G. Steve Journal

Fire In You

Musician Bruce Springsteen was interviewed this past week by The Daily Show's Trevor Noah:

Trevor: When you create, do you still have doubts sometimes?

Springsteen: Any good artist wrestles with their insecurities. It’s your insecurities that move you forward. If you were simply completely comfortable with who you are and what you’re doing and what you’ve done, I don’t know if you would have the fire in you to move forward. It’s your doubts and your questions and your searching for new and different answers that move you forward in your work.

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Pointing Away To The Moon

Photography, videography ––likely all creative pursuits that involve the use of tools –– have practitioners who's passion and reverence for those tools begins to subjugate the creative impulse, leading them to believe that what stands between them and perfection is the lack of the proper equipment.

Beginners, especially, are vulnerable to this way of thinking, often sidelining creative ideas until they are in possession of whatever item they're convinced is vital to the project.

By concentrating on the tools, the artist may miss the moment –- the very reason the tools exist.

We were reminded of this dilemma after a coming across a clip of the late actor Bruce Lee in the movie "Enter The Dragon", who counsels his young protoge:

Don’t think…. Feel!

Lee points upward:

It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.

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Always There

 

 The beauty was always there, but moments of true awareness were rare.

                                                                                                                      –Jane Goodall

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Not Seeing

This looking and not seeing things was a great sin, I thought, and one that was easy to fall into. It was always the beginning of something bad and I thought that we did not deserve to live in the world if we did not see it.

                                                                                                                 –– Ernest Hemingway 

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So What...

I have lived on a razor's edge.

So what if you fall off - I'd rather be doing something I really wanted to do.

I'd walk it again.

            – Georgia O'Keefe

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