I went up to Woodstock and just read, and read, and read, and read, for five years.” ~ Joseph Campbell I think about Joseph Campbell at least once a day. The first time I read Campbell’s explanation of the Hero’s Journey, I was sitting on the floor in front of the fire, propped up against…
Creativity
Follow Your Creation’s Lead
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau The other day I tallied up the approximate number of batches of puttanesca sauce I have made over the course of my life. I landed on somewhere around the number 3,500! By Malcolm Gladwell standards, I have hit mastery…
The Trauma of Unused Creativity
He sat across from me in the booth, tucked in the far end of the diner. He pushed his salad around with his fork as he spoke, keeping his gaze from meeting mine. “I wake up, and it starts. I’m pretty good about getting going and getting busy before it really lands. When I get…
The Art of Idea Capture
Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, youโve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. Theyโre huge and abstract. And theyโre very beautiful.โ ~ David Lynch, Catching The…
Connecting Creativity to Your Driving Force
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”ย ~ Excerpt from “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver The room in the Palm Beach Convention Center, filled…
Being Differently Wired
I stood in the hallway in the elementary wing just outside of her classroom. She leaned in and used a file folder to cover the side of her face. “The truth is is that he didn’t learn what he needed to learn in the first and second grades. I’ve been trying to work with him,…