3 Principles First, energy follows the path of least resistance. Second, the underlying structure will determine that path. Third, we can change the underlying structure, and thereby change the path of least resistance.

This point is important for the artist to understand. The audience will fully engage if the universe you create has its own integrity, its own rules that are consistent within itself, independent of how the world really works. It also needs to be worth spending time with.

Another way of describing an artistic vision is that we create a unique universe in which the audience can live.

The love artists have is generative, not responsive. Romantic love is responsive. You meet and then you fall in love. The situation first, the love second. But for the artist, the love predates the situation. The filmmaker loves the film before the film is made. The painter loves the painting before paint touches canvas. The choreographer loves the

Neither approach can be productive. We need to have both elements, which means to narrow our attention on what we are creating, while, at the very same time, broaden our awareness to allow unimagined insight to surface.

Much artistic training enables the artist to create a vehicle that is capable of expressing something true, real, vital, essential, and magnificent, not by trying to control the circumstances, but by being clear, focused, and rigorously concentrated on the desired result (very Yang,) while, simultaneously, being open, relaxed, and free of apprehens

“Many – perhaps all-natural systems obtain their organization and energy from the interaction of opposites,” writes Christopher Alexander in his classic book The Nature of Order.

arts, rather than freeing the mind, we focus the mind. We set up a strategic tension-resolution system formed by the difference between a vision of the final piece we want to create, and where we are at any moment in the process.

These people have mastered the art of being completely focused, while at the same time, completely relaxed.