Art and artists inspire us. And the interesting thing is that the way workers approach work is starting to look more and more like the way artists approach art.
I just discovered a bit of a poem, that makes the perfect conclusion to the blog swap experiment:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
– T.S. Elliot, Four Quarters
Good news from zero7:
Zero 7 have now completed their new album ‘When It Falls’ which will be released on March 1st 2004. The first single to be lifted from the album will be ‘Home’ released on February 23rd 2004. The single will also be available via download from this site from 12th February…so watch this space!
Zero7’s debut album Simple things is one of my favourite albums of all time. It is downbeat electronica, alternating between beautiful vocals and haunting instrumental tracks. It is groundbreaking, alive, flowing, complex. I had the pleasure of seeing them perform live in Copenhagen, and the joy they took in their music was plain to see. They have three different singers, and when one was performing, you’d find the others out among the audience, dancing with the rest of us, rather than chilling backstage. They seemed more like a club than a band.
It’s been a loooong while since Simple things was released, so I’m REALLY looking forward to the new album. In the meantime, if you absolutely can’t wait, check out Healing is difficult by Sia, one of their singers. This has more of a funk/soul feel, and Sia’s very characteristic voice suits the songs perfectly.
Here’s some info on the writing of Neal Stephenson’s latest book Quicksilver from his new website:
The manuscript of The Baroque Cycle was written by hand on 100% cotton paper using three different fountain pens: a Waterman Gentleman, a Rotring, and a Jorg Hysek. It was then transcribed, edited, formatted and printed using emacs and TeX. When it was totally finished, the TeX version of of the ms. was converted to Quark XPress format using an emacs LISP program written by the author. Some share of credit thus goes to the people who made the GNU/Linux operating system and to the originators of LISP.
I just love the idea of that kind of mixture of new and old. Fountain pens and TeX, 100% cotton paper and LISP programs written by the author.
There’s an interesting article by Linda Naiman in the CEO Refresher called Orchestrating Collaboration at Work Using the Arts, on the benefits of using arts in the business world. An appetizer: The arts take us on adventures in creative expression that help us to safely explore unknown territory, overcome fear, and take risks. We can transfer these learning experiences to the workplace. Art-making has an alchemical effect on the imagination. It teaches us to think in symbols, metaphors, and to de-code complexity.
Poetic, urban and beautiful: Copenhagen autumn road graffiti.
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The other day while I was driving home, I looked into the gutter and saw yellow leaves. Autumn’s here, and here’s a fitting poem which I found in Anne Lamott’s beautiful book “bird by bird”.
Above me, wind does its best
to blow leaves off the Aspen
tree a month too soon. No use,
wind, all you succeed in doing
is making music, the noise
of failure growing beautiful.
– Bill Holm
Here’s the author’s own background for the poem.
When I was in Slovenia for the art of hosting seminar, Tim performed one day, rapping his way through this piece called Word to the mother. I like it!
When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
– R. Buckminster Fuller
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Team up Fatboy Slim, Spike Jonze and Christopher Walken and what do you get? My favourite music video. It’s weird and beautiful, and Christopher Walken even choreographed his own dance moves.
Trivia about Christopher Walken from imdb: “Manages to insert a little dance number into all of his roles, no matter how small, scripted or not”. I’d never thought of that, but yeah – there’s the wedding dance in “deer hunter”, there’s the tango scene in “scent of a woman” and some truly amazing dance scenes in “pennies from heaven”. Though I don’t seem to recall him dancing in “pulp fiction”..?
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