Living a creative life
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. There is a romanticized image of the lonely artist, the tortured soul who courageously clings to a solitary vision while remaining misunderstood by the ignorant masses. Ayn (“Ayn the Pain”) Rand created an entire long-winded novel, The Fountainhead, around this image. The lonely artist is often portrayed in…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I watched a delightful documentary recently (as I write this, it's currently streaming on Netflix). Bathtubs Over Broadway introduces us to the world of corporate musicals from the perspective of former Late Show With David Letterman writer Steve Young. First, Young discovered the likes of The Bathrooms are…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've come across two works recently that got me thinking about the importance of analysis in creativity. The first was a passage from Steven Hyden's 2018 book Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock. The book explores, among other things, cultural aspects of…
You are young and you are the future So suck it up and tough it out And be the best you can John Mellencamp, Minutes to Memories Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. When I was in 6th grade, our class was given a weekly syllabus of assignments. If we finished those before the…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. It's easy to think of creativity as an act of creating something out of thin air. A novel, a painting, a sculpture; these are all tangible products that didn't exist until they were created. We shouldn't believe that creativity is always about making something up, however. Sometimes, it's…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. My wife and I both needed dental work recently beyond a routine cleaning or filling. Faced with the prospect of dental bills sufficient to make a down payment on a house, we struggled with what to do. Finally it dawned on us that we were not constrained by…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. Being over a certain age, I'm way past the point of demonstrating myself to be a prodigy. Although I did display some aptitude for music at a fairly young age, I lacked the discipline to pursue it in depth. I mostly enjoyed all the great sounds I could…
