I’m a beginner all over again.

If you are there, know that I will come in due time but not before I set the world on fire.

So.

May your twenty ten be filled with mystical magic and delicious dreams and monkey madness. I hope you READ some really fine books and smooch someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art. Write or draw or build or photograph or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in twenty ten, you surprise yourself.

I know I did with tears.

525,600 minutes, How do you measure, measure a year? in daylights? in sunsets? in midnights? in cups of coffee? in inches? in miles? in laughter and strife?

I’m fully capable of many things. More than you can imagine.

Now, it’s not likely I’ll ever use these skills, but I like having them, and they don’t take up much room in my brain. In fact, they probably sit quite comfortably with all sorts of other stuff I’m not likely to use, like how make a pipe bomb and how paint like Van Gogh.

I’m a fierce autodidact. I tend to collect this sort of stuff. It’s not a terrible hobby. I had to work harder at.

Now I have the internet. I don’t have the brain speed I had at 13, but self-teaching keeps it in fairly good shape. It hasn’t made me better with people. I am always good with people except with idiots and morons. That’s a different set of skills, one which I seem to lack, despite efforts made.

Anyway.

Knowledge. Stuff we learn. Stuff we might ignore because it falls under our ‘need to know’ radar. It’s good stuff.

My formal education is scientific.
Aside from a drawing class in secondary school and 3 months of art school, I’m a self-taught artist.
I learn a lot from reading textbooks and manuals.
I learn a lot from reading.
I learn a lot from listening.
I learn a lot by watching.
I learn more by watching differently.
I learn a lot by quietly thinking about things I see.
I learn a lot by trial and error.
I learn a lot by completely fucking things up.
And Boy have I fucked things up.

All the stuff we learn goes into our ‘soup.’ Some of it floats right on top, in plain view. Skills we use regularly. Some of it is without substance. It’s flavor, an interpretation of lessons past learned, the essence of information–the stock.

What did I tell you? You can’t go wrong with a soup metaphor. It’s all in there.

School is crap. The model of school is archaic and the curriculum is rudimentary. School mostly teaches kids to walk in line and to follow a schedule very much like that of modern prisons.

It’s of paramount importance to teach kids how to research. How to find what they’re looking for, and to teach them a love of reading of books of any form—print or electronic.

By definition, a good education is to know everything about your chosen subject, and a little bit about everything else.

I don’t know everything about art, but I know everything there is to know (so far) about my own art, and the craft required to produce it. I’m still working on the little bits about everything else.

As always and as everyone else, I will always hope my best work is ahead of me. I’ll always look forward to new discoveries. I intend to continue to read and geek out to the science channel and warez sites at every opportunity.

Learn. Read. Listen.Your time won’t be wasted. I’ve been surprised so many times when some obscure bit has solved a contemporary problem. The stuff is in there. It’s part of your Soup. Make it rich and it will sustain you.

A friend sent me this;

If you are a Dove: You symbolize a very happy-go-lucky approach in life.Whatever the surroundings may be, grim or cheerful, you remain unaffected.In fact, you spread cheer wherever you go. You are the leader of your group of friends and good at consoling people in theirtimes of need. You dislike hypocrisy and tend to shirk away from hypocrites. They can never be in your good books, no matter what. You are very methodical and organized in your work. No amount of mess, hence, can ever encompass you. Beware, it is easy for you to fall in love….

Is your birthday day 13 of the month?

Your Life

You are sincere and easy going. Flattering and charming around are not your style. You care so much for freedom that often leads you to the difficult path. Because of your sincerity, most people find you easy to be around although you are sometimes too straightforward.

Your Love

Your gentleness, care and sincerity make you an attractive person. Even though you don’t intend to be charming, but you naturally are, especially in the eyes of opposite sex.

Ideas are like stars, they’re endless.

Some version of the Drake Equation could be applied to ideas. Applying this equation, where fraction of stars with planets = durability of concept andfraction of planets capable of sustaining life = materials and funding and fraction of those planets where life evolves = opportunity and environment.

One could conceivably calculate the possibility of a well conceived, well executed work finished from universe of ideas just as one might calculate the possibility of life.

