WABI-SABI

One red leaf

Perfection isn't real. Perfection only exists in mind. Therefore, for something to be a perfect depiction of anything else -- a feeling, an image, a sound, an idea-- it must be imperfect.

That paradox gets my heart going every time I think about it.

Say it: wabi-sabi. It's balanced in the mouth like an aged cabernet. It's rhythmic to the ear like controlled breathing to a long distance runner. There is no perfect translation from the Japanese, it's source, but the measure of it's aesthetic is deep and profound. It speaks of balance and peacefulness, imperfection and beauty, and above all, life.

Nothing lasts forever, but in the digital age we're often led to believe otherwise. Everyone's heard that every bit of data we enter into our various electronic devices persists, eternally discoverable. There's always a record, we're told, always a copy backed up on a server, somewhere. Everything is searchable.

Wabi-sabi says otherwise. Impermanence defines all things. Wabi-sabi says that perfection is an unattainable goal. What we create––as individuals and as cultures--exists in finite time. In the digital world those lifespans may be artificially extended but ultimately they reach an end. All things are finite, and as such, all things are imperfect.

It's essential to realize that there's always a new creative discovery, a new idea to pursue, even if nothing lasts forever.  But the moment a creative person thinks his or her invention is so important that it can transcend time's infinite reach is the moment creativity fails to understand it's own finite heartbeat.  Nothing lasts forever, and an embrace of that melancholy thought confers vital license for creative people of all stripes to take passionate risks and dare to reach for greatness.

Perfection may be unattainable, but it is an asymptotic goal, and we can eternally approach it. To achieve the sublime, perfecting imperfection becomes one of the most fabulous koans of all.

--MS

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READ A BOOK

Put that tablet computer down.

I mean, don't put it down if you're reading this blog. Send messages to all of your friends about the blog, and THEN put it down.

And don't reach for your TV remote, either!

See those stacks of thinly sliced trees across the room with the colorful cardboard covers? Those are books. You used to read them. They miss you, and more to the point, you probably don't realize just how much you miss them.

I know you do. You're just numb to the surrounding din. If you're reading this blog, you're a reader already. Blogs like this one, about creativity and philosophy and life and all that artsy-airy stuff, tend to attract people already inclined to the slow-motion pleasures books. But there's no prejudice here: books ought to matter to wide populations more than they do these days.

Listen to Public Radio and you'll start to think books grow on trees rather than get manufactured from tree pulp. "So-and-so is the author of a new book on…" seems to be the opening line to interviews all day long. To a lesser, but still significant degree this phenomenon appears on television news programs, too--an ironic reality for a medium that often appeals to viewers who'd never think of picking up a book. The message from mainstream media is that everyone writes books. Therefore it would be easy to be suckered into a false belief that people actually, y'know, still read 'em.

You already know what the problem is, don't you? The ubiquity of electronic devices and the ease of consumption for the data they serve outweighs the comparative work of focusing on black words on white pages. No pictures! No sounds! No birds knocking bricks out from above thieving pigs! What's more, the stories we consume in books often take days to experience. Pages go by in minutes, not seconds. Action scenes happen only in the mind's eye; characters unspool only if we apply ourselves to the words writers use to bring them to life. I'm not opposed to electronic books, per se. But I sometimes wonder if the ability for them to facilitate quick jaunts to email is like having doughnuts on the kitchen counter when someone else in the house is trying to lose weight. It's a temptation that simply stacks the deck against even the toughest resolve.

The loss of a book culture is incalculable. Electronic methods of communication simply do not function in the same way. In the singular way that sustained reading focuses the mind, books ask us to absorb precisely because we must make room for them. They require our participation to work, where videos and blog posts and photos and tweets barely require our attention at all. Words function differently in different formats, and pictures are not replacements at all. I say this as a guy who not only makes his living making pictures, but genuinely loves good pictures. It's simply that they're not interchangeable. Pictures do not replace books.

