How to Respond to the Challenges of Our Time?: Jazz Legends Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter Give 10 Pieces of Advice to Young Artists, and Everyone Else

in Art, Creativity, Current Affairs, Jazz, Music | February 7th, 2017

Some moments in his­to­ry strike us as dra­mat­ic rup­tures. Cer­tain­ties are super­seded, thrown into chaos by a seis­mic event, and we find our­selves adrift and anx­ious. What are artists to do? Gripped by the same fears as every­one else, the same sense of urgency, writ­ers, musi­cians, film­mak­ers, painters, etc. may find them­selves unable to “breathe with uncon­di­tion­al breath / the uncon­di­tioned air,” as Wen­dell Berry once described the cre­ative process.

We might remem­ber the rad­i­cal break with tra­di­tion when the shock­ing car­nage of World War I sent poets and painters into fright­en­ing places they had pre­vi­ous­ly left unex­plored. Vir­ginia Woolf summed up the sit­u­a­tion in her essay The Lean­ing Tow­er: “sud­den­ly like a chasm in a smooth road, the [Great] war came.” Shat­tered as they were, her gen­er­a­tion over­came their paral­y­sis. Mod­ernists of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry were able to speak to their bro­ken age in ways that con­tin­ue to speak to ours.

But we should tem­per our belief that bad times make good art by not­ing that the most vision­ary cre­ative minds are not sim­ply reac­tive, respond­ing to tragedy like reporters on a crime scene. As Wayne Short­er and Her­bie Han­cock— two of the 20th century’s most con­sis­tent­ly inno­v­a­tive musicians—suggest, artists at all times need a set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples. (See the two play “Mem­o­ry of Enchant­ment” above in 2002.) There is always a lot of per­son­al work to do. And in “tur­bu­lent and unpre­dictable times,” the two jazz greats advise, “the answer to peace is sim­ple; it begins with you.”

A plat­i­tude, per­haps, but one they illus­trat­ed near­ly a year ago in an open let­ter at Nest HQ with some pro­found, if chal­leng­ing, pre­scrip­tions for our present cul­tur­al ill­ness­es. Short­er and Hancock’s coun­sel is not a reac­tion to the rup­ture of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, but a response to the events that pre­ced­ed it, “the hor­ror at the Bat­a­clan… the upheaval in Syr­ia and the sense­less blood­shed in San Bernardi­no.” Not pas­sive­ly wait­ing to find out where the past few years’ vio­lence and unrest would lead, the two have made eth­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, and spir­i­tu­al inter­ven­tions, pre­sent­ing their phi­los­o­phy and ethics through jazz, Bud­dhism, sci­ence, art, and lit­er­a­ture.

Below, you can read their ten pieces of advice “to the next gen­er­a­tion of artists,” or at least excerpts there­of. They begin with a reas­sur­ing pref­ace: “As an artist, cre­ator and dream­er of this world, we ask you not to be dis­cour­aged by what you see but to use your own lives, and by exten­sion your art, as vehi­cles for the con­struc­tion of peace…. You mat­ter, your actions mat­ter, your art mat­ters.” That said, they also want to assure read­ers that “these thoughts tran­scend pro­fes­sion­al bound­aries and apply to all peo­ple, regard­less of pro­fes­sion.”

First, awak­en to your human­i­ty

You can­not hide behind a pro­fes­sion or instru­ment; you have to be human. Focus your ener­gy on becom­ing the best human you can be. Focus on devel­op­ing empa­thy and com­pas­sion. Through the process you’ll tap into a wealth of inspi­ra­tion root­ed in the com­plex­i­ty and curios­i­ty of what it means to sim­ply exist on this plan­et.

Embrace and con­quer the road less trav­eled

Don’t allow your­self to be hijacked by com­mon rhetoric, or false beliefs and illu­sions about how life should be lived. It’s up to you to be the pio­neers.

Wel­come to the Unknown

Every rela­tion­ship, obsta­cle, inter­ac­tion, etc. is a rehearsal for the next adven­ture in life. Every­thing is con­nect­ed. Every­thing builds. Noth­ing is ever wast­ed. This type of think­ing requires courage. Be coura­geous and do not lose your sense of exhil­a­ra­tion and rev­er­ence for this won­der­ful world around you.

