Ian Summers: Heartstorming http://www.heartstorming.com/ This blog offers an opportunity for participation and dialog with Heartstorming readers and clients. It is for anyone who wishes to manifest what they love and what matters. It is for those growing their careers. Please feel free to comment on any of the articles, comments or artwork. en Copyright 2007 Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:06:03 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Announcing Heartstorming News Blog



I am happy to announce that the last thirty Heartstorming Newsletters with Idea Stimulators have found a new home. Please visit and participate in the dialog.



]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2007/09/announcing_heartstorming_news_blog.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2007/09/announcing_heartstorming_news_blog.html Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:06:03 -0500 Telephone Number Change

Please note that my telephone number has changed to:
610-438-5707
All other information remains the same.
Thank you.


]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2007/03/telephone_number_change.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2007/03/telephone_number_change.html CONTACT IAN Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:06:41 -0500 Inside Storie - Part Two Please see the next entry for
photographs of shot desks.



Inside Stories - Part Two
The second in a series of articles about storytelling
(Link to Part One)
Spontaneous oral storytelling exercises my creative mind. And when I became a father, I couldn't wait to tell stories to my children before they went to bed. Those stories were pure improvisations. My children loved them because they came from our every day experiences. Others were fantasies where the children were forced to suspend disbelief and to accept the world as I presented it. The stories were often interactive and participatory. I remember inventing a fantasy world without television which prompted my daughters to reinvent radio drama as a storytelling device. Neither child had ever heard a radio drama. Children love radio drama because it invites them to complete the stories in their mind's eyes.

What if storytellers presented only the basic facts? A plot for a movie might read something like this:

Steve worked at the same advertising agency for twenty-four years. He is presently semi-retired and writing a play.

It is not likely the movie would ever get made. There's just not enough information to get us interested. We don't care about Steve because his character was never developed. We don't have any information about what he did at the agency or what kept him in the same job for twenty-four years. This story is boring. What if we turned the facts into a story?

Steve's story is written in the present tense which is the preferred format for a scenario. Each action occurs in the present and builds anticipation. Spontaneous oral storytelling often follows this format. It is a natural way to build an improvisation.

Steve resembles Albert Einstein. His disheveled white hair and droopy mustache calls attention to his advancing age in this young person's fickle advertising agency world. He does not know how to tell his colleagues he has been fired after a career making award winning advertisements. Steve was once the boss - a capo di capo of copy oriented conceptual creative directors. Steve was the one who did the firing. He is loyal to the agency and expects the agency to return the favor after twenty-four years. Betrayed, it suddenly hits him that he is just one year short of being vested in the profit sharing fund which would have left him a rich man for the rest of his life. Now he will have to struggle.  Later, at the local gin mill, he sips on his seven dollar martini afraid to tell his wife. He makes her his excuse for suffering the daily abuses his bosses threw at him. Now they are gone. They sold the agency out from under him. Steve is bitter. It's ten PM. Steve has not eaten. He is ordering his fifth martini and slurring his words. He wonders what he will do tomorrow. Will he even bother to clean out his desk? He has lost any last vestige of self esteem. Steve enters into a conversation with a stranger at the other end of the bar. Steve tells the mildly interested and very polite gentleman about his dreams, he would have, could have, should have been a playwright, if it weren't for his wife who demanded money - lots of it. Later Steve pulls a cardboard box from the top shelf of a closet, he finds an unfinished manuscript, sets up his typewriter, and begins to work. The noise disturbs his wife, who insists on knowing what Steve's doing. He lies. Etc.

We are all improvisers. Richard Lederer points out in The Miracle of Language, "The most common form of improvisation is ordinary speech. As we, talk or listen, we draw on a set of bricks (vocabulary) and rules for combining them (grammar)." Think of each of your conversations as a form of word jazz. A conversation between two people is like the spontaneous dialogue between two musicians. The activity of instantaneous creation is as ordinary to us as breathing."

Lederer's computer studies have shown that it would take ten trillion years -- two thousand times the estimated age of the earth - to utter all of the possible sentences that use exactly twenty words. He wrote, "Therefore, it is unlikely that any twenty-word sentence an individual speaks has ever been spoken previously. The same conclusion holds true, of course, for sentences of greater length and for most shorter sentences. That is why almost every sentence in every book magazine, and newspaper that has been written, is expressed, or will be expressed is in its exact form for the first time. Every story you tell is likely to be told for the first time."