The loss of a book culture is the transformative process in a culture that cannot sit still and has trouble thinking complex thoughts. Can the culture do complex things? Sure: cell phone networks are intensely complex enterprises. Next day package delivery systems require astounding algorithms and organizational plans. But there's a difference between complex technical requirements and introspection. Values clarification never comes from technological achievement, and morality--flexible and fuzzy though that term may be to diverse audiences-- can not accrue without introspection andexperience.

This lament does not confine itself to fiction. Non-fiction books matter, too. Countless titles on the miles of non-fiction literature shelves can thrill and inspire in ways just like fiction. But even here, the trend is to wade ankle deep in Wikipedia rather than dive into the deep waters of a full length tome. Science may move faster than the speed of conventional printing presses these days, and not for a second do I suggest that it should slow down. But practical information skimming as a replacement for deep knowledge acquisition are not equatable.

The irony here is that people read now more than ever. Short non-fiction on the web has exploded, with texts of all sorts evolving in real-time. Blogs, new journalism, long form articles, tweets, comment forums, and more constitute an ocean of content that never existed before and competes ferociously for time. But while the level of wordplay may have risen in some sectors as a result of Darwinian pressures in the marketplace, I worry about audiences losing touch with the merits of sustained focus on singular topics.

Modernity has also turned us into consumers of endless instruction manuals, often hyperlinked on electronic platforms, chockablock with detailed information. Are they books? Technically they are. But to claim that instruction manuals for video cameras and networkable toaster ovens and programmable vacuum cleaners have the equivalent heft of novels and histories and other works of sustained thinking is to misunderstand the value proposition. Even pulpy trade paperbacks, showcasing soapy romances or endless spy capers of limited literary legerdemain have are a loss. In the sustained focus of reading the culture learns how to critically assess detail and imagination and opportunities that are not simply simply a click away.

In a thought experiment that will never find it's way into real-world practice, the best way to make non-readers pick up a book may be to lock them in a prison for a few months surrounded by richly stocked bookcases and no hope of escape. Given a paucity of stimulation people are naturally curious.  With nothing else to do but read, I have to believe that most captives would rather open a book and escape. Outside prison walls, the very same action--picking up a book-- is the very opposite of escape. It is an act of quiet engagement. But faced with the beeping, blinking stimulations of the real, non-captive world, natural curiosity often struggles to overcome the ubiquitous distractions all around. Books require a measure of mental isolation, of focus. The modern world does not like to leave us alone.

I don't read nearly as much as I would like, despite my best intentions or druthers. The books that matter to me stay with me everyday. Characters are my friends, my advisors, my foils. Stories become my maps and my inspirations. In a culture that sees the power of this old fashioned technology fading into a quaint antiquity, I lament the implications even as I struggle to find the time to  turn the page.

--MS   (Hey, you can follow me on Twitter @michaelstarobin if you're so motivated.)

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BODIES

BODIES

You have one. I have one.

The subject of human bodies carries high voltage. For some the subject provokes an electrical jolt of distress; for others it's an electrical surge of energy. As raw material for creative consideration, bodies bring the sun for an infinite set of opportune days.

Some people have bodies like road-weary Studebakers. Other have bodies that shimmer like rain-kissed Italian sports cars. Fast or slow, sleek or not, they propel us through space, through time, through life. They torment us with aches and pains, and sometimes far, far worse. But don't think about this too hard: look at the next body you see, even if it's your own standing in front of the mirror. No matter whether it treats you well or badly, it's still an astounding thing.

Sages have spent ages trying to separate body from mind. Speaking as someone who spends huge sums of his day blissfully immersed in pursuits of mind alone, this separation makes some good sense. The intangibility of our thoughts do not demand our ability to life heavy objects, nor process oxygen across the alveoli in our lungs. But as we all know, there's no such thing as a life of pure intellect, nor should we ever aspire to such. Even literalism here suggests that the ordinary act of thinking requires respiration--oxygen transfer--to facilitate the alchemy of thought.