In other words, the ideas that make it to finished work are likely more rare than we think.

Think about it–the average human says between 300 and 1000 words per minute to themselves. (hopefully, generally, silently) For the creative person, many of those words involve ideas.

That’s a lot of information in a day, a week, a month.

Ideas are also like Soup. There are endless varieties, but only a few basic formulas. Like most humans, from a distance, soups all look the same. But generally, there’s a background/backstory (stock), and symbols/metaphor (veggies and/or meat), character (noodles) and the experience of the creator (flavor/spice.)

Ok. Soup is sort of a silly metaphor for art. But it sort of works, and that’s the visual I started with.

If you don’t like soup, then how about this?

Ideas are like assholes. Everyone has one. Everyone thinks his or hers is special.

Everyone is wrong about that.

See? Soup is good.

Some Ideas should be written down. Some should not. Learning to recognize the difference takes both effort and experience. Sometimes writing an idea down can take the wind right out of it, rob it of it’s magic.

I’ve learned that this isn’t the best plan, at least not for me.

It works better for me not to try to write down every idea, but instead to give them my full attention as they bloom and fade in my head. Let them go into the mix of other ideas.

They’re raw data, bits that can and will combine with other bits and come out later as something more.

More than the sum of its parts.

Bigger inside than out.

Really good ideas don’t get lost or forgotten. Really good ideas stick like glue.

I had to work long and hard to find out the kinds of stuff I needed to make note of. I had to learn to pay attention. Notes and lists can be good tools, used correctly. But they can become a form of procrastination. If you’re writing everything down, the good stuff gets lost in the fray. Not to mention that trying to write down every idea that comes to mind (think 300 – 1000 wpm) can make you crazy.

I work better if I treat ideas as living things. They are, in a sense, in that they are mutable, affected by their environments, they can be fed and they can die.

I often get my best ideas when I’m working. I can tell if an idea is good because it persists. It looks just as good the next day. And the next day. If it’s a really good idea it rings like a bell. It wakes me up at night.

If it’s a great idea it makes me sweat and/or pace. It makes me not care if my shirt is on inside out and backwards. It makes me forget whether I’ve brushed my teeth.

I’m not kidding about this one bit.

Note – worse than writing:

Getting a fresh new idea is very exciting. It’s like falling in love. You want to shout it from the mountain tops. You want to email your friends. Eureka! But what you should really do is

SHUT THE HELL UP.

Nothing sucks the life out of a good idea faster than yakking about it. Not even writing it down. Not even close.

Shut the hell up. Be quiet. Think. Work. Let the idea build its own momentum. This proves to work better for me. Over and over and over. Other creatives will tell you the same things. Ask the successful ones, the big guys.

They know exactly what I mean.

Besides, no one can ever, ever see your idea as you do. No matter how inspired and pure and holy. No one sees what you will/might do. No one sees anything except the work you’ve done.

Don’t talk about it. No one gets it. They watch your lips move and nod politely. But they do not see. Or they say something completely deflating. It’s not their fault. No one can see what’s in your brain.

Trust me on this one. Shut up.

I hope this saves you time and energy.

Ideas tend to work out in their own time, even though that doesn’t mean we should sit on our tuffets and wait. Ideas that are good come in their own time often after years of gathering the raw materials they’re made from. Like clear water from underground. It takes work to prime the pump.

Possibly the best we can hope for it to get better at knowing the difference.

Don’t be afraid of ideas. At their core, they are few, but no two people create from the same recipe, from the same raw materials. Like soup, people look the same from a distance, but up close, we each have our own flavors.

I feel as though I’ve returned from a very very long journey.

There are stories as usual, and I’ll tell them, but it’s just too early.

For now, I’ll keep working. I’ve been traveling for sure, to interesting places in my psyche.

I found great darkness there, and beauty. The work will describe it. It’s a language that works better then words, for things I can’t describe.

But I thought of all of you there, and tried to remember what I’d bring back for you. There are treasures to be found in the strangest places!

When I return, you’ll see some of the things I found.