(Video link here.) Paulo Goldstein sees himself as a craftsman in his approach to repair. It seems to us, he has the viewpoint of an artist, and certainly his repairs reflect a rare sensibility. We found this short video incredibly illuminating, for the many levels of living he addresses. Here’s the gist, but there’s way more in this 5 minutes:
REPAIR IS BEAUTIFUL began with the idea of solving frustration. A broken object delivers frustration because it doesn’t achieve its functionality, but the same principle applies to a broken system that caused the financial crisis, which has affected our lives since 2008. In a time of uncertainty, taking things into our own hands and having the feeling of control back can be very therapeutic. Repair is Beautiful aims to give back this feeling of control – by scaling down a major society problem to a human size and projecting frustration upon broken objects that can be repaired through design and craftsmanship. The final outcome is a collection of intriguingly repaired objects imbued with new meaning and functionality. The once rejected objects reflect the environment that created them and call us to question our society as a whole.
Check out Goldstein’s director’s chair repair inspired by a suspension bridge:
When the wise, inventive, not-terribly-technological Christoph Niemann tried to create an app, it became pretty “interesting. He documented the process in the New Yorker recently and in doing so, a wonderful distillation of the creative process and struggle:
I explored countless (but crucial) dead ends, and it all came down to the most important struggle at the center of all creative pursuits: being the artist and the editor at the same time. read more…
Maria Robledo sent us these words from Mother Theresa. They’ve been reverberating as we think of the people we know that really live them…wondering if we can find —improvise— ways to do that daily.
According to motivation scientist Heidi Grant Halvorson at at 99U“Making if-then plans to tackle your current projects, or reach your goals, is probably – without exaggerating – the most effective single thing you can do to ensure your success.”
Yikes! Sign us up! What do we have to do?
If-Then thinking works like this: You decide in advancewhen and where you will take specific actions to reach your goal and then create the statement: If X happens, then I will do Y.
“IF THIS” becomes the trigger that spurs the “THEN THAT” action.
Last Thursday, ‘improvised life’ reader Sue Anderson sent us these extraordinary photograph taken during the massive May blizzard that hit the Midwest last week, with this report:
This goose with a “can-do” attitude may be of interest to you. I suppose you have heard about the snow storm currently underway in the US Midwest. Here in southeastern Minnesota classes are cancelled, roads are closed, travel is not advised, but this mother Canada goose remains on the job. This photo sent to me by my friend Greg Munson who lives in Rochester, MN, where today’s record May snowfall amount will likely exceed a foot…..
The goose is nesting on a city-owned retention pond at the back of his property. Greg tells me that the goose still remains on the nest today, although some of the snow has melted from her back so she is not as deeply buried as before.
…while we are still getting light snow and sleet today, our temps are predicted to climb from near freezing up to around 70 degrees in the next 4 days with snow giving way to rain. Although it will be hard to learn if those diligently protected goose eggs end up being lost to flooding, we have to keep in mind that this is often nature’s way.
Here’s the first image Sue sent; the valiant goose’s head is just above the snowline: read more…
Dig this brilliance from E.B. White, author of the great Charlotte’s Web. He starts his day plan with a Principle — “…change the world and have one hell of a good time” — instead of a schedule, and knocks all the day-planning strategies and productivity experts on their heads. Yay!
(Video link here.) In the annals of self-helpism, doubt is considered something to overcome, to find ways around, to MASTER. We’ve discovered time and again that that is easier said than done. Doubt seems to come with territory of being creative, and most of the people we know just find ways to soldier through…or be felled by it periodically, only to pick themselves up and keep going.
Just as we were navigating another wave of it ourselves, wondering ARE WE CRAZY?!!, we came across artist Paul Zelevanzky’s curious antidote: a 40-second video offering a very different view of doubt:
Doubt is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
We can’t say exactly how Zelevansky’s somewhat zen-like video works, but it definitely helped to SHIFT our view. It reminded us read more…
Q-Does it matter that what you’ve achieved, with your online special and your tour can’t be replicated by other performers who don’t have the visibility or fan base that you do?
Why do you think those people don’t have the same resources that I have, the same visibility or relationship? What’s different between me and them?
Q-You have the platform. You have the level of recognition.
