Vulnerable Artist Quotes

The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.

The same sensitivity that opens artists to Being also makes them vulnerable to the dark powers of non-Being. It is no accident that many creative people--including Dante, Pascal, Goethe, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Beethoven, Rilke, Blake, and Van Gogh--struggled with depression, anxiety, and despair. They paid a heavy price to wrest their gifts from the clutches of non-Being. But this is what true artists do: they make their own frayed lives the cable for the surges of power generated in the creative force fields of Being and non-Being. (Beyond Religion, p. 124)

Creativity connects me to my truest self and vulnerability. There is nothing more personally liberating, than reaching for my face and peeling off the social mask that hides my; shadow self, pain and weakness. When i produce from this place of truth, the results transform both creator and beholder.

It's very vulnerable, being an artist, telling the truth like that, like we're doing now. When you're living your life, you're so inside your head, you're swirling around in your own pain, that it's hard to see how obvious it is to the people around you. These songs I was writing felt coded and secret, but I suspect they weren't coded and secret at all.

vulnerability is a guardian of integrity

We have this idea that love is supposed to last forever. But love isn’t like that. It’s a free-flowing energy that comes and goes when it pleases. Sometimes it stays for life; other times it stays for a second, a day, a month, or a year. So don’t fear love when it comes simply because it makes you vulnerable. But don’t be surprised when it leaves, either. Just be glad you had the opportunity to experience it.

Comedians and artists are some of the loneliest, self-destructive people on the planet. If you enjoy what they produce, take the time to appreciate the humiliation and vulnerability that made them.

Look it - you start out as an artist, I started out when I was nineteen, and you’re full of defenses. You have all of this stuff to prove. You have all of these shields in front of you. All your weapons are out. It’s like you’re going into battle. You can accomplish a certain amount that way. But then you get to a point where you say, “But there’s this whole other territory I’m leaving out.” And that territory becomes more important as you grow older. You begin to see that you leave out so much when you go to battle with the shield and all the rest of it. You have to start including that other side or die a horrible death as an artist with your shield stuck on the front of your face forever. You can’t grow that way. And I don’t think you can grow as a person that way, either. There just comes a point when you have to relinquish some of that and risk becoming more open to the vulnerable side, which I think is the female side. It’s much more courageous than the male side.

Courage is a defining factor in the life of any artist. The courage to bare your innermost feelings, to reveal your true voice, or to stand in front of an audience and lay it out there for the world to see. The emotional vulnerability that is often necessary to summon a great song can also work against you when sharing your song for the world to hear. This is the paralyzing conflict of any sensitive artist. A feeling I’ve experienced with every lyric I’ve sung to someone other than myself. Will they like it? Am I good enough? It is the courage to be yourself that bridges those opposing emotions, and when it does, magic can happen.

Somewhere here I want to bring in a learning which has been most rewarding, because it makes me feel so deeply akin to others. I can word it this way. What is most personal is most general. There have been times when in talking with students or staff, or in my writing, I have expressed myself in ways so personal that I have felt I was expressing an attitude which it was probable no one else could understand, because it was so uniquely my own…. In these instances I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets as people who have dared to express the unique in themselves.

Putting our art out there is one of the biggest risks we can take. It's a special kind of vulnerability. It takes guts to be an artist.

She had the courage of a diamond, that shines in the dark. In lights, even a glass is shinier.

Women are attracted to artists, of course, as they are to doctors and prisoners on death row. The powerful and the vulnerable. If you want to continue to get laid, particularly as you get older, that’s where to head, boy.

Genius requires an audience. For all his cleverness, Delaunay was an artist and as vulnerable as any of his kind to the desire to vaunt his brilliance. And there were few, very few, people capable of appreciating his art. I did not know, then, how deep-laid a game they played with each other, nor what part in it I was to play. All I knew was that she was the audience he chose.

But the Greeks and the Romans both believed in the idea of an external daemon of creativity—a sort of house elf, if you will, who lived within the walls of your home and who sometimes aided you in your labors. The Romans had a specific term for that helpful house elf. They called it your genius—your guardian deity, the conduit of your inspiration. Which is to say, the Romans didn’t believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius; they believed that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius. It’s a subtle but important distinction (being vs. having) and, I think, it’s a wise psychological construct. The idea of an external genius helps to keep the artist’s ego in check, distancing him somewhat from the burden of taking either full credit or full blame for the outcome of his work. If your work is successful, in other words, you are obliged to thank your external genius for the help, thus holding you back from total narcissism. And if your work fails, it’s not entirely your fault. You can say, “Hey, don’t look at me—my genius didn’t show up today!” Either way, the vulnerable human ego is protected. Protected from the corrupting influence of praise. Protected from the corrosive effects of shame.

I used to say I admired women who never doubted themselves, who have no fear and could just kind of roar it out and do it. But I’ve changed my mind, because I actually don’t think that exists. I admire women who are open and vulnerable about the self-doubt that happens in the creative process and yet go forward and do it anyway. (Aarti Sequeira)

If one were to list all the cruelties and maltreatments, both physical and emotional, that parents and adults inflict on children under the guise of love, the list would be a long one. But, going beyond such sinister examples, even kissing and hugging may or may not convey to a child that he is loved. Love is a feeling, an emotional state. Artists, writers, philosophers, poets have tried to define it. Marcel Proust says, "Love is space and time measured by the heart." What is space and time? It is the here and now. It is you. As unfortunately I am no poet, I will try to recall from my own experience how it feels to be truly loved by someone. It makes me feel good, it opens me up, it gives me strength, I feel less vulnerable, less lonely, less helpless, less confused, more honest, more rich; it fills me with hope, trust, creative energy and it refuels me. How do I perceive the other person who gives me these feelings? As honest, as one who sees and accepts me for what I really am, who objectively responds without being critical, whose authenticity and values I respect and who respects mine, who is available when needed, who listens and hears, who looks and sees me, who shares herself - who cares. Cares. To care is to put love in action. The way we care for our babies is then how they experience our love.

I always feel the greatest bliss when I recollect those I have caught in my snares, for they generally are insolent, and so self-conceited that they challenge wit. We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised for a fool is covered with steel and it is often very hard to find his vulnerable part. In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man.

I think as a society we forget that men also have daddy issues, they've also had bad childhoods, they're vulnerable beings.. They also need love. We are made to think men don't have a hard time, and that's mainly because we've trained them not to show emotion, not to shed a tear.. but I can assure you, we men break down just like every other being. We get depressed. We get heartbroken, we get scared, lonely, butterflies.. We feel every emotion just as women do.

