Fun Friday Resources

This week, class, we’re going to do some reading.

Nearly two years ago, as we all barricaded our doors and turned off the lights, Douglas McLennan wrote “Arts: Rebuild What? And Why?” He presents a case for the opportunists (vs. the restorationists) to be our visionaries moving forward, i.e., what we had before (infrastructure/funding) wasn’t working and we need to assemble the pieces of our arts scene into something new.

What’s interesting to me in the piece is that coming back to it nineteen months later I find some of his presuppositions to be a bit off. Most performing arts groups around here have survived, have cautiously reopened, and have audiences champing at the bit to get back into their seats. However, I think his core proposition is correct: What we had before was no great shakes, so why not use the opportunity of the breakdown to reconfigure some things?

If you have any suggestions — comment!

Over at Gridology, Ross Gordon and Rose Choi Marques serve up a grid and its accompanying discussion on the topic of stepping out of your comfort zone. I’ve always used Wallace Stevens’s metaphor of the walled garden for this idea, that we all organize the chaos of the universe into a tidy garden that we can understand (some are tidier than others of course), but the creative person is always looking for the doors out of the garden — whereupon we encounter the chaos of the universe and organize just that much more to add to our garden.

This grid gives you a tool to assess whether a specific goal outside your comfort zone is a good idea for you or not. Pay some attention to the “Shortcomings of the Grid” section at the end. I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt out there.

Suppose I told you that one of the best articles on getting past “writer’s block” is from an outdoors website? Read “I Moved to a Remote Cabin to Write, and I Hate It” over at OutsideOnline. It’s astute look at the RITUALS we think will save us vs. the ones we actually need.

Finally, over at his Range Widely website, David Epstein has a great piece on “defamiliarization,” with many links to many other strategies to shake you out of your current, locked-in reality. I was amused by his reference to Dr. Seuss’s art teacher scolding him for turning his paper upside-down and sketching the still life that way: that’s exactly what my drawing/painting teacher Diane Mize did to us 50+ years ago at Governor’s Honors.

I’ll be back Monday with more art supply wasting; things are going very well outside that particular comfort zone.

Comments are always welcome!