Milton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Celebrated Designer Dispenses Wisdom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

in Creativity, Design, Life | April 24th, 2017

“None of us has real­ly the abil­i­ty to under­stand our path until it’s over,” the cel­e­brat­ed graph­ic design­er Mil­ton Glaser mus­es less than a minute into the above video.

The 86-year-old Glaser’s many con­tri­bu­tions to pop culture—the  I ❤ NY logo, the psy­che­del­ic por­trait of a rain­bow-haired Bob Dylan, DC Comics’ clas­sic bul­let logo—con­fer unde­ni­able author­i­ty. To the out­side eye, he seems to have a pret­ty firm han­dle on the path he’s been trav­el­ing for lo these many decades. Aspi­rant design­ers would do well to give extra con­sid­er­a­tion to any advice he might share.

As would the rest of us.

His “Ten Things I Have Learned,” orig­i­nal­ly deliv­ered as part of a talk to the AIGA—a ven­er­a­ble mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tion for design professionals—qualifies as sol­id life advice of gen­er­al inter­est.

Yes, the Inter­net spawns bul­let-point­ed tips for bet­ter liv­ing the way spring rains yield mush­rooms, but Glaser, a self-described “child of mod­ernism” who’s still a con­tender, does not truck in pithy Insta­gram-friend­ly apho­risms. Instead, his list is born of reflec­tion on the var­i­ous turns of a long and most­ly sat­is­fy­ing cre­ative career.

We’ve excerpt­ed some of his most essen­tial points below, and sug­gest that those read­ers who are still in train­ing give spe­cial empha­sis to num­ber sev­en. Don’t place too much weight on num­ber nine until you’ve estab­lished a sol­id work eth­ic. (See num­ber four for more on that.)

MILTON GLASER”S TEN RULES FOR WORK AND LIFE (& A BONUS JOKE ABOUT A RABBIT).

1. YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE

Some years ago I real­ized that… all the work I had done that was mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant came out of an affec­tion­ate rela­tion­ship with a client.

2. IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB

Here, Glaser quotes com­pos­er John Cage: Nev­er have a job, because if you have a job some­day some­one will take it away from you and then you will be unpre­pared for your old age. 

3. SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

Glaser rec­om­mends putting a ques­tion­able com­pan­ion to a gestalt ther­a­py test. If, after spend­ing time with that per­son “you are more tired, then you have been poi­soned. If you have more ener­gy, you have been nour­ished. The test is almost infal­li­ble and I sug­gest that you use it for the rest of your life.”

4. PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH (or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT)

Glaser con­cedes that a record of depend­able excel­lence is some­thing to look for in a brain sur­geon or auto mechan­ic, but for those in the arts, “con­tin­u­ous trans­gres­sion” is the qual­i­ty to cul­ti­vate. Pro­fes­sion­al­ism does not allow for that because trans­gres­sion has to encom­pass the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fail­ure and if you are pro­fes­sion­al your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat suc­cess. 

5. LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE

I have an alter­na­tive to the propo­si­tion that I believe is more appro­pri­ate. ‘Just enough is more.’

6. STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Style change is usu­al­ly linked to eco­nom­ic fac­tors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when peo­ple see too much of the same thing too often.

7. HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN

The brain is the most respon­sive organ of the body…. Thought changes our life and our behav­ior. I also believe that draw­ing works in the same way…. Draw­ing also makes you atten­tive. It makes you pay atten­tion to what you are look­ing at, which is not so easy.

8. DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY

One of the signs of a dam­aged ego is absolute cer­tain­ty. Schools encour­age the idea of not com­pro­mis­ing and defend­ing your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usu­al­ly all about the nature of com­pro­mise…. Ide­al­ly, mak­ing every­one win through acts of accom­mo­da­tion is desir­able.

9. IT DOESN’T MATTER

Glaser cred­its essay­ist Roger Rosenblatt’s Rules for Aging (misiden­ti­fy­ing the title as Aging Grace­ful­ly) with help­ing him artic­u­late his phi­los­o­phy here.  It doesn’t mat­ter what you think. It does not mat­ter if you are late or ear­ly, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stu­pid. If you were hav­ing a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cock­eyed or your boyfriend or girl­friend looks at you cock­eyed, if you are cock­eyed. If you don’t get that pro­mo­tion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t mat­ter.

10. TELL THE TRUTH

It’s inter­est­ing to observe that in the new AIGA’s code of ethics there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of use­ful infor­ma­tion about appro­pri­ate behav­ior towards clients and oth­er design­ers, but not a word about a designer’s rela­tion­ship to the pub­lic. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more cen­tral to what we do.

