Quote of the Day
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“Intention involves such a small fragment of our consciousness and of our mind and of our life.”
Jasper Johns at Pearl Street studio in 1955. Photograph by Robert Rauschenberg
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Trust Nobody
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In the autumn of 1889, 41-year-old Gauguin received a distraught
letter from his young friend after a particularly harsh critical
reception of Bernard’s paintings. In a reply found in Paul Gauguin: Letters to His Wife and Friends (public library), the painter writes to his 21-year-old friend:
Your disconsolate letter reaches a countryside as
sorrowful. I understand the bitterness which sweeps over you at the
foolish reception of you and your works… What would you rather have? a
mediocrity which pleases everybody or a talent which breaks new ground.
We must choose if we have free will. Would you have the power of choice
if choosing leads to suffering — a Nessus shirt which sticks to you and
cannot be stripped off? Attacks on originality are to be expected from
those who lack the power to create and shrug their shoulders.
As for me, I own myself beaten — by events, by men, by
the family, but not by public opinion. I scorn it and I can do without
admirers. I won’t say that at your age I was like this, but by the
exertion of sheer will power, that is what I am like to-day. Let them
study carefully my last pictures and, if they have any feelings at all,
they will see what resigned suffering is in them — a cry wrung from the
heart… But you, why do you suffer, too? You are young, and too early you
begin to carry the cross. Do not rebel; one day, you will feel a joy in
having resisted the temptation to hate, and there is truly intoxicating
poetry in the goodness of him who has suffered.
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Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
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Even your family eventually betrays you
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Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
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My Shit Don’t Stink
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Gospel of Matthew 16:2b–3 (the signs of the times)
Greek
Ὀψίας γενομένης λέγετε, Εὐδια, πυρράζει γὰρ ὁ οὐρανός καὶ πρωὶ,
Σήμερον χειμών, πυρράζει γὰρ στυγνάζων ὁ οὐρανός. τὸ μὲν πρόσωπον τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ γινώσκετε διακρίνειν, τὰ δὲ σημεῖα τῶν καιρῶν οὐ δύνασθε.
Translation (RSV)
When it is evening, you say, “It will be fair weather; for the sky is
red.” And in the morning, “It will be stormy today, for the sky is red
and threatening.” You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky,
but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.
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Passion Versus Obsession
Because passionate people are driven to create as a way to grow and achieve their potential, they are constantly seeking out others who share their passion in a quest for collaboration, friction and inspiration. Because they have a strong sense of self, passionate people are well-equipped to form relationships. They present themselves in ways that invite trust – they have little time for pretense and they are willing to express vulnerability and need in order to receive the help they need in achieving their own potential. Because they are passionate, they are willing to share their own knowledge and experience when they encounter someone sharing their passion. They are also intensely curious, seeking to understand the other passionate people they encounter in order to better see where and how they can collaborate to get better faster.
In contrast, obsessive people hide behind their objects of obsession. The objects are what are important, not others or even themselves. As a result, obsessive people are hard to get to know and trust – they share little of themselves and they exhibit minimal interest or curiosity regarding the needs or feelings of others. One of the hallmarks of obsessive people is that they tend to talk endlessly and often repetitively about the same thing, rarely inviting commentary or reaction from others, and ultimately pushing others away with their obsessive rants.
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It’s Very Difficult To Argue With An Idiot
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Synchronicity is a concept, first explained by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. During his career, Jung furnished several slightly different definitions of it. Jung variously defined synchronicity as an “acausal connecting (togetherness) principle,” “meaningful coincidence”, and “acausal parallelism.” He introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture.
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Bullshit
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Everybody starts by imitating their heroes. For me it was Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters.