Driven by my mishearing of something Dr. David Scheel was talking about regarding the octopus Heidi he kept in his home for a yearlong period...
His documentary ‘Octopus: Making Contact’ is a lovely thing worth watching I should add!
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)
After he had started his own company, Tesla arrived at the office at noon. Immediately, his secretary would draw the blinds; Tesla worked best in the dark and would raise the blinds again only in the event of a lightning storm, which he liked to watch flashing above the cityscape from his black mohair sofa.
Tesla ate alone, and phoned in his instructions for the meal in advance. Upon arriving, he was shown to his regular table, where eighteen clean linen napkins would be stacked at his place. As he waited for his meal, he would polish the already gleaming silver and crystal with these squares of linen, gradually amassing a heap of discarded napkins on the table. And when his dishes arrived—served to him not by a waiter but by the maître d’hôtel himself—Tesla would mentally calculate their cubic contents before eating, a strange compulsion he had developed in his childhood and without which he could never enjoy his food.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“Of all things, I liked books best.”
― Nikola Tesla
“One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
― Nikola Tesla
#dailyrituals #inktober #NikolaTesla @masoncurrey
George Balanchine (1904–1983)
Balanchine liked to do his own laundry. “When I’m ironing, that’s when I do most of my work,” he once said. The choreographer rose early, before 6:00 A.M., made a pot of tea, and read a little or played a hand of Russian solitaire while he gathered his thoughts. Then he did his ironing for the day (he did his own washing too, in a portable machine in his Manhattan apartment) and, between 7:30 and 8:00, phoned his longtime assistant for a rundown of the day’s schedule.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“I like to do things certain ways and I disagree with everybody but I don't even want to argue.”
― George Balanchine
#dailyrituals #inktober #balanchine @masoncurrey
The dog who I saw in Koh Rong Island, Cambodia. He was looking in a restaurant with sparkle eyes. I'm sure he realized something smelled good and was looking for someone who give him that
1979’s The Tin Drum is one of those films I’ve been itching to see for a long time, but haven’t got round to yet for some reason. The main character in that film’s played by a guy called David Bennent. Not a household name for most, but you’ve seen Ridley Scott’s Legend, you’ll recognise him when he played Honeythorn Gump, Tom Cruise/Jack’s elfin pal.
Not sure why the idea to name this piece after D.B. occurred to me, but it did!
This line from the Stephin Merritt episode of the 'She's A Talker' podcast (referring to Stephen Sondheim plot-lines) got my imagination ticking in overdrive
There is really nothing more I can say about this than it is truly just a doodle on a notepad while I was on the phone. The more I do this though, the more ideas I get for larger work.
It totally bypassed my mind that last night I would be off to see Gary Numan with my uncle. The perks of having both an over-active work life and a social one too...
W. B. Yeats (1865–1939)
A lyric poem of eighty or more lines took him about three months of hard labor.
Fortunately, Yeats was not so careful about his other writing, like the literary criticism he did to earn extra money. “One has to give something of one’s self to the devil that one may live,” he said. “I give my criticism.”- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.”
― W.B. Yeats
#dailyrituals #inktober #WBYeats @masoncurrey
A Japanese demon known as a yokai, who started off as a human but whose emotions ran so deep, she ended up transforming into something much more monstrous…