So if the term “technology” can refer not only to fancy gadgets and computers, but also to crafts and systems of organization, then somewhere the fate of small communities seems to lie in its hands. How should post-industrial communities reorganize now that the money flow is gone? Should they? Is  it better to maintain an H. L. Mencken-like disdain for the backwater town? Better to celebrate that most Americans now live in urban areas? I, myself, have lived mostly in urban areas since high school. Where do I get off suddenly being worried about the places no one else is worried about?

If science requires empirical and rational knowledge, then what am I basing my intuition on that small communities and how they function are going to become a lot more important sometime in the not-too-distant future? This week I have read data that suggests, or rather, proves, that as compared to the current small community model in the US of driving everywhere, city living in the US actually leads to a smaller carbon footprint. I was also reading this week about how when cheap oil from Russia stopped flowing to Cuba, the formerly “outside-the-mainstream” Cuban agriculture specialists proposing city rooftop gardens for providing most of Cuba with vegetables– those folks suddenly got to have their say. While getting this all going, seems that the average Cuban lost 20 pounds, and apparently the place is still not teeming with food, and now though it gets cheap oil from Venezuela, Cuban agricultural policy remains that most food is produced local and in the town where it will be sold. Maybe also not so difficult when you have four-season gardens.

My husband is always pointing out to me where lawns could be used to grow so much food. When we were in Eleanor, WV he pointed out to me that the lawn for the middle school could easily produce enough food to feed everyone in the town for a year (obviously with some canning, drying, curing, and freezing involved– the first three being technologies most everyone knew something about till the 1950s). I also have been thinking about what it would take to get communities to do that. Whom would you fight? How crazy would people think you were to suggest it? I have been thinking a lot about communities or cities and their “Plan B”? These little dead post-industrial towns certainly had no Plan B for when the factory stopped working. What would happen if my home town suddenly had to pull an agricultural stunt like Cuba had to pull? Who would you have to convince now to start Plan B as a way of life now?

About seven years ago, I gave an eighth grade class of mine an assignment to create another shape for government–something not in a pyramid that mimicked, in its way, the top down power of kings or the Catholic Church.  One kid had a government model shaped like a skateboard. I sort of feel like doing that with how we are educated, how we learn:– a total reshaping; a lot is researched in terms of working within the model we have; I am not sure that the future of our country, and, maybe the world, doesn’t depend on our coming up with another model than our current model/s for schools.  I mean, have you, ever, really stopped to think about:

How until just about a hundred years ago, kids were rarely segregated out by age rather than by aptitude and skill-set?

What if kids could move on to higher ed. simply when they reach a certain aptitude rather than a certain age?

How, until maybe thirty years ago, if you were fine person, smart in your own way, adept at talk or with your hands, you could still make a decent living?  How, more than ever, high-level reading is an essential skill now? I say this not to make anyone anxious, but, more to suggest, and, if that weren’t so?  What would you do instead?  I think of a few students I have now (first graders) for whom reading may never end up being their “thing,” and how they are fine people, but through no fault of their own, they may be even more up the creek by the time they hit the job market than someone even hitting the market today.

I am also back to– what would it take, really, for a community to be semi-self-sustaining?  I mean, really, do people think you are going to be able to attract high tech into the former industrial mountain areas of West Virginia? Rust-belt Michigan or Indiana? And, if local folks are bright, and go to college, they almost never return to their communities. Is that really what we want out of life?  To be dependent on outsiders and outside sources and other economic factors to dictate the terms and whereabouts of our lives?  I think again:

What skills do we need in a community to be semi-self-sustaining?  What would it take, for example, for a town like:

Bluefield, WV to be semi-self-sustaining in food, shelter, energy, and also have enough goods produced to contribute to a wider money economy and to pay state and federal taxes?

Or, Detroit?

Or, Gary, Indiana?

Or?  Or?  Or?

What if some foundation were to come in and fund a pilot project that would make a local community as self-sufficient as possible?

What would the folks in the community need to know? How would education change if self-sufficiency, entrepreneurship, and sustainability were its goals? If there were a blend of skills from food production to high tech communication within the same small community, or, maybe, even within the same people?

I often paraphrase Jung that if you want to know a culture’s psychology, know a people, then look at what they create. Our culture is becoming more and more disembodied, more and more cerebral in the skills we need.  What if a community responded to the needs of industry, second, and its needs as a community, first?  Not as in communism, which has in common with capitalism that the first concern is material. But, if the community sets its own priorities with a concrete plan for revamping whatever would need to be revamped to get there?

March 28, 2010 – April 24, 2010

I started this entry about a month ago, then life got in the way (as you can see by the differing dates above).

What I wanted to write about was all of the art and the artists I have experienced since being back in West Virginia: frankly, some as good as anything I have seen anywhere….

There is an idea afloat that makers of the larger culture are slowly being decentralized from the large cities… for the most part, innovators in art and culture can’t afford to live in those. Furthermore, the internet allows for folks to sync up with a larger culture without having to pay big city rent. Just a few things I have seen… and been amazed by since being back.

Charleston Art Walk

(A cheater — here is a photo exhibit of the April Art Walk: http://blogs.wvgazette.com/popcult/2010/04/16/flaming-guns-and-walking-art/)

Okay, so they need to change the tag on the far left on the Art Walk Facebook page… but I went to the March Art Walk.  I saw a very cool exhibit of banjo pickers and other bluegrass and old time musicians.  I met some interesting folks along Hale Street–which is the small, Charleston, WV version of a hipster street, what with its a sprinklin’ of bars and antique stores and gallery spaces. That evening, I also got to see work by friends of friends who now qualify as friends:

Keith Allen–Why didn’t I know this guy when we were in high school?

