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Just listen.

Posted on August 14, 2009July 5, 2021 by namho

Some TED presentations are inspiring and challenge you to do something. Others are funny and entertaining… And still others are just beautiful to listen to. This falls into the last category: So take a break. Relax. Just listen.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the New York Times best seller Eat, Pray, Love talks about how creatives can possibly protect their creativity and themselves.

… one day [Tom Waits] was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles he told me, and this is when it all changed for him. And he’s speeding along, and all of a sudden he hears this little fragment of melody, that comes into his head as inspiration often comes, elusive and tantalizing, and he wants it, you know, it’s gorgeous, and he longs for it, but he has no way to get it. He doesn’t have a piece of paper, he doesn’t have a pencil, he doesn’t have a tape recorder.

So he starts to feel all of that old anxiety start to rise in him like, “I’m going to lose this thing, and then I’m going to be haunted by this song forever. I’m not good enough, and I can’t do it.” And instead of panicking, he just stopped. He just stopped that whole mental process and he did something completely novel. He just looked up at the sky, and he said, “Excuse me, can you not see that I’m driving?” “Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment when I can take care of you. Otherwise, go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen.”

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