WellsBaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

Losing our edge

By 3 Comments


Being weird used to be lonely. But then the Internet happened.

The web connected the vinyl collectors, the sneakerheads, and the want-to-be Romance novelists. Niches came together, competed, collaborated, cheered each other on while a select few took their micro, macro until their weird became the new standard.

“Success blurs. It rounds off the rough edges.”

John Peel

We’re not all weird. We’re not all normal. But some of us are curious and forward-thinking. We search for what’s next before it even hits the trend spotters’ radar. We dig deep in the underground to avoid the peril of sameness.

The closer we get to normal, the closer we are to losing our edge.

Always a good reread: We’re Are All Weird

Advertisements

Fighting inertia

By

We take risks, do the unpredictable, anything to keep the supposed simulation of world guessing. / Fighting inertia #amwriting
via giphy

Stock phrases, a detailed script, a prescription for exactitude. Imagine how boring life would be if you already knew its outcome.

It’s the routine that subverts our days into yesterday’s form, responding to emails in our head. Sameness destroys creativity.

How can we fight inertia?

We take risks, do the unpredictable, anything to keep the supposed simulation of world guessing.

En medias res, we ensure that we’re performing in the middle of becoming.

How jumping reveals the real person

By

Iconic Latvian photographer Philippe Halsman shot some of the most famous portraits of all-time for every major American magazine, including credits for more than 100 Life Magazine covers. He shot the Albert Einstein photo for Time Magazine.

But he's also renowned for one of his side projects in taking black and white images of popular faces in mid-air “jumpology.”

During a six-year period in the 1950s, he'd request an off the cuff photo of a celebrity artist, author, scientist, or film star jumping into the air. He captured nearly 200 portraits of celebrities including the Marylin Monroe, Salvador Dalí, and Aldous Huxley and published them in a book aptly titled Philippe Halsman's Jump Book.

“When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears.”

Philippe Halsman

Why writers feel like they do nothing

By

gif via tumblr

As writers, we may feel like we do nothing.

No matter how much daily effort we put into it, writing doesn’t feel like a regular job.

Instead, writing feels like a blessing — whether we do it for pay, as a hobby, for therapy, or because we enjoy stitching together words as art. Or all of the above.

The process of interpreting the picture we have in our mind and converting that into words is a beautiful sensation.

Of course, the first draft is rarely any good. Writers harbor good bullshit detectors.

But the expectation is that we can tweak our words until they sound right. Revision wields the pen to our advantage and protects sentences from the erosion of complexity.

Never to be killed by comfort, the writer types on.

What are we missing here?

By

gif via tumblr

We either open up possibilities for inquiry or close them.

The open-minded tend to include those around them.

The shallow-minded prefer to isolate others as a means to an end. Evolution halts.

Attitude predetermines whether we discover facts and establish truth.

We put our minds in the world, shaped by the rhythm of nuance and complexity and weave it into a geometry of thought.

We never know for sure when the old world passes away and a new one begins.

All that’s certain are the infinitude of blind spots.

Eureka moments are a myth 💡

By 8 Comments

giphy (20).gif
gif via Tumblr

In 1726, an Apple dropped from a tree and hit the elder physicist Isaac Newton on the head.  It was then he discovered insight into gravity. Or so the story goes. 

In reality, he had already done a lot of his thinking while staring at the surrounding apple trees. Newton’s friend and biographer William Stukeley wrote: “Occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood.” 

We polish stories, embellish them, so they’re more memorable and thus more shareable. To quote librarian Keith Moore, the Newton story is “an 18th-century sound bite.”

There is no such thing as a Eureka moment. Light-bulb moments arise because we’ve already spent a long time thinking about them and letting the subconscious do its work.

It’s no surprise that big ideas seem to happen in dull moments when we're in the shower or doing the dishes. Ideas also come to us during rest. A resting mind still hungers for stimulation because creativity is always awake.

This is also why planning unscheduled time is so vital to the work process. We have to get out of our own heads so we can think with more clarity.

Eureka moments are a myth. They occur when we’re thinking without thinking. The right ‘creative’ brain is always on. It splits duties with the left brain to interpret various phenomena.