Watching my clients, I have come to a much better understanding of creative people. El Greco, for example, must have realized as he looked at some of his early work, that 'good painters do not paint like that.' But somehow he trusted his own experiencing of life, the process of himself, sufficiently that he could go on expressing his own unique perceptions. It was as though he could say, 'Good artists do not paint like this, but I paint like this.' Or to move to another field, Ernest Hemingway was surely aware that 'good writers do not write like this.' But fortunately he moved toward being Hemingway, being himself, rather than toward some one else's conception of a good writer. Einstein seems to have been unusually oblivious to the fact that good physicists did not think his kind of thoughts. Rather than drawing back because of his inadequate academic preparation in physics, he simply moved toward being Einstein, toward thinking his own thoughts, toward being as truly and deeply himself as he could. This is not a phenomenon which occurs only in the artist or the genius. Time and again in my clients, I have seen simple people become significant and creative in their own spheres, as they have developed more trust of the processes going on within themselves, and have dared to feel their own feelings, live by values which they discover within, and express themselves in their own unique ways.

What we must think about is an agriculture with a human face. We must give standing to the new pioneers, the homecomers bent on the most important work for the next century - a massive salvage operation to save the vulnerable but necessary pieces of nature and culture and to keep the good and artful examples before us. It is time for a new breed of artists to enter front and center, for the point of art, after all, is to connect. This is the homecomer I have in mind: the scientist, the accountant who converses with nature, a true artist devoted to the building of agriculture and culture to match the scenery presented to those first European eyes.

Promoting my first novel has been a vulnerable experience. I know many artists and for the first time, I truly understand the immense difficulties they face. Making art is a vulnerable experience. The artist seeks intimacy and vulnerability. To then have to self publicise their work adds immeasurably to that sense of vulnerability.

All art is a form of vulnerability because at least part of the artist goes into the piece.

Con artists often target people who are emotionally vulnerable,” I said. “People who need to believe the reality they’re selling, desperate for a solution to whatever problems they’re facing.

Homo Sapiens are Exploitable. Large Corporations Base the Mass with Least Recognition. It does NOT have to be the Employee Himself that would Deteriorate the Corporations Intranet but Surely since his Least Recognized, He is Most Definitely Vulnerable, Its a Starting Point to Open a Door for a Lovely Challenging Maze filled with Seed of Corruption that in Stages the Artists Shall Paint their Mark.

If you're reading this book, there is probably an artist or band whose music you have an intense personal relationship with. I would also guess that this artist or band came into your life during a time when you were highly vulnerable. if this is the case, this artist or band might be the closest thing you had to a confidant. in fact, he, she, or it was better than a confidant, because his/her/its music articulated your own thoughts and feeling better than you ever could. This music elevated the raw materials of your life to the heights of art and poetry. It made you feel as if your personal experience was grander and more meaningful than it might otherwise have been. And naturally you attributed whatever that music was doing to your heart and brain to the people who made the music, and you came to believe that the qualities of the music were also true of the music's creators. "If this music understands me, then the people behind the music must also understand me," goes this line of thought.

Art evokes the suburb of our experiences, emotions, and longings; it transcendence beyond personal preference. Art is vulnerability. Art is intimacy. Art is mystery. Art is indefinite. Art evokes the truth.

Be vulnerable. I have tried forever to stop being vulnerable. It’s not going to happen, so, fuck it, I’ll just embrace it. And how many times have I let myself be overwhelmed by fear, I can’t even count. But always, I have found the courage to overcome those two and make it. Being vulnerable has made me the artist I am and continues to be a part of my daily existence. How else could I open my heart and create? Worrying about not being good enough or being terrified to start a new project brings out the fear. So, fuck it, I’ll embrace the fear too. Being courageous has brought me rewards I should never forget. From accomplishing my first gallery exhibitions to realizing I could handle trauma in my family with strength I didn’t know I had. All I can hope for is that I continue to allow myself to be vulnerable, face my fears and go on with courage. Maybe when facing our very human vulnerability and fear, we should take off the armor and adopt those two with an open heart. Maybe that is the ultimate act of courage. Be vulnerable.

the true test of a country’s level of civility has nothing to do with building the tallest skyscraper or driving the fastest car, nor does it matter how advanced your weapons system is or how powerful your military might be; it is also not about how advanced your technology is or even your artistic achievements, and it is especially not related to how lavish your official government meetings are or how splendid your firework displays are, or even how many rich Chinese tourists you have buying up different parts of the world. There is only one true test, and that is how you treat the weakest and most vulnerable members of your society.

To My Priestess Sisters To my priestess sisters: the keepers of mysteries, the medicine women, the story keepers and story tellers, the holy magicians, the wild warriors, the original ones, the ones who carry the ancients within the marrow of your bones, the ones forged in the fires, the ones who have bathed in thier own blood, the heroines who wear thier scars as stars, the ones who give birth to their visions and dreams, the ones who weep and howl upon the holy altars, the avatars, the mothers, maidens and crones, the mystics, the oracles, the artists, the musicians, the virgins, the sensual and sexual, the women of our world- I honor you. I stand for you and with you. I celebrate both your autonomy and our sisterhood of One. We are many. We are fierce. We are tender. We are the change agents and we are radically holding and clearing space for the bursting forth of the holy seeds of the collective conscience and consciousness. We are manifestors and flames of purification and transformation. We are living our lives in authenticity, vulnerability, transparency and unapologetically. We are committed to integrity, impeccability, accountability, responsibility and passionate love. We are here on purpose, with purpose and give no energy to conformity, acceptance or approval. We are the daughters of the earth and the courageous of the cosmos. Priestess, keep living your life passionately, raising the cosmic vibrations and lowering your standards for no one. You are brazenly blessed and a force of nature. Nurture yourself and one another. You are a crystalline bridge between realms and uniting heaven and earth. You are a priestess and you are divinely anointed, appointed and unstoppable.

out that expending emotional labor, working without a map, and driving in the dark involve confronting fear and living with the pain of vulnerability. The artist comes to a détente with these emotions and, instead of fighting with them, dances with them. The linchpin connects as a result of the indispensable nature of her contribution. The artist, on the other hand, connects because that’s what art is. The artist touches part of what it means to be truly human and does that work again and again.

Daisy: It’s very vulnerable, being an artist, telling the truth like that, like we’re doing now. When you’re living your life, you’re so inside your head, you’re swirling around in your own pain, that it’s hard to see how obvious it is to the people around you.

