Beth Brower's Selected Journals ~ February 2024

semper anticus

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There is a book I have slowly been making my way through. It is called The Creative Act: A Way of Being by the record producer Rick Rubin. I read the first fifty pages last summer, and have been letting them marinate ever since. Soon I will be ready to bring the next fifty or one hundred pages into the personal library of my reading, but today I wanted to share a few paragraphs with you that have stuck with me. It is a belief I have long held and always want to practice. And I like how Rick Rubin articulates the idea.

In service of this robust instinct, consider submerging yourself in the canon of great works. Read the finest literature, watch the masterpieces of cinema, get up close to the most influential paintings, visit architectural landmarks. There’s no standard list; no one has the same measures of greatness. The “canon” is continually changing, across time and space. Nonetheles…