The Inspiration Laboratory

The Mountaintop

2008-01-20T23:51:00.000-08:00

We peer so suspiciously at each other
that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on
the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege.

– Pierre Elliot Trudeau –

Agreement

2008-01-20T23:33:00.000-08:00

Truth is Bliss

– Robert Lepage –

Life As Our Lab

2008-01-20T23:08:00.001-08:00

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.

– David Cronenberg –

Words about Words

2008-01-20T22:59:00.000-08:00

"Truth, at the wrong time, can be dangerous."

"I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure."

"It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself."

"It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not."

– Michael Ondaatje –

A Case Of You

2008-01-20T22:47:00.000-08:00

Just before our love got lost you said
"i am as constant as a northern star"
And I said, "constant in the darkness
Where’s that at?
If you want me I’ll be in the bar"

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue tv screen light
I drew a map of canada
Oh canada
And your face sketched on it twice

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh I’d still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I’m frightened by the devil
And I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
"love is touching souls"
Surely you touched mine
"cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
And you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
Still I’d be on my feet
And still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
Color "go to him, stay with him if you can
Oh but be prepared to bleed"
Oh but you are in my blood you’re my holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter, bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I’d be on my feet
I’d still be on my feet

Mmmmmmm

-Joni Mitchell (Blue)

William Hutt: (1920 to 2007)

2007-06-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

"Never speak unless it improves on silence;

Never move unless it improves on stillness."

(William Hutt)

New York Prep #3: Walt Whitman

2007-03-30T01:41:00.000-07:00

"The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him
as affectionately as he has absorbed it"

- Walt Whitman -

New York Prep #2: Robert Wilson

2007-03-30T01:24:00.000-07:00

“A good actor can command an audience by moving one finger”

- Robert Wilson -

New York Prep #1: Dash Snow

2007-03-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

"To make a Hamster's Nest, Snow and Colen shred up 30 to 50 phone books, yank around all the blankets and drapes, turn on the taps, take off their clothes, and do drugs - mushrooms, coke, ecstasy - until they feel like hamsters."

(January 15th, 2007 - New York Magazine: Warhol's Children)
(Chasing Dash Snow by Ariel Levy)

This lime-tree bower my prison!

2007-02-22T15:23:00.000-08:00

Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge-

A Poetic Revolution: Fighting With Words

2007-02-15T14:25:00.000-08:00

“To be young and not to be revolutionary

is a contradiction in terms!”

Salvador Allende

via

Rosa Laborde’s Léo

...The Year of Peace?

2007-01-01T16:23:00.000-08:00

The Marriage of Freedom & Wellbeing

One

2006-12-09T20:22:00.000-08:00

...Nothing will come of nothing...

William Shakespeare

The Best Days...

2006-12-08T00:20:00.000-08:00

Photo by: Yousuf Karsh

The days you work are the best days.
Georgia O’Keefe

A Pirate's Life For Me

2006-11-30T13:23:00.000-08:00

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
Robert Lewis Stevenson

Quite Something

2006-11-17T11:24:00.000-08:00

I was lucky to have my wife as the art director,
and it turned out to be quite something - a great success.
I'm very proud of it.

Helmut Newton

Your Own Resposibility

2006-10-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

There was a famous Kabuki actor, who died about fifty years ago, who said, ‘I can teach you the gesture pattern that indicates “looking at the moon”. I can teach you the movement up to the tip of the finger which points to the sky. From the tip of your finger to the moon is your own responsibility.’

-Yoshi Oida-

The Invisible Actor

The Threshold

2006-10-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

As Kingfishers Catch Fire
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying, What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is -
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

A Sign Of The Times

2006-10-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

“I think these big blood floods are absolutely timely”
Barnaby Furnas

It's True!

2006-09-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

Always tell the truth – it’s the easiest thing to remember.
David Mamet

Lesson Unlearned

2006-09-12T13:05:00.000-07:00

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age

to save those that have no imagination
George Bernard Shaw

A Good Point

2006-09-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

You want to make your thoughts sharper
Jim Mezon

From Architect to Actor

2006-09-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

God is in the details
Rosemary Dunsmore

EXPLORE!!!

2006-06-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

Every time you get a chance to act, explore!
Daniel Brooks

Delicious Action

2006-06-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

All homework, research and background, laboratory and experimentation must
have their consequences in actions.
Uta Hagen

All the way from Neptune...