It is difficult for me to wag my finger at you from so very far away, particularly as my heart aches for you but really, darling, you must pack up this nonsensical situation once and for all. It is really beneath your dignity, not your dignity as a famous artist and a glamorous star, but your dignity as a human, only too human being. Curly [the shaven-headed Brynner] is attractive, beguiling, tender and fascinating, but he is not the only man in the world who merits those delightful adjectives?… do please try to work out for yourself a little personal philosophy and DO NOT, repeat DO NOT be so bloody vulnerable. To hell with God damned ‘L’Amour.’ It always causes far more trouble than it is worth. Don’t run after it. Don’t court it. Keep it waiting off stage until you’re good and ready for it and even then treat it with the suspicious disdain that it deserves … I am sick to death of you waiting about in empty houses and apartments with your ears strained for the telephone to ring. Snap out of it, girl! A very brilliant writer once said (Could it have been me?) ‘Life is for the living.’? Well, that is all it is for… …Unpack your sense of humour, and get on with living and ENJOY IT. Incidentally, there is one fairly strong-minded type who will never let you down and who loves you very much indeed. Just try to guess who it is. XXXX.

I always feel the greatest bliss when I recollect those I have caught in my snares, for they generally are insolent, and so self-conceited that they challenge wit. We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised for a fool is covered with steel and it is often very hard to find his vulnerable part. In

For the artist who endured childhood shaming—over any form of neediness, any type of exploration, any expectation—shame may kick in even without the aid of a shame-provoking review. If a child has ever been made to feel foolish for believing himself or herself talented, the act of actually finishing a piece of art will be fraught with internal shaming. Many artists begin a piece of work, get well along in it, and then find, as they near completion, that the work seems mysteriously drained of merit. It’s no longer worth the trouble. To therapists, this surge of sudden disinterest (“It doesn’t matter”) is a routine coping device employed to deny pain and ward off vulnerability.

When a population becomes distracted by trivia,” wrote the cultural critic Neil Postman, “when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville, then a nation finds itself at risk: cultural-death is a clear possibility.”72 Con artists and swindlers exploit the frustrations and anger of a betrayed people. They make fantastic promises they never keep. They prey on the vulnerable. They demand godlike worship. They conjure up a world of illusions and fantasy. And then it implodes. The workers and patrons at the Trump Taj Mahal were victimized first. Now it is our turn.

My heart was filled with pride. Not just pride in Violet’s musical ability, but pride in her courage. Courage is a defining factor in the life of any artist. The courage to bear your innermost feelings, to reveal your true voice, or to stand in front of an audience and lay it all out there for the world to see. The emotional vulnerability that’s often necessary to summon a great song can also work against you when you’re sharing your song for the world to hear. This is the paralyzing conflict of any sensitive artist. A feeling I’ve experienced with every lyric I’ve sung to someone other than myself. Will they like it? Am I good enough? It is the courage to be yourself that bridges those opposing emotions, and when it does, magic can happen.

More than my personal happiness, I needed my career as an artist to survive. Happiness was secondary. Happiness was a fleeting bonus. I married Tommy because I thought it was the only way for me to survive in that relationship. I saw the power he could put behind my music, and he saw the power my music could give him. Our holy matrimony was built on creativity and vulnerability.

But it’s depressing to think of the number of vulnerable young men who might approach these so-called experts in the genuine hope of improving their relationships with the opposite sex, only to find themselves immersed in a bewildering world of insults, negging and dehumanisation. Take, for example, one pickup guru’s insistence that men should ‘interrupt what a girl is saying every 10 words’, simply to throw her off balance and undermine her confidence.

During a workshop in San Francisco, I’d spent the night at the house of a lawyer named Anne. On her nightstand there was a thin book by a guy named Joel Kramer. Unable to sleep, I picked it up and leafed through the pages. He explained the emotions Caroline and I were feeling best: We have this idea that love is supposed to last forever. But love isn’t like that. It’s a free-flowing energy that comes and goes when it pleases. Sometimes it stays for life; other times it stays for a second, a day, a month, or a year. So don’t fear love when it comes simply because it makes you vulnerable. But don’t be surprised when it leaves, either. Just be glad you had the opportunity to experience it. I’m

Construction work was the city’s new brutalist art form, erecting its installations wherever you looked. Tall buildings fell and construction sites rose. Pipes and cables rose from and descended into the hidden depths. Telephone landlines ceased to work and water and power and gas services were randomly suspended. Construction work was the art of making the city become aware of itself as a fragile organism at the mercy of forces against which there was no appeal. Construction work was the mighty metropolis being taught the lessons of vulnerability and helplessness. Construction workers were the grand conceptual artists of our time and their installations, their savage holes in the ground, inspired not only hatred—because most people disliked modern art—but also awe.

Little Brother, an aspiring painter, saved up all his money and went to France, to surround himself with beauty and inspiration. He lived on the cheap, painted every day, visited museums, traveled to picturesque locations, bravely spoke to everyone he met, and showed his work to anyone who would look at it. One afternoon, Little Brother struck up a conversation in a café with a group of charming young people, who turned out to be some species of fancy aristocrats. The charming young aristocrats took a liking to Little Brother and invited him to a party that weekend in a castle in the Loire Valley. They promised Little Brother that this was going to be the most fabulous party of the year. It would be attended by the rich, by the famous, and by several crowned heads of Europe. Best of all, it was to be a masquerade ball, where nobody skimped on the costumes. It was not to be missed. Dress up, they said, and join us! Excited, Little Brother worked all week on a costume that he was certain would be a showstopper. He scoured Paris for materials and held back neither on the details nor the audacity of his creation. Then he rented a car and drove to the castle, three hours from Paris. He changed into his costume in the car and ascended the castle steps. He gave his name to the butler, who found him on the guest list and politely welcomed him in. Little Brother entered the ballroom, head held high. Upon which he immediately realized his mistake. This was indeed a costume party—his new friends had not misled him there—but he had missed one detail in translation: This was a themed costume party. The theme was “a medieval court.” And Little Brother was dressed as a lobster. All around him, the wealthiest and most beautiful people of Europe were attired in gilded finery and elaborate period gowns, draped in heirloom jewels, sparkling with elegance as they waltzed to a fine orchestra. Little Brother, on the other hand, was wearing a red leotard, red tights, red ballet slippers, and giant red foam claws. Also, his face was painted red. This is the part of the story where I must tell you that Little Brother was over six feet tall and quite skinny—but with the long waving antennae on his head, he appeared even taller. He was also, of course, the only American in the room. He stood at the top of the steps for one long, ghastly moment. He almost ran away in shame. Running away in shame seemed like the most dignified response to the situation. But he didn’t run. Somehow, he found his resolve. He’d come this far, after all. He’d worked tremendously hard to make this costume, and he was proud of it. He took a deep breath and walked onto the dance floor. He reported later that it was only his experience as an aspiring artist that gave him the courage and the license to be so vulnerable and absurd. Something in life had already taught him to just put it out there, whatever “it” is. That costume was what he had made, after all, so that’s what he was bringing to the party. It was the best he had. It was all he had. So he decided to trust in himself, to trust in his costume, to trust in the circumstances. As he moved into the crowd of aristocrats, a silence fell. The dancing stopped. The orchestra stuttered to a stop. The other guests gathered around Little Brother. Finally, someone asked him what on earth he was. Little Brother bowed deeply and announced, “I am the court lobster.” Then: laughter. Not ridicule—just joy. They loved him. They loved his sweetness, his weirdness, his giant red claws, his skinny ass in his bright spandex tights. He was the trickster among them, and so he made the party. Little Brother even ended up dancing that night with the Queen of Belgium. This is how you must do it, people.

