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Archive for the category “Creativity”

23 Oct 2012

music of poetry

Poet Dorothea Lasky said:

The music of poetry is a delight for the mind.

And when it’s read out loud—or set to music and sung—it’s also a great delight to the ear.

i carry your heart with me

Poem by e.e. cummings/performed by Michael Hedges (with David Crosby and Graham Nash singing harmony) from the album Taproot. Cummings is my favorite poet and Hedges is a wonderful musician.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

adventures of Isabel

Poem by Ogden Nash/performed by Natalie Merchant from the album Leave Your Sleep. I love the energy, the arrangement, the words, Merchant’s voice…everything! It’s my favorite tune on the album.

Isabel met an enormous bear

Isabel, Isabel, she didn’t care
bear was hungry, bear was ravenous
bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous
bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you
How do, Isabel, now I’ll eat you
Isabel, Isabel, she didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
Washed her hands straightened her hair up
Then Isabel ate the bear up

Once in a night black as pitch
Isabel met a wicked old witch
witch’s face was cross and wrinkled
witch’s gums with teeth were sprinkled
Ho, ho, Isabel! old witch crowed
I’ll turn you into an ugly toad
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
showed no rage, showed no rancor
turned the witch into milk and drank her
Oh yeah,

Isabel!!!

Isabel met a hideous giant
Isabel so self reliant
giant was hairy, giant horrid
One eye in the middle of his forehead
morning, Isabel, giant said
I’ll grind your bones and make my bread
Isabel, Isabel, she didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
nibbled on his zwieback that she fed off
When it was gone, she cut the giant’s head off

Isabel!!!

Isabel met a troublesome doctor
punched and poked till he really shocked her
doctor’s talk was of coughs and chills
doctor’s satchel bulged with pills
doctor said wow Isabel
Swallow this, it will make you well
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry

Took those pills from the pill concocter
Then Isabel cured the doctor, yeah, oh yeah

ozymandias

And now for something completely different.

Poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley/performed by JJ Burnel (bass guitarist for the English group, the Stranglers) on the “b” side of his single, “Freddie Laker.” (Lyrics included in the video.) I confess to having once stolen a book from the public library–and it was the collected works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. I memorized this poem. I was in high school, but still, what was I thinking? What I’m thinking now is that this is actually pretty cool.

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20 Oct 2012

a day in someone else’s life

If you ever get an urge to peek into what’s going on today in Amsterdam, Ann Arbor, or Auckland; Denver, Dubai, or Dublin; Lisbon, Lodz, or London; Oahu, Oeiras, or Oslo; Riga, Rome, or Rotterdam; Taipei, Tehran, or Toronto; Venice, Vilnius, or Vrsovice—or more than 300 other locations around the world, you can satisfy it quite easily.

More than 400 people regularly post photos from wherever they live on City Daily Photo blogs. I originally found this amazing gateway into all parts of the world via the City Daily Photo portal, but the portal has been down for several months. From what I recently read on the CDP Facebook page, it should be coming back up soon, which is great news. It’s always fun to while away an hour (or more) by stepping virtually into a few other worlds.

In the meantime, there’s another blog, CDPB Theme Day, where you can see thumbnail photos from the bloggers who post pictures on the current month’s theme. Another way to locate CDP blogs is from the lists some bloggers post on their own sites. This list from a Seattle CDP blogger was last updated a bit over a year ago, but is still a happy hunting ground for photo blogs.

I’ve followed more than a dozen different CDP blogs over the past few years, some for a few months and others over the long haul. My current favorites, with sample photos, are:

Santa Fe Daily Photo

Namaste

Oeiras (Portugal) and environs Daily Photo

Viewpoint

Adelaide (Australia) & Beyond

Tulips

Tulips

Salt Spring Photos (Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada)

Waiting for the Sun

Getting these bird’s-eye views into other people’s days, worlds, and worldviews reminds me how much more there is to notice and appreciate and consider than whatever may be right in front of me at the moment.

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18 Oct 2012

redemption songs

The story begins with Mark Johnson—a Grammy Award-winning music producer and engineer—hurrying through a crowded New York City subway. All of a sudden, he hears two monks making music, playing and singing in a language he doesn’t understand. He walks toward them and becomes part of the ad hoc audience, 200 or so people who have stopped moving toward their individual destinations in order to cluster together and listen to the music. If it hasn’t occurred to him before, it hits him now that music is a way to bring people together.

