Slowing Down

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

My friend and colleague, Rubén Polendo, once told me a story about working with the late great theater director Peter Brook.

Rubén had the chance to assist Peter on a production in LA 30 years ago, and when they finished working together, he asked him for some advice on his future career.

Peter’s answer was simple: “Take time, take time with everything.”

The statement reads almost like a Zen koan — and since hearing this advice, time has been an idea that I have wrestled with constantly as an artist.

As I have traveled throughout the world, I have discovered that each culture has its own relationship to time. In Tanzania, the communal mantra is “pole, pole”, which translates to “slowly, slowly”. When I lived in Mongolia, one would often say, “Mongol tsag” (Mongolian time) if someone was running late.

Or, recently, how both of my parents while dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis told me, “Michael, slow down, you don’t have to work so hard.”

So much of the current belief system in the West, however, is tailored to instant gratification. This is, of course, amplified if you live in New York City.

In fact, sociologists have found that in recent years individuals in cities like New York are working fewer hours than 50 years ago, but feel as if they are working more. I share this sentiment. It seems we have more and more time-saving devices but sometimes, it seems, less and less time.

For myself, I am constantly re-learning that in an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slowly. Nothing can be more exhilarating than taking time, with everything.

How are you embracing stillness today? Where are the places in your life you can slow down?

A CREATIVE TOOL

Stability AI recently launched Stable Doodle, a sketch-to-image tool that converts a simple drawing into a dynamic image, providing limitless imaging possibilities to a range of professionals and hobbyists.

When I was a kid, I used to draw planes like the one you see below. Imagine the possibilities now that you can turn a quick doodle into this with a click of a button!

A PIECE OF ART

“Small Kindnesses ” by Danusha Laméris

originally published in The New York Times

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

Grateful,

Michael