Bill Frisell's words of wisdom

“I guess that has something to do with just my personality," he laughs. "Like, it's hard for me to talk sometimes, so that probably comes through, too. When I play, I want to be sure that there's some reason for it to be there, so sometimes I’ll wait. I don't want to just run off with a bunch of stuff; I like to have every note mean something. I have the same attitude, whether I'm playing a solo or comping. I just try to listen to whatever is happening and go with that, rather than play something that's worked out or preconceived. Paul Motian was a big influence on me that way. He's constantly changing and trying to make every note mean something. He won't play something just to play it.”

“Well, there's a lot that I can't do. That's for sure (laughing). I guess I try not to put limits on my imagination or I would say don't put limits on what the possibilities are, but then you're constantly running up against physical limitations all the time and in some ways, that's where you get your own individual, personal sound. You're sort of trying to push past this point. Each person has their own kind of a wall that you get up against and then it is when you get up against that wall, you have to figure out a way to deal with it. One thing that helped me a lot when I was a bit younger, I read something about Miles Davis saying that he was trying to play like Dizzy Gillespie, but he couldn't play that high so he just played what he thought was sort of the same stuff an octave lower or something. And I was thinking if Miles Davis had been able to play like Dizzy Gillespie then we wouldn't have Miles Davis. We would just have another Dizzy Gillespie, which would, that would be fine too, but there is something about dealing with your limitations and I think that's where you find your own sound.”

“Talk about being lucky! Now, it's like this full orchestra surrounding me. I have friends, really close friends, this group of people where I don't have to explain anything. There's a huge body of music that we've all played together, so it's like a live organism that keeps on growing. The circle of people just keeps growing, but there's maybe a core of a bunch of people that we put in different combinations together. We come together and then we go apart and do our own things, and when we come together again everybody just has more experiences that keep feeding this kind of giant plant.”

“It's such a gradual, day-to-day thing chipping away at [one's personal style]. It's not really a matter of finding it. I think so much of it comes from your limitations. I'm hearing something in my head and I'm striving towards it but can't ever really get there. So, you just do what you can do in the moment. And so much of it is what you CAN'T do in what it really sounds like. It's a good thing. It's what makes each of us unique. If we could do whatever we wanted at any moment then there'd be no music [laughs]. Music just keeps on going and going and you never get to the end of it. You just keep trying and trying and trying. There's no finish line or anything.”

“With the people I'm playing with there's tunes we can play where it's not about the tune itself, which becomes a kind of framework where all kinds of new things can happen. I need to write new things and come up with new compositions and all that, but there's something great when people have this shared conversation that they've played for years and years.”

“I guess I'm just looking for progress or something. It's almost an emotional thing. Each time I hope I get a little more comfortable with being myself. All music is that anyway, whether there's other people or not. It's all an invitation to take the next step.”

Knowledge and Creativity

I think the only people who are still capable of saying something are either those who have not been conditioned by education and its notions, or those very few who went through with it and escaped it. If it is creativity and life you desire, you have to dump that baggage at the crossroads and go with what you wanted to say all along.

Education and knowledge have nothing to do with creativity. It took me a long time to realize this. You have to know why you want the answers and what you want to do with them before you cram them down your throat. Being skilled is one thing, being educated is another, and being creative is another. It seems to me that education promises a lot, but delivers little in substance. No wonder most people who invest themselves in education at the expense of all the else end up jaded by it and deal in education for the rest of their lives.

The creative people, the ones actually doing the work, are never to be found within educational and academic circles. Their effect, and especially the influence of the people within it, is so stultifying to the spirit that one must cut all ties with them if one hopes to fly free. The fallacious notion that appears to me to be behind every theoretical analysis of anything (and indeed one must hold this notion to some degree to be true because otherwise the foundation of the whole endeavor collapses) is that something, no matter what it may be or how great, can be understood as the sum of its parts. This raises, for me, two questions: In the first place, why the desire or need to understand it? And second, what effect does one hope this understanding will bring? There is understanding to be had, but this understanding is partial at best, and dubiously related to the actual thing in itself, unless the thing one investigates was made explicitly to be understood through deconstruction, like a puzzle.

What one learns through analysis has more to do with being able to do analysis and less with what one uses the process for. That is to be expected with any kind of standardized method of theoretical understanding. What you learn then becomes a way to deconstruct and understand a particular thing, a method of perception. The scope of this understanding, although useful if used judiciously and with awareness, is very limited. By applying the method, you learn how to apply the method. It becomes more or less and end in itself, unless you are willing to see beyond it. You might know of a way to explain how something works, but you do not know why it does, and without the why you also do not truly know the how, just a how-to. That is because all systems of analysis and theoretical understanding must come necessarily after the fact, and conform to the fact for as long as they can until the new fact, the new art, literature, scientific discovery etc. demand a change in the method of explanation.

A person who goes to university to learn how to become a creative individual, in any field, is sorely deluded. Analysis and theoretical understanding cannot help anyone one bit toward that end. They can only help one "create" work that rises from applying this theoretical understanding and analysis to their craft. In other words, exactly backwards from the way it actually works, from theory to practice, instead of practice to theory. This results in work that has little or nothing to do with creativity, individuality and self-expression and everything to do with clever ways to use theory and knowledge. This, for me, constitutes the fallacy of all educational institutions, a fallacy that is so widespread that almost everyone who is associated with one or wishes to attend one takes as de facto. It is implied within the brochures, through their use of words and so on; "Come to us and we'll tell you all the methods and all the things you need to know to make a great (insert here)".

The problem I see with this is that the more it is propagated, through old institutions and new ones alike and through the majority of the academic world, the more the understanding of what it truly means and takes to be creative is being lost. Pupils imitate their teachers and assume their way of thinking, and pass it on. The industries that deal with creative people conform more and more to this new 'standard' of creative work. People, especially in the States, who want to be musicians or writers or filmmakers are increasingly brainwashed into accepting this sort of propaganda from institutions who in the end exist to make a profit. Most art schools in the US for example are very very expensive, especially music schools. But you know, it's "the place to be" if you wanna "make it". Well about 20%-25% make it with a degree, and out of those about 1%-3% go on to what their institutions promised as a career. Why? Because information is cheap nowadays. You've got institutions churning out thousands of skilled everythings, every year. Thousands of people who have the knowledge and the skills, and are competing for the same kind of work. So the demand for excellence, creativity, individuality and genuine art is on the rise. But 99% of the people who have the skills and the knowledge and can explain to you all of Bach's fugues or write a hundred-thousand word essay on Proust are completely ill-prepared for this demand to be outstanding, to be the originator of truly distinguished creative work. The 1% who figured out that their imagination is their most valuable asset are those who have a shot at being studied and analyzed by the academia later on. These people are visionaries, because they know that, in the words of Keith Jarrett, music does not come from music.

