The Saunterer

M. C. Escher on the mood swings of creators

    What M. C. Escher says below about the psychological ups and downs of working creatively applies universally, from the projects of artists to those of entrepreneurs.

    At times, when I feel very enthusiastic, it seems as though no one in the world has ever made anything so beautiful and important. Shortly afterwards — a matter of hours — it suddenly looks useless and I am overcome by the utter pointlessness of all that pitiable fiddling. But having taken it on, I continue the next day as though my very life depended on it. I can even get truly terrified by the possibility of dying before this latest, so-called masterpiece is finished.

    (Quoted from page 259 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of M. C. Escher, click here. For images of or relating to M. C. Escher, click here.

Louise Bourgeois on art

    Often the artist discovers the final destination from first setting out to another destination, an idea included in Louise Bourgeois’ remark:

    An artist’s words are always to be taken cautiously. The finished work is often a stranger to, and sometimes very much at odds with what the artist felt or wished to express when he began. At best the artist does what he can, rather than what he wants to do. After the battle is over and the damage faced up to, the result may be surprisingly dull — but sometimes it is surprisingly interesting.

    (Quoted from page 382 of Art in America 1945— 1970, Jed Perl, editor. The Library of America, 2014.)
    For a brief biography of Louise Bourgeois, click here. For images of or relating to Louise Bourgeois, click here.

Indra Devi on the harm tranquilizers do

    Although we must be cautious in attributing cases of correlation to be cause and effect, Indra Devi practiced yoga for most of her life and it lasted 102 years. Besides liking her for that, we like her for her advice about tranquilizers:

    Tranquilizers do not change our environment, nor do they change our personalities. They merely reduce our responsiveness to stimuli. They dull the keen edge of the angers, fears, or anxiety with which we might otherwise react to the problems of living. Once the response has been dulled, the irritating surface noise of living muted or eliminated, the spark and brilliance are also gone.

    (Quoted from Chapter 1 of Renewing Your Life Through Yoga, by Indra Devi. Prentice-Hall, 1963.)
    For a brief biography of Indra Devi, click here. For images of or relating to Indra Devi, click here.

George Bernard Shaw on the vegetarian diet

    George Bernard Shaw didn’t eat meat but not for the logic he gives here:

    Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into a giant oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.

    (Quoted from page 133 of Bernard Shaw: Playboy and Prophet, by Archibald Henderson. D. Appleton and Co., 1932.)
    For a brief biography of George Bernard Shaw, click here. For images of or relating to George Bernard Shaw, click here.
    For a brief biography of Archibald Henderson, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on the ways we need wilderness

    If our need for large spaces of wilderness was only one, then that would reason enough for fighting for it politically. Here, Henry David Thoreau counts our multiple needs:

    Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

    (Quoted from page 211 of Walden and “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” by Henry David Thoreau. Signet Classic, 1960.)
    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here. For images of or relating to Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Rasmus Waern and Gert Wingårdh on why ruins are beautiful

    They attribute the beauty of ruins to romance:

    The essence of romance lies in provoking strong feelings. . . . Buildings can . . . invoke a momentous, solemn gravity, especially ruins in moonlight. Ruins reveal what’s left of a building: its primary geometry. Every wall bears witness to an accumulation of work. Its collapse makes the impermanence of our greatest efforts so much clearer, because anyone can see that the ruin will never be reconstructed. If a well-preserved building reveals our vain dreams of immortality, the ruin is a manifestation of the reality of life.

    (Quoted from “Question 48" in What is Architecture?, by Rasmus Waern and Gert Wingårdh. Laurence King Publishing Ltd., 2015)
    For a brief biography of Rasmus Waern, click here. For the same of Gert Wingårdh, click here.

Rumi on the world hidden in seeds

    Reflect for a moment on seeds through reflecting in Rumi’s poem:

The Seed Market

Can you find another market like this?
Where, with your one rose
you can buy hundreds of rose gardens:

Where,
for one seed
you get a whole wilderness?

    (Rumi quoted from page 81 of The Triumph of Seeds, by Thor Hanson. Basic Books, 2015.)

    For a brief biography of Rumi, click here. For images of or relating to Rumi, click here.
    For a brief biography of Thor Hanson, click here. For images of or relating to Thor Hanson, click here.

Vita Sackville-West on the gardener’s spirit

    Vita Sackville-West shows how it feels on thinking back over a lifetime of gardening:

And so the traveller
Down the long avenue of memory
Sees in perfection that was never theirs
Gardens he knew, and takes his steps of thought
Down paths that, half-imagined and half-real,
Are wholly lovely with a loveliness
Suffering neither fault, neglect, nor flaw.

    (Quoted from page 30 of The Garden, by Vita sackville-West. Frances Lincoln, 2004.)

    For a brief (garden themed) biography of Vita Sackville-West, click here. For images of or relating Vita Sackville-West, click here.

Marina Abramović on ritual and repetition in performance art

    Performance artist Marina Abramović notes that the power of ritual comes through repetition:

    You can start with any object and create an energy field around it again and again through ritual . . . because repetition of the same thing over and over again generates enormous power. Old cultures know this, that’s why they base their entire ritual structure on repetition.

    (Quoted from page 35 of 512 Hours, by Marina Abramović. London: The Serpentine Galleries, 2014.)
    For a brief biography of Marina Abramović, click here. For images of or relating to Marina Abramović, click here.

Henry Tizard on the secret of doing great science

    In college science courses the emphasis is on getting great solutions; in actual science it is on getting great questions. Henry Tizard:

    The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the scientific world.

    (Quoted from page 297 of New Foundations in Mathematics, by Garret Sobczyk. Birkhauser, 2013.)
    For a brief biography of Henry Tizard, click here. For images of or relating to Henry Tizard, click here.
    For Garret Sobczyk’s webpage, click here.