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For the past three weeks or so, I have been posting 1501 Quotes Questions & Pondering on the Creative Process at my Facebook Group Page. I invite you to visit the group and sign up as a member. This is an opportunity to enter into dialogue with a wide range of people. You may post artwork based upon the quote. Add to the collection by posting quotes from your own collection on the FB discussion page. Think of each entry as an idea stimulator.

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When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold, because they believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful.

Barbara Bloom

Installation Artist, Curator, Photographer, Designer

b. 1951

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For a synopsis of the book that accompanied The Collections of Barbara Bloom, by Barbara Bloom, at ICP.

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Photograph, paint, draw the face of a wrinkled elder. While you are working, imagine each crack filled with gold. How does that vision change the ways you see the subject? How different would our culture be if we valued elders this way?

Men are not born, but fashioned.

Desiderius Erasmus

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Albrecht Durer the Elder, Self Portrait, Silverpoint, Early 1500′s

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When you come to the fork in the road, take it. Yogi Berra was right. Well, sort of. If we keep walking, we will be faced with new forks in the road. It may be time to make new choices. We are unlikely to be presented with an opportunity to double back. Commit to your passions. Carry them in your backpack. Dare to take the next step on the ‘road-of-the-I-do-not-know.’ I believe that the expression, If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there is a distortion of the truth. It suggests that living without goals is aimless. I create a life of adventure, discovery and manifestation. I co-create a world where people are safe to bring what they love and what matters into being — by being a compassionate teacher and expressive painter. That is my mission; not a goal. When I chose a path and stay on mission, there is rarely any remorse. SIGH!

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The speaker stands in the woods, considering a fork in the road. Both ways are equally worn and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. The speaker chooses one, telling himself that he will take the other another day. Yet he knows it is unlikely that he will have the opportunity to do so. And he admits that someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a slight twist: He will claim that he took the less-traveled road…

…Ironic as it is, this is also a poem infused with the anticipation of remorse. Its title is not “The Road Less Traveled” but “The Road Not Taken.” Even as he makes a choice (a choice he is forced to make if does not want to stand forever in the woods, one for which he has no real guide or definitive basis for decision-making), the speaker knows that he will second-guess himself somewhere down the line—or at the very least he will wonder at what is irrevocably lost: the impossible, unknowable Other Path. But the nature of the decision is such that there is no Right Path—just the chosen path and the other path. What are sighed for ages and ages hence are not so much the wrong decisions as the moments of decision themselves—moments that, one atop the other, mark the passing of a life. This is the more primal strain of remorse.

Thus, to add a further level of irony, the theme of the poem may, after all, be “seize the day.” But a more nuanced carpe diem, if you please.

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Robert Frost (C. 1910)
b. 1874 – d. 1963

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Two roads diverged in the woods, and I

I took the one less traveled by,

and that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

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The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Frost’s Early Poems.” SparkNotes LLC. 2002. http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/frost/ (accessed June 21, 2010).

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This stimulator helps people remember their past. It frees up a plethora of forgotten emotions. It is also useful in giving direction to your actors or models. Give them what you know about your character and ask them to go back and create the characters past using this method. Or use it yourself while creating characters for lifestyle images. Begin at the age of five and continue into your teens. Start by saying, “I’m five years old, and I…” filling in the blanks from that age until you run dry and cannot remember anything else. Then move on to the next age. Stay in the present tense: “I am telling a joke” not “I told a joke.” The following is an edited transcript from my own exercise:

I am five years old and I am sitting on the front porch. I am surrounded by comicbooks, coloring books and crayons. I am lost in a fantasy world. It is Sunday and I am waiting for the relatives to arrive. I hope they bring me presents. I am filled with anticipation…

I am five years old and I am in kindergarten. My teacher’s name is Miss Ada. She is fat. She likes to hug me. I love her. She asks me to tell her a joke. I tell her the one about what do you get when you goose a ghost. She makes me tell it to the other teachers. I make them laugh. I feel good. I am  five years old and my Great-Grand Father dies. The firemen carry him out of the house. I am scared. I don’t want him to go. He is gray. I am scared. I want him to stay alive..

I am five years old and I hear doors slamming. I want to disappear… I am five years old and we are expecting another baby. I am confused… I am five years old and I can hear my Grandmother’s footsteps upstairs. I wonder what she is doing. She’s getting ready to make me breakfast. I am angry. She won’t let me have a dog. I am sad…

I am five years old and am waiting for the wooden station wagon to pick me up. I go to Camp Bell. I don’t like it there. They want me to play games. I want to read. I feel left out… I am five years old and my Grandmother takes me to see Bambi. I am scared. I am crying. A news reel comes on and it’s about the war. I have bad dreams about it…

I am six years old and I am waiting for Mommy to come home from the hospital. I have a new brother. I am a man now. I don’t want to be. I have to be extra good. I have to help around the house. Dust the woodwork. I am lonely… I am six years old and the war is over. There are sirens and everyone is drunk. My baby brother is crying. I am outside. I am riding on my tricycle. It is red and has a chain.  I am going very fast. I fall off and skin my knees. I am crying.  I can’t get anyone to notice. I am invisible…

I am six years old and want to be an artist when I grow up. I love to draw comic books. I can read big books too. I am the best reader in my class. Mrs. Nichols lets me read to the class. I am important… I am six years old and I have dog. He has floppy ears. His name is Puddy. I love him… I am six years old and they take Puddy away. I don’t know why. They lie to me. I am sad. I am crying….

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