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 MoreGO FARTHER -- 2014 COMES TO A CLOSE
In the news section of our website you can follow tales of our exploits. Here on the blog the topic generally concerns the many ways to think about being creative, from what fuels creativity, to how we lose it, to engaging it in diverse and surprising—or even simply reliable—ways.
Read MoreSTORY
Story means everything, even if everything doesn’t look like a story. How we think about what we do is the essential architecture of all stories, and the onus is always on storytellers to make them sing.
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 MoreGIVING THANKS
Trust is not simply about hearing the truth, or counting on someone to pick you up at an appointed time. Trust is about counting on insight and integrity mixed with courage and confidence. Trust is about knowing that people have your back while remaining unafraid to tell you you’re wrong.
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 MoreTHE ESSENCE OF PLACE
Sound makes sights real. A movie with the sound turned off is not only inert, but slightly disturbing. Something substantial feels out of balance, and mere intellectual understanding of the problem does not satisfy our need to fix the context. The barest whisper of wind solidifies the clear air of Autumn, moving crispy, auburn leaves through space and into our senses. Autumn colors tell us what’s happening; Autumn sounds saturate our senses.
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