Even stories about common occurrences are unique. In our lifetime we collect sensory experiences about people, places, animals, landscapes, events large and small. We store factual and reactive data in our subconscious. None of us sees the same events in the same way. Couple that with the infinite ways of expressing ourselves and Richard Lederer's calculations are most believable.

]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2007/03/inside_storie_part_two.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2007/03/inside_storie_part_two.html Articles Sat, 03 Mar 2007 11:03:38 -0500 Chaos - Shooting Your Desk




I  d  e  a  S  t  i  m  u  l  a  t  o  r  s

Chaos

In a recent Heartstorming Newsletter now published with Weekly Idea Stimulators
I included some thoughts on Creativity and Chaos.

I invited people to
SHOOT THEIR DESK!
How Does Your Desk Reveal Your Personality?
Read this article first.

That's right. As is. No cleaning up.
Chaotic or Orderly or Some Place in Between.
Send me a low res JPEG and I will place it on this blog.

Chris Bonney

Chris Bonney Desk
Copyright 2007 Chris Bonney
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbonney/



Emmanuel Faure's Desk
www.emmanuelfaure.com
Copyright 2007 Emmanuel Faure

widoff desk

Steve Widoff's Office
www.widoffphoto.com
Copyright 2007 Steve Widoff


]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2007/02/chaos_shooting_your_desk.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2007/02/chaos_shooting_your_desk.html Idea Stimulators Wed, 07 Feb 2007 11:45:05 -0500 Guidelines to Idea Stimulators Thousands of people having been receiving my Free Weekly Idea Stimulators. Some examples are here at this blog. The only way to receive them after today is by request.

Please Add me to Ian Summers Weekly Idea Stimulators List.
Guidelines for Using Idea Stimulators

Be Positive - Suspend disbelief and keep a positive attitude. This world is filled with enough nay-saying.

Limit Judgment - Judging your ideas as you are producing them is like driving the car with the brake and accelerator on at the same time. While you are producing ideas, the pedal should be to the metal. The time to put on the brakes is when you are choosing which ideas to produce. Beware of inner voices of judgment. How many times have you had a good idea you talked you out of?

Detach from an Outcome - I recommend that you detach from a specific outcome when you creating new work. This means that when an idea comes up which produces the Eureka! response, execute the idea because your heart tells you to do it. Do not measure ideas by whether they will appeal to your stock agency, your portfolio, art buyers, picture editors, or... The only criteria ought to be that you love the idea enough to do what ever it takes to bring it into being.

Hitchhiking - Allow others to add to your idea. Your idea may stimulate something in a collaborator. Do not have so much pride in your idea that you think you own it. Give it away. There is an endless supply of ideas in the universe. As you can see by my entries, each concept may generate dozens of additional concepts. No two creators would interpret them the same way. And the purpose of this program is to stimulate you to produce your own concepts. And hitchhike on your own ideas by going back to your idea journal and reviewing and harvesting. One idea will often produce others related or not.

Quantity - Go for quantity. The more ideas the better. You have a better chance of coming up with an innovation, if there are dozens of ideas rather than just a few. Studies show that the first idea is rarely the best. The first half of ideas produced in a prolonged period of time were compared with those of the second half. The later contained 78% more good ideas. Imagine there are two sealed paper bags. One has one hundred ideas. The other has ten. Each bag costs $5.00 and you may only choose one. Chances are you would pick the bag with a hundred ideas because there is a better chance of finding a stimulating idea.

Write it Down - Write everything down as you are processing or you will forget it. Even the best human brain can not hold more than seven variables at a time. I like to keep a large pad with juicy markers handy. It helps me think bigger. When you have an idea write it down quickly. Trying to hold onto a thought may prevent you from coming up with your next idea. It contributes to creative block. Keep an idea journal.

Limit Editorializing - Many of us love our ideas so much that we feel a need to explain them over and over to ourselves and perhaps others. Don't waste time and space explaining your ideas until you have chosen one to produce.

Incubate - This means sleep on it. When you begin ideating you may come up with hundreds of ideas. They will come to you when you least expect it like when you are driving and taking a shower or that moment of somnolence just before you fall asleep. Keep your journal at the side of your bed so you may record those moments or you will forget them. Include your dreams in this journal.

