Dear
Heron Dancers,
Creative people are sponges for information, constantly in search of the new image, new perspective, new information that can change their work. I think I’ve offered this quote in a previous Pause for Beauty or on the Heron Dance Facebook page.
I once asked advertising legend Carl Ally what makes the creative person tick. Ally responded, "The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he (or she) never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen."
— Roger von Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head
Gary Snyder once told an interviewer (I think in the book The Real Work, Interviews and Talks. 1964-1979) that the problem with most poetry is that most poets are unwilling to study the tradition out of which their craft evolved. Most who consider themselves poets don’t really want to go to the trouble of studying the history of their poetry: studying, for instance, ancient Chinese poetry or haiku. Their work, he says, lacks depth because it lacks effort and humility.
About half the paintings pinned to the walls in my studio are by other artists, and almost all are wild, uninhibited paintings that offer a rough approximation of a subject. They are paintings more about what the artists felt about their subjects than what the subject actually looks like. They offer insight into something deeper. I put them there to remind myself to relax when I paint, to not worry so much about an accurate representation. In a way, those paintings give me permission to pursue my own independent inclinations and vision.
In his memoir, Chronicles I, Bob Dylan describes coming to the conclusion that he wanted to write his own material, rather than sing songs written by others, “I could see that the type of songs I was leaning towards singing didn’t exist…” For inspiration, he looked to songs that had a wild freedom about them, songs that didn’t follow any rules. In particular, he studied “Pirate Jenny,” a song by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Dylan compared the song to Picasso’s painting Guernica.
This is a wild song. Big medicine in the lyrics. Heavy action spread out. Each phrase comes at you from a ten-foot drop, scuttles across the road and then another one comes like a punch on the chin. . . . It leaves you breathless.
Later I found myself taking the song apart, trying to find out what made it tick, why it was so effective. Everything was fastened to the wall with a heavy bracket, but you couldn’t see what the sum total of all the parts were, not unless you stood way back and waited until the end. . . . I took the song apart and unzipped it.
— Bob Dylan, Chronicles I (Nina Simone offers a particularly
powerful performance of the song on YouTube. Visit here.)
Dylan goes on to describe the next songs he studied as he prepared to write his own material — songs by bluesman Robert Johnson — the man who, according to legend, traded his soul to the devil at the crossroads in return for the ability to play the guitar as only a supernatural being could.
In Martin Scorsese’s documentary of Dylan’s life, No Direction Home, acquaintances from Dylan’s late teens describe an incident where Dylan helped himself to several albums that had caught his imagination when his friends were out of town — albums that he inhaled and that changed his music. Some of the lyrics in his latest album, Modern Times, bear a striking resemblance to those of a little known Civil War reporter and poet, Henry Timrod.
These happy stars, and yonder setting moon,
Have seen me speed, unreckoned and untasked,
A round of precious hours.
Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked,
And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers,
To justify a life of sensuous rest,
A question dear as home or heaven was asked,
And without language answered. I was blest!
— Henry Timrod, “A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night,” from Poems (1860)
. . . and at times
A strange far look would come into his eyes,
As if he saw a vision in the skies.
— Henry Timrod, “A Vision of Poesy,” from Poems (1860)
The moon gives light and it shines by night
Well, I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
O’er the road we’re bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I’ll be with you when the deal goes down
— Bob Dylan, “When the Deal Goes Down,” from Modern Times (2006)
Modern Times contains at least ten instances of lines or phrases taken from various Timrod poems. Dylan, when he first lived in New York City during the early 1960s (he was born in 1941), made a point of going to the library and reading every newspaper published in the ten years 1855 to 1865. In his memoir, he wrote:
The age that I was living in didn’t resemble this age, but it did in some mysterious and traditional way. Not just a little bit, but a lot. There was a broad spectrum and commonwealth that I was living upon, and the basic psychology of that life was every bit a part of it. If you turned the light towards it, you could see the full complexity of human nature. Back there, America was put on the cross, died, and was resurrected. There was nothing synthetic about it. The godawful truth of that would be the all-encompassing template behind everything I would write.
Reading that, I was reminded of the Carl Ally quote offered at the beginning of this Pause for Beauty. I’m reading a memoir now by sculptor Henry Moore, and it is the same thing—he studied and pondered the work of artists through history—including work he didn’t like, work that bore no resemblance to his own, such as Chinese calligraphy. (To read more on Henry Moore’s study of art, visit my blog here.) When you look at work by Picasso and Matisse side by side, you can see how they fed off each other, reflected off each other, just as they both studied cave paintings and African sculpture.
Part of pouring one’s heart and soul into one’s art is taking the time to study and ponder the work of those who have gone before, as well as read material seemingly unrelated to current creative inclinations. Through that process, art emerges that is deeper, and sometimes that is revolutionary.
In celebration of the Creative Journey,

Roderick W. MacIver
Click
here to forward to a friend!
Several times a week, Rod posts a book or interview excerpt on the creative process on his Pause for Beauty Blog. Recent examples include quotes from Picasso, MC Richards, Henry Moore, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan.
You can now receive these creativity quotes emailed to you automatically each day through this Blog site:
http://pauseforbeauty.blogspot.com/2010/03/notes-on-conflict-and-imperfection-in.html

Birches I
Signed, Framed
Limited Edition Print
Double Matted
$75 - $225
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Raptor Sunrise
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Grandfather's Gift

Ethan Hubbard seeks out those who live simply and close to the land. His work is inspired by his deep affinity for gentle, authentic, and hospitable people. Grandfather's Gift: A Journey to the Heart of the World records, in photographs and words, his travels over the past forty years. Previously offered for $19.95, Grandfather's Gift is now available for just $9.95!
I lived one winter with a Welsh family named Williams in an old stone house in Llanfachreth, a twelfth century village. When spring came, I moved into an old abandoned Gypsy wagon at the edge of their farmstead where I could enjoy the rhythm of a fast-moving stream. Lewis Williams was the sixth generation to farm Tyddn Back. The family owned several hundred Welsh Mountain sheep, a herd of beef cattle, milk cows, and eight herding dogs. Combining their talents and energy, the eight members of the extended family were as solid as the granite mountains that surrounded them.
—Ethan Hubbard, Grandfather's Gift
Visit here to order Grandfather's Gift
Visit here to read additional excerpts.
Wood Thrushes in Love

These striking 5" x 7" notecards (blank on the inside), are printed domestically on Reincarnation, the same premium recycled paper that we used for our Holiday cards.
These notecards feature one of Roderick MacIver’s most memorable images, Wood Thrushes in Love. The set contains 10 notecards and 10 matching envelopes, also made from premium recycled paper, all of which are tucked securely in a sturdy natural-finish box embossed with the Heron Dance logo on the front.
Visit here to order Wood Thrushes in Love notecards $17.95.
Visit here to order a signed, limited edition, double matted print.
Visit here to order a single matted print for $15.
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