Under­stand the True Nature of Obsta­cles

We have this idea of fail­ure, but it’s not real; it’s an illu­sion. There is no such thing as fail­ure. What you per­ceive as fail­ure is real­ly a new oppor­tu­ni­ty, a new hand of cards, or a new can­vas to cre­ate upon.

Don’t Be Afraid to Inter­act with Those Who Are Dif­fer­ent from You

The world needs more one-on-one inter­ac­tion among peo­ple of diverse ori­gins with a greater empha­sis on art, cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Our dif­fer­ences are what we have in com­mon…. We need to be con­nect­ing with one anoth­er, learn­ing about one anoth­er, and expe­ri­enc­ing life with one anoth­er. We can nev­er have peace if we can­not under­stand the pain in each other’s hearts.

Strive to Cre­ate Agen­da-Free Dia­logue

Art in any form is a medi­um for dia­logue, which is a pow­er­ful tool… we’re talk­ing about reflect­ing and chal­leng­ing the fears, which pre­vent us from dis­cov­er­ing our unlim­it­ed access to the courage inher­ent in us all.

Be Wary of Ego

Cre­ativ­i­ty can­not flow when only the ego is served.

Work Towards a Busi­ness with­out Bor­ders

The med­ical field has an orga­ni­za­tion called Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders. This lofty effort can serve as a mod­el for tran­scend­ing the lim­i­ta­tions and strate­gies of old busi­ness for­mu­las which are designed to per­pet­u­ate old sys­tems in the guise of new ones.

Appre­ci­ate the Gen­er­a­tion that Walked Before You

Your elders can help you. They are a source of wealth in the form of wis­dom…. Don’t waste time repeat­ing their mis­takes.

Last­ly, We Hope that You Live in a State of Con­stant Won­der

As we accu­mu­late years, parts of our imag­i­na­tion tend to dull. Whether from sad­ness, pro­longed strug­gle, or social con­di­tion­ing, some­where along the way peo­ple for­get how to tap into the inher­ent mag­ic that exists with­in our minds. Don’t let that part of your imag­i­na­tion fade away.

Whether you’re a jazz fan, musi­cian, artist, writer, accoun­tant, cashier, truck­er, teacher, or what­ev­er, I can’t think of a wis­er set of guide­lines with which to con­front the suf­fo­cat­ing epi­dem­ic of cyn­i­cism, delu­sion­al think­ing, ram­pant big­otry, hatred, and self-absorp­tion of our time. Read Short­er and Hancock’s full open let­ter at Nest HQ.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Jean-Paul Sartre on How Amer­i­can Jazz Lets You Expe­ri­ence Exis­ten­tial­ist Free­dom & Tran­scen­dence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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David Lynch Explains How Meditation Boosts Our Creativity (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Meditating)

in Creativity, Film, Health | January 17th, 2017

David Lynch med­i­tates, and he med­i­tates hard. Begin­ning his prac­tice in earnest after it helped him solve a cre­ative prob­lem dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of his break­out 1977 film Eraser­head, he has con­tin­ued med­i­tat­ing assid­u­ous­ly ever since, going so far as to found the David Lynch Foun­da­tion for Con­scious­ness-Based Edu­ca­tion and Peace and pub­lish a pro-med­i­ta­tion book called Catch­ing the Big Fish.

It might seem non­sen­si­cal to hear an artist of the grotesque like Lynch speak rap­tur­ous­ly about voy­ag­ing into his own con­scious­ness, let alone in his frac­tured all-Amer­i­can, askew-Jim­my-Stew­art man­ner, but he does med­i­tate for a prac­ti­cal rea­son: it gives him ideas.

Only by med­i­tat­ing, he says, can he dive down and catch the “big fish” he uses as ingre­di­ents in his inim­itable film, music, and visu­al art. You can hear more of his thoughts on med­i­ta­tion, con­scious­ness, and cre­ativ­i­ty in his nine-minute speech above.