BONUS JOKE

A butch­er was open­ing his mar­ket one morn­ing and as he did a rab­bit popped his head through the door. The butch­er was sur­prised when the rab­bit inquired ‘Got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er said ‘This is a meat mar­ket – we sell meat, not veg­eta­bles.’ The rab­bit hopped off. The next day the butch­er is open­ing the shop and sure enough the rab­bit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er now irri­tat­ed says ‘Lis­ten you lit­tle rodent, I told you yes­ter­day we sell meat, we do not sell veg­eta­bles and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those flop­py ears to the floor.’ The rab­bit dis­ap­peared hasti­ly and noth­ing hap­pened for a week. Then one morn­ing the rab­bit popped his head around the cor­ner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butch­er said ‘No.’ The rab­bit said ‘Ok. Got any cab­bage?’’

Read Mil­ton Glaser’s “Ten Things I Have Learned” in its entire­ty here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Glaser Draws Shake­speare & Explains Why Draw­ing is the Key to Under­stand­ing Life

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

World-Renowned Graph­ic Design­er Mil­ton Glaser Has a Laugh on Old Jews Telling Jokes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Patti Smith, Umberto Eco & Richard Ford Give Advice to Young Artists in a Rollicking Short Animation

in Animation, Art, Creativity, Life | April 17th, 2017


Note: There are a cou­ple brief not-safe-for-work moments in this film.

Patron­iz­ing, pon­der­ous, well-mean­ing, self-aggran­diz­ing, inco­her­ent… young artists are sub­ject­ed to a lot of unso­licit­ed advice, and not just from their par­ents.

But what hap­pens when a young artist active­ly seeks it out?

Daniel­la Shuh­man turned to the Louisiana Channel’s series, “Advice to the Young,” feast­ing on the col­lect­ed wis­dom of such heavy hit­ters as per­for­mance artist Mari­na Abramovic, author Umber­to Eco, artist Ola­fur Elias­son, and the mul­ti­tal­ent­ed God­moth­er of Punk, Pat­ti Smith in prepa­ra­tion for her final project at Jerusalem’s Beza­lel Acad­e­my of Arts and Design.

Her resul­tant short film, above, appears to be the work of a deliri­ous­ly aggro inner child, one with a keen bull­shit meter and an anar­chic sense of humor.

“The most impor­tant advice I have is to have fun,” coun­sels nov­el­ist Jonathan Franzen—a man who alleged­ly wrote The Cor­rec­tions while wear­ing earplugs, ear­muffs, and a blind­fold, then bust­ed on Oprah Win­frey when she chose it for for her Book Club.

Cue great spurts of ani­mat­ed arte­r­i­al blood.

At least Franzen both­ers to sound encour­ag­ing… much more so than Abramovic, or fel­low nov­el­ist Richard “Talk Your­self Out of It If You Pos­si­bly Can Because You’re Prob­a­bly Not Going to Be Very Good At It” Ford.

(Par­ents strug­gling to come up with tuition may be relieved to learn that Ford’s on leave from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty this term.)

Mean­while, Shuh­man breaks for NSFW ter­ri­to­ry to visu­al­ize artist Eliasson’s advice, a move that would sure­ly please anoth­er Louisiana Chan­nel per­son­al­i­ty, car­toon­ist David Shrigley. Per­haps it can be his con­so­la­tion prize for not mak­ing the cut.

The pul­sat­ing repro­duc­tive organs aren’t entire­ly inap­pro­pri­ate. Lis­ten to Eliasson’s full inter­view to hear him equate mak­ing art with mak­ing the world. Now that’s the sort of advice that will put a young artist to work!

Some of the more gen­er­ous advice:

Build a good name, keep your name clean, don’t make com­pro­mis­es, don’t wor­ry about mak­ing a bunch of mon­ey or being suc­cess­ful.

Don’t be embar­rassed about what excites you.

If you are doing some­thing weird that every­body hates, that might be some­thing worth look­ing into and worth inves­ti­gat­ing.

Make your own way in the world. Wrap up warm. Eat prop­er­ly, sen­si­bly. Don’t smoke and phone your mom.

We love imag­in­ing the sort of unfet­tered advice Shuh­man will one day be in a posi­tion to dis­pense.

You can see some of her post grad­u­a­tion illus­tra­tion work on her Flickr page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Great Film­mak­ers Offer Advice to Young Direc­tors: Taran­ti­no, Her­zog, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Ander­son, Felli­ni & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Wynton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Practice: For Musicians, Athletes, or Anyone Who Wants to Learn Something New

in Creativity, Education, Life, Music, Productivity, Psychology | April 3rd, 2017

Image by Eric Del­mar, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Prac­tic­ing for count­less hours before we can be good at some­thing seems bur­den­some and bor­ing. Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to sto­ries of instant achieve­ment. The monk real­izes satori (and Neo learns kung fu); the super­hero acquires great pow­er out of the blue; Robert John­son trades for genius at the cross­roads. At the same time, we teach chil­dren they can’t mas­ter a skill with­out dis­ci­pline and dili­gence. We repeat pop psych the­o­ries that spec­i­fy the exact num­ber hours required for excel­lence. The num­ber may be arbi­trary, but it com­forts us to believe that prac­tice might, even­tu­al­ly, make per­fect. Because in truth we know there is no way around it. As Wyn­ton Marsalis writes in “Wynton’s Twelve Ways to Prac­tice: From Music to School­work,” “prac­tice is essen­tial to learn­ing music—and any­thing else, for that mat­ter.”

For jazz musi­cians, the time spent learn­ing the­o­ry and refin­ing tech­nique finds elo­quent expres­sion in the con­cept of wood­shed­ding, a “hum­bling but nec­es­sary chore,” writes Paul Klem­per­er at Big Apple Jazz, “like chop­ping wood before you can start the fire.”

Yet retir­ing to the wood­shed “means more than just prac­tic­ing…. You have to dig deep into your­self, dis­ci­pline your­self, become focused on the music and your instru­ment.” As begin­ners, we tend to look at prac­tice only as a chore. The best jazz musi­cians know there’s also “some­thing philo­soph­i­cal, almost reli­gious” about it. John Coltrane, for exam­ple, prac­ticed cease­less­ly, con­scious­ly defin­ing his music as a spir­i­tu­al and con­tem­pla­tive dis­ci­pline.

Marsalis also implies a reli­gious aspect in his short arti­cle: “when you prac­tice, it means you are will­ing to sac­ri­fice to sound good… I like to say that the time spent prac­tic­ing is the true sign of virtue in a musi­cian.” Maybe this piety is intend­ed to dis­pel the myth of quick and easy deals with infer­nal enti­ties. But most of Marsalis’ “twelve ways to prac­tice” are as prag­mat­ic as they come, and “will work,” he promis­es “for almost every activity—from music to school­work to sports.” Find his abridged list below, and read his full com­men­tary at “the trumpeter’s bible,” Arban’s Method.

  1. Seek out instruc­tion: A good teacher will help you under­stand the pur­pose of prac­tic­ing and can teach you ways to make prac­tic­ing eas­i­er and more pro­duc­tive.
  1. Write out a sched­ule: A sched­ule helps you orga­nize your time. Be sure to allow time to review the fun­da­men­tals because they are the foun­da­tion of all the com­pli­cat­ed things that come lat­er.
  1. Set goals: Like a sched­ule, goals help you orga­nize your time and chart your progress…. If a cer­tain task turns out to be real­ly dif­fi­cult, relax your goals: prac­tice does­n’t have to be painful to achieve results.
  1. Con­cen­trate: You can do more in 10 min­utes of focused prac­tice than in an hour of sigh­ing and moan­ing. This means no video games, no tele­vi­sion, no radio, just sit­ting still and work­ing…. Con­cen­trat­ed effort takes prac­tice too, espe­cial­ly for young peo­ple.
  1. Relax and prac­tice slow­ly: Take your time; don’t rush through things. When­ev­er you set out to learn some­thing new – prac­tic­ing scales, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables, verb tens­es in Span­ish – you need to start slow­ly and build up speed.
  1. Prac­tice hard things longer: Don’t be afraid of con­fronting your inad­e­qua­cies; spend more time prac­tic­ing what you can’t do…. Suc­cess­ful prac­tice means com­ing face to face with your short­com­ings. Don’t be dis­cour­aged; you’ll get it even­tu­al­ly.
  1. Prac­tice with expres­sion: Every day you walk around mak­ing your­self into “you,” so do every­thing with the prop­er atti­tude…. Express your “style” through how you do what you do.
  1. Learn from your mis­takes: None of us are per­fect, but don’t be too hard on your­self. If you drop a touch­down pass, or strike out to end the game, it’s not the end of the world. Pick your­self up, ana­lyze what went wrong and keep going….
  1. Donʼt show off: It’s hard to resist show­ing off when you can do some­thing well…. But my father told me, “Son, those who play for applause, that’s all they get.” When you get caught up in doing the tricky stuff, you’re just cheat­ing your­self and your audi­ence.
  1. Think for your­self: Your suc­cess or fail­ure at any­thing ulti­mate­ly depends on your abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems, so don’t become a robot…. Think­ing for your­self helps devel­op your pow­ers of judg­ment.
  1. Be opti­mistic: Opti­mism helps you get over your mis­takes and go on to do bet­ter. It also gives you endurance because hav­ing a pos­i­tive atti­tude makes you feel that some­thing great is always about to hap­pen.
  1. Look for con­nec­tions: If you devel­op the dis­ci­pline it takes to become good at some­thing, that dis­ci­pline will help you in what­ev­er else you do…. The more you dis­cov­er the rela­tion­ships between things that at first seem dif­fer­ent, the larg­er your world becomes. In oth­er words, the wood­shed can open up a whole world of pos­si­bil­i­ties.

