Creative Constipation.

It is pretty amazing how we have the ability to stand in our own way; I have recently discovered how I engage in these self-defeating behaviors that retard the creative process...all of this judging, second-guessing and censorship. It is quite exhausting. I would never dream of treating another person with this harshness and criticism and I, somehow, allow it to go on within my own psyche. So how do we get out of our own way? How do we clear a path through our own crap to get to the real treasures that lie within each and everyone of us? How do we find that most authentic voice and open the channels through which we can express ourselves? That is my existential angst for the day. I often find inspiration through reading and music. I don't really get inspired by looking through great design books...I always feel like I am filling my mind with someone else's "visual solutions"...I get inspired by thoughts, words, ideas, concepts, possibilities. That comes with being a thinking person, though...I like to stretch my mind. Having a "passionate outlet", a channel for exploring my emotions is a relatively new experience for me. I guess I am going to have to be patient with myself. That is something I have never been really good at.

"There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul."
-Arnold Bennett

"Everybody, artist or not, wears a costume so as not to be revealed. The real trick is to get the self to come out against all odds."
-Robert Motherwell

"I have always assumed that the essential nature of intelligence's functioning is the grasp of relations. Many of these relations are nonverbal. Indeed, one of the worst things that a painter can say about a painting is that it is a literary painting."
-Robert Motherwell


Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
–Marianne Willamson