So to come back to my first point, theoretical analysis is very essential and useful in the beginning because it brings together all this vast amount of creative work and filters it through a standard method of deconstruction. It becomes a way of navigating this world of art, or music or literature or whatever it is. But it also has the effect of numbing the senses, of blurring the fine distinctions that are so important and worst of all it can make you think (it certainly made me think) that you really understand something. The only thing you really can come to understand (and therefore apply) is the method. To really understand (which is not exactly the right word for it) that which the method deals with, you have to dump the method altogether or be bound and short-sighted by its limitations. It's just a means to an end, and pretty soon it's not the right means for those who are bursting with creative desire and the spirit of adventure.

The real means are not external, they lie within oneself and, after they have been carefully cultivated they can only be supported by external factors such as knowledge and theory. There are infinite skills one can acquire - the key is to weed through all the "should's" and "have-to's" and only go for those that are absolutely essential to one's creative journey and keep working on them for the rest of one's life, because that's where the true value lies. Everything else is not necessarily superfluous, it's just secondary.

Letting Go?

[...] All I can say is that there is nothing to let go of. It is the illusion that there is something, a "self", a "you" that you believe you are holding on to. So long as you define "you" strictly by your knowledge of your past, your thoughts about the future and your self-awareness in the present moment, you cannot let go. Because the ego cannot let go of itself.

Self-consciousness is the barrier between what is construed as "self" and "other". Self-consciousness, the ego, "yourself" is the dividing line and the root of all fear. The ego is defined by what it separates itself from. The ego is defined by other, and as long as there is the perception of "other", there must be a "self". Fear then, is the resistance of "other".

Fear is what happens when you operate under the illusion of being separate from that which is happening to you. It is only the ego that is afraid. To resist the ego by means of the ego is futile at best and delusional at worst. The ego itself, or the self-consciousness in the present moment, or the sensation of "I" as something that experiences life, instead of being the experience is Resistance. The way it resists is by putting barriers between you and everything else, separating consciousness from Life and blocking experience and action.

When you see all of it is You, and that there is no "other", there is nothing more to fear. There are no barriers, no fears, no effort beyond the "self", beyond the ego.

What you are afraid of is what will set you free. It is the only means of liberation from "self" that has worked for me. It is only through facing fear that you truly come to see that there is no fear, there is no "self", and "you" are not what you think.

When you do what you fear, what goes beyond "yourself", you recognize there is no distinction between "self" and "other" -it was only your thoughts that told you so- and you become liberated from the illusion of control. The intellect cannot serve anything apart from the ego. Only through direct action can this be accomplished. As long as you act through the prism of a "self", whether you are trying to "let go" or not, it makes no difference because for a "self" to be there must be "other" and those two must be different. As long as you remain "yourself" there is the illusion of having to 'let go', which is just another form of Resistance.

There is nothing there to let go of.
There is nobody holding on to anything.

Ray Bradbury's words of wisdom pt.2

“It is easy to doubt yourself, because you look around at a
community of notions held by other writers, other intellectuals,
and they make you blush with guilt. Writing is supposed to be
difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.”

“But, you see, my stories have led me through my life. They
shout, I follow. They run up and bite me on the leg—I respond by
writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I
finish, the idea lets go, and runs off.”

“That is the kind of life I've had. Drunk, and in charge of a
bicycle, as an Irish police report once put it. Drunk with life, that
is, and not knowing where off to next. But you're on your way
before dawn. And the trip? Exactly one half terror, exactly one
half exhilaration.”

“By the time many people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested
of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until
when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto,
no flavor. Others have criticized, and they have criticized themselves,
into embarrassment. When the circus pulls in at five of a
dark cold summer morn, and the calliope sounds, they do not rise
and run, they turn in their sleep, and life passes by.”

“My ideas drove me to it, you see.
The more I did, the more I wanted to do. You grow ravenous.
You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep
at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you
in your bed. It is a grand way to live.”

Steve Lacy's words of wisdom

“When I was coming up in New York in the '50s I was always into the radical players but at the same time I was contemporary with some of the younger accepted players.I was really mainly concerned to work with the radical people but at the same time I couldn't ignore the non-radical elements. But for me playing with the accepted people never worked out. Simply because they knew all the patterns and I didn't. And I knew what it took to learn them but I just didn't have the stomach for it. I didn't have the appetite. Why should I want to learn all those trite patterns? You know, when Bud Powell made them, fifteen years earlier, they weren't patterns. But when somebody analysed them and put them into a system it became a school and many players joined it. But by the time I came to it, I saw through it - the thrill was gone. Jazz got so that it wasn't improvised any more. When you reach what was called 'hard bop' there was no mystery any more. It was like - mechanical - some kind of gymnastics. The patterns are well known and everybody is playing them. It reached a point where I, and many other people, got sick and tired of the 'beat' and the '4 bars' - everybody got tired of the systematic playing, and we just said 'Fuck it'.”

“I think the question of appetite is very important. Some people are of a progressive bent and some are not. And you can't ask either of them to change. Some people are interested in carrying on an old tradition and they can find their kicks in shifting round patterns and they are not in any rush to find new stuff. They can rummage around the old stuff all their lives. People become obsessed with not just maintaining a tradition but with perfecting it. Some people search for the perfect arrangement of the old patterns and that is progress for them. Other people want to beat down the walls and find some new territory.”

Oh, yes.

“Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Joey Baron's words of wisdom

“You have to listen. You can't do anything that you really don't hear. You can get it out of a book or someone can show you something, but if you're not really hearing it inside you're not going to be able to put much belief in it. I mean I know all about all kinds of things and techniques and tricky things but I just don't hear it so I don't waste time trying to force myself to play stuff that I don't hear. I don't fancy myself as being a technical player although a lot of people say: your chops are this and that and how do you do this so fast...it's like I'm not even relating to music that way.”

