The quest for great latte art means that when I fail, I forget sometimes that I still made myself a tasty cup of coffee. I get worked up, down on myself, obsessed with improvements.
Striving for mastery is worthwhile and a meaningful part of how I live my life, but it can obscure the joy of why I started in the first place. The story I tell myself about success and failure gets in the way.
That story starts to lose its power when I remind myself what it is that I did, at its simplest level. “I made some messed up latte art” can become “I made some latte art,” can become “I made some coffee.” Or even “I had a hot drink.” One layer at a time, my obsession melts, and I relax.
Marcus Aurelius (a prominent Stoic philosopher) calls this ‘stripping away the legend.’ He advises us to strip away the legend of luxuries and misfortunes, to make room in our hearts for what really matters in life. That $100 steak is just some cooked meat; the awful new policy announcement at work is just an email.
There are all sorts of little things in our day we get worked up in knots over, that get in the way of contentment. The good news is, that means we’ll never run out of opportunities to practice. Find a knot in your day today to untie with this technique, and see what you find. In the meantime, I’m gonna make another cup of coffee.
Old harmful patterns are usually still there, under the surface. They don’t have antidotes. To live differently requires choosing differently, over and over and over again.
Backsliding doesn’t mean you’ve made no progress—only that the old self is still there to fall back on, for better or worse.
Hidden guitar
Being an artist means your taste will always exceed your ability. Being a professional means keeping sane despite being an artist.
Podcasts should have intermissions every half hour. I don’t want to pause in the middle of a narrative beat but the dishes are done and I’ve got other things to do
Drawing practice. Emphasis on organizing light with five values
#drawing #artpractice
In other news: Viola
Me in the planning stage of the new piece: I can’t wait to get the actual writing!
Me in the writing stage: oh no
Crossposting from micro.blog is very satisfying, in that I can write without being sucked into the social media platform. But I haven’t figured out a good solution for reading posts off-platform. RSS works great for me for articles, but I don’t want to clutter my reader with short posts. Ideas?
As the weather turns darker, it’s the perfect time to listen to a favorite album of queer anticapitalist klezmer. Ferocious and beautifully recorded. #nowplaying
Breathe in, breathe out. Just once. Take a sip of the space you are in.
Some very helpful, grounded business advice in here.
How to start an email list, for artists: https://open.substack.com/pub/madrecords/p/how-to-start-an-email-list-for-artists?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
When I’m feeling down the way I do today, I come back to Richter playing BWV 582.
It’s always an option to restart from wherever you are now.
Plan for after work:
- kitchen tasks
- composing session: continuing to plan the tempo map for this project
- drawing session: more practice with Reilly heads
Some photos from the fair:
- This bunny named ‘With Intent’
- A prize-winning flower
- A beautiful large bonsai (some type of Japanese juniper, as I recall)
- ‘Gnome, Gnome on the Grange’ - a display made out of produce
Every year at the state fair I relearn that draft horses are absolutely HUGE animals
Off to the state fair for the day!
Planning the proportions of a new track is hard. For filmed media, some fenceposts are already in place—total length and the major emotional beats. But when it’s just ‘write the main theme for our game’ (my current practice project), drawing that map from nothing can be intimidating. #composerdiary
The thing I love about three cats, that I couldn’t anticipate when we adopted the third, is the ‘energy field’ you get to sit in. As in: two cats in the room is a line segment; three cats in the room is a triangle, with all this cat-energized space that feels very comforting to be in and around.