It’s a survival thing. When a person is an Outsider — someone who doesn’t “belong” to a group of one sort or another for whatever reason — there is a kind of invisible barrier that rises up between them and the people who do belong to that group. It’s a very real divide. “Same” is good, the prevailing culture code says; “different” not so much. It’s a built-in herd thing, I suppose. Every group has a culture code. Every group…
One of the best bits of advice I’ve come across is in Sam Bennett’s book GET IT DONE: From Procrastination to Creative Genius in 15 Minutes a Day: “Be busy like a trapeze artist flying through the air or like a stuntwoman – just cleanly move through each task with great clarity, concentration, and grace.”
“Mash-ups” is a new word for me, but an old art-strategy. You mix or fuse disparate elements or types of media that don’t normally go together and somehow synthesize new meaning out of the mix. This is what you do when you play with what artists call “mixed media”.
My idea of “poet” is someone who loves words. The dictionary (preferably unabridged) is this kind of poet’s Bible. The etymology of words — how they began, how they change in meaning and develop nuances over time, and how they die when they’re neglected — that’s a fascination for this kind of poet. Why one word or phrase works and another doesn’t…the TASTE of words…their music and the rhythm of strings of them, their “prosody” — that stuff’s exciting to…
