12 Inspirational Tips for 8–22–21
1. Suck the Marrow Out of Life
Henry David Thoreau inspired many to life simply and suck the marrow out of life. Journaling is an important tool to do this. Mindfulness is another — taking stock of tiny sensations throughout the day — a cool breeze on your skin or acknowledging the feeling of grass beneath your bare feet.
2. Dirty Clown Suit
David Lynch is amazing. He’s the famed director of such classics as Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man. He’s also a huge proponent of transcendental meditation. He said, “I practice transcendental meditation twice a day, and in almost 43 years, I’ve never missed a session. It’s such a tremendous feeling of freedom when that suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity begins to dissolve. I think of meditating as bringing in the gold and saying goodbye to the garbage.”
Oh my God do I love his image of the “suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity” beginning to dissolve.
3. Compose Your Life Into a Masterpiece
My inspiration for the Think Like a Musician system for managing a busy life to live one’s masterpiece life began when I first started playing drums in fourth grade but intensified and clarified in college when I began composing. I had two key composition professors: Lewis Spratlan and Dr. Yusef Latef. They were the first mentors that helped me bridge the gap between how I approached composing a piece of music and managing my life in a way that was built upon beauty and boundless inspiration. Sometimes managing one’s busy life can feel like work but when you get the spark for a composition, you unleash your inspiration. So, I learned to approach my life — in all of its main categories or “roles” as a composition I was joyously planning.
4. Brother Lateef
I was a jazz performance major in college and had Prof. Lateef as my improvisation/composition teacher. He had a profound impact on me. It was as if he believed in my more completely than other other professor. When I had the hair-brained idea to write a piece for full orchestra as a junior, he didn’t try to talk me out of it — he gave me an old copy of a book about orchestration (ranges and tendencies of all the instruments). He converted to Islam in the fifties and thus, called me Brother Snow! I loved that. I’d occasionally skip history of music lectures to see if he was available to chat. He had a tiny practice room office — which I never understood because he was the most accomplished musician in the faculty yet he was given a closet-sized office space.
One of my favorite memories of learning from Brother Lateef was learning to improvise on the vibes as he accompanied me on piano. He’d make short moaning and grunting sounds, in response to, my selection of notes in my solo. He was showing me the reaction of my playing on another person and that was profound. I loved his oversized, thick score paper and the bag he toted around during his march from the bus to his office. I remember playing him a recording I made the night before of myself trudging across campus in a snow storm. He closed his eyes and listened intently and made eye contact with me after and say, ‘You may have some elements of genius here.” Lol — he was the best.
5. Professor Lewis Spratlan
During the same time I was working with Prof. Lateef, I started composition lessons at Amherst College with Lew Spratlan. This followed a very negative experience I had with a composition teacher at U-mass, who took a very traditional, harmonic approach and wasn’t encouraging in the least. Prof. Spratlan was kind and I spent most of my week preparing for my hour-long lesson. Under his tutelage I composed three pieces I was very proud of and even had them performed in the composer’s concert. One piece was called “Funhouse” and it had a pre-recorded tape of Funhouse mirror-type music and had a trio of flute, baritone horn, and piano. Another was called “1619” — a based on a poem I wrote about slavery and performed with a male singer, percussion, piano, and cello. Town Meeting of the Bugs was an interesting composition for tape and it was created with a synthesizer and electric fan. The fan was used to created background sound for segments of the piece and when the fan was turned off, there was great contrast to the backdrop of the sounds. My biggest accomplishment was the Zoo-Keeper’s Wife — a setting of a Sylvia Plath poem of the same title. It was a dark and creepy piece with piano, percussion, violin, mezzo-soprano, female reciter, electric guitar, and French horn. Prof. Spratlan liberated me by teaching me about tone rows and atonality.
6. Chief Fun Officer
I love the new job titles nowadays: Chief Fun Officer, Chief Storytelling Officer, and Chief Heat Officer (to combat forest fires in California). The TLAM system for time management, I teach the process for writing a mini-mission statement for each role. Each mini-mission statement ends with a nickname for the roles. For example, the nickname for my role of Visionary is “Willy Wonka Engine that Drives Everything Good in My Life.” Often times, I utilize similes in mission statements, such as, The Warren Buffet of Business Strategy or the John Coltrane of Creativity. Try it! What are the nicknames for your roles?
7. Maggie Q Tips
I’m fascinated with movies featuring master assassins. This began with the 1972 film, The Mechanic, starring Charles Bronson. The concept of anyone who goes about their job at an elite level gets my full attention — even if it’s a villain. I love everything Joker and have since watching Cesar Romero in the corny 60s Batman series on tv.
There was a top 10 tips article from Maggie Q — the actress in the new movie, The Protege (female assassin). Here are a few highlights:
* She loves backgammon! One of her business strategists encouraged her to take up the game. I’m a huge backgammon fan! It certainly has many lessons for an entrepreneur — strategy, risk-taking, assessment, and big-picture thinking. Try it!
* She loves soup! We forget how amazing a good soup is — life-affirming really. Her mother is Vietnamese and pho is a type of soup she was raised on. What’s your favorite soup to cook?
* She shared how she loved listening to records on her record player as a youngster and how she’d sit back and let the album unfold. She pointed out that she had to become an active listener to participate. She added feeling concerned for kids nowadays who are completely overstimulated most of the time.
8. I Love Dental Fillings
I’m in the middle of making a deck for my house. Well, I’m a laborer and my brother-in-law is leading the project. We dug holes for cement footings, inserted Sonotubes, filled them cement and let them set. In the quiet following the excavation work, I thought of the calm and healing feeling of getting a cavity filled. You have all the necessary drilling and destruction that’s followed by the calming fill. Self-development work could be described similarly: the digging and ugly work and then the healing feeling of progress afterward.
9. Inspiration Fades
I use a 5-subject notebook throughout the day to jot down thoughts or inspiration. I’m learning the importance of honoring ideas in the moment. Don’t put ideas on the back burner — give them a chance to shine! Feature ideas in your audio journal that night — don’t wait for the idea to be perfect and fully-realized.
10. Skateboard Park Art
My sons are very creative — one of them (I have twins) — enjoys projects the he creates. I love it! We had extra flashing (1 foot aluminum sheeting used to be a barrier between wood and your house) and he used it to craft an expansive skateboard park — like a diorama!
11. 4,000 Weeks (Average Human Lifespan)
There’s a new book out titled “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman. Whereas most time management books help you become more effective or productive, this one helps you realize that time is all we have! We have a limited time on this Earth so we should strive to spend as much of it possible doing things we cherish. He drew from Buddhism, meditation, and philosophy for the book.
12. Everybody is Somebody
This is the translation of a Haitian Creole phrase in a mural: Tout moun se moun.
11. 4,000 Weeks (Average Human Lifespan)
There’s a new book out titled “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman. Whereas most time management books help you become more effective or productive, this one helps you realize that time is all we have! We have a limited time on this Earth so we should strive to spend as much of it possible doing things we cherish. He drew from Buddhism, meditation, and philosophy for the book.
12. Everybody is Somebody
This is the translation of a Haitian Creole phrase in a mural: Tout moun se moun.
