To know yourself, you must recognise your rock-bottom inner self, compare your dreams to reality and desires to morality, and from that base explore the social, personal, private and hidden selves that complete your multifaceted humanity.*
Robert McKee

we produce against the feeling of lack**
Byung-Chul Han

But what do we lack? –
Not things but self,
Without which no amount of activity and
stuff will compensate,
Not to be people who have but
to be people who must, the product of
the deep self.

The most useful work we create causes a change to happen. And the more profound the change, the less predictable it is.^

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals;
^Seth Godin’s blog: Comfortable with the fuzziness.

Some doodles from this day through the years.

Thin|Silence comes as a colouring book and as a fancy tea towel (with gift card in the same design). If you’re interested in giving either of these as a Christmas present then you can order a copy of Slow Journeys in the Same Direction here (£5, plus postage and packing), and drop me a line for the tea towel and card (£10, plus postage): geoffrey@thinsilence.org

Old men should be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity …*
T. S. Eliot

Insecurity, for an artist, can ultimately be a gift, albeit an excruciating one.**
Sally Mann

A sparky life, over and against a stodgy life,^ requires
the dynamic as well as the static,^^ although
the likelihood is, as I grow older,
I will seek the stodge and avoid the spark;
Whilst the invitation to keep moving remains –
And as long as we draw breath, it remains –
The wonderful gift of being knocked out of our
knowing and into wondering is still ours, albeit
an unkiltering experience.

Being curious is better than being smart.*^

*Peter Turchi’s A Muse and A Maze;
**Mason Currey’s Subtle Maneuvers blog: Insecurity is a gift!;
^Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World;
^^The dynamic ought to produce the static, the static, in turn must stimulate the dynamic. When life becomes all dynamism or all stasis, we are in trouble. Seth Godin’s new book This is Strategy explores these as strategy and system;
*^James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

For your talent to fight above its weight, it needs to bulk up on knowledge.*
Robert McKee

in indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit**
Robin Wall Kimmerer

A talent is a lyric waiting for a tune,
When increased through the knowledge of heart and soma and
spirit, as well as mind, it becomes a mighty
composition,
An embodied song of joy for
the benefit of others.

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.

doing good was our greatest source of happiness*
gapingvoid

What’s would you do if you could not fail? … What would you do even though you might fail?**
Bernadette Jiwa

What a neat trick:
Happiness follows doing good,
The same goodness that keeps us on track
no matter what.

Goodness is a part of
who we are:
Evolution has produced a mind that
evolves towards an appreciation of
the vastness of our collective design,
and emotions that enable us to
enact these loftier notions. 
We are wired for good.^

*gapingvoid‘s blog: The Quest for Our Higher Self;
**Bernadette Jiwa’s The Story of Telling blog: On Doing the Work That is Calling to Us:
^Dacher Keltner’s Born To Be Good.

(My apologies: I am unable to find the sources for either of today’s quotes.)

Because you can only create from what’s already in your mind, your work is strictly limited to the contents of your unthought thoughts.*
Robert McKee

It’s a good thing reality isn’t limited by your imagination. It’s a good thing reality doesn’t mirror your imagination. The fact that you can imagine a different reality, and set your path toward it, is a miracle.**
Gabe Anderson

I may feed my body with the same breakfast of porridge every day,
But I aim to feed my mind – and my imagination – with
a mélange of thoughts and ideas;
Our imaginations will work with what it finds in our minds,
For good or bad:
The mind takes the shape of whatever
it rests upon – or, more exactly,
the brain takes the shape of whatever
the mind rests upon.^

There are so many thoughts and ideas out there, so
where to begin? –
Following our curiosities and interests is always a good place to
start, but don’t only focus on the centre of these, rather
pay attention to what you find on their edges, then dive
into these, always noticing what appears on their edges,
And on.

Once inside the imagination all manner of inexplicable things occur. Time gets loopy, the past presses itself against the present, and the future pours out its secrets.^^

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Gabe Anderson’s blog: Imagination;
^Rick Hanson, from Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us;
^^Nick Cave’s blog: The Red Hand Files #156

The flâneur moves through the city with neither a map nor a plan. He has to feel himself free and alone, ready for the imponderable.*
Federico Castigliano

Malabou expounds Derrida‘s thought by settling into the undecidability of the French words dériver and arriver. Dériver signifies at one and the same time “to derive” but also “to drift” or “to deviate,” while arriver means not only to arrive at or reach the destination one has consciously set out to reach but also to come about by chance, to happen, like a surprise … .**
John Caputo

It’s okay to use a map or to
follow a plan, but sometimes, it’s better
to leave them behind and wander, especially
with others – something
imagined by Theory U‘s more
circuitous journey of opening the mind and
heart and will, whereby, perhaps,
We shall encounter something not previously imagined
wanting to emerge.

*Federico Castigliano’s Flâneur;
**John Caputo’s What Would Jesus Deconstruct?

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness … we are diminished, and we forget that we are more than we know … .*
Madeleine L’Engle

And if you stopped doing all these things you’re doing for the money and the attention, what would be left? What would you be if you didn’t do these things?**
Derek Sivers

It may not be the thing you are being paid for,
Nor what is getting you noticed –
These may simply be camouflaging what
you really need to do if we are to
lose the feeling that something is
missing.

You may know, yet be putting it off,
Waiting for the perfect conditions that will
never arrive – more likely it is the present imperfect conditions that are
necessitous to your art.

Our success has a lot to do with how we dance with conditions that aren’t quite perfect.^

*Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water;
**Derek Sivers’ Hell Yeah or No;
^Seth Godin’s blog: The perfect conditions.

You were born to make art. But you’ve been brainwashed into believing you can’t trust yourself enough to do so.*
Seth Godin

To be someone as an artist, means: to be able to speak to one’s self.**
Rainer Maria Rilke

Which of these two statements
explains how you think of yourself?

To be human is to be an artist.

Only some are able to be artists.

Which statement do you believe to be true?

*Seth Godin’s The Practice;
**Raier Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.