The individual on the threshold of the artist’s journey is like the protagonist in an amnesiac story. I love these. Total Recall, The Bourne Identity and its sequels, and my fave of a couple of years ago, The Hangover.

Here’s Philip Roth on the subject of beginning a novel:

Power comes from authenticity. When we hear an artist or a politician, a warrior or an advocate speak from her true center, we feel her power. Even Lady Gaga, whose public persona is as artificially contrived as it is possible to be, is authentic in her artificiality.  

Finally, the details have been settled. The one-day Writing Retreat will take place on September 7, a Saturday, at the Zuma Orchid Ranch in Malibu, California.

The artist and entrepreneur find their authentic selves not by whom they love or hate, or what they believe, or what feats they perform.

The process of finding our own voice is not one of learning, but of unlearning. Not of acquiring baggage but of jettisoning it.

One of my favorite scenes in movies of the past few years is the Frozen Park Bench scene in the first of the Jason Bourne movies—The Bourne Identity.

At 0815 hours on 5 June [1967] we gambled all we had. What for other countries would have been defeat, for us would mean extermination. It was not possible for us to lose the war and survive and each man carried this knowledge in his heart when we moved west.

I had a boss when I worked in advertising who used to call together the Creative Group (four two-person teams of copywriter and art director) just before he would submit a pitch or proposal to a client.

Forgive me if I get this story wrong; it’s probably apocryphal anyway. It’s about the great director Federico Fellini and his screenplay for La Dolce Vita (1960).