- Joey Baron

I realize #45

To listen is not merely to hear.
To see is not merely to look.

I realize #44

Growth, improvement and change is the natural order of things. Happiness is the result of challenging ourselves.

I realize #43

The best control is when we are least aware of it. When attention is focused not on control, but on letting go and naturally responding to whatever happens.

Watts Revisited : More Timeless Wisdom

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

Well, here’s the problem: if this is the state of affairs which is so, and if the conscious state you’re in this moment is the same thing as what we might call the Divine State. If you do anything to make it different, it shows that you don’t understand that it’s so. So the moment you start practicing yoga, or praying or meditating, or indulging in some sort of spiritual cultivation, you are getting in your own way.

Now this is the Buddhist trick: the buddha said ‘We suffer because we desire. If you can give up desire, you won’t suffer.’ But he didn’t say that as the last word; he said that as the opening step of a dialogue. Because if you say that to someone, they’re going to come back after a while and say ‘Yes, but now I’m desiring not to desire.’ And so the buddha will answer, ‘Well at last you’re beginning to understand the point.’ Because you can’t give up desire. Why would you try to do that? It’s already desire. So in the same way you say ‘You ought to be unselfish’ or to give up you ego. Let go, relax. Why do you want to do that? Just because it’s another way of beating the game, isn’t it? The moment you hypothesize that you are different from the universe, you want to get one up on it. But if you try to get one up on the universe, and you’re in competition with it, that means you don’t understand you ARE it. You think there’s a real difference between ’self’ and ‘other.’ But ’self,’ what you call yourself, and what you call ‘other’ are mutually necessary to each other like back and front. They’re really one. But just as a magnet polarizes itself at north and south, but it’s all one magnet, so experience polarizes itself as self and other, but it’s all one. If you try to make the south pole defeat the north pole, or get the mastery of it, you show you don’t know what’s going on.

And so in this way–it’s called the technique of reductio ad absurdum. If you think you have a problem, and you’re an ego and you’re in difficulty, the answer the Zen master makes to you is ‘Show me your ego. I want to see this thing that has a problem.’ When Bodidharma, the legendary founder of Zen, came to China, a disciple came to him and said ‘I have no peace of mind. Please pacify my mind.’ And Bodhidharma said ‘Bring out your mind here before me and I’ll pacify it.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘when I look for it, I can’t find it.’ So Bodhidharma said ‘There, it’s pacified.’ See? Becuase when you look for your own mind, that is to say, your own particularized center of being which is separate from everything else, you won’t be able to find it. But the only way you’ll know it isn’t there is if you look for it hard enough, to find out that it isn’t there. And so everybody says ‘All right, know yourself, look within, find out who you are.’ Because the harder you look, you won’t be able to find it, and then you’ll realize it isn’t there at all. There isn’t a separate you. You’re mind is what there is. Everything. But the only way to find that out is to persist in the state of delusion as hard as possible. That’s one way. I haven’t said the only way, but it is one way.

So almost all spiritual disciplines, meditations, prayers, etc, etc, are ways of persisting in folly. Doing resolutely and consistently what you’re doing already. So if a person believes that the Earth is flat, you can’t talk him out of that. He knows it’s flat. Look out the window and see; it’s obvious, it looks flat. So the only way to convince him it isn’t is to say ‘Well let’s go and find the edge.’ And in order to find the edge, you’ve got to be very careful not to walk in circles, you’ll never find it that way. So we’ve got to go consistently in a straight line due west along the same line of latitude, and eventually when we get back to where we started from, you’ve convinced the guy that the world is round. That’s the only way that will teach him. Because people can’t be talked out of illusions.

There is another possibility, however. But this is more difficult to describe. Let’s say we take as the basic supposition- -which is the thing that one sees in the experience of satori or awakening, or whatever you want to call it–that this now moment in which I’m talking and you’re listening, is eternity. That although we have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary, and that we may not feel very well, we’re sort of vaguely frustrated and worried and so on, and that it ought to be changed. This is it. So you don’t need to do anything at all. But the difficulty about explaining that is that you mustn’t try and not do anything, because that’s doing something. It’s just the way it is. In other words, what’s required is a sort of act of super relaxation; it’s not ordinary relaxation. It’s not just letting go, as when you lie down on the floor and imagine that you’re heavy so you get into a state of muscular relaxation. It’s not like that. It’s being with yourself as you are without altering anything. And how to explain that? Because there’s nothing to explain. It is the way it is now. See? And if you understand that, it will automatically wake you up.

So you see, when you ask ‘How to I obtain the knowledge of God, how do I obtain the knowledge of liberation?’ all I can say is it’s the wrong question. Why do you want to obtain it? Because the very fact that you’re wanting to obtain it is the only thing that prevents you from getting there. You already have it. But of course, it’s up to you. It’s your privilege to pretend that you don’t. That’s your game; that’s your life game; that’s what makes you think your an ego. And when you want to wake up, you will, just like that. If you’re not awake, it shows you don’t want to. You’re still playing the hide part of the game. You’re still, as it were, the self pretending it’s not the self. And that’s what you want to do. So you see, in that way, too, you’re already there.

I realize #42

Surrender yourself (or your 'Self') to life. Don't do - Be. Disassociate from the 'doer'. Let Go. To be joyful costs nothing. Doubt is the only enemy. Control is a myth. Everything is, was, and will be as it should be. Have faith - You'll always float once you trust the current.

I realize #41

A lack of commitment will always lead to failure. However, one has to be willing to accept the possibility of defeat if he is to succeed. One is successful not when he clings to success, but when he can celebrate failure.

I realize #40

“Listening is the primary musical activity. The musician listens to his own idea before he plays, before he writes.” - Suzanne K. Lager: The Musical Matrix

I realize #39

The intellect, all that we call knowledge, and the cultivation thereof is but the means by which we play a very interesting game in our life, a very interesting act, but which however is not totality of life, but only a part of it for indeed it arises from it. Therefore we must not succumb to the confusion of identifying with this game of intellectual pursuit, of discussions and debates, of playing hide and seek by placing big distances between what we 'know' and what we 'don't know'... This game is just like any other game that is played for the pure enjoyment thereof, because it is interesting - and in that sense it is also significant. This game is not something serious, for it arises from thought and thought is immaterial and in constant flux, it has no substance except in relation to this game and other thoughts. Take it too seriously and we become blind to the fact of its non-importance, out of which its very sense of importance arises, as if to justify itself. Play it, and play it well by enjoy yourself while doing it, always remembering that if it ceases to be a game and becomes something 'serious', something terribly important, something which in one way or another IS life, then it loses all its potency and becomes a drag, makes one anxious and hopelessly stuck.

Feldman's words of wisdom

MF: One of the tragedies of music education is that it doesn't produce composers. I turned down a very good job a year or two ago, because my idea of teaching just isn't what's happening in departments. I didn't want my students involved in performance groups, or in writing music for performance. [...] The trouble with music composition as taught in colleges is that what you're learning has only one word: analysis. You're given models, and the implication is that there's a secret to learn that will help you compose. That's the first tragic assumption.

Q: But haven't developments in music always taken place in response to previous developments? It would have been impossible for Beethoven to write as he did without knowing what had been done by Mozart and Haydn.

MF: I don't feel that Beethoven really emerged from Mozart and Haydn.

Q: Well, let's just say that he took forms from them; whatever he did was on the basis of forms which had been developed in the past.

MF: But forms are tricky things - there are so few of them in music. You sound much more realistic than me: of course, how could I have developed if I didn't have Webern and if I didn't have Varèse? But I never consciously used them as models.

Q: So what should music education be doing?

MF: I think it should just be for performers; I don't think composition should be taught. It's interesting that the four most influential composers in America today - myself, Earle and Cage, and Christian Wolff really because he's a classicist - had no connections and no training in music departments. So my attitude is: keep everything as human as possible, create a sense of proportion, good atmosphere to work, quietude, fantastic people there to help when they need them, and let them quietly get discouraged and get out of this tentative commitment they made; rather than creating some kind of Utopia.

Arunachala Ramana's last words

“Take no position.

Be happy.”

Alan Watts' words of wisdom

“You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are, and therefore you try to know and dominate the future, and you believe prophets and things like that. Well, prophecy is simply contaminating the future with the past, projecting what we know upon the unknown. And that's why, really, things like Astrology, although interesting, are rather ridiculous. Because if you know the future there's no surprise for you. A completely known future is past, you've had it. ”

- Alan Watts

Alan Watts : Beat Zen

“[...]the Westerner who is attracted by Zen and who would understand it deeply must have one indispensable qualification: he must understand his own culture so thoroughly that he is no longer swayed by its premises unconsciously. He must really have come to terms with the Lord God Jehovah and with his Hebrew-Christian conscience so that he can take it or leave it without fear or rebellion. He must be free of the itch to justify himself. Lacking this, his Zen will be either "beat" or "square," either a revolt from the culture and social order or a new form of stuffiness and respectability. For Zen is above all the Liberation of the mind from conventional thought, and this is something utterly different from rebellion against convention, on the one hand, or adopting foreign conventions, on the other.”

“The point is simply that people who feel a profound need to justify themselves have difficulty in understanding the viewpoints of those who do not, and the Chinese who created Zen were the same kind of people as Lao-Tzu, who, centuries before, said, "Those who justify themselves do not convince." For the urge to make or prove oneself right has always jiggled the Chinese sense of the ludicrous, since as both Confucians and Taoists-however different these philosophies in other ways-they have invariably appreciated the man who can "come off it." ”

Article

Zen: Words #1

“For Buddhism, the dualism between life and death is only one instance of a more general problem, dualistic thinking. Why is dualistic thinking a problem? We differentiate between good and evil, success and failure, life and death, and so forth because we want to keep the one and reject the other. But we cannot have one without the other because they are interdependent: affirming one half also maintains the other. Living a "pure" life thus requires a preoccupation with impurity, and our hope for success will be proportional to our fear of failure. We discriminate between life and death in order to affirm one and deny the other, and, as we have seen, our tragedy lies in the paradox that these two opposites are so interdependent: there is no life without death and--what we are more likely to overlook--there is no death without life. This means our problem is not death but life-and-death.”

Dōgen, Soto Zen Founder (1200 - 1253 AD)

I realize #38

Enlightenment = En+Light = With Light = Being light as a feather

Cling on and you lose it.. Let go and you have it!

Alan Watts on Self

“Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.”

“Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self more really us than I. And the more you become aware of the unknown self -- if you become aware of it -- the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. You are a function of this total galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. You look and look, and one day you are going to wake up and say, "Why, that's me!" And in knowing that, you know that you never die. You are the eternal thing that comes and goes that appears -- now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown -- and so it goes, forever and ever and ever.”

Shunryu Suzuki: Study Yourself

From Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Seek the seeker

“You are the Self, nothing but the Self. Anything else is just imagination. So be the Self, here and now. There is no need to run off to a forest or shut oneself in a room. Carry on with your essential activities but free yourself from the association with the 'doer' of them. Self is the witness; You Are That.”

- Sri Ramana Maharshi

Tea > Water

Drinking three or more cups of tea a day is as good for you as drinking plenty of water and may even have extra health benefits, say researchers.

“Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so its got two things going for it.”

Article

Wei Wu Wei's words of wisdom

As long as we are identified with an object: that is bondage. As long as we think, act, live via an object, or as an object: that is bondage. As long as we feel ourselves to be an object, or think we are such (and a “self ”is an object): that is bondage.

- Wei Wu Wei

Note by Matt Errey : This true nature Wei Wu Wei characterizes as the underlying Subject, or “pure being,” of which all apparent objects—our “selves” included—are simply a manifestation in the relative reality of space and time as perceived through the senses. In and of themselves, these apparent objects have no actual existence except as Subject Itself thus perceived.

I realize #37

Whenever you try to convince others what you are really doing is trying to convince yourself. The more you get offended, raise your voice, assume an indignant stance and fume out of your ears, the more you can be sure that you are afraid of seeing that your cover's blown, that you are in fact lying to yourself, that you are afraid of the notion that there is no one truth, and you become desperate to convince and reassure yourself about that, because what you observe as 'yourself' depends upon it for its existence.

