My Year of Hopefulness - Walking with Faith Through Egypt

"For we walk by faith, not by sight." ~ 2 Corinthians 5:7

I went to the Egyptian Galleries today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I've been doing a little bit of fiction writing and needed to collect some research on Egypt. I suppose I could have could just looked it up on-line though it was a gorgeous day, I wanted to walk through the park, and there is not substitute for seeing the treasures of Egypt right in front of us.

The Egyptian Galleries are well-known as one of the favorite attractions for kids to the Met. The fiction piece I'm writing is actually for a young adult audience so I must admit that a little of my motivation was some good eaves dropping. Kids, of course, were fascinated by the mummies. "There's a dead person in there?" I heard numerous times. Followed invariable by the parents saying "yes" and the kids responding "cool". (For the record, that was my response in my mind, too.) They also loved the myriad of figurines, depictions of dogs, and all the fancy gold jewelry that literally glowed within the display cases. I easily saw a dozen kids striking a pose that matches the many Egyptian etchings that lined the walls of the galleries. I wanted to do that too, though I knew it wouldn't be as endearing an act for a 33 year old as it is for a 10 year old, so I held myself back.

To write fiction, we have to hang out with our characters, walk around with them, see the world through their eyes as well as our own. In this action, there are bits of dialogue that surface. We learn about the experiences of our characters the same way we get to know a new friend or someone we've just started dating. A little at a time, we learn where they've been, what they've seen, and where they hope their lives will go. I just walk beside them silently, recording everything.

There's a lot of faith involved in writing fiction. At the top of a blank page, we're never quite sure where we'll end up by the time we reach the bottom of that page. We have to be generous and patient and let the story unfold naturally, taking comfort that it will go exactly the way it's supposed to. It's a mystical process.

Our lives are kind of like fiction writing, too. We might have some kind of basic outline for what we'd like to do and where we'd like to go, though the details of how we color in the lines is largely spontaneous. We meet new and interesting characters along the way, we veer off in many different directions, take advantage of one opportunity and then pass on another. We travel, we experience, we remain open to things that are new and strange and beautiful. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I see that living life really is exactly like writing fiction. We fumble around in the dark, not knowing exactly what is in front of us, forging ahead with only the faith and belief that the road we're on is exactly where we are meant to be. All we must do is be present. The story, and our very lives, will unfold around us.

My Year of Hopefulness - The Life We Receive Without Asking

"Our plans are nothing compared to what the world so willingly gives us." ~ Margaret Wheatley

"Never tell everything at once." ~ Ken Venturi, American former professional golfer

On Saturday evening, I headed across Central Park toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As I crossed the park, I passed between the southern border of the Great Lawn and Belvedere Castle. It's one of my favorite little pieces of New York City. There's some sort of happy air that exists in that little triangle; it's impossible to resist smiling there. I always feel romance and unending possibility as I traverse that ground. It was late afternoon so the sun was just streaming over Belvedere, the clover and honeysuckle filled the air with a perfume that I wish could be bottled, and there was a soft breeze. For those few moments, everything felt perfect.

On Friday and Saturday nights the Met is open until 9:00pm so I wanted to take advantage of the extended hours. I checked in on my friends Vermeer and Rodin, stopped by to visit the empires of Northern Mesopotamia, and spent some time among the folk artists of Oceania. It's almost inconceivable how lucky we are to be able to walk among so many priceless pieces of art at a moment's notice.

At the Met I was on a little bit of a mission. I've been working on some children's fiction over the last few weeks. Every day that I sit with my characters, they tell me something new about themselves. In a way, creating characters is like getting to know a new friend. I uncover little pieces about them over time, just by sitting with them and letting them tell me their story. Every day I'm reminded of Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way, when she says "Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite -- getting something down." While I have a general map for the story, the characters themselves are just letting me tag along on their journey. The characters themselves will provide a far richer, more intriguing story than I could ever plan. That's the great joy and magic of writing.

As I was wondering through the Greek and Roman Galleries, the art of Cyprus, and the rooms full of knights in shining armor, a lot of ideas were drifting in and out of my mind. I dutifully wrote them all down - bits of dialogue and thoughts and twists and turns in the plot. After recording them all, I stopped to wonder if they made sense. And then I realized the characters I'm writing about can actually do anything they want. Writing fiction is a little daunting for this very reason - all of a sudden the possibilities are wide-open. When you're just getting something down, there are no more limitations. Writing fiction may present our one and only opportunity for complete and total freedom.

