One Creative Thing » ideas

Finished Art & Fear

minim — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:07:23 +0000

For the second time. That’s one powerful book. It totally captures the wonder and massive insecurities of being an artist. I think this should be required reading for anyone who lives with an artist and isn’t one themselves. And even if they are, then I’d probably recommend it. I’m hoping to do a proper book review of it soon, but first need to sort out this house business first – putting in a lease application in the morning, then signing the lease probably on Thursday. Moving in about a month, it seems, so regular posting should hopefully resume after that.

Had an idea for a perpetual motion piece

minim — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:11:39 +0000

Thinking about writing something which uses the geolocation features of something like the iPhone to drive the playback and construction of a piece. Think it might work – need to do some more research though.

Discovered a composer group

minim — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:04:10 +0000

Very excited! I was hoping to find a composer group in London and this one does – it sounds – pretty much what I want: meetups to talk through new works and problems and occasional special events focusing on a particular topic. Yay!

Finished reading ‘The Creative Habit’

minim — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:35:31 +0000

Wow! What a book. That’s just totally shaken me up. And I just totally devoured it. I did kind of feel that I should be taking an Artist’s Way approach to it and only doing one chapter a week, to really let it sink in, but I couldn’t let it alone – I couldn’t wait to see what she’d say next, so I made myself keep at least to just one chapter a day so the ideas didn’t get too muddled. I’ll write a review of it sometime soon and post it here.

Expanding this blog!

minim — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:23:12 +0000

I decided on the way home this evening, after contemplating and discarding a number of approaches (including a new, anonymous blog, which then raised the question of how do you promote an anonymous blog?) that I’m going to start creating the occasional longer post for this blog, addressing various topics to do with creativity, productivity and related topics. I’m hopefully going to post the first one on the weekend, but for now, I’ve written a letter to explain what on Earth I’m thinking…

Took delivery of a new book

minim — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:11:43 +0000

Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit: Learn it and use it for life which I’ve been salivating over on Amazon for quite some time, and which has made it to my house at long last thanks to an Amazon gift voucher Christmas present from a lovely friend (also Wii Fit Plus which I can’t wait to go on once the wretched sprained ankle is fixed!). First thoughts: Ooh, nice typography!

Bought & devoured a design magazine

minim — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:59:14 +0000

No, not literally! The latest issue of Creative Review is dedicated to creative workspaces, which is something that fascinates me, so indulged and have subsequently consumed. Mmmm.

Whee! New idea!

minim — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:09:12 +0000

I’ve had this vague idea for the orchestral piece kicking around my head for a few days. Title to be ‘Fear of Falling’ and thinking along the lines of quarter-tone falling glisses (if a quarter-tone slide counts as an actual gliss) in the flutes. Anyway, this evening I managed to get down an idea for how to start it and the basic structure of the piece. It’s still not actual notes, and I don’t know how it will pull together, but it’s a concrete idea and I think could be effective and interesting for the performers. Now trying to get inspiration for the actual sound of the thing. Listening to Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3.

Thoughts on a website

minim — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:43:16 +0000

Began to pull together some ideas (again) about how I want to tackle my new website. I’ve started this a couple of times but this feels meatier and more like it has a chance of making it to the coding phase.

Reading and reviewing

minim — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:13:48 +0000

Over the past week I’ve managed to clear about 20 items off my read/review list. It’s a long list and there’s still 127 things in there (and that’s not counting whatever’s lurking in my RSS reader or the hard-copy file!) but it’s great to feel it decreasing a bit.