This where I write and sometimes think
Bruce DeBoer from Permission To Suck has post the results of a new word game. Change, add or subtract one letter from a word and come up with a new definition.
Examples like Osteopornosis (n.): A degenerate disease and Dopeler effect (n.): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly, make for a light hearted distraction from work.
On a more important note games and exercises like this make for a great way to flex your creative muscles once in a while.
Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentation, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.
- Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters To A Young Poet
I came across this passage while reading Ranier Maria Rilke’s letters to a young poet and it seemed to be an appropriate follow up to my previous post A New Definition of Crazy.
“You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must”, then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.”
Whether it’s work or fun if we approached everything we did with these ideas in mind we would all be happier.
Artist Kentaro Nagai has created a series of images which the recreates the creatures from the Chinese zodiac using a morphed world map.
I love this kind of thing because on first glance they are just graphically interesting pictures of animals but on deeper inspection a new layer of creativity is revealed.
You can see the video of how the pictures were created here