overflow // Joshua Wagner Online

Consuming vs Producing

May 17, 2009 | Art | Life

Here’s a quickie for the start of the week.

I’ve taken a little break from tweeting and blogging for the last week. Part was for vacation. Dusty and I went to Pigeon Forge, TN for a few days. We had a great time! No computers, no Twitter, just us. Wonderful.

But it did cause me to think about producing and consuming.

Lately I have been producing a lot. I’ve been blogging, Wordpressing, and Tweeting so much, I drained myself. I’ve blogged before on the value of silence before. I think I relearned that this week.

So, to keep it short: sometimes you need to just sit back and consume life. By that, I mean to enjoy time with family and friends, to go out and relax in the woods, to experience at art as opposed to creating art. When we overproduce, we empty ourselves. And when we are empty, nothing overflows. Our art, our work, our passions come from that overflow. Remember this next time you push yourself too hard. Take an hour, a day, a week to refill yourself. It’ll do you good.

So, what recharges you? What drains you? When do you need a break most?

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Silence

January 18, 2009 | Art | Writing

In our daily lives, there is little silence. Almost every moment is consumed by something; whether it is music, work, radio, television, the list goes on. However, we should still remember the importance of silence.

Silence can be deafening.

It’s ironic, but life is full of those ironies. Like being alone in a crowd.

Example: In music, a composer will write in silence to emphasize a loud part immediately following. Hey, John Cage wrote 4′33″ with a lot of silence. Interesting tune.

Most important, silence forces us to think. It forces us to listen, both to God and ourselves.

I think we should take some time to be silent. Take time to quiet what we do most often. If we can take a step back from our projects, from our daily grid, you never know what you just might find.

For example, I took some time to myself (partially because I got sick, but we all need a push sometimes) and sat down to read a book. It was a book I never thought I’d enjoy. Boy was I wrong. I finished the whole novel in less than 3 days. Usually it takes me a week at least. I’ve found another book I love, and I’ve found a few more tricks to use in my own writing.

You can’t run forever. If you constantly pursue without relent you will burn out. This is not changing focus or loosing passion. Those are different. Endurance runners don’t run every 100 meters in 10 seconds. They would never make it the whole way.

Give yourself a little time to just sit. Go to a park and watch the animals. Go read a book you didn’t see before. In order to be honest in our art, we need to overflow from our hearts. If we’ve drained everything from our hearts by never taking a moment to be silent, we will not achieve anything but adding more noise.

If we are to be real in our art, then it should overflow from our hearts. If our hearts are never silent, we will only add more noise.

Posted via web from On Life, Stories, and Music

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