“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”-Oscar Wilde
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Tag Archives: Inspiration
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“Life is trying things to see if they work.”-Ray Bradbury
Creativity and the Macabre: Forever is Composed of Nows
Ideas often come alive for me at strange or inconvenient moments. After the ever-trusty shower, I usually feel the most open to creativity when I am…….
walking amongst graves. My husband and I are lucky to live a few minutes from the second largest cemetery in the United States. Established in 1845, it is equally an arboretum, with 15 lakes, trees, flowers and wildlife set within what, at times, looks like traditional parkland. Continue reading
[From My Archives]* On Shaw, or How a Dead Playwright Transformed My Adolescence and Altered My Life
When I set out to do this essay, I realized that writing about George Bernard Shaw would be rather like writing about my first (real) love: a little daunting, a little dangerous and, ultimately, mostly about me, for we tend to see ourselves reflected in others as steadfastly as we implant ourselves firmly in what we read. Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 72: 1001 Pearls of Wisdom
- Title: 1001 Pearls of Wisdom Wisdom, wit and insight to enlighten and inspire
- Author: David Ross
- Year Published: 2006 (Duncan Baird Publishers Ltd)
- Year Purchased: 2006
- Source: Unknown
- About: This is a thick little volume full of colourful illustrations and inspirational quotes that are divided into traditional self-help categories (the good life, finding fulfilment, lighting the dark).
- Motivation: Quotes, quotes, quotes! Reading, compiling and dispensing quotes is one of my favourite pastimes (I know, I’m a bit obsessive). Although I have an extremely curious and roving mind, I love anything that gives me, however fleetingly, a sense of order.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 285: “Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” (Benjamin Franklin)
- Happiness Scale: 9 1/2
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“All I’m writing is just what I feel, that’s all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland.”-Jimi Hendrix
The Dead Writers Round-Up: 24th-27th January
- Edith Wharton was born on 1/24/1862. “Beware of monotony; it’s the mother of all the deadly sins.”
- Vicki Baum was born on 1/24/1888. Her novel, ‘Menschen im Hotel’ supplied the basis for the 1932 Hollywood film, ‘Grand Hotel’. Starring John and Lionel Barrymore, Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford (along with many others), it was one of the first big budget all-star productions.
- Robert Burns was born on 1/25/1759. “Dare to be honest and fear no labor.”
- W. Somerset Maugham was born on 1/25/1874. “Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.”
- Virginia Woolf was born on 1/25/1882. “A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.”
- Ouida died on 1/25/1908. Her novel ‘Under Two Flags’ has been adapted for the screen 5 times, the 1936 version starring Ronald Colman and Claudette Colbert being the most famous.
- Lewis Carroll was born on 1/27/1832. “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end. Then stop.”
The Dead Writers Round-Up: 19th-23rd January
- Edgar Allan Poe was born on 1/19/1809. “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
- Robinson Jeffers died on 1/20/1962. “Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.” (Shine, Perishing Republic, 1941)
- Lytton Strachey died on 1/21/1932. Strachey revolutionized the genre of biography, finally bringing it out of the Victorian era by infusing his profiles with wit and genuine human emotions.
- George A. Moore died on 1/21/1933. “Art must be parochial in the beginning to be cosmopolitan in the end.”
- George Orwell died on 1/21/1950. “Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”
- Lord Byron was born on 1/22/1788. “Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.”
- August Strindberg was born on 1/22/1849. Strindberg was an artistic triple-threat, engaging in painting and photography as well as the writing for which he is known. He also fancied himself an alchemist.
- Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) was born on 1/23/1783. “A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.“
Inspiration Board-8 February 2012
- The work of the late Cincinnati (and internationally famous) artist, Charley Harper. I’ve never been a big fan of animal art (or puns) but there is something about his clean lines and mid-century modern aesthetic (which he dubbed “minimal realism”) that has been drawing me in, almost unwillingly. Any previously declared distaste for animals-in-art has been sliding slowly away, in the face of his compelling creations. I don’t love them all (far from it, actually) but am seriously enamored of some of the pieces.
- Although this is hardly new, or cutting edge, I’m slightly obsessed with Jane Wiedlin‘s acoustic version of ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’. I love kooky chicks; for this reason alone she has always been my favorite member of the Go-Go’s. When I was very young, my Aunt Linda gave me her copy of ‘Beauty and the Beat’. Ah, nostalgia, right? Not entirely. I almost prefer this version to the original; maybe it’s just because the stripped-down sound goes better with winter’s quiet ways.
- Margaritas. Maybe I’m terribly eager for warm weather but I have been ordering this salt-rimmed concoction at every available opportunity, instead of my usual Scotch.
- The book reviews in the current (FEB/MAR 2012) issue of ‘BUST’. There are so many compelling entries. I want to read them all, particularly ‘Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom’ by Sara Benincasa (William Morrow), ‘Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality’ by Hanne Blank (Beacon) and ‘Treasure Island’ by Sara Levine (Europa).
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[Mae’s Writing Days] Ghosts of Projects Past
As most of you know, I recently rearranged my writing studio. Okay, full disclosure time: I’m still actively working on it, after nearly 3 weeks of mostly dedicated effort. It may look lovely to the casual observer but, lurking beneath the neat surface, is my hideous secret: it’s really a mess. Tucked inside of the cabinets and chests and drawers is a dark, sloppy, sordid underbelly of….paper. Continue reading
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 