U.G.'s words of wisdom

On turning our intellect -'self'- against itself :

“It's thought that is creating all our problems and it is not the instrument to help us solve the problems created by itself.”

“Thought creates frontiers everywhere. That's all it can do. ...it is thought that has created the world; and you draw lines on this planet, "This is my country, that is your country". So how can there be unity between two countries? The very thing that is creating the frontiers and differences cannot be the means to bridge the different viewpoints. It is an exercise in futility.”

“This instrument thought which we have been using to understand has not helped us to understand anything except that every time we are using it we are sharpening it. Someone asked me, 'What is Philosophy? How does it help me in my day-to-day existence?' It doesn't help you in any way except that it sharpens the intellect. It doesn't in any way help you to understand life. If that thought is not the instrument and if there is no other instrument then is there anything to understand?”

“Unfortunately, the servant, which is the thought structure that is there, has taken possession of the house. But he can no longer control and run the household. So he must be dislodged. It is in this sense that I use the term 'natural state', without any connotation of spirituality or enlightenment.”

“The only way for anyone who is interested in finding out what this is all about is to watch how this separation is occurring, how you are separating yourself from the things that are happening around you and inside you. Actually there is no difference between the outside and the inside. It is thought that creates the frontiers and tells us that this is the inside and something else is the outside. If you tell yourself that you are happy, miserable, or bored, you have already separated yourself from that particular sensation that is there inside you. The only way it can maintain its continuity is through the constant demand to know. If you don't know what you are looking at, the 'you' as you know yourself, the 'you' as you experience yourself, is going to come to an end. That is death. That is the only death and there is no other death.”

“Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, traveling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events.”

“Knowledge creates experience and experience strengthens the knowledge. This is a vicious circle.”

“Anything you experience based on knowledge is an illusion.”

“There is no meaning in and no purpose to suffering.”

On spirituality :

“Spirituality is the invention of the mind, and the mind is a myth.”

“The so called self-realization is the discovery for yourself and by yourself that there is no self to discover. That will be a very shocking thing because it's going to blast every nerve, every cell, even the cells in the marrow of your bones.”

“The mystique of enlightenment is based upon the idea of transforming yourself. I maintain that there is nothing to change or transform.”

“Consciousness is so pure that whatever you are doing in the direction of purifying that consciousness is adding impurity to it.”

“Unless you are free from the desire of all desires, Moksha, liberation, or self-realisation, you will be miserable.”

“A guru is one who tells you to throw away all the crutches that we have been made to believe are essential for our survival. He would ask you to walk, and he would say that if you fall, you will arise and walk.”

“All I am saying is that the peace you are seeking is already inside you, in the harmonious functioning of the body.”

On the Natural State :

“You actually have no way of looking at the sunset because you are not separated from the sunset. The moment you separate your self from the sunset, the poet in you comes out. Out of that separation poets and painters have tried to express themselves, to share their experiences with others. All that is culture.”

“To be an individual and to be yourself you don't have to do a thing. Culture demands that you should be something other than what you are. What a tremendous amount of energy — the will, the effort — we waste trying to become that! If that energy is released, what is it that we can't do? How simple it would be for every one of us to live in this world!”

“All that is necessary for the survival of this living organism is already there. The tremendous intelligence of the body is no match for all that we have gathered and acquired through our intellect.”

“As a human body it is an extraordinary piece of creation. But as a human being he is rotten because of the culture.”

“This body doesn't want to learn anything. Left to itself it has tremendous intelligence.”

“When once it throws out everything that has been put in there by your filthy culture, this body will function in an extraordinarily intelligent way. It can take care of everything.”

“The native intelligence of the human body is amazing. That is all it needs to survive in any dangerous situation in life.”

“The native intelligence is what you are born with; the intellect is acquired from what they teach you.”

“(Q:) Are you afraid of death? (A:)There is nothing to die here. The body cannot be afraid of death.”

On himself :

“I am not anti-rational, just un-rational. You may infer a rational meaning in what I say or do, but it is your doing, not mine.”

“My mission, if there is any, should be, from now on, to debunk every statement I have made. If you take seriously and try to use or apply what I have said, you will be in danger.”

“My interest is not to knock off what others have said [that is too easy], but to knock off what I am saying. More precisely, I am trying to stop what you are making out of what I am saying.”

“The fact is that we don't want to be free. What is responsible for our problems is the fear of losing what we have and what we know. All these therapies, all these techniques, religious or otherwise, are only perpetuating the agony of man.”

- U.G. Krishnamurti

I realize #36

There is no point in creating or acquiring anything -both material and immaterial- if it is not shared with others. It is not yours; you cannot claim ownership of it any more than you can claim ownership of water, or the sky. Its function, the reason it comes into being and into your reality is precisely so that you, along with others, can make use of it, enjoy it for what it is and gain more happiness, more fulfillment, perhaps more liberation even from it.

All that one possesses comes to naught if it is not used to enrich others besides ones' self. And there is always plenty to go around for everyone. Otherwise it lives and dies ingloriously with its “owner”, destined to find expression and fulfill its purpose elsewhere.

I realize #35

Yearning for a solution is what creates the problem.

I realize #34

It does not matter where or how one begins. It is sufficient that one begin, and begin immediately.

Don't improve;remove

If you try to “improve” you will reach a dead end. It cannot be done, because you are attempting to improve upon a falsehood, an ego that only wishes to remain and perpetuate its current form.

Goethe's words of wisdom

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

“A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.”

“All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.”

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

“The deed is everything, the glory is naught.”

“Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.”

“The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.”

“The right man is the one who seizes the moment.”

“Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.”

“The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.”

“To create something you must be something.”

“The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.”

“What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.”

“Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.”

“Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I realize #33

You cannot use rational thinking to resolve irrational behavior.

That is another one of the cunning strategies by which the irrational -the resistance within- attempts to protect its existence and misguide you by convincing you that you chose it consciously at some point and that therefore it must have some rational basis, some basis in 'reality' and therefore belongs with you, it is a part of you, maybe it even IS you...
It makes you believe that by using your rational faculties you can get rid of this proverbial splinter in your mind and essence that stands in your way. Do not believe it, do not get sucked into its alluring rhetoric. You will only be running in circles.
You can not reason with the irrational. See it for what it is and reduce it to nothingness. It is a lie, a misconception, one that you did not chose anyway. It stands in the way of your freedom.

