People like Optimists Because Levity Has Appeal

They do. Well, I know I do. Optimism, I believe, is not only informed by genetics but also by acquired behavior and learned skill. And it most certainly does not happen with ease and without effort. Becoming and staying optimistic feels, at times, like a full-time job and that's not a problematic thing necessarily. It is important to invest in the future, after all, and investments in attitude and outlook are as important as a healthy 41K plan.
I had an unusual conversation over sushi that got me to thinking afterwards.

"So, what is the secret to life?" asks my good friend and I find myself wrinkling my forehead as I didn't think I had heard him correctly the first time around. I look around in an effort to portray some sense of confusion to him and then added, "Secret? Ah. Hmm. Well, no talk of secrets before I've gotten my hypoglycemia under control, guy." We had ordered a few tuna rolls, California rolls, and, naturally some eel. I had exerted myself more than usual at the gym because, well, I got carried away listening to my new playlist. Something about putting Placebo and trance music in the same list, or something. Music tends to grab my attention fully and if I had a penny for every time I've heard, "you totally check out of the conversation when music's playing" then I could head to the Apple store in a New York minute to get the next gadget, I mean iPad. Come to think of it, it was the playlist's fault that one time when I got so focused on the music that I missed my exit to Denver and kept driving in circles around Colorado. But I digress and, of course, music is to be blamed for the digression. Today, it's Shostakovich's "Waltz 2" from Jazz Suite.

Cont.
He insists on asking the same question and after my third California roll I reckon I can attempt some kind of answer. The hypoglycemic levels were under control after all that that was as good a time to entertain a conversation as any. It was something to the tune of, "... well, let's see. Do your thing, do it well, invest in a good pair of Oxfords, always have some Clinique Chocolate Ice lipstick as you never know when you need it to add visual intensity to your day, be unapologetic about being optimistic, check all words of praise and criticism against your own self and core values, never deny yourself good nutrition and exercise, don't go a day without moving about, be hydrated, say 'no' to cigarettes and avoid being around cigarette smoke as good skin does not just happen, always have sun glasses on your person, tell your folks you love them once a week, and, uhm, well, maintain a clean living space. Other than that, hmm, beats me. You're going to finish that Cali roll, by the way?"

As I was talking I remember thinking that the question wasn't as cliched as I had first thought. I suppose that's why the adage says you think better on a full stomach. But, isn't being happy the one pursuit that informs all other achievements and ways of being in the world, after all?

I also added, bike everywhere if you can help it. Bike or run everyday. I have never been unhappy when on the bike and/or running. Never. And that is one piece of solid experiential knowledge that my friend needed to hear, I suppose. Ah, also, make sure to drive along Highway 1 at least once. The view is so spectacular, it will give added meaning to life." Then I really felt I was proving cliches to be true the more I continued to speak, ergo I opted for another tuna roll instead.

Subsequently, I asked him the same question and he said, "Ah, I ate too much. I have to think about it even though I asked the question first. I guess, I withdrew without depositing, eh?" To which I added, "well, next time you bring it up make sure I've had my lunch and I'm on a Macchiato break."
And, what a good way to dodge the question, I thought.

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graph per http://paulbuckley14059.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/sushi-for-2.jpg

Great Piece on Ben Franklin and Creativity

I was just informed of this. A most delightful piece to read.
Ben Franklin, one of my heroes.

View/read it here.

And I love his "to-do" list.

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Richard Burton's Excellence and Why I Love It

Richard Burton's acting left an impression on me from the first time I witnessed it. HIs delivery was characterized by such ease that I couldn't help but appreciate it. His face seemed to ooze a kind of aversion for affectation and cheap mimicry that I instantly appreciated.

I liked Burton even when he started to act Hollywood. He seemed to do it because he got a kick out of the whole scenster culture.
And who could blame him?
It's kind of tough to let a freak show go unexplored, is it not?

The hardest thing for me to tolerate is cheap imitation.

I have been trying to understand if such intolerance has anything at all to do with some permeating vanity I've neglected to detect before and all I can deduce is: 'nah, not really.'

The reason why I can't stand cheap imitation is because it interferes with authenticity and originality of essence. Furthermore, it delays the learning process. And I really can't stand the latter.

Enter Richard Burton.

He stands on the opposite end of this aversion.

