"Here there are no griots, only poets. You think that you are leading an extraordinary life and that people see you as you would like them to. You adorn yourself with your writing. It becomes your identity, your bread and butter, and your reason for living. You begin to believe in what people say. You become locked up in your creation, become submerged in words, and sentences suffocate you in the solitude of your retreat. They make you forget the blood and the dust." --Veronique Tadjo, As the Crow Flies

Utterly moved by Ama Ata Aidoo's Changes: A Love Story, a serendipitous find at the New York Public Library. More later.

"For Esi though, things hadn't worked out so simply. She had had to teach herself not to expect him at all. She had had to teach herself not to wonder where he was when he was not with her. And that had been the hardest of the lessons to learn. For, Accra being that kind of place, she couldn't help hearing about his womanising activities. Given the nature of her job, it was only natural that out of those close to Esi, it should have been Opokuya who heard more of the gossip about Ali. Yet it was she who told Esi least. Esi believed Ali when he insisted that he loved her very much. She knew it was true: that he loved her in his own fashion. What she became certain of was that his fashion of loving had proved quite inadequate for her."

i recently dusted off my old copy of the artist's way and set about finally doing the exercises designed to "recover" my lost creativity. easier said than done, as the book was trapped in one of many unmarked boxes in a storage unit in brooklyn. i had been searching online for books and resources regarding creativity, and came across this one, which i remembered that i had bought once upon a time and never read.

i am more of a grazer when it comes to reading--and, incidentally, eating as well--and had skimmed through each chapter rather quickly without ever really internalizing the lessons and insights. boy. i had no idea what would come up out of the depths. so far, the past couple of weeks have been very interesting and certainly worth the hour it took to find it.

Here's a brief excerpt:

"Most of the time, the next right thing is something small: washing out your paintbrushes, stopping by the art-supply store and getting your clay, checking the local paper for a list of acting classes...As a rule of thumb, it is best to just admit that there is always one action you can take for your creativity daily.

By setting the jumps too high and making the price tag too great, the recovering artist sets defeat in motion. Instead of writing three pages a day on a screenplay, we prefer worrying about how we will have to move to Hollywood if the script gets bought. Which it can't anyway since we are too busy worrying about selling it to write it.

Rather than take a scary baby step toward our dreams, we rush to the edge of the cliff and then stand there, quaking, saying, 'I can't leap. I can't. I can't.'

No one is asking you to leap.

Take one small daily action instead of indulging in the big questions. When we allow ourselves to wallow in the big questions, we fail to find the small answers. What we are talking about here is a concept of change grounded in respect--respect for where we are as well as where we wish to go. We are looking not to grand strokes of change--although they may come--but instead to the act of creatively husbanding all that is in the present: this job, this house, this relationship."

"Well, I do not really feel that I have things to say. I do not think such or such movie absolutely needs to be made. A film has no necessity. As long as it does not exist, it does not need to be made. Art is not the truth. I do not think creation has a mission to tell the truth. I am very aware that we live in an unjust world not engaged in finding the truth. I am aware that one can be totally destitute, and yet it is in that state of destitution that one finds human dignity, fundamental values. Today, something else is being imposed. So, I portray people nobody else would portray, but my intention is neither to give them a voice, nor speak up for them, but to convince myself of the necessary frailty of human life.

And also because I know that the fact that I left home did not save me or exempt me from anything, that the self-imposed exile is part of a family sacrifice. Someone leaves because someone else has to stay. The one who leaves is not better or worse than those he leaves behind. The one who leaves comes back to share what he has found."

--Abderrahmane Sissako in
Through African Eyes: Dialogues with the Directors
Edited by Mahen Bonetti and Prerana Reddy

"I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing, not associating with all the people around me. I felt that the indispensable relationship I should build in my life was not a specific person, but with an unspecified number of readers. As long as I got my day-to-day life set so that each work was an improvement over the last, then many of my readers would welcome whatever life I chose for myself. Shouldn't this be my duty as a novelist, and my top priority?"

--From What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
by Haruki Murakami

(Thanks to Waffarian for recommending!)