The Shakespeare way…
Know little Latin and less Greek. Remove your ego to the extent that you can fully inhabit a saint, a murderer, a queen, a beast, a clown, and everything in between. Be myriad-minded. Cut down on the history reading. Be a passionate lover who distrusts power.
The Dickinson way…
Make vast imaginative cognitive leaps while wearing white. Listen to a fly or look at gazing grain while contemplating the journey from infinity to eternity. Reject church. Talk regularly with your sister-in-law, God, and Shakespeare. Make your greatest outing the distance between your bedroom and the kitchen. Tell it slant. Much madness is divinest sense.
The Van Gogh way…
Transition from depicting your family eating potatoes to communing with the divine in a drinking hole. Be sorrowful but always rejoicing. Practice bhakti yoga, approaching everything with awe and devotion. Be on good terms with a relative who makes money. Paint that which is dark, yet color.
The Yeats way…
Be silly but know your trade. Obsess over a girl who’s completely wrong for you. Dive into the occult. Don’t be content.
The Stevens way…
Maintain a stable job and the outward appearance of normality. Take long walks. Spend hours and hours in contemplation and concentration. Resist the intelligence almost successfully.
The Kafka way…
Be obsessive. Become literature itself. When Germany declares war on Russia, go swimming in the afternoon.
The Rothko way…
Spend long hours staring at a blank canvas. Have a well-worn copy of Fear and Trembling by your bedside. Contemplate inner feeling states and express them in haunting and ecstatic ways.
The Beckett way…
Completely digest and integrate the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, Proust, Joyce, western philosophy, and art. Contemplate qualities such as waiting and ending. Express fundamental sounds. Write a play in which nothing happens twice.
The Guston way…
Spend years telling stories, then years in abstraction, then years telling stories again. Constantly question everything, especially your own motives. Completely strip yourself down and start over again so that each new form is genuinely fresh. Mingle comics and politics with the masters and eternity. Love all things Italian. Cut down on the smokes.
The O’Hara way…
Enjoy lunch, talk a lot on the telephone, be a fast runner and wear tight jeans.
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