Search results for 'Bill Murray'
We really love Flavorwire’s recent The Craziest Advice from Famous People which includes some wild stuff from cultural icons like Courteney Love, William Burroughs and Frank Zappa. We couldn’t help thinking that Jack Kerouac’s Belief & Technique for Modern Prose is a very curiously syncopated Beat poem full of jazzy wisdom about the creative process and living in general.
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow read more…
04.12.13 |
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in inspiration books + zines, paths + processes, people, quotes, road warrior, rules for living
99% recently published highlights of designer Frank Chimero’s “everything he knows about design“. We went to the original and culled our own. As usual, we see them being about LIFE, not just design.
If you can’t draw as well as someone, or use the software as well, or if you do not have as much money to buy supplies,or if you do not have access to the tools they have, beat them by being more thoughtful. Thoughtfulness is free and burns on time and empathy.
Change contexts when you’re stuck. Draw wrong-handed and upside down and backwards. Find a good seat outside.
Stop trying to be cool: it is stifling. read more…
03.27.13 |
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in people, rules for living
Over the past several months, Pixar’s former story artist Emma Coates‘ 22 Rules of Good Storytelling has been flying around the web. Although we find it to be excellent advice for writers, we found annotating it made it even better: a list of fine life principles for any creative soul. Our favorite:
No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
Here’s our annoted list made simply by substituting words specific-to-writing with more general ones.
You admire a character person for trying more than for their successes.
Simplify. Focus. Combine characters elements. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
What is your character are you good at, comfortable with? Throw yourself the polar opposite at them. Challenge them yourself. How do theyyou deal? read more…
03.19.13 |
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in paths + processes, principles, quotes, signs
Library of Congress
Found on …Found, the great, full-of-amazing-things National Geographic Tumblr of images from its archives in honor of its 100 birthday: Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel kissing within a tetrahedral kite, October 1903.
It reminded us that kissing is probably one of the most improvisational things there is.
Related posts: a mantra from bill murray
03.13.13 |
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in people, sightings
(Video link here.) We were knocked out by this must-watch-all-of-it TED talk by Anne Cuddy, a professor and researcher at Harvard Business School, where she studies how nonverbal behavior and snap judgments affect people from the classroom to the boardroom.
The gist: everyone we meet is influenced by our nonverbals, our thoughts and our feelings and our body language and physiology; as we ourselves are. The talk is full of evidence that “power posing” – acting as “as if” — is not about being fake, but about practicing and accepting a new way of viewing yourself, that can become yourself. The most powerful example is Cuddy’s own extraordinary story of how she put it into action, starting at 15.40.
Though watching the whole talk is essential, the transcript itself is full of useful nuggets: read more…
03.04.13 |
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in how-to, inspiration blogs + sites, paths + processes, people, principles, quotes, video
Bill and Julie got married on Valentine’s Day in 1943, 70 years ago today. He was a GI who had managed to wangle a weekend pass to marry his childhood sweetheart. From the get-go,their marriage was an improv.
“We didn’t have a minyan, the minimum of ten people required for a Jewish wedding,” Julie recalls. ”So his brother went to the local movie theater and rousted ten guys out of the balcony and promised them dinner if they’d come. For years afterward, perfect strangers would come up to us on the street and say,‘Hey, I was at your wedding!’”
Today, Bill is 95, Julie will be 90, and they’re still in love. read more…
02.14.13 |
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in celebrations, family + friends, paths + processes, people, principles, quotes, strategies
We’ve been reading Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale
and stumbled on this amazing bit. No need to know the background. It rings big bells right on it’s own…
We’ve enjoyed this fatso novel immensely (except that it’s so heavy). Another favorite chunk is a list of dishes that are part of a rather crazed housekeeper’s repertoire: read more…
01.28.13 |
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in principles, quotes, signs
?
In the the Bill Murray interview we excerpted recently we held back an essential chunk, perfect for right NOW:
I realized the more fun I had, the more relaxed I was working, the better I worked.
Q. That seems to be a philosophy you apply not only to your work but to your entire life.
A. Well, I’ve made some mistakes in that area too. The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself.
We were wondering how old wiseman Bill manages to stay so relaxed when we found a post on ZenHabits about exactly how to relax and let go of tightness no matter where you are. Leo Barbauta boils relaxation down to a few simple steps: read more…
01.14.13 |
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in health, how-to, learn, paths + processes, people, principles, quotes, resources
Tomorrow, December 5th, at midnight is the absolute final deadline for entering our giveaway of the great Canal House Cooks Every Day
, Christopher Hirscheimer and Melissa Hamilton’s inspiring, user-friendly cookbook. It’s a beaut, a cookbook definitely to have and definitely to give.
Read a bit about the book and check out the super easy rules for entering the contest here.
And if you want to get MORE of a sense about Canal House Cooking, read more…
12.04.12 |
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in entertaining, food, gifts, recipes, resources, resources books + zines
- ?
Sunday’s New York Times featured a wonderful interview with Bill Murray, a man who never ceases to astonish us for his very improvised ways. (He’s the guy who spontaneously said: Grab this day by the neck and kiss it.)
The first couple of pages of a 2010 GQ interview we stumbled on intimates that Murray is not all sweetness and light, but he is an acutely original and honest guy whose thought a lot about how he wants to live, and what, exactly, the point is. (If you want to reach him, you leave a message on an 800 number; if he wants to speak to you he’ll call you back!)
Here’s are a few potent life lessons we clipped from the Times piece:
Q. There seems to be so much serendipity in your life. Are you actively cultivating these moments or just hoping that they come to you?
A. Well, you have to hope that they happen to you. That’s Pandora’s box, right? She opens up the box, and all the nightmares fly out. And slams the lid shut, like, “Oops,” and opens it one more time, and hope pops out of the box. That’s the only thing we really, surely have, is hope. You hope that you can be alive, that things will happen to you that you’ll actually witness, that you’ll participate in. Rather than life just rolling over you, and you wake up and it’s Thursday, and what happened to Monday? Whatever the best part of my life has been, has been as a result of that remembering.
Q. Are there days where you wake up and think: “Nothing good has come to me in a little while. I’d better prime the pump”? read more…
12.03.12 |
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in inspiration, people, quotes, rules for living, video
We’ve long been fans of Canal House Cooking
, the groundbreaking cookbook series created and published by Christopher Hirscheimer and Melissa Hamilton. We are totally smitten with their latest effort: Canal House Cooks Every Day, a bright red, 385-page tome documenting a year of cooking from Canal House, based on their popular daily lunch blog. The book offers many levels of pleasure: great REAL do-able recipes by two women who cook for themselves daily, evocative photographs and illustrations AND a no-nonsense, simplepleasure-centric philosophy of cooking. Perfect. Check out a preview here.
We’ll be giving away a copy to the lucky winner of a random drawing (see details below). read more…
11.07.12 |
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in celebrations, entertaining, food, free + flea, gifts, kitchen, resources, resources books + zines
Just about everyone we know is beside themselves with anxiety about this election (we find ourselves checking Nate Silver’s 538 polling blog compulsively for comfort). On the eve of the election, we offer our ‘improvised life’ survival guide: cocktails and easy-to-whip-up treats to help assauge anxiety no matter which candidate you favor.
The first order of business are alcoholic beverages. Wine-Spirits-Food writer Josh Eisen suggested a cocktail based based on the most American of spirits: bourbon and/or rye whiskies (Rye is especially fitting because, eons ago, early Ohio’ns — that BIG swing state — unable to grow wheat, grew rye instead…and of course, made whisky from it.) Josh found a simple formula for a Manhattan in Jim Meehan’s The PDT Cocktail Book: The Complete Bartender’s Guide from the Celebrated Speakeasy
: read more…
11.06.12 |
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in entertaining, family + friends, recipes, resources, strategies
We are big fans of Junot Diaz, whose novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
was so original, we didn’t want to give it away (as we usually do with fiction we’ve read); we knew we’d go back to it to dive back into its wild language. With the release of Diaz’ latest book This Is How You Lose Her
, Sam Anderson of the New York Times interviewed Diaz about his writing process. Diaz describes his “creative metabolism” as being SLOW and painful — he often throws out whole hunks of work he’s slaved over — and admires writers who seem to write both quickly and well. Since we consider ourselves SLOW compared to the “real” world in all sorts of ways— and know a lot of people who feel the same way about themselves — we found Diaz’ words heartening:
The thing is, you try your best, and what else you got? You try your best, really, that’s all you can do. And for me, my best happens really so rarely. I was so always heartened by people like Michael Chabon who write so well and seem to write so fast. Edwidge Danticat writes really well and really fast. I was always heartened by them. I keep thinking one day it’ll happen. It might.
Now we’re going to check out our free sample first chapter of This Is How You Lose Her…
Related posts: t.s. eliot on the creative process
how to slow down, via leo widrich and bill murray
isamu noguchi’s creative process
the role of magic in the creative processx
10.04.12 |
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in inspiration books + zines, paths + processes, people, quotes
to be a tonic. You can do it anywhere — subway, shopping mall, supermarket…It changes everything.
