Play the Fool // Ethan Hawke

'I believe that we are here on this star in space to try to help one another. Right?

And first we have to survive, and then we have to thrive. And to thrive, to express ourselves, alright, well, here's the rub: we have to know ourselves. What do you love? And if you get close to what you love,who you are is revealed to you, and it expands.'

There's so much to love about these beautiful thoughts from Ethan Hawke. In this pandemic year, it's been so startling to take an inventory of my creative life. Even in prepping work for this site, it's been so wild to see the growth patterns of my work. And the volume of that work. 20 years is a long time. There's been work that makes me cringe and work that is maturing well. I can see times when I was incredibly uneven, and it's very clear when I was doing something that I probably had no business doing. But, still, there it is. Like Seamus Heaney noted: 'Getting started, keeping going, getting started again — in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground of convinced action, the basis of self-esteem and the guarantee of credibility in your lives, credibility to yourselves as well as to others.' That process is so visable now. It's become the evidence of a life full of learning how to make things, and understanding and reaching for the things that illuminate and inspire me. Then continuing on even when I can see how often I desperately fall short.

Like he articulates so beautifully ... You have to figure out what you love. Or to follow Charles Bukowski (as he naturally takes 1000 steps further) ... 'Find what you love and let it kill you.'

I can recognize it in the work that I am doing. Whether it's design or songwriting or taking photographs, the more that I understand what I love the better my work has been. It's a high-wire act in the best of times, but that's what we do. Keep showing up. Even when you have no idea what you are doing.

I am happy to have this be my first post of what will be many. The advice of 'Playing the Fool' is the perfect place to start with everything that we create.

Stay Radical

Ryan

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