Tag Archives: inspiration

CoffeeLetter: Peanut butter noodles, rain on the docks, new spring books

Coffeeletter 2

 

The CoffeeLetter is out! This is a once-every-two-months newsletter I send to blog followers; view this one here and subscribe to get the next one. Cheers!

 

Sunflower Field

sunflower field

How long did you wait for the sun to find you before you fled your unlit rooms and your flickering screens and took barefoot to all the fields outside your door?

[photo by Select Study Abroad, text by Coffeegirl]

10 Quotes on Creativity: Kafka, Rilke, Doctor Who and more

Way to Success

1. First of all, don’t worry about the money. Love the process. You don’t know when it’s gonna happen. Louis C.K. started hitting in his 40s; he’d been doing it for 20 years. And don’t settle. I don’t want to ever hear, “It’s good enough.” Then it’s not good enough. Don’t ever underestimate your audience. They can tell when it isn’t true. Also: Ignore your competition. A Mafia guy in Vegas gave me this advice: “Run your own race, put on your blinders.” Don’t worry about how others are doing. Something better will come.” –  Joan Rivers

2.  In short, this has been my strategy, though I’m worse at ‘pruning’ than I should be. Consume widely, create with focus, and you’ll see that the novel connections and solutions will follow naturally. You will have the broad base of material and information that allows for new, interesting applications paired with the practiced skill of a technician in your execution. -Erich Campbell, Create with Focus

3. The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out. ―David Rakoff, Half Empty

4. Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.  -Franz Kafka

5. Inspiration is for amateurs–the rest of us just show up and get to work. – Chuck Close (painter)

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Imaginary Worlds: Archan Nair and The Phantom Tolbooth

Azalia fantastical art printvia

“If something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn’t there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That’s why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones.”

-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Kajo – Aspiration Official Music Video

My friend Arkae Tuazon, better known as Kajo, has released a music video for the first single off his upcoming album, a summery, shimmering beat about inspiration and hope.

If I fall short are you okay with that

Fall and Umbrella

rain clear umbrella photography

by Amorito Citrella

Did you write today? Did you make art? Did you let a glaze of raindrops sweep across your opened palm? Let light in, let air, let hope and breathing. Let fall sweep you up with its voluminous wings into crisp mouthfuls of breezes, cherry tea steaming, warm on fingers and in cafes, rain on clear windows and clearer umbrellas – let it make you come more awake.

Star Stuff

bulbs

 

by Amorito Citrella

We are star stuff. Keep looking up. 

Quotidian: Madeleine L’Engle

madeleine l'engle quote

Quotidian: Ira Glass on Creativity

ira glass creativity quote print

(You can buy this print on Etsy)

Quotidian: Virginia Woolf

SONY DSC“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

-Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own