“True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’.”
― Arthur Rimbaud
What we choose to create comes from who we are. Who we are as far as I can tell comes from some inherent characteristics, some energy (soul, spirit, ray what have you ) that filters through everything we sense and everything that we remember either consciously or subconsciously. If we remember old television theme songs and comic book heroes along with the typical dysfunctional family dynamics that most of us grew up with (along with a strong hunger for world mythology and spirituality and appreciation of the aesthetics of the human body) then that will come across in the art we make. If I had had different interests during my formative years, my art may have manifested in a much different way. What I write about here each day springs directly from what I have experienced either in creating art or talking with people or sometimes with the quotes I find in desperation looking for topics on days that have been quiet. Each shaped by my memory and experiences. Each manifesting an aspect of who I am.
Blessings G
“Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.”
― Terence McKenna
Where does creativity come from? Oh with order you get pretty designs. There’s a lot you can do with the building blocks of sacred geometry. Things organized with shape and form with rigid lines. Imagination tho is not orderly. Imagination fully expressed has very few clear lines. We go deeply inside of ourselves and draw from a well of chaos where everything and anything that we’ve ever encountered either awake or asleep lies. A concept bubbles up and we seek to express it. Not capture it because ideas don’t take kindly to being caged up. We impress our own internal order on these shapes and something begins to form. It may be a poem or it may be art. It may simply be a new way of looking at life that has not been encountered. It begins tho with that seed of chaos. Even fractal designs are a form of order emerging from a primal chaos. Without that link to chaos nothing new is created.
Blessings, G
“You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life”
― Salvador Dalí
I trust contradiction and paradox. It’s comforting to know that as soon as one point of view is expressed, an equal and opposite run arrives especially as we increase the scope of the question. When we are confused our mind becomes open to possibility and imagination.
Don’t get me wrong. I can enjoy and appreciate certainty. Some people wear it well and it seems to look good on them. Of course you look again and it starts looking like the Emperor’s new clothes… brilliant garments he was taught to believe existed when in reality he parades around naked…secure in the fact that no one will gainsay him. Yet children always know or those with the heart of a child. The child hears people admiring the Emperor’s clothes and gets more and more confused until he speaks out his confusion and people see that the Emperor’s clothes, his certainties never existed in the first place.
So I will continue speaking paradox and avoiding certainty. I may never get dressed but at least I’ll be creative.
Blessings, G
“The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward. ”
–Joseph Campbell
What fills me with awe?
Seeing flowers in the garden that weren’t there the day before
Seeing babies of almost any species
The extreme acts of kindness and helpfulness that people are capable of
The extreme acts of insensitivity that people are capable of
Every night when I look at a finished blog entry after the initial trepidation of a blank screen
So many pieces of art and music and writing. The creative mind is a wonderful thing and I have been so fortunate in being exposed to the creative talents of so many.
Love in all forms
Appreciation for the things that I do from people.
“Creativity is contagious, pass it on”
– Albert Einstein
Do you believe that magic exists? that spells may be woven, that things may be changed through sheer will? Well of course you do. We’ve all read of parents able to lift cars off endangered children and speed records being broken. We do the unusual every day and sometimes the miraculous just takes longer. Just think, every day, every minute we create our reality and see others creating theirs. This doesn’t mean that there is not an underlying objective reality after all the elephant exists no matter how many different parts of it we grab. But the perspective we have at any given moment and how that changes, that is miraculous. We can go from villain of the story to hero or backwards, we can become mighty or week, our mates can be the most amazing people we know or the most horrible. We create every moment we can’t help ourselves and yes it is contagious. You’re it. May I never be cured.
Blessings, G
Castle by G A Rosenberg 
