Human Slightly Broken

But do you think we can start a family, a family… and a family...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 11:46:10 -0400

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

But do you think we can start a family, a family…

and a family tree stretchin for centuries, and centuries…

The Ride

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:25:00 -0400

I had an inspiring talk with Frank Warren of PostSecret today, who has become a friend and mentor to me following a recent collaboration. In the midst of the meandering conversation, he reminded me to do a very simple thing.

Enjoy the ride.

As much as I love my work, it feels relentless. I am never satisfied with the things I make. I am never content with the current set of challenges I face. And I am always looking for new buildings to climb, even when I know I’m moving too fast or teetering on the edge.

I can never get better fast enough. I can never understand deeply enough. And I can never follow through, execute or focus long enough.

I have felt this way to varying degrees as far back as I can remember. And yet, things get done. I make things. I learn things. I try to help other people make and learn things. And when I take a step back and look at this body of things as a whole, they do seem to be getting just a little bit better – a little bit closer to that place I imagine I want to be.

My way of trying to create these things is honestly kind of a mess, but it’s my mess. And most days it’s a fun mess.

Someday maybe I’ll arrive and feel content and have learned enough and made enough to feel that everything just clicks. Or maybe not. Either way, the ride is nice and the wind feels good and I have a lot more room on me for bumps and bruises along the way.

Thanks Frank.

Image: Fifty People One Question, Live

His Stage

Mon, 31 May 2010 16:02:00 -0400

Spend any decent amount of time in Williamsburg when the sun is up and the kids are out, and you’re likely to spot one of the neighborhood’s many bizarre but memorable characters; a bubbly middle-aged man who circles the area religiously in his red SUV, blasting oldies and belting along out the window.

His charade might not sound very impressive, but in the 6 years that I’ve lived in north Brooklyn, this crooner has been one of the most consistent local attractions, making his rounds every weekend, seemingly without fail.

He sings as if everyone is watching, because they are.

By now I’m so familiar with his little show that I prefer to watch other people react. They tap each other, point, laugh, and exchange bright-eyed looks with calls of “there he is again!” and “what the fuck!” … like clockwork. The silent question has always been … why?

Today the spell was broken in a way that I found slightly magical.

I was having brunch with a good friend on one of Greenpoint’s sleepier streets, just around the corner from my apartment. We were sitting at a table outside and sipping watermelon juice when I heard that unmistakable sound of the one and only golden oldies sing-a-long guy. This particular sighting was quite the anomaly though, because I’ve never spotted him in Greenpoint before (he usually hugs hipster central pretty tight). Other brunch’ers seemed to share our surprise. He was apparently conquering new terrain.

And then I realized that he was off his normal routine. This was something different, something secret. We were, in effect, backstage.

We watched as he pulled across the street and parallel parked, eager to see if the enigmatic entertainer was actually going to get out of his car (never before seen by me or anyone else I know in the area). Sure enough, he emerged. And in an instant, at least one piece of his puzzle was laid out for us.

He has a severe limp, apparently made worse by the fact that he is considerably overweight. He doesn’t sing while he walks.

My friend and I exchanged sympathetic looks and continued to watch as he worked his way up the sidewalk and into the bodega on the corner, purchased a bottle of water, and then tipped back into his SUV and out of sight.

I wanted to run across the street and shake his hand. I wanted to let him know that his singing lights people up and makes them laugh. I wanted to thank him for singing. I didn’t.

That’s why he drives and sings, she said.

In praise of standing still

Mon, 31 May 2010 13:21:22 -0400

In praise of standing still:

bobulate:

Jonathan Harris:

When you move around so fast and so much, bits of you flake off and stay everywhere you stop, and if you go too fast you get thin and confused and it’s hard to remember who you are or where you’re from because you’re so many people in so many places at once, all of them blending into each other and all of them blurring into nostalgia, and to get yourself back you need to stop moving and wait for the pieces to wander back into your town and your head and your body, and then you begin to remember and once you remember then you can get back to moving.

Or, in praise of a return to moving.

After a year of heavy travel, which was wonderful, I’m anchoring down with hopes of finding home again.

I’m going to the Brooklyn Department of Motor Vehicles...

Fri, 28 May 2010 10:02:09 -0400

I’m going to the Brooklyn Department of Motor Vehicles today, so this lovely dose of reassurance couldn’t have possibly come at a better time.

amorousmusings:

(via thewestisthebest)

meaghano: by frank chimero.

Fri, 28 May 2010 02:06:05 -0400

meaghano:

by frank chimero.

Starved for Attention - Coming June 2

Thu, 27 May 2010 00:17:52 -0400

Starved for Attention - Coming June 2:

doctorswithoutborders:

Next week Doctors Without Borders and VII Photo Agency are launching Starved for Attention, a multimedia campaign exposing the neglected crisis of childhood malnutrition. Starting June 2, you can be part of the campaign to rewrite the story of malnutrition and demand that 195 million malnourished children get the attention they need and deserve.

