One of the practices we try to encourage at TRC is culture making. Every human is a culture maker, because each one is required to make something out of all the raw materials that life gives. Here is a great reflection on making by Jeff Tweedy the frontman for Wilco:
“I just like writing songs. It’s a natural state to me. I like to believe that most people’s natural state is to be creative. It definitely was when we were kids. When being spontaneously and joyfully creative was just our default setting. As we grow we learn to evaluate and judge. To navigate the world with some discretion. And then we turn on ourselves. Creating can’t just be for the sake of creating any more. It has to be good. Or it has to mean something. We get scared out of our wits by the possibility of someone rejecting our creation.
It bugs me that we get this way. It bugs me a lot. I think just making stuff is important. It doesn’t have to be art. Making something out of your imagination that wasn’t there before you thought it up, and plopped it out in your notebook or your tape recorder, puts you squarely on the side of creation. You’re closer to God. Or at the very least, the concept of the Creator.
If a work of art inspires another work of art, I think it’s accomplished its highest sense of duty. People look for inspiration and hope. And if you have it, you share it. Not for your own glory but because it’s the best thing you can do. It doesn’t belong to just you.
No one has ever laid on their deathbed thinking, ‘Thank God I didn’t make that song. Thank God I didn’t make that piece of art. Thank God I avoided the embarrassment of putting a bad poem into the world.’ Nobody reaches the end of their life and regrets even a single moment of creating something. No matter how shitty or unappreciated that something might have been.”
Jeff Tweedy
Watch The Goodness Project video — Thin Places: Heffernan St. Bridge
The Heffernan Street bridge has a long history dating back to 1914. Its elevated position provides not only an excellent point to look out over the river, but its high arches are beautiful to view from the shore as well, casting impressive reflections into the river below it. The song playing in the background is a cover of the song “Places We Won't Walk” by Bruno Major, performed by Sember Wood.