If you’d like to hear more, the video just above offers a near­ly two-hour pre­sen­ta­tion at UC Berke­ley with Lynch as its star. You’ll also hear from out­spo­ken quan­tum physi­cist John Hagelin and Fred Travis, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Brain, Con­scious­ness and Cog­ni­tion Mahar­ishi Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­age­ment. Some of what they say might make good sense to you: after all, we could all use a method to clear our minds so we can cre­ate what we need to cre­ate. Some of what they say might strike you as total non­sense. But if you feel tempt­ed to dis­miss all as too bizarre for seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, you might med­i­tate, as it were, on oth­er things Lynchi­an: back­wards-talk­ing dwarves, sev­ered ears on sub­ur­ban lawns, alien babies, women liv­ing in radi­a­tors, sit­com fam­i­lies in rab­bit suits. He’s cer­tain­ly pitched us weird­er con­cepts than med­i­ta­tion.

For some sec­u­lar intro­duc­tions to med­i­ta­tion, you may wish to try out some of these resources.

–UCLA’s Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion Ses­sions

–Insight Med­i­ta­tion Center’s Free 6‑Part Intro to Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion

–Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

–Med­i­ta­tion 101: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Beginner’s Guide

–Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

–Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in April, 2013.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Allen Gins­berg Teach­es You How to Med­i­tate with a Rock Song Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan on Bass

 

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Kurt Vonnegut’s Term Paper Assignment from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Teaches You to Read Fiction Like a Writer

in Creativity, Education, Letters, Literature, Writing | October 24th, 2016

vonnegut drawing

Image by Daniele Prati, via Flickr Com­mons

I wish I’d had a teacher who framed his or her assign­ments as let­ters…

Which is real­ly just anoth­er way of say­ing I wish I’d been lucky enough to have tak­en a class with writ­ers Kurt Von­negut or Lyn­da Bar­ry.

There’s still hope of a class with Bar­ry, aka Pro­fes­sor Chew­bac­ca, Pro­fes­sor Old Skull, and most recent­ly, Pro­fes­sor Dro­go. Those of us who can’t get a seat at the Wis­con­sin Insti­tute for Dis­cov­ery, the Omega Insti­tute, or the Clar­i­on Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­ta­sy Writ­ers’ Work­shop can play along at home, using assign­ments she gen­er­ous­ly makes avail­able in her books and on her Near-Sight­ed Mon­key Tum­blr.

Von­negut fans long for this lev­el of access, which is why we are dou­bly grate­ful to writer Suzanne McConnell, who took Vonnegut’s “Form of Fic­tion” (aka “Sur­face Crit­i­cism” aka “How to Talk out of the Cor­ner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro”) course at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop in the mid-60s.

The goal was to exam­ine fic­tion from a writer’s per­spec­tive and McConnell (who is soon to pub­lish a book about Vonnegut’s advice to writ­ers) pre­served one of her old teacher’s term paper assign­ments—again in let­ter form. She lat­er had an epiphany that his assign­ments were “designed to teach some­thing much more than what­ev­er I thought then…  He was teach­ing us to do our own think­ing, to find out who we were, what we loved, abhorred, what set off our trip­wires, what tripped up our hearts.”

For the term paper, the eighty students—a group that includ­ed John Irv­ing, Gail God­win, and Andre Dubus II—were addressed as “Beloved” and charged with assign­ing a let­ter grade to each of the fif­teen sto­ries in Mas­ters of the Mod­ern Short Sto­ry (Har­court, Brace, 1955, W. Hav­ighurst, edi­tor).

(A decade and a half lat­er, Von­negut would sub­ject his own nov­els to the same treat­ment.)

A not­ed human­ist, Von­negut instruct­ed the class to read these sto­ries not in an over­ly ana­lyt­i­cal mind­set, but rather as if they had just con­sumed “two ounces of very good booze.”

The ensu­ing let­ter grades were meant to be “child­ish­ly self­ish and impu­dent mea­sures” of how much—or little—joy the sto­ries inspired in the read­er.

Next, stu­dents were instruct­ed to choose their three favorite and three least favorite sto­ries, then dis­guise them­selves as “minor but use­ful” lit mag edi­tors in order to advise their “wise, respect­ed, wit­ty and world-weary supe­ri­or” as to whether or not the select­ed sto­ries mer­it­ed pub­li­ca­tion.

