“The imagination needs moodling — long inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering. People who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas…But they have no slow, big ideas.”

That’s a quote from Brenda Ueland’s book If You Want to Write. Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen has collected several other passages by her about creativity and inspiration, here and here.

(Thanks Nadine!)… more

Visited Boston for the first time this weekend and scored a ticket to the Henry Rollins spoken word show at the Berklee Performance Center on Sunday night. I know of Rollins, of course — he of music, radio, TV, book, movie, USO tour, and stage fame — but I’d never really seen more than a few clips from his TV show nor ever heard his radio program, so I wasn’t sure exactly what I could expect other than probably a few passionate rants. Well, we got that – and then some!

Rollins took the stage at 7:30 and stayed there for three hours and ten minutes – never missing a beat and engrossing the audience the entire time.… more

One of my favourite Jane Jacobs passages comes from her lesser known book The Nature of Economies. In it she uses cities as examples of man-made economic “ecosystems” which exhibit qualities similar to those found in nature.

Jacobs argued that economic expansion relies on capturing, using and then re-using transient energy. The more successful systems are particularly adept at recycling this energy before it is discharged because they have more diverse ways of identifying it, taking it apart, recombining it, passing it around, and recycling it. This rich, diverse environment in turn grows even larger from within because of its excellent self-refueling capabilities.… more

“When the whole and the parts are seen at once, as mutually producing and explaining each other, as unity in multeity, there results shapeliness.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge; 1821.

(via A.Word.A.Day)… more

After reading Andy’s rousing review, check out this uplifting video of Dom Dagenais – trampoline rock god!… more

There’s really just two ways to come to discover something new or to achieve something uniquely interesting. The first is to tweak and chip and inch forward through persistent and diligent innovation. The second is to capture some lightning bolt of unexpected inspiration to spark an altogether new idea. The first is more common and more reliable but usually more measured and less surprising. The second can be a real game-changer – and that’s exactly what Radiohead is about to do to the music biz.

Thom Yorke and company will be releasing their next album, In Rainbows, in a week’s time exclusively at their website.… more

Cluetrain Manifesto coauthor David Weinberger has just released a new book and it’s a good one. Titled Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, Weinberger looks closely at how computers and the internet have have fundamentally altered how we organize and use information. Traditionally, because information was bound by atoms (usually paper), everything must go someplace but it can only go one place. But now through things such as tagging, contextual search, and social networks, we can, as he says, hang leaves on more that one branch (eg. Amazon’s listing of books in multiple categories) and thus miscellany becomes an asset, not an incomprehensible mess.… more

Beatbox + flute + Peter and the Wolf = Greg Pattillo.

(Thanks Anastasia)… more

I’m late to posting this: for the past few days Amsterdam has been hosting a multidisciplinary ideas festival called Picnic ’07. Poke around their site and you may find some video of the various sessions, which include Walt Mossberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Weinberger, David Silverman, and others.

(Thanks Justin)… more

A curious connection between simulations and branding pondered over at Jeffre Jackson’s Pink Air.

“You should try to be as interesting as possible, on the theory that the designer is more likely to keep you around for the next simulation.”… more