The Poetics of Simplicity

"My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:47:32 -0400

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.”

- Virginia Woolf

Stephanie's Book Club 5.0

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 12:23:00 -0500

January book of the month: The War of Art, Steven Pressfield. Classic.

You should read this book if you are creative. Or want or to be. If you are talented. Or want to be. If you are ambitious. Or want to be. If you are evolving. Or want to be. This book is for anyone who wants to be a little bit better today than they were yesterday.

Writes Pressfield: “Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. It’s target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and that no one else has but us. Resistance means business. When we fight it, we are in a war to the death.”

Read it. Be transformed by it. And then let’s talk about it.

http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/

"The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good,..."

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:36:27 -0500

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”

- Charles Bukowski

notes in the margins:

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:25:19 -0500

Incomplete manifesto for growth - bruce mau

Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.
Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”
Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’
Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.
Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

"Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense..."

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:12:26 -0500

“Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning.”

- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Photo

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:13:55 -0500

the love of my life and his first duet. i may not be able to...

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 23:00:32 -0500

the love of my life and his first duet. i may not be able to sleep tonight. seriously.

i can’t stay away.

click picture to listen.

these lyrics.

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 02:02:40 -0500

these lyrics.

"I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits."

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 19:13:33 -0400

“I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

every time his hands find themselves on my body, i hear the...

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:27:11 -0400

every time his hands find themselves on my body, i hear the stars exhale.

i’m glad to have my disappointment, which is much better than having nothing.

i want your bones.

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 23:04:16 -0400

i want your bones.

"It is not who I sleep with that defines the quality of these acts. It’s not what we do..."

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 16:38:05 -0400

“It is not who I sleep with that defines the quality of these acts. It’s not what we do together but what life statements I am led to make as the nature and effect of my erotic relationships percolate through my life and my being.”

- Audre Lorde

A Litany for Survival

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 10:42:06 -0400

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive

- Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn

THE MERMAID A mermaid found a swimming lad,Picked him for her own,Pressed her body to his...

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:44:16 -0400

THE MERMAID

A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.

William Butler Yeats

Photo

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:31:17 -0400

balance. ah, balance, i’ve been expecting you.

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:18:15 -0400

balance. ah, balance, i’ve been expecting you.

"Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?"

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:15:14 -0400

“Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?”

- Albert Camus

the answer to it all is LOVE.

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:38:23 -0400

the answer to it all is LOVE.

confession #10101:

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:36:15 -0400

i envy the the trees at this time of the year; experts in letting such beautiful pieces of themselves go.

confession #9957:

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:06:59 -0400

i can’t wait to read fairytales to my swollen belly.