Here’s the full assign­ment, which was pub­lished in Kurt Von­negut: Let­ters (Dela­corte Press, 2012). And also again in Slate.

Beloved:

This course began as Form and The­o­ry of Fic­tion, became Form of Fic­tion, then Form and Tex­ture of Fic­tion, then Sur­face Crit­i­cism, or How to Talk out of the Cor­ner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will prob­a­bly be Ani­mal Hus­bandry 108 by the time Black Feb­ru­ary rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cyn­i­cal and reli­gious. I want you to adore the Uni­verse, to be eas­i­ly delight­ed, but to be prompt as well with impa­tience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Uni­verse is or should be. “This above all …”

I invite you to read the fif­teen tales in Mas­ters of the Mod­ern Short Sto­ry (W. Hav­ighurst, edi­tor, 1955, Har­court, Brace, $14.95 in paper­back). Read them for plea­sure and sat­is­fac­tion, begin­ning each as though, only sev­en min­utes before, you had swal­lowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as lit­tle chil­dren …”

Then repro­duce on a sin­gle sheet of clean, white paper the table of con­tents of the book, omit­ting the page num­bers, and sub­sti­tut­ing for each num­ber a grade from A to F. The grades should be child­ish­ly self­ish and impu­dent mea­sures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some sto­ries bet­ter than oth­ers.

Pro­ceed next to the hal­lu­ci­na­tion that you are a minor but use­ful edi­tor on a good lit­er­ary mag­a­zine not con­nect­ed with a uni­ver­si­ty. Take three sto­ries that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pre­tend that they have been offered for pub­li­ca­tion. Write a report on each to be sub­mit­ted to a wise, respect­ed, wit­ty and world-weary supe­ri­or.

Do not do so as an aca­d­e­m­ic crit­ic, nor as a per­son drunk on art, nor as a bar­bar­ian in the lit­er­ary mar­ket place. Do so as a sen­si­tive per­son who has a few prac­ti­cal hunch­es about how sto­ries can suc­ceed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flat­ly, prag­mat­i­cal­ly, with cun­ning atten­tion to annoy­ing or grat­i­fy­ing details. Be your­self. Be unique. Be a good edi­tor. The Uni­verse needs more good edi­tors, God knows.

Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill some­body, about twen­ty pages from each of you should do neat­ly. Do not bub­ble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.

poloniøus

McConnell sup­plied fur­ther details on the extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ence of being Vonnegut’s stu­dent in an essay for the Brook­lyn Rail:

 Kurt taught a Chekhov sto­ry. I can’t remem­ber the name of it. I didn’t quite under­stand the point, since noth­ing much hap­pened. An ado­les­cent girl is in love with this boy and that boy and anoth­er; she points at a lit­tle dog, as I recall, or maybe some­thing else, and laughs. That’s all. There’s no con­flict, no dra­mat­ic turn­ing point or change. Kurt point­ed out that she has no words for the sheer joy of being young, ripe with life, her own juici­ness, and the promise of romance. Her inar­tic­u­late feel­ings spill into laugh­ter at some­thing innocu­ous. That’s what hap­pened in the sto­ry. His absolute delight in that girl’s joy of feel­ing her­self so alive was so encour­ag­ing of delight. Kurt’s enchant­ment taught me that such moments are noth­ing to sneeze at. They’re worth a sto­ry.             

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Umberto Eco, Patti Smith & More

in Art, Creativity, Education, Life | October 12th, 2016

Nev­er meet your idols, they say. It can put a cramp in your appre­ci­a­tion of their work. There are always excep­tions, but maybe Bill Mur­ray proves the rule. On the oth­er hand, you should always learn from your idols. There’s a rea­son you admire them, after all. Find out what it is and what they have to teach you. In the series we fea­ture here, Advice to the Young, many an idol of many an aspir­ing artist and musi­cian offers some broad, exis­ten­tial advice—ways to absorb a lit­tle of their process.

