Recently in Creative Category

"I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine."
Fritz Perls

You have seen the catchy ipod nano comerical. Now see the whole video of the delightful Feist.

A smart, funny, and insightful interview about entertainment, process, creativity, and race politics by one of the smartest people in the business, Chris Rock, can be found at KCRW's "The Treatment".

Please don't hold "I think I love my wife" against him.

(Sung like the Cardigans circa 1997)

Evaluations from a conference we helped out at in December, "We love the APeX guys, but could you get someone else for a change."

Ouch!

Someone said for someone else (or so we have heard), "I don't like APeX because they always do the same stuff."

Ouch!

The first comment came in the middle over 100 pages of evaluations and comments about the event. It is the only one I remember.

The second comment was shared with me at the end of a day in which over 50 adults had personally thanked us for our work and our presence (many who have seen us multiple times). It was the only comment I could think about as I drifted off to sleep.

I think the reason these comments haunt me is because they reconfirm my own fears.

I love the work we do. I know we have worked very hard and are committed to quality. One some level we must be doing something right because we have found enough work to make a living for close to a decade.

But there are times, late at night (when nothing good crosses ones mind) we I think I am a fraud. That I am closer to being the man behind the curtain than the public face that is put forward.

As I hear these comments, it is easy enough to get defensive, because I justify and defend why me make the choices we make (and it is not because of laziness).

But that does me no good.

It is good to listen to critique and criticism. It is good to be challenged to be better and to grow.

It is useless to agonize and lament. It is debilitating to give all my energy to defending my actions.

It is best to listen, process and let it go.

It is that simple.

Too bad it isn't that easy.

I have always wanted to own a t-shirt store. If I did, this is the store I would want to own. (I love the Jonah shirt!)

http://sixteensixsseventy.com

ps: You should visit for no other reason than to find the significance of 16670.

Things I love:
* The democratizing power of the internet to give people access to people the would never meet in a very low cost way.
* Creative ideas
* People willing to share what they have.

This has all three.

Michael James is a musician from California.

For lent he has created a web site called 40 Days of Praise.

Each day of lent he is posting a video of a praise song he has written. The video includes playing instructions, a brief introduction to the song, and him playing it. He also provides the sheet music for you to download.

Last night I attended an intro class on stand-up comedy. It was offered by Jen Dziura who is performing in the area tonight.

I attended the class the class for a number of reasons:
* I love hearing about people's process of writing new material. Even if stand-up is very different from what we do, I always seem to learn something new from someone else creative process.
* It was a good opportunity to force myself to sit down and do some writing myself.
* It was a chance to support Jen. Last night is the first time I met her in person, but have read her blog for more than a year. I am always very impressed by people who are willing to follow their dreams, and to do it in very creative ways. She works very hard on her craft as well and sharing it with others. Even though it was the first meeting, I have admired her for a while.

Any of those reasons would have been worth the $20 to get in the door. But there was something that topped it all.

One of the first exercises we did was talk about our lives and Jen helped us find the topic areas that might be funny to talk about. (Ex: One of the women in the class looked like Gillian Anderson and talked about how geeks have tendency to hit on her.)

There was very unassuming African-American woman in the class who was in her 50's. She was not a natural on stage, but she was a very funny story-teller. At one point she was talking about (with all the sincerity in the world) the heart attack she had when she was 38. At one point in her life she worked in medical field. The conversation went something like this:

Woman: When I had the heart attack they found me on the toilet.

Jen: You had a heart attack on the toilet?

W: No I had the heart attack on the couch.

J: Then why did they find you on the toilet?

W: I had seen people die before. When most people die they crap their pants. I was sitting on my white couch and I knew if I died they were going to need the couch. So I drug myself to the bathroom. That way if I crapped myself, I would be on the toilet.

There are three types of jugglers.

The first do the same old tricks in the same old way.

The second take the standard tricks, but do then in new and different ways. (I hope I am part of this group).

Then there is the third. These are the people who push the envelope. They think of juggling in new and different ways. They don't simple take old stuff and frame it new. They place it in completely different contexts.

Greg Kennedy is one of those guys.

Here is one of his latest creations.

[via mom]

[full story | via Byond Marketing]