This week’s offering is simply a pointer to someone I greatly appreciate and read regularly, Jonah Lehrer.
Be sure to watch NPR’s Ira Glass on the YouTube video. I promise you will be inspired.
May 31, 2008 by Mark Brady
This week’s offering is simply a pointer to someone I greatly appreciate and read regularly, Jonah Lehrer.
Be sure to watch NPR’s Ira Glass on the YouTube video. I promise you will be inspired.
Often I wake up early on Sunday morning and what a treat to get your email in my inbox! My area of research/expertise is different than yours. So I LOVE that you cull through things and funnel them to me/us and cut to the chase.
What a great – I want to say reminder, but actually it is somehow new information – inspiration. Something to remember.
I loved this offering, Mark, both parts. Especially delightful for me was Ira Glass marking the discrepancy that can exist and persist, between taste/aesthetic and the ability to create at a level that is satisfying. In my own experience, the emotional journey of this process has a direct relationship to much of what you write about and offer here.
An ongoing challenge for me as singer/songwriter has been allowing myself the time and freedom to experiment, improvise, try things, like them/don’t like them, start over, etc. I experienced so much pressure as a child to hurry up and do what would please other people, that the creative work has been a fantastic laboratory for bringing old patterns to consciousness and using my various tools to heal and transform them.
For me, each step I take in claiming my creative process as my own, allowing myself to do something “badly” and have that be private and of no real consequence, feeling free to mess around and be the ultimate authority on what is “good”, has been profound liberation. I appreciate Ira’s support for the longer arc of time this process can take, and would add to his commentary that taste/aesthetic is deeply subjective, and one of the real joys of creating can come from claiming one’s own standards with true authority.
Dear Mark,
Thank you for these references. How timely for me to learn that others too have spent many years practicing becoming who they are. I have spent the past ten years in “school” learning to “practice” therapy. Kind of ironic in a way as I’ve learned the absolute most from being in the client’s chair.
I recently began to “practice” therapy from the therapist’s chair and now school is back in session!
Namaste, Diane
Hi Mark,
I took a leave of absence from my job to work on my dissertation this summer and am finding that it isn’t turning out to be nearly as ‘great’ as I had hoped. The Ira Glass video was the perfect antidote to my growing frustration. I’ll keep practicing and use this summer as an intense workout for my mind!!
Thanks for putting together such a great blog!
Be well,
Chris