Today's Quote: Alain de Botton

Text:
Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
~ Alain de Botton

Found!

Are you familiar with found poems? To make a found poem, you "find" a poem within some other text. Blackout poems, like what Austin Kleon does, are found poems. IMPERFECT poet Robyn Hood Black talks about found poems on her blog.

Here's one that IMPERFECT poet Kat Apel created from our cover reveal:

Kintsugi

Precious scars
filling cracks
with liquid gold,
mended
more beautiful;
broken history
displayed with pride;

imperfection golden.

Musical Mistake

Who needs to be a Phoenix for rebirth? One simply requires themselves and an instrument to clean the slate and start over, perhaps create their own world where everything is better...
~TheBakaViolinist

Sometimes a whole group of people can make a mistake. This video shows a clever way to fix one:

Today's Quote: J.M. Barrie

Text:
The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.
~ J. M. Barrie

7+3=Blue

I'm good at thinking outside the box, so much that you realize it's not a box to begin with.
~will.i.am

"The Box" by Chip Ghigna, son of IMPERFECT poet Charles Ghigna.

Jazz and Mistakes

The only mistake is if each individual musician is not accepting and aware enough of his fellow band member and...we don't allow for creativity.
~Stefon Harris, talking about improvising music with his bandmates

A TED talk today!

What is a mistake? By talking through examples with his improvisational jazz quartet, Stefon Harris walks us to a profound truth: many actions are perceived as mistakes only because we don't react to them appropriately.

Today's Quote: Vincent van Gogh

Text:
Only when I fall do I get up again.
~ Vincent van Gogh

A Favorite Mistake?

“But what if I make a mistake?" Will asked.
Gilan threw back his head and laughed. "A mistake? One mistake? You should be so lucky. You'll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day alone!"
~John Flanagan

It's pretty easy to come up with a list of least favorite mistakes, but what about favorites? I can think of a couple I've made that I might call favorites. Can you? There are a lot of people who appreciate these mistakes:

15 Delicious Things That Were Invented By Mistake




Sheryl Crow

Today's Quote: Vicki Davis

Text:
Make the mistakes of your past a signpost, not a hitching post.
~ Vicki Davis

Cover reveal!

THE STORY BEHIND THE COVER

When we make mistakes, show our imperfections, or wind up feeling broken in some way, we have to patch ourselves back together. The Japanese art of kintsugi is the art of creating “precious scars” or “golden repair” by filling cracks in pottery with precious metals such as liquid gold or silver.

Kintsugi is said to have begun hundreds of years ago when a Japanese military commander broke his favorite tea bowl and sent it to be repaired. When it returned, it had been patched together unattractively with metal staples. Seeing the well-loved but sloppily-mended bowl inspired Japanese craftsmen to develop kintsugi as a better, more beautiful way to fix something broken.

The breaks in kintsugi pottery are considered to be part of the object’s history, and are displayed with pride. An imperfection isn’t the end. It’s a chance for a “golden repair”!

Cover design by Vivien R. Zhu