Philosophers have also spent great energies trying to reconcile mind and body--to place them in direct contact. Breath is the fuel that powers Zen meditation, an active pursuit of achieving emptiness. Aristotle and Hippocrates both espoused the values of body and mind. Two thousand years later Thoreau similarly didn't separate physical experiences from intellectual considerations of ethics and values.

But bodies: what of bodies?

Science cannot produce them, even as modern science continues to improve our ability to maintain them. Art continues to reinvent them; culture finds endless ways to present them. Taken as geography, bodies are any archaeologist's dream. In their folds there and mountains and hills; there are wide-open expanses; there are areas exposed to the sun. Skin stretched tight over muscles or skin hanging loosely  over bones tell stories. Time develops scar, tattoos of experience unique to every single body that has ever lived. Scars are inevitable, and the roadmaps of time that each of us wear. We live in these shells, and in these shells we act in the world, each similar, each slightly different, just like the narrative threads we all tell.

No doubt there's the potential for prurience here, for slightly salacious implications of objectification and judgmental evaluation. If all that is corporeal of our humanity is only to be evaluated endlessly, baubles in a market, we become nothing but bodies of judgement rather than entities for marvel. That's why I'll suggest the following: it's fine to regard some people as more beautiful than others, some people even more attractive than others. But beyond superficial aesthetics, consider the deeper possibilities. Every body you've ever knows will return to it's constituent elements soon enough. You only get to inhabit your own body for a short time. Therefore, when you consider different bodies as the starting point for endless moments of invention, superficial aesthetics don't  get you nearly as far as knowing the people who inhabit the bodies themselves.

--MS

HEY: ONE MORE THING! Our new movie WATER FALLS opens on October 10th. Check out all the latest on the movie at the website http://gpm.nasa.gov/waterfalls

Or follow the movie on Twitter at #waterfalls

Or, y'know, follow me on Twitter @michaelstarobin

Or, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/1auglobalmedia

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world.

Like what you see? Set it free.

COMET

When you wish upon a star, it makes no difference who you are.

If someone's light that shines so bright-- lights up your life like sun at night-- it's hard to keep a level head if you wished it yours instead.

Songs, and films, and books, and deals: are you stuck just spinning wheels? Those who finally ignite, should not be pilloried by spite.

Instead, the measure of their due reviewed-- inspiration: refreshed, renewed.

Chance success for some, it's true: perhaps those odds are not for you. To beat The House by chance is rare, but labor's love can get you there.

Thus tales of other's success should stand as forward-leaning fetch toward land. Grab the light and ride the air and by example you'll travel there…

…because…

It makes no difference who you are when you wish upon a star.

--MS

@michaelstarobin facebook.com/1auglobalmedia facebook.com/michael.starobin

THE TITLE OF THIS ESSAY WAITS TO REVEAL ITSELF

It always happens. Days, weeks, sometimes even months of grinding work suddenly reach a crest in the shadowed road and then pass over the rise into exhilarating bright light. Intangibility turns solid. Ideas become real. Light floods the space and suddenly something exists in the world in a way that didn't exist a moment before.

That transformative jolt is not simply an epiphany suddenly making it's presence known. That jolt is akin to the lighting that reanimated Dr. Frankenstein's monster. Hard, incremental work prepared the space, with little emotional resonance. Hard work yesterday turns into hard work today, with the promise of more to come tomorrow. Intellectually we may understand the trajectory of an undertaking, but emotionally it's hard to believe that tiny steps taken day after day will actually amount to anything useful. But then the lifecycle of a project reaches a mid-point, and something must transform somehow, or at least make room for new components. When it's clicking some sort of new, élan vital enters the body, takes a breath and fires cells to life…

…and here's the crazy thing: those moments are hard to predict.

But sometimes you can get a hint that they're coming.

