Play is the taproot from which original art springs. It is the raw stuff that the artist channels with all his learning and technique.

The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.

When we are totally faithful to our own individuality, we are actually following a very intricate design. This kind of freedom is the opposite of "just anything".

To create, we need both technique and freedom of technique

Paradoxically, the more you are yourself, the more universal your message. As you develop and individuate more deeply, you break through into deeper layers of the collective consciousness and the collective unconsciousness.

Here the artist is, as it were, an archaeologist, uncovering deeper and deeper strata as he works, recovering not an ancient civilization, but something as yet unborn, unseen, unheard, except by the inner eye, the inner ear. He is not just removing apparent surfaces from some external object, he is removing apparent surface from the Self, revealing his original nature.

If we split practice from the real thing, neither one of them will be very real.