Sunday, January 3, 2010

Tonight on Planet Earth


You know: you could start off a new year more worser than by paying heed to Anne Bogart's sage adjurations.

Many thanks to my colleague Megan Kate Ward for posting this on her blog and recalling me to what I’m up to. What we’re all up to.

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A Word of Advice by Anne Bogart

Do Not assume that you have to have some prescribed conditions to do your best work.

DO NOT WAIT

Do Not wait for enough time or money to accomplish what you think you have in mind.

Work with what you have right now.

Work with the people around you right now.

Work with the architecture you see around you right now.

Do Not wait till you are sure that you know what you are doing.

Do Not wait for what you assume is the appropriate, stress-free environment in which to generate expression.

Do Not wait for maturity or insight or wisdom.

Do Not wait until you have enough technique.

What you do now, what you make of your present circumstances will determine the quality and scope of your future endeavors.

And at the same time, be patient.

7 comments:

Monique Kleinhans said...

What a great message for the start of a new year. Thanks Anne! You are a constant inspiration.

Chris 'Frog Queen' Davis said...

Just what I needed!! Thanks for sharing....can I borrow this for my blog....I promise to link back to yours!!! :)

Cheers!

Mead said...

But of course, FG -- any time!

Chris 'Frog Queen' Davis said...

Thank you kind sir....I just posted it and a reeeealy long, post with it.....wish me luck. :D

Hope to see you around town sometime soon!!!

Cheers!

Sam said...

Amen sister.

Unknown said...

1. Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.

2. General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students.

3. General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.

4. Consider everything an experiment.

5. Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

6. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.

7. THE ONLY RULE IS WORK. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.

8. Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.

9. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

10. “We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” – John Cage.

Helpful hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything always. Go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully often. Save everything, it might come in handy later.

There should be new rules next week.

Unknown said...

oops... meant to put this ahead of that list:

those rules are sister corita kent's rules. she ran the visual art department at the immaculate heart college in los angeles in the 60's. anne bogart's list reminded me of this one... i haven't thought about it in far too long.