Blog Archives

Pearls from artists* # 637

St. Malo, Brittany, France

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

After periods during which one has actively tried to solve a problem, but has not succeeded, the sudden right orientation of the situation, and with it the solution, tend to occur at moments of extreme mental passivity… A well-known physicist in Scotland once told me that this kind of thing is generally recognized by physicists in Britain. “We often talk about the Three B’s,” he said, “the Bus, the Bath, and the Bed. That’s where the great discoveries are made in our science.”

In my experience travel helps, too!

Wolfgang Koehler quoted in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 635

Dinard, Brittany, France

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

The body of writing takes a thousand different forms,

and there is no right way to measure.

Changing, changing at the flick of a hand, its various

forms are difficult to capture.

Words and phrases compete with one another, but the

mind is still master.

Caught between the unborn and the living, the writer

struggles to maintain both depth and surface.

He may depart from the square, he may overstep the

circle, searching for the one true form of his reality.

He would fill the eyes of his readers with splendor, he

would sharpen the mind’s values.

The one whose language is muddled cannot do it;

only when mind is clear can language be noble.

Lu Chi quoted in Free Play: Improvisation in Art and Life by Stephen Nachmanovitch

Comments are welcome!

Travel photo of the month*

Dinard, Brittany, France


*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog

Comments are welcome!