Notion's Notions

"We are all dying, and art is what keeps us alive in the meantime"
- William Gibson

"We are creatures of creation"
- Adam Savage

"Whenever we’re driven to reach out and create something from nothing, whether it’s something physical like a chair, or more temporal and ethereal, like a poem, we’re contributing something of ourselves to the world. We’re taking our experiences and filtering it through our words or our hands, or our voices or our bodies, and we’re putting something in the culture that didn’t exist before. In fact, we’re not putting what we make into the local culture, what we make IS the culture. Putting something in the world that didn’t exist before is the broadest definition of making, which means all of us can be makers. Creators."
- Adam Savage

"Obsession is the gravity of making. It moves things, it binds them together, and gives them structure."
- Adam Savage

"there's even another way to find inspiration, on that I have leaned on more and more as I've gotten older and more experienced: DIGGING RIGHT THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF THE RABBIT HOLE, by which I mean, going as deep as humanly possible on something you care greatly about, something you can't stop thinking about."
- Adam Savage

“Now I love lists. I like long detailed lists. I like big unruly lists. I like sorting unsorted lists into outline form, then separating out their topics into lists of their own. Every single project I do involves the making of lists. I make them for organization, of course, but I also make them for assessment, for momentum as a stress reliever, and, counterintuitively, as a means to improve my creativity and free my thinking. There are daily lists, there are project lists. There are “things to order” lists. I make lists of pieces of research that I want together, lists of people I am collaborating with . . . . I make lists of things I need to purchase, things I need to find, and when all of those objects are going to get to me. And hopefully, finally, there are “homestretch” lists, that tell me I’m reaching the end.”
- Adam Savage

"i just have to remember to lose control. the dancing, remember the dancing...the only people who look bad on a dance floor are the people half dancing. the other half thinking...o wretched thought leave my mind for tonight, for tomorrow night, for seven nights hence...let me just be in this body and shake in a delirious whirl. i dont think when i laugh, i dont think when i laugh."
- Dave Malloy

"i must stop assuming that the rest of the world is stronger than me. i must remember that my ability to give love is miracle."
- Dave Malloy

"i am goalless, theres just thump thump this beat, and merely attending to each new downbeat, thats what im going to do. after every hit of the drum there another one coming up. on it. right now im riding fast through midnight a slipper of ice, and the walls of night are a million cymbals suspended and waiting for my playful picket fence stick. im hitting more than ever..."

- Dave Malloy

"One day I will be someone else // I am fragile and ephemeral // so love me while I'm here"
- Dave Malloy & Krista Knight

"one asked me, why do i perform? i cant answer you, i cant. i have no idea. its what im here to give? its just there and its beautiful and thats all i can do. maybe im doing too much? i can barely feel."
- Dave Malloy

"these things happened, and now i am those things. im really growing up."
- Dave Malloy

"this alone is diferent, but still not lonley. this alone is powerful, and puts me in touch with the world of men. i have felt it before, when driving across the country- in hotel parking lots and rest stops and gas stations where the world is enormous and unpopulated. all the signs of commerce and society surrounding, advertisements and trash reminding me that i am in the world of human beings. of living and dying and buying and selling and anger and boredom and desire and stagnation. and somehow, in spite of all of my feelings of isolation and detachment form the world, my sarcastic spearation and absurdist observing, i am a part of it, im there, and its letting me. the world is letting me pass. im doing just fine. i can stop into the gas staion and fill up the tank and pay with a card and not get arrested, not get flooded with lights and snipers, not be jumped by men of tired jokes and boring clothes and poor musical taste, throwing a sack over myhead and asking mke who i think i am. i cant talk to most people, i cant agree, but somehow ive slipped through the netting and am here, alone, unaccompianed, unstopped. how can i be in lisbon? what the fuck am i doing in lisbon? how can the world of men have let me here? im not that kind of man...i look up at planes overhead and start laughing out loud, start laughing like a maniac as loud as i can and still am left alone. there are old buildings and cars, yes, but there is still ocean and grass and sky, im still there and conneceted through those pieces of nature. and i can laugh at the things i see and wonder at the words people tell me and feel so alone, but im free to do so, i am free to act and think this way. i am getting away with it."
- Dave Malloy