About Danielle, I remember, my feelings were no more specific than pleasant anxiousness. She hadn’t caught me, obviously enough, at a very erotic moment in my life. I had never been much of a pickup artist—a few ghastly encounters in my twenties had seen to that—and the alternative prospect of a euphoric romance not only exhausted me but, in fact, struck me as impossible. This wasn’t because of any fidelity to my absent wife or some aversion to sex, which, I like to think, grabs me as much as the next man. No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. I was in my mid-thirties, with a marriage more or less behind me. I was no longer vulnerable to curiosity’s enormous momentum. I had nothing new to murmur to another on the subject of myself and not the smallest eagerness about being briefed on Danielle’s supposedly unique trajectory—a curve described under the action, one could safely guess, of the usual material and maternal and soulful longings, a few thwarting tics of character, and luck good and bad. A life seemed like an old story.

In real life I fell easily under the spell of all traveling artists. En route to New Orleans, entertainments of many kinds would stop over in those days for a single performance in Jackson's Century Theatre. Then, as now, my imagination was magnetized toward transient artists - toward the transience as much as the artists. I must have seen "Acrobats in a Park" at the time I wrote the story as exotic, free of any experience as I knew it. At the center of the little story is the Zorro's act: the feat of erecting a structure of their bodies that holds together, interlocked, and stands like a wall. Writing about the family act, I was writing about the family itself, its strength as a unit, testing its frailty under stress. I treated it in an artificial and oddly formal way; the stronghold of the family is put on view as a structure built each night; on the night before the story opens, the Wall has come down when the most vulnerable member slips, and the act is done for. But from various points within it and from outside it, I've been writing about the structure of the family in stories and novels ever since. In spite of my uncompromising approach to it, my fundamental story form might have been trying to announce itself to me.

In the future, white supremacy will no longer need white people,” the artist Lorraine O’Grady said in 2018, a prognosis that seemed, at least on the surface, to counter what James Baldwin said fifty years ago, which is that “the white man’s sun has set.” Which is it then? What prediction will hold? As an Asian American, I felt emboldened by Baldwin but haunted and implicated by O’Grady. I heard the ring of truth in her comment, which gave me added urgency to finish this book. Whiteness has already recruited us to become their junior partners in genocidal wars; conscripted us to be antiblack and colorist; to work for, and even head, corporations that scythe off immigrant jobs like heads of wheat. Conscription is every day and unconscious. It is the default way of life among those of us who live in relative comfort, unless we make an effort to choose otherwise. Unless we are read as Muslim or trans, Asian Americans are fortunate not to live under hard surveillance, but we live under a softer panopticon, so subtle that it’s internalized, in that we monitor ourselves, which characterizes our conditional existence. Even if we’ve been here for four generations, our status here remains conditional; belonging is always promised and just out of reach so that we behave, whether it’s the insatiable acquisition of material belongings or belonging as a peace of mind where we are absorbed into mainstream society. If the Asian American consciousness must be emancipated, we must free ourselves of our conditional existence. But what does that mean? Does that mean making ourselves suffer to keep the struggle alive? Does it mean simply being awake to our suffering? I can only answer that through the actions of others. As of now, I’m writing when history is being devoured by our digital archives so we never have to remember. The administration has plans to reopen a Japanese internment camp in Oklahoma to fill up with Latin American children. A small band of Japanese internment camp survivors protest this reopening every day. I used to idly wonder whatever happened to all the internment camp survivors. Why did they disappear? Why didn’t they ever speak out? At the demonstration, protester Tom Ikeda said, “We need to be the allies for vulnerable communities today that Japanese Americans didn’t have in 1942.” We were always here.

I WANT TO end this list by talking a little more about the founding of Pixar University and Elyse Klaidman’s mind-expanding drawing classes in particular. Those first classes were such a success—of the 120 people who worked at Pixar then, 100 enrolled—that we gradually began expanding P.U.’s curriculum. Sculpting, painting, acting, meditation, belly dancing, live-action filmmaking, computer programming, design and color theory, ballet—over the years, we have offered free classes in all of them. This meant spending not only the time to find the best outside teachers but also the real cost of freeing people up during their workday to take the classes. So what exactly was Pixar getting out of all of this? It wasn’t that the class material directly enhanced our employees’ job performance. Instead, there was something about an apprentice lighting technician sitting alongside an experienced animator, who in turn was sitting next to someone who worked in legal or accounting or security—that proved immensely valuable. In the classroom setting, people interacted in a way they didn’t in the workplace. They felt free to be goofy, relaxed, open, vulnerable. Hierarchy did not apply, and as a result, communication thrived. Simply by providing an excuse for us all to toil side by side, humbled by the challenge of sketching a self-portrait or writing computer code or taming a lump of clay, P.U. changed the culture for the better. It taught everyone at Pixar, no matter their title, to respect the work that their colleagues did. And it made us all beginners again. Creativity involves missteps and imperfections. I wanted our people to get comfortable with that idea—that both the organization and its members should be willing, at times, to operate on the edge. I can understand that the leaders of many companies might wonder whether or not such classes would truly be useful, worth the expense. And I’ll admit that these social interactions I describe were an unexpected benefit. But the purpose of P.U. was never to turn programmers into artists or artists into belly dancers. Instead, it was to send a signal about how important it is for every one of us to keep learning new things. That, too, is a key part of remaining flexible: keeping our brains nimble by pushing ourselves to try things we haven’t tried before. That’s what P.U. lets our people do, and I believe it makes us stronger.

In the face of our collective condition of danger and pervasive loss, Rilke summons us to be present to our world in all its exquisite fragility. He reminds us that there is not a more important gift we can make to life on Earth. Knowing our own vulnerability is essential, both to the artist and to all who would awaken to the miracle of what is.

And for Adam Blacklock the artist, older, wiser, and perhaps less vulnerable than once he had been, a chance to assess from maturity a person whose maturity was and always had been a thing disconcerting to witness. For what, after these violent years, would entertain or even interest Francis Crawford, Blacklock found he had no idea.