While I went through Central Park and to the Met to accomplish something specific, I found something far greater in both places than I had intended. These experiences reminded me that the world has great plans for us, far greater plans that we have for ourselves. And while not having control may at first seem frightening, in many ways it's as freeing as writing fiction. Unexpected, incredible circumstances, people, places, and opportunities are going to appear in our lives through no effort of our own. All we need to do to receive them is to show up with an open heart, an accepting mind, and the willingness to listen. If we can do this, the magic that is all around us becomes an unlimited and constant presence in our lives.

The Journal of Cultural Conversation: Titanic: The Exhibition

Happy Monday, all. My latest post is up at TJCC. On Saturday I visited Titanic: The Exhibition, now on view at the Discovery Times Center on 44th Street. The exhibit tells the story of the Titanic through items salvaged from the wreckage, eye-witness accounts, and scientific exploration. I found it to be equal parts fascinating and terrifying. Around every corner I was surprised by some new fact I never knew.

For the full article and to check out all of the other great conversations happening over at TJCC, please click here.

My Year of Hopefulness - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A short bus ride across town from my apartment, the bus stops just outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art - a place that transports you to a different world once you enter its main hall that is now decorated with large urns full of cherry blossoms. Just beyond that main hall are the Greek and Roman Galleries, refurbished and re-opened almost exactly two years ago. In those halls and throughout the museum the array of art is dizzying. It took me a few moments today just to get my head around the treasures we have the good fortune to wander through.

What I find most amazing about the Met, and art in general, is that someone, an individual, had an image in his or her mind hundreds or thousands of years ago, put brush to canvas, anvil to stone, hand to clay, and shared with us, the world, what he or she was thinking of. These pieces of art are living history. They capture a moment in time for all of us to witness and appreciate.

After touring through the French Bronze exhibit and Rafael to Renoir sketches, I wanted to wander around the gift store and see if I could find some of the prints I've been looking for. The Met is so immense that I often just wander around from gallery to gallery, never quite sure where I am. I like to get lost in the art. I asked a docent just outside of the entrance to the Papua New Guinea Gallery how I could get to the gift shop.

"The Main Gift Shop?" he asked.

I nodded, thinking, "is there another one?"

"Walk straight ahead and take a left at the column from the Temple of Artemis."

It's not everyday you hear directions like this. I smiled to myself and followed the docent's instructions, imagining that I was walking through Ancient Greece, appreciating all of the treasures that were my landmarks.

My Year of Hopefulness - Social Entrepreneurship and iTunes U

By trade, I am product developer. I design and build product for American consumers, mostly wealthy ones. While I was in business school at Darden, if I could have chosen any career, this is what I would have chosen. In fact, it is what I have been doing my whole career in a variety of industries - I was building programs, theatre productions, communication plans, and fundraising concepts. However, up to that point I didn't give much thought to the idea that what we do is just as important as how we do it and whom we do it for. 

Just after my graduation I moved back to New York City sans job. By the end of June I had a good job offer to start in July in the field of innovation, exactly what I wanted, and was free to spend a fair amount of time bumming around my old haunts, wandering, and reacquainting myself with a city that I had not lived in full-time since 2001. One afternoon I found myself at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. They were running an exhibit called Design for the Other 90%. At the time I did not realize that this exhibit and my strong belief in community service would start me on a course that would begin to dominate the way I view my future and my career.

Now a year and half out of business school, a light bulb has gone off for me. I have spent all of this time thinking that I needed a really brilliant idea to start an entrepreneurial venture, and that starting my own business mean a complete about-face from all of the work I have done in the past. In actuality, becoming a social entrepreneur is an amalgamation of all the work I have done to this point, and mixing it up with personal passions of history, culture, and volunteering. As Steve Jobs says, "Looking back, we are able to connect the dots of our lives." And that is exactly the process I currently find myself in. 

