photo credit: Bernadette Ann

Hi everyone (nice to see you both!)

Things are a bit strange around here these days, which explains the radio silence – or doesn’t explain it at all really, since I actually haven’t explained anything at all. Oh well. Anyway.

Action and reaction

This post began as a comment on another blog, but it quickly became clear that it had delusions of grandeur, so I moved it back here. In fact it was a comment on a post that I suspect may have started the same way… so, to continue a kind of slow-motion threaded conversation, I’d like to react here to Stacey Cornelius’ post on the Studio Source, which was itself a reaction to Clint Watson’s post on Fine Art Views, which was itself a reaction to some comments made by Seth Godin during promotion for his latest book, Linchpin:

“Artist doesn’t mean painter or cartoonist or playwright. Artist means someone willing to stand up, stand out and make change.”

“What do we call a customer service rep or an insurance adjuster or landscape architect that changes the game, that elevates each interaction and that takes enormous emotional and professional risk with their work? I think they need a name, so I stole one. I call them artists.”

“A great waitress or conductor or politician can make art. So can David, who cleans the tables at Dean and Deluca. Art isn’t the job, it’s the attitude you bring to the job and work you do when you’re there.”

I haven’t read Linchpin yet, so I am in no way directly reacting to it; I just had some thoughts on the subject and thought I’d throw myself into the fray… Read the rest of this entry »

Contingency

Well it’s Sunday and I’m a bit out of sorts. I was supposed to be in Toronto for an old friend’s wedding this weekend but my flight went through New York and the connecting flight was canceled, along with all other possible alternatives, due to snow (it sounds like they have had quite the storm over there! I hope things are returning to normal gradually).

Luckily I found out about this before getting on the plane so rather than being stuck at JFK along with 10,000 other frustrated stranded travelers I just turned around and headed home. Disappointed friends and an unexpected weekend off, and I’m a bit confused about what to do with it. Not for want of options – there is no great lack of things I should be doing – but shifting gears when the rug is pulled out from under you like that can be tricky.

This coincides with the publication, tomorrow, of my first ‘big’ guest post, on the wonderful Lateral Action blog. It’s a meditation on some of the ‘mythology’ we seem to have erected around creativity, and how it can hold us back, and what we might be able to do about it. I hope you check it out, and leave a comment! I’ll be monitoring and replying to comments there for the next few days.

I’m really happy to have my work featured there among such fine company, and I’m also happy to welcome anyone who might click through to find out a bit more about li’l ol’ me… so, if that’s you, welcome! Make yourself at home! Pull up a chair! Read the rest of this entry »

I spend a lot of time with my little boy. He’s pretty great, and everyone tells us he’s their favorite toddler (obviously he’s ours), but I’m pretty sure he’s exactly as special as every other almost-three-year old, which is to say amazingly, unimaginably special. I figure he probably does much the same stuff they all do. Which is to say, he plays. And I play with him, as often as I can between the dishes and the laundry and such. I also watch… and learn.

Here are a few pearls of wisdom I’ve distilled from observing (usually in jealous awe) his effortless, totally un-self-conscious creative play. Read the rest of this entry »

Contestants, start your engines!

Greetings fearless friends… and hopefully some new ones: this blog is now a Contest Entry, so apparently being read and judged by a panel of experts… (welcome, experts! Enjoy your stay! Don’t jump off of anything I wouldn’t jump off of!)

For other readers, I’ll explain – as part of my ongoing attempt to redesign myself as someone with an ounce of business and marketing savvy, I have bought a book called ‘Music Success In Nine Weeks‘ by one Ariel Hyatt, who runs a prominent music PR firm and is generally regarded as a person from whom one can learn a lot about such things. I have high hopes for this book (rather, for what it can help me accomplish if I put as much of it into practice as I can).

Ariel is now running a contest wherein my fellow entrants and I will blog about our progress through the book, our experiences implementing some of the advice it contains, and so on. Nine blog entries, for the nine major chapters of the book, in nine weeks… Tolkien would be proud.

So here we go. Before I launch into the project, as kind of a Prologue to the main event, let me introduce myself. Since in fact I’ve never done this in these pages before, it probably makes sense to give a bit of background to my quest for Music Success. Read the rest of this entry »

tightrope closeup, photo by ly wylde

I’m not sure if there’s any way to back this up, but my impression is that most people seem to think about balance as a state – either a person or thing is in a state of balance, or not.

I’d like to propose that balance is better thought of as a process.

I am not a tightrope walker by any stretch, but I’ve always been able to balance quite well on railings and so on. It has often struck me that in doing so, when it’s going well at least, I have the feeling of being constantly but slightly off-balance to one side or the other – but never too much so.

I am fascinated by moments in life when we have to confront fear, rise above it, move beyond it… and in the process learn something about ourselves, our limits, and our ability to surprise ourselves. This is not going to be about physically jumping off of cliffs. I’m not absolutely opposed to doing this, and I’ve jumped off a few in my time – more on this shortly – but generally it’s dangerous and probably a really bad idea unless you’re really sure what you’re doing and that you can do it safely. The fact that people die doing it fairly frequently is sad testimony the fact that it often isn’t as safe as someone thought it was.