Next panel [Plate 9]: Adam and Eve—painted by Masaccio—as they are thrown out of Eden. (Masaccio seems to have been, too.) The figures are less standard, even less accurate, than Masolino’s: Adam’s arms are far too short, his right calf is impossibly bowlegged; Eve’s arms are of unequal length and she is dumpier than in Masolino’s version, with a fat back and hefty haunches and an awfully thick right ankle. But they are alive, believable, fleshy!—and being pushed forward into all the horror of real life. Adam’s stomach, sucked in and emphasizing his vulnerable ribs, displays the tension of inconsolable grief; Eve’s hands, placed to shield her belles choses (and copied by Masaccio from the teasing poses of ancient Venuses), have been transformed into demonstrations of irremediable shame. Her breast, peeking out above her wrist, is a real breast; and Adam’s genitals are downright funky—not smoothly attractive, not ready for the style section of the Sunday newspaper, just their grotty selves. Never before had such nudes been seen or even thought of. How far they are from the ideal figures of the ancients, as well as from the self-censoring expressions of so many Christian centuries.

I believe that when you step into uncharted territory, you are also stepping into total abandonment, potential humiliation, and a space where nothing is guaranteed; there’s no case study or roadmap. I have so much respect for anybody who will step away from what they can do in order to find what they must do. That’s a hallmark characteristic of entrepreneurs and artists. And it’s scary and exciting as all hell.

In his book Social Anthropology, Sir Edmund Leach refers to the ethos of individualism which is central to the contemporary Western society but which is notably absent from most of the societies which social anthropologists study.10 The growth of individualism, and hence of the modern conception of the artist, was hastened by the Reformation. Although Luther was an ascetic who attacked wealth and luxury, he was also an individualist who preached the supremacy of the individual conscience. Until the sixteenth century, the ultimate standard of human institutions and activities was not only religious, but promulgated by a universal Western Church. As Tawney eloquently demonstrates in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, however often men exhibited personal greed and ambition, there was none the less a generally agreed conception of how the individual ought to behave. The idea that anyone should pursue his personal economic ends to the limit, provided that he kept within the law, was foreign to the medieval mind, which regarded the alleviation of poverty as a duty, and the private accumulation of wealth as a danger to the soul. The Reformation made possible the growth of Calvinism, and the establishment of the Protestant work ethic. It was not long before poverty was regarded as a punishment for idleness or fecklessness, and the accumulation of wealth as a reward for the virtues of industry and thrift. Durkheim later pointed out that the growth of individualism was also related to the division of labour. As societies grew larger and more complex, occupational specialization led to greater differentiation between individuals. The growth of cities furthered looser, less intimate social relations; and, whilst the individual gained personal freedom by being emancipated from the intimate ties which characterize smaller societies, he became vulnerable to anomie, the alienation which results from no longer conforming to any traditional code.

He reported later that it was only his experience as an aspiring artist that gave him the courage and the license to be so vulnerable and absurd. Something in life had already taught him to just put it out there, whatever “it” is. That costume was what he had made, after all, so that’s what he was bringing to the party. It was the best he had. It was all he had. So he decided to trust in himself, to trust in his costume, to trust in the circumstances. As he moved into the crowd of aristocrats, a silence fell. The dancing stopped. The orchestra stuttered to a stop. The other guests gathered around Little Brother. Finally, someone asked him what on earth he was. Little Brother bowed deeply and announced, “I am the court lobster.” Then: laughter. Not ridicule—just joy. They loved him. They loved his sweetness, his weirdness, his giant red claws, his skinny ass in his bright spandex tights. He was the trickster among them, and so he made the party. Little Brother even ended up dancing that night with the Queen of Belgium.

The artist in Hansberry saw in the photograph of a black woman being manhandled by white cops all the suffering, all the injustice, all the offense to black life. The brutality was grave enough; the spread of the image transmitted trauma and reinforced the vulnerability of black women and, indeed, the race.

My mission with Rave Scout is to promote cultural inclusiveness and increase the visibility of marginalized talent and diversify the underground scene through and by producing digital immersive experiences. The ultimate aim is to motivate the community and the scene to experience and learn how to feel and passively accept their vulnerabilities and one another.

An artist is vulnerable and their craft truthful when he/she resists the desire to meddle with the wholesome expression of the soul

Lady Jenny, your turn.” She passed her sketch pad over to him, feeling a pang of sympathy for accused criminals as they stood in the dock. And yet, she’d asked for this. Gotten together all of her courage to ask for this one moment of artistic communion. “Well,” Mr. Harrison said, “isn’t he a handsome fellow? What do you think, ladies?” “You look like a papa,” Fleur observed. “Though our papa doesn’t sketch. He reads stories.” “And hates his ledgers,” Amanda added. “Is my hair that long in back?” “Yes,” Jenny said, because she’d drawn not only Elijah Harrison’s hands, but all of him, looking relaxed, elegant, and handsome, with Amanda crouched at his side, fascinated with what he created on the page. “I look…” He regarded the sketch in silence, while Jenny heard a coach-and-four rumbling toward her vulnerable heart. “I look… a bit tired, slightly rumpled, but quite at home. You are very quick, Lady Genevieve, and quite good.” Quite good. Like saying a baby was adorable, a young gentleman well-mannered. “The pose was simple,” Jenny said, “the lighting uncomplicated, and the subject…” “Yes?” He was one of those men built in perfect proportion. Antoine had spent an entire class wielding a tailor’s measure on Mr. Harrison’s body, comparing his proportions to the Apollo Belvedere, and scoffing at the “mistakes” inherent in Michelangelo’s David. Jenny wanted to snatch her drawing from his hand. “The subject is conducive to a pleasing image.” He passed the sketch pad back, but Jenny had the sense that in some way, some not entirely artistic way, she’d displeased him. The disappointment was survivable. Her art had been displeasing men since she’d first neglected her Bible verses to sketch her brothers. “You

Any artist who fails to engage with society and the vulnerability of the individual in a cruel existence should not style him-or herself an artist

Only if, Happiness could be measured and could be traded, I wonder, would there still be sorrows around ?

A great lawyer is not only learned in the law, so that when the brief is laid before him he may place this fact with that. A great lawyer is also an artist. He is able to march into a land of untamed information and make it adhere to his own idea of order, creating a successful system where only chaos has hitherto reigned. In the mind of a great lawyer there exists a private tribunal of sense and feeling. He puts good with good, bad with bad, and resigns the false to the false. He strikes at vulnerable points in the evidence of others. He throws firm assertions into cloudy confusion. he finds the affinity that exists between actual events, connecting the everyday with the unexpected, and by weaving lines of testimony within and around the statements of strangers, through the most perplexing phases of fabrication, can bring the truth to light if it suits his client's case, or throw it into shadow if it doesn't. If he can master this art of light and dark, he can in the process become rather rich.

In a later interview, [Junod] noted of longtime cast members: 'In their way, they were strangely kind of vulnerable folks, too. I mean, they...settled in and had their artistic and creative home there....There was an acceptance of limitation there. It wasn't like they were out there fulfilling their own wild ambitions...It was not that at all. It was like they were there because they had found a home there.

