beauty, imagination, resilience
I recently read Thucydides on the beach and was struck by how contemporary, or perhaps just timeless, he is. Here is a thoughtful reflection in one of his reported speeches; you can love beauty of things and of the mind without going soft. Our love of what is...
beauty, discovery, enchantment, imagination, inspiration
I love the word ‘hoard’, in the sense of a bardic ‘word-hoard’, or here, a hoard of observations you stash in the cupboard of the imagination, a mind-hoard. And I like the absolution from having to understand those bright-shining things you...
happiness, imagination, innocence, resilience
This excerpt from an interview with a Russian writer brought up in Siberia, due to the political exile of her parents, demonstrates the child’s deep need to play and the imagination which led her to create her own dolls, despite poverty, exclusion and general...
authenticity, awards, beauty, colour, enchantment, freedom, happiness, humour, imagination, innocence, inspiration, kindness, nuannaarpoq, resilience, sleep
Our fourth nominee for a Nuannaarpoq Award is: John Keats (1795-1821) Parameters:Â 18th-19th centuries, British, real, human, male, now living elsewhere Nuannaarpoq qualities:Â authenticity, creativity, enchantment, happiness, freedom, imagination, kindness, life,...
authenticity, awards, beauty, colour, enchantment, freedom, happiness, imagination, innocence, inspiration, kindness, life, resilience
Our third nominee for a Nuannaarpoq Award is: Mary Delany (1700-1788) Parameters:Â 18th century, British, real, human, female, now living elsewhere Nuannaarpoq qualities: authenticity, enchantment, imagination, innocence, kindness, resilience References:Â Molly...
authenticity, awards, enchantment, imagination, kindness, nuannaarpoq, resilience
As you may be aware, we had the bright idea to present a few nuannaarpoqian characters as candidates for a Nuannaarpoq Award.  Please feel free to read more about this idea including the rules devised to ensure this is a joyous and humanistic process. Therefore...
happiness, imagination, moments
The capacity of otters to play and to turn anything they find into a game, is breath-taking. Here is one, having worked out the ludic possibilities inherent in the physics of ping-pong balls, setting off to entertain himself for an hour or two at a stretch.  You can...
enchantment, imagination, sharing
Gorky’s grandmother probably ensured his psychological and possibly physical survival, somehow rescuing him with her luminous spirit and her fantastic story-store. There seems to have been no end to the stories she spun, though it isn’t clear whether she...
enchantment, happiness, humour, imagination
This one I discovered by accident, tucked away at the end of the album for which its composer is famous, namely Tubular Bells. I bought the CD second-hand in a moment of nostalgia and was unexpectedly disappointed in revisiting the Tubular Bells piece, but it was...
imagination
I love this description of the eccentric British Consul in Rhodes after the war. The better to mull over a newly striking idea, he would precipitously slam on the brakes of the car and give it his full mental attention. Only hope he looked in the rear-view mirror...
imagination, time
A simple injunction, but timely, always. Be patient. It takes time for ideas to become clear. Source: Adam Nicolson, Sissinghurst: An unfinished history (London: Harper Press, 2009), p. 120Photo credit: Quadronet_Webdesign at...
imagination, inspiration
A lovely notion in George Eliot, that our imagination has its own mother tongue. It made me realize how much of my imaginative world was indeed seeded by my mother. I can’t even put my finger on how she did it, other than by simply being an imaginative person...
imagination
A fascinating comment by a very individual mind on exactly that, individuality and its creative capacity. While I believe also in the power of combined minds, and don’t agree with Steinbeck’s ‘the only creative thing our species has’, I do...
discovery, imagination
An intriguing thought, that art is the means to receive hints from another reality. Â I am not sure what he means by it, but as I get older, I sense something more numinous. Â And I like the idea of art as a kind of antenna – it was Ezra Pound who described poets...
beauty, imagination, inspiration
Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, puts our relatively short-termist parochialism in stark contrast to that of our forebears, who despite multiple constraints of which we are free, were able to conceive and implement long term projects which they wouldn’t see...
imagination, memory
I liked this pithy analysis by Vico, which could serve as an exercise in imagination training: take a memory, describe it as a realistically as you can, then alter or imitate it in some form, then give it a new turn by placing it in a relationship to other things....
enchantment, imagination
Many indeed and I like the short list, but even more the loving depiction of cleaving to the sea and the islands in a gentle autumnal light. May your masts spring branches and fruits, but not before you are safely in harbour. “Many are the joys of this world – women,...
imagination, inspiration
What if love were the prime driver of our creativity? I liked the power and simplicity of Stravinsky’s statement. And I remembered this photo taken with and of a friend who held up a book he found in a magical library we found in the Jura. ‘In order to create...