The objective of awareness is freedom of experience.

Freedom is not found in learning ways to win the fight against resistance but rather it is being without resistance. The process of enlightenment is getting rid of resistance in perception, action, thought & experience. Why learn to manage that which you do not need in the first place?

Resistance can acquire many forms and be perceived and understood in many ways; fear, anxiety, doubt, suffering, self-limitation, negativity, temptation, criticism, depression, anguish, despair, attachment, egoism, not being present... All those and many more are the result of but one thing, a perception of reality based on resistance and a meaning created through the filter of resistance.

Realize that meaning is not truth, and that there is no one truth, but only the truth you create and choose to be your truth, and you will be on your way to freedom.

Buddha said simply, " I teach suffering and the end of suffering."

Asked whether he was a god, a man or something else, he replied,

"I am awake."

I realize #32

Restriction kills inspiration,

and inspiration -the ability to go beyond yourself in your work- is what enables one's unique creative expression to manifest itself, and that is where the true value of the artist lies. It is his/her only true power; the ability to access inspiration, that invisible but potent force that guides and directs and touches and leaves its mark on both the artist and the work and enables tremendous personal and actual accomplishment.

What we call talent seems to me to be nothing more than the intuitive observation that someone (perhaps ourselves) possesses the ability to 'plug into' inspiration and deliver creative work that transcends the commonplace, the bland, the indifferent and in some way forms a connection with the people coming in contact with it. Without allowing inspiration to work itself through him or her the artist must settle with imitation, a mere performer of premeditated gestures and applier of intellectual concepts, a slave to all the tools he has acquired ostensibly for the purpose of enabling his own creativity to manifest itself. A pitiful and endlessly frustrating predicament.

The artist's job is to obtain self-mastery at least where inspiration is concerned, otherwise he can never flourish. He or she must realize the causes of them restricting the flow of their inspiration and instead learn to ride on that wave that leads them closer to themselves, closer to their artistic vision, their artistic truth.

Without inspiration there is only imitation. It may be such a successful imitation that it'll fool some, but it has no vitality, it is lacking in true meaning and purpose for existence and such it is but an orphan in time, it is ephemeral and lacks the substance to impact anything long-term. The only way for the artist to guard against this is to give himself entirely to the creative force, open the gates of his mind to inspiration without judgment, without expectation, without attachment to the outcome and allow it full reign in his work. Then, in the eyes of others who do not know how or will not surrender to this force that all readily recognize behind every great work of art, the artist becomes Godlike.

How to be happier, instantly

Take a good look at this picture.

Now stop taking yourself* so seriously and go shake it to a Prince tune. Enjoy yourself! Do shake it, too, don't just stand there. The activity of dancing always restores one's attention to the immediate present. People who honestly cannot enjoy such masterpieces as "Kiss" or "Let's Go Crazy" deserve to be miserable.

* Take your life, your goals, your work, your obligations and your responsibilities seriously, but whatever you do don't take yourself too seriously or you'll be missing out on all the fun

Bradbury's words of wisdom

“Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.”

“I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

- Ray Bradbury

I realize #31

People fail because they settle for being a failure.

I realize #30

Be willing to jump off a cliff creatively... sometimes you will fail in spectacular ways and other times you will take off.

"Only the mediocre are always at their best."
- Jean Giradoux

I realize #29

You cannot reason with unreasonable beliefs - you can only get rid of them and choose the ones that are aligned with the truth as you see and want it to be.

Ken Robinson's words of wisdom

“Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability.”

- Ken Robinson

I realize #28

In art one is either oneself or nothing at all.

To pretend in art is a crime, it is but the worst form of self-negation that inevitably leads one to despair, confusion and disappointment. The artist who doubts his own heart, his own desire, his own creativity is the most miserable individual of all. For the artist to blossom into authenticity he must first embrace himself and place his faith solely upon his own creative power.

If at the critical moment the artist abandons confidence in his own creative ability and seeks external securities his own unique voice will be stifled and his creativity will not find complete expression.

I realize #27

The highest form of understanding is application. Wisdom is not to be had, but to be lived.

Picasso's words of wisdom

About life :

“Everything you can imagine is real.”

“Paradise is to love many things with a passion.”

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”

“He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”

“What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing.”

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

“One must act in painting as in life, directly.”

“You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.”

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”

“It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.”

“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.”

“Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.”

“I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.”

About Art :

“Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.”

“No doubt, it is useful for an artist to know all the forms of art which have preceded or which accompany his. That is a sign of strength if it is a question of looking for a stimulus or recognizing mistakes he must avoid.”

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions derived from anywhere: from the sky, from the earth, from a piece of paper, from a passing figure, from a spider’s web. This is why one must not make a distinction between things. For them there are no aristocratic quarterings. One must take things where one finds them.”

“Everyone wants to understand painting. Why don’t they try to understand the song of the birds? Why do they love a night, a flower, everything which surrounds man, without attempting to understand them? Whereas where painting is concerned, they want to understand. Let them understand above all that the artist works from necessity; that he, too, is a minute element of the world to whom one should ascribe no more importance than so many things in nature which charm us but which we do not explain to ourselves.”

“Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. All of them are researches. I search constantly and there is a logical sequence in all this research.”

“The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.”

“If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.”

“A good picture, any picture, has to be bristling with razor blades.”

“A young artist must forget painting when he paints. That's the only way he will do original work.”

“Unless your work gives you trouble, it is no good”

“When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order.”

“When you begin a picture, you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial.”

“The only pictorial matter that is of interest to me is the matter and sentiments brought about by the work itself.”

“What I want is that my picture should evoke nothing but emotion.”

“To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art does not live in the present, it must not be considered at all.”

“Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”

“The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.”

“The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense.”

“To draw you must close your eyes and sing.”

- Pablo Picasso

I realize #26

#1 There is no “good” or “bad” music aside from technical considerations. There is only music that engages emotion, thought or sensation and music that does not -all of which depend almost exclusively on the needs, preferences, expectations and judgment of the listener.

