(Video link here.) The latest video from cyclist Danny MacAskill has an added feature: insight into MacAskill’s thinking and interior approach to his challenging stunts and excursions: JOYRIDE.
Related posts: joy ride: practice makes wondrous perfection
danny macaskill’s joy ride
danny macaskill’s bike lesson (setbacks + difficulties + perseverance = mastery)
gifts + inspiration for bikers (and walkers)
weekend fun: new danny macaskill video
(Video link here.) We can’t think of a better way to celebrate this lovely ordinary day than with this video of the great Maira Kalman – whose remarkable books are a blend of images and words into vivid stories – giving her two cents on what it is to be human. She covers a lot of ground: work, love, identity, life, death, THE POINT OF IT ALL.
Our favorite gem: read more…
Good Maker is running a contest for bloggers trying to make a social impact. Selected by popular vote, the winner will get $1,000 for the cause they support plus a $500 prize. The ‘Blogs for Good’ run the gamut, from blogs that advocate for the positive aspects of pit-bull-like dogs or the virtues of home-grown foods to fashion bloggers who advocate for various social justice issues. We found out about the contest from Dese’Rae L. Stage who is ‘the improvised life’s remarkable new part-time assistant.
She has entered her blog ‘Live Through This,’ which is a photography-based project about 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.
It is utterly compelling and heartening.
Thanks David!!
Related posts: 94-year-old matilda klein’s gracefully defiant dance
carpenter sentayehu teshale re-envisions ‘disability’
‘nothing is impossible’ defies ‘disability’
signmark and the very loud message of deaf rap
(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…
photo: sally schneider
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…
Recently, two friends described the deeply challenging situations they were going through as “really interesting”. They are both artists, and we thought, ‘Ah-h-h just like them to view difficulty from a different lens’.
We’ve been trying on the idea, with which we’ve become increasingly comfortable since we started writing ‘the improvised life’. Instead of just reacting, we’re trying to really LOOK at the difficult situations we find ourselves in, shift the view, see what possibilities they hold, what is interesting about them.
Easier said than done.
Then we read The Good Short Life, an astonishing essay that appeared last July in the New York Sunday Times. Dudley Clendinen, a former national correspondent and editorial writer for the Times wrote candidly about his diagnosis of ALS, a painfully fatal disease: read more…
UPDATE: Since we first published this post, Una Morera’s video has become inaccessable online, most likely because it was made an official selection for the New York Food Festival. Yay for Morera. So sadly for us, you’ll have to wait until it’s made public again. Fortunately, we sussed the video and its essential quotes, below.
When we first got wind of the Una Morera’s short documentary about Maurizio Negrini, a 3rd generation Italian baker, we callously thought “h-mm-m, bread…probably too specific …better suited for a food blog.”
We found that this beauty of a video goes way beyond its subject into much deeper realms…or perhaps it is that it reminds us what handmade bread is really about. “Artisan baker” is about bread as nourishment and as metaphor, bread as cosmic substance, thoughtfully expressed by Negrini: read more…
sally schneider
After Scott McDowell attended a class in theatrical improvising with Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere, he faced a quandery: how to reconcile a basic tenet of productivity – saying “No” and setting limits – with the essential principle of improvising – saying “Yes, and…”.
“Yes, and” is a protocol that allows for anything to happen, and it goes like this: No matter what your fellow actors present to you, instead of negating it, belittling it, or disagreeing with it, your job is to say, “Yes, and…” Accept the scenario as it’s presented to you (regardless of where you wanted it to go), and then to add to it.
Having found this excercise compelling, McDowell decided to see what happened if he practiced “Yes, and…” in the “real” world of work, family and obligations for 24 hours. He summed them up recently in a post on 99%. Although he found saying “Yes, and…” doesn’t work all the time, it is a powerful tool. Our favorite revelation: read more…
meg hitchcock
If you look closely at this image, you’ll discover that it is composed of the Buddhist Prayer for Peace, each letter cut from the Methodist Hymnal. It is the work of artist Meg Hitchcock, who letter-by-letter, cuts up sacred texts and reformulates them into others, creating a compelling and transcendent fusion. read more…
photo: Wallace G. Levison
We love pictures of people leaping – taking the leap – and publish them frequently. Then we came across this image of a woman tentatively wading in. We realized that sometimes going slowly, taking little step by little step, getting used to the territory is also taking a leap – an act of daring and beginning.
Via Retronaut
Related posts: how do you know when to take the leap?
do you want to fly?
jump! leap! (philippe halsman)
fly! (merce cunningham)
photo of the day: ‘leap into the void’
visualphotos.com
Yesterday afternoon, I looked at the massive to-do list that would keep me working into the evening and…actually for days – an impossible amount of tasks from writing posts to the endless details of moving to tending an elderly mom’s affairs.
I wondered if there was another way to be handling things that allowed for more spaciousness, and made a mental note to test out more deeply some of the methods we’ve posted about here (busyness being a state that seems to affect just about everybody these days). Then I continued to barrel through a very scheduled day. Until late evening when suddenly CRASH, life slammed into the control tower!
(Video link here.) They say that moving homes is one of the most stressful of life events. We are finding that to be true, due to the sheer volume of details that makes up a life: it’s as though we’re in an avalanche, crushed by how much there is to do. Though we keep things pretty spare, we are wondering how things got so complex.
What if we didn’t have all this stuff and accounts and fierce need for HOME? It got us thinking about the video we saw recently about Daniel Suelo who one day decided to give up all money. He moved to the wilderness of southeastern Utah, where he makes a cave his home, foraging for food, living by his wits, creativity and the generosity of friends. Says Daniel: read more…
Hans Hofmeester filmed his daughter Lotte once a week for the past twelve years. Then he edited snippets of film together to produce this time-lapse video of her growing from a baby into lovely 12-year-old, in under 3 minutes.
For us, GROWING is the operative word. Once you get past 40 or 50, aging often becomes something of conceptual downer, with images of life being half over, on a downward slope toward…the end. This video reminds us that aging is about growing, learning, understanding, revelation, fulfillment…and always: possibility.
via Kottke
Related posts: three keys to a long life
messages from the future, written in the past
role model: lucien freud, 82, painting
advanced style: doing your thing at any age
the dalai lama on $$, loss, “failure”