I'm writing this blog entry sitting in a recording studio in Athens, Ohio while our music master Andre (Hey! Check the rest of our website for a photo and bio!) is hunched over the piano working on a score for our new Science On a Sphere movie WATER FALLS. I think I speak for the whole team when I say that we all look forward to this phase of a big production, even as we're all starting to feel the strain of exertion and fleeting time. The work is serious and hard but simultaneously joyful. The process is a complete embrace of the best parts of life. It creates matter from void; it declares emotional resonance from nothing but memory and inspiration. For WATER FALLS, months of effort have led us here. We finally have a rough cut of the film capable of supporting serious dialogue between itself and musical ideas. No doubt that music will re-inform the visuals, and we'll be in a sudden pas-de-deux between the two, pictures influencing audio, audio influencing picture.

I've been doing this work for decades, and it still makes my heart rate pick up the pace. A moment ago, something that never existed before suddenly sprang into being, achieving enough mass and complexity to transform from a pile of matter into a gleaming structure, a temple, a town, a soul. There's music behind the pictures, and an a flooding list of notes running off the the pages in my notebook, and though the hour is late, I am wide awake and scribbling as fast as I can.

Moments of discovery are rare. The do not come easily. They are milestones along long, often forced marches, and they do not, by themselves, pay the rent. But placed against the endless labors of ordinary days, they are gleaming cracks in the often opaque facades of what we're all forced to endure in ordinary days. Moments of discovery shine light on what we all so desperately want to believe could be great, meaningful, shimmering substance of lives worth living.

--MS

--MS

Twitter @michaelstarobin Facebook facebook.com/1auglobalmedia

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world.

Like what you see? Set it free.

ALONE

Modern electronic media and traditional art are not synonymous, although they both draw water from the same well. Creative media always seeks to establish a relationship with an audience, while art may be the product of other motivations. Both inevitably require substantial creative energies to come into being. Both may invest a great measure of personality from their creators. But above all, creative work of all types inevitably demands a sizable measure of time on the part of the creator focused in his or her own head, often alone.

The irony here should be obvious. Whether by force of a pen inscribing a few precious lines of poetry, or a stage director looking to send shivers all the way into the back row of the theater, most moments that convey meaning and emotional response stem from intense, focused, often private labor. We understand the poet immediately, quietly scratching out verse while leaning thoughtfully against the trunk of a tree. If you're wondering about the stage director, remember that long before he or she meets with actors and set designers and lighting techs, a director must do the work of refining a vision. There's reading and there's often writing, too. There's research and study, and like your parents always used to tell you about homework, no one can do it for them.

The same is true for those who produce soda commercials and magazine make-up advertisements. Even as more billable creative work tends to operate inside the forum of larger organizations, the day- to-day effort of writing scripts, drawing storyboards, or processing digital images from photographic memory cards comes down to one person leaning in to the work, often for many hours alone.

Of course, creative types often DO work with other people; most disciplines demand it. But I find those to whom I pay most attention are capable of motivating themselves outside the pressures of groups.

Make no mistake: I love working with teams. The energy and invention and even bonhomie camaraderie of creative teams has rare equal, even if it occasionally comes with intense interpersonal challenges. The pleasures of sharing ideas, of finding growth that always surpasses the limits of what any one person could singularly invent, imbues resonant satisfactions. People are interesting! The best experience from working in groups is the reflection of larger humanity's historical sweep of achievement, of culture. In a narrow microcosm, we recreate the best of our own shared triumphs as a species and celebrate it with re-enactment.

But like all performances, the lights ultimately dim. Even after standing ovations, audiences always go home. Players who live for the applause often don't survive. Applause is fleeting. But those who can take pleasure and satisfaction in the intense world of singularly creative mind return to quiet spaces and dream again. If they're good, applause may very well return. If they're perceptive, they may even be aware that applause is something they can court. But if they care about their craft, whatever it may be, that time alone is something they're not going to trade for anything in the world.

--MS

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TOAST

 

The bread has edges, beyond which the peanut butter cannot go. But because the bread does have edges, toast made right will support peanut butter--or marmalade, or Nutella, or cream cheese--all the way out to those edges. The details matter, especially if you're preparing that toast for someone else.

What if you're making that toast for yourself? You can do it any way you like, of course. But consider the choice you have if you're making toast for yourself, all alone one morning, with nobody else around. I wonder if sometimes in the service of ourselves we think, "It's just for me. It really doesn't matter how it comes out, and it's just a piece of toast."

