Where the Beauty Is (or Isn’t)

A few years ago Joshua Bell, a Grammy award-winning world class violinist, played a brief concert in a Washington DC subway for 43 minutes and made $32.17 in donations.

He usually makes around $1,000 per minute.

The Washington Post conducted the experiment. A short excerpt from the full article:

“His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”

The 43 minute concert, played on Bell’s $3.5 million dollar Stradivarius, was captured on video…

Continue reading “Where the Beauty Is (or Isn’t)”

Speaking Fake English and Other Fake Languages

Have you ever tried to mimic a foreign language? As in: you don’t speak French, Chinese, or German but you attempt to sound like you’re speaking the language?

I’m guilty. I’ve done this on several occasions. This past weekend I made a baby giggle by performing my faux Chinese for him. He loved it. Best thing he’d ever heard in his less-than-one-year-old life. Giggles galore.

There are numerous You Tube clips of people speaking fake English. If you have a few minutes, watch this video. It’s a short film of actors doing a scene in fairly convincing fake English. Fascinating. Here’s one viewer’s comment…

Two other times in my life, I’ve publicly spoken fake langages.

Hotel in Des Moines. I was in high school at the time and was attending a function at a convention center. I don’t remember the function. I don’t even remember why I was there. I do remember my friend Jason and I were extremely bored. In our boredom, we masqueraded as foreigners in the opulent lobby by chatting in a quasi-something language as people walked by. The passers-by either thought “wow, they’re so foreign that I don’t even know where they’re from” or “what’s wrong with them.”

Rehearsal for a Play. A director once had the idea to have the actors focus only on the intent of our lines without using the lines themselves. She told us to use gibberish instead of our actual lines; our communication limited to nonsense sounds and physicalization. It’s a decent idea… until you start cracking up while trying to communicate frustration, joy, and other emotions while looking into your fellow actor’s eyes as he says “gerdarbul ferndig blarstic. Blarstic! Narful blads tog infel daldig rerg. Gowtow.”

Langauges fascinate me. I’m always amazed how humbled and awkward I feel when I’m in a foreign country where everything, including the language, is different from my normal. It’s refreshing to learn again. To communicate in broken sentences. To push through all those mistakes and uncomfortable moments.

Isn’t that what we do each and every time we create? We find our legs again and we start from scratch. We seek to communicate using our chosen language: written words, paint, ingredients, presentations. Sometimes we feel foolish. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes our message may seem like gibberish.

But sometimes we bring a smile. Sometimes our seeming nonsese makes someone laugh. Sometimes we change something in someone. All because we spoke the language that only we can speak.

Don’t Miss a Thing: Subscribe to this Blog

Celebrating Mistakes

There are multiple mediums of artistic expression: oil on canvas, word on paper, film on screen, status update on Facebook.

Regardless of the medium, at times our initial vision may get distorted by a glitch (or two) during the creative process. The clay is too dry. The paint is low quality. Writer block. Fear. In the case of a Facebook update intending to be clever, the distortion emerges because of not proofreading.

The Pumpkin Roll Problem

A simple example, and yet it proved a point to me:

Our blunders often create something unexpected.

Isn’t that what we want as creatives? We love the unexpected. Something new. Something fresh. Something surprising and refreshing. Sometimes we must allow ourselves the grace to make mistakes during the process. If we don’t, we will never create. We will never share. Others will never enjoy our work.

Conversely, when we do give ourselves grace in the process, we enjoy the immense satisfaction of creating and sharing our work. It’s very refreshing. Very rewarding.

Isn’t it time to dive in? Time to make some mistakes? Time to blunder?

Who knows, the end result may be more interesting, beautiful, and unique with the mistakes than without them.

Don’t Miss a Thing: Subscribe to this Blog

Fuel For Creatives: Creative Freedom (Part 2 of 3)

Ideation + Creative Freedom + Time = Fuel for Creatives. Read part one on ideation here.Now that we have our idea, we gotta mix in a little freedom to create the idea and add a healthy dose of time to let it steep and brew.Freedom first. A picture = 1,000 words. So here’s my words on creative freedom:

“Freedom” by Zenos Frudakis

Zenos Frudakis’s vision for his sculpture “Freedom,” now roaming the streets of Philadelphia:

I wanted to create a sculpture almost anyone, regardless of their background, could look at and instantly recognize that it is about the idea of struggling to break free. This sculpture is about the struggle for achievement of freedom through the creative process.

Defining ‘freedom’ would be a daunting task even for Webster… we’ll not even bother looking it up. Instead, we’ll ask ourselves a few questions in regards to the Frudakis sculpture.

  • What do you see in this picture?
  • What do you see in the four figures?
  • Where do you picture yourself?
  • How did that last figure finally break out of the ‘mold’?

I have to first want freedom in order to put in the word to get freedom. We must define creative freedom for ourselves, otherwise it’s someone else’s freedom… and that’s not freedom at all.

So if we all desire creative freedom, what is holding us back?

Leave a comment below and we’ll converse on it a bit.

***

Candy is Art, Candymakers Artists

Walking into an old time candy shop is like walking into an enveloping fog of pure joy.

I think I’d like to own a candy shop like that. Maybe when I’m like 70 and am a weird old man. The kids would say ‘let’s go see that crazy candy guy.’ Yeah, I wouldn’t mind being known as the crazy candy guy with the cool candy shop.

My adorable nephew exemplifies how I feel about sweets. You do me proud Joshy!

Names for my shop:

Candy is joy.

Joy Candy.

I Candy? Maybe not.

Candy is a comfort. Seeing and feeling and smelling all the lovelies in the bulk aisle of a grocery store–too much. Puts me on the edge of acceptability. Almost can’t take it.

Look at it–it’s sole purpose is to tantalize the senses. The color, the texture, the carefully orchestrated scents and smells. Come on.

Candymakers are artists unrealized.

What’s not to love? How can someone not like candy? It’s like saying “I don’t like color, joy, and anything other than my job.” This person is an alien. Or they’ve divorced themselves from their true passions.

One of my passions is candy. Not that I sit around and eat it all the time. Sometimes I just look at it or think about it, and after an hour or two of that, it’s time to move on to something else. Maybe taffy instead of the chocolate.

Oh, chocolate. We live in a town where they make M & M’s and man, when the wind blows just right, we’re breathing in chocolate. Little bits of it.

Incidentally, that’s what always grossed me out so much about farts–the thought of where that smell came from and the science of why I’m smelling it–too much. Particles from that place are floating around and entering into my nose. Actual. Particles.

So I’d rather be smelling chocolate. Or fudge. But not that other thing.