river ripples
roll downstream unwarped
by the flow.
Rainy River [Haiku]
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Tag Archives: Flow
BOOKS: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick RubinMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
This book offers Rick Rubin’s philosophy of creativity and art. For those unfamiliar with Rubin, he’s a ZZ Top-looking music producer who contributed to a lot of successful albums, ranging from hip hop to the rock-n-roll of Tom Petty. He was a major player behind the Run DMC cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” that blew peoples’ minds in the 80’s. Interestingly, Rubin is neither a musician nor a technologist, and I heard him say in an interview that his great value-added was having an extremely high level of confidence in knowing what he liked. Rubin has a persona that is as much guru as music producer, and this book reflects this broad insight and wisdom.
In the book, Rubin lays out his view of the creative process and the mistakes people make with it, but along the way he offers insight into such interesting questions as why some artists only seem to have one major work in them. While Rubin’s experience is mostly with music (though he also worked with comedian Andrew Dice Clay on Clay’s albums,) his book is broadly targeted towards all artists, and he seems to use as many examples from literature and graphic arts as he does from music.
Rubin does sound a bit woo woo here and there, but I found that many statements — e.g. those that spoke of the universe’s role in artistry — could be interpreted in a way that wasn’t necessarily superstitious. While woo woo sounding statements often get on my nerves, I felt Rubin’s use was poetic and spoke to a broader truth.
I’d highly recommend this book for artists and creative types, regardless of field.
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Infinite Regress [Free Verse]
The sweep of trees
forms a mandala.
The eye roams over it,
looking for a center
that doesn't exist.
Those roving eyes
rove & repeat:
caught in an
infinite loop.
And I wonder what hides
in the arc of trees?
What monsters mimic
the sinuous spine
of those pointy trees?
Whose eyes catch
the fine light,
reflecting back a
burning bright-yellow?
What lives unseen?
What flows unbidden?
What empties out,
but returns?
and returns?
and returns...
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Dark River [Lyric Poem]
flow on, Dark River; slip through the night. midnight's thick clouds block the moonlight. your voice drowned out by insect chirr. a Huck Finn raft drifts by at a blur: the rafters unseen; their secret stays hush... but for those red eyes in the underbrush.
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Fish Drift Relativity [Haiku]
"the fish's world is always in drift," thinks I, from the bank.
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Machine Flow [Free Verse]
This machine can flow,
moving over, around,
& through.
Skin conforms to the contours
of musculature.
Muscle binds to bone,
muscle that thickens
and lengthens and ripples
and pulses.
Bones that flex and recoil.
But that machine can flow --
over, around, and through.
It can cause air to pop
and water to slosh
and earth to tremor.
It crawls through liquid,
slices through gases,
and slams the solids,
but can move over, around,
and through.
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Flowing & Rigid [Haiku]
roots drape over rock, a blind search for soil: flowing & rigid.
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Accidental Travel [Sonnet]
If you can follow rivers to the sea by drifting without thrashing or grasping -- just let the flow take you upon a spree, a spree of dunk and breathe, without gasping, then you will witness all there is to know. You'll see shaky shanties and vast estates, the birds in flight and creatures: fast and slow, the weeping willows, and fish tempting Fates. If you can roll around the rocks -- always -- and never crack your head and silence all the voices saying you've reached your end-days, and never rush and never, ever stall... If you can do all this and keep the flow, it won't matter you don't know which way you go.
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River Temple [Haiku]
monks of the temple that stands beside the river receive flow teachings
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Horseshoe Bend [Free Verse]
I stand before a horseshoe canyon, and it feels like the world has folded back upon itself. And I sort of like that idea. There's too much emphasis on progress, so maybe we need pockets of regress. Not a full fusion blast of regression. No one's calling for being battered back to the stone age. Maybe, it'd just be nice to escape the clarity of the watercourse way. To be in the kind of place where one has to drop a leaf to know which way the waters flow.
