Every time I pass the local community garden I think of Ann Patchett’s “I am a compost heap.”
I feel like the signs on the compost heap could stand in for various stages of the creative process.
Books are made out of books
In the back of Show Your Work! and Keep Going, I took out the “recommended reading” heading I used in Steal and quoted Cormac McCarthy from a 1992 NYTimes profile:
The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.
It was also used for the title of a book on his literary influences.
RIP.
Do you have a nemesis?
Today’s newsletter is on the benefits of having a creative nemesis. I start out by quoting Dana Jeri Maier’s Skip To The Fun Parts:
The purpose of an artistic nemesis is to harness the narcissism of comparison, helping us identify the critical differences between our work and theirs, to emerge with a clarified sense of who we want to be instead. The point is not to be consumed with debilitating bitterness or rage but to summon just enough precious envy to put to constructive use.
(I previously wrote about how feelings are information and how making an enemy of envy can lead to new creative work.)
This, by the way, is how theses newsletters often begin: with a bubble map of my mind.
There were a few things I forgot to throw in, like Plutarch on how to profit from your enemies:
In Plutarch’s “How to Profit by One’s Enemies,” he advises that rather than lashing out at your enemies or completely ignoring them, you should study them and see if they can be useful to you in some way. He writes that because our friends are not always frank and forthcoming with us about our shortcomings, “we have to depend on our enemies to hear the truth.” Your enemy will point out your weak spots for you, and even if he says something untrue, you can then analyze what made him say it.
And these excellent Kate Beaton cartoons, which make me think of one of my favorite movies: Ridley Scott’s first feature, The Duellists.
More for me!
From today’s newsletter:
As I rapidly approach middle age (I’ve got exactly one week before the big 4-0), something I’ve been saying a lot to myself lately is “More for me!” Oh, the kids are rolling their eyes at something I like? More for me! People have soured on an artist I like? More for me! Not only one of my favorite conversational shortcuts, but a way to stay focused on minding my own business and doing my work.
The Ganzfeld Procedure
If you can’t afford an Apple Vision Pro but you’d still like to see what isn’t really there in front of you, just get yourself some tape, a ping pong ball, and a radio, try out The Ganzfeld Procedure:
Begin by turning the radio to a station playing static. Then lie down on the couch and tape a pair of halved ping-pong balls over your eyes. Within minutes, you should begin to experience a bizarre set of sensory distortions. Some people see horses prancing in the clouds, or hear the voice of a dead relative. It turns out that the mind is addicted to sensation, so that when there’s little to sense — that’s the purpose of the ping-pong balls and static — your brain ends up inventing its own.
(I saw this years ago in the Boston Globe. Infographic by Javier Zarracina.)
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