You’ll note in even a cur­so­ry scan of Marsalis’ pre­scrip­tions that they begin with the immi­nent­ly practical—the “chores” we can find tedious—and move fur­ther into the intan­gi­bles: devel­op­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, humil­i­ty, opti­mism, and, even­tu­al­ly, maybe, a grad­ual kind of enlight­en­ment. You’ll notice on a clos­er read that the con­scious­ness-rais­ing and the mun­dane dai­ly tasks go hand-in-hand.

While this may be all well and good for jazz musi­cians, stu­dents, ath­letes, or chess play­ers, we may have rea­son for skep­ti­cism about suc­cess through prac­tice more gen­er­al­ly. Researchers at Prince­ton have found, for exam­ple, that the effec­tive­ness of prac­tice is “domain depen­dent.” In games, music, and sports, prac­tice accounts for a good deal of improve­ment. In cer­tain oth­er “less sta­ble” fields dri­ven by celebri­ty and net­work­ing, for exam­ple, suc­cess can seem more depen­dent on per­son­al­i­ty or priv­i­leged access.

But it’s prob­a­bly safe to assume that if you’re read­ing this post, you’re inter­est­ed in mas­ter­ing a skill, not cul­ti­vat­ing a brand. Whether you want to play Carnegie Hall or “learn a lan­guage, cook good meals or get along well with peo­ple,” prac­tice is essen­tial, Marsalis argues, and prac­tic­ing well is just as impor­tant as prac­tic­ing often. For a look at how prac­tice changes our brains, cre­at­ing what we col­lo­qui­al­ly call “mus­cle mem­o­ry,” see the TED-Ed video just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wyn­ton Marsalis Takes Louis Armstrong’s Trum­pet Out of the Muse­um & Plays It Again

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Fiction of the Science: A Meditation on How Artists & Storytellers Can Advance Technology

in Art, Creativity, Sci Fi, Technology | March 13th, 2017

In ele­men­tary school, a play­ful teacher gave us an assign­ment. Every­one was to dream up some sort of amaz­ing inven­tion, then draw both a design and an adver­tise­ment for it.

It seemed most of my class­mates were primed for a future in which sneak­ers would come equipped with ful­ly oper­a­tional, built-in wings.

I suc­cumbed to peer pres­sure and turned in an ad show­ing a laugh­ing, air­borne boy, taunt­ing an earth­bound adult by dan­gling his be-winged sneak­er-clad foot just a few inch­es out of reach.

My Fleet Foot was award­ed a good grade, but I felt no pas­sion for it. The inven­tion that tru­ly cap­tured me was the one depict­ed in my favorite illus­tra­tion from Pat­apoufs et Fil­if­ers, the fun­ny French children’s book my father had passed down, about a war between fat and thin peo­ple. The thin char­ac­ters were indus­tri­ous and high­ly dri­ven, but the fat ones knew how to live, loung­ing in feath­er beds beside wall spig­ots dis­pens­ing hot choco­late.

Those spig­ots were—then and now—a tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment I would love to see real­ized.

Robert Wong, are you lis­ten­ing?

In the Fic­tion of Sci­ence, the short film above, Wong, a graph­ic design­er and Google Cre­ative Lab’s VP, shows how sto­ry­telling can put the spurs to those with the train­ing and know-how to ush­er these wild-sound­ing advance­ments into the real world.

Case in point, the cell phone.

Mar­tin Coop­er, an engi­neer at Motoro­la, is wide­ly regard­ed as the father of the mobile phone, but when we take a broad­er view, the cell phone actu­al­ly has two dad­dies: Coop­er and Wah Ming Chang, the artist respon­si­ble for many of Star Trek’s icon­ic props, includ­ing the phas­er, the tri­corder and the com­mu­ni­ca­tor—a “portable trans­ceiv­er device in use by Starfleet crews since the mid-22nd cen­tu­ry.”

(Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Coop­er was a huge Star Trek fan.)

Touch screens and 3D fab­ri­ca­tions born of hand ges­tures are among the many cre­ative fic­tions that have quick­ly become real­i­ty as sci­ence and art inter­min­gle on movie sets and in the lab.

If you’re inspired to take an active part in this rev­o­lu­tion, Google Cre­ative Lab is cur­rent­ly tak­ing appli­ca­tions for The Five, a one-year paid pro­gram for five lucky inno­va­tors, drawn from a pool of artists, design­ers, film­mak­ers, devel­op­ers, and oth­er tal­ent­ed, mul­ti-dex­trous mak­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Sto­ry­telling

Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

John Berg­er (RIP) and Susan Son­tag Take Us Inside the Art of Sto­ry­telling (1983)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er whose play Zam­boni Godot is play­ing in New York City through March 18. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Cormac McCarthy Explains Why He Worked Hard at Not Working: How 9‑to‑5 Jobs Limit Your Creative Potential

in Creativity, Literature, Writing | February 27th, 2017

Last sum­mer, a rumor cir­cu­lat­ed that Cor­mac McCarthy, one of America’s most beloved liv­ing writ­ers, had passed away. In the midst of a dev­as­tat­ing year for famous artists and their fans, the announce­ment appeared on Twit­ter, but it “was, in fact, a hoax.” As McCarthy’s publisher—recently merged jug­ger­naut Pen­guin Ran­dom House—con­firmed, the author of such mod­ern clas­sics as Blood Merid­i­an, All the Pret­ty Hors­es, and No Coun­try for Old Men “is alive and well and still doesn’t care about Twit­ter.” The lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty is bet­ter off not only for McCarthy’s good health, but for his dis­re­gard of what may be the most fiendish­ly dis­tract­ing social media plat­form of them all. He is still hard at work, on a nov­el called The Pas­sen­ger, ten­ta­tive­ly slat­ed for release this year.

You can hear excerpts of The Pas­sen­ger read in the dim, shaky video below, from an event in 2015 at the San­ta Fe Insti­tute, an inde­pen­dent sci­en­tif­ic think tank where McCarthy keeps an office and where he has plied a sec­ondary trade as a copy-edi­tor for sci­ence-themed books, includ­ing Quan­tum Man, physi­cist Lawrence Krauss’s biog­ra­phy of Richard Feyn­man. (McCarthy’s “knowl­edge of physics and maths,” writes Ali­son Flood at The Guardian, is said to exceed “that of many pro­fes­sion­als in the field.”) McCarthy’s lat­est work seems like a depar­ture for him.


His ear­li­er nov­els mined the rich­ness of South­ern Goth­ic and West­ern tra­di­tions, and “have sub­tly woven in sci­ence,” writes Babak Dowlat­shahi at Newsweek. But The Pas­sen­ger “will place sci­ence in the fore­ground.” San­ta Fe Insti­tute pres­i­dent David Krakauer calls it “full-blown Cor­mac 3.0—a math­e­mat­i­cal [and] ana­lyt­i­cal nov­el.”

So we know Cor­mac McCarthy is a genius, but how is it that he found the time to become a Pulitzer Prize, Nation­al Book Award, and Guggen­heim and MacArthur Fel­low­ship-win­ning nov­el­ist and, on the side, a stu­dent of the­o­ret­i­cal physics and math? His secret involves more than stay­ing off Twit­ter. As McCarthy tells Oprah Win­frey in the video at the top of the post, excerpt­ed from his first tele­vi­sion inter­view ever in 2007, he has made his work the cen­tral focus of his life, to the exclu­sion of every­thing else, includ­ing mon­ey and pub­lic adu­la­tion from fans and admir­ers. For exam­ple, he answers a ques­tion about why he turned down lucra­tive speak­ing engage­ments with, “I was busy. I had oth­er things to do.”

It’s not that I don’t like things, I mean some things are very nice, but they cer­tain­ly take a dis­tant sec­ond place to being able to live your life and being able to do what you want to do. I always knew that I didn’t want to work.

How did he pull off not work­ing? “You have to be ded­i­cat­ed… I thought, ‘you’re just here once, life is brief and to have to spend every day of it doing what some­body else wants you to do is not the way to live it.’” McCarthy doesn’t “have any advice for any­body” about how to avoid the dai­ly grind, except, he says, “if you’re real­ly ded­i­cat­ed, you can prob­a­bly do it.” As Oprah puts it, “you have worked at not work­ing?” To which he replies, “absolute­ly, it’s the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty.”