#2 It is just as (if not more) difficult to create meaningful and engaging music with a few tools and/or skills as it is to do with more of them.

Jim Black's words of wisdom

“The only thing I think I must do is play; no, I know that's the only thing I have to do really, is play.”

- Jim Black

I realize #25

The artist does not have to be tormented.

There's nothing “romantic”, nothing attractive, nothing “mysterious” nothing dignified and nothing respectable about being (or appearing) troubled, tormented, surly, angry, depressed etc. The only thing the “tormented artist” myth does is to block creativity, disempower you, minimize your self worth, drive people away, perpetuate a miserable reality and then come up with cul-de-sac excuses that disempower you further by taking responsiblity away from you (e.g. "Nobody understands me", "the artist must be alone", "artists are misunderstood" etc.)

Remember : “If you hold others accountable for what is happening in your life, then your life will be what they make it.”

Seth Godin: Who is easily manipulated?

Sometimes (and too often) marketers work to manipulate people. I define manipulation as working to spread an idea or generate an action that is not in a person's long-term best interest.

The easiest people to manipulate are those that don't demand a lot of information, are open to messages from authority figures and are willing to make decisions on a hunch, particularly if there's a promise of short-term gains.

If you want to focus on the short run and sell something, get a vote or gather a mob, the easiest place to start is with populations that leave themselves open to manipulation.

There are habits and activities that leave people open to manipulation. I'm not saying they are wrong or right, just pointing out that these behaviors make you open to being manipulated...

Article

Habit is everything.

“We are what we repeatedly do.”

- Aristotle

“Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters.”

- Nathaniel Emmons

“Men form habits and habits form futures. If you do not deliberately form good habits, then unconsciously you will form bad ones.”

- Albert Gray

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

- Aristotle

“Character is long-standing habit.”

- Plutarch

“Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.”

- Edith Wharton

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.”

- Mark Twain

“Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow.”

- Yidish proverb

“Habit is more powerful than will. If you get in the habit of painting every day, nothing will keep you from painting.”

-Irwin Greenberg

“The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.”

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Habits are safer than rules; you don't have to watch them. And you don't have to keep them, either. They keep you.”

- Frank Crane

“Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.”

- Confucius

“If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.”

- Andre Maurois

“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread each day, and at last we cannot break it.”

- Horace Mann

“The best way to break a bad habit is to drop it.”

- Leo Aikman

“I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else.”

- Pablo Picasso

Long overdue : Cage's words of wisdom

“Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness. ”

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.”

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

“I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. Photoelectric, film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored.”

“It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of "culture".”

“What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.”

“People who are not artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.”

“We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.”

“I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.”

“We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.”

I realize #24

The bigger our foolishness, the harder it is to see it.

More Miller wisdom

“I had to learn to think, feel, and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink.”

“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.”

“Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep.”

“Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.”

“I soon learned that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write write write.”

“The Happiest peoples, it is said, are those which have no history. Those who have a history, those who have made history seem only to have emphasized through their accomplishments the eternality of struggle. These disappear too eventually, just as those who made no effort, who were content to merely live & enjoy.”

“The most difficult thing in life is to learn to do what is strictly advantageous to one’s welfare, strictly vital.”

- Henry Miller

Musiklust

“While Ellington and Stravinsky certainly shaped some pieces directly for recording, it continues to astonish me that almost no postwar American or European classical composers ever really embraced the record as a basic unit of musical expression, in the way that has been taken for granted in popular music—at least since Frank Sinatra’s celebrated Capitol LPs. How strange that such far-thinking composers as Pierre Boulez or György Ligeti evince little or no interest in exploiting the unique attributes of the recording studio, or the CD as a specific medium. For them recording is a photograph of a sculpture; a picture, as it were, of the art, not the art itself. Whereas for the Beatles, the record itself was the art. To take another example, the great 78s of the twenties and thirties—and I’m thinking here of early jazz, blues, and rural Southern traditions—are typically very carefully orchestrated, as structured as a good sermon, their A and B sides dialectically engaged. What distinguishes the one approach from the other we could call self-consciousness.”

-John Schott
(liner notes to Shuffle Play : Elegies to a Recording Angel)

I realize #23

It doesn't matter to anyone but yourself whether the techniques, processes and tools you use are sophisticated or not; the only thing that matters is how cohesive, functional and effective is the ultimate result.

The surprising truth about heroin and addiction

“[...]what the psychologist Bruce Alexander calls "the myth of drug-induced addiction" is still widely accepted in the case of heroin -- and, by extension, the drugs compared to it -- because moderate opiate users are hard to find. That does not mean they don't exist; indeed, judging from the government's survey results, they are a lot more common than addicts. It's just that people who use opiates in a controlled way are inconspicuous by definition, and keen to remain so.”

Article

I realize #22

Self-awareness should never cause insecurity.

It serves as a tool for accurately identifying why one behaves the way one does in both action and thought. That knowledge is crucial for changing towards the better and removing limitations. However one must focus on the goal : what one wishes to become. Otherwise one becomes trapped in determinism when focusing too much on how and why one currently thinks and behaves as one does.

Various emotional states are intensified by self-awareness, and people sometimes try to reduce or escape it through things like television, video games, alcohol, drugs, etc. However, some people may seek to increase their self awareness through these outlets. People are more likely to align their behavior with their standards when made self-aware. People will be negatively affected if they don’t live up to their personal standards.

Ο Αναγνωστάκης περί ποίησης

«Η ποίηση είναι έργο της νεότητας. Χρειάζεται ενθουσιασμό, αυταπάτες, ψευδαισθήσεις. Αυτά τα έχουν οι νέοι. Όσο μεγαλώνεις, κατέχεις καλύτερα τα μέσα σου. Γίνεσαι τεχνίτης, αλλά ένα ποίημα δεν χρειάζεται να είναι τέλειο για να είναι καλό.»