I have been doing some research to find a class to take on the subject. Columbia has a few, as does Pratt, the New School, and NYU. Though none of them have exactly what I'm looking for. They either treat the subject as part of a nonprofit management masters, a business class, or as part of the sociology curriculum. One woman from NYU suggested I take a class entitled something like "How to become a female entrepreneur." Can you imagine? It was essentially a class on how to write a business plan. I was telling my friend and mentor, Richard, about these classes and his response was, "I don't suggest that. You would be completely bored." He's right.

And then I remembered an earlier post I wrote on this blog about iTunes University. Apple collected a wide variety of classes and lectures from the world's top universities and put them on-line. For free. And sure enough, Stanford's Center for Social Innovation had an entire series posted with exactly the material I was looking for. Did I mention that it was free. And it's mobile so I download the lecture into iTunes, put them on my ipod, and away I go. I spent the afternoon walking around, doing my errands, and being inspired by the ideas and experiences of the brightest minds in my chosen field. 3 birds (exercise, errands, and learning) with 1 stone. 

I also learned that I don't need a degree to do this work. (Good thing since I can't afford one!) I have and am currently amassing the knowledge and experience I need to do this. And rather than take a class or apply for a fellowship in this field, Richard encouraged me to sit down and write letters to the social entrepreneurs I admire most. Ask them if I could visit their organizations and spend half a day with them learning about their work. A handful of plane tickets and my time will teach me a whole lot more about this field than a once-a-week class for four months in a lecture hall. It's also cheaper and places an emphasis on networking with people doing the work I aspire to do. I may have just found my mountain...

Buckminster Fuller

I went to the Whitney today with friends Dan, Steve, and Liane. It was our inaugural museum / dinner quarterly outing. (As just decided by Steve at the conclusion of our time at the Whitney.) Dan and I had been planning to go to the Buckminster Fuller exhibit for a good 6 weeks and finally our schedules aligned today. Luckily Steve and Liane were free as well. 

Fuller is an interesting guy, though after an hour long tour by a woman who is clearly a scholar and viewing close to 100 pieces of his work, I'm still not sure if or how he is relevant to the art and architecture worlds. Entirely self-taught, he can't be called a designer, architect, or engineer. (Leaving me highly skeptical about his relevance to begin with.) At 32, the age I am now, he had an epiphany that rather than commit suicide by drowning himself in Lake Michigan, he would spend his time as a guinea pig of design, throwing out crazy ideas one after another and seeing if any of them stick to help improve the quality of life on this planet. Hmmmm...I am growing more skeptical by the minute. 

Fuller was very concerned with a handful of concepts and activities: marketing and branding, developing a design language all his own, optimism under all circumstances, and the state of the human condition. Now I'm growing a bit more interested. And then two other facts really pulled me in: he did not give a lick about the historical preservation of architecture (he cared only about the futuristic city) and he was so obsessed with the ideation / prototyping phase of a project that none of his ideas ever made it to market. 

As someone who loves the history of architecture and often spends days walking around a city just looking at buildings, I'm horrified that anyone in this field would ever admit to not caring one way or another if any architecture is ever preserved. And then I considered how many people I know who love thinking up ideas with no ability / desire to execute them. I like endings; I enjoy completing projects and reveling in the analysis of the outcome. (Perhaps that's because I was born a Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac.) I cannot imagine anyone loving to think up ideas for ideas' sake and not doing what it takes to see those ideas realized first-hand. To say you are a visionary with no ability to operate is like saying you would enjoy the company of other people if only you didn't love to hide in your apartment. A million good ideas have no relevance if you don't have the inkling to make them come to life. Or do they?

My friends and I left the exhibit interested and confused. Why on Earth would the Whitney devote an entire floor to a man who couldn't get things done? I thought about this on my walk to dinner. This sliding scale of a man, equal parts genius and crack-pot. This man with no formal training who has talents that defied any kind of definition. A man without a community. 

I wonder if it is people like Buckminster Fuller who provide the shoulders for us to stand on to do great things after him. He could see that building environmentally sustainable vehicles and communities would be important, even if he didn't have the ability to get them built. He could see that we were building so much manufacturing capability in this country that someday those resources would have to be used in new ways such as green energy production. So the question becomes can someone else with more energy and organization pick up the good points of his ideas and run with them to create something that benefits humanity in a tangible way? Maybe that is his lasting legacy: he confused, inspired, and infuriated us so much that people picked apart his ideas and salvaged the pieces that could be brought to life with a little ingenuity and a lot of hard work. Not a bad legacy for a man who almost ended it all at 32 on the shores of Lake Michigan. No bad at all. 