Lest we imme­di­ate­ly dis­miss McCarthy’s phi­los­o­phy as clue­less­ness or priv­i­lege, we should bear in mind that he will­ing­ly endured extreme and “tru­ly, tru­ly bleak” pover­ty to keep work­ing at not working—or work­ing, rather, on the work he want­ed to do. There’s a bit more to becom­ing a mul­ti­ple award-win­ning nov­el­ist and MacArthur “Genius” than sim­ply avoid­ing the 9‑to‑5. But McCarthy sug­gests that unless artists make their own work their first pri­or­i­ty, and mate­r­i­al com­fort and eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty a “dis­tant sec­ond,” they may nev­er tru­ly find out what they’re capa­ble of.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

The Employ­ment: A Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About Why We’re So Dis­en­chant­ed with Work Today

Cor­mac McCarthy’s Three Punc­tu­a­tion Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Wern­er Her­zog Reads From Cor­mac McCarthy’s All the Pret­ty Hors­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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“Stop It and Just DO”: Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Advice on Overcoming Creative Blocks, Written by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (1965)

in Art, Creativity, Letters | February 22nd, 2017


A quick fyi: this video is a lit­tle not safe for work.

You know you want to cre­ate some­thing, but how on Earth to get it out of your mind and into real­i­ty? Some­times you sim­ply can’t see the way for­ward, a sit­u­a­tion in which every cre­ator finds them­selves soon­er or lat­er. When the sculp­tor Eva Hesse hit a cre­ative block in 1965, she wrote of her prob­lem to a close friend, the con­cep­tu­al artist Sol Lewitt. He emphat­i­cal­ly sug­gest­ed that she “just stop think­ing, wor­ry­ing, look­ing over your shoul­der,” and fur­ther­more that she stop

won­der­ing, doubt­ing, fear­ing, hurt­ing, hop­ing for some easy way out, strug­gling, grasp­ing, con­fus­ing, itch­ing, scratch­ing, mum­bling, bum­bling, grum­bling, hum­bling, stum­bling, num­bling, ram­bling, gam­bling, tum­bling, scum­bling, scram­bling, hitch­ing, hatch­ing, bitch­ing, moan­ing, groan­ing, hon­ing, bon­ing, horse-shit­ting, hair-split­ting, nit-pick­ing, piss-trick­ling, nose stick­ing, ass-goug­ing, eye­ball-pok­ing, fin­ger-point­ing, alley­way-sneak­ing, long wait­ing, small step­ping, evil-eye­ing, back-scratch­ing, search­ing, perch­ing, besmirch­ing, grind­ing, grind­ing, grind­ing away at your­self. Stop it and just

DO

You can read Lewit­t’s reply in full, which offers much more col­or­ful advice and sup­port­ing ver­biage besides (as well as a far bold­er “DO” than HTML can ren­der), at Let­ters of Note. Though per­son­al­ly tai­lored to Hesse and her dis­tinc­tive sen­si­bil­i­ties, Lewit­t’s sug­ges­tions also show the poten­tial for wider appli­ca­tion: “Try and tick­le some­thing inside you, your ‘weird humor.’ ” “Don’t wor­ry about cool, make your own uncool.” “If you fear, make it work for you — draw & paint your fear & anx­i­ety.” “Prac­tice being stu­pid, dumb, unthink­ing, emp­ty.” “Try to do some BAD work — the worst you can think of and see what hap­pens but main­ly relax and let every­thing go to hell — you are not respon­si­ble for the world — you are only respon­si­ble for your work — so DO IT.”

Though all this has plen­ty of impact on the page, it has an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind when per­formed by actor (and cham­pi­on let­ter-read­er) Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, as seen and heard in the Let­ters Live video above. Putting on a not-over­done New York accent, the Eng­lish star of Sher­lock and The Imi­ta­tion Game deliv­ers with all nec­es­sary force Lewit­t’s advice to “leave the ‘world’ and ‘ART’ alone and also quit fondling your ego,” to “emp­ty your mind and con­cen­trate on what you are doing,” to know “that you don’t have to jus­ti­fy your work — not even to your­self.” Be warned that this cre­ative coach­ing ses­sion does gets a lit­tle NSFW at times, but then, so do some of the finest works of art — and so do the truths we need to hear to make them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Famous Writ­ers Deal With Writer’s Block: Their Tips & Tricks

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Albert Camus’ Touch­ing Thank You Let­ter to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How to Respond to the Challenges of Our Time?: Jazz Legends Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter Give 10 Pieces of Advice to Young Artists, and Everyone Else

in Art, Creativity, Current Affairs, Jazz, Music | February 7th, 2017

Some moments in his­to­ry strike us as dra­mat­ic rup­tures. Cer­tain­ties are super­seded, thrown into chaos by a seis­mic event, and we find our­selves adrift and anx­ious. What are artists to do? Gripped by the same fears as every­one else, the same sense of urgency, writ­ers, musi­cians, film­mak­ers, painters, etc. may find them­selves unable to “breathe with uncon­di­tion­al breath / the uncon­di­tioned air,” as Wen­dell Berry once described the cre­ative process.

We might remem­ber the rad­i­cal break with tra­di­tion when the shock­ing car­nage of World War I sent poets and painters into fright­en­ing places they had pre­vi­ous­ly left unex­plored. Vir­ginia Woolf summed up the sit­u­a­tion in her essay The Lean­ing Tow­er: “sud­den­ly like a chasm in a smooth road, the [Great] war came.” Shat­tered as they were, her gen­er­a­tion over­came their paral­y­sis. Mod­ernists of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry were able to speak to their bro­ken age in ways that con­tin­ue to speak to ours.

But we should tem­per our belief that bad times make good art by not­ing that the most vision­ary cre­ative minds are not sim­ply reac­tive, respond­ing to tragedy like reporters on a crime scene. As Wayne Short­er and Her­bie Han­cock— two of the 20th century’s most con­sis­tent­ly inno­v­a­tive musicians—suggest, artists at all times need a set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples. (See the two play “Mem­o­ry of Enchant­ment” above in 2002.) There is always a lot of per­son­al work to do. And in “tur­bu­lent and unpre­dictable times,” the two jazz greats advise, “the answer to peace is sim­ple; it begins with you.”

A plat­i­tude, per­haps, but one they illus­trat­ed near­ly a year ago in an open let­ter at Nest HQ with some pro­found, if chal­leng­ing, pre­scrip­tions for our present cul­tur­al ill­ness­es. Short­er and Hancock’s coun­sel is not a reac­tion to the rup­ture of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, but a response to the events that pre­ced­ed it, “the hor­ror at the Bat­a­clan… the upheaval in Syr­ia and the sense­less blood­shed in San Bernardi­no.” Not pas­sive­ly wait­ing to find out where the past few years’ vio­lence and unrest would lead, the two have made eth­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, and spir­i­tu­al inter­ven­tions, pre­sent­ing their phi­los­o­phy and ethics through jazz, Bud­dhism, sci­ence, art, and lit­er­a­ture.

Below, you can read their ten pieces of advice “to the next gen­er­a­tion of artists,” or at least excerpts there­of. They begin with a reas­sur­ing pref­ace: “As an artist, cre­ator and dream­er of this world, we ask you not to be dis­cour­aged by what you see but to use your own lives, and by exten­sion your art, as vehi­cles for the con­struc­tion of peace…. You mat­ter, your actions mat­ter, your art mat­ters.” That said, they also want to assure read­ers that “these thoughts tran­scend pro­fes­sion­al bound­aries and apply to all peo­ple, regard­less of pro­fes­sion.”

First, awak­en to your human­i­ty

You can­not hide behind a pro­fes­sion or instru­ment; you have to be human. Focus your ener­gy on becom­ing the best human you can be. Focus on devel­op­ing empa­thy and com­pas­sion. Through the process you’ll tap into a wealth of inspi­ra­tion root­ed in the com­plex­i­ty and curios­i­ty of what it means to sim­ply exist on this plan­et.

Embrace and con­quer the road less trav­eled

Don’t allow your­self to be hijacked by com­mon rhetoric, or false beliefs and illu­sions about how life should be lived. It’s up to you to be the pio­neers.

Wel­come to the Unknown

Every rela­tion­ship, obsta­cle, inter­ac­tion, etc. is a rehearsal for the next adven­ture in life. Every­thing is con­nect­ed. Every­thing builds. Noth­ing is ever wast­ed. This type of think­ing requires courage. Be coura­geous and do not lose your sense of exhil­a­ra­tion and rev­er­ence for this won­der­ful world around you.

Under­stand the True Nature of Obsta­cles

We have this idea of fail­ure, but it’s not real; it’s an illu­sion. There is no such thing as fail­ure. What you per­ceive as fail­ure is real­ly a new oppor­tu­ni­ty, a new hand of cards, or a new can­vas to cre­ate upon.

Don’t Be Afraid to Inter­act with Those Who Are Dif­fer­ent from You

The world needs more one-on-one inter­ac­tion among peo­ple of diverse ori­gins with a greater empha­sis on art, cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Our dif­fer­ences are what we have in com­mon…. We need to be con­nect­ing with one anoth­er, learn­ing about one anoth­er, and expe­ri­enc­ing life with one anoth­er. We can nev­er have peace if we can­not under­stand the pain in each other’s hearts.

