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During my recent passage in Paris, I photographed this quote on the Embarcadero, right across from the Eiffel tower…

‘Tout homme crée sans le savoir
Comme il respire
Mais l’artiste se sent créer
Son acte engage tout son être
Sa peine bien-aimée le fortifie‘ 

Loosely translates to:

‘Any man creates without realizing it
Just as he breathes
But the artist feels himself creating
His act engages his whole being
His beloved sorrow fortifies him‘ 

My own distilled and slightly less poetic take: striving to become conscious of our innate creative power is espousing the Way of the Artist, and it is a high ideal, for it allows us to consciously and positively influence reality. Also, allowing ourselves to experience the pain and sorrow as well as the joy and laughter is part of artful / heartful living.

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Virtual friend Bethany Buffington, who wears philosophy on her brow and has poetry in her heart, judiciously commented on part I of this post (as it appears on Myspace), suggesting that the proper way to create a house is as an outer expression of one’s inner beauty. One who cultivates inner beauty and chooses to let it shine by expressing it in the material realm in whatever form (house, object, performance, etc.) is certainly an artist. And I wholeheartedly agree that a proper dwelling should be a work of art. And this invites a proper digression into the concept of beauty
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I’ve just started working on my house, doing long overdue repairs. The roof in particular is in need of major overhaul. Its a metal roof, still quite sturdy in general, even after 20 some Quebec winters, but there are rusty screws, some holes and yes, minor leaks.

Of course, I tend to neglect these maintenance tasks just ever so slightly too long. My excuse? Well, the house just doesn’t make sense. Or at least, it doesn’t make sense to me. Mind you, it is a fairly good, solid, and comfortable house, entirely renovated 20 years ago (long before we purchased it).

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I have always admired Steve Jobs. For those who might not have heard of him, he is the founder of Apple Computer (now known simply as Apple Inc.) and is currently the head of both Apple and Pixar Animation Studios (bought out recently by Walt Disney, but still independently operated).

Mr Jobs is an idealist and a visionary, and he fits my definition of a ‘creative agent of positive change.’ He is known as a charismatic leader, and his detractors accuse him of being single-minded; they talk about the ‘Jobs warped reality field.’
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R. Buckminster Fuller (July 12th, 1895—July 1st, 1983), engineer, poet, philosopher, architect, inventor, and visionary was the quintessential modern Renaissance man. Among many other descriptions, he was called “the PR man to the Universe.” His original and profoundly individual way of thinking led to a catastrophic business failure and bankruptcy in 1927; he had been attempting to innovate in the very conservative business of construction, which has traditionally been strangled by regressive codes and territorial trade unions. Profoundly shaken, he chose to embark on a lifelong experiment as “Guinea Pig B” to find out what one individual could do to help all of humanity become an enduring success, in a manner which would be sustainable and environmentally sound. He worked ahead of his time and left an impressive legacy of tools and knowledge in mathematics, architecture, engineering, philosophy, etc. One of the highlights of his life’s work is that he understood the importance of working at the interfaces, of transcending the boundaries that exist between the fields of human endeavour. In this line of thought, he was inspired by Nature’s synergetic mechanisms, its systemic quality, which makes it difficult to understand if you look at only one aspect at a time. This philosophy led to unique and extremely valuable inventions, with the geodesic dome being the most recognized.     (more…)