Lau­rie Ander­son, above, tells us to “be loose.” Widen our bound­aries, “make it vague,” because “there are so many forces that are try­ing to push us in cer­tain direc­tions, and they’re traps…. Don’t be caught in that trap of def­i­n­i­tion. It’s a cor­po­rate trap…. Be flex­i­ble.” Good advice, if you’re as eclec­tic and loose as Lau­rie Ander­son, or if you seek artis­tic lib­er­a­tion ahead of sales. “I became an artist because I want to be free,” she says.

Just above, Daniel Lanois, super­star slide gui­tarist and pro­duc­er of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, U2, Peter Gabriel, and Emmy­lou Har­ris, tells us what he learned from work­ing with Bri­an Eno. His advice is impres­sion­is­tic, allud­ing to the impor­tance of atmos­phere and envi­ron­ment, as one might expect. It’s about appre­ci­at­ing the process, he sug­gests. He does get con­crete about a dif­fi­cul­ty near­ly every artist faces: “if you have a finan­cial lim­i­ta­tion, that might be okay. You don’t have to have every­thing that the oth­er peo­ple have. I think a finan­cial lim­i­ta­tion or a tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion may free up the imag­i­na­tion.” In an age of home stu­dios, that’s always wel­come news.

David Byrne has always told it straight, in his cul­tur­al crit­i­cism and song­writ­ing, and in his seg­ment, above, he steers hope­ful musi­cians and artists away from the dream of Jay Z‑level fame. “Often the artists who are very suc­cess­ful that way” he says, “they don’t have much flex­i­bil­i­ty. In achiev­ing suc­cess, they lose a lit­tle bit of their cre­ative free­dom. They have to keep mak­ing the same thing over and over again.” Byrne’s advice solid­ly under­lines Ander­son­’s. If you want cre­ative free­dom, be pre­pared to fly under the radar and make much less mon­ey than the stars. End­ing on a stark­ly real­ist note, Byrne admits that in any case, you’ll prob­a­bly need a day job: “it’s very, very hard to make mon­ey in the music busi­ness.”

Nov­el­ist Umber­to Eco also brings us down to earth in his inter­view, say­ing “not to think you are inspired,” then sly­ly drop­ping a cliché: “genius is 10% inspi­ra­tion and 90% per­spi­ra­tion.” The old wis­dom is truest, I sup­pose. He also urges writ­ers to take their time with a book. “I can­not under­stand those nov­el­ists who pub­lish a book every year. They lose this plea­sure of spend­ing six, sev­en, eight years to tell a sto­ry.” Eco’s advice: rise through the ranks, “go step by step, don’t pre­tend imme­di­ate­ly to receive the Nobel prize, because that kills a lit­er­ary career.”

Pat­ti Smith, com­fort­ably address­ing an audi­ence from an out­door stage, urges them to “just keep doing your work” whether anyone’s lis­ten­ing, read­ing, etc. To those peo­ple who crit­i­cize her suc­cess as sell­ing out her punk rock roots, Smith says, to laughs, “fuck you.” She then trans­mits some advice she received from William S. Bur­roughs: “build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t’ make com­pro­mis­es, don’t wor­ry about mak­ing a lot of mon­ey or being suc­cess­ful; be con­cerned with doing good work.”

Easy per­haps for Bur­roughs the adding machine-heir to say, but good advice nonethe­less, and con­sis­tent with what each artist above tells us: do it your way, don’t get pigeon­holed, work with what you have, don’t wor­ry about suc­cess or mon­ey, keep your expec­ta­tions real­is­tic.

You can watch more inter­views with Mari­na Abramović,  Wim Wen­ders, Jonas Mekas, and many more on this Advice to the Young playlist assem­bled by The Louisiana Chan­nel. All 21 talks in the series can be viewed below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How to Raise Creative Children Who Can Change the World: 3 Lessons from Wharton Professor Adam Grant

in Creativity, K-12 | October 11th, 2016

Adam Grant, a pro­fes­sor at The Whar­ton School of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, has been “rec­og­nized as Whar­ton’s top-rat­ed teacher for five straight years, and as one of the world’s 25 most influ­en­tial man­age­ment thinkers.” He’s also the author of the best­selling book Orig­i­nals: How Non-Con­formists Move the World, a study that exam­ines “what it takes to be cre­ative and cham­pi­on new ideas.”

