits is just as essential as bringing creativity to our work. We cannot go through the motions in our days and live an optimized life. Creativity and work must be integrated together to fully realize our potential.

    • A Creative Life

      “The creative adult is the child who has survived.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      A creative life is a lifestyle choice more than an economic choice. I once had that mixed up in my mind, chasing a career path that didn’t suit my particular passion. But with anything done repeatedly, we develop business acumen and an ability to communicate with others that lends itself to business success. But is that enough?

      When I began this blog, it was a way to start incrementally introducing myself back to creativity. It’s paid dividends in other parts of my life as well, with better writing and communication skills (as one might expect), but also in more creative thinking applied to problems encountered along the way. When we let creativity out of the box it becomes a trusted advisor tapping us on the shoulder when most needed.

      Whatever the future holds for all of us, there’s no doubt that the need for more creativity in our lives is essential. It’s a call to arms for the self: do the work that inspires, and grow with it. So what is whispering in the ear now, eager for expression? We must give creativity the light it needs to grow, that we may grow with it.

    • In the Ripple

      “Men see God in the ripple but not in miles of still water. Of all the two-thousand miles that the St. Lawrence flows—pilgrims go only to Niagara.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      As a pilgrim to many a waterfall, including Niagara, I know the call of white water. Isn’t it thrilling to experience the power of water channeled into a plummet? Yet Niagara herself is only a fraction of what she was before most of her water was redirected to hydroelectric power. It turns out that I’m keen on productivity too, and appreciate the clean energy even as I wonder what those falls felt like before they were diminished.

      We focus so much on the ripple we’re making that we forget that a pond was beautiful before the splash is made at all. Deep down we know that those still waters may still be here for what feels like eternity, but humans don’t have that kind of timeline. We feel a compulsion to do something in our time. If it any wonder we’re attracted to the ripple?

      Action is thus our call. Sometimes it’s in service of the harvest; productive and purposeful. Often it’s merely busyness for its own sake, as if churning the waters enough will make up for direction. The thing is, it’s no secret that water that’s been churned up is often murky. To bring clarity we must also have stillness. All this busyness in our lives doesn’t lend itself to insight or revelation.

      I grew up in New England, where great mill cities were built with the power of channeled water. In the spring when the waters are flowing quickly it’s not difficult to maintain momentum in the mills. But after the waters recede, the mills have difficulty getting enough power. So the mill engineers built giant reservoirs to help regulate the flow of water for optimal performance.

      We run ourselves dry if we don’t pause now and then and gather ourselves. We must learn to settle into our stillness and see what it brings. We may find our creativity flows far better when we fill our own reservoir. Seeking out balance in this way brings us to sustained productivity and the ripple we wish to make, and also to revelation and purpose, that we may find the right channel for our power.

    • The Noble Road

      “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” — Ernest Hemingway

      I was out for a walk on the local rail trail, looking at the ice formations developing on the ledge, when I noticed someone had tagged some of the rock face. My opinion of tagging isn’t positive. It’s someone spray-painting inane symbols of self importance on something that in many cases was more beautiful before the affront. And yet I’m a fan of street art. It’s the same paint, but in my opinion the intent is different. I value order over chaos, and tagging nature is chaos in my mind. Collectively, we must choose a better path.

      I’m a better technical writer than I once was if only because I think more about the semicolon in Hemingway’s quote and the em dash I used to credit him for the quote than I did when I began blogging. But being a technical writer was never the aspiration (no doubt my writing still makes an editor shudder). Being a person who has something interesting to write about is the true goal. Some days are full of growth in this regard, some days leave something to be desired. The road to better continues upward.

      Better in and of itself is useless unless we leverage it for growth and enlightenment. The noble road is a path of goodwill towards others, of mutual support for common goals and uncommon dreams. It’s Kaizen (constant and never-ending improvement of the self) with the aim of arete (that forever evasive personal excellence). We may never reach excellence, but the climb towards it has a nicer view.

      We know that art is highly subjective, and one person’s junk is another’s art. I may not understand or appreciate some art for all that it represents, but I generally find connection in the intent of the work. When an artist aspires towards excellence, it shines through in both their art and in how they move through the world. We can see when someone is on the noble road just as easily as we can see when they’re on the road to ruin. The trick is to rise above the distractions of life and see which road we ourselves are on.

