genealogy of “a creative life”

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The emergence of “a creative life” may be interesting, but likely only in light of the set of pages. If you enjoy that, this posting might matter. This is intended for reading afterward.

In midstream of doing the January pages of The Project (starting “philological play”), I thought of Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei again, then checked Amazon.com to see if she had another book. I’ve done that several times per year. She hasn’t had a book since 2011. But I was happily surprised that she had published The Life of Imagination in October. I immediately ordered it.

The description of the book surprised me, because it’s so suggestive of what I’ve been up to, as if my postings and couple of email exchanges with her over the years had some direct influence. My imagination, undoubtedly. But that was interesting in itself. Though I dismissed the feeling, I wanted to respond to the book description before I received the book, having only the book description at hand. So, I sent her an email, writing to the description, and we had a delightful set of exchanges before I received the book.

Meanwhile, I continued with my January/February pages on The Project. But over the next few days, I became a little haunted by the feeling of similarity between her project (apparently) and my own. So, when the book arrived, I decided not to even open it, until I had finished my February pages on The Project. That happened at the end of the month.

Meanwhile, I had been accumulating thoughts, including variations on the notion of “the life of imagination.” The notes seemed to gravitate into sections of discussion. I identified all of the phrases of the book description and associated each with the growing sections of notes. This resulted in a schema of grouped themes.

I began to write to the notes. As I did so, aspects of The Project came to mind. As the days went on, the writing seemed to gravitate into versions of Project Areas, like implicit introductions to some of The Project Areas, but now in light of having finished the January/February notes. The sections of “a creative life” began to feel like a derived version of Areas of The Project.

For a long time, I’ve had a set of books I wanted to attend to, deciding to at last begin appropriating them into The Project after doing the January/February pages. As the sections of “a creative life” emerged, I was associating to some of those books, so I incorporated reference to them and gave each some anticipatory context.

The result is a hybrid, derived version of The Project in light of dwelling intently with book description themes of The Life and free associating on what I want to pursue for The Project relative to books that are primarily interesting to me. But the result is something all its own.

So, “a creative life” expresses a creative life as derived mode of futuring The Project.