If you don't know his work, well then, chop, chop, get to it. You're missing out.
And if you're a Shakespeare lover who doesn't know Burton, repent first, and hit Netflix later.

Also, read today's NY Times feature on Richard Burton, courtesy of Dick Cavett.

Few do acting the way Burton did. And fewer have his version of chutzpah.

And here's a bit from the Dick Cavett interview of Burton:

“I hope I don’t frighten you, Mr. Burton.”

“No, Mr. Cavett, you do not. I do that to myself.”

Read and view it here.
Tip of the hat, RB.

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graph per google images

Jack White's Dead Weather

Jack White is a man about town (Nashville that is) who has his hands in a lot of promising pies. Two of them being the White Stripes and the Raconteurs. His appetite has gotten healthier, however, and he is now the frontman of a new act, Dead Weather.

I started developing an active interest in Detroit-based artists back in 2001 after living there for a good part of the year. White Stripes was one of the bands I started paying active attention to and the interest has taken good root. Especially, White Stripes who have delivered over and over again mostly on account of Jack White's idiosyncratic drumming. Jack White has now settled in Nashville and his new projects are coming out of there.

Something very interesting is happening here with respect to location and the actual value of geography-specific creativity. Jack White has been positively vocal about living in Nashville and why he has chosen to make the city his home. The music scene is rich and artistic networking inimitable. Another point of interest when discussing the validity of the creative class and how it desperately needs live feedback. For where the creatives roll together, new acts are born. I look forward to Dead Weather's debut in June.

"Dead Weather’s debut LP, Horehound — which White produced — [will be released] in June.... The tracks — a sludgy, bluesy blend of psych-rock guitar, alternately stark and explosive rhythms and Mosshart’s sultry-to-siren vocal — take relatively logical leaps from the members’ other bands, White’s groove-heavy drumming elevating the Dead Weather’s Stripes-esque blues-rock moods and Fertita and Mosshart pulling in atmosphere and disaffected cool, respectively."

Read more here.

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Time Management: Why It Matters

I talk about time and multi-tasking quite often and that's because it's a high-frequency issue/concern/topic in my quotidianity.
Simply put, I have to be acutely aware of time for two rather basic reasons:

1) productivity
2) quality of life

So, here are a few things to consider when thinking about time/schedules.

1) Do not allow distractions to interfere with planned tasks. Block a generous time frame for the most important tasks.

2) The most important tasks of the week need to be completed first before the week gets full.

2) Plan enough time for each task.

3) Allow a 2-hour block daily for a work-out and focused physical activity. Planned physical time is a great way to put tasks and time-sensitive duties in perspective.

4) Write daily even when there is no apparent inspiration.

5) Do not over-work on a certain day as it might be difficult to get enough motivation to tackle the same task the following day. Know when to stop.

6) Unapologetically keep to a personalized schedule.

7) Carefully plan time for 'no-activity' or as I call it 'thinking time' without gadget/media/information input.

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Sorry, Your Art Is Lacking...?

Members of the creative class rely on a fundamental support they get by virtue of being close to one another. Location, in this context, is everything. Or much of everything. The main reason behind clustering, after all, is the creative support and feedback that the creatives generate for themselves and their community.

Inspiration is key to productivity and without the clustering effect and some key external motivation it would be rather difficult to create.

-"So, what inspires you?"
This is a question I get often. I gave it some thought the other day and what's actually served as a true inspiration in the recent past is photography by the artists around me. And I don't just support them because they contribute actively to my own creativity. The more I live the more I think that we attract the kind of art that is, in nuce, congruent with our basic understanding of life, the arts, and the general human experience.

Now I'm pretty fortunate to have plenty of creative input and the work of the dear ones is inspiring. And what's inspired me the most in the recent past is photography, more specifically, literature as represented in photography.

But what can one say when confronted with a piece of art that doesn't necessarily ooze high quality? One needs to give an answer especially when actively encouraged to do so. So, what could be said?

Consider this as I thought it was worthy of reaction.