Tumblr, can we count on your support? Reblog if yes!

Ira on the Story

Wed, 26 May 2010 11:15:00 -0400

I sometimes wish every story in existence could go through some sort of This American Life ‘golden story’ machine and come out shining like the stars. I love this series of videos in which Ira Glass shares some of his secrets for great storytelling, with equal doses of humility and self-respect for his mastery of the craft. Here are a few excerpts, but be sure to watch them yourself.

On the power of the anecdote:

A story in its purest form is somebody saying this happened and that lead to this next thing and that lead to this next thing and that lead to this next thing, one thing following another. And some of the things in the sequence can be ‘that made me think of this’ and ‘then I said this’. There can be facts and ideas as part of it but one is leading to the next is leading to the next.

And the power of the anecdote is so great that no matter how boring the material is […] it has a momentum in and of itself…

On killing crap:

It’s time to kill and it’s time to enjoy the killing because by killing you will make something else even better live and I think that not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.

One thing that you should know is that all video production is trying to be crap. Like, in fact our radio production is trying to be crap. Basically it’s like the laws of entropy. You know that thing where like the universe is… All the energy in the universe is dissipating and all the atoms are getting lower and lower in energy? Well basically anything that you put on tape, from the moment that you put it on tape, basically it’s trying to be really bad. It’s trying to be unstructured, it’s trying to be pointless, it’s trying to be boring, it’s trying to be digressive, much like these sentences that I’m saying right here.

And pretty much you have to prop it up aggressively at every stage of the way if it’s going to be any good. You have to be really a killer about getting rid of the boring parts and going right to the parts that get into your heart. You just have to be ruthless if anything is going to be good. Things that are really good are good because people are being really, really tough.

On the gap between your stuff and your taste:

And the thing I would just like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short, you know, and some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves.

But we knew that it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have and the thing is … everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. You know what I mean? Whatever it’s going to be. You create the deadline. It’s best if you have somebody who’s waiting for work from you, somebody who’s expecting work from you, even if it’s not somebody who pays you but that you’re in a situation where you have to try not to work. Because it’s only actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

Berger _ Two Excerpts

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:01:39 -0400

John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos

One

Once In A Song

A singer may be innocent
never the song. With its instantaneous eyes
opened on to the world
and its heart laid bare,
the song is brazen,
the song is newborn.
Only when it has quietened
can listeners resume by habit
the innocence of their age.

Two

When I open my wallet
to show my papers
pay money
or check the time of a train
I look at your face.

The flower’s pollen
is older than the mountains
Aravis is young
as mountains go.

The flower’s ovules
will be seeding still
when Aravis then aged
is no more than a hill.

The flower in the heart’s
wallet, the force
of what lives us
outliving the mountain.

And our faces, my heart, brief as photos.

Current Crush: Text Playlist

Sun, 23 May 2010 22:27:26 -0400

I’m crushing on Frank Chimero’s Text Playlist concept and plan to make my own list soon. I’ve done this kind of repeated, pick-me-up reading via a smattering of bookmarks and saved excerpts that I continually revisit. I think it will be fun and helpful to codify some of these things and approach the reading more deliberately. Thanks Frank.

viafrank:

A lot of designers and creative folk that I know keep a morgue file, a folder of random elements that they find from old jobs that got killed, inspirational bits, torn images from magazines, and other scraps. In fact, a lot of these Tumblr blogs are just that.

I do a bit of that myself, but I keep what I perceive to be a more valuable, important morgue file: one made of the best writing on the web I come across. I take this list and revisit and reread it every 4 to 8 weeks. You could almost consider it a playlist of text: it’s very select (I artificially limit it to 10-15 articles), I typically read them all in one sitting, and the order and pacing is very purposeful. Most revolve around what it’s like to be making things in 2010, and a lot of the people that I respect the most have pieces in it. It’s almost a pep talk in text form. I visit it when I’m down, when I’m lazy, when I’m feeling the inertia take over.

Read More

"As designers, as people, adjust the boundaries of your place. It is there you’ll see new meaning..."

Sun, 23 May 2010 19:44:00 -0400

“As designers, as people, adjust the boundaries of your place. It is there you’ll see new meaning emerge, the behavior you designed for, and stories you never could have predicted.”

- This morsel from Liz Danzico via 52 Weeks of UX in her post, Makers of Frames. I’m thinking about how to create the space for a certain spirit of interaction in the context of small (actually, tiny) networks forged around interpersonal (i.e. one to one) communication. I keep bumping into Liz.

Life will get harder. And life will get better. I don’t...

Sun, 23 May 2010 15:35:55 -0400

Life will get harder. And life will get better. I don’t just mean a swing between the two. They go hand in hand.

David Rawlings, Method Acting / Cortez the Killer from the album, A Friend of a Friend:

‘Cause I don’t know what tomorrow brings.
It’s alive with such possibility.
But I know that I feel better when I sing.
Burdens are lifted from me.
That’s my voice rising.

I’m also reminded of Jeffrey and his dirty little secret:

Only a restless, broken heart can drive you to do what is necessary.

