Art is Storytelling.

In the book "Made to Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath, they talk about stories as being like a "flight simulator" for the brain. It turns out that when a person thinks about doing something, like driving or opening a door or singing, the corresponding parts of their brain lights up as if they were doing the actual activity. So when you listen to a story, you are learning about what's happening for real. This is why stories are so important to kids, and why they want to hear them over and over. They are in the flight simulator, practicing all sorts of things. Magic spells! Dealing with bullies! Building a skyscraper!

What about the other side of this coin? What about the process of making your own stories? Does creating your own stories, in whatever form, also grow your brain? I'm willing to bet it takes the flight simulator and makes it even more fabulous, because now now only do you get to create your own flight simulator, but you get to think about how someone else is going to see or hear or read it. So you simulate what's in your story, and you think about someone else experiencing it. At the same time. That's cool. Never forget that art is storytelling.

Paintings in the Prado, in Super High-Res, on Google Earth!

This is so totally cool.

Okay a while ago I wrote about "How to Look Inside a Painting," a presentation where I talk about the way a painting is done and how it reflects the actions and the attitude of the artist. Then, I wrote about how a drawing is a recording of the artist in that time and place. Here's the presentation:

How to Look Inside a Painting

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: creativity creative)

Now, you can see paintings in the Prado Museum in Spain in ultra-high resolution, down to the brushstroke, right from your screen. Totally cool. Now you can look at the work of masters, and consider every detail of how they made these images. Click here to go to the Google Blog, where they explain and tell you how to set it up. You can view it either through Google Earth or through Google Maps. They're both, as I said, totally cool.

Texture and Perfection

I was listening to music from Cirque du Soleil recently, "Alegria" to be exact, and I was struck by how the singer, in the higher registers, seemed kind of hoarse. Like she had a frog in her throat. But that must have been on purpose, because there it was on the recording - and if they didn't like it they would have gotten another singer or had her warm up differently or something. Right? So how come she sounded like that?

It was texture. That's part of what's so great about Cirque du Soleil, is the texture. The lumps and bumps and slight weirdness of everything. It's not polished, but it's emotional and perfect at the same time. This is a very French/French-Canadian thing. They see perfection in everything.

Not so in the U.S. We airbrush everything. We don't like people to have skin, we like them to have some flesh-covered coating that doesn't interfere in the "image." We take people who look perfectly fine the way they are and Photoshop them thinner still. Argh!!

Even in movies I find I'm spending a lot of time noticing how smooth everything is. Even when there's gore or something, it's all choreographed. Battle scenes must be a certain way or they are not "right."

And then we worry that we are desensitizing people to violence. Hm.

And, we stop drawing in 4th or 5th grade because we can't "make" our work measure up to some perfect thing in our head.

That's terrible! A drawing is fabulous simply because you made it. It's exactly what you did at that very moment. That makes it perfect.

I with we understood this better in the States, because we spend a lot of time eliminating what we view as "imperfection" when what we're really doing is taking the personality out of everything.

Draw stuff that's lumpy, and messy, and has texture. Please.

How is a Drawing like an MP3?

Music is interesting because you have to play it. If you want to hear it again, you have to play it again. A musical instrument sits there until somebody picks it up and uses it to make music.

You would think that drawing is totally different. After all, you can always see a drawing, you and look at it for as long as you want, you don't have to "repeat" it. You don't perform a work of art, you look at it. Unless you're a performance artist, but that's a different issue.

But, a drawing is actually a lot like an MP3. It is a recording of the movements that the artist made in a particular time and place.

You may not be able to see the order in which each line was drawn, but there in front of you is an exact copy of what the artist did. And it's there even hundreds, or thousands, of years later.

This is partly why cave paintings are so cool. They are not just objects, they are recordings, as if the person who made them is still standing there applying pigments to the wall.

So next time you look at a piece of art, think of the artist standing there, or sitting there, moving the brush or the pencil or the chalk around. That art is an exact recording of the time the artist spent there. Pretty cool.

Think about it the next time you look at a painting by Van Gogh. Wow, that guy moved the brush around a lot. With a lot of paint on there. Gives you a new perspective on his style and his personality and how intense he was.

And then, there is something in-between: the Phonautogram. This was how the very first recording of the human voice was made, by translating sound into squiggles on a piece of paper and then back into sound. Also pretty cool.

Art is not just a thing that we keep somewhere and look at, it's the actual movement of the artist.

The Art of Possibility

Okay I've written about Benjamin Zander before, but here's a book that he's written with his wife, Roz Zander, that's the kind of thing you put on your nightstand along with "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland. Zander is really into turning the dynamics of achievement and expectations upside down, acknowledging the great creativity in everyone before they do anything, not after, so that whatever they do or create comes out as if from a person who is already creative, not someone who hasn't "proven themselves" yet. This is how he draws out performances from his musicians that are about the music, and about expressing something bigger than just the performance. Really important stuff about setting your compass and giving yourself a chance rather than judging yourself. Zander has spoken at TED, too, you can see his talk here.

