G. Steve Journal

How Do We Know...

... when we have something?

Musician and composer Quincy Jones responded with a simple answer – one that every artist understands:

We simply did what gave us the goosebumps.

[via]

 

Feel Illuminated

A perennial theme explored in these posts is the tension between how we apprehend the world: intellectually versus emotionally – cognitive vs. pre-cognitive is how we’ve often labeled it – and we make the case that the most powerful and meaningful creative expressions are those that evoke a pre-cognitive emotional response.

Here’s filmmaker Werner Herzog weighing in on this theme, using poetry as an example:

You will find that in great poetry, when you listen or read a great poem it will occur to you very abruptly that there’s a deep, enormous truth in this poem and you feel illuminated, and you don’t have to analyze, and you don’t have to read lots of literature about this poem, you just know it instantly.

And why do you know it? Because there’s an ecstasy of truth that is in this poem.

[via]

State of Becoming

 

An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive

at a place where he thinks he's at somewhere.

You always have to realize that

you're constantly in a state of becoming.

And, as long as you can stay in that realm

you'll sort of be alright.

                                                           – Bob Dylan

 

Eyes Open

 

People say you have to travel to see the world.

Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place

and keep your eyes open,

you're going to see just about all that you can handle.

                                                            – Paul Auster