Presents a twelve-week program intended to increase creativity by capturing the creative energy of the universe.

Written by artists, for artists, this survival guide explores the way art gets made, the reason it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way.

Questlove -- musician, bandleader, designer, producer, culinary entrepreneur, professor, and all-around cultural omnivore -- offers insight into building the best creative life and how to let the best creative life build you. He synthesizes all the creative philosophies, lessons, and stories he's heard from the many creators and collaborators in his life, and reflects on his own experience, to advise how to consider creativity and where to find it....

Combining memoir, social criticism, and research, the author explores what it means to be solitary and celebrates the notion, common in his Roman Catholic childhood, that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling. Delves into the lives and works of nearly a dozen iconic "solitaries," including Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Bill Cunningham, Cézanne, and Zora Neale Hurston. "A meditation on solitude as a font of creativity and spirituality. Known...

"Picasso & Matisse. Manet & Degas. Pollack & de Kooning. Lucian Freud & Francis Bacon. This is the story of four pairs of artists-- each linked by friendship and a spirit of competitiveness. Taken together, they form an impressive lineage stretching across more than 150 years. But in each case, these relationships had a flashpoint, a damaging psychological event that seemed to mark both an end and a new beginning, a break that led onto new creative...