A year ago,
I was enjoying my hot chocolate
as I sat in a Melbourne cafe, watching
a humongous queue of Oasis fans
waiting their turn to buy merchandise.
It caused me to ponder how
the best place to be
is in a creative line of one–
Doing the thing
only each of us can do.
It sounds facile to say, “We don’t pick our subject. Our subject picks us.” But I’m convinced that statement is true…Like the hero’s journey, the artist’s journey demands to be lived out. It demands to be expressed.*
Steven Pressfield
I didn’t set out
with the idea of doing
what I now do.
It found me
along the way
and I cannot not do it.
Something speaks to us
through our lives,
And how will we respond?
*Steven Pressfield’s The Artist’s Way.
What gift do you bring for your people?…The gift is the product of the hero’s solitary suffering.*
Steven Pressfield
I came here, and, well, I’ve been here ever since. The moral of this cautionary tale is: if you want to do something, you’d better watch out, because you might just end up doing it for the rest of your life!**
Josef DeCoux
Passion–
The original sort
as in
suffering and
enduring–
The thing you cannot
not do
with all your heart
and energy, all your curiosity
and imagination
and creativity–
*Steven Pressfield’s The Artist’s Journey;
**Quoted from Robert Macfarlane’s Is A River Alive?; follow the link above to check out Josef DeCoux’s passion.
Let the deadline of death drive you.
Create until your last breath.
Let your last spark of life go into your work.
Die empty, so death takes only a corpse.*
Derek Sivers
Reality does not provide meaning.
Stories do.**
Robert McKee
Death is our ultimate reality
making sense of everything and all,
Ever present,
Not only when we find ourselves in a scrape–
Death does not tell us what we ought to do,
Only that we may want to find and live fully
the thing we have a hankering for–
How wasteful then
to try to live without Death’s help–
*Derek Sivers’ How To Live;
**Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Why Reality Is Not Enough For Writers.
Interest is an all-pervading attitude and form of relatedness to the world, and one might define it in a very broad sense as the interest of the living person in all that is alive and grows. Even when this sphere of interest is genuine, there will be no difficulty in arousing his interest in other fields, simply because he is an interested person.*
Erich Fromm
*Erich Fromm’s The Revolution Of Hope.
Resistance is not a peripheral opponent…It comes from us. You can board a spaceship to Pluto and settle, all by yourself, into a perfect artist’s cottage ten zillion miles from Earth. Resistance will still be with you. The enemy is inside you.*
Steven Pressfield
When we find the thing
we really want to do–
Think values, energy, superpowers
all coming together in some urgent way,
Maybe we struggle to start
because we don’t want to break it–
But this may be exactly what it needs
to become what it can be.
*Steven Pressfield’s Do The Work.
I ask you to assume that the person in front of you contains some piece of themselves that has no weight, size, colour, or shape yet gives them infinite value and dignity. If you consider that each person has a soul, you will be aware that each person has some transcendent spark in them. If you see the people you meet as precious souls, you’ll probably wind up treating them well.*
David Brooks
*David Brooks’ How To See A Person.
Faithfulness is is the art
of making something
for others
with who you are
and what you have–
In ways large and small
day after day.
Old age offers the opportunity to integrate and bring together the multiplicity of directions that you have travelled. It is a time when you can be awakened and new possibilities come alive for you.*
John O’Donohue
*John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara.
You need ritual not inspiration. Every day, no matter what, you must practise. Your practice ritual is your highest priority – an unbreakable commitment. Stubbornly protect this time against the demands of the world.*
Derek Sivers
*Derek Sivers’ How To Live.
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