I was walking across 125th Street in Harlem the other day and noticed a guy standing outside of a store, wearing really surprising earrings in one ear. “Wow, cool earrings” I said, “Did you make them?”
“Yeah, and they’ve got a story…” He said with a smile. He told me he dreamed them, dreamed of earrings made of mailbox keys, etched with his astrological sign, Aries. So, he took a couple of mailbox keys to a jeweler and had them etched…in silver.
He was really proud of them.
…Original and beautiful, with a backstory I never would have guessed.. read more…
A good deal of our inspiration comes from seeing how other people improvise to get where they need to go, build what they need, figure out solutions. We also benefit mightily from things that remind us that there is a huge, endlessly creative universe out there, and that we are a part of it. Tom Ashcraft is one of those people whose work gives both views at once.
We wrote about Tom a few months ago and keep an eye on what he is up to. He is one of those ahead-of-his-time people who keep following their path whether one or hundreds of people come along with him.We were thrilled to see that thousands of folks have their eyes on him these days: Recently, Wired posted DIY Recordings of Awakening Sun and last weekend NPR’s All Things Considered interviewed Tom. read more…
This Saturday is Fasnacht, a wildly pagan, pre-Lenten festival that takes place in Helvetia, a tiny town deep in the West Virginia Appalachians that was settled by the Swiss in the 1860′s. It is like Mardi Gras in a cold snowy land: revelers parade through the town wearing terrifying homemade masks and carrying lanterns lit by candles. They they dance for hours to the strains of fiddle music under an effigy of Old Man Winter, hung from the rafters of the community hall. At midnight Old Man Winter - made of pine boughs and old clothes – is thrown onto a roaring bonfire and burned, and his demise is celebrated throughout the night.
For many, Fasnacht is the culmination of months of crafting their costume out of paper mache and elaborate wire constructions, fueled, in part, by the chance to compete with their extraordinarily inventive peers, and for a prize. For others, their costume is impromptu, fashioned at the last minute from whatever is at-hand that will transform them for the night, as they hide their true selves to become, for a few liberating hours, someone else… read more…
The past few days, we’ve received emails and phone calls from friends recounting news reports from Haiti of solutions improvised in the most impossible of circumstances. A New York City search-and-rescue team used ceiling tiles to splint a broken leg. An Israeli surgeon used a ballpoint pen to perform a tracheotomy. A nurse at the airport treated a seriously injured man with what she scrounged: clothing to improvise a bandage; rum to cleanse the wound, a bystander’s Vicodin to quell his pain. Surgeons work by flashlight and camping headlamps, without running water; a team of seven performed 75 operations over three days…
It is all so valiant and amazing, but the horror of what is happening in Haiti seems at times too much to bear, as though no act of hope or courage could matter amidst the relentless darkness and despair. I heard some people say “That country has always been doomed. And now, perhaps we should just leave them to their lot…”
But, light keeps breaking through: evidence of a fierce and generous spirit in people so stripped bare. It’s there read more…
In the often-surprising “Lives” page of last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Robin Black told the story of how her family’s dilapidated home was scouted by a reality tv producer for a show about houses so “spectacularly unkempt” that they make their neighbors mad. At first Black and her husband are shocked and somewhat embarrassed, then they warm to the idea. Caught up in the idea that “our failings would turn us into stars”, they convince themselves of a pat sitcom-ish pitch for the audition tape as towhy their place is so untended: of good-natured overachievers – lives rife with interest and accomplishment – who couldn’t possibly do it all. It was a far cry from the actual reasons for their house’s disrepair, which she and her husband see all too clearly when they weren’t chosen for the show after all:
Voting for the Homies Home Design Award nomination has ended and ‘the improvised life’ was officially nominated, thanks to your votes, though it didn’t make the finals. No worries; we did great!
Your steady barrage of votes kept ‘the improvised life’ on Apartment Therapy’s Hot Movers list for a day and a half, right up front. It made many people so curious about ‘the improvised life’ that they came to check us out; many left enthusiastic comments. Our traffic numbers were HIGH, meaning LOTS of people visited, which helps to expand ‘the improvised life’s visibility, and get the message out – essential fuel for a young blog.
Entering ’the improvised life’ into the awards involved no strategy on our part other than to say “Why not see how we’d do?”, and put ourselves out there. And we got back wonderful, and unexpected, rewards.
So a heartfelt THANK YOU for taking the time to vote, and for being in there with us!
ApartmentTherapy’s Homie Awards honors the best in home blogs for 2009, and I’m thinking “Why NOT see if the 6-month old ‘the improvised life’ could have a chance for a nomination at the last minute. The voting for nominating a blog ends on December 29th, so there are only a couple of days to get this going. If we are nominated, then there will be another round of voting to narrow down the category; and one more to choose the absolute winner.