Speak­ing at the 2016 Aspen Ideas Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this year, Grant asks the ques­tion: What do Nobel Prize-win­ning sci­en­tists do dif­fer­ent­ly than their more ordi­nary peers? The answer: They’re twice as like­ly to play musi­cal instru­ments. Sev­en times more like­ly to draw or paint. 12 times more like­ly to write fic­tion or poet­ry. And 22 times more like­ly to per­form as dancers, actors or magi­cians.

Case in point Ein­stein, who nev­er trav­eled with­out his beloved vio­lin and saw a direct cor­re­la­tion between his ground­break­ing work in physics and his musi­cal life.

For Grant, it’s nev­er too ear­ly to cul­ti­vate cre­ativ­i­ty. So above, he out­lines three things par­ents can do to encour­age their children’s cre­ative devel­op­ment.

1. Focus on val­ues over rules.
2. Praise their char­ac­ter, not their behav­ior. Get them to see them­selves as cre­ative at heart.
3. Help them draw cre­ative lessons from the books they read.

This all pre­sum­ably gets cov­ered in greater depth in Chap­ter 6 of Orig­i­nals: How Non-Con­formists Move the World. The chap­ter is enti­tled “Rebel with a Cause: How Sib­lings, Par­ents and Men­tors Nur­ture Orig­i­nal­i­ty.”

Below you can watch Grant’s TED Talk, “The sur­pris­ing habits of orig­i­nal thinkers.” The video above was shot by The Atlantic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

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Periodic Table Battleship!: A Fun Way To Learn the Elements

in Chemistry, Creativity, Games, K-12, Science | October 10th, 2016

periodic-table-battleship

Nitro­gen.

Phos­pho­rous.

Arsenic.

Aw, you sunk my bat­tle­ship!

Mil­ton Bradley’s clas­sic board game, Bat­tle­ship, can now be added to the ros­ter of fun, cre­ative ways to com­mit the Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments to mem­o­ry.

Karyn Tripp, a home­school­ing moth­er of four, was inspired by her eldest’s love of sci­ence to cre­ate Peri­od­ic Table Bat­tle­ship. I might sug­gest that the game is of even greater val­ue to those who don’t nat­u­ral­ly grav­i­tate toward the sub­ject.

Faced with the option of learn­ing the ele­ments via show­er cur­tain or cof­fee mug osmo­sis, I think I’d pre­fer to take out an opponent’s sub­ma­rine.

Rules of engage­ment are very sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal. Rather than call­ing out posi­tions on a grid, play­ers set their tor­pe­does for spe­cif­ic ele­ment names, abbre­vi­a­tions or coor­di­nates. Advanced play­ers might go for the atom­ic num­ber. the lin­go is the same: “hit,” “miss” and—say it with me—“you sunk my bat­tle­ship!”

The win­ner is the play­er who wipes out the other’s fleet, though I might toss the los­er a cou­ple of rein­force­ment ves­sels, should he or she demon­strate pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with var­i­ous met­als, halo­gens, and noble gas­es.

To make your own Peri­od­ic Table Bat­tle­ship set you will need:

4 copies of the Peri­od­ic Table (lam­i­nate them for reuse)

2 file fold­ers

paper clips, tape or glue

2 mark­ers (dry erase mark­ers if play­ing with lam­i­nat­ed tables

To Assem­ble and Play:

As you know, the Peri­od­ic Table is already num­bered along the top. Label each of the four tables’  ver­ti­cal rows alpha­bet­i­cal­ly (to help younger play­ers and those inclined to fruit­less search­ing for the ele­ments des­ig­nat­ed by their oppo­nent)

Fas­ten two Peri­od­ic Tables to each fold­er, fac­ing the same direc­tion.

Uses mark­ers to cir­cle the posi­tion of your ships on the low­er Table:

5 con­sec­u­tive spaces: air­craft car­ri­er

4 con­sec­u­tive spaces: bat­tle­ship

3 con­sec­u­tive spaces: destroy­er or sub­ma­rine

2 con­sec­u­tive spaces: patrol boat

Prop the fold­ers up with books or some oth­er method to pre­vent oppo­nents from sneak­ing peeks at your mar­itime strat­e­gy.

Take turns call­ing out coor­di­nates, ele­ment names, abbre­vi­a­tions or atom­ic num­bers:

When a turn results in a miss, put an X on the cor­re­spond­ing spot on the upper table.

When a turn results in a hit, cir­cle the cor­re­spond­ing spot on the upper table.

Con­tin­ue play until the bat­tle is won.

Repeat until the Table of Ele­ments is mas­tered.

Sup­ple­ment lib­er­al­ly with Tom Lehrer’s Ele­ments song.

Those not inclined toward arts and crafts can pur­chase a pre-made  Peri­od­ic Table Bat­tle­ship set from Tripp’s Etsy shop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn to Write Through a Video Game Inspired by the Roman­tic Poets: Shel­ley, Byron, Keats

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, sec­u­lar home­school­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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David Byrne & Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain the Importance of an Arts Education (and How It Strengthens Science & Civilization)

in Art, Creativity, Education, Science | September 23rd, 2016

Unless you’re a pol­i­cy geek or an edu­ca­tor, you may nev­er have heard of the “STEM vs. STEAM” debate. STEM, of course, stands for the for­mu­la of “sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics” as a base­line for edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum. STEAM argues for the neces­si­ty of the arts, which in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion have waxed and waned depend­ing on pre­vail­ing the­o­ry and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, polit­i­cal will. Andrew Carnegie may have donat­ed hand­some­ly to high­er edu­ca­tion, but he frowned on the study of “dead lan­guages” and oth­er use­less pur­suits. Indus­tri­al­ist Richard Teller Crane opined in 1911 that no one with “a taste for lit­er­a­ture has the right to be hap­py” because “the only men enti­tled to hap­pi­ness… are those who are use­ful.”

It’s a long way from think­ing of poets as “the unac­knowl­edged leg­is­la­tors of the world,” as Per­cy Shel­ley wrote in his “Defence of Poet­ry” 90 years ear­li­er, but Shelley’s essay shows that even then the arts need­ed defend­ing. By the time we get to STEM think­ing, the arts have dis­ap­peared entire­ly from the con­ver­sa­tion, become an after­thought, as ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, rather than wealthy indus­tri­al­ists, decide to trim them away from pub­lic pol­i­cy and pri­vate invest­ment. The sit­u­a­tion may be improv­ing, as more edu­ca­tors embrace STEAM, but “there’s ten­sion,” as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says in the excerpt above from his StarTalk inter­view show on Nat Geo. In the kinds of fund­ing crises most school dis­tricts find them­selves in, “school boards are won­der­ing, do we cut the art, do we keep the sci­ence?”

The choice is a false one, argues for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man and some­times Cas­san­dra-like cul­tur­al the­o­rist David Byrne. “In order to real­ly suc­ceed in what­ev­er… math and the sci­ences and engi­neer­ing and things like that,” Byrne tells Tyson above, “you have to be able to think out­side the box, and do cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing… the cre­ative think­ing is in the arts. A cer­tain amount of arts edu­ca­tion…” will help you “suc­ceed more and bring more to the world… bring­ing dif­fer­ent worlds togeth­er has def­i­nite tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits. To kind of cut one, or sep­a­rate them, is to injure them and crip­ple them.”

The idea goes back to Aris­to­tle, and to the cre­ation of uni­ver­si­ties, when medieval thinkers tout­ed the Lib­er­al Arts—the Triv­i­um (gram­mar, rhetoric, and log­ic) and Quadriv­i­um (arith­metic, geom­e­try, music, and astronomy)—as mod­els for a bal­anced edu­ca­tion. Tyson agrees that the arts and sci­ences should not be sev­ered: “Sup­pose they did that back in Renais­sance Europe? What would Europe be with­out the sup­port and inter­est in art?” He goes even fur­ther, say­ing, “We mea­sure the suc­cess of a civ­i­liza­tion by how well they treat their cre­ative peo­ple.”

