- Grave Peril (Dresden Files #3, by Jim Butcher)
Wise Man’s Fear (Pat Rothfuss)
Paulo Coelho (via nagging)
via rcuevas
“In Memoriam”
(video content courtesy of StoryCorps)
2,977.
That’s how many people were lost on this day, 10 years ago (may they rest in peace).
It’s unfathomable.
Numbers are clear, definite, exact. We rationalize them each day - as prices, as times, as the number of things we have to do, as anything you can imagine…
…but as a life?
When we hear that this many people were lost (the number is a total from New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, according to CNN), how can we begin to understand that? Each person counts as “one”, but it’s so much more than that. Each of them is a confluence of experiences, hopes, dreams, actions, thoughts, causes, effects, relationships, successes, failures, and just about anything else.
Each of them is a story, and each of those stories can not be reproduced in this vast existence of time that we call history.
Think about it, if only for a minute.
If each of those people were just 10 years old, then the world has lost close to 30,000 cumulative years of experience.
If each of them only knew 10 people, then almost 30,000 lives have been affected by this tragedy (not including the fallen).
Now the numbers begin to mean something more. Each is just a placeholder for something unfathomable. A life.
Each of those names, whether graven in stone, or ink, or secreted away in the dearest places in our hearts, is a litany against the storm that has come to our world, a note in the song that those that come after us will sing in years unseen - a melody so complex that to learn it would be a project undertaken over the course of a life.
A reminder that once, there was light in the world, and that it will always be here, waiting.
We have lost much, even if you haven’t lost anyone close to you. But out of that terrible loss we have managed to gain things that - while they may never make up for the presence of just one life, one moment shared with a loved one - we must also remember on this day.
Solidarity. Whatever your thoughts on politics, your beliefs about the world, for this one day we are all of one mind. Looking at the remembrances, seeing all those people coming out for the same purpose, reminds us that we are all connected in ways we cannot see even as we go about the business of living lives that become increasingly disparate from one another.
Awareness. The loss of even one life impacts us all. Each life never exists in a vacuum; those people knew and touched the lives of others, some of whom have become different people for the knowing of the fallen. And those people go out, changed, to touch the lives of those they meet, until the wave of social relationships crests on some far-flung shore and suddenly the world is filled with a people that look like themselves, but with new facets.
So when you go about your lives today, whether it be going through the motions or holding silent vigil, remember that as you think about this day, those people. This is only a fraction of their legacy. Though they are not with us anymore, their legacies can not ever be taken away, or lost. A part of them remains with us always, unseen, maybe even unnoticed - but it is now a part of all of us.
In May of this year, Pixar animator Austin Madison kindly hand-wrote the following open letter to aspiring artists, in a bid to inspire them through times of creative drought. It’s a lovely, eloquent letter, and in fact contains advice valuable to people in many a creative field. It was written as a contribution to the Animator Letters Project.
Transcript
PIXAR
May 17, 2011
To Whom it May Inspire,
I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, “in the zone” seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time.
The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems.
In a word: PERSIST.
PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision. Remember what Peter Jackson said, “Pain is temporary. Film is forever.” And he of all people should know.
So next time you hit writer’s block, or your computer crashes and you lose an entire night’s work because you didn’t hit save (always hit save), just remember: you’re never far from that next burst of divine creativity. Work through that 97% of murky abyssmal mediocrity to get to that 3% which everyone will remember you for!
I guarantee you, the art will be well worth the work!
Your friend and mine,
Austin Madison
“ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!”Because all of my friends in the arts need to read this.
via lilpocketninja
Daredevil Wire Walker
Michael Kemeter says “fuck you” to gravity on the highest taut slackline in Austria at Grossglockner Mountain.
(via: dailymail.co.uk)
via ianbrooks
It is not the artists who are creative. Creativity comes from immersion, from being so mired in what you do that you make it yours. Before your way of doing things is yours alone, before you have grasped the process, become a part of it and then preside over it, you are not yet there.
When you have done this, you have grasped creativity, and only then can you be an artist.
There is an art to everything, and it is all around us. It can exist in the way a cook prepares a meal, flipping, mixing, observing; in the way a cab driver navigates the troubled, mechanical rivers that crisscross the city; in the way that anyone does anything.
Most of us are artists in our own right - but few of us will ever truly realize it.
Neil Gaiman, The Books of Magic (via misswallflower)
via booklover
found in a Lifehacker article (here).
Not sure I agree completely, but it makes an interesting point…
“Inspiration From the Rain”
It’s a funny thing. When it rains - really rains, until the streets are washed clean and the trees drink deeply - and the wind carries just right, the windows…ripple. Glassy waves run across their surfaces. It is so fragile-looking, then. Almost as if you could shatter it if you reached out, your contact enough to give lie to the image before your eyes.
You know it is not moving - it can’t be - and yet…the window shimmers. Look as long as you like. So long as the wind howls its solitary refrain and the rains come down, the impossible lies before you.
And you can almost touch it.
Progress…finally.
Finally been able to work consistently - not too much at a time, but it’s getting there.
Really, I found that if I write (that is: by hand) a bit while I’m at work or something, when I get to the keyboard, that serves as a jumping-off point.
That said, there are four shorts in the mix, all in some kind of draft form (complete or otherwise), and one summer to get at least one ready.
That’s all for now.
Arthur Schopenhauer (via lifeofliterature)
via frozen-in-tyme
Random Daze theme by Polaraul