I’ve had this theory for a while that whatever coping mechanisms you developed to get through high school, you then have to turn around and deal with once you are an adult.  Being back in WV has made me realize that this, in some way, also happens with people.  I seem to be meeting quite a few folks that I feel as though I would have known in high school, that I-shoulda-coulda-woulda known and we all sorta ended up back where we started, but healthier versions. Keith is one of those people (and so is artist Jamie Miller, featured a little bit further down).  Keith asked me an interesting question the evening we met–as I had gone out into the big world, lived in NYC, LA, and Europe and all, did I think those folks that didn’t leave WV missed out on something? I answered that 10 years ago I probably would have said “yes,” but now with social networking in place connecting people from all over, I’m not so sure. I certainly envy the closeness of the art-house crowd in Charleston and in WV…but I also envied similar sets of folks local/native to their environs when I lived in LA and in NYC. Maybe the outsider is just me… In any case, I wish Keith had more of his post-punk art up on the net to share. And, hands down, he is one of the funniest people I have ever met anywhere.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VFamL7dpMFk/SpAbRtlfr2I/AAAAAAAAAek/Ba1N0tndMOY/s1600-h/P8200542+%282%29.JPG

http://blogs.wvgazette.com/popcult/files/2010/04/Img_9628.jpg

Next up, one of those people that just seems to be brilliant at whatever she does, Amanda Jane Miller. She plays a mean fiddle, can dance, and is also a very interesting artist and illustrator, with work featuring imps from your worst nightmares.  She is also immensely entertaining to be around… and, again, one of those people that has carved out an artistic life despite, in spite, of, or due to, our local environs in WV.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_VFamL7dpMFk/SpAUW6dgdyI/AAAAAAAAAcs/7_W-W6iU-qE/s1600-h/P8200497+%282%29.JPG

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_VFamL7dpMFk/SpASof3SpdI/AAAAAAAAAck/ZiTiLgfBefk/s1600-h/P8200495+%282%29.JPG

Okay, I really shoulda known her in high school

I don’t quite know how Jamie and I didn’t know each other, though, I secretly learned that she had been a majorette.  My take now–never underestimate where that will all lead to.  Jamie Miller–I friggin’ love what I have seen of Jamie’s work. I hear the rich and famous have also admired it.  Okay, again, like Amanda’s work, there is a definite stamp of femaleness– and in Jamie’s work, again come the stuffed animals from hell not to haunt, but enlighten you. Here are all the possible links I could find:

http://www.wvculture.org/agency/press/wvje2009/2009wvjewinners_miller.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_VFamL7dpMFk/SpASnT-Fx2I/AAAAAAAAAcU/rn7Ld_V-Rr8/s1600-h/P8200490+%282%29.JPG

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_VFamL7dpMFk/SpAr76UpBTI/AAAAAAAAAhE/EZcSdcN2Vqc/s1600-h/P8200492+%282%29.JPG

http://www.myspace.com/jamiemilla

Last but not least, Kerry Bingaman–I wish I could find a link to her work on the net. I went over to Keith Allen’s studio for a while the night of the March Art Walk, and, Kerry had a small exhibit up.  One photo in particular stood out: an iridescent red photo taken through the window of a laundromat in Brooklyn.

More incredible creative things from the last month

Lori McKinney must be one of the most gracious people on earth.  She had invited me a while back to come and visit her and her husband’s art space in Princeton, WV….and, finally, back in March, we got a chance to.  See: http://www.theriffraff.net/fr_home.cfm

I grew up near Princeton till I was 10… and I remember shopping on this street thirty years ago. Now, most of the Boulevard is abandoned. But, McKinney and company have brought hope to one corner. They now have two large adjacent buildings, one of which already houses a galley, a performance space, offices, studios, and a living space.  Her sister Melissa McKinney owns the building across the street, and recently began a music school that is having riproaring success: http://www.theriffraff.net/fr_home.cfm

I have to say, I would have DIED to have gone to Melissa’s school when I was a kid. She has several all-girl teeny bands on rotation at the space.

The McKinney’s have started a local and downhome arts renaissance in their corner of the world.  What they are doing with their local community is inspiring…And, again, pretty amazing to witness.

The one place we didn’t get a chance to see but everyone told us about while we were in Mercer County:

Gary Bowling’s House of Art in Bluefield, WV

But!  We did look in the window on a rainy Sunday afternoon! The storefront is pretty wild…. my dad tells me he did some printing work for Bowling thirty years ago when he apparently tried to get something like this off the ground…. only to come back years later to actually make it work. It is an art space/performance space.  What you have to understand that nothing like that existed for miles around… till the McKinney’s started what they started in Princeton.

And, speaking of Bluefield…. this place where I shopped as a child, this town where I was born… has the most amazing buildings. My husband and I walked around on a dreary Sunday afternoon with our mouths agape. Bluefield had been known as “Little New York” in the 1920s… and the remaining buildings bear that out. Again, my father reminded me that many of those buildings were torn down by the 1950s and 1960s… though, the many buildings that are left were built between the 1880s and 1920s. Amazing tin roofs, incredible facades… I even liked the strange nulti-colored panel “mod” facades slapped on front of some of the buildings some time fifty years ago.

We also stood for a while at the train yard, which is still very active… and still very covered in coal dust.

I found these photos already online of Bluefield–scroll down to the bottom of that link for a lot of online photo galleries of art deco, ah, the art deco, work and of the amazing buildings: http://www.pbase.com/kstuebin/bluefield

Lots of huge homes caving in on themselves right up off Downtown. We watched a dude in shorts and a ball cap run back and forth down a hill…. he was a white dude selling pharmas to passing white people in fancy cars.  I am used to seeing the hypodermic needle next to the beer bottle in neighborhoods in big cities… here, we saw the little brown pharma bottle and the beer bottle.  Certainly, we were anomalies walking around in the near dark in this abandoned downtown… but I could imagine.  I could imagine this area revitalized and vibrant. WV is building rich, and, maybe the artists are the ones that will reignite the needed vitality to make the buildings breathe again.

This week, I have been thinking about what tools we really need to fulfill last week’s list of the skills we actually need. I have gotten some enthusiastic responses to what skills a person ought to really know…that everyone should have a foundation in. The idea would be that along with specializing in a particular skill set, you would experience the most major sets of skills leading up to it along with studying the theory. I am a product of a liberal arts education…but I do wonder if that mode of learning, set up originally to address upper middle class career aspirations from a different age, is now the best fit moving forward. My instinct tells me that a mix of traditionally more “hands-on” learning and theoretical learning, even at the level of higher ed, is key.

In any case, back to working on my own work more this week… and tackling issues in web design and development–one of those things from last week’s post on the essential skills to have. Gettin’ there, gettin’ there.

As for creativity in my week, I watched a friend of a friend play a little concertina last night…or, rather play a little on a little concertina.

Apparently he busks in Charleston once a month near the library… we are going to seek him out a bit today.

Otherwise… here are two snippets of things that I recommend….

Crazy Heart

Finally saw it this week with my sister….Crazy Heart (which I think of as being titled after the main character “Bad Blake,” that is, when I think of the film I don’t think of the given title, but of his character) had me wrapped in amber, the kind from Arizona skylines, the one from aged whiskey, the kind of an insect caught in a viscous fluid….Amber of basking in sun-warmth, like how you know that light is anything but artificial. I don’t remember the last time a film wrapped its way around me… and, if you haven’t yourself, I have known those people: immensely talented drunks or addicts or former drunk or addicts that spin out more creative work from their little finger than most of us can from our whole hand. The film Crazy Heart captures all of this. Here is what I also love. No one is crucified, vilified, exempt, all bad or all good. I love that the amber doesn’t sink to the rock bottom and it doesn’t stand forever in the yellow spotlight. This is why you go see a film, a goddamn film, not a movie, but the way a film can be, dramatic without big drama. Good for them all. This from Wikipedia about the film (for as much as Wikipedia can be trusted, but here it goes anyway)…

The film was produced for $7 million by Country Music Television, and was originally acquired by Paramount Vantage for a direct-to-video release,[2][3] but was later purchased for theatrical distribution by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Good for Scott Cooper from down Abingdon, VA that got it together to make it thanks to Robert Duvall, good for T Bone Burnett, good for Maggie Gyllenhaal, and by god, good god for Jeff Bridges. All in all in all one helluva a job…. One complaint was that it didn’t have much of a plot… actually, I think it showed the life of one type of addict quite brilliantly, that is, that things happen around him but his emotional life does not change till he sobers up. Gyllenhaal had to be our emotional barometer, which she pulls off brilliantly. Her characters also has a subtle arc, she does get what she wants in the end… not a marriage, but being a real journalist. That all worked for me….

One other note, I went looking for more about the actors and came across Jeff Bridges’ website. Very worth checking out… not every part of the site is a successful design, but I do like what they did with his “handwritten” and drawn bits: http://www.jeffbridges.com/main.html

Next bit– born and raised in West Virginia, I never knew Bill Withers was from there till I was listening to a PRI story this week. There is a new doc out (no theatrical release scheduled yet) about the Soul singer.

Bill Withers

Still Bill

http://stillbillthemovie.com/

There was a fantastic bit they played on air in which Bill and his daughter sing together. I almost stopped the car. She blew me right out of the seat.

The gist of the doc seems to be that Withers retreated on purpose from the spotlight, that dealing with the things you deal with being famous never suited him. Until I looked up more about him, I also didn’t realize how accoladed he was.

Beautiful day here… going to do some more writing. I should go see Nikki Giovanni this afternoon for free…I’ll let you know if I get there.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

At first this didn’t seem like a very creative week, mostly a skill-building kind of week. Spending some of my days now with kids under the age of ten has actually made me more hopeful about the future. If you haven’t been in an elementary school since you last attended one, the one I currently am spending my days in could come as quite a shock: bright classrooms, kids out of their seats now and again, tech labs, music rooms, art rooms, an array of interventionists to help kids along, teacher’s aides, etc… and this is in a public school in West Virginia. Seems like there certainly has been a shift from my days years ago in the same state, silent, in rows, where speaking out of turn got your knuckles cracked with a ruler.

But all of this change also leaves me thinking, and, I have been thinking about this for a while: what are the actual useful things to know?

This is a long and hard debate, and I think of the debate between Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglas about learning skills that would get you a job or learning for learning’s sake. My guess is that the truth is somewhere in between. If I could roll back the clock and have time to learn everything I really need to know… or, if I think of my husband’s kids or these kids I have in school now, if I could design a curriculum that would address life as we know it, I would include the following skills. Now, of course, not ONLY these skills, but as I approach the age of two score, these seem to be the essential skills for survival as a person in almost any situation and as a person that probably has to do something to earn money, or at the least, save money. These skills are not in order of relevance…yet, imagine how interesting and useful school would be if these skills were included, and, imagine what a different society this would be, too.

Essential Skills

Web authoring and web design

You can’t have a business, get the word out, or do almost anything without involving this know-how.

Photoshop

Ditto. It is essential for life on the web as we know it.

Farming, nutrition, and cooking

Everyone should be growing part of their own food. Period. If you can grow it, and grow the right things, you then need to know what to do with it.

A martial art

As I approach two score, almost no one I know that knows a martial art really well is a major screw-up. They seem to have some self-reliance, and they certainly have some discipline. Also,  most martial arts seem to be lifelong pursuits, unlike football or baseball or gymnastics.

Self-defense

If everyone knew that everyone knew the basics, well,what a different homelife many people might have.

Auto mechanics and bicycle repair

You have to get from here to there somehow. You should be able to do a lot yourself. Gun safety is also important (see below).

Psychology, interpersonal relationships, conflict resolution

‘Nuff said. Know the nuts and bolts of yourself and others and how to deal with nuts. You are going to be working in teams and maybe “managing up” a lot, so learn maybe the reasons behind the why. Learn how to get along with almost (and almost, but not all) anyone: bosses, co-workers, partners, spouses, exes, children, neighbors…. In short, it’s not all about you…and the converse, no, they can’t do that/say that to you, either.

Childcare, teen care, elder care

At some point in your life you will most likely take care of a child, a teen, or an elder. Learn now what you need to know later.

Animal care, animal slaughter, food (or wool or leather) from animals

Don’t get a pet unless you know how to and can care for it. Ew, animal slaughter grosses you out? Then don’t eat or wear animals anymore–then learn how to make yourself a grass skirt when or if you may need it. If you can handle learning to prepare from step one on up the meat that you eat, then learn it. You never know when it may be essential.

Management

At some point either you will be put into a position managing other people and you will have no business doing that or you will work for someone who is responsible for managing you and has no business doing it. Lots of people managing others have never taken one class in interpersonal skills, conflict resolution, or psych much less management. And no, having an MD, a JD, or a PhD does not make you a people person or endow you with one shred of sense when it comes to business plans, business orchestration, teamwork, etc… Also, you may have an MBA and find yourself managing up, which I hear about all the time from almost everyone I know dealing with Boomer bosses that can’t even log into their own email accounts (yes, still, in 2010) or who don’t like to learn anything technical (which includes anything about the web).

Meditation

Stress, anyone? It’s the #1 killer, really. We should all probably know how to chill.

Household repairs, wood carving, and construction

Landlords or slumlords don’t show. Your McMansion is a McDisaster. The starter got up and left. Fix it so you can live in peace. Build it so you don’t have to pay to have it built.

Simple electronics and computer repair

Ditto. We should all not be afraid of opening up the back of a PC or Mac and installing the extra memory.

Accounting, Excel, personal accounting, and tax preparation

For your own finances, for where you work, so you don’t screw others or don’t get screwed in the spreadsheets.

Swimming

It’s good for you and you should know how in case you need to.

Emergency preparedness, basic medical care, and CPR

Again, it’s good for you and you should know how in case you need to.

Basic video and audio production

Want it on the web? Need to show it? Learn how to make it.

Ethics, Philosophy, and World Religions
The first two are intertwined with the last one. In order to make sense of what to do and how to behave, and, how to make sense of the news, these seem more essential than ever.

Entrepreneurship, starting a business, making a business plan
Even if you don’t start your own, this is useful stuff to understand the ones you are working for.

Geography

Not just part of a World History class… but it’s own class that also discusses topography, climate, peoples, etc…

Principles of democracy, social movements, and organizing

I’ve needed these skills at any number of jobs–how to get people together, how to form groups that are fair, how to get the word out in a community. It’s something everyone should know how to do.

Piano or guitar

You can also write a song or make friends if you know one of these. I’ve seen this happen dozens of times in my adult life.

Ballroom dance

This may seem silly, but, at higher level social functions, many folks know how to swing, jitterbug, foxtrot, or cha-cha and this is true around the world. If you are suddenly in a room with diplomats and there is live dance music, this is a needed skill to have.

Marketing, PR, advertising & media literacy

Not only should you know the man behind the mirror, you should know how to make a mirror if you need to. Most business or most of life takes some kind of marketing know-how these days…

Driving a car, truck, or motorcycle, boat, or semi-

You never know when one or the other of these may be the thing you need to know how to work.

Gun safety and use

Same here–you never know when one or the other of these may be the thing you need to know how to work.

Tying knots

I am not so sure about this one, except that my husband laments he doesn’t know more about it. Seems like a natural to learn maybe in geometry class or something and could be useful in a bind (all puns intended).

This is my list, and, of course I don’t know everything on this list–or even a lot of it–but it now seems like a good list to use to start with. It seems that if you know these things, you’d be ready for most anything life could send your way. I could and maybe intend to build a school curriculum that builds these in. This list seems to have a good mix of “hard” technical and physical survival skills and “softer” skills like getting along with people and getting people together to accomplish things.

Hey, you out there, if you are listening, anything I’ve missed that should be on the list?

Here is the C (creative,  Crystal, calibrated, compiled) Week in Review

Writers Workshop at the Charleston Culture Center

Last weekend I was surprised when about 200 (or more) people showed for a day of free writers workshops at the Culture Center in Charleston. I have taken writers workshops with many a master writer and this day was no exception. The morning I spent with

Frank X Walker, http://www.frankxwalker.com/

I heard him read two or three years ago with a group of Affrilachian Poets and was impressed with his imagery, topics, and energy. I then subscribed to his creative journal Pluck! that focuses on creative African-American work in Appalachia. In this workshop I appreciated his attempt at boiling down the main elements of poetry: image, rhythm, economy of language, and, I also appreciated his addressing persona poems directly. As a writer primarily of fiction, a persona poem allows me to enter into poetry from a place that resonates in me rather than out of a fear of treading too heavily and stomping all over a genre. I also got to see him read last Friday and was moved and impressed again…

Doug Van Gundy, http://www.dougvangundy.com/

Doug you read about in last week’s Valentine’s post. He subbed in an autobiography class for a writer that couldn’t make it. I don’t want to give away his tricks of the trade, but his exercise was well-thought out and particularly clever. In brief, out of a list of our top ten most significant life events, he had us focus on number 10 rather than number 1. The thought being that most of the top events of most folks’ lives are commonplace (births, marriages, graduations, jobs), but that number 10 is less emotionally charged, but maybe also less commonplace. This lent me more insight into those people that do write successfully about their own lives.

Mid-week Public Radio International ran a piece on the change of mood in Japan from giddy humor and anything’s possible to more somber. This fabulous skit from the Japanese version of the Johnny Carson show from the mid-1980s was used as a pop culture illustration of Japan’s former Zeitgeist. I loved this–everything about it: the costumes, the story, the cheekiness, the kitsch, and how well orchestrated it is. You gotta love this, right?

Japan seemed to be one theme of the week. After scoring organic udon noodles at Big Lots, we did a lot on a pseudo-Japanese food theme this week…. and, then, last night, the Unitarian Church here in Charleston, WV showed last year’s foreign film Academy Award winner for free:

Departures

Apparently it took ten years to put this film together. Really some just fantastic acting. This is also some of the finest screenwriting I have witnessed in a very long time. I had wondered if it were based in a novel or short story (I can almost always tell). Turns out it is roughly based on the autobiography of a Buddhist mortician. Far from being morbid, there are layers of love stories and types of love, lots of inner and outer struggle. The scenery is also spectacular. Sometimes I have found Japanese films too outside my cultural experience for me to really get the full picture of a film event’s significance. Departures struck home with me on universal and modern themes, without resorting to the grandiose. I would certainly watch it again.

The next creative things I am going to do:

After being asked often now for access to print copies, I have set out the task of getting my two books into print publishing shape this spring. For a while I was torn: do I try again with agents and publishers or do I keep giving it a go on my own? Three years ago I gave it a shot at larger scale publishing, only to be told by agents, that although they loved what they read, they felt they couldn’t market Bombardirovka. I know that despite very encouraging and positive feedback, I haven’t pushed the novel enough… but I am thinking that the right time presents itself for each creative work. My goals are to get it and Disco Hillbilly into print form by late spring and available through our new business entity MediaCauseGlobal as our first works out under that creative imprint. I am hoping to end up a sort of Ani DiFranco of publishing and multimedia. DiFranco started her own label back in the 1989: http://www.righteousbabe.com/ and has never worked through a major label. Now, she doesn’t have to.

Okay, maybe I should have started this twenty years ago… but better late than never. This is also what writer Dave Eggers did. He started out in ‘zines, then started McSweeney’s, which now also publishes him.

There is good proof, though, that one’s facility with language and story improves with age. I am hoping this is true of marketing oneself and one’s friends and the creative folks one admires. I guess I’ll find out.

What am I up to this weekend?

Hope to go see see Crazy Heart. The guy that wrote it is from this part of the country from down in Abingdon, VA… and got his start at the Barter Theatre there apparently.

Today, we are starting a photography project (once I get Edward out of bed). We are starting with what we have: ideas and some cheap equipment. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

I also hope to get in some time updating a formatted version of Bombardirovka and also work on the next installment of Disco Hillbilly for the web.

I am also reworking a website of my dad’s…

Next Twyla Tharp questions — from her list of questions that help you figure out your creative DNA

Last time I answered questions from Tharp’s list (see an earlier post) on the best idea I ever had… here are its opposite and the links between the two…

5. What is the dumbest idea I ever had?

I am going to stick with the realm of ideas. We have all done things we regret…so the question focuses on an idea — what is the dumbest idea I actually never realized, that is, made reality?

Maybe trying to potentially set up a service that helps writers get writing work. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

6. What made it stupid?

I didn’t have the infrastructure in place to actually make it work. I spent way too much on a graphic and simple website and that would have been better spent with a consultant flushing out the ideas. My view, though, is that with time, bad ideas morph into somewhat decent ideas. I do thinking owning and starting a business was a good idea. Last summer I thought I wanted the business to focus on the nonprofit sector; now, I think the business has settled into a vehicle for exclusively creative work. Ideas need time to ferment and become what they are going to become. I am pretty happy with the idea of a business focused on creative work…. So, from a stupid idea three years ago comes a pretty good idea this year.

7. Can you connect the dots that led you to this idea?

My MFA program gave no advice or direction on the “what next” part of being a writer. Great. So now you have an MFA. What next? Only so many writing instructor positions exist, and a lot of those are now taken up by folks with a Ph.D. AND an MFA and a hefty publishing credit under their belts. I’d thought about giving seminars on the what next of creative writing, and then, using that to recruit writer-consultants. Frankly, about that time my day job amped up, and I just didn’t have the time to invest in this idea. Then online writing portals really took off, so my idea was so of already obsolete by the time I got around to thinking it.

8. What is your creative ambition?

To complete the projects I have already outlined for myself. These include:

getting Bombardirovka (which I refer to affectionately as Bomba) and Disco Hillbilly out in print and audio forms

investigating and theorizing a school of the arts and technology

becoming well-experienced in multimedia production

become well-experienced in creating art through using digital media, esp. the web

finishing a long list of creative projects: Dogfight film; Chicken Mountain project; several audio and video projects; two more Jada Perlmutter novels; several online interactive narratives; three docu-reality multimedia websites, etc.

to become a creative and learning theorist

to become/remain part of an exchange of ideas and art

I think sometimes about being part of a larger conversation on a larger stage, but I am not sure I even care about that, or have ever cared about it, really. I am not sure what a person gains, other than access to the people also on those stages– maybe more money? I don’t know, though, if that stage door closes behind you once you go through it. That would most definitely not appeal to me.

Oh!  And l let me say one more thing about these people.  They all inspire me.  They are also personable. These are all people you’d like to be around.  They make you feel creative and alive being around them.

NOT in alphabetical order or order of preference, starting with…

the creative females ’cause creative females also usually get the sxxt-stick when it comes to recognition.

Ann Pancake, http://annpancake.blogspot.com/

A WV native like me… a master fiction writer and just an all around good soul. Her words and themes are real… that is, she is not shucking and jiving you. She knows of which she writes and she renders the prose with atmosphere, glimpses of light and shadow.

Nancy Agabian, http://nancyagabian.com/

I right out super way loved reading Nancy’s autobiography  Me As Her Again. She always has something cooking, whether it’s running off to Yerevan, Armenia to blow people’s minds there with performance art or doing a reading of her work in the States. She does it her way. Period. So there.  Her work can also be unbelievably funny, like the piece she read at Beyond Baroque about her being hazed while working on a children’s show in LA.

Sandra Sievert (and Dirk Berger), http://www.s-wert-design.de/

I have known these two folks for years.  Sandra is the ‘s’ in S-wert Design and the picture here is worth a thousand words.  She opened her own business in Berlin focusing first on the city itself as inspiration for her work.  Trained as an architect, Sandra has made a creative life that works, and she gets paid for it….

Tina Kim, http://www.tinakim.com/

I met Tina at a show she was performing.  Just one of the funniest people there is and she is also nonstop.  You never know what she is going to say, and I say this with the utmost respect, she don’t give a hoot… I mean, she will just say it, you better believe it. She is hilarious in a world where out-of-touch effetes like Christopher Hitchins can get away with writing in Vanity Fair a few years back that women are not funny.

Sonya Gay Bourn, http://www.sonyagaybourn.com/

A Renaissance woman: Sonya writes for entertainment media (TV and film); she directs; she is co-head of the Women’s Committee at WGAwest, and, if that ain’t enough–she is an awesome stand-up comic. She also happens to be from North Carolina and her dad was born in the same county in West Virginia as mine.  She always has something cooking and I am always excited to see what she is up to.  She is also a mean clogger.  Just throw on Rocky Top somewhere around her and you’ll see.

Carmen Elena Mitchell, http://therealgirlsguide.wordpress.com/meet-the-real-girls/

I couldn’t stop watching the promos for Carmen’s webseries The Real Girls Guide to Everything Else.  We took a writer’s workshop together almost eight years ago and she  has super come into her own. She writes and acts in this web series, and, it’s just one of the smartest things out on the web in terms of entertainment. She also pulled all this together herself. Go, Carmen!

Jacqui Barcos, http://www.jacquibarcos.com/

Jacqui Barcos is a force of nature. She really is.  A writer/director, you know, an auteur, she really just does have what it takes.  Beyond being super talented and exciting to be around, I truly envy her ability to catalyze situations and engage people.  She does nothing half-assed. She is also real and on the level, but smooth. She is the person you want on your side when you have to move mountains, in the good sense of the phrase.

Joanna Warsza, http://www.laura-palmer.pl/

Joanna I met because she was the main organizer of this crazy art exhibit when I was living in Tbilisi, Georgia. The exhibit was throughout the Betlemi neighborhood, which was traditionally the Jewish and Armenian quarter of Old Tbilisi. During the exhibit, you actually walked into people’s home, and maybe,  in one, there was performance art.   In another, there was a techno cave. In another space, someone was serving absinthe and taking you on a tour of a Zoroastrian temple, that, yes, was actually now part of  his home.  In a place where it is not easy to get things done, Joanna got everything together, and, she was an extremely warm person to be around. You could see why people would follow her. She made sure you felt you were wanted and she went out of her way to make sure you had a good time.

Dorian Wood, http://www.dorianwood.com/

Dorian. Dorian. Dorian. Dorian. What to say about Dorian Wood that hasn’t already been said? A consummate musician, composer, and performer… I almost feel like a poem about Dorian would be more appropriate. In short, there  is nothing about him that isn’t lyrical. His scruffy beard under a sometime mop of curls. His good-humored melancholy. His preferences for donning black blouses like your grandmother would wear. His 20-minute raps wrapped in a white sheet. His on-the-spot improv songs. His ability to channel both Patti LaBelle and Mahler all in the same note, the same instant.

Doug Van Gundy, http://www.dougvangundy.com/

You know that kind of person that just crackles with smarts? That kind of person with such a wide array of references that you are just excited by what all he knows? Then, when those smarts get boiled in the same pot with talent, and not just one talent, but several talents, and this person also happens to have focus and  drive? The person gets up and does it?  He gets out and shares it?  He doesn’t keep it all to himself?

Also, when you are around someone that believes in what he does enough to find vulnerability still when he comes to the page, enough vulnerability to still tear up at what he has written? If you don’t know anyone like that, then, well, obviously you don’t know WV native Doug Van Gundy…

Rod Cumming, http://www.myspace.com/cathairensemble

Rod, the leader of Cat Hair Ensemble, writes almost the best lyrics you’ll ever read.  He prompts you to pursue your creative career on company time. His limbs float about as he mourns the loss of your love. Plus, he friggin’ plays accordion. And he can sing.  Oh, and by the way, he has an MFA in screenwriting, like a good one from a hard school.  Apparently he’s written some science fiction-y stuff, too.  At first glance, you’d never guess he was born and raised in New York City, but, once you hear him play, you see it out before you, a Manhattan Street still haunted, a street jilted, ignored by the chain stores now littering that isle, you see Rod early in the AM, noisebox tucked at his side, making that walk home that the wild ones before him have swaggered. Except, whoops, you forgot he now lives in LA.

Jack Terricloth, http://www.worldinferno.com/

I met Jack before he was Jack or a Jack-in-the-box. The back-then Jack made me spend my rent money on a used tuba. A couple of years ago, after years, we sat in a pink balloon made of cotton candy in a basement bar on St. Mark’s and compared life notes. He’s done exactly what he wanted to do, so thankyouverymuchSin-aeeetra. Including floating in a pink balloon made of cotton candy.  There’s really no excuse for not knowing his music. He’s also been doing this for, count ‘em, almost 25 years…. What the hell have you been doin’ for 25 years?

Artsvi Bakhchinyan, http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2009-04-18-artsvi-bakhchinyan-compiles-the-stories-of-armenians-past-and-present-far-and-near

Artsvi is one of those people that leads a creative life. He has made it happen in a country that it’s not so obvious or easy in. Professionally, he is a writer and a film academician. But that is just the start. He juries film competitions. He sings in a professional choir. He writes book after book. He takes ballet lessons for fun. He hangs out with his family and three children. He always has time to make new friends and greet old ones. He does this all with exuberance and joy. His life is very much a model of how to live a happy creative life.

Lado Burduli, http://www.myspace.com/ladoburduli

When’s the last time you listened to some Gothic new wave from the Republic of Georgia? If so, then you listened to Lado Burduli. Talking about recording his latest album with a classical ensemble, we compared notes on how exhausting the full-on creative process can be. People don’t understand why you are so tired… you are putting yourself on the line minute by minute. Lado should, by now, be a sort of world music star. He keeps at it, always wanting to find a way to exalt the modern Georgian performer, the contemporary musician engaged in the music of today, and to gather the contemporary artists and creative people together in community in his country. Bravo, Lado! It makes you think, what’s the last thing you did to bring creative people together?

Leonard Graves Philips, http://www.myspace.com/dickiesband

Could you keep up being cantankerous for almost forty years?  Could you? Leonard fronts one of the punk bands that has stayed together the  longest.  He has the deepest speaking voice you’ve never heard (he should be doing his own radio show). He’ll also argue politics with you until you want to hit him with one of  his puppets. Beneath it all, though he wouldn’t want you to know, like so many of the punks, he is a gentle soul.

Joe Tepperman, http://sail.usc.edu/~tepperma/ and http://www.myspace.com/mooeymoobau

Joe recently made his first music video, which I also couldn’t stop watching. The dude is in his 20s, he’s getting a Ph.D. in some kind of thing like audio recognition, he writes mean, lean, long, sound poems and sets them to music.  He plays amazing trombone. I wish I had wasted my 20s being him. I can’t imagine how creative he will remain into his 30s.  He’s a one man Talking Heads. Move over, the rest of you poseurs and louts.

P.S.

So, reading and thinking about what it means to be creative…. I left a comment on a Daniel Pink interview recently with Seth Godin… I’d really like to believe it, I’d really like to see it where artists get hired to be artists and paid the big payola. I remember learning about the chart by some famous anthropologist (feel free to remind me of who) who noted three main motivators in human behavior, but that we are not all motivated by them in equal amounts nor proportionately:

‘security’

‘identity’

and I think the last one was ‘adventure’

Right-brainers, I think, probably mostly fall into the latter two categories. Managers??? Into???

I am unconvinced that the Right-Brainers (the creative types) are really going to rule. Maybe they will rule some parts of industry, I don’t know which parts, or if “artists” and “industry” — ne’er the twain shall meet…other than Apple, and those are hired guns all working for a common business purpose.

Further, I just came back from the Caucasus where I heard the the Finance Minister there give a presentation that sounded like he was propounding an economic agenda from 1970: construction and natural resources. Not to mention that the US remains in several wars: the war for ideology (internally and externally), the lost wars on vice (drugs & our bodies: gay, straight, and prostitutes), and the physical wars over??? What are they really about? I’m just not sure and haven’t been—I am unconvinced mistaken senses of propriety and culture-clashes won’t keep the creative class in its current lowly status…

‘k, as they say…. let’s use the old scientific method. What if the some of the most creative people I know well enough to share a cup o’ joe with actually were put in charge?

