(Video Link Here)

Sometimes I indulge in really wrong-headed notions about how other people work and live. It goes like this: THEY do things easily, neatly, brilliantly all the time; and I’m really untogether and slow,  and waste time and am weak and undisciplined because I take naps and … Big judgments. This way of thinking wastes time and can put the kibosh on the creative process (and is practiced by half the world).

The antidote is to hear the real inside truth about how creative people do what they do when they make a piece of music or create a beautiful space or find a solution to something. So I browse bigthink.com which features candid, unfiltered video interviews with leading thinkers, movers and shaker. You can search by question or by topic or “expert” (a concept I loathe, and in fact, like any experts, you need to take theirs with a grain of salt). I zeroed right in on Inspiration.

I was really heartened to hear the Pulitzer Price winning poet Paul Muldoon talk about how slowly he writes (and that it HAS to be respected); that his day job as an administrator is difficult in part because he is constitutionally unable to just “knock-off” emails.  And especially his inspiring words about having patience with the process, “cherishing ignorance”, and embracing not knowing what’s going on when you’re working on something, the “negotiation between knowing and not-knowing…knowing and not-knowing”. He hits the nail on the head in three minutes.

If you’ve found illumination, joy, or inspiration in this post, please consider supporting Improvised Life. It only takes a minute to make a secure donation that helps pay our many costs. A little goes a long way towards helping Improvised Life continue to live ad-free in the world.

Support Improvised Life ♥

One thought on “big think illuminates

  1. Thanks for posting this. I feel similarly to yourself and Paul Muldoon. This reminded me that the struggle is worthy of the man and his work. As he laments the position of admin and words in emails written worthy of tomb stone script I am reminded of words once written in my own co-creation the book of IAM. Opinions written in stone are destine to become sand.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *