Skin on Frame

Joann Sfar and Quentin Blake and Saving the World

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Wonderful conversation between Joann Sfar and Quentin Blake on drawing and being creative.

http://www.culturetheque.org.uk/listen/talks/new-page

What I love about Sfar is the way he works.  He's an artist as courageous gardener.  No planning, no safety net, no method, no plan, do the next thing. 

"Otherwise I’m working, as usual, on a book nobody is asking for. I finished Klezmer 4, it will be out in the first days of January and then I should do the next Lumières. Or finish L’Ancien Temps 2. Anyway. I’m not doing that now, I’m working on Klezmer 5. I can’t help it, that’s what’s coming out.  ...  

I can’t work on just one thing only. If I tell myself “just focus on that thing”, all inspiration will dry up and nothing comes out. I need to go to a café and read pages of Klezmer and both novels, and I’m working on everything at the same time. I’ve always done that. If I change, something’s gonna be broken."

I definately was told this is NOT the way to be in the world.

This ties into something else I have been thinking about.  The obsession with detailed planning, overaching strategies and training.  Dave Pollard, over at "How to Save The World"  has an interesting post on "Resilient Circles" and whats needed to make a change.  The interesting part is a comment by Norberto Rodrigue about how the the eco community at Gaviotas has evolved. He observes,

"One of Lugari’s (Paulo Luagri - one of the founders) mantras for their work is A.V.V., “alli vamos viendo”, meaning “we will see what happens as we go along.”

Those guys found that “it became clear to us that most of the successes at Gaviotas were not a result of brilliant planning but of a trial and error process, replete with wrong turns and detours. “Gaviotas showed us that there is not an orchestrated march towards a finished product –there is only the process, the unpredictable evolution of strategies and ideas.”

And this my friend, is what i understand by “BEING RESILIENT”…

Too much talking, too much planning… time for Action is long overdue!!"

 

The Cost of Creativity

I found this article cuts to the core of some things I have been thinking about.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/the-cost-of-creativity/

A hunter gatherer need 250 watts of power to live.  Modern day urbans need 11,000 watts, more then a blue whale.  

Creativity has given us much but the products of our creativity require more and more resources that are being used more and more quickly which requires new "creative" solutions that use more and more ... etc.

Like sex, creativity is an urge and I suspect as deep as the urge to breath.   Creativity is daemon with us and any attempt to regulate, manage, package or direct will be futile.     

 

Mushrooms, WiFi and SETI

I love how the net allows information to build meaningfully on itself - thanks to rss feeds coming into my igoogle page.

I love mushrooms and I'm looking to grow them.  I like hyperlocal food.  

I came across Hyperlocalvore joined and saw this video with Paul Stamet on Mycelium and saving the world.  Why do lots of antibiotics come from fungii?  Because they get the same diseases as us.

Then came across Adam Black via Shareable  talking about KeyWifi, a startup to share unused wifi, who nicely uses fungii as a metaphor for new ways of organising business.

Then an interesting article on the Fermi paradox by SciFi Karl Schroeder, [Life is probably adundant in the universe so why haven't we seen the aliens?]  with a nice sugestion:

"... any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Nature.  Basically, either advanced alien civilizations don't exist, or we can't see them because they are indistinguishable from natural systems. I vote for the latter."  

... maybe just like Mycelium.