The source of all art is the human psyche’s primal need for the resolution of stress and discord through beauty and harmony. … Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but well-told stories have the power to harmonise what you know with what you feel.*
Robert McKee

When passion of feeling and technical brilliance come together the beauty can be devastating and transfiguring.**
John O’Donohue

The story is how we make all of that
passion and competence
breathe and live and dance each day;
Whilst comprised of thoughts and feelings,
It only finds full expression in our actions,
The making of the beautiful we are
each capable of for one another.
More than this,
The story keeps us moving through all the struggles:
The myth and its accompanying rituals
were a reminder that often things had to get worse
before they could get better,
and that survive and creativity
required a dedicated struggle.^

*Robert McKee‘s newsletter: What Makes a Story a Work of Art?;
**John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
^Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth.

I want to go on drawing with those old fashioned implements with which you can literally feel the shapes and dorms you are committing to paper – metal nibs, brushes, reed pens, quills. But today these drawings can be reproduced at any size.*
Quentin Blake

Keeping it simple in the twenty-first century involves another set of important tasks. These include decluttering our minds by switching off our devices and disconnecting from digital distractions.**
Anna Katharina Schaffner

Seth Godin writes about how ChatPDF can
instantly read and summarise a document for you;
The problem is:
It doesn’t work until we choose to understand.
Part of the magic of an actual book is that
the reader ends up understanding.
It seeps in, the aha’s are found,
not highlighted.^
But this isn’t about old versus new,
As Quentin Blake’s remark about
how technology allows his drawings to be
reproduced on a grand scale;
It’s about how the ability to use old and new smarter
will become a 21st century-defining quality.

*Quentin Blake’s Beyond the Page;
**Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self-Improvement;
^Seth Godin’s blog: The Cliff Notes paradox.

I always admire people who marvel at things that anyone could have noticed but didn’t.*
Brian Eno

I discovered things and wanted to share them. … Don’t look at me, look at what I’ve found. You don’t have to look far away. You have to know how to see. … The more anonymous you are and the more you lose yourself, the more you add to your self.**
Hedda Sterne

I suspect that if I look with more humility and
gratitude and
faithfulness, then
I will see more.

*Brian Eno’s A Year With Swollen Appendices;
**Austin Kleon’s blog: The work and wisdom of Hedda Sterne.

Life is not linear. When you follow your own true not you create new opportunities, meet new people, have different experiences and create a different life.
Ken Robinson

Being a midwife is a cooperative exercise. When some of us are tempted to call the journey off, others are there to remind them that we all in the process of giving birth and that birth is hard, focused work.
Mary Ruth Broz anad Barbara Flynn

Whilst the saying is usually
comings and goings,
Goings allow for new comings –
A point of encouragement I cannot help but feel
as I look upon a new journey.
We don’t do this haphazardly,
We arrive at our new futures by
living our talents and values as large as we possibly can:
The soul is never at home in
the social world that we inhabit.
It is too large for your contained, managed lives.^

*Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds;
**Mary Ruth Broz and Barbara Flynn’s Midwives of An Unnamed Future;
^John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

Characterisation is achieved … through a process that opens up and releases mysteries of the human spirit. The object is not to “solve” a character – to expose some hidden secret – but instead to deepen and enlarge the riddle itself.*
Tim O’Brien

*Peter Turchi’s A Muse and A Maze.

You know … all of this could be rearranged to form quite a different story.*
Jan Kjærstad

The self is always under construction. The multiplicity of selves is what allows change.*
Peter Turchi

There’s a different story in each of us, some
new invention of self.
Not some fantasy or illusion
like the magician’s persona Peter Turchi describes:
Whatever the details, that
character is every magician’s
first illusion.*
This story is true, or truer –
Truth being a journey we are making through life –
And the truer we can be –
To self, to others, to our god or beliefs –
The more meaningful and weightier our lives will be:
May you see in what you do
the beauty of your soul.**

*Peter Turchi’s A Muse and A Maze;
**John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For Work.

When someone shares a new idea, or makes a pitch, or describes a dream, what would happen if you were enthusiastic? … In this moment, your confidence and enthusiasm exist to make the idea better. No harm in that. For either of you.*
Seth Godin

HOLY S[*&%],
HOLY. S[*&%].
Keep Writing.
Drop Everything.
Write.
WRITE
WOMAN
WRITE**
Ken Cain

We’re each capable of bringing a little of
our light to others –
And we all need more light.
So more light-shedders in our lives, please,
Which means more light gatherers.

*Seth Godin’s blog: Cooperative enthusiasm;
*Susan Cain’s Bittersweet; Ken Cain’s encouragement to Susan to write after reading some of her memoir thoughts in sonnet form.

I am a question asker and a truth seeker. I do not have much in the way of status in my life, more security. I have been on a quest, as it were, from the beginning.*
M. C. Richards

When people say to me that they are not creative, I assume they just haven’t yet learnt what is involved.**
Ken Robinson

We would think it quite a thing if
we could generate our own light to live by,
Yet we may undervalue the wonder of light also being
curious inquiry, imagination and making stuff.

*M. C. Richards’ Centering;
**Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds.

Our knowledge, if we allow it to be transformed within us, turns into capacity for life-serving human deeds.*
M. C. Richards

The experience of ego, and of ego-identity, is based on the concept of having. I have “me” as I have all other things which this “me” owns.  Identity of “I” or self refers to the category of being and not of having.  I am “I” only to the extent to which I am alive, interested, related, active, and to which I have achieved an integration between my appearance – to others and/or to myself – and the core of my personality.**
Erich Fromm

Life is hard,^ but
it can also be
beautiful –
This is the bittersweetness of which
Susan Cain writes in her latest book:
And there it is again:
the oldest problem, the deepest dream –
the pain of separation,
the desire for reunion.^^
Whilst humans are able to point to many fine achievements,
The greatest of all may be how we make available
who we are and
what we have –
For each is more than enough – for healing
the brokenhearted, for gathering
the outcasts, and for binding
one another’s wounds.*^

*M. C. Richards’ Centering;
**Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope;
^The first of Richard Rohr‘s five elemental truths;
^^Susan Cain’s Bittersweet;
*^Psalm 147:2-3.

Life on its own, without art shaping it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but well-told stories have the power to harmonise what you now with what you feel. Story is a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.*
Robert McKee

It is a call. It is a call to meaning, and a call to love. It requires of us that we reach beyond our own dejection and attend to the condition of the world. … I want to facilitate, in some small way, a mutual journey toward meaning; to decrease the dimensions of our emptiness and draw us closer to love and to beauty.**
Nick Cave

Nick Cave’s advice for those experiencing
an emptiness and hollowness is to
go out and save the world, which
he confesses may sound grandiose, but is about
a myriad of small kind actions.
In the end,
We may not save the world, but
we may save ourselves,
That is, to awaken to how our lives are
far from empty and hollow:
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.^

*Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The Power of Story;
**Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files blog: #200;
^Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope.