Sunday, October 24, 2010

The coolest thing

I just returned from a week in Paris visiting La Fonderie. Seeing friends and co-workers, meeting new artists in the space we opened, hearing about their dreams and projects, their successes and challenges. It is always inspiring to be with creative people.

Speaking about new technology that promises to erase the line between television and computer, Google is quoted in Newsweek (Oct 17 2010) as saying: “The coolest thing about Google TV is that we don’t even know what the coolest thing about it will be.”

No matter what one might think about Google, a corporation like others financially motivated to get people to use their services, that statement expresses a kind of vision that leaves the horizon open for those who would like to explore it and even move it.

It is a vision that invites people in, and challenges them to innovate and create. To imagine.

It is the kind of invitation that I try to give to those around me. Because there are endless possibilities for those who are open to the idea that we don’t yet know what the defining moment or body of work or mark of our lives will be.

That describes, at least in part, an artistic journey and a creative life.

What will you create today?

Monday, October 4, 2010

A clearing in the forest

My favorite songwriter/poet tells me to write the piece first, then let the title emerge. Okay, I will try that. But couldn’t help attempting to visualize this place in my journey with some image that was not urban, since there is nothing urban around me.

Reading this morning in Devotional Classics, seeking some profound thoughts to help me start my day, I was puzzled by a selection dealing with affections as the spring of action. It is just that affections, somehow tied to the emotions, do not lately seem to have figured significantly in my process. I am trying to find the next right thing. The next action to take. There is an unlimited supply of ideas and possibilities.

I have been more focused on strategy and plans, and spiritual and artistic visions. Creative stuff. Starting stuff. It is not sure that I have been listening closely.

This morning the phrase jumped from the page and stuck in my head: “…do not be stubborn any longer.” Not the inspirational word that I was seeking.

Actually, I have complained that I am tired of waiting, and wondered why God was stubbornly withholding from me.

Odd to be outed in this way. “Do not be stubborn any longer.”

As if it is my heart that needs to relent, not his. As if he were already at work, already extraordinarily generous, inviting me into the new things that he is doing, and the things that he wants me to dream and do.

Ok, I see. And I think the title works fine.

What are you seeing today?
The illusion wanes, and in time we return
to our noisy cities where the blue
appears only in fragments
high up among the towering shapes.
Then rain leaching the earth.
Tedious, winter burdens the roofs,
and light is a miser, the soul bitter.
Yet, one day through an open gate,
among the green luxuriance of a yard,
the yellow lemons fire
and the heart melts,
and golden songs pour
into the breast
from the raised cornets of the sun.

from "The Lemon Trees"
by Eugenio Montale
(Translated by Lee Gerlach)