To nominate ‘the improvised life’, or any other blog, go to The Homies Page. You need to sign in (easy), then vote. Although ‘the improvised life’ seems to cover a lot of the categories – food, kids, tech, etc, I think “Home Design” encompasses it enough (though “Life Design” would be more like it…)
So please vote. Let’s see what happens…
…at the very least, maybe some more folks will join our growing community…
Giorgio Carbone, known to his loyal subjects as has “His Tremendousness” passed away in November in Seborga, the country he created through a masterful feat of improvisation. In 1963, Carbone, a former mimosa farmer, was seized by what the NY Times called “a glorious vision:” that Seborga, five square miles nestled between the Italian Riviera and the Alps, was not part of the surrounding nation of Italy. read more…
This short clip is from a film called Medicine Fiddle, about a unique hybrid music and dance form created by the convergence of French, Scotch and Irish fur traders and trappers, with Native American tribes in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Canada in the 1700 and 1800′s. These mixed-blood people are often called Metis. Their music is rural American fiddle with a strong beat that echoes the step-dancing of the Europeans and the tribal dancing of Native Americans. When they had no access to a real fiddle, they’d made their own out of maple wood and birch bark, or cigar boxes and fishing line.
Early on in the film an old woman talks about how one of the great mixed-blood fiddlers learned to play:
“He said no one taught him how to play. He said what he used to do is, he used to take his violin…because the old Indians always said there was music in the air…
So he used to go out in the woods with his violin, and he used to play…He said you could hear that music. And he could play a violin. That’s where he learned music, from woods, he said, from the trees…”
Imagine that degree of listening, of being open, and wanting to find the way… read more…
After reading yesterday’s post ‘the safety pin (and other everyday object) improvisations’, Lydia Wills sent me photos from fashion designer Junya Watanabe’s 2005 collection, where he used zippers and snaps in the most beautiful way: layers of gold zippers become something totally other. Look closely and you’ll see that, aside from the gold plating, these are essentially standard-issue 8-or-so-inch zippers with their fabric siding in a gorgeous color – lots of them – stitched snugly side-by-side and overlapping. One of the most dazzling permutations of this playing-about with zippers is this sensational collar… read more…
After reading Anni Albers ‘Common Object’ Jewelry, Lydia Wills wrote an inspiring email that is a perfect, if inadvertent, post for ‘the improvised life’. It’s like a bedtime story for grown-ups (with an amazing ending in bold.)
“The lesson of Anni Albers’ jewelry is her ability to look at everyday objects and see just how they can be re-imagined on the body, how their shape and curve and sheen will look when worn. A simple object, not only seen in a new way, but taken a step farther. It’s only improvisation when it goes from the mind’s eye , passing through your hands, and out into the world.
This is exactly the lesson of my favorite jewelry designer, the truly great Vivianna Torun Bulow-Hube, who was born in Sweden and went on to design for Georg Jensen. She set out early to make “anti-jewelry,” that is, jewelry you don’t store in the family vault until the fancy night arrives, and then snap shut in the vault. She worked with materials that lived and breathed out in the open–rocks, stones, pebbles, silver and saw how they could be shaped to fit the human form.
When she was broke in the 50s in France, she used to go to the beach and look for stones and pebbles that she could work into her simple silver wires and hand-hammered necklaces. read more…
During World War II, when materials were in short supply, textile artist Anni Albers improvised charming, inventive jewelry using simple components usually found in hardware and stationary stores, and five-and-dimes. This dramatic necklace uses inexpensive window chain sold on giant wheels at hardware stores and steel bobbi pins. Seeing her necklace, suddenly these objects become BEAUTIFUL and full of unexpected possibilities; our notions of jewelry change. read more…
Dennison Lee is one of several people I know who have shifted their life radically recently, some in response to the recession and their work drying up, and some hoping to find a more satisfying way of living. Dennison, who had plenty of work as a transportation economist, is one of the latter. He spent about a year getting ready for his move “out”, saving money, and trying on different plans in his head before he hit on the right next step.
He gave up his New York City apartment to join forces with Jim Grillo, a farmer he knew from the Union Square Greenmarket and moved four hours upstate to Jim’s farm. He lives there in a gutted Airstream he brought on CraigsList for $3,800, and outfitted to be his spare living quarters.
Dennison has become a farmer and forager as he explores other ways of being in the world. He has intentionally embraced a demanding, deeply improvisational way of living read more…
Every day for a year, as Christopher Rehage walked across China, he made a picture or video of himself, documenting his hair growth along the way. Day One shows him clean shaven, almost bald; he gradually turns into…a completely other version of himself. When he returned, he made this amazing little artwork of a video; it is way more than about watching someone’s hair grow. 3:40 minutes into the piece, it gets really moving and makes you think…
…about what time is…and how we change…and what we make along the way…share…leave for others to find…document….and if we were the same person a year ago, or yesterday?
It manages to look back and forward at the same time.
Before Reg E. Cathey left Manhattan for London’s West End where he will star in the Shawshank Redemption, he wrote this goodbye love song to Manhattan. It reveals a completely-other view of Manna Hatta (the Indian name) and promises to change the way you view the city. Click here to listen to Reggie read it aloud as you read along or just look at the pictures (like some kind of grown-up bedtime story). (The audio will open as a separate page; make the page smaller so it can sit along side the post.) read more…
