Kevin Ashton over at Medium delivering the ugly truth about the creative person’s relation to the world, which should, if you’re serious, involve a lot of saying No. No is the guardian of creative work, the theory goes.
Time is the raw material of creation. Wipe away the magic and myth of creating and all that remains is work: the work of becoming expert through study and practice, the work of finding solutions to problems and problems with those solutions, the work of trial and error, the work of thinking and perfecting, the work of creating. Creating consumes. It is all day, every day. It knows neither weekends nor vacations. It is not when we feel like it. It is habit, compulsion, obsession, vocation.
Saying “no” has more creative power than ideas, insights and talent combined. No guards time, the thread from which we weave our creations. The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know. We are not taught to say “no.” We are taught not to say “no.” “No” is rude. “No” is for drugs and strangers with candy.
Somewhere he’s dug up this letter from Charles Dickens:
‘It is only half an hour’ — ‘It is only an afternoon’ — ‘It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes — or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometime worry a whole day … Who ever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go in my way whether or no.”
That reminds me, and probably you—how could it not?—of Charles Dikkens, the esteemed Dutch author mentioned in this Python sketch, featuring Graham Chapman:
Speaking of comedy and literature, the poet Andrew Hudgins has made a series of videos to promote his forthcoming memoir, The Joker. Here’s a good one:
These two, this one and this one, meet at the intersection of marriage, hospitals, and sex.