Back home in Santa Monica, Johnson is walking along a street when he hears the voice of Roger Ridley, a street musician who performs regularly on the 3rd Street Promenade. Johnson retraces his steps to ask Ridley if he can record him—and then take the song around the world to overdub the tracks of other musicians. That is the birth of “Stand By Me,” as produced by Playing For Change.

After 10 years, there’s a documentary, Playing For Change: Peace Through Music; then a CD, Playing For Change: Songs Around the World; and still later another CD, PFC2. The Playing For Change Band is formed with musicians from the U.S., the Netherlands, Zimbabwe, the Congo, Italy, and South Africa. As Johnson & company take all of these songs around the world, PFC stops along the way to develop eight music schools (in South Africa, Ghana, Nepal, Rwanda, and Mali), and then creates Playing For Change Day, an annual event to unite people through music and raise money to develop more music schools and programs.

Roger Ridley dies in November 2005. But the story hasn’t come close to ending.

~ ~ ~

You just never know the magnitude or the nature of the spark that could ignite—that could even change the world—through the simple act of creating something that’s meaningful in this moment only to you.

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16 Oct 2012

create something today

It seems like a good day for creating, doesn’t it ? So go ahead:

  • Scribble a poem.
  • String some beads together.
  • Knit and purl a few rows of that sweater.
  • Borrow a coloring book from a kid and pick out a page to color. If you don’t have crayons, you can use some of mine.
  • Take a photograph of something outside your front door that looks like autumn.
  • Make up your own song—and sing it, of course.
  • Draw a picture on a postcard and mail it to yourself.
  • Tie dye your kitchen curtains.
  • Choose a color scheme for redecorating your bathroom.
  • Cut out some pieces of fabric for your quilt.
  • Turn a bunch of flowers into a bouquet.
  • Build a shelf and paint it.
  • Cut out some magazine pictures and make a collage.
  • Try a new recipe or experiment with an old one.
  • Make someone happy.
  • Make someone else giggle.
  • Create your own list of things to create.
  • Improvise. Riff. Make something up.

ta da!

After you complete your creation, you can assume this pose. (You don’t have to, but you’re entitled.)

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13 Oct 2012

it’s still Newk’s time

I didn’t have much exposure to either jazz or classical music until I graduated from high school into the wider world (one town over from mine). Among the group of friends I made in college, it was almost a requirement to own certain jazz LPs, among them Quiet Nights by Miles Davis, Song for my Father by Horace Silver, and My Favorite Things by John Coltrane. They provided the backdrop for the many serious discussions we held in each other’s apartments  ’round midnight and well into the early morning.

When I got together with my partner, R.C., who was 14 years older than me and had for a time been a professional jazz musician (keyboards), we merged our music collections. His was much more extensive and diverse than mine, but those three albums were some of the few we both owned copies of.

Classical music made more of an impression on me than the jazz did, and somehow I didn’t let 30 years of living with a jazz musician impact my lack of appreciation for the music. That was his thing, not mine. When he died seven and a half years ago, I picked out a few CDs from his collection, let his son take all that he wanted, and donated the rest to the public library. I did play Kind of Blue by Miles over and over for months, but then I put it away.

Sonny Rollins

I developed my current love of modern jazz pretty much on my own several years ago by borrowing CDs from the library to listen to. After deciding who and what I liked, I built up my own modest jazz collection. I still don’t appreciate Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, or (don’t strike me dead, Lord, I did purchase one of his CDs) Thelonious Monk. I dug deeper into Coltrane, added to the Miles collection, and welcomed back Oscar Peterson, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Gerry Mulligan. I also “discovered,” among others, Art Blakey, Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, and wonder-of-wonders, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Better late than never.

saxophone colossus

Sonny Rollins is one of the minority of his peers, it seems, who not only hasn’t succumbed to drug and/or alcohol addiction or otherwise died too young, but who is also still creating, composing, and performing. At 82, he just this month performed a 90-minute set at Davies Symphony Hall for the 30th annual San Francisco Jazz Festival. A few years ago, he headlined the New Mexico Jazz Festival, and I was severely disappointed that I wasn’t able to attend. (Wherever he is, I’m sure R.C. was shaking his head over that.)

One of my favorite albums of his is Don’t Stop the Carnival, recorded live at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in April 1978. I was actually living there, but in complete oblivion, at the time, so I missed that, too.

Two of his best-known albums are Saxophone Colossus and The Bridge. I happen to like Sonny Side Up with Sonny Stitt and Dizzy Gillespie quite a lot, too.

His signature song is “St. Thomas,” from Saxophone Colossus:

And here’s “The Bridge,” from The Bridge:

One more: the title tune from Tenor Madness, with John Coltrane:

Everyone should have a little Sonny Rollins around for times that are already good (to make them even better) and times that are not so good (to smooth out the bumps or at least make you want to get up and move). Go, Sonny! Long may you run.

~ ~ ~

Note: Newk’s Time is the title of an album released in 1958. Rollins got the nickname because he resembled–and was once mistaken for–a major league baseball player named Donald Newcombe, whose nickname was Newk.

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29 Sep 2012
1 Comment

she changes: Janet Echelman’s lacenet

She Changes, 2005 – Porto, Portugal

Janet Echelman spent seven years as an Artist-in-Residence at Harvard. She left Harvard to go to India on a Fulbright lectureship with the intention of giving painting exhibitions around the country.

Although she arrived in Mahabalipuram, a fishing village in India, her paints did not. Without her paints, she needed to find another medium. First she tried working with bronze casters, but that was expensive and unwieldy. Then one night, she notice the fishnet the fishermen were bundling on the beaches, and that sparked her imagination.

She wondered “if nets could be a new approach to sculpture: a way to create volumetric form without heavy, solid material.” The works she’s created are ethereal and stunning, unlike anything I’ve seen before. I really want one!

but what if her paints HAD shown up?

Echelman was probably dismayed, to say the least, that her paints hadn’t made it to India. But she didn’t give up and go home. It didn’t stop her from doing what she’d come to India to do. She took the materials at hand and used them in a way they’d never been used before. Although she didn’t have her paints, she still had her imagination and her creative spirit.

Things hadn’t gone according to her plan. And it was a very good thing they didn’t because if they had, we wouldn’t have these gorgeous lacy sculptures to look at. It’s important to have a plan. But it’s equally important to not be so committed to the specifics of the plan that when things begin to fall apart, you fall apart, too.

she changes

Change. Adapt. Be flexible. Look around you. Create from what’s already there.

More views of the piece She Changes (above) can be seen on Echelman’s website, which also describes the materials used in this and other sculptures and their method of construction.

And you can listen to Echelman–and see slides of her work–in this TED talk called “Taking Imagination Seriously.”

Posted in Art, Creativity and tagged , , ,
27 Sep 2012

arts & the mind

It’s more than sad and disappointing that so many elementary and secondary schools are decreasing art programs or cutting them out altogether. It’s a cost-saving measure that hurts not only the students, but also society in general. Arts–and creativity–are not add-ons or extras. They aren’t really dispensable.

Humans have been making art, in the form of painting, drawing, and carving, as well as music, since at least 20,000 BC–possibly even since 40,000 BC. Maybe it was engaging in those creative pursuits that contributed to our increased brain size and our unique capacity for learning and transforming the world we found ourselves in. How ironic is it then to get to this point only to collectively turn our backs on art?

your brain on jazz

Charles Limb is a surgeon and jazz musician. In this TED talk, he says:

Artistic creativity is a neurologic product that can be examined using rigorous scientific methods.

So he used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) on some jazz and rap musicians. Watch and listen to see what he found out.

And the man raps! (He claims it will never happen again.)

the neurological connections

Limb is featured in the recent two-part PBS series Arts & the Mind, hosted by Lisa Kudrow. It’s entertaining, moving, and informative. I highly recommend it. (The link takes you to a page where you can watch both episodes in their entirety.)

EPISODE ONE – Creativity

Arts & the Mind explores the vital role the arts play in human development throughout our lifetimes. Episode One, “Creativity,” features stories and the latest scientific research from experts around the country illuminating how the arts are critical in developing healthy young minds and maintaining them as we age. Showcases innovative arts education programs OrchKids in Baltimore and Get Lit in Los Angeles.

EPISODE TWO – The Art of Connection

This episode illuminates how art is the brain’s lifeline to empathy, emotion, mental agility and healing. Features stories and experts’ insights on: the positive effects of the arts for: children in hospitals; veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; building community in Appalachia; and warding off dementia.

final words

Science has to catch up to art.

–Charles Limb

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