2006-06-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying,
or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.
Noam Chomsky

Gesamtkunstwerk

2006-06-30T20:49:00.000-07:00

Life In A Glass House

Once again I'm in trouble with my only friend
She is papering the window panes
She is putting on a smile
Living in a glass house

Once again packed like frozen food and battery hens
Think of all the starving millions
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones
Your royal highnesses

Well of course I'd like to sit around and chat
Well of course I'd like to stay and chew the fat
Well of course I'd like to sit around and chat
But someone's listening in

Once again we are hungry for a lynching
That's a strange mistake to make
You should turn the other cheek
Living in a glass house

Well of course I'd like to sit around and chat
Well of course I'd like to stay and chew the fat
Well of course I'd like to sit around and chat
Only only only only only only only only only only....
There's someone listening in

Original Meal

2006-06-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

Don't worry about people stealing an idea.

If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken

The New Record

2006-06-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

This month New York City's Neue Galerie pays a record US$135m for the Gustav Klimt painting: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

An Athlete of God

2006-06-30T20:01:00.000-07:00

Cory Fuhr

We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

Martha Graham

The Prophet?

2006-06-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

www.heyapathy.com

The Future

2006-05-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents
are interconnected. That is our home.

We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options.

Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences. It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles.

Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: scepticism.

A Positive Difference

2006-05-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

Philanthropy is all about making a positive difference in the world by devoting your resources and your time to causes you believe in.

My thesis is that people want to see films that will not only entertain them, but also give them hope and inspire them.

--Jeff Skoll--

Keen

2006-05-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

Everything that's made me what I am today is part of that process of being intrigued and curious.
--Ben Kingsley--

Good & Lucky

2006-05-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

"Trading is 40% art, 40% science and 20% luck. To be a good trader, you have to be lucky, but to be lucky you have to be good. You wake up early, you do your routine—going to the gym, or whatever you do that gets you going in the morning, that inspires you in the morning—and you come into work charged up, you're ready to go, so you put yourself in the right place. Therefore you're lucky. It's like being in the right place at the right time.”

Mike Wekerle a.k.a. "the Wek," a.k.a. the Gretzky of the trading floor… The Best Trader on Bay Street…

Wise Man

2006-05-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

The wise man reads both books and life itself
Lin Yutang

Lin Yutang was born in Fujian province in south-eastern China, near Xiamen. This mountainous region made a deep impression on his consciousness, and thereafter he would constantly consider himself a child of the mountains (in one of his books he commented that his idea of hell was a city apartment).

Infinite Possibilities

2006-05-12T23:57:00.000-07:00

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Daniel Day Lewis

Practice

2006-05-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

That technical stuff is really practice. It's not some magical thing. It's hard work, like an athlete, in a way. You just have to practice how to embody this character. If I'm playing a character who isn't like I am, it can take months and months.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Iron Balls

2006-05-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

You have enemies? Good.
That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

The best argument against democracy is
a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

(Winston Churchill)

Freedom

2006-05-07T22:58:00.000-07:00

He gave us our freedom

(Jack Nicholson)

Relative

2006-05-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
(Albert Einstein)

Recycle

2006-05-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

Andreas Gursky

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
-Thomas Edison

Mind & Body

2006-05-07T21:06:00.000-07:00

"Me We"
Muhammad Ali

Priorities

2006-05-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

"Dora Maar With Cat," a 1941 portrait by Picasso, was sold Wednesday night for $95.2 million, the second highest price for a painting at auction. "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)," a 1905 painting from Picasso's Rose Period, which brought $104.1 million at Sotheby's in May 2004 is the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction.

True or False?

2006-04-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

There is no character, there are just black marks on a white page – it is a line of dialogue.
David Mamet

Ferocious

2006-04-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

Feet, why do I need them if I have wings to fly?

I hope the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return.

Frida Kahlo

A Job Well Done

2006-04-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Courageous

2006-04-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

(Martha Graham)

The Visionary

2006-04-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

Our dream life is no less important than our waking life, especially for the artist.
(Federico Fellini)

A Really Easy Way

2006-04-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism.
Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.
(Noam Chomsky)

Belief

2006-04-10T20:07:00.000-07:00

Genius is one percent inspiration,
And ninety-nine percent perspiration.
-Thomas Edison-

Detail

2006-04-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

"God is in the details" (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)

Reality

2006-04-06T20:37:00.000-07:00

Picasso said "Everything you can imagine is real."

"What he is"

2006-04-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

Jackson Pollock once said "Every good painter paints what he is."

In the beginning there was Radiohead

2006-04-06T17:08:00.000-07:00

I thought I would start with something that seems to be a tireless source of inspiration...
It begins....
E.