Strive to Cre­ate Agen­da-Free Dia­logue

Art in any form is a medi­um for dia­logue, which is a pow­er­ful tool… we’re talk­ing about reflect­ing and chal­leng­ing the fears, which pre­vent us from dis­cov­er­ing our unlim­it­ed access to the courage inher­ent in us all.

Be Wary of Ego

Cre­ativ­i­ty can­not flow when only the ego is served.

Work Towards a Busi­ness with­out Bor­ders

The med­ical field has an orga­ni­za­tion called Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders. This lofty effort can serve as a mod­el for tran­scend­ing the lim­i­ta­tions and strate­gies of old busi­ness for­mu­las which are designed to per­pet­u­ate old sys­tems in the guise of new ones.

Appre­ci­ate the Gen­er­a­tion that Walked Before You

Your elders can help you. They are a source of wealth in the form of wis­dom…. Don’t waste time repeat­ing their mis­takes.

Last­ly, We Hope that You Live in a State of Con­stant Won­der

As we accu­mu­late years, parts of our imag­i­na­tion tend to dull. Whether from sad­ness, pro­longed strug­gle, or social con­di­tion­ing, some­where along the way peo­ple for­get how to tap into the inher­ent mag­ic that exists with­in our minds. Don’t let that part of your imag­i­na­tion fade away.

Whether you’re a jazz fan, musi­cian, artist, writer, accoun­tant, cashier, truck­er, teacher, or what­ev­er, I can’t think of a wis­er set of guide­lines with which to con­front the suf­fo­cat­ing epi­dem­ic of cyn­i­cism, delu­sion­al think­ing, ram­pant big­otry, hatred, and self-absorp­tion of our time. Read Short­er and Hancock’s full open let­ter at Nest HQ.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Jean-Paul Sartre on How Amer­i­can Jazz Lets You Expe­ri­ence Exis­ten­tial­ist Free­dom & Tran­scen­dence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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David Lynch Explains How Meditation Boosts Our Creativity (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Meditating)

in Creativity, Film, Health | January 17th, 2017

David Lynch med­i­tates, and he med­i­tates hard. Begin­ning his prac­tice in earnest after it helped him solve a cre­ative prob­lem dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of his break­out 1977 film Eraser­head, he has con­tin­ued med­i­tat­ing assid­u­ous­ly ever since, going so far as to found the David Lynch Foun­da­tion for Con­scious­ness-Based Edu­ca­tion and Peace and pub­lish a pro-med­i­ta­tion book called Catch­ing the Big Fish.

It might seem non­sen­si­cal to hear an artist of the grotesque like Lynch speak rap­tur­ous­ly about voy­ag­ing into his own con­scious­ness, let alone in his frac­tured all-Amer­i­can, askew-Jim­my-Stew­art man­ner, but he does med­i­tate for a prac­ti­cal rea­son: it gives him ideas.

Only by med­i­tat­ing, he says, can he dive down and catch the “big fish” he uses as ingre­di­ents in his inim­itable film, music, and visu­al art. You can hear more of his thoughts on med­i­ta­tion, con­scious­ness, and cre­ativ­i­ty in his nine-minute speech above.

If you’d like to hear more, the video just above offers a near­ly two-hour pre­sen­ta­tion at UC Berke­ley with Lynch as its star. You’ll also hear from out­spo­ken quan­tum physi­cist John Hagelin and Fred Travis, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Brain, Con­scious­ness and Cog­ni­tion Mahar­ishi Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­age­ment. Some of what they say might make good sense to you: after all, we could all use a method to clear our minds so we can cre­ate what we need to cre­ate. Some of what they say might strike you as total non­sense. But if you feel tempt­ed to dis­miss all as too bizarre for seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, you might med­i­tate, as it were, on oth­er things Lynchi­an: back­wards-talk­ing dwarves, sev­ered ears on sub­ur­ban lawns, alien babies, women liv­ing in radi­a­tors, sit­com fam­i­lies in rab­bit suits. He’s cer­tain­ly pitched us weird­er con­cepts than med­i­ta­tion.

For some sec­u­lar intro­duc­tions to med­i­ta­tion, you may wish to try out some of these resources.

–UCLA’s Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion Ses­sions

–Insight Med­i­ta­tion Center’s Free 6‑Part Intro to Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion

–Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

–Med­i­ta­tion 101: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Beginner’s Guide

–Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

–Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in April, 2013.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Allen Gins­berg Teach­es You How to Med­i­tate with a Rock Song Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan on Bass

 

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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