Lots of people say they’re not creative – but they are! Rick Rubin’s book “The Creative Act — A Way of Being” has many contradictions but the thing I like most about it is the assertion that “We are all creative” and that creativity is about our relationship to the world. Two unusual examples of […]
Image: Newman Turland’s Book. Coloured pencil on paper 18 x 19cm by Hilary Murfin 2023. Newman Turland Brown was Hilary’s 3 x great grandfather and the picture shows one of his diary entries. Part 1 of this post (link below) was about the trials Beethoven faced when he was creating “Ode to Joy”. This post […]
Image: Autographed manuscript of von Schillers Ode an die Freude. Created 1785. Beethoven was 15 years old when Shiller’s poem “Ode to Joy” was published. It was a blazing manifesto that says if freedom, justice, and human happiness are placed at the centre of life and made its primary devotion, politically and personally, then peace […]
What would the Romantic poets have made of social Media? “They’d have bloody loved it and used it mercilessly for all their creative outpourings.” This is a social media post by Andrea Constable and it made me laugh out loud and then immediately start imagining what sort of conversations I’d have with these illustrious, troubled […]
Does art help us to appreciate our differences? A big part of this year has been taken up with people being driven apart by politics, violence and differences of opinion on many things. When Quincy Jones was 20 years old in 1953, he was part of a big band tour of Europe. The band members […]