These days, we know A LOT of people who are in the middle of a seachange, ourselves included: NOT yet knowing what exactly we’re in the process of creating, or where we’ll end up. So stumbling on this quote by T.S. Eliot was heartening and affirming. It’s just THE DEAL: in creating something new, we…
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(Video link here.) A writer we know confessed her method to us: when she was blocked, she just lay down and read something completely unrelated until she fell asleep. It’s like shutting down a computer. When she woke up, she’d usually be able to continue her work. OMG, we do that too! We were SO…
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(Video link here.) We are always on the lookout for people, books and sites that give an honest view of what it takes to make or do or be something. So were intrigued by this video trailer for The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. The book is Oliver Burkeman’s exploration of various…
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On Thursday evening, we published pictures of ‘the improvised life’s laboratory – our new space – after all hell had broken loose and we were struggling to get some perspective on a day where everything had gone awry. We did manage to, with the help also of some hilarious and generous Comments from readers. One…
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In response to our many LEAP photos, and the recent one of a woman wading in (a slow leap) – a definite obsession – reader Maia Tabet emailed us this adage…with her tiny comment. It’s perfect – charmingly old-fashioned, almost children’s rhyme-ish – and speaks to the practice we work to cultivate, of having faith…
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‘back to the future’ by malte jäger, 2011 Reminder to self: this perfect flying move was the result of A LOT of practice and falling flat on face… via Gif me Berlin Related posts: skateboard in style! (1974) practice flying (via the uganda skateboard union) skateistan: skateboarding as antidote (to war, poverty, sadness…) joy ride: practice makes…
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The Henry Miller video we posted on Friday has led us to an Eastertime revelation. It can be summed up in two words: Blaise Cendrars. Miller praised the French writer as “my idol,” and says, “what a writer learns from Cendrars is to follow his nose, to obey life’s commands, to worship no other god…
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(Video link here.) We’ve posted before about artist Theo Jansen’s remarkable Strandbeests, creatures made entirely from PVC pipe that move on their own using wind-power. Watching them scurry across the beach like enormous prehistoric insects never ceases to delight us. Jansen, who has been working on his beasts for over 20 years, has often referred…
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(Video link here.) Here’s a glimpse of the interactive iPAD app that Björk recently created to be part of her recent album, as she tries to give create ever more dimensions in her music. Its introduction, narrated by David Attenborough, is a strange combination of beautiful, inspiring and ever-so-slightly hokey, in a good way. We…
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This photo of artist Lucio Fontana reminded us how central that concept of “blank canvas” is to ‘the improvised life’. Getting up in the morning, the day ahead is our first blank canvas. Each post we write starts as one as well: blank space that is pure potential; we often don’t know where it will go,…
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From a teeny, illuminating interview with Neil Gaiman that we stumbled on in TimeOut New York: Q: You once said that your biggest influence, for your writing, was punk rock—the idea that you could do something just by doing it. It still is. You have to be willing to make mistakes, and you have to…
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DARK SIDE OF THE LENS from Astray Films on Vimeo. Waylon Lewis, the powerhouse behind Elephant Journal sent us this: a gift video for a long weekend. See you Tuesday sometime! Related links:creative pursuit as deep sea dive
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A friend recently alerted us to Lynda Barry‘s book What It Is: ” It is a book about writing that provides guidance on how you can re-discover skills you likely possessed before getting caught up in the notions of “good and bad”. It’s more than a book. It’s a public service. Barry is trying to help everyone reconnect…
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This video is of comedienne/writer/producer/brilliantina Tina Fey’s hour-long interview with Google’s awkward, SO not-quite-getting-it Eric Schmidt about her book Bossypants. The best bits for us are 4 1/2 minutes right up front, starting at about 3:30 when Fey talks about her rules for improv, and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels rules for hiring/collaborating. Although…
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One week after we posted Anni Albers words about “listening to the materials”, we found this quote by sculptor Ulrich Rückriemon on the great art blog Rolu: “my basic principle is: i start from an idea and from the material. it is not fixed which of the two comes in the first place. for me,…
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99% recently published a compelling post called the Power of Uncertainty. The gist (though it’s worth reading the whole thing): Projects fail all the time because we unwittingly bake the end solution into our initial objective. Rather than enduring an uncomfortable (but highly necessary) period of ambiguity, we fall into the trap of limiting our…
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Liz Massey of Creative Liberty blog featured an interview called with Sally in her April e-newsletter. Check it out here to learn how ‘the improvised life’ came about, and Sally’s rant-ette on the creative process, how cooking relates to improvising, and the benefits of adopting an improvisational frame of mind… Here’s an excerpt: What advice…
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MANY years ago, when we barely knew who Anni Albers was, we clipped a quote of hers from a magazine, and have had it on our fridge ever since. It is faded and yellowed, but resonates as strongly as ever: “Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to…
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Ain’t that the truth!
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An amazing 35 seconds. Yeah, that’s what we feel like we are doing, creating… one… step… at… a… time.. Video link here. via Triangulation. Thanks for turning us on to it Cara!
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