Odilia Rivera-Santos
An artist must remain humble enough to consider learning something new. One of my New Year's resolutions is to read only on Fridays. The first week was challenging and made me realize the number of times I reach for a newspaper, magazine, novel, collection of poems and disengage to delve deep into someone else's point of view. Time spend reading is time I could spend writing. Stephen King in his fantastic book on writing cleverly titled On Writing mentions that writers need to read in order to have something to write about. But I would add if one reads too much, it becomes like the shopaholic who opens a closet to discover items with price tags, unopened boxes and duplicates. I think a person's mind can be like this overflowing closet where you no longer properly unpack and use, not clothing or shoes, but information.
As soon as I think this, I want to run to the MIT Website to read articles on brain function, information organization and retrieval,etc. See what I mean?
Instead, I sit here in consideration of the great mystery of a human mind and how avoiding the constant accumulation of information is in itself an intellectual process. I am using the information I already have like the woman who shops in her own closet. Speaking to people about nutrition a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised at the information my brain shook loose and I realized information needs breathing room, and should not be tightly packed.
Information requires us to create space in order to use our imagination for a new hypothesis.
I am in an undisclosed location with a lovely person, listening to banjo music and completely at ease with being in one place at one time and four days away from looking at someone else's work.
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