Vehemence

Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.

- Gustave Flaubert, French novelist

…from Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain, page 81, chapter 5: ‘Organize - Save for Actionability’.

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I believe what Flaubert refers to as “violent and original” is that primal spark of unattenuated creative force all artists have once known - a muse.

It is by this very process of arduous vehemence that any great thing we know has come to be. It is as though the resultant creation traps in its brushstrokes, in its notes, in its choice of words, the very spark that prompted its making.

Man may create in his lifetime but one great song, painting, book, invention, and spend the rest of his days yearning for that same godlike creative force once in his hands. Yet, within his creation, that same divine energy endures.

A creative may know another on the soul level by analysing their work, intuiting and feeling their process, the cascade of emotions, their subtle choices and reasonings - a great work tells the story of its creation - it places the passion and fervour on full display.