Things are happening simultaneously, small and large all the time, for everyone. The moment you remember that simple thought is the moment you notice the details happening right in front of you, wherever you happen to be.
Read MoreCHANGE OVER TIME (second of a two part series)
Change comes from a willingness to try something that doesn’t match what’s come before. When an iceberg calves from a glacier we see sudden transformation as tons of ice crash into the sea. But what we don’t necessarily see is the inexorable, relentless push of the glacier down to the sea, the long-term, root cause of the calving front. The thunderous change we observe is the sudden visibility of what’s really a deeper, longer, richer process.
Read MoreCLOUD WATCHING
The ability to see something different from the person directly next to you offers clues about how you might regard acts of creative invention, or at least appreciation.
Read MoreHEARTS AFIRE
A romantic existence, just like a romantic story, deals with extending life into the future. Ultimately the extension of all of our lives into the future is why we invest ourselves in our children, in our values whatever they may be, or in our great creative enterprises big and small. Romance is about preserving a moment or an idea into timelessness.
Read MoreTHE STORY YOU JUST PASSED
Artists of all types spend their days telling stories of all types. When you consider that everybody has them, some more dramatic than others, perhaps, we begin to realize how important it is to simply pay attention whenever we can. When we do—when we notice and recognize the pointillistic aspects of a complex world told one story at a time, we gain an ever-so-slightly greater ability to refract and transform our own stories into creative enterprise that relate and resonate.
Read MoreWHAT CREATIVITY WANTS
Creativity wants to solve problems. To create something is to make a judgment, that “this” is more desirable than “that”. What raw materials are available will influence the process, just as the level of available talent will also influence the process.
Read MoreBEAUTY
Beauty is a trait often found during moments of transformation, full of implication and promise. Beauty resides in the levitating silence filling camera crew headsets five seconds before a live broadcast begins. It's the perfectly timed bare-handed pickup of a baseball between second and third base. It's a successful parallel parking maneuver on the first try.
Read MoreTHE ART OF LIVING
I recently spent some time with a young, passionate emergency care nurse about to ship out with Médecins Sans Frontières, aka Doctors without Borders. She’s headed to Monrovia, Liberia for a six to eight week deployment on the front lines of the Ebola outbreak. Not yet thirty, she’s already an MSF veteran in parts of the world that most Americans can hardly find on a map, to say nothing of being able to imagine themselves working there for a single day. To meet her you’d never know.
Read MoreTHE COLLISION OF IMAGININGS
In the main hall the ceiling will soar above everyone, underground, with near magical light shining on opportunities and courageous perseverance and solidified resolutions of city officials, consultants by the score, and financiers. The transit station will declare the power of some, but it will profoundly serve the diverse needs of all.
Read MoreWHERE IT COMES FROM
Where does the mass of what we know come from? Sometimes the wellspring simply surprises me, and other days I nod my head in respectful remembrance. The balance of each day is an accumulation of past experience, and to forget our sources is to forget ourselves.
Read More