I went to college on an art scholarship and never took an art class.
I won awards at photography and had my own darkroom and never showed anyone that I knew. I joined a creative writing class, wrote some stories that the class loved, the teacher said I was smarter and more talented than he was. I stopped writing after that class. In the same class, someone was so impressed with my creativity they wrote me in their story. I walked away without talking about it. I used to draw and make cartoons and haven't drawn years, and it is a skill, and it has faded. My apartment used to be filled with paintings and books, and I threw them all away. I remember applying to an art school but delayed the portfolio and put it together at the last minute so it was not the best it could have been. I did not make it. I never applied to another school and got an MBA instead. I have started writing and then dropped so many books I lost count. The list could keep going, I have not done or finished so much. The time of self destructing my creativity is over. D I have become fascinated with the concept of strange loops,
Implicit in the concept of Strange Loops is the concept of infinity and I fascinated by the ideas of fugue and canon within a narrative structure. Think of the drawings by Escher. "The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started. (Here, the system is that of musical keys.) Sometimes I use the term Tangled Hierarchy to describe a system in which a Strange Loop occurs. As we go on, the theme of Strange Loops will recur again and again. Sometimes it will be hidden, other times it will be out in the open; sometimes it will be right side up, other times it will be upside down, or backwards. "Quaerendo invenietis" is my advice to the reader." - Godel, Escher, and Bach. I don't remember where I got the quote below, but it fascinates me. The question arises, "Can a brain be understood, in some objective sense, by an outsider?" Minds and Thoughts. The preceding poems bring up in a forceful way the question of whether languages, or indeed minds, can be "mapped" onto each other. How is communication possible between two separate physical brains: What do all human brains have in common? A geographical analogy is used to suggest an answer. The question arises, "Can a brain be understood, in some objective sense, by an outsider?" D “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing From my adventures in the subculture of addiction recovery, I’d learned that the trajectory of one’s life often boils down to a few identifiable moments—decisions that change everything. I knew all too well that moments like these were not to be squandered. Rather, they were to be respected and seized at all costs, for they just didn’t come around that often, if ever. Even if you experienced only one powerful moment like this one, you were lucky. Blink or look away for even an instant and the door didn’t just close, it literally vanished. In my case, this was the second time I’d been blessed with such an opportunity, the first being that precious moment of clarity that precipitated my sobriety in rehab. Looking into the mirror that night, I could feel that portal opening again. I needed to act. But how?
In truth, I needed an entirely new lifestyle. Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself by Rich Roll What is this blog about?
Looking at the many varied posts; I can see that I have been thinking about time, and how it functions and we function within it. . I have thought hard about the brain, how it is a very unique tool, and how to improve all it's functions to make my work better. I have learned it is plastic and changeable. We can change, we do change. I have read and used and experimented with many aspects of health, fitness and nutrition. I have tried many things and tried to distill all the conflicting information to have a simple concise plan. I want to create and build and that is all about endurance. I love authors and writing and creativity. I love creativity and believe it matters and it makes everything you do better. I write and I am trying to learn, and want to see what others are doing. I went to college on an art scholarship, studied literature, computers, and business The more eyes and minds on a problem, the more efficient the solution. You are your network. You become what your network is. Good business is creative, I find business creative and interesting and when business is done well , it is a powerful force to make the world around it better and when done badly it is one of the most destructive. I also believe firmly that specialization is for insects. Great minds are many things, and can do many things, can be many things, and can makes many things better for them simply taking an interest in it. Creative people matter, look at some figures in history, Richard Feynman, Voltaire, Da Vinci, the list is long but these are all people who saw new potential in the everyday world. Someone the other day was making fun of liberal arts majors. I promise you, you give me a team of ten liberal arts majors and pit them against ten MBA's, the liberal art's team will stand a chance of creating something new, because the world is full of people with tools and nothing to say and no original thoughts in their head. I could create a world with liberal art's majors. With MBA's I can refine a price point or talk at great length about Operations strategies but they, as a whole, do not create, they refine. Keep in mind I am a liberal arts major and an MBA. I find the world fascinating and people's reactions even more so, and believe that mental systems like Buddhism have tools and ways of life that are compelling and ways of living that work and have worked for thousands of years. All these topics fascinate me and I it think shows in the posts on this blog. What seems like a lack of focus is actually me finding ways to function in the world, trying to be creative in a world that up until recently valued only obedience and specialization. I remember reading somewhere, I believe it was Plato, about the concept of Philosopher King, and since we are the Rulers of our lives and the CEO's of our finances self business, it is a good model to imulate, taking control of our lives, living our creative lives, with balance. I am all about finding the balance. And since the world changes constantly, balance matters and is also dynamic. That is what this blog is about, is finding the tools to create the balance you need to create. No matter who the artist, there needs to be a pocket of tools in hand to keep you functioning. D MURAKAMI
I’m a hard worker. I concentrate on my work very hard. So, you know, it’s easy. And I don’t do anything but write my fiction when I write. INTERVIEWER How is your typical workday structured? MURAKAMI When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity. Haruki Murakami Interview - Paris Review Pursue a life of focused creative work.
