I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Friday, May 4, 2018

The Chemistry of Creativity


from this week in May, 2013  (I was 68)

The Chemistry of Creativity
            Much reputable research is done to discover the chemistry
of creativity.  Daniel J. Levitin’s, Your Brain on Music, makes me
smarter about an artistic discipline I do not practice. 
            The classic, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty
Edwards, gave me practical insight into another artistic practice at
which I am not proficient.  –Enough so, as to create a longing for
its pursuit, but also, an understanding that my artistic path lay
elsewhere.
            Carl Sagan’s, The Varieties of Scientific Experience, (title
taken from Henry James’ Varieties of Religious Experience ?)
furthered my cosmic view of perceptions, perhaps first piqued long
ago by Marshall McLuan’s, The Medium is the Massage. 
            Poetry & Mysticism, by Colin Wilson has been a valuable
reference for me. 
            The forces and effects that engender creativity remain
mysterious.  Isn’t that great?  Creativity is not prescriptive.  In
fact, one definition of creativity may be that it is anti-prescriptive,
a notion that widens our window of opportunity.
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