That's true to a degree. No one will know if you under-browned the bread or missed a corner with the raspberry jam. But standards begin with an internal adjudication, and the moment we begin equivocating about whether quality matters in private is the moment we begin eroding quality in public.

Sounds obsessive, doesn't it? Sounds a little nuts.

It doesn't have to become a boat anchor around the neck of your life. The point is that small gestures add up. In aggregate they begin to describe how we approach our days, how we think about thinking, how we regard an endeavor undertaken and a mission completed. Making toast should not become a complicated process. But next time you're about to coat a good piece of pumpernickel with butter and jam, notice the fine details around the perimeter. If it's for you, there's a moment's pleasure in knowing it's just the way you like it, however that may be. If it's for someone else, enjoy the fact that he or she will ever-so-slightly appreciate the care you took to do it right.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world.

Like what you see? Set it free.

WORDS ABOUT WORD

Microsoft Word: I still use it, but it's no longer my go-to program for all things written anymore.

It used to be that Word was the last word in words.  That changed when the world's dominant publishing environment became an endless forest of glowing screens, found everywhere simultaneously. Instead of Word's proprietary formatting rules invisibly structuring language behind the scenes, minimally formatted text made lots more sense.

Or, said differently, minimally formatted text up front makes more sense when it's likely that millions of scriveners like myself will shortly mark-up their words with their own hypertext of some sort. Meta-textual hooks are a pain in the neck when the program holding those words already has an architecture underneath.

Let me simplify my frustration: I can't stand it when my word processor hijacks my tab settings. Someone out there knows why it gets screwed up, but it drives me crazy, and it takes me mentally out of what I'm doing. Using Word makes me an endless software manager, distracting me from being a writer.

What you're reading now I'm writing this in a program that I dismissed for more than a decade: Apple's TextEdit. It's strange. With almost no formatting information at all, my scribblings here cut and paste comfortably into the WordPress engine I'm using to power this site. Markup's a breeze, and because my blog posts are usually short, the tools are great for fast, easily navigable texts. It's simple, it launches quickly, and the files are small. What's not to like? Besides, the bloated behemoth that underpins the Office suite just rankles philosophically. As a child it was always fun to have infinite options, in the event that someday….SOMEDAY… I just MIGHT want to do some obscure mail merge with an integrated Excel spreadsheet. But seriously? I think I've used about ten percent of the Office tools available, and I'm not likely to sink the precious time to learn tools that have precisely zero percent chance of ever being needed. That bloat don't float!

But I'm being honest here. I must admit that I…do…still…use…Word. I must. for longer pieces, or carefully laid-out, artfully designed document formatting I still find it indispensable. Finding text strings across big documents is simply easier; major formatting tools are profoundly more powerful; organization tools do what I need them to do. (Yes, I'm actively messing around with Apple's Pages, but it's not quite in the fingers yet…) Word is also still the keeper of an all important network-effect, that because it's the standard program in the world, it remains as such. But that hold on everyone's phalanges is beginning to weaken.

But these days, when I use Word I have to know that I'm "going in", that I'll be in Microsoft-land for a while. Imposed formats change the ways we interact with our ideas. Tools shape art. When I have to move a mountain, I drive a bulldozer. But I've been playing more and more with minimal approaches to what I always assumed would be imperturbably solutions for daily tasks. My bulldozer gathers more dust these days. Lately my words just want to be free, and keeping the Microsoft keys on the counter has been a revelation. These days I move mountains more often simply by asking them to move. Such is the power of words set free.

Word.

--MS

PS -- Does this make you smile? Make you think? Make you wish next Monday were one sunrise away from arrival? If so, you may be ready to become one of our loyal outreach team! How do you assume that lofty role? Tell your friends! Tell your colleagues. Share our link on your Twitter and Facebook page, and let people know where you turn every Monday morning for a blog of a different color. You were expecting horses?

