Adam Murphy » Thoughts

adam — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:59:01 +0000

But — tell me — black and white, may one use them or not? Are they forbidden fruit? I think not. Frans Hals must have had twenty-seven blacks. White — but you know yourself what singular paintings some modern colourists purposely made with white on white. What does that phrase mean, one may not? Delacroix — called them [...]

adam — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:58:21 +0000

An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits, when they are held up to each other, that’s where the real making begins. That’s what art and crafting are. A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise. The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again so they can be used for fine carpentry. Your doctor must have a broken [...]

adam — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:46:40 +0000

…I did not see that we were going to a goal, but that we were living in process, and that that process is eternal. My intention in putting 90 stories together in an unplanned way is to suggest that all things, sounds, stories (and, by extension, beings) are related, and that this complexity is more [...]

adam — Sat, 22 May 2010 18:37:09 +0000

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -marvelous error!-
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Antonio Machado

Last Minutes with ODEN.

adam — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:24:34 +0000

I wept. Perhaps that is not surprising... Do watch this, it's a short film with so much depth and power. "God is Love, and Love is God..."

adam — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:45:24 +0000

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.

Thomas Traherne

adam — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 15:23:51 +0000

"You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining."

Joni Mitchell

adam — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:08:33 +0000

All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy. calld Evil. is alone from the Body. & that Reason. calld Good. is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True
1 Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3 Energy is Eternal Delight

William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

adam — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:13:24 +0000

Lynda Barry on writing slow and letting it come to you... I learned how to do this from kids. I met a kid named Benny Greiling when I was trying to write a book on the computer, and he was four, and I was babysitting him and I asked him if he wanted to tell me a story and I’d write it down and we could draw pictures to go with it. He says yes but he will only tell me the story one word at a time. I have to write that word down completely before he’ll tell me the next one. And the story turns out solid! It has a beginning, middle, end, character development, transformation, fore-shadowing, no change in evil character, symbols of death, every lit/crit thing you can think of. And this four year old did it one word at a time in eight minutes. And I remember going back to my studio and thinking if he can do it, what the hell, I’ll give it a try. And between slowing down the story intentionally in my head and using a paintbrush so it slowed physically on the page, something happened to how I physically felt while I was writing. And that changed the content of the writing into something I was following rather than pushing along. Again, I don’t mean any kind of big feeling, it’s just the difference between being interested in your surroundings and not being interested Writing this way gave me a feeling I remember having when I was a kid and cutting things out of construction paper for a shoebox diorama or coloring in a coloring book when it was going really well, or making tiny channels and rivers between dammed up mud puddles in the alley, it gave me that same feeling, that sensation of being absorbed in the physical act of what I’m doing in such a way that the back of the mind had a chance to come forward and move things around.

Read the whole article here.

adam — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:39:07 +0000

. . . this mind, through endless kalpas without beginning, has never varied. It has never lived or died, appeared or disappeared, increased or decreased. It's not pure or impure, good or evil, past or future. It's not true or false. It's not male or female. It doesn't appear as a monk or a layman, an elder or a novice, a sage or a fool, a buddha or a mortal. It strives for no realization and suffers no karma. It has no strength or form. It's like space. You can't possess it and you can't lose it. Its movements can't be blocked by mountains, rivers, or rock walls. . . . No karma can restrain this real body. But this mind is subtle and hard to see. It's not the same as the sensual mind. Everyone wants to see this mind, and those who move their hands and feet by its light are as many as the grains of sand along the Ganges, but when you ask them, they can't explain it. It's theirs to use. Why don't they see it? . . .

The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, trans. Red Pine