(Video link here.) This morning, we found several emails from readers alerting us to this video that is flying around the internet like wildfire. It’s about 9-year-old Caine who devised an elaborate arcade out of cardboard, great quantities of packing tape, plastic toys – whatever he could find – over the course of a summer vacation hanging around his dad’s used auto parts store. You can read the backstory here.
Though for us a bit too long and treacly toward the end, it is really worth checking out the first 6 or so minutes to witness the work of a truly inventive mind, and BIG spirit, who made a great deal out of what was at hand. ”No” does not appear to be in his kid’s vocabulary.
One of the best lines is from Caine’s dad, when his son said he wanted to buy a claw machine: “Why don’t you just build it?”… a perfect question. So Caine did.
We can only imagine what a kid like Caine might grow up to be, and do.
(Video link here.) Vicki Celestines, one of our readers, sent us this great compilation of “compelling TED Talks on Money.” Together, the eleven videos make up a unique “crash course in economics and personal finance” which we can certainly use. They cover topics such as putting a value on nature; raising kids to be entrepreneurs; poverty, money, and love; and investing in a post-crash world.
(Video link here.) Sue Anderson, an ‘improvised life’ reader, sent us this GREAT video of artist Chuck Close‘s powerful, simple, forthright words-to-live-by from an ongoing CBS series “Notes to Self”. It’s well-worth suffering through the 30-second commercial for its memorable four minutes of pure wisdom (don’t bother with the last minute of news anchor blather). In the course of the video, Close outlines eight perfect rules for living…as true as we’ve ever seen: read more…
(Video link here.) Cara de Silva sent us an email with this video and one sentence: “Four plus minutes of extraordinary nourishment for the mind, eyes, and heart.”
We thought it would make a fabulous breakfast/start to your day, in the first days of Spring. (We found it to be even lovelier with the corny violins off.)
Note: Wait just a few seconds to close the annoying ad.
(Video link here.) We love this 20-second finish-to-start folding of an origami rhino; For us, a simple reminder of the process of creation: a rhino that once started as a simple square of paper.
(Video link here.) This morning we received an email from a reader with a Vimeo link and these few intriguing words:
This man is the epitome of the improvised life daily and he has achieved this with a grace that makes me rethink my own daily life.
So we watched and were knocked out, and felt the same way.
Ethiopia-born Sentayehu Teshale is so natural in his moves that we hardly knew he’s handicapped; in fact, he seems to reject the very idea of disability, redefining his feet as his hands. Listening to his words, we thought “This is the thinking of a true creative.”
First I imagine something, then I store it in my mind and wherever I go I see it. It may take a long time to make it but because it stays in my mind, I’ll eventually make it.
Teshale envisioned a completely different life for himself than his circumstances seemed to dictate —he was told he should be a beggar — and then created it, along with many beloved objects.
(Video link here.) Our friend Fast Forward sent us an illuminating post from Gilttaste called “What Makes Sushi Great”. It’s about newly released film, “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”, about Jiro Ono, 85 years old, a revered sushi chef and one of Japan’s Living National Treasures who runs a tiny, legendary restaurant inside a Tokyo subway station:
“…the movie focuses on the life of a man who is utterly devoted to his craft. Jiro doesn’t have a secret to why his sushi is more astonishing than anyone else’s. What he says, over and over, is that great sushi—and, by extension, greatness itself— is the result of hard work, of dedication, of a commitment to excellence that, in the end, trumps everything else in life.
His search for perfection is eternal. At 85, he hasn’t stopped working; he says he hates holidays because they are too long to spend away from the restaurant. Chefs, in particular, who have seen the film don’t hesitate to call it “inspiring.” To watch the gorgeously shot scenes of him forming pieces of sushi, jewel-like and dripping with soy sauce and life, is to wish that you might one day make so much beauty. (Indeed, a film critic friend said that her reaction to seeing this was not hunger, but to want to go home and make jewelry.)
… Still, there is another side to this mastery…” read more…
(Video link here) We are totally charmed by this video of Salvador Dali on an episode of What’s My Line, an old tv game show in which blindfolded contestants had to guess the occupation of the special guest by asking yes/no questions. Here are all of the questions that Dali answered yes to (we’ve boldfaced ones that confounded the host):
A still from the film yves klein: la revolution bleue (the blue revolution), found via Matt Olson‘s inspired blog Rolu, which so often gives us a new view. We would see the world very differently without it.
(Video link here.) Frank ‘Sugar Chile’ Robinson was eight years old when he performed Caldonia in the 1946 MGM Film No Leave No Love. His pure boogie-woogie is notable not only because he is so young, but because of his unique playing style, where he uses fists and slams to create his fabulous sound. Neither of his parents were musicians and by age two he was playing the piano by ear, formulating his own style based on “what worked”.
Soon after we found it, we happened to be watching a video of the great jazz pianist Thelonius Monk playing the piano in the 50′s. (Video link here). He, too, plays in a unique, very personal style, bundled fingers seeming to slam the keys to make stunningly clear sounds, and often playing with one hand crossed over the other instead of following the usual divided down the middle piano style: left plays left of middle, right plays right of middle. He started playing the piano when he was six years old and was said to be self-taught. read more…
(Video link here.) In 2008, a reader of TIME magazine asked Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson this question: “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?”
Here’s a slightly overwrought video version of his answer, along with the transcript of Tyson’s words: a stunning and essential message.
The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth the atoms that make up the human body are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among them went unstable in their later years they collapsed and then exploded scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas cloud that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems stars with orbiting planets, and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. read more…
A couple of weeks ago in the New Yorker, Vince Aletti wrote a brief description of an exhibition of photographer Alec Soth’s work:
Soth’s subject here is elusive; he seeks out people who’ve gone off the grid, tracking survivalists, drifters, and recluses to their makeshift lairs…
…Working through his own ambivalence—what he describes as “the desire to run away and the knowledge that you can’t”—Soth take us to a place that’s almost as seductive as it is forbidding.
Our own ambivalent ”desire to run away” — the fantasy that it is possible, the possibility of stepping out of our lives — sent us to Soth’s website to see his work. We culled some intriguing images of makeshift spaces and things from the many projects he features. They are original, eccentric, mysterious, resourceful, reflecting very improvised lives. With each one, we wonder about—and imagine— the backstory. read more…
