Overview: In this short solo episode (ep. 126) on the Humanitou Podcast, Adam Williams stands at the intersection of creative intentions and oopses, where truth lies in the inexactitude of life. He explores the practice of listening to the intuitive and recognizing “when something artful this way comes.” (Released on podcast on Jan. 22, 2023)
Also on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Google and other players.
EP 126 SHOW NOTES, LINKS & TRANSCRIPT
Connect with Adam Williams
Humanitou on Instagram: @humanitou
About Adam
Art Credits
Podcast cover art and photograph below: Adam Williams
Music
“Old Rope” by Joe Johnson | joejohnsonsings.com
Original Written Version
Something artful and honest often comes about at the intersection of intention and oops.
The greatest skill perhaps lies in applying discretion in recognizing what’s worth keeping and carrying forward, and what out to be set aside.
The trick, as it be, is learning to tap into one’s inner guidance. To feel into it and heed it is a practice. The feeling is the meaning. Attuning to that feeling, that guiding voice, even when we don’t yet understand the meaning, is the practice.
I practice listening to that guidance that my logical brain (or ego) so often would dismiss in favor of rigidly staying the course toward a predetermined destination. Little things, seemingly inconsequential things. Which T-shirt to wear, which trail to hike, which coffee mug to use. I practice awareness.
In a life in which my brain, ego and so-called personality traits call for order and something close to perfection on a near-constant basis, my practice of tuning into feeling rather than calculation is the difference between my being an artist or something far less heartful.
Sure, we can calculate and make good work. We can be precise and intentional, and use tools to perfection in designing architecture and engineering processes. Those skills literally create the physical world we live in. Yet the art of personal expression is best given to something else.
It’s that tapping into the holy within us and serving as conduit to it. That’s a feel thing. That’s where the truth of ourselves, and the unfolding of ourselves occurs, and the knowing and expressing of ourselves happens.
“Exactitude is not truth,” Henri Matisse said.
Photograph by Adam Williams
In the flow of that truthiness, that inexactitude of actions, I am often as surprised and joyful in the outcomes of my creative work as anyone.
Probably moreso, because I got to feel the ecstatic process of seeing where the words and the strokes and whimsies were taking me, and then look back to see the ground that was invented along the way, so it could be traveled until I felt the “Stop here.”
Art is about emotion. Of course, it also holds great powers to evoke curiosity and thoughtful consideration and re-consideration of our world, our presence, our ways of being and connecting and ruling and teaching and learning and loving and …
Emotion is not in the realm of exactitude. It is not in the planning and reasoning of life. Again, it’s in the feeling. It’s intuitive. We need only listen, trust and act upon those pulses that instruct us.
When the oopses of life and art corrupt our reasoned plans, we have an opportunity that is far more than whatever we had otherwise devised. Discerning when to stay the course, and how and when to trust the flow that has presented itself is the heart of the practice.
The more we listen and trust our intuitive guidance, the more artful somethings this way come.
[Podcast outro comments added … ]
I’m Adam Williams. Thanks for listening to the Humanitou podcast. And thank you for however you might be sharing it with others, through word of mouth, social media, and by rating and commenting on it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening.
Remember, we’re all Humanitou. All we’ve got to do is stay true, stay human. Stay Humanitou.