It’s Sunday. Life is complicated. Life is bright. And I’m working.

"The central mistake of recent digital culture is to chop up a network of individuals so finely that..."

Sun, 23 May 2010 00:23:53 -0400

“The central mistake of recent digital culture is to chop up a network of individuals so finely that you end up with a mush. You then start to care about the abstraction of the network more than the real people who are networked, even though the network by itself is meaningless. Only the people were ever meaningful.”

- Jaron Lanier _ You Are Not a Gadget

Tonight I began reading this in tandem with The Timeless Way of Building, and there’s an unmistakable dance between them that has my mind fizzing. Written three decades apart and in completely different contexts, both serve as manifestos for richer human experiences; one in the physical world, the other digital. I look forward to unraveling the rest of the conversation between them.

Liz + Zinsser

Sat, 22 May 2010 18:35:00 -0400

Liz + Zinsser:

Liz Danzico’s bobulate has become, for me, a regular destination for waking up and thinking about things worth a damn, which hopefully translates into making things worth a damn. And it really does feel like I’m singing when I try to make those things. Thanks for sharing this Liz.

William Zinsser on finding enjoyment in making things:

You should paint like a man coming over the top of the hill singing. —Robert Henri

That’s a quote he took down in a commencement address given by David McCullough in a small Connecticut town. He continues:

Amen. That’s also how you should write, sing, dance, draw, sculpt, act, play an instrument, take a photograph, design a building, live a life.

That’s also how you should design, cook, map, teach, drive cars, present things you make, consider, run, study, walk dogs, invent, eat, get lost, travel, chart, think. At least.

Being Alive

Sat, 22 May 2010 17:21:29 -0400

I have been reading and re-reading Christopher Alexander’s The Timeless Way of Building for over a month now and am thinking about the implications for digital world building. I just got another copy of the book (after returning one that I had borrowed previously) and don’t expect to put it down anytime soon. Today’s excerpt:

The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person’s story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.

We know, now, what the quality without a name is like, in feeling and in character. But so far, concretely, we have not seen this quality in any system larger than a tree, a pond, a bench. Yet it can be in anything - in buildings, animals, plants, cities, streets, the wilderness - and in ourselves. We shall begin to understand it concretely, in all these larger pieces of the world, only when we first understand it in ourselves.

It is, for instance, the wild smile of the gypsies dancing in the road.

[…]

And I am free to the extent I have this quality in me.

PS22 Chorus covers Lisztomania by Phoenix. Think less but see...

Sat, 22 May 2010 17:08:00 -0400

PS22 Chorus covers Lisztomania by Phoenix.

Think less but see it grow

Like a riot like a riot oh!

Not easily offended

Know how to let it go

From the mess to the masses

(discovered via amorousmusings)

This Distance (via 9 0 0 0) I really like to dance....

Sat, 22 May 2010 15:26:02 -0400

This Distance (via 9 0 0 0)

I really like to dance. Let’s do it again soon.

"I get lost all the time. On my better days, I get lost intentionally. Lost can be much more than a..."

Sat, 22 May 2010 14:37:43 -0400

“

I get lost all the time. On my better days, I get lost intentionally. Lost can be much more than a step in the wrong direction or an act of aimless wandering. Lost is not necessarily dumb, blind, confused or misguided. Lost is not a ship without a rudder. Surely, to be lost should not imply that one is forgotten, and it should never be mistaken for mere absence.

Lost can be purposeful. Lost often leads to finding and creating. Lost can be, and frequently is, rewarding. Lost is an honest, open state of questioning. And in order to find the things worth questioning, you have to start by getting lost.

”

- From my recent article, Lost and Found, via the Crush + Lovely Field Guide.

I am learning magic.

Sat, 22 May 2010 13:07:27 -0400

Only magic can do these things.

Make the downs look up and the ups look higher. Make all logic seem irrelevant. Roll it up so tightly and throw it out into the shade where it will fall asleep until we decide to find it there again, if ever. Take a distance and fold it, twice over and twice again, like a sheet that becomes no bigger than our hands as they meet to match the corners, each to each.

Only magic can make those eyes, and those ears, and those arms, and those legs, and that smile, and the shape your whole face takes with that smile, and those hands held once, and those eyes again, and the color of your skin, and the smell of your hair, and that way that you move, and that way that you laugh, and that way that you must do all of those things that you do that remain a mystery.

Make me this happy. Make me this foolish. Make me hurt this way, and want the hurt. Make me not understand at all and not want to understand at all, and just be in it. Make me write these words and dance this way. Dream the things that I dream this way. Make me wait forever. I will wait forever.

Only you can do these things.

The latest Fifty People One Question collaboration took us back...

Sat, 22 May 2010 13:05:44 -0400

The latest Fifty People One Question collaboration took us back to London a few weeks ago. Of the many friends we made there, Harriet Henson was certainly one to remember. When a place doesn’t give you the color you need, find it in the people.

Photo: Deltree