The premise:

Visitors to this website and readers of my book, An Artist Empowered, have already come across one of my mantras: no thing is obvious and no thing goes without saying.

On the radio this morning, I heard a writer, The New York Times replacement for the language column made famous by the late William Safire, talk about his newfound plum of a job.

Within the first minute, the writer uttered ‘obvious’, and then again within the next minute. I had no choice but to leave that radio interview to its own devices.

If obvious, meaning clear to everyone, had any significance, the world would be what the Buddha had envisioned—a place set free from mindless rote, ignorance, and superstition. 

Words, which developed after art, can enlighten and encourage, or they can cause havoc and mayhem. So, the next time ‘obvious’ dribbles near your tongue, say, for example, ‘apparent’ or ‘self-evident’ instead. Words that have depth and meaning empower you, and those around you.

Be diligent. You won’t be sorry. 

German American physicist Albert Einstein was born this day in 1879.

In his book, Einstein, Picasso, Arthur I. Miller writes:

“The corpus of Einstein’s fourth paper entitled ‘On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,’ the so-called relativity paper, is at first glance no different from other scientific papers of that era.

“Yet first glance deceives: It was daring in both style and content. Today no leading physics journal would publish it because of its complete lack of citations to the literature.”

If this is so, then art and physics are allies in the description of truths: physical and metaphysical. Nearly a century after Einstein drew his line of chalk in the fabric of space-time, the quest for the Theory of Everything has become the holy grail of advanced theoretical physics.

The equation of the millennium would explain the elemental relationship of matter and energy, gravity and light.

We can also note that a considerable aspect of Einstein’s genius lay in his gift for asking the right questions coupled with his dedication, his ability to stay with a problem for many years until a solution revealed itself. 

Who is the arbiter of your thoughts, your feelings?

Before you answer, remember that we all are prisoners of the culture and language that we inherit. The artist, recognizing this limitation, creates a new universal language that is free from the bias and restrictions of the past.

Original thinking or feeling is based on nothing that preceded it. This is an essential insight to grasp for your own evolution.

Original means something unencumbered by what preceded it; original is not a conclusion, but a revelation that takes off in a new direction.

In the same way that you can’t plan an original thought, you can’t contrive original art. This isn’t an opinion; it is a universal constant. 

Why has so much been written about the aesthetic experience? And what is it?

The aesthetic experience is when art becomes a doorway. You look, listen, feel, and for yet another moment, or for the first time, you are seeing for yourself without the limiting and blinding filters of others—that is, of course, if you’ve got the guts.

Digging deeper: The aesthetic experience is a moment of truth, and you know where you stand without having to ask for a show of hands to corroborate your feeling.

And as we have heard from the poet, truth is beauty, and beauty truth—and so beautifully said to boot.

Here’s a repost from seven years ago.

Mr. Bowles’ Buddhist-leaning observation contains a universal teaching we can all prosper from and enjoy in the present moment.

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.”

—from The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles