Nicole's Dreambook

Notas de la pequeña trotamundos * Notes from a petite globetrotter

[lecieltumultueux]

I am too old to deal with friends who can’t be bothered to show mild interest in my life

[nicole-dreambook]

"Quit with me. There is no closer we will grow to be. I look out every night across the sea, and wait to see the line: your highest, lowest, reddest tide.

Quit with me. Quit with me. 

We came to be, amidst a verdant, giant galaxy. Provinces rose and art and industry that kept the lights on bright, we'd see them walking home at night.

And in the trees, all blooming effortlessly 'round our knees, creatures of every kind free of disease, and wounds would tend to mend-- you were my love, you were my friend.

We lost it all.  We're on an island now that's worse than small. When I come home it's hard to spot it all, I swear I tried to make it out, to reach across, to hear you now.

Quit with me. There is no closer we will grow to be. You were a burning, bleeding part of me. One thing I know is true: the path I walked was laid by you.

So quit with me, 

quit with me

quit with me...

[nickkahler]

1. Art requires time — there’s a reason it’s called a studio practice. Contrary to popular belief, moving to Bushwick, Brooklyn, this summer does not make you an artist. If in order to do this you have to share a space with five roommates and wait on tables, you will probably not make much art. What worked for me was spending five years building a body of work in a city where it was cheapest for me to live, and that allowed me the precious time and space I needed after grad school. 2. Learn to write well and get into the habit of systematically applying for every grant you can find. If you don’t get it, keep applying. I lived from grant money for four years when I first graduated. 3. Nobody reads artist’s statements. Learn to tell an interesting story about your work that people can relate to on a personal level. 4. Not every project will survive. Purge regularly, destroying is intimately connected to creating. This will save you time. 5. Edit privately. As much as I believe in stumbling, I also think nobody else needs to watch you do it. 6. When people say your work is good do two things. First, don’t believe them. Second, ask them, “Why”? If they can convince you of why they think your work is good, accept the compliment. If they can’t convince you (and most people can’t) dismiss it as superficial and recognize that most bad consensus is made by people simply repeating that they “like” something. 7. Don’t ever feel like you have to give anything up in order to be an artist. I had babies and made art and traveled and still have a million things I’d like to do. 8. You don’t need a lot of friends or curators or patrons or a huge following, just a few that really believe in you. 9. Remind yourself to be gracious to everyone, whether they can help you or not. It will draw people to you over and over again and help build trust in professional relationships. 10. And lastly, when other things in life get tough, when you’re going through family troubles, when you’re heartbroken, when you’re frustrated with money problems, focus on your work. It has saved me through every single difficult thing I have ever had to do, like a scaffolding that goes far beyond any traditional notions of a career.

Teresita Fernandez, “Commencement Address at VCU,” 2013 (via nickkahler)

[bostonpoetryslam]

The further I move into my recovery from addiction, the less it has to do with abstinence; the less it has to do with white-knuckle avoiding narcotics, or alcohol, and the more it has to do with repairing the kind of psychological and cosmological rot underneath. There is a huge chunk of my brain that will always pass a liquor store and be like, you know what you could do? That’s a kind of hunger, the hunger of my disease just doing push-ups and getting stronger while my higher brain tries to distract itself. I have other hungers today that I didn’t have before. I have hunger for poetry. I have hunger to talk to people as often as I can about poems and to engage people deeply about poems. To get to be of service to poetry as much as I can in this life.

Kaveh Akbar, interviewed by Thora Siemsen for Literary Hub (via bostonpoetryslam)

[thelovejournals]

Brianna Wiest | @thelovejournals

[nayyirahwaheed-deactivated20180]

by nayyirah waheed.

[nicole-dreambook]

It was, as you know, awful and joyful and then he was dead, and there was no more talking with him, and that’s when real time started up again and something—grief?—took me in its mouth. I remember walking with Stanley Kunitz and saying: “Stanley, something has me in its mouth and is chewing.” And he said, “Yes, and you must wait to see who you are when it’s done with you.” He gave me a great permission.

Marie Howe, interviewed by Victoria Redel

[culturenlifestyle]

Ethereal Watercolor Cityscapes Nicolas Jolly

Bordeaux-based illustrator Nicolas Jolly is known for his exquisite and abstract watercolor illustrations. Jolly effortlessly navigates the realms of abstract art and delicacy in each piece. Often depicting the beauty of Parisian and New York architecture, Jolly captures the urban beauty of the cities’ elegance and grittiness. Find his work in his Society6 and Etsy shop.

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[bostonpoetryslam]

Dad, you kept my metaphors clear and simple, and kept my mind skeptical but never cynical, and always treated my small emotions with respect, since they were emotions. This is all I think good poetry is.

Max Ritvo, from the acknowledgements of Four Reincarnations (via bostonpoetryslam)

[wnq-psychology]

“Loneliness isn’t the physical absence of other people, he said—it’s the sense that you’re not sharing anything that matters with anyone else. If you have lots of people around you—perhaps even a husband or wife, or a family, or a busy workplace—but you don’t share anything that matters with them, then you’ll still be lonely.

Johann Hari | @wnq-psychology

Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

(via thelovejournals)

[bostonpoetryslam]

Write as well as you can, with as much heart as you can, whenever you can. Make sure there are people in your life who will have faith in your promise when you can’t. Get your writing in the world, ideally for the money you deserve because writing is work that deserves compensation. But do not worry about being closer to 50 or 65 or 83. Artistic success, in all its forms, is not merely the purview of the young. You are not a late bloomer. You are already blooming.

Roxane Gay, for her advice column Ask Roxane 

[bookmania]

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 

[wnq-unknown]

@wnq-unknown

[nicole-dreambook]

Thesis inspiration....

[bostonpoetryslam]

if you don’t understand the joke then perfecting your american laugh if not catching the reference then writing it down to google it later if not beautiful, then something they can hear through the walls if a bad cook, then hungry for something else. if an ugly scar, then story to tell over & over again

Melissa Lozada-Oliva, “I’m Sorry, I Thought You Were Your Mother” (after Ocean Vuong), from Peluda (via bostonpoetryslam)

[harmed]

[hauntedbystorytelling]

Three young women eat spaghetti on inflatable mattresses at Lake of Capri, 1939 (AP Photo / Hamilton Wright)

[nicole-dreambook]

Life goals

[listentothestories]

So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?

Elizabeth Gilbert, from Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Riverhead

Books, 2015)