G. Steve Journal

"The War of...

Art" and "Anything You Want" are two very brief but very powerful books on the creative process, though they take very divergent paths.

Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art" is a manifesto urging the reader to conquer resistance  -- the resistance that prevents us from doing what it is we need to do. At times admonishing and at times metaphysical, this is the kind of book one wants to keep close at hand as a reminder when straying from the task at hand. As an Esquire review put it, Pressfield's book is: "...a kick in the ass."

Conversely, Siver's "Anything You Want" is an abbreviated inside look at Derek Sivers' ten-year adventure as the founder of CD Baby, an early online music business.  Sivers, a musician, makes it clear he has the discipline to do what it is he sets out to do and it's a fascinating read.  The upshot: be sure that whatever it is you are doing serves the ultimate goal of being happy.  He concludes that money and possessions are not as important to him as the freedom to live a more nomadic life -- a very unusual but refreshing conclusion from a "successful" business-owner who made millions from his brainchild.

Both worth a look...

What We Know

A friend sent me this link about how what we know -- or don't know -- clearly affects our perceptions...

Perfect Day For...

Yesterday was a perfect summer day, and a friend and I set out early to enjoy the morning and see if we could capture some images. 

The sky was a cloudless blue - it was the kind of day that visitors to the gallery often remark is, "the perfect day to take pictures."  I don't usually bother to correct them:  those are the nicest days to be out with a camera, but they are the most difficult for a landscape photographer, since a sky without clouds tends to also lack personality.

We hiked along one of the many streams in the area and, as I wrote about in an earlier post, I liked the composition of many of the images but not the color -- a homogenous summer green.

I converted to B&W, as I did the earlier image, and the end result expresses, for me, the timeless feeling of this setting.

Soulful

I read a wonderful interview with the actor Wendell Pierce, who plays the laconic Antoine Batiste in the HBO series Treme, about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  If you haven't seen this series yet, consider putting it on your Netflix queue, if only for the musicians featured, like Dr. John and Kermit Ruffins.

Pierce, a New Orleans native, talks about the vital music scene there and observes that how music is played -- from the heart -- "soulful" -- is just as important, if not more so, than hitting all the notes.

On reflection, that's probably true for most creative endeavors, including photography.  If a work of art -- poem, painting, photo - doesn't speak from that soulful place, then ultimately it doesn't really connect with the audience on the level that art should.

Art

A friend recomended a Jaques Barzun essay collection and, being unfamiliar with this author, I did some searching online and came upon a selection of quotations attributed to him, one of which I found especially trenchant:

Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.

                                                                                                                     –– Jacques Barzun