by Gary Powell
At full sail, we can realize and create our purest artistic vision at our highest performance level and understanding. We can then come to enjoy the benefits from the realization of working at that highest and best use. I’m suggesting that in between fate, hard work, discipline, luck, favoritism, and talent, we can occasionally find our wind and be at full sail. In these snippets of time when chance collaborates with our fullest and best expressions – we forget time, place and even the context of our artistic origins. Life floats on the gentle and effortless waves of creativity and success, and we have indeed found our wind.
This is a time when our individual character either out-smarts or out-works the stillness of misfortune.
Conversely, we more frequently find ourselves in a dead calm. While we own the best vessel with all our gear at the ready, we simply have no wind. These are the periods of Big Sails – No Wind, which can be most disheartening, or something worse altogether. Within this metaphor, rations become scarce, resources diminish, and emotions turn to despair. The solution is to absolutely know that this will happen and to provision for it. Before World War II, the precept of economic prudence was a core value of most Americans. Few of our grandparents ever bought anything on credit. Having a good credit rating is not a bad thing, but it is not provisioning for the dead calm.
The dead calm may also require the use of a paddle. This is a time when our individual character either out-smarts or out-works the stillness of misfortune. Regardless of whether the dead calm seems engineered through circumstance, is self-inflicted, or is being masterminded by people who would shield the wind from your sails, the antidote is to provision, provision, provision, and don’t forget to buy a paddle.
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Big Sails, No Wind-How to Survive the Arts in a Dead Calm. http://tinyurl.com/45mr4j
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.
by Gary Powell
At full sail, we can realize and create our purest artistic vision at our highest performance level and understanding. We can then come to enjoy the benefits from the realization of working at that highest and best use. I’m suggesting that in between fate, hard work, discipline, luck, favoritism, and talent, we can occasionally find our wind and be at full sail. In these snippets of time when chance collaborates with our fullest and best expressions – we forget time, place and even the context of our artistic origins. Life floats on the gentle and effortless waves of creativity and success, and we have indeed found our wind.
This is a time when our individual character either out-smarts or out-works the stillness of misfortune.
Conversely, we more frequently find ourselves in a dead calm. While we own the best vessel with all our gear at the ready, we simply have no wind. These are the periods of Big Sails – No Wind, which can be most disheartening, or something worse altogether. Within this metaphor, rations become scarce, resources diminish, and emotions turn to despair. The solution is to absolutely know that this will happen and to provision for it. Before World War II, the precept of economic prudence was a core value of most Americans. Few of our grandparents ever bought anything on credit. Having a good credit rating is not a bad thing, but it is not provisioning for the dead calm.
The dead calm may also require the use of a paddle. This is a time when our individual character either out-smarts or out-works the stillness of misfortune. Regardless of whether the dead calm seems engineered through circumstance, is self-inflicted, or is being masterminded by people who would shield the wind from your sails, the antidote is to provision, provision, provision, and don’t forget to buy a paddle.
Helpful? Then Copy, Paste and Tweet It:
Big Sails, No Wind-How to Survive the Arts in a Dead Calm. http://tinyurl.com/45mr4j
All Content of Gary Powell’s Site is Licensed Under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License
.
In these times of “dead calm,” do you think that the provisions will help us survive with out great creativity or help us deal with the lack of inspiration and create all the same?
Nick Barnett
Nick,
thanks for the question and for starting this conversation. Provisioning for the future by simply saving money and building assets is, at least, a protection against a roller-coaster lifestyle. Every person has different emotional attachments to money or the lack of it. It is a highly charged topic for us all. Yes, having assets can give us figurative survival and literal survival both. Some people are crushed under hard times and some become empowered with their creativity on fire. I am the latter. How about you?
There are many reasons for lack of inspiration. Some mental health professionals say our society is walking around with low-grade depression, or worse still, PTSD. As you suggest, creativity can be fueled by inspiration, but is can also be fueled by simple necessity or more important in these times, it can be fueled by anger. My creativity is born from an early childhood of needing to be loved, and currently, a mixture of both necessity and anger. I just can’t imagine loosing in these hard times, so my creativity is set on stun.
To expand this further, what happens when we are under extreme oppression? Read this post about Joseph Stalin and ask yourself what you might have done under this kind of brutal regime. American slaves suffered extreme oppression as well as the Ukranians, so we have a good understanding, through studying history and sociology, of what this extreme portion of the worst kind of dead calm yields for humanity.
Lost human potential, especially under despotic oppression, is a hot topic for me, and as you suggest, through my anger I become inspired and even more creative. I think it’s an important question to ask one’s self because you will most certainly be faced with it in your lifetime, though hopefully not to the extreme.