My brother is a huge Bill Murray fan so recently having had the “experience” of working with him I asked him if he wouldn’t mind signing a Birthday card for him. Inside he wrote, “grab this day by the neck and kiss it”…my new mantra for life.
WOW!!!! Yeah. Perfect mantra (whether Bill Murray actually said it or not.)
And now here’s the quote we clipped, Murray talking about his teacher Del Close (more WOW!): read more…
(Video link here.) We are always on the lookout for people, books and sites that give an honest view of what it takes to make or do or be something. So were intrigued by this video trailer for The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. The book is Oliver Burkeman’s exploration of various kinds of ”inspirational, success-oriented thinking” and new research that posits that “positive thinking” might not be as useful as we thought. It lead him to a radical take on happiness and success: the power of negative thinking, in which we learn to “bathe in insecurity, uncertainty and failure.”
We’re definitely gonna check it out as we’ve long thought that these principles are actually keys to the creative process. This Guardian piece distills a chunk nicely. read more…
We were stunned at the news of Nora Ephon‘s passing, wondering how could it be? It seemed like she would always be here. As columnist Liz Smith wrote: “What the hell will we do without you?”
Fast Company recently published Failure Does Not Suck, an interview with Sir James Dyson, who spent 15 years inventing the world’s best-selling vacuum cleaner, among other paradigm-altering housewares. Here’s a potent snippet:
You once described the inventor’s life as “one of failure.” How so?
I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That’s how I came up with a solution. So I don’t mind failure. I’ve always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they’ve had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative. read more…
(Video link here.) David Saltman sent us this video with the message “YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS”. And he was right, despite its 13 minutes, which is long for us. This 60 Minute profile tells the story of pianist Derek Paravicini who is blind, with disabilities so severe, he can’t tell his right hand from his left. But man, is this a story of unexpected redemption, of extraordinary gifts that can lie hidden in what may have seemed to a be profoundly limited life. It took a young piano teacher who ‘saw’ and nurtured Derek’s musical language, never imagining quite where it would lead.
The harsh reality of white-painted floors like the ones in our ‘laboratory’ is that they are prone to scratching and losing their pristine look FAST. Since our plywood floors were painted a beautiful oyster shell white (THAT story to come in a later post), it has been our personal challenge to GET OVER the fact that they will get nicked, scratched, stained and who knows what else…
The solution: to view them as a canvas to paint as we wish, when we wish, WHAT we wish. We’ve started a mental file of possibilities. The zig-zag pattern on this rug would translate easily to being painted on the floor read more…
It was raining late this afternoon as we sat writing in ‘the improvised life’s laboratory‘ with the terrace door open. Suddenly we heard the joyous sound of a full-on gospel choir coming through the trees of the Harlem park we look out on. We went out onto the terrace to see who was singing. Instead we saw a lone man sitting under an umbrella (which is there, though it blends with the surroundings) on a bench in the park, taking a moment to enjoy the soft rain and the music reverating through the wet leaves.
We often post ideas on ‘the improvised life’ that we might never make, like the futurist cinder block artist Tom Sachs displayed at recent exhibition Space Program Mars. There is a simple, practical logic to this: these creations remind us of do-able possibilities that, had we the time or wherewithall, we COULD make ourselves.
Sach’s wonderful block is made with ordinary materials: plywood bored with holes, flat corner irons, flat-head screws, possibly a skim of concrete for texture. We find the image infiltrating our prejudices, shifting the notion of what a cinder block can be, offering up the possibilitiy that we can view our daily norms in radically different ways, and maybe, with stuff hidden in our tool chest or at the hardware store, create something new.
After we posted Tom Sach’s wonderful ‘love letter to plywood‘, and mentioned our idea to clad our ancient fridge in plywood, a reader sent us the results of her hungry search for MORE Tom Sachs. Somewhere along the line she stumbled on Sach’s video COLOR, about the strict paint color code he uses in his studio. But it goes way beyond that subject. It will really make you begin to notice colors – the particular color of the colors all around us.
The whole world as we experience visually comes to us through the mystic reality of color.
Video link here. Recently Kottke posted this video of the anonymous Chinese man who stood up to a tank in Tiananmen Square. The footage was taken on June 5, 1989, the day after the Chinese military killed hundreds of civilians in an effort to extinguish democratic protest. Most of us have only seen the photo of him standing before a single tank; in fact, there was a long line of them.
We hadn’t seen the video before and looked to find out more: read more…
(Video link here.) Thomas Roebers film ‘Foli’ shows the rhythmic daily life of Baro, a Malinke village in Guinea; it is entralling. Almost eleven minutes long, it can be a lot to watch in a busy day. Break it up, watch bits over the course of a day. It will bring into focus the rhythm’s of your life.
A man who we assume to be one of the tribe’s leaders speaks occasionally throughout. His words form a kind of mantra, poem, prayer, with a rhythm of their own: read more…
…is what we feel for ‘the improvised life’s ever-astonishing and generous readers, who send us ideas, thoughtful comments, support in endless ways and encouragement.
On Thursday evening, we published pictures of ‘the improvised life’s laboratory – our new space – after all hell had broken loose and we were struggling to get some perspective on a day where everything had gone awry. We did manage to, with the help also of some hilarious and generous Comments from readers. One couldn’t help laughing at the disparate array of chairs that pepper the place. (We’ve got a thing for odd 50′s chairs)…
…and others who basically said LOOK AT THE BIGGER PICTURE, read more…
Since moving, our space has gone from mess to order many times, as we unpack, settle, organize, in stages. Today, just as we thought we were through the worst of it, that is, AFTER we put the pots back on the finally-finished pot racks, all hell broke loose. Everything went wrong that could, as we tried to set up new phones (where IS the phone that’s ringing?) install the new AC to discover it was damaged, clean up the mess left from a project, help an ailing mother from afar, hire a new assistant, IMPOSE SOME ORDER and get this lovely place back to its airy minimal self. Every project we started got interrupted by another going wrong until finally we hit a wall. read more…
. The book is Oliver Burkeman’s exploration of various kinds of ”inspirational, success-oriented thinking” and new research that posits that “positive thinking” might not be as useful as we thought. It lead him to a radical take on happiness and success: the power of negative thinking, in which we learn to “bathe in insecurity, uncertainty and failure.”
