G. Steve Journal

Magic

Here's an excerpt from an interview with photographer Camille Seaman in a recent issue of Parabola magazine:

I suspect there are things we don't have words for.  And if you have a certain quality of sensitivity, they are felt, but no one knows how to talk about it.

Exactly, exactly.  It's that intangible. Part of the magic of an artist is being able to draw from the intangible and create a physical. That's magic, truly, because you're literally reaching into a void and drawing energy and making something…"

 

Nothing New...

From the blog Futility Closet:

I am astonished at the foolish music written in these times. It is false and wrong and no longer does anyone pay attention to what our beloved old masters wrote about composition. It certainly must be a remarkably elevated art when a pile of consonances are thrown together any which way.

I remain faithful to the pure old composition and pure rules. I have often walked out of the church since I could no longer listen to that mountain yodeling. I hope this worthless modern coinage will fall into disuse and that new coins will be forged according to the fine old stamp and standard.

– Samuel Scheidt, to Heinrich Baryphonus, Jan. 26, 1651

Good Enough

Our western culture places a premium on achieving ever greater measures of success which, paradoxically, can intimidate us from taking the first, crucial steps towards a goal -- fear of failure can often prevent forward progress. 

I came across an interesting interview in the NY TIMES with Jan Filochowski, chief executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, one of the world’s top children’s hospitals, where he talks about the importance of constructively dealing with failure, as opposed to trying to avoid it:

Q. We have to make mistakes to become better managers?

A. I’m a huge believer in the 80/20 rule. As long as you get more things right than you get wrong, that’s O.K. And if you wait until you get everything right, you’ll never do anything. You’ll be perfect, but indecisive, and you will fail big-time. That’s one of the things I learned. It’s about achieving not just the O.K. but the good enough. If you focus on the good enough, you get better and better. If you wait to get from the good to the great, I don’t think you’ll ever get to the good.