The need to live by secure, sharply etched classifications is buried deep in the human mind and one of its earliest demands; simplicity allays anxieties by defeating discriminations. Real situations are rarely clear-cut, real feelings often nests of ambivalence. This is something the adult learns to recognize and to tolerate, if he is fortunate; it is a strenuous insight from which he will regress at the first opportunity. That is why the liberal temper, which taught men to live with uncertainties and ambiguities, the most triumphant achievement of nineteenth-century culture, was so vulnerable to the assaults of cruder views of the world, to bigotry, chauvinism, and other coarse and simplistic classifications. "Every society," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in one of his most brilliant aphorisms, "has the tendency to degrade and, as it were, to starve out, its adversaries—at least in its perception." The criminal, he thought, was one victim of such a regressive process; so was the Jew. And "among artists, the 'philistine and bourgeois' becomes a caricature." And artists, the avant-gardes, Nietzsche might have added, only set the tone for the wider culture. Class consciousness, which emerged fitfully and then more and more fully and aggressively towards the end of the eighteenth and in the early nineteenth century, enshrined such a caricature: a mixture and social reality and unconscious needs.

SEALING THE QI “The imperatives of war demand deadly, effective, pre-emptive action.” Peter Consterdine We have established that the Fire meridians, which include the Heart, Small Intestine, Pericardium, and Triple Warmer meridians are the most vulnerable to martial attack. The information and research that has been presented should validate the Fire meridians as the Primary Energetic Targets of the body from a combative viewpoint. There are numerous other tidbits of martial science that can be derived from the information. The knowledge of understanding which of the elemental energies are deficient or excessive during a combative situation allows the martial artist to tailor their self-defense techniques to gain the best response. If you have been applying Traditional Chinese Medicine to your individual style, then you have already been doing this procedure. Examination of the various techniques of your style, through that Eastern perspective, has opened the proverbial door to an increase in the overall effectiveness of your techniques. Knowing that initial strikes to the arms, while an opponent is punching for instance, will “activate” the Gall Bladder meridian for follow-up attacks. This example follows the Cycle of Control by first attacking the Fire and Metal meridians of the arms and then attacking the Wood meridians for a quick follow-up strike. By disrupting the energy flow of three elements, the Fire, Metal, and Wood energies in this example, of the Cycle of Control you are able to drop most opponents fairly easily.

The Governing Vessel is the sea of the yang channels.” Su When The Governing Vessel is the Yang aspect of the “Human Battery.” It starts at the intersection of CV-1 and runs posteriorly to Governing Vessel 1 (GV-1) at the tip of the coccyx bone at the end of the spine. From GV-1 the Governing Vessel ascends the centerline of the body running over the spine to GV-15, which is the point that the head and the spine connect. From GV-15 the Governing Vessel follows the centerline of the head up and over onto the face. It then descends down the centerline of the face until it connects with Conception Vessel at GV-28. Given the yang characteristics of the Governing Vessel it is harder and more resilient to strikes than the softer Conception Vessel. Consider how the body is designed according to Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Science. The Yang surfaces of the body are the natural shock absorbers of the body. Let us say that someone is going to strike you with a whip. Will you just stand there and take the strike across the front of your body? I doubt it. Your natural defenses will cause you to turn your back to the strike. The strike would fall on the Yang surfaces of the body. Thus allowing you to protect the more vulnerable yin surfaces. This description illustrates the difference between a Yang surface and a Yin surface. The Yang surfaces of the body can take more physical abuse than the Yin surfaces. This should be a major clue to the martial artist. The fact that the body is designed to protect the Yin over the Yang illustrates that attacks to Yin are more traumatic to the body.

As adults, we can also protect ourselves from vulnerability with cool. We worry about being perceived as laughing too loud, buying in, caring too much, being too eager. We don’t wear hoodies as often, but we can use our titles, education, background, and positions as handles on the shields of criticism, cynicism, cool, and cruelty: I can talk to you this way or blow you off because of who I am or what I do for a living. And, make no mistake, when it comes to this shield, handles are also fashioned out of nonconformity and rejection of traditional status markers: I dismiss you because you’ve sold out and you spend your life in a cubicle or I’m more relevant and interesting because I rejected the trappings of higher education, traditional employment, etc. DARING GREATLY: TIGHTROPE WALKING, PRACTICING SHAME RESILIENCE, AND REALITY CHECKING Over the course of one year, I interviewed artists, writers, innovators, business leaders, clergy, and community leaders about these issues, and how they stayed open to the constructive (albeit difficult-to-hear) criticism while filtering out the mean-spirited attacks.

Soul involves us in the pack and welter of phenomena and the flow of impressions. . . . Soul is vulnerable and suffers; it is passive and remembers. It is water to the spirit’s fire. . . . Soul is imagination, a cavernous treasury. . . . Look up, says spirit, gain distance, there is something beyond and above, and what is above is always, and always superior. . .. Soul replies by saying, “Yes, this too has a place, may find it’s archetypal significance, belongs in a myth.” The cooking vessel of the soul takes in everything, everything can become soul, and by taking into its imagination any and all events, psychic space grows.

Part of you understands that expending effort to achieve a goal also makes you vulnerable. After all, what if you put in all that time and energy to build a business or study for the boards and you still fail? No, it’s far less painful not to try than to expose yourself to others’ judgment of your work and risk falling short. Plus, if you never really give it your best shot, you can always claim (if only to yourself) that you could have been a great writer, artist, leader, or lawyer—that is, if you’d really tried.

Andrei avoided the internet as well and this evasion only added to his gloom. He loved music, especially old songs, and he loved movies, of all sorts. If he had the patience, sometimes he would read. While most of the pages he turned bored him to sleep, certain books with certain lines disarranged him. Some literature brought him to his feet, laughing and howling in his room. When the book was right, it was bliss and he wept. His room hushed with serenity and indebtedness. When he turned to his computer, however, or took out his phone, he would inevitably come across a viral trend or video that took the art he loved and turned it into a joke. The internet, in Andrei’s desperate eyes, managed to make fun of everything serious. And if one did not laugh, they were not intelligent. The internet could not be slowed and no protest to criticize its exploitation of art could be made because recreations of art hid perfectly under the veneer of mockery and was thus, impenetrable. It was easy to use Chopin’s ‘Sonata No. 2’ for a quick laugh, to reduce the ‘Funeral March’ to background music. It was a sneaky way for a digital creator to be considered an artist—and parodying the classics made them appear cleverer than the original artist. Meanwhile, Andrei’s body had healed playing Chopin alone in his apartment. He would frailly replay movie moments, too, that he later found the world edited and ripped apart with its cheap teeth. And everyone ate the internet’s crumbs. This cruel derision was impossible to escape. But enough jokes, memes, and glam over someone’s precious source of life would eventually make a sensitive body numb. And Andrei was afraid of that. He needed his fountain of hope unblemished. For this reason, he escaped the internet’s claws and only surrendered to it for e-mails, navigation, and the weather.

The most difficult battles we face in life are those we wage within. Self-doubt, feelings of unworthiness, and fear of rejection: This is the trifecta of demons that holds us back from reaching our full potential. We’re not born with these demons; for proof of this, one need only look at how free and uncensored young kids are. By the time most of us reach adulthood, however, we’ve devolved into a tangle of insecurities and negative experiences. From what I’ve seen and from what I’ve suffered, I’d wager that perfectionism hits artists the hardest. Artists—whose very calling is based on the expression of feeling—tend to be more introspective than your average human being and spend much more time living internally. Releasing a creative project out into the world requires ceding a part of yourself to the world and exposing it to the slings and arrows of external criticism. So, it’s only natural that the artist, aware of the vulnerability and invitation for judgment inherent in the act of creating publicly, would take painstaking care to ensure that whatever is released into the world is as close as possible to “perfect.” If left unchecked, this tendency to obsess and strive for perfection can lead the artist to devote months, if not years, to producing a single flawless creation. The truth of the matter, though, is that our actual creations will never be so perfect as we’ve dreamt them to be; they can only be perfected in the sense that, when released, they exist. Sometimes, it takes losing control to gain control over this obsession with perfection.

the sensitive and passionate souls are the flowers here. in this harsh world, the way you feel and pour it all out, leaving bright and vulnerable beauty all around, the artists and lovers, intense feelers and wild dreamers, with your soft and aching hearts… i know it gets heavy and can feel hard to be how you are, but you are the flowers here… so please… be just how you are.

I believe the desire to create is in us all, the desire to leave our mark on the world and bring something into it that would not exist if we did not exist, to have a little piece of reality that we created, and to leave it as something that might live on and matter beyond us. In regards to artistic creations to make something that might matter is to create something that is honest and unique, something that is at least slightly different from anything anyone else has ever done, to say something that no one else would ever quite say in a way that no one else could ever quite say it, to tie the creation around the artist’s personal thoughts and sense of life. In order to do this, an artist must be willing to face him or herself with complete candor. They must be willing to face any personal demons that they would otherwise prefer to pretend don’t exist, to travel into the depths of their mind, and to retrieve a part of themselves that is potentially scary or sad, something that might be convoluted or hard to explain, something that is perhaps counter to cultural norms and is vulnerable or strange and then in spite of all of this they must still share it. In this act, the artist risks something we all dread: rejection, worse yet rejection on a very deep and personal level and this is often where a problem with self-doubt can arise in the creative process caused by the fear of rejection.

All this further convinced Phillips that the country music old guard in Nashville was vulnerable. Pierce was only thirty-four, but the young artists from Sun had made him look fifty.

Many artists begin a piece of work, get well along in it, and then find, as they near completion, that the work seems mysteriously drained of merit. To therapists, this surge of sudden disinterest ... is a routine coping device employed to ... ward off vulnerability.

For the one being tied, it can be many things. She wants to demonstrate trust. She wants to feel controlled. She likes the excitement of danger that comes with being vulnerable. I'm sure there are many more reasons." "And the… tier?" "He can like the exact control. He can like the power. He can like knowing she's scared. He can like knowing he's trusted. He can like being creative with it." I nodded to the stage. "He clearly likes the artistic aspects." "I'll say. She looks like a frick’n human waffle." "And many like the marks it leaves after the rigging is removed. You don't want to meet a third degree Sadist who likes the artistic flare of bondage." "Third degree sadist. A man who likes to hurt unwilling victims but not kill them.

How did you get in?” he asked and then immediately shook his head and waved the question away. “Never mind. I really don't want to know. However, if on Monday I find that the walls have been spray painted, I'll know who to point the finger at.” “Paint is not my medium,” I sniffed, offended. “Oh really? What exactly is your medium?” He locked the door behind us as we stepped out into the night. “Wood,” I clipped, wondering why I was telling him. Let him think I was a graffitti artist. Who the hell cared. “You do,” a little voice taunted mildly. And I did. “And what exactly do you do with wood?” “I carve it.” “People, bears, totem poles, what?” “Totem poles?!” I was incredulous. “Is that supposed to be some kind of slam to my ethnicity?” “Your ethnicity? I thought you told me you weren't Native American.” “I don't know what the hell I am, but that still sounded like a slam, Sherlock!” “Why don't you know what you are, Blue? Haven't you ever tried to find out? Maybe that would make you less hostile!” Wilson seemed frustrated. He stomped ahead of me, almost talking to himself. “Absolutely impossible! Having a conversation with you is like trying to converse with a snake! You are vulnerable and tearful one moment and hissing and striking the next. I frankly don't know how to reach you, or even if I want to! I only said totem poles because they are usually carved from wood, all right?” He turned and glared at me. “Cranky when you stay up past your bedtime, aren't you?” I mumbled.

I For Marcel Proust. - The son of well-to-do parents who, whether from talent or weakness, engages in a so-called intellectual profession, as an artist or a scholar, will have a particularly difficult time with those bearing the distasteful title of colleagues. It is not merely that his independence is envied, the seriousness of his intentions mistrusted, and that he is suspected of being a secret envoy of the establishE:d powers. Such suspicions, though betraying a deepseated resentment, would usually prove well-founded. But the real resistances lie elsewhere. The occupation with things of the mind has by now itself become 'practical', a business with strict division of labour, departments and restricted entry. The man of independent means who chooses it out of repugnance for the ignominy of earning money will not be disposed to acknowledge the fact. For this he is punished. He is not a 'professional', is ranked in the competitive hierarchy as a dilettante no matter how well he knows his subject, and must, if he wants to make a career, show himself even more resolutely blinkered than the most inveterate specialist. The urge to suspend the division of labour which, within certain limits, his economic situation enables him to satisfy, is thought particularly disreputable: it betrays a disinclination to sanction the operations imposed by society, and domineering competence permits no such idiosyncrasies. The departmentalization of mind is a means of abolishing mind where it is not exercised ex officio, under contract. It performs this task all the more reliably since anyone who repudiates the division of labour - if only by taking pleasure in his work - makes himself vulnerable by its standards in ways inseparable from elements of his superiority. Thus is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game. It is as if the class from which independent intellectuals have defected takes its revenge, by pressing its demands home in the very domain where the deserter seeks refuge.