AN AFTERNOON WITH E.O. WILSON

Before the world made ubiquitous connections through a web of packet-switched data, books mattered. Carried innocuously in backpacks and bare hands, books served as collections of big ideas and gateways to adventures. In 1990, there were clues all around that the world was on the edge of an epic transformation, from the recent end of Soviet-era geopolitics, to a hard-to-predict explosion in data processing and transmission. It was as if a massive tidal wave of ideas was suddenly swelling on the horizon, and the expectant world was about to receive the deluge.

In 1990 I was selected to give the commencement address at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had recently written a short book for my honors thesis in biomedical ethics, and anticipated that I might develop a career in related fields. As the commencement speaker that year, I had the opportunity to spend the afternoon with college VIPs and honorees, one of whom would be the great biologist E.O. Wilson, selected to receive an honorary degree from the school.

Wilson is not only one of the great scientific minds of his time, but of any time. Formally an expert on myrmecology—the study of ants, of all things—he may be most scientifically influential in the development of his theory of sociobiology, which proposes that culture and social behavior is direct product of biological evolution. He’s the author of many books, including a stunning, shimmering novel (Anthill), and has largely restructured the collective conversation on environmental advocacy, sustainable ecology, and more. He’s got a bright sense of humor, a warm aura of easy engagement, and despite his endless awards, accolades, adulations, and adventures at august institutions like Harvard, he’s as approachable as your favorite avuncular uncle.

In my home growing up, he had been a bit of a hero, too. My father had dug deeply into Wilson’s 1975 landmark book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, and it had become the taproot for endless probing, exciting conversations. The concept of ants maintaining complex societies and behaviors-- rather extraordinary declarations at the time-- fueled endless metaphoric comparisons to the state of modern human cultural trends, political disputes, and evolutionary trajectory. That Wilson could also write about his complex ideas like a master wordsmith on top of being a world-class scientist solidified his merit. In my home the ability to have a sophisticated insight into just about any subject didn’t matter much if it could not be communicated clearly and rationally, with bonus points for a dash of poetry. Wilson could do all of the above.

Graduation day came, and I found myself sitting in comfortable chairs next to the great man sharing tea and cookies. At twenty-one, I couldn’t help but feel a little out of time and place, dressed in jacket and tie, a big day speaking to thousands, discussing the potentials of my own future and listening to many of my betters enjoying the day with the seasoned perspectives that are only possible by greater years. Wilson and I found ourselves in an easy conversation about everything and nothing at all. I confided that his book had been an intellectual revelation for me, with resonant effects on my family. Whether it was just polite southern gentility (Wilson hails from Alabama) or genuine interest, I recall how he earnestly asked me about my honors thesis and enjoyed the thought that I might head into a field that he regarded as vital and stimulating.

But what I recall even more is how we shared stories about growing up. We talked about walks in the woods for him outside of Birmingham that introduced him to the power and beauty of the natural world, and he asked me questions and then listened intently to my own teenage forest adventures—comparatively more recent than Wilson’s, to be sure!

It’s ironic as I look back on that day now in the digitally wired future that his famous research into ant culture demonstrated a collective intelligence to those lowly bugs that transcended individual abilities and ambitions. The colony was greater any one person; communication among the colony members was an elegant, surprisingly sophisticated system of data exchange and transmission. Wilson had described a biological expression of modern networking, a metaphor I think about almost every day that I interact with bits of data in the interconnected space of modern life.

After my graduation address, Wilson came over to me and shook my hand, made some very personal, specific comments about my speech—something that mattered immensely to me because it told me he genuinely listened. Perhaps more than anything else that day, I recall most of all how he sought me out after the ceremony. For all his remarkable achievements and reputation, Wilson presented himself as a genuine person, a down-to-Earth man who listened closely, observed intensely, and didn’t miss anything.

Life fleets by so fast. For a twenty-one year old about to set out to find his way in the world, the afternoon spent with him reaffirmed the values I still regard as most important: don’t take life for granted; don’t miss a minute, and above all, work hard to find value in the relationships you make with others, because the colony is stronger the more individuals re-invest themselves in shared experience.

--MS

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