(Video link here.) Tracy Metro is a designer and the host of I Live with My Mom on SpacesTV, where she makes over bedrooms of twenty- somethings who are still living at home with Mom. “I rid them of their soccer trophies, Legos and stuffed animals in favor of an adult launching pad for life.”
She’s applied her own small-space thinking to The Retro Metro, a houseboat she and her husband bought a few years ago. When we saw the before-and-after photos, we had to know the story. So we interviewed Tracy and spliced-in pictures and plans to show you just how big a project it was. read more…
These days, we know A LOT of people who are in the middle of a seachange, ourselves included: NOT yet knowing what exactly we’re in the process of creating, or where we’ll end up. So stumbling on this quote by T.S. Eliot was heartening and affirming. It’s just THE DEAL: in creating something new, we can’t control the process, and need to endure the discomfort of not having the answer, yet...and faith that it will come.
Every morning, a friend calls me, or I call him, with a poem to start the day. This seven-month-old tradition arose out of an ‘improvised life’ post called “What’s NOT wrong?” about NOT jumping out of bed to check email or read the news first thing in the morning. Instead, start with a few minutes of reading something really GREAT…anything that reminds you of possibilities, other ways of thinking, grounds you.
My friend and I discovered that reading – or listening to – a poem or two has the effect of placing us right IN the moment, while casting a great deal of light on things, often bringing Nature right into our apartments. Of all the books of poems we read from – of Mary Oliver and Pablo Neruda and Su Tung-P’o to name a few- we’ve found the most treasures in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry. I’m not sure “sacred” describes the selection of poems; were I to see the book in a store, I might pass it by, thinking “sacred” to mean religious. The books editor, Stephen Mitchell, calls them “poems of fulfillment.”
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…
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…
Recently, a smart, lovely article by blogger Erin Boyle on Urban Foraging made a connection that we knew but were somehow too tired or blocked to make: that the stunningly fragrant linden trees in bloom in many parts of the country (and in New York City) are the very same ingredient used for an age-old tisane, or calming tea, served commonly in France. Its leaves and blossoms can be picked judiciously without harming the tree, and easily dried to make an herb tea to have on hand all year.
Erin told the story of getting up the courage to actually “forage” some linden in her Brooklyn neighborhood, 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…
About a year ago, we wrote a post called “On Things ‘Not Looking Good While You’re Working on Them”, about the difficult – and often ongoing – “middle” of a project when things haven’t come together. We were heartened by artist John Currin‘s revelation about the creative process: the ONLY way to make thing anything happen is if you are able to endure the uncomfortable mid-point period of chaos and disorder, when things don’t look good.
Which is what we found on moving day 10 days ago. Despite our best efforts to complete our “simple” renovation (home of ‘improvised life’s new laboratory) and have things all pulled together when we moved into our new space, the movers arrived at the new space with a giant restaurant stove that was, inexplicably read more…
‘improvised life’ editor-at-large David Saltman has just finished writing a historical novel starring Harry Houdini. From David we’ve learned about the amazing achievements of this real life superhero that go way beyond his well-known escapes from straightjackets and handcuffs. We’ve come to know a little of ‘the inside’ of the great magician.
Houdini trained his mind and body rigorously perhaps to a level never achieved by anyone else. His daily work was a kind of meditation. He practiced sleight of hand and acrobatics, of course, but even more important was his mental and emotional training, aimed at overcoming the natural fears of the body and mind. Wrote Houdini:
My chief task has been to conquer fear. The public sees only the thrill of the accomplished trick; they have no conception of the tortuous preliminary self-training that was necessary to conquer fear. No one except myself can appreciate how I have to work at this job every single day, never letting up for a moment.
This allowed him to solve life and death problems in the moment read more…
(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.
We were talking about imperfection, wabi sabi, and how messy the creative process is when, out of the blue, David Saltman said “The imperfect is our paradise.” He looked surprised and then said “Wallace Stevens.” He had called up from memory the best line of a famous Wallace Stevens’ poem called The Poems of Our Climate.
We looked it up. It was a little difficult at first, until we read it out loud. O-h-h-h! It became clear as a bell.
So we looked for an audio file to post here, so you could listen to this incredible poem that is about where we humans really live. We think it is a lovely way to start the day (poems often are, as we discovered a while back, and wrote about.) We couldn’t find a recording of it anywhere. So you’ll have to read it out loud yourself, or just stick with that one true and dazzling line, above. read more…
We wondered if Neruda’s life was a magical and sensuous as depicted in his poetry and in the movie Il Postino. Then yesterday, we stumbled on images of Neruda’s homes. Over the years, he had three: all with spectacular open views – charming, unique, whimsical, deeply personal spaces in lush surroundings. He named one ”La Chascona”, a Quechua word meaning disorderly or disheveled – as an affectionate reference to the red curly hair of his third wife (go on a virtual tour of it here.) We read other descriptions as we looked at the pictures we found at the Pablo Neruda Foundation, of Isla Negra and La Sebastiana. But the images speak for themselves – an insight into a poet’s personal style: read more…
; it’s called The Speed Exercise:
, accompanied by an image by the great photographer 
and 
and 
to name a few- we’ve found the most treasures in 
. I’m not sure “sacred” describes the selection of poems; were I to see the book in a store, I might pass it by, thinking “sacred” to mean religious. The books editor, Stephen Mitchell, calls them “poems of fulfillment.”
. 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.”
, which express a zen-like awareness of the detailed life around him. We love 