So why do I have the platform and the recognition?
Q-At this point you’ve put in the time.
There you go. There’s no way around that. read more…
When we first saw this sign, we though ‘Yeah, for sure’. Then we started thinking more critically about fear and realized it is not always a bad thing. We searched “antidote to fear” and found bits and pieces about love antidoting fear, and especially, being present antidoting fear. Then we stumbled on a rough draft of a speech called “The Mastery of Fear or Antidotes for Fear” by Martin Luther King Jr. in an archive at Stanford. Here’s an essential piece:
(Video link here.) This video of artist and musician Brian Eno is full of interesting ideas about the creative process. The best, to us, is right up front in the first 1:44 minutes:
I think one of the things art offers you is the chance to surrender, the chance to not be in control any longer. Now if you think about it, most of the encouragement is to take control. What we like doing —and that’s the reason we enjoy sex, drugs, art and religion— what we like doing is surrendering. They’re really all ways of losing ME. They’re ways of losing yourself.
…The biggest mistake is to wait for inspiration. It won’t come looking for you. It’s not so much creating something. It’s noticing when something is starting to happen. Noticing it and then building on it and saying OK. That’s new. That hasn’t happened before. What does it mean? Where can I go with it?
(Video link here.) Professional skydiver Erik Roner asked himself a question he’d wondered for a long time: what would happen if he sky-dived with an umbrella? Then he tried it, just to see what would happen. A man after our own improvisational hearts.
Question the “rule(s)”…
…ask “What would happen if…?
…and then TRY YOUR IDEA OUT!
Sometimes you break new ground, and sometimes you RE-discover what someone else already figured out, often years before… read more…
Over the past several months, Pixar’s former story artist Emma Coates‘ 22 Rules of Good Storytelling has been flying around the web. Although we find it to be excellent advice for writers, we found annotating it made it even better: a list of fine life principles for any creative soul. Our favorite:
No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
Here’s our annoted list made simply by substituting words specific-to-writing with more general ones.
You admire a characterperson for trying more than for their successes.
Simplify. Focus. Combine characters elements. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
What is your character are you good at, comfortable with? Throw yourself the polar opposite at them. Challenge themyourself. How do theyyou deal? read more…
Cara de Silva sent alerted us to Smithsonian’s wonderful Jane Goodall Reveals Her Lifelong Fascination With…Plants?. Here is a particularly illuminating chunk, about a tree (which has come to be one of the most commented on subjects by our readers). If you don’t have time to read it all at once, it’s worth bookmarking:
Just over ten years after 9/11, on a cool, sunny April morning in 2012, I went to meet a Callery pear tree named Survivor. She had been placed in a planter near Building 5 of the World Trade Center in the 1970s and each year her delicate white blossoms had brought a touch of spring into a world of concrete. In 2001, after the 9/11 attack, this tree, like all the other trees that had been planted there, disappeared beneath the fallen towers.
But amazingly, in October, a cleanup worker found her, smashed and pinned between blocks of concrete. She was decapitated and the eight remaining feet of trunk were charred black; the roots were broken; and there was only one living branch. (see far right of photo, below). read more…
(Video link here.) In a recent post at the Houdini File, David Saltman rounded up a huge trove of formal public challenges to magician/escape artist extraordinaire Harry Houdini, inviting him to escape from all manner of restraints, one more complex and seemingly-impossible than the next. According to Saltman, Houdini accepted every single challenge issued:
“every challenge a new opportunity and a path to glory, he always said ‘Yes.‘ He never backed down – he took on all comers.”
Saltman’s rigorous research has taught us that Houdini, who has long been seen as a kind of caricature, was an immensely disciplined man, who adhered to a fierce set of personal principles and practices designed to help him master his craft, and the undermining weakness that plagues most people: fear. Each challenge issued forced him to solve a whole new set of problems, to use his talents and knowledge in new ways, and almost always, to improvise. We love his principle of viewing every challenge as an opportunity. He spent his life cultivating that mindset.
We are knocked out by this variation of the beautiful sleight-of-hand Houdini would do for impromptu requests to read more…
. He starts his day plan with a Principle — “…change the world and have one hell of a good time” — instead of a schedule, and knocks all the day-planning strategies and productivity experts on their heads. Yay!