Have Fun - Creating should be a celebratory experience. Be playful.

Be Conscious Of Your Body - Problem solving is an activity that originates in the brain. Heartstorming comes from the body. We feel in our bodies not our heads. Use your body to check-in: to focus on your feelings. For example, I often have a burning sensation in my throat when I am feeling fear. It reminds me that I am not saying something that represents my truth.]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/12/guidelines_to_idea_stimulators.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/12/guidelines_to_idea_stimulators.html Thu, 28 Dec 2006 12:51:16 -0500 Ways to Get Attention Ways to Get Attention
Idea Stimulator #13
I just read that someone surveyed a group of art directors and buyers who advised  photographers seeking their attention to send postcards -- and to send them without envelopes or it will make them angry. It occurred to me that these people do not believe in advertising. If they did, they would be impressed with how promoters get their attention. While it may be easier to send a postcard of your work from time-to-time or even an e-mail with your latest picture, the likelihood is that it will not be looked at and remembered. Advertising people know that after identifying a market, they need to get people's attention with a message that appeals to their needs and desires. If you are using e-mail, your message ought to provide information in some form. Perhaps a newsletter containing information that your audience wants. Or perhaps your promotion may entertain. However you promote, it has to relate and reinforce the ways that you see. A gimmick for a gimmick's sake will not work. Your promotion should have some kind of call for action or a promise or... It should complete the Oh Yeah Response:

Oh Yeah! I love this work. It stirs my soup. I will remember the photographer's name and images. I understand the ways this photographer sees. I will save it. And I will keep this photographer in mind for the next opportunity to work together.

]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/ways_to_get_attention.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/ways_to_get_attention.html Idea Stimulators Thu, 19 Oct 2006 10:39:24 -0500 Inside Stories - Part One
Inside Stories - Part One
This is the first in a five part series of
articles on storytelling
By now you probably realize how much I love to tell and listen to stories. It comes from inventing ways to be noticed in a household where four generations attempted to grow up at the same time. Our two family home was the headquarters for hungry friends, neighbors and relatives who visited every Sunday in swarms. There were bottomless bottles of bourbon, scotch and rye whiskey. There was lamb barley soup, brisket, lumpy mashed potatoes with brown gravy, crusty breads from Brooklyn, homemade cole slaw, vegetables, salad, and Jell-O molds, followed by triple layer all chocolate cake, cake resembling a twelve inch cheese Danish, ice cream, coffee, tea, and chocolate egg creams for the children made with Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup, milk, and seltzer from a syphon bottle. In this house, food was love. But mostly, I remember the noise. What started out as a drone rose to shouts, shrieks and bellows as family and guests all spoke at the same time.

Great Uncles and Aunts told classic family stories embellished and distorted beyond reality. In the retelling stories grew to mythic proportions and we believed them. There was the story about Uncle Harry who worked for my Great Grandfatheat a ship outfitting store at the turn of the last century near South Street in New York. No one ever explained why the sailors thought Harry was a doctor, but they did. And when a merchant marine came to the store drunk and presented Harry with a hangnail, my uncle cut off the sailor's finger. Uncle Leonard, one of my great heroes, was raised in New York City. He moved to Washington D.C. just before World War II and became a taxi driver and tour guide.

Lenny-the-Hack had a devoted following of people who came back year after year for his informative tours. When I discovered Lenny made the whole thing up I was appalled and elated - appalled because of his lack of integrity and elated because of his creativity. I was the one who caught him. One spring when I was about eight years old, I visited Lenny at the nation's capital and accompanied him on a bus tour. He was the guide.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he sang in a convincing southern accent in front of the Washington Monument. "Count up fourteen stones and two over. That stone was carved by hand in the great state of Wisconsin by a man named Horowitz It weighs exactly sixteen thousand four hundred eighty-nine and three quarters pounds."

I went back again when I was nine. Lenny had his customers count up fourteen stones and two over. This time the stone was brought from the great state of Montana and was carved by a man named Schwartz.

