Archive for Inspiration
i thank You God for most this amazing
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s that time again!
I’m a huge poetry fan, as I was an English major back in the day, along with studying art, and poetry is one of my earliest loves. I feel like it’s the most marginalized art form, and most of us were taught poetry in school by people who didn’t like it. What a shame, since so often it’s the art form we reach for when we need to express our most important emotions.
I thought the exuberance of this poem would be good for a grey winter day (like the one we’re having here in the Northeast) and e.e. cummings‘ playfulness with language is a great inspiration for doing your own thing in whatever your art form.
You might not know that e.e. cummings also painted and drew, and was influenced by Surrealism, which I talked about recently in my blog post on Automatic Drawing.
Enjoy.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
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Pushing Past Rejection
Posted by: | CommentsIn my last post, Bags of Gratitude, I mentioned two big takeaways I got from a talk I heard from motivational speaker Kevin Touhey, but I only wrote about one.
The second one is something I’ve wrestled with on and off for a long time–pushing past rejection.
As part of his talk, Kevin shared his experience of writing a memoir/motivational how-to book and trying to get it published. He sent his book out to fifty-two publishers and they all rejected him.
Fifty-two. 5-2.
And then he published it himself.
It got to 2nd place on the Amazon best-seller list, and now he has a publisher for his 2nd edition.
As I listened to his story, I thought, hmmm, when would I have quit? When would I have thought that I needed to read the writing on the wall and understand that what I had written was no good? Twenty rejections? Eleven rejections? Thirty-one?
All my life I have been so moved by stories of people ignoring rejection or prevailing wisdom about what’s “good” or “worthy” and what isn’t, and turning their dreams into success.
I’ve marveled at their emotional fortitude and lack of self-doubt. Their unwavering belief in what’s they’ve created above and beyond what anyone else thinks about it. Read More→
Bags of Gratitude
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Last night I went to my first ever business networking meet-up in Manhattan.
I almost ran out in the first 5 minutes, panicking about out how I was going to keep chatting with perfect strangers all night.
But I met a lot of nice, down to earth small business owners and we had a motivational speaker, Kevin Touhey, who was a very pleasant surprise.
“Pleasant surprise”, I guess, because I tend to wrinkle my nose at titles like “Motivational Speaker” and the blurb I read seemed like a lot of internet sales hype I’ve seen before. But he was warm, honest and real. And now that I’ve met him, I know he means it all.
And while a lot of what he said wasn’t new to me, it was a great reminder. And he shared two experiences that lingered especially in my mind after the talk was over.
Bags and Bags
One was that he has grocery bags in his office filled with scraps of paper with different thoughts of gratitude and appreciation written on each one. Bags–plural.
He pulls out an appreciation or two when he needs to counteract a negative belief or experience.
He holds his hand over his heart and breathes into it as he reads these thoughts of gratitude and appreciation to himself in order to blunt the effect of the negative belief pattern and stop the spiral of indulging familiar demons.
I really like the idea of physically creating and keeping actual bags of gratitude around me–it’s so concrete and poetic at the same time. Read More→
Creative Spark
Posted by: | CommentsElizabeth Gilbert wrote the wonderful memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Last winter she gave a fantastic Ted Talk and I thought I should share it here in case you haven’t seen it.
It’s a great talk on creativity, “genius”, success, fear of failure, and the cultural stereotypes of the “unstable artist” and how we might rethink that. I hope you enjoy it–she’s very engaging.
(If you’re reading this in an email, you’ll have to click here to view the video.)
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When I Met My Muse
Posted by: | CommentsTime for another poem. I like this short one about finding one’s muse by William Stafford.
It’s rare today that artists talk of having a muse. We mostly think of (male) painters from the past as having a (female) muse–a particular model perhaps, that intrigued an artist to make painting after painting, trying to capture or express a particular something.
But I like how Stafford suggests that your muse is “your own way of looking at things”; asserting that your own idiosyncratic point of view is motivation and reason enough to create what you are inclined to create. Enjoy.
When I Met My Muse
I glanced at her and took my glasses
off—they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. “I am your own
way of looking at things,” she said. “When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation.” And I took her hand.
—William Stafford from The Way It Is
Feeding Your Soul
Posted by: | CommentsLately, my husband and I have gone to a couple of free, old-fashioned “salon” type gatherings at the Science House in Manhattan.
The first talk we went to was about String Theory, and the second was on Quantum Mechanics.
Now, before you run away, I just want you to know that I am not a science or math-y type person–I still blanch at the mere mention of a word problem and I know we’re made up of cells and atoms and everything, but, well, it all gets kind of hazy for me after that.
What’s great about these talks though, is we have a fabulous teacher who makes these complicated ideas accessible to the layperson–he leaves out the math and we discuss the concepts.
So we spent each of these evenings exploring big ideas about physics, the men who figured them out, what all we still don’t know, what we used to believe but don’t anymore, etc. (I love the ‘we’ thing, like I even have a clue.)
It was so fun.
And I realized that one of the reasons it was so fun is that the entire evening was spent exploring ideas. Sitting with a small group of strangers of varying degrees of scientific understanding chatting about the universe, our origins, and everything that’s either gigantic or uber-tiny about life itself.
How often do we really do that? I know it’s pretty rare for me. It felt so enriching, interesting and nourishing. Read More→
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i thank You God for most this amazing
To Thine Own Self Be True and Other Difficulties
Posted by: | CommentsThe other day, I went on a business forum I’m a member of, and I asked for some feedback on a few projects I’m working on. I got some. And then I was hurt and angry.
Hmm. As someone who has made her living designing things, I thought that I’d gotten good at asking for feedback only when I’m willing to hear whatever someone has to say. (When what you make is part of a business discussion, it can get a little callous, so it helps if you learn strategies for toughening up.)
So I clearly blew it this time, which I only realized after I got feedback I didn’t want. AND, to make matters worse, I hid my hurt and displeasure and thanked them for their comments.
Oh brother.
And then I had a fight with my husband instead. Alas.
Because he basically said, “Who cares what they think?”
Well, it turns out I did. Too much. Read More→
My name is Sarah Bush and this is my blog dedicated to helping busy artistic people like you weave creativity back into your life again.
