G. Steve Journal

Stay Awhile

An excerpt from "When I Am Among the Trees" by poet Mary Oliver:

                Around me the trees stir in their leaves

                
and call out, “Stay awhile.”


                The light flows from their branches.

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Work That Matters

I find it encouraging to read behind-the-scenes stories of the strife and tensions that often accompany the creative process.  One of my favorite films, Terence Malick's Days of Heaven was sidelined in the middle of shooting while the parties sought to reconcile artistic differences.

This inescapable phenomenon has certainly been true in my own brief venture into filmmaking, typically from well-meaning clients insistence on a misplaced allegiance to the literal:

If you want to watch more TV, the universe won’t bother you.
                                But if you want to do work that matters, it’s going to be a fight.                                                                                                      – Shawn Blanc

 

 

Go Where You're Drawn

One finds this admonition regularly in texts from Thoreau to Dr. Suess, and for the creative person, there's never a bad time to come across a reminder – this time from filmmaker Martin Scorcese:

You have to find your own way. There are no manuals, no shortcuts, no secrets. You write your own manual, develop your own shortcuts, find your own secrets. You go where you’re drawn to go, and you learn by doing the work.
I mean, if you’re scared, if it all seems too daunting, if the machinery of it all seems too big and scary and overwhelming—that’s great. You wake up in the morning and you do it anyway. If it seems impossible, that’s even better. You do it anyway. Now it’s time to get to work.

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Go To The Riverbank

In keeping with our exploration of the creative process comes this little gem from Monty Python's Eric Idle:

...in the PBS series Monty Python’s Personal Best, Idle discusses the joy of writing for the show—and compares creating Monty Python to fishing, of all things: “You go to the riverbank every day, you don’t know what you’re going to catch."

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