That is the goal for all of us, and the tools have never been better, easier, or less expensive than right this minute. Dream. Write. Do. Now. "The notion that the most outlandish thoughts could pay for your existence,” says Grant Morrison. “The most bizarre thoughts you may have had in 1994 on an Ecstasy tab can turn into money, which turns into houses, which turns into cat food. It’s the Yukon in our brain, it’s a gold rush, it’s all sitting there, and it’s worth money." Our dreams and thoughts can change things, they can change the world but we need to do more than think them; our creative acts can do anything, and they are very powerful, and the oddest thought can change your life and others. We need to chose to be active over passive. I kept creating web site after web site, until I realized that what I really wanted was to create. Writing is not passive, not when done right. Writing is getting in the trenches of what it means to alive, and it can show and deliver and high light all the possibilities thatit means to be human. Say yes more than you say no. Writing is a talent and a skill, but all the skill in the world doesn't mean anything if you have nothing to say or give. Interesting lives leads to interesting creative acts when coupled with skill, practice, and discipline. Start writing. D You can’t read your way to expertise. I have tried.
You have to do. People who get things accomplished choose to work on things more consistently and with more ficus than average people. They systematically work, making what they want to accomplish a series of habits to repeat. So here is what I want you to do: 1. Today, I want you to pick one thing that you really want to do. 2. In the next 24 hours, I want you to do one thing to make that happen. Make it simple and short, 10 to 15 minutes to do. Mark on a calendar. 3. Then the following day do that one thing again. Mark it on the calendar. 4. Continue for 7 days and then calculate what you have done. How much did you get done in one day? Take that and multiply by 365, and that is what you will have done in a year. Consistency is powerful. It creates productivity. Woody Allen states “If you work only three to five hours a day you become very productive. It’s the steadiness of it that counts. Getting to the typewriter every day is what makes productivity.” It takes Woody Allen a month to write a comedy and three months to write a drama so at three to five hours a day it shows me he writes every day, he’s consistent, and he doesn’t waste time. D John von Neumann’s says it the best in the following quote,
“The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models..” My writing is basically model-building. Though in my blog I don’t use mathematics, my approach is basically the same one as explained in the above quote. Writing allows you to see all the potential things you can do, or see, or create. Once you have many ideas, and you have thought of and written through the various ideas or models, then you do.
Actions matter. D PS. This is the first post from my phone. Basically a test, and if it works, get ready. Sometimes you need to take something apart to make it better, either literally of figureitively. Writing notes over and over, taking my ideas and new concepts and breaking them down, I realize I am like Philip Glass, in his music, in that reptition there is power. Taking pieces of thought, taking your thought patterns, taking how you see the world, and then writing pieces down and repeating, and changing elements only slighty, pushing all the possibilities, until you discover the power of the idea, and you learn how slight changes of thought can bring large changes to your life and your concepts. Writing can methodically change how you think, so that you can change how you think. When you understand the concepts of neural plasticity, you know that your brain is not fixed in time, that it can change and will change, and you can control that change. Write down all the possible variants of an idea. Do no editing. Truly explore ideas and concepts, slightly change it each time, and bring the power of repitition to the process, so that you csn start picking what ideas you like, and then reinforce those ideas that you want to internalize. You write about what you want to be, how you want to live, write about what about what you want to become and then explore what it would be like, how it would be to live that way, what you would see, what you would do, how you would be, write until reality starts to match the idea. Writing activates your mind. It is a visualiztion technique that also uses the physical. I like literature because it shows all the possiblities of what a person can be, all the ways to be human, and writing lets you do the same thing. It allows you to see all the possible variations of you, and to see all the possiblity in you. It lets you think and feel and act your way to what you can be. See what you truly think, because most of us do not know ourselves, and we have over time built layer upon layer of persona, which we need to strip away until pure and then rebuild those aspects of persona we choose to be. We build our future selves. |
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