- Μανόλης Αναγνωστάκης

Συνέντευξη Νίκου Δήμου

“Όταν έγραφα στο «Βήμα», η στήλη μου ήταν μακράν η πρώτη σε αναγνωσιμότητα στο σύνολο του Τύπου. Όταν έφυγα από το «Βήμα», σκέφτηκα, εν τη μεγίστη μου αφελεία, «από αύριο θα σπάσουν τα τηλέφωνα». Επί δύο χρόνια δεν με πήρε κανένας τηλέφωνο να μου προτείνει να γράψω. Ένα βράδυ, σε μια δεξίωση, ένας μεγαλοεκδότης μου λέει «Δήμου, είσαι η καλύτερη πένα της Ελλάδος και σε λογαριάζω γύρω στα 20.000 φύλλα. Τόσα έχασε το "Βήμα" όταν έφυγες, τόσα θα κέρδιζε η εφημερίδα μου αν σε έπαιρνα». Και τον ρωτάω, γιατί δεν με παίρνετε; «Γιατί δεν είσαι άνθρωπος, γράφεις ό,τι θέλεις εσύ» μου απάντησε. Κατάλαβα ότι στην Ελλάδα δεν λειτουργεί ούτε καν ο νόμος της αγοράς. Έχεις ένα καλό προϊόν που αφενός το εξαναγκάζεις σε παραίτηση και ο άλλος, σκεπτόμενος ότι θα έχει προβλήματα με τους πολιτικούς του πάτρωνες, δεν θέλει να το αγγίξει. ”

“Η διαφήμιση έφαγε δεκαοκτώ χρόνια από τη ζωή μου, αλλά μου έδωσε οικονομική ανεξαρτησία - δηλαδή τη δυνατότητα να μπορώ να παραιτούμαι. Ένα από τα γνωστά ρητά μου είναι ότι τα χρήματα δεν μπορούν να σε βοηθήσουν να κάνεις αυτό που θέλεις, αλλά να μην κάνεις αυτό που δεν θέλεις. ”

“Με συγκινούν τα παιδιά, οι γέροντες, οι ανήμποροι, οι άνθρωποι που παλεύουν. Αντιθέτως, δεν μπορώ να χωνέψω τους εφησυχασμένους, τους κατασταλαγμένους. Έχω πολύ λίγους ανθρώπους με τους οποίους κάνω παρέα. Με τα χρόνια οι άνθρωποι συμβιβάζονται, παραιτούνται και προσπαθούν με διάφορους τρόπους, με θρησκευτική πίστη ή μαντζούνια, να ξορκίσουν το μοιραίο. Αυτοί τώρα κατακάθονται, εγώ μονίμως αναταράσσομαι. ”

“Είμαι αρκετά μοναχικός άνθρωπος. Δεν κυκλοφορώ, δεν πηγαίνω σε εκδηλώσεις. Θα μπορούσα να είμαι ασκητής, αν δεν ήμουν τόσο αισθησιακός ασκητής. Είμαι ο άνθρωπος των αισθήσεων, πιστεύω ότι ο μόνος παράδεισος είναι ο παράδεισος των αισθήσεων. Δεν υπάρχει τίποτα άλλο. ”

Zorn's words of wisdom

“Your music is like your child, and your child is not you, it goes out there and makes its own life, it becomes its own thing, and you can't control or influence that.. Some people feel like their children have to become what THEY want them to be, become an extension of their own ego and if they becomes something different they feel like they're dissed or something. It's the same with music. A composition or a piece of film or anything after its finished begins its own life. It's only the finished product of your creativity and you don't have to identify with it more than that.”

- John Zorn

Seth Godin: The lizard brain

We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don't read that book the boss lent us.

The contradictions never end. When someone shows up and acts without contradiction, we're amazed. When an athlete just does the sport, or when a writer just writes the words, we can't help but watch, astonished at the purity of their actions. Why is it so difficult to do what we say we're going to do?

The lizard brain.

Article

I realize #21

Fuck creating a masterpiece.

or

Never try to create a masterpiece, because you will fail.

or

I thought I must create something great, something extraordinary. No, what I must do is create.

About sound

Sound itself is the instrument.

It seems like most composers today focus much more on the musical content or the process of their compositions and tend to somewhat neglect (or take for granted) all the other sound properties (and 'sound palette' options) that have more to do with sound rather than music.

It must not be forgotten that what is defined as music belongs, ultimately, to the whole realm of sound.

On the other hand, many composers choose to deal with specific sound properties or limit their focus by working with a specific number of compositional devices that they deem most valuable for their own personal concept of composition and/or self expression.

There is huge potential for expression in dealing with the most fundamental qualities of the sonority that constitutes a piece of music, namely dynamics, frequencies, timbres etc.

It is up to the composer (sound architect) to decide to to which degree he/she will become aware of and exert control over all the properties that are inherent in his/hers sound creation, from the choice of pitches and rhythm (that are most immediately associated with the word 'composer') to all the other less obvious properties and devices available to him.

It is useful to be aware for example of the sound properties that make Beethoven Beethoven or that make a certain recording of Beethoven's late quartets 'superior' to another, in one's search for the best execution of one's intentions.

Often times that means reducing unnecessary sound properties that do not support the whole in any essential way but rather detract from it by distracting the listener from the properties that form the backbone of the musical experience.

Some properties will matter more than others depending on the needs of a composition and its composer.

But they are there all the time and, whether they are perceived or not, they constitute the whole of the sound structure, like a tightly knit web.

Dealing with the sound experience of a composition and evaluating its effectiveness and impact according to a more 'holistic' approach where all sound properties are considered equally can provide fresh inspiration that can further augment its 'narrative', build upon it, add or subtract and ultimately make for a more rewarding experience.

Even those sound properties which are not significant in supporting a particular sound structure nevertheless have an effect, and a composer's job is at the least to make sure that none of them detracts from the intended sound structure (of course the 'ideal' would be to optimize all these properties so that they all contribute towards the a sound experience that is as close to the intended/imaginary sound structure as can be).

(e.g. A violinist who uses a particular bowing technique that does not yield a full, round, "cut-through-the-mix sound" when such a sound is required will result in detracting from the composer's intended sound and its intended effect upon the listener. Even the greatest orchestra in the world will provide a vastly different experience for the audience playing the same music in a great concert hall as opposed to a mediocre or poor concert hall.)

Rothko's words of wisdom

“It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. ”

- Mark Rothko
National Gallery of Art

Kurosawa's words of wisdom

“It is quite enough if a human being has but one field where he is strong. If a human being were strong in every field it wouldn't be nice for other people, would it?”

- Akira Kurosawa