The sitter is depicted as having a homely face, a wide-spaced and flat face, small nose and thin lips. This apparent lack of idealised beauty has led to a general belief that this work was painted on commission, although it is possible that the model was the artist’s daughter. The picture encourages the viewer to be curious about the young woman’s thoughts, feelings, or character, something typical in many of Vermeer’s paintings. Girl with a Pearl Earring and this painting are unusual for Vermeer in that they lack his usual rich background. Instead the girls are framed by a background of deep black, producing an isolating effect and heightening the girls’ appearance of vulnerability.

The surgeon knows that her work is creative work. A machine can’t do it because it requires human delicacy and decision making. It can’t be done by an automaton because it requires critical thinking and a good dose of winging-it-ness. Her work requires a balance of self-confidence and collaboration, a blend of intuition and improvisation. If the surgeon, while slicing that vulnerable brain, hits an unexpected bump in the process and needs to ask the person beside her for something essential—and quickly—she has absolutely no time to waste on questions like: Do I deserve to ask for this help? Is this person I’m asking really trustworthy? Am I an asshole for having the power to ask in this moment? She simply accepts her position, asks without shame, gets the right scalpel, and keeps cutting. Something larger is at stake. This holds true for firefighters, airline pilots, and lifeguards, but it also holds true for artists, scientists, teachers—for anyone, in any relationship. Those who can ask without shame are viewing themselves in collaboration with—rather than in competition with—the world. Asking for help with shame says: You have the power over me. Asking with condescension says: I have the power over you. But asking for help with gratitude says: We have the power to help each other.

Even as a creative artist, I used to think enduring struggles and hard days in silence and telling people everything was great meant I was strong. And then I learned it just meant I was scared---scared of people not loving me any other way. Scared of sharing the lessons that pain had to teach. I no longer see perpetual claims of "fineness" as strength. People desperately need to see the full human experience, especially the dark parts. They need to know that other folks struggle, too, and that it's all part of a bigger story of triumph. They need permission to keep going, knowing that hardship is normal for everyone. Give them that gift. Have that courage. Tell the whole story.

When you are open to creativity, that's when you are more vulnerable.

There is no requirement for those affected by an idea to be aware of any of this, of course. When the writer and media critic Philip Sandifer writes that "David Whitaker, at once the most important figure in Doctor Who's development and the least understood, created a show that is genuinely magical and this influence cannot be erased from within the show," he does not mean that any of the hundreds of actors and writers who went on to work on the programme saw it in those terms. Or as Sandifer so clearly puts it, "I don't actually believe that the writers of Doctor Who were consciously designing a sentient metafiction to continually disrupt the social order through a systematic process of détournement. Except maybe David Whitaker." From Drummond and Cauty's perspective, the story of Doctor Who is irrelevant. All that was happening was that they were exploring their mental landscape, and they were fulfilling their duty as artists by doing so more deeply than normal people. This is a landscape with many unseen, unknown areas where who-knows-what might be found. The KLF explored further than most and, if we were to accept Moore's model, it would perhaps not be surprising that a fiction as complex as Doctor Who could encounter them in Ideaspace and, being at its lowest point and in dire need of help, use them for its own ends. For Moore, and other artists such as David Lynch who use similar models, the role of the artist is like that of a fisherman. It is their job to fish in the collective unconscious and use all their skill to best present their catch to an audience. Drummond and Cauty, on the other hand, appear to have been caught by the fish. Lacking any clear sense of what they were doing, they dived in as deeply as Moore and Lynch. They did not have a specific purpose for doing so. They just needed to make something happen - anything really, such is the path of chaos. "It was supposed to be a proper dance record, but we couldn't fit the four-four beat to it, so we ended up with the glitter beat, which was never really our intention but we had to go with it," Cauty has said. "It was like an out of control lorry, you know, you're just trying to steer it, and that track took itself over really, and did what it wanted to do. We were just watching." This lack of intention is significant, from a magical point of view. One of the most important aspects of magical practice is the will. Aleister Crowley defined magic as being changes in the world brought about by the exercise of the will, hence his maxim 'Do what thou Will shall be the whole of the Law.' The will or intention of a magical act is important because the magician opens himself up to all sorts of strange powers and influences and he must avoid being controlled by them. Drummond and Cauty were not exerting any control on the process, and so they made themselves vulnerable to the who-knows-whats that live out of sight in the depths of Ideaspace. For this reason, you could understand why Moore would think that Bill Drummond was “totally mad." All this only applies if you're prepared to accept the notion of magic, of course.

Needing a second opinion This one. I think this is the one women in the workplace are scared of. I know I am. Broad City is a very collaborative environment, and I trust everyone we’ve hired to work with us, so I naturally ask people’s opinions. But when you get a new job, a new assignment, or a promotion, the fear of not being good enough, of not knowing everything can seep in. In the last season of Broad City (4), I directed two episodes. This was a new experience for me, and one I took very seriously. But I found, during the process, that a big insecurity for me is the fear that if I need a second opinion, that means I don’t know what I’m doing. This is false, I do know what I’m doing, but it’s that vulnerability, that want for another set of eyes on my decision that can make me shaky. I ultimately made all the decisions I needed to—after using my resources aka asking questions—but in order to do that, I had to continually let go of this unease that someone from a dark, back corner would pop out, pointing directly at me, yelling about how I’m a fraud for asking for help while in charge. That I’d be plucked up by a huge claw and dropped outside on the sidewalk, banished from taking on this new role. This fear is mindless. Understandable, but stupid. Crews are a team. Any business is a team, and the whole point of having people do different jobs and be experts in their specific department is for them to help in any way they know how. The director isn’t there to bark out orders. They are the conductor bringing everyone’s talents together to execute their own artistic vision. Asking and bouncing ideas off people, and even changing your mind, is allowed. It’s so hard to ever show any sort of weakness, especially when you’re a woman at the top of the project, in a business you never thought you’d actually be able to break into. But going through all the possibilities and asking for help is not weak, it’s smart. I’m going to go ahead and dog-ear this paragraph so even I can come back and remind myself.

Many married women, faithful to family duty and their husbands, will at this point probably ask themselves why such strong men, so really good and kind, who are so vulnerable to women like Madame Marneffe, do not find the realization of their dreams and the fulfilment of their passions in their wives, especially when their wives are like Adeline Hulot. The reason is linked with one of the most fundamental mysteries of human nature. Love, which awakens the mind to joy and delight, the virile, austere pleasure of the most noble faculties of the soul, and sex, the vulgar commodity sold in the market, are two aspects of the same thing. Women capable of satisfying the hunger for both are geniuses in their own kind, and no more numerous than the great writers, artists, and inventors of a nation. Men of all kinds, the distinguished man and the fool, the Hulots as much as the Crevels, desire both an ideal love and pleasure. They are all in quest of that mysterious hermaphrodite, that rare work, which most often turns out to be a work in two volumes.