"You Can't Make a Living at..." --- is DOO DOO!!

Everyone has heard the stories of kids who grew up with dreams of being an artist, or a musician, or a musical artist, or just something 'creative,' that didn't fall into the mainstream of career-oriented occupations, or so everyone thought -- many of these people are now middle-aged, have maybe had good careers doing something else, maybe their creative passion now takes the form of a hobby -- and this happened because early in their life, they heard the words, "You can't make a living at..." or, "You need a backup," or, "You need to get a real job," or, "I'm not paying for four years of college for you to major in..." or something like that.

And then, a few of them didn't listen and supposedly because of their immense talent they got successful anyway, despite everything, and the rest is magic.

Pardon me in advance, but both of these scenarios are DOO DOO.

It is not what you want to do, what your passion is, what you are good at, or your creativity even that make you "successful." It is your drive, your professionalism, and your willingness to find opportunities and make connections. That's it. Same goes for athletics, for accounting, for aeronautics.

I have had a ton of cool creative jobs. I've worked in film and video, and design, and information architecture, and even games. But each job involved being a professional. And now, working for myself, it's even more important for me to be professional - to respond to customers, to write back to fans, to get stuff in by a deadline, to make quality stuff consistently.

I am taking my daughter this week to hear Steve Turre, who is considered by many to be the world's best jazz trombonist. He also happens to have grown up in our neighborhood and gone to the same schools that she is attending. Now, kids understand jazz implicitly, so I know musically it will be a rich experience for her -- but I also want her to see how professional musicians set up, how they conduct themselves onstage, how they handle their equipment and their instruments, how they address the audience -- because these will be some serious professionals. And regardless of what she wants to do with herself, she will need to be a professional.

So, if you've got a passion, great. Pursue it. Major in it. Get really good. But don't think that raw talent will get you all the way -- you must be a professional, you must be willing to get out there and make connections. This is what I tell high school students when I talk to them about careers. So, have at it, have a great time, but most of all get out there.

Trust and Hair on Fire

I'm reading this book right now, called "Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire." While the whole thing is interesting, I was very struck by a point the author makes about Trust.

Rafe Esquith is the teacher, and he talks at length about how important it is to establish trust in the classroom in order for kids to learn. Otherwise they just spend their time "gaming the system," trying not to get in trouble or to pull one over on the teacher or the other students - or on the assignment. He believes that the relationships inside the class must never be adversarial, so he goes to great lengths to establish trust.

Drawing is a risk. You take part of yourself, or your thoughts, or your ablities with a pencil, and you put them out there where they can be seen. Now, you may or may not show your drawing to anyone, that is your choice. But it is still a risk, even showing it to yourself. By drawing you are opening up a channel of communication (to use a geeky Star Trek reference) that is totally unique. That's a risk.

You risk disappointment, being made fun of, frustration, or even finding out something scary about yourself. Putting stuff out there where it can be seen is a risk.

So, trust is really important if you are going to draw. You must trust yourself to use the pencil and paper, and trust yourself not to attack whatever you put down. If you draw with others, you have to trust them not to ridicule your work or to destroy it (I actually had one student crumple up another student's drawing and throw it away once -- it took me ten minutes to get the victim to lift his teary face back up out of his shirt).

So next time you draw, with yourself or with others, remember that trust is part of the equation and be sure that it exists with you and with those around you. Especially trust yourself.

Stick-to-itiveness

Have you ever heard the term, "stick-to-itiveness?"

Here's the definition from the dictionary.

Stick-to-itiveness is what you have when you stick with something. Even when it isn't all that fun at the moment. It's persistence. But I think "stick-to-itiveness" is more fun to say than "persistence."

When you really love something, like drawing or reading or playing a sport or singing or origami or baking or whatever, you get natural stick-to-itiveness. Because it's something you love. You are more likely to keep at it. If something isn't interesting to you, you're more likely to just drop it and go do something else.

Drawing can give you stick-to-itiveness that you can use when you do other things. This is because drawing is a great way to try something, then try it again, erase and start over, and try some more. Do more than one version. Draw one thing, wait a week, then draw another. And if something comes out weird or silly or some other unexpected way, you can try making it into something different. Or you can color it or paint over it. Or turn it upside down. Or hand it to a friend and say, "Add something."

All you need to find your own stick-to-itiveness is a pencil and some paper. And it's a great thing to have, because your stick-to-itiveness is what will make it possible for you to find the thing or things in life that you most love to do and that you are good at. And that's fantastic!