[The blog is on vacation this week. Happy Thanksgiving to all! Here’s one of my fave posts from a little while ago:] Two of the most popular movies of the past few years are The Hangover and The Bourne Identity. What do they have in common? They’re both amnesia stories. I love amnesia stories. What could be more fun? Guy wakes up face-down on the floor of a villa in Vegas, or floating in a wetsuit off the coast of Marseilles. He remembers nothing. Who is he? How did he get there? And where the hell did that tiger in the bathroom…

Here’s a subtle but crucial point for us to hold in mind as we slog through the trench warfare of the artist’s journey, battling Resistance every step of the way. Remember: Resistance arises second. What comes first is the idea, the passion, the work we are so excited to create that it scares the shit out of us. Resistance is the response of the frightened, petty, small-time ego to the brave, generous, magnificent impulse of the creative self. Resistance is the shadow cast by the innovative self’s sun. What does this mean to us, as we duel our demons? It…

[The following excerpt from Rosanne Cash‘s Composed hit me like a two-by-four between the eyes. Thanks to Ms. Cash for permission to run it.  The book is brand-new and it’s keeping me up nights. It should be required reading, in my opinion, for all serious writers, artists and musicians, particularly women. But judge for yourself. I’m giving over the whole of today’s post to this passage from Rosanne Cash’s Composed. [Note: “King’s” is King’s Record Shop, the 1987 album that produced four #1 singles. And now: over to you, Rosanne …] It was late in the making of King’s that…

[First, huge thanks to everybody who wrote in in response to last week’s When It Works. Wonderful stuff, from the heart. It’s tremendously gratifying to me, I must say, to see this site evolving into a real peer-to-peer meeting ground–and I include myself as one of those peers. I picked four “winners” instead of three, but could easily have chosen ten or more. Congrats to Anjanette, Stef, David Layton and Dana. I’ll get your signed War of Arts out right away. Thanks to everybody! Now to this Wednesday’s post … ] Have you seen the director’s cut of Apocalypse Now?…