“You must have clarity to create.”

Plus a farewell to a physicist whose calculations were “works of art”

Author

Leonie Mercedes
October 19, 2025

Good morning, darlings. Here’s your three-part nudge for the day:

a prompt

Write on the following for 5–10 minutes:

What went well this week? What didn’t go as well? With this in mind, what will you do next week?

a thought

“Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they’re like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They’re like a vice grip on creativity… You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas.” – David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish

farewell

Yang Chen Ning, physicist (1922–2025)

“Dr Yang’s sense of mathematical beauty, [physicist Freeman] Dyson said, ‘turns his least important calculations into miniature works of art, and turns his deeper speculations into masterpieces’.”

Thanks for coming, dear makers and shakers. See you tomorrow ☕