"The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz." - Mihály Csíkszentmihályi on the "flow state", aka “complete immersion in an activity"

(via Ted Gioia) 

 Hello I’m Mark E. Smith and this is The Mark E. Smith ‘Guide To Writing’ Guide.

Day-by-day breakdown

Day One: Hang around house all day writing bits of useless information on bits of paper

Day Two: Decide lack of inspiration due to too much isolation and non-fraternisation. Go to pub. Have drinks.

Day Three: Get up and go to pub. Hold on in there a style is on it’s way. Through sheer boredom and drunkenness, talk to people in pub.

Day Four: By now, people in the pub should be continually getting on your nerves. Write things about them on backs of beer mats.

Day Five: Go to pub. This is where true penmanship stamina comes into its own as by now, guilt, drunkenness, the people in the pub and the fact you’re one of them should combine to enable you to write out of sheer vexation. To write out of sheer vexation.

Day Six: If possible stay home. And write. If not go to pub.

(via Bobcast / Creatures  What You Never Knew About / Greenwich Sound Radio. 1983 interview with Mark E. Smith) 

 “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don’t need. We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we’ll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won’t”

 - "Tyler Durden", Fight Club, channeling Mick Jagger, channeling Gang of Four, channeling... 

 "Quiet and well-spoken, they talk about Rhythm and Blues the way people on the Third Programme talk about Schoenberg" 

— Maureen Cleave on Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, from the Evening Standard, 1962

[Third Programme = Radio 3 ]

"When we are no longer children, we are already dead.” — Constantin Brancusi 

 "I think at last there's an equality of aim going around. Art can be exciting 'cos it's real. Again. Maybe it's never been that before...I think now is the age that needs art. Now is the first time that art has ever been necessary...because the only way to break out is to break out with pride...and break out and feel that you're on a journey of some sort. And rock'n'roll is a massive part of that...it's easy and that makes it good, and it's attractive... But yeah there are new currencies and there are so many secret societies in this world brought about through reasons of potential and through reasons of excitement too. If there is to be a shared knowledge then it's gonna happen anyway, there is no need for a messiah. And to be a rock'n'roller is to become immediately aware of the possibilities that someone...wants to climb through your window. Nothing more. Either with a kiss or with a shooter...or with a message from somebody or whatever... and er I don't want...I'd rather be nervous in that respect...I just want to be an entertainer."

- Ian Dury, three spliffs to the wind, Ludwigshafen. West Germany, June 1979 

(interviewed by Paul Morley for the New Musical  Express)