Laura Young Photography

You Are Already the "Real You"

I think that we're all waiting to be transformed into something else but in fact the luckiest of us are the people who realize that this is it. And that to honor our dreams and to honor our loved ones and to honor our rituals and our lives is precisely what literature is endlessly trying to teach us. That this is the moment. And that we are happy and immortal only insofar as we know and notice that.

~Allan Gurganus, interview in Naomi Epel's Writers Dreaming

Amen, Harry Crews, Amen

So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design.

From Getting Naked with Harry Crews

 I first learned of Harry only recently while watching Searrching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus.  Haunting. Not for everyone, but if this little wayside inn of a blog had a juke box in the corner this would surely be on it.  Tom Waits, too. And Dayna Kurtz. Leonard Cohen. Jorane. Jaggedy edges all.  Just like all the best people I know, they're all pieces of broken glass in this kaleidoscope. 

But when the light hits them...oh when it does...it will take your breath away.

Helen Keller on Courage, Security and Choices

"Keep in mind that you are always saying 'no' to something.  If it isn't to the apparent, urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things.  Even when the urgent is good, the good can keep you from your best, keep you from your unique contribution, if you let it."

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."

--Helen Keller (1880-1968)

Thomas Wolfe on the Creative Life

"I did not know that for a man who wants to continue with the creative life, to keep on growing and developing, this cheerful idea of happy establishment, of continuing now as one has started, is nothing but a delusion and a snare. I did not know that if a man really has in him the desire and capacity to create, the power of further growth and further development, there can be no such thing as an easy road. I did not kow that so far from having found out about writing, I had really found out almost nothing...I  had made a first and simple utterance, but I did not know that each succeeding one would not only be...more difficult than the last, but would be completely different, that from each new effort would come new desperation, the new, and old, sense of having to begin from the beginning all over again, of being face to face again with the old naked facts of self and work, of realizing again that there is no help anywhere save the help and strength that one can find within himself."

Ben Byer on Indestructible

I wish I were a good enough artist to make this movie and not have the disease. Now THAT would have been talent.

~Ben Byer on making the documentary of his life with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease).

Anne Michaels on Integrity

"We think that we will suddenly rise to an occasion when the occasion demands it—that human values, human integrity, these things don't have to be practiced, that somehow, when the moment of choice occurs, we will do the right thing. But these things have to be practiced. Human integrity, human values have to be constantly practiced. So that when the moment calls for it, we will be able to respond."

From an interview with Anne Michaels

True

Everyone has at least one story that will stop your heart.

~Claudia Shear in Blown Sideways through Life

Ahhhh, Yes, What She Said...

I am looking for the story that creates the legend of that moment in time ...

                                                                                            ~ Di Mackey

Bill Evans on Discipline and Freedom

Discipline and freedom have to mix in a very sensitive way...I believe all music is romantic, but if it gets schmaltzy, romanticism is disturbing. On the other hand, romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty.

Bill Evans on the Function of Art

 My creed for art in general is that it should enrich the soul; it should teach spiritually by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It's easy to rediscover a part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That's the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that's universal, and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate this to a person without his realizing it. Enrichment, that is the function of music.