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is this anything

~ a compendium, by Nancy Coughlin

is this anything

Tag Archives: art

practice (a journal entry)

26 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by is this anything in journal entry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

art, journal, music

bearplayingguitar

September 26, 2017

Words don’t come. Mind cluttered with choices, so no place to settle. Hands do my translations now, the left a calloused tiller of soil, the right another kind of expert: a sprightly dabbler in patterns and rhythms. I don’t know how either of them do their jobs, and in fact I try not to know. My hands work best unsupervised. I merely turn them loose, then frown or nod at the choices they make. Luckily, we share the same ear, so mind and hands always agree. And through this everyday practice, this playful trial and error, this harnessing of serendipity, the guitarist (all of me combined) makes progress. It’s a game of letting go, a trick of trusting a bodily intelligence my mind can only squint at, and I find myself loving it more, I suppose, than would make sense to most people.

 

beginner (a quote from Shunryu Suzuki)

13 Saturday May 2017

Posted by is this anything in quotation, zen

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Tags

art, creativity, quotation, zen

writing_child

“The most difficult thing is, always keep your beginner’s mind. There’s no need to have a deep understanding of zen. Even though you read much zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, ‘I know what zen is,” or “I have attained enlightenment.” This is also the real secret of the arts. Always be a beginner.” –Shunryu Suzuki

 

storytelling (a quote from Michael Shermer)

28 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by is this anything in quotation

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Tags

apophenia, art, coincidence, imprinting, Michael Shermer, pareidolia, quotation, randomness, stories, The Believing Brain, zen

“Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not.”
― Michael Shermer

Image

artistic (quote from Van Gogh)

22 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by is this anything in quotation

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Tags

art, love, quotation, van gogh, zen

The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.    –Vincent Van Gogh

reunion

pareidolia in art (quote from Leonardo da Vinci)

17 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by is this anything in quotation, random thought

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

accident, apophenia, art, both, coincidence, freedom, illusion, James Lawley, Leonardo da Vinci, metaphor, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, pareidolia, quotation, randomness, serendipity, transience, wabi sabi, writing, zen

[Pareidolia is ‘a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant, a form of apophenia.’]

From wikipedia:  In his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci wrote of pareidolia as a device for painters:

“If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms.”

pareidolia (1)

 

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