    • Buried Treasure

      I know, you never intended to be in this world.
      But you’re in it all the same.
      so why not get started immediately.
      I mean, belonging to it.
      There is so much to admire, to weep over.
      And to write music or poems about.
      — Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

      I know that there’s darkness in the world. I know that my time in it will draw to a close one day. I can hope that day is long from now, but really, who knows? And so I work to make something beautiful of this day, even if the world never finds it—it will be my buried treasure awaiting discovery. Perhaps this blog post, perhaps a photograph, or maybe the way a passage I underlined in a book long ago, that escapes even me.

      The snow is accumulating, layering above the frozen lawn, hiding those stubborn acorns and oak leaves that fell after the very last cleanup. There is never a last cleanup, they whisper. Life is a cycle and we are merely surfers catching a wave in our time. We aren’t meant to wrestle with infinity, it’s always had the advantage of waiting us out. Those holdout acorns have become buried treasure too.

      Each day I find some small project to finish. A book I thought would never end, a bit of paint on the wooden trim, a call I’ve been reluctant to make, a paragraph written and re-written in hopes of being published one day. Maybe, like those acorns buried under the falling snow, our work will be frozen in time awaiting some moment in the sun. Our best treasure still hides within. We must stop hiding and venture out into the world, while there’s time for such things.

    • To Be More

      “Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.” — Albert Camus

      To live and create, to the point of tears… How many of us read that and then settle back into old routines? It would be more prudent to stick with the familiar, to live a vanilla lifestyle, to do work that we’re comfortable with, and to stay in our circle of influence so we don’t upset the apple cart. There’s something to the tried and true, after all, for it brought us to this place.

      In the words of Marshall Goldsmith, “What got you here won’t get you there.” We’ve only got a few blessed days to work with, let us not dare waste this one on trivial pursuits. We may choose to be bold, and rise to meet the moments that unfold. For this, friend, is all there is.

      This isn’t a call for reckless living, consumerism or nihilism—just the opposite really. We must be bold, focused and purposeful with each moment, that we may optimize it. Optimization may sound very professional and career-focused, but can we not use the same standard on our days? We only have this one, why dare squander its potential? Carpe diem.

      With every deliberate act, we ought to consider how to amplify it more. Be more creative in our work, be more adventurous in our recreation, be more engaged in our relationships. It doesn’t take much more than choosing and following through. Momentum matters in all things: we may be more now, that we may build on that later. Live as if tomorrow depended on our actions today. We know it does.

    • The Highest Possible Thing

      “It’s so silly in life not to pursue the highest possible thing you can imagine, even if you run the risk of losing it all. You can’t be an artist and be safe.” — Francis Ford Coppola

      To reach for something beyond our present capabilities is to risk something tangible, be it a hit to our reputation, our financial or physical wellbeing, or our precious time. It’s easier to just do what everyone wants of us, rather than to keep answering the same old questions about what we’re going to do with our lives. That question is so common that it auto-filled as I typed it.

      The thing is, we waste so much time just answering the damned question instead of simply pursuing the dream that most people never ship the work. Wait too long and that dream dies with us one day. Talk about losing it all…

      That voice of reason means well for us, but it thinks small. Nothing perfectly reasonable turns out to be great. Reasonable only leads to “fine”, as in, “How’s everything going for you, old friend?” Our confidant who once knew our secret dream back in the day asked. “Oh, it’s going fine.” We respond, and all that was lost but unsaid was revealed.

      When it comes time to put our highest aspirations ahead of the feeble excuses about time and commitments or the expectations of our tribe, we must train ourselves to forget reasonable. The biggest risk is wasting the present in the futile hope that tomorrow will be any different. There is no tomorrow, old friend: Take the bold route now.

    • Urgency Applies

      “The reason to finish is to start something new.” — Rick Rubin

      To finish what we started ought to be the goal for every project, but we know the truth isn’t so pretty. We bounce between projects, finishing some, but too often drag others along forever for want of attention. It’s all prioritization and focus, lest the forces conspiring against us wash over our lives and that project we were once so excited about gets flushed away like so many schemes and dreams. As with life itself, urgency applies to projects. Do it now.

      Starting something new is exciting. We dance with possibilities: discovering and enhancing and dancing with the light that shines through our eyes and lights up our work. Like a cold mountain stream, it’s invigorating and full of momentum. It’s only downstream, where things slow down and sometimes stagnate, where that project grows tedious. Momentum is everything, and we maintain it through focused attention. Deep channels flow relentlessly fast, shallow deltas slow and sometimes flow backwards with the whim of the tide.

      That new project ought to be a reward for having finished the previous project, not yet another distraction from it. Surely urgency applies to the things we wish to accomplish in this lifetime. We must finish what we’ve started, that we may begin again with the fresh perspective and skills developed from the last brought to the next.