I’m a pretty big list maker. Post-its have become a part of my room decor and scribbled on notes are forever falling out of my backpack pockets. I’m also always on the lookout for some new inspiration, so an inspiring inventory is pretty much the cream of the crop in my book. These four are particularly special–each collection of words provides inspirational thoughts and ideas that are applicable to living a creative, inquisitive, and fulfilling life in general. You don’t have to be an artist, musician, or writer to appreciate these mini-manifestos. Check out my list of lists, below, and get ready to want to start tackling that dust covered to-do list of your own.
1. Sister Corita Kent‘s rules for the Immaculate Heart College art department
[image via]
2. Woody Guthrie’s “New Years Rulin’s” (January 1st, 1943)
[image via; click to read larger]
3. Illustrator Nathaniel Russell‘s artist statement map
[image via]
4. Jack Kerouac’s “30 Beliefs and Techniques for Prose and Life“
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
First image by Nathaniel Russell, last image by John Cohen
