music, musicians, radio, television
The dreaded “BLOCK”. It’s a mind-thing that plagues every creative person that ever was. Whether you are a writer, a scientist, an artist, or a business person, there comes a time when you reach for an idea and there’s nothing there. For some reason the well has gone dry. Not even mud comes up. You are pounding on a stuck door that, for whatever reason, is closed and locked to you, a door that used to swing open easily at…
Willa Cather once wrote, “Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.” This is a thing I’ve been trying to do in my poetry, I think. Refining that “sense of truthfulness” is really all about asking whether I’m dancing around blathering bullshit or actually standing there, flat-footed, talking true.
Another IPS (Inner Peace Symptom): a tendency to notice and appreciate many joys. [Obsessing on and holding tightly to one kind of joy kills it. If you notice and appreciate many joys, then your days just fill up with them.] I think I have to agree with Henri Matisse, who said, “Ever since there have been men, man has given himself over to too little joy. That alone, my brothers, is our original sin. I should believe only a God…