A couple of them on this list actually have been in charge of people and things… but, if I compare them to the folks that I know that run organizations or businesses… I see a chasm in need of a major synaptic leap. How do you experiment for that?

If I worked with ANY of these people listed above I’d wake up with a spring in my step and a song in my heart to go to work.

Imagine how different the workplace would be with any of these people in charge or asked for their input and actually having it applied.

Now, then, imagine the folks in charge most places. Then try to imagine those folks and these folks… mmm, ‘m not sure. There is a saying that interviewing for the workplace is like dating… Think of most bosses of companies or organizations you have worked in, now, imagine the experiment of sending them on a date with one or more of these folks. Close on some, but no cigar on others?

This brings me back to Tharp’s idea of creative identity and creative DNA. She says ‘if you understand the strands of your creative DNA, you begin to see how they mutate into common threads in your work. You begin to see the “story” that you’re trying to tell; why you do the things you do (both positive and self-destructive); where you are strong and where you are weak (which prevents a lot of false starts), and how you see the world and function in it.’

Wow.

If I answer these questions, I will learn all that about my creative DNA? Okay, maybe so. Though, another favorite quote I now find myself mis-attributing: take that about yourself which people complain about most and cultivate it, for that is what about you is truly yours.

Okay, in an earlier post I talked about how much I dislike creative writing assignments from other people… and, I am squirrelly when it comes to answering these kinds of things.

Questions answered: questions by Twyla Tharp

1. What is the first creative moment you remember?

Preparing to sing Jesus Loves Me for preschool Bible school. I was about 3 years-old. The full story goes that I was extraordinarily excited to sing. I loved practicing. I couldn’t wait to be on stage. The evening of the performance, I headed straight to where I thought we would sing–that is, where the choir always sung–in risers behind the pastor. Except, to get to these risers, you had to go out a side door and then enter the choirpit from a hall. Across the bottom of the choirpit ran about a three foot wall. While the other little kids lined up off to the right on the stage, I ran straight for the choirpit. And, I figured, over the wall must be the way to enter. In my haste, I foisted myself up onto the ledge, pulled, and about that time, got stuck halfway between the stage and the choirpit. I heard a huge crowd of laughter, more laughter than I had ever heard live in my short life, and looked back over my three-year old shoulder to see a sea of open mouths laughing at me while I unknowingly bared my ruffled yellow bloomers and my ruffled yellow dress slid down my back toward my neck. I burst into inconsolable tears, slid down, and ran straight for my parents to later be only mildly muffled by being bought a hot fudge cake at Shoney’s in Bluefield, WV.

I think this is not that atypical of creativity: I was so focused on my own excitement and the chance to perform that I sailed on past the rest of the crowd getting into line. My own enthusiasm upstaged the regularly scheduled program. My act of pointing out what was obvious proved to be more creative and daring (yet also humiliating) and more entertaining than the scripted entertainment.

2. Was there anyone to witness or appreciate it?

I was mortified by several things for years: singing (though I loved to). I often wondered if this incident stifled a voice or a performer I could have been…. Though, this provided me with one of my first stories to tell. I could clearly see the setup, and I saw myself in third person that evening; I saw what I had done, I saw what I had wanted, the climax was different than the set-up, and I had unanticipated audience response.

3. What is the best idea you’ve ever had?

The wheel for systemic change on gender in the entertainment industry. I came up with this a couple of years into working as the head of a project/organization for challenging the status quo on gender in the entertainment industry. I had never thought of myself as being great at synthesis, though, later reading Daniel Pink’s book

but as a writer and as a writer very driven by wordplay, and as someone, by the time I had this idea, that had managed to write a whole novel, I saw that synthesis is one of my fortes. I was able to take a lot of input from over the course of two years and synthesize it to this:

The organization I was working for headed up research and worked to cause a shift on gender imbalance in entertainment aimed at kids.  In my thinking, research formed the core of the issues; it defined the problem. The main players for change fit into the four categories around the wheel. These groups and interests would be solicited to come together in a collaborative effort. Last but not least, foundations and philanthropists would be approached to fund the collaborative effort.

After two solid years of doing this work, I came to believe that large-scale change was possible (as I noted in an earlier post of mine), but that only a large-scale collaborative effort would produce much substantive change.  In order to create a paradigm shift, this whole wheel would need to work in concert.

4. What made it great in your mind?

It was a model for collaboration and a model of how to make social change happen in a specific industry. I took what I had learned over the two years of doing a job I had and synthesized what need to be done into a simple graph. The idea was relatively clear and labeled who all the principle players needed to be. As the Japanese apology goes, I am sorry I didn’t have time to write you a shorter letter. This was a “short letter.”  It cut through a lot of the other nonsense about making change and it illustrates really what must happen.

I am totally going to rip off their ideas.  I am just stating this here, for anyone who cares to read this.

Scroll to the bottom of this awesome visual and audio blog to their former posts and enjoy.  I also have this particular link’s Alvin and the Chipmunk’s rendition of Godsmack’s Voodoo song running round and round in my head like that terrible game you play where you try to make someone have a hideously awful song running around and around in their head all day.  Like when you sneak up behind someone you love and sing the lyrics to Neverending Story or Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore or other such dreck.

So, I am going to riff on my Disco Hillbilly work by ripping off what they are creating at this site. It’s totally worth it…. and now I am back to trolling this site again and again… just so you don’t miss it:

http://doublehappiness.ilikenicethings.com