Those may have been the good old days. But, nothing so grand ever happened around me when I was a boy. So, I reinvented my family. Dad ran a foundry making shells for the war effort during World War II. On the side, he sold life insurance. The man worked very hard to support four generations. I loved my father and I know he loved me. however, it wasn't enough for this creative adventurer. I turned my father into a gangster and a crusader for human rights. First, I recreated him as a journalist whose dreams were broken when textile unionists destroyed his printing presses and his heart after he ran a union busting editorial. Later, I fantasized Dad as the leader of a gang of Robin Hood thieves who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. I believed my lies were far more interesting than the truth. I told my tales with great conviction and often defended them against my friends who recognized my embellishments. On the other hand, they often requested me to tell them stories and I was rather popular. As an adult, I realized the lies kept me from really knowing a great man. He was a major influence in my life and a colorful joke teller himself.

There is solace in the thought that lying is instinctive rather than learned. For children, there is only the vaguest dividing line between true and false reporting. Truth is a moral concept which needs to be taught. George Steiner said, '...alternity is the greatest of man's tools, by far. With this stick, he has reached out of the cage of instinct to touch the boundaries of the universe and time." Creating alternative worlds can help me cope with and understand reality. Someone once claimed that storytelling is the lie which tells the truth.
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]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/inside_stories_part_one.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/inside_stories_part_one.html Articles Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:08:53 -0500 Enlightenment Logo
Enlightenment

Here is a dialog I have been part of numerous times -- slightly exaggerated for effect:
Q. Who Are You? What Makes You Different?
A.  It's My Lighting, Dude. My Lighting!
Q. 9 out of 10 People Tell Me It's Their Lighting. What About Your Lighting Defines Your Work?
A. It Brings Out Emotions, Man.
Q. And What is It About the Your Lighting That Brings Out Emotions, That Makes You Different? What Do You Mean by Light?

Without light, you could not make a photograph. In fact, without light we could not see. Life could not exist. What is the most frightening experience you have ever had of darkness. For me, it was being alone in a forest at night. The night was moonless. Stars were hidden behind a dense blue-black fabric of clouds. I was eleven. I was lost. I did not know which direction to travel. I fell and skinned both of my knees. There were no light rays to bounce back at my eyes. Without light we can not see. So let there be light!:
In Natural History of the Senses, author Diane Ackerman writes an essay on light:

...Even people who have been blind since birth are greatly affected by light because although we need light to see, light also influences s in other ways. If affects out moods, it rallies our hormones, it triggers our circadian rhythms. During the season of darkness in northern latitudes, the suicide rate soars, insanity looms in many households, and alcoholism becomes rampant...

 Read this book if you can find a copy on Amazon or E-Bay. It is out of print and published by Vintage in 1991.

 ]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/post_4.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/post_4.html Articles Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:45:51 -0500 Annie Liebovitz logo

A Photographer's Life 1990 - 2005
Annie Liebovitz
The photographs, published earlier this month by Random House in a book titled A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005, will be shown at the Brooklyn Museum in an exhibition opening Oct. 20. For those of you in town for Photo Plus, make some time to see this show. There will be photographs of her family and personal history including her fifteen years with the great photography essayist and novelist Susan Sontag. There will be a collection of some of her best images from Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Read Janny Scott's feature in the October 6th edition of the New York Times.

In the days after the death of Susan Sontag in December 2004, Annie Leibovitz began searching for photographs for a small book to be given out at the memorial service. She started with other people’s photographs of Ms. Sontag, then turned to her own, taken during the 15 years they spent together. That exercise turned into what she has described as an archeological dig: an unearthing and sifting of a decade and a half of work, love, family life, illness, deaths and births, adding up to “my most important work,” she said in an interview this week. “It’s the most intimate, it tells the best story, and I care about it.”
Janny Scott, NYTimes, October 6, 2006

“I don’t have two lives,” Annie Leibovitz writes in the Introduction to this collection of her work from 1990—2005. “This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.” To read reviews and to order a discounted copy of A Photographer's Life 1990-2005 visit Amazon.com.
]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/annie_liebovitz.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/annie_liebovitz.html Articles Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:43:03 -0500 Maira Kalman
Maira Kalman

In the NY Times (October 4, 2006) , author/illustrator/humorist Maira Kalman touched my heart. 

This work should be shared. If you like it, go back and look at her previous columns. Then take a look at her history on her website.

In today's story, and she is a remarkable storyteller, she searches for the answer to the question, "Who am I?" At one point she begins to describe herself through her collections. Her illustrations are excellent. And her subjects include everyday objects (sort of), people she has known, historical figures including Abraham Lincoln, Goethe and even her father-in-law.