It’s a bold state­ment that emerges from a longer con­ver­sa­tion Tyson has with Byrne, which you can hear in the StarTalk Radio pod­cast above. Tyson is joined by co-host Maeve Hig­gins and neu­ro­sci­en­tist and con­cert pianist Dr. Móni­ca López-González—and lat­er by Pro­fes­sor David Cope, who taught a com­put­er to write music, and Bill Nye. Byrne makes his case for the equal val­ue of the arts and sci­ences with per­son­al exam­ples from his ear­ly years in grade school and art col­lege, and by build­ing con­cep­tu­al bridges between the two ways of think­ing. One theme he returns to is the inter­re­la­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture and music as an exam­ple of how art and engi­neer­ing co-evolve (a sub­ject on which he pre­vi­ous­ly deliv­ered a fas­ci­nat­ing TED talk).

You won’t find much debate here among the par­tic­i­pants. Every­one seems to read­i­ly agree with each oth­er, and I can’t say I’m sur­prised. Speak­ing anec­do­tal­ly, all of the sci­en­tists I know affirm the val­ue of the arts, and a high per­cent­age have a cre­ative avo­ca­tion. Like­wise, I’ve rarely met an artist who doesn’t val­ue sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  We find exam­ple after exam­ple of scientist-artists—from Albert Ein­stein to astro­physi­cist Stephon Alexan­der, who sees physics in Coltrane. The cen­tral ques­tion may not be whether artists and sci­en­tists can mutu­al­ly appre­ci­ate each other—they gen­er­al­ly already do—but whether school boards, politi­cians, vot­ers, and investors can see things their way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

An Ani­mat­ed Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Elo­quent Defense of Sci­ence in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Get­tys­burg Address

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Build Your Own Miniature Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service & More

in Creativity, Film | September 22nd, 2016

In the Shin­to­ism from which Hayao Miyazaki’s films lib­er­al­ly draw, the worlds of nature and spir­it are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. “Shrine Shin­to,” write James Boyd and Tet­suya Nishimu­ra at The Jour­nal of Reli­gion and Film, “under­stands the whole of life, includ­ing both humans and nature, as cre­ative and life giv­ing. A gen­er­a­tive, imma­nent force har­mo­nious­ly per­vades the whole phe­nom­e­nal world.” But to expe­ri­ence this pow­er “requires an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pure and cheer­ful heart/mind, an emo­tion­al, men­tal and voli­tion­al con­di­tion that is not eas­i­ly attained.” In My Neigh­bor Totoro, for exam­ple, Miyaza­ki helps to induce this state in us with long slice-of-life pas­sages that move like gen­tle breezes through tall grass­es and trees. In the apoc­a­lyp­tic sci-fi Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, the title char­ac­ter her­self takes on the task of har­mo­nious­ly rec­on­cil­ing man, nature, and mutant insect.

I would argue that Miyazaki’s films are not sole­ly enter­tain­ments, but means by which we can expe­ri­ence “an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pure and cheer­ful” heart and mind. And although he has retired, we can relive those films “over and over again,” as The Creator’s Project writes, not only by watch­ing them, but by build­ing minia­ture sets from them, as you see rep­re­sent­ed here. See My Neigh­bor Totoro’s old, rus­tic house in the for­est—where Sat­su­ki and Mei come to terms with their mother’s ill­ness while befriend­ing the local nature spirits—get assem­bled at the top of the post. And just above, see the town of Koriko from Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice take shape, a place that becomes trans­formed by mag­ic, just as Kiki does by her sor­ties into the for­est.

These kits, made by the Japan­ese paper craft com­pa­ny Sankei, are “ready to be assem­bled and glued togeth­er, cre­at­ing your own mini movie set,” The Creator’s Project notes. Pre­vi­ous mod­els include Totoro and his two small com­pan­ions, above, and the bak­ery from Kiki; anoth­er kit recre­ates the desert­ed mag­i­cal town Chi­hi­ro and her par­ents stum­ble upon in Spir­it­ed Away. The kits don’t come cheap—each one costs around $100—and they take time and skill to assem­ble, as you see in these videos. But like so many of the impor­tant acts in Miyazaki’s films—and like the act of watch­ing those films themselves—we might think of assem­bling these mod­els as rit­u­als of patience and devo­tion to aes­thet­ic habits of mind that slow us down and gen­tly nudge us to seek har­mo­ny and con­nec­tion.

via The Creator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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