A meeting of the minds: art and technology

I have been out of professional theatre management for quite some time now. I love going to shows, love reading about the industry. Every once in a while I get a twinge to go back to it, and then about 5 seconds later I have a moonstruck “snap out of it” moment. We idealize the past.

While I am not sure if I will ever return to the industry, I am passionate about propagating the arts. I read Michael Eisner’s book A Work in Progress about 6 months before I moved to New York City to begin my career in theatre. It is not an exaggeration to say that he very much influenced my decision to give it a shot and see what I could do in the industry. He has a quote in the front cover that to this day is one of my favorites, and it bears repeating. "What hope there is for us lies in our nascent arts, for if we are to be remembered as more than a mass of people who lived and fought wars and died, it is for our arts that we will be remembered. The fortunes wither, the kings depart. What survives are the creations of people who are makers and artificers of the spirit.”

I am now an outsider of the industry with some wonderful friends still very much inside. Over the past few months I have begun to wonder how on Earth the industry expects to survive without embracing technology beyond complicating lighting plots and set designs. With all of the competing interests for time that consumers now face and a shaky economy, the arts cannot expect to rely on local audiences and tourists to make up the whole of their subscriber base. The traditional subscriber model needs to be ripped to shreds and rebuilt. Why should Lincoln Center limit their viewers to only those who can get to NYC? Why not develop a subscriber base that spans the globe?

I’m talking about a technological platform that would film performances and museum exhibits in very high definition to be broadcast via subscription on the web to those who pay per log-in. I am already hearing the naysayers – “theatre is about being there”, “what about the live interaction that the actors need?”, “no technology can replace actually being there in person”. I agree with all of that. And the die-hard subscribers will, too. They will still come to performances and exhibits.

Let’s consider those who can’t get to the theatre or museum: why should art institutions leave that money on the table? Why shouldn’t all people everywhere be able to experience and appreciate art wherever it is? If we don’t do this, can we hope to hang on to young audiences who are so intrinsically linked to technology? And don’t our artists deserve to have the ability to reach audiences far and wide?

The other bonus that this kind of technology would offer is the ability for those who see the performances to interact with one another, to keep the artistic discussion going long after the curtain goes down. Not to mention the diversification of revenue – new subscribers and the increased ad money that could be made available to arts organizations to not only survive but to thrive.

I have a certain disdain for critics – how they kill works of art before the performers even get their arms around a piece. Why should the critics decide what shows stays open on Broadway and what closes? Why does this very select group of people get to determine the art we see and enjoy? Opening up the subscriber base and encouraging the conversation among patrons returns the power to the people it rightfully belongs to – the patrons.

The above images can be found at http://infocusmagazine.org/3.2/images/eng_beyond.gif

Delightful Doodles: the art of William Steig

Yesterday I took a walk across Central Park to stop in to the Jewish Museum of Art at 92nd Street and 5th Avenue. There is a new exhibit there that celebrate the art work of William Steig, a cartoonist who achieved early fame as an illustrator of the New York and became a children's book author at age 60. Though he is most famous for conceiving the idea for and creating the story of Shrek, that one work, as wonderful as it is, does not do justice to a career based on enchanting doodles.

Like many art exhibits, this one has multi-media components - a short film, narrated by Steig, about his life and work, models of the Shrek characters, letters he's written to and received from monumental figures in the art world, interactive pieces such as a children's library, and of course, his marvelous sketches. Immediately upon entering the exhibit, the greatest nugget to genius is written plainly on the wall. When asked about how he developed such a successful career, Steig said "I don't think like other people. I never really did grow up."

It's his wonderful sense of honesty and childlike desire to connect with people on a very profound basis that had me smiling all throughout the exhibit. His doodling and intentional coloring outside of the lines kept me dreaming, entering his world of fair tales that had meaningful lessons to teach viewers about their real, everyday lives. Steig said his best work came from drawing with no direction, with no purpose. Drawing for the sake of drawing.

This had me wondering all the way home what works I could create if I had no agenda in my creations. How would I live my life if I just did what I wanted to do without any sense of having to do something "useful"? By letting go, we can break-through.