Maira was the wife of the late great designer Tibor Kalman.

Make sure you see her New Yorker covers especially this collaboration with Rick Meyerowitz called New Yorkistan.

]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/maira_kalman.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/10/maira_kalman.html Articles Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:29:44 -0500 Star of Your Own Soap Opera Idea Stimulator #12
You Are the Star of Your Own Soap Opera

The term soap opera originated from daytime radio when these serial dramas which were largely aimed at housewives. Many of the products sold during these commercials were laundry and cleaning items, and included a jingle praising the product. This specific type of radio drama became associated with particular commercials, and thus gave rise to the term soap opera. Generally soap operas were melodramatic stories that were sponsored by soap products.

The soap opera form originated on U.S. radio in the 1930s, and expanded into television starting in the 1940s. Radio soap operas began in Chicago in 1930 when WGN broadcast the fifteen minute drama Painted Dreams, about the trials of an Irish-American widow and her daughter. By the start of World War II there were dozens of popular soap operas. The first concerted effort to air continuing drama on television occurred in 1946 on the DuMont television series Faraway Hill. (Wikipedia)

Louise Lasser as Mary Hartman


]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/07/star_of_your_own_soap_opera.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/07/star_of_your_own_soap_opera.html Idea Stimulators Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:23:42 -0500 Hey Tony!
logo
Hey Tony!

This is my story of how I became an art director and developed an adrenaline addiction. Five years out of college, I decided to leave a career as a high school art teacher and to make some money. I had a child on the way, lived in New York City, and could no longer support my family on a teacher's salary. I remembered counseling my students against the commercial arts believing it was a sell out. However I was desperate. My portfolio consisted of an art student's frayed zippered bag, some wrinkled figure drawings, and a #10 envelope containing thirty over or underexposed dusty scratched slides of my paintings. No one taught me about presentation in art school. I dragged this portfolio all over town and talked my way into interviews with creative directors and personnel managers at advertising agencies. They thought I was charming, but they had a large pool of well-trained young graphic designers to choose from.

There was an ad in The New York Times classifieds for an Assistant Advertising Manager at a company called Lightolier. I called. Lightolier was located in Jersey City. I lived in New York. There was no way I was going to reverse commute. My concerned wife thought it would be a good idea to get the experience of a genuine interview. I went reluctantly via buses and trains. Lightolier was located in a huge brick factory building of Civil War vintage. It was not my idea of glamour and I knew somewhere in my bones that I would sabotage this interview.


]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/07/hey_tony.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/07/hey_tony.html Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:42:10 -0500 The Definitive Pez Collection Idea Stimulator # 11
The Definitive Pez Collection

When my wife and I moved to Easton PA in 2001, we came across a new museum being built just a few blocks from our loft. The founder, owner, and curator Tim Coyle turned out to own the loft below ours.




In 1927, Austrian Edward Haas came up with a new peppermint candy.The word Pez comes from the German word for peppermint (pfefferminz). It was an adult breath mint that he decided to market as an alternative for smoking. From the word pfefferminz they took the first, middle and last letter and came up with the word Pez. Pez was carried around in pocket tins. Then in 1948 they came out with the "easy, hygenic dispenser" that we all recognize now to be a standard. In 1952 Pez was introduced in the United States. Package designers placed heads on the dispensers and marketed the newly positioned Pez to children...
About 1,500 Pez dispensers, all nestled in creative landscapes, fill the Easton Museum Of Pez Dispensers. Disney Pez sit in a 10-foot-high castle. Halloween-themed Pez are displayed in a haunted house. Psychedelic Pez are set beside a real Volkswagen Beetle that appears to be crashing through the wall. There are NFL Pez and superheroes, Star Wars and Charlie Brown, Elton John and Santa Claus. There is also a "Where in the World Is Waldo" game set up on a wall display containing more than 500 dispensers.
This got me thinking about how the candy bars of my childhood have evolved; package design, product extensions, flavors, ingrediants, logos, advertising, &c. Of course, some of my favorite candies disappeared. Take a trip back to your childhood and make a list of the candies that you remember. Go to a supermarket and see if that product is still made. Can you recognize it? What’s different? How does this stimulate your imagination.