"Dear Prudence,
My dear, highly educated husband has written a book. While he has many talents, writing isn't among them. He paid someone to edit the book, which helped it somewhat, but it's still awful. I've gone through it as well and cleaned it up the best I could without completely rewriting it. The problem is my attitude—I don't feel it's my place to crush my husband's dream but find it hard to just sit there with a smile on my face while he goes on and on about how life will change when he's a best-selling author. It's not going to happen. I realize that at one point a publisher (or a stack of rejection letters) will make the point without me doing so, but I'm not quite sure how to act now. I love him and want to be supportive of him following his dreams, but I don't want him to waste his time. Do I stand by and lie, or break the news to him somehow?"

How would you deal with this scenario?

Tip of the hat to MR for the pointer.

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The Creative, the Berry, and Productivity

I had a most enjoyable conversation with my friend Polly tonight. Polly is what I would call a highly successful member of the creative class who is both switched on and tuned it.

We were talking about a cornucopia of things, one of them being the importance of context-decoding and connection-making. A successful 21-st century creative is not just one who has acquired much information of a general and esoteric nature but especially one who can make connections, contextualize things fast and effectively, and make the right linguistic choices.

I agree with both cognitively and experientially.

While talking to Polly, I thought of a Richard Florida article on the creative class and the human capital and I thought I’d include a snippet here. In it, Florida and his collaborator Charlotta Mellander, observe:

‘The role of talent and creativity in economic development has been a subject of growing interest to social scientists. Human capital is observed both to be an important contributor to growth and to be unevenly distributed
geographically.

While there is consensus on the importance of human capital to economic
development, debate takes shape around two central issues. First, there is the question of how best to measure human capital. The conventional measure of human capital is based on educational attainment (share of population with a bachelor’s degree and above). But more recent research suggests that it is more important to measure what people do than what they study, and thus occupationally based measures, associated principally with creative class occupations, have been introduced.’

An interesting study, no doubt. However, it does seem to leave out one important point: the necessity of immediate connection-making as facilitated by technology. A successful creative cannot simply be one who is well-educated, lives in a place where other like-minded creatives live, and has the ability to create in the niche s/he finds her/himself. But as Polly also mentioned, a successful creative is one who can clearly see what the nature of thing is and what connections to make and create accordingly.

Being switched on is a good thing, but being switched on and tuned in is better.
graph per blackberry
text per creative classroom

In Which Space Do You Work?

Richard Florida over at Creative Classroom (one of my favorite blogs) had a most interesting post today about creative spaces. He based some of his reactions on a recent NY Times bit about office spaces.
He writes:
'In Rise, I said the organizational precursors of the creative company
are Edison's laboratory and Andy Warhol's factory. The traditional
office is a place for control and for gossip and small talk. It is
inefficiency and waste taken to a new level. People visit with one
another, chit-chat, and get little actual work done. Just watch any
episode of "The Office" for crying out loud. With the rise of
electronic technology, like the stuff I'm using now, we can get focused
work done more effectively at home, on the road, in a coffee shop and
other venues than at the office. At home I work on the couch - I've
given up my home office.
Right now I'm working on a rattan lounge chair.
The office - or what used to be the office - now becomes a venue for
social interaction, for catching up, for discussing joint projects. The
social function becomes less about killing time and more important as a
way to connect, build relationships and keep up. One trend I've noticed
in my own work-style is that when I meet with colleagues and
collaborators at the office, we spend a lot more time catching up on
each other's lives and bonding so to speak than even talking about our
actual work. We then go home and send e-mail to catch up on that.
Most of my ideas are developed in a space other than the office. I
prefer the coffeeshop atmosphere.'

I would agree with this for the most part. I also have a predilection for choosing to do my creative work in places other than the conventional ones. And I also generally privilege the coffeeshop.
Technology enables the creatives to do their work anywhere. The presence of conventional walls is optional. All one needs are the gadgets that allow one to do the work and one could be at an airport in a foreign land, on a family member's Lazy Boy when visiting for the holidays, or at a coffeeshop. Any coffeeshop anywhere.
Like Richard, the best place for me to accomplish creative work is not necessarily my work or home office. The work office is a good space to deal with the quotidian elements of the work, and the home office area is necessary when dealing with the work I have to bring home if the day was not enough to take care of it.
Just where do I feel I am the most creative? I would say, anywhere. As long as I have all my necessary tech tools which fit nicely in an urban bag. The contents of that bag are what allow me to feel authentic. And as long as I have my urban bag the creative space can be created basically anywhere.
Where do you accomplish your creative work? How much does space actually matter?

graph per open house