My Childhood Favorites
Bazzini Nuts
Baby Ruth
3 Musketeers
Bit O' Honey
Good & Plenty
Oh Henry!
Peanut Chews
Jujubes
Jujyfruit
Necco Wafers
Planter’s Peanut Bar
Snickers
Bonomo Turkish Taffy
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/07/the_definitive_pez_collection.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/07/the_definitive_pez_collection.html Idea Stimulators Mon, 10 Jul 2006 11:34:31 -0500 Snickers and Walnettos Idea Stimulator # 10
Snickers and Walnettos

When I was an elementary school student my grandmother prepared a brown bag lunch each day sparing me from the cafeteria. Lunches included a healthy sandwich (roast beef, meatloaf, egg salad), a fun sandwich (peanut butter or cream cheese and jelly), a slice of homemade chocolate cake, a piece of fruit, and enough money for an ice cream and container of milk. I was not small. However if I knew someone had it, I would often trade my entire lunch for a Snickers Bar.

Snickers
The Best-Selling Candy Bar of All Time
]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/07/post_2.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/07/post_2.html Idea Stimulators Sat, 08 Jul 2006 10:28:10 -0500 Spanners logo
Spanners
The Characteristics and Attributes of Artists
Whose Careers Span Fifty Years or More
I recently introduced a discussion in my teleconferences about artists whose careers have flourished for long periods of time. We considered the careers of Picasso, Matisse, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Norman Mailer, Paul McCartney, and others. In a couple of months Paul McCartney will be – you guessed it – 64 years old. And what a career he has had. I believe he is as vital today – maybe even more so – than he was in his time as a Beatle. He wrote his first song in 1956; fifty years ago.
Richard Avedon's career spanned 60 years.
Pablo Picasso's career spanned 77 years.
Henri Matisse's career spanned 65 years.
Irving Penn's career spans 63 years and he is still at it.
Norman Mailer's career spans about 60 years - still going strong.

I call these people Spanners. Some questions:

What are the attributes and characteristics (A's and C's) present in Spanners? How do you measure up?  Few have all the A's and C's. Many of us have a little of each. Some may be worthwhile to focus on and to improve. Others may just be considered genetic.

Go through the list. (see the full article for the list) Define the terms for yourself. What is talent? It is defined as a natural apptitude. However, if you have it, are you using it fully? If you do not use it, will you lose it?

Are you inspired and do you inspire others? When was the last time you surprised yourself while creating? Do you love your dream strongly enough to apply the energy required to bring it into being -- no matter what?

Obsession is a common attribute of Spanners. Matisse was so obsessed by his calling to make art that he told Amelie when he proposed that his love for his art will always come before everything else. And that is the way he lived his long and productive life. I just finished reading an insightful and extremely informative two volume biography of Matisse. Read it. Matisse had most of the A's and C's most of the time. As in most of us, A's and C's oscillate: they wax and wane.
A Life of Henri Matisse
Hilary Spurling
Volume One: The Unknown Matisse 1869-1908
Volume Two: Matisse The Master 1909-1954
(Alfred Knopf)



Henri Matisse
Self-Portrait in a Striped T-Shirt.
1906.
Oil on canvas.
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark

From the dust jacket: ..."If my story were ever to be written down truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone." ...With unprecedented and unrestricted access to his voluminous family correspondence, and other new material in private archives, Hilary Spurling documents a lifetime of desperation and self-doubt exacerbated by Matisse'sattempts to counteract the violence and desperation of the twentieth century in paintings that now seem effortlessly serene, radiant and stable.
I have provided a matrix to help you ask yourself questions like these. You will see the attributes and characteristics which we identified on the left side of the matrix. If there are A's and C's not represented, add them. There are three columns immediately to the right. Using a scale of 1 – 10, how would you rate yourself right now. Be fiercely honest. The next column marked with an F is for feasibility. Using a scale of 1 -- 10 and considering everything you know and believe about yourself, how feasible would it be to raise your score. And finally, the third column marked with an E is for effectiveness. How effective would it be for you to focus and put energy into raising each A and C?
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1001 Quotes, Questions & Pondering
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]]> http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/05/spanners.html http://www.heartstorming.com/archives/2006/05/spanners.html Articles Wed, 03 May 2006 10:04:29 -0500