principles

emergency medicine

A few months ago, while I was clearing out a storage room in a lonely warehouse building, a friend called me on my cell phone in tears. She told me of the overwhelming fear and anxiety she was feeling about a trip she was to embark upon in a few hours, that held many potentially difficult situations.

Standing in a storage room amidst broken cardboard boxes and forgotten stuff, I listened and talked and listened, as my friend’s tears gradually subsided. “But, how will I make it through?” she asked. “What will I do if I start to panic on the long flight, or when I am in another time zone?”

I wondered what I could offer right then and there? What would be totally portable, that she could look at any time she needed to, to remind her of other ways of seeing things, the opposite of fear and sadness?

I found myself saying: “Get a pen. Now draw a heart in the palm of your hand. read more…

08.11.10 | comments (10) | in family + friends, gifts, identity, principles, resources, road warrior, signs, strategies, travel |

a book + music (free play + the koln concert)

One of our favorite books about improvising is Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch. It’s one of those enduring books that you can open randomly and find something useful or compelling…like this, which we found just now:

“…Sometimes we damn the limits, but without them art is not possible. They provide us with something to work with and against. In practicing our craft we surrender, to a great extent, to letting the materials dictate the design…”

Among the many jacket quotes praising the book is one by Keith Jarrett, the jazz pianist known for his astonishing improvisational work the Koln Concert. In four sentences, he totally nails what improvising is:

“You are called to an important meeting, the subject of which you are not told. It is of utmost importance that you ‘Be Yourself’. The meeting starts immediately and your clothes are in the laundry and you have no time to wash up or shave. Is this a ‘serious’ situation? Then so is improvisation…”

And that is what The Koln Concert was. In the video, Jarrett describes the impossible circumstances that made for a stunning creation.

That’s what Free Play is about.

We view them as an essential part of our toolBox.

(You can listen to samples of The Koln Concert, and/or buy it as an MP3, here.)

08.06.10 | comments (1) | in art, inspiration books + zines, paths + processes, people, principles, tools |

help us chose a blurb for ‘the improvised life’

Corey Templeton/Flickr CC

‘the improvised life’ needs a tagline on its HomePage so newcomers who jump onto the site with no introduction can get the gist quickly, and find their way more easily. We’ve been mulling possibilities for a while now and ask for your help in figuring out which of the phrases below describes the site best. OR send us your ideas and words for the best way to convey what’s going on here, in a flash…It would be placed below the title, where the Manifesto is now…

…resourcefulness as a daily practice…

…inspire your own creative ideas…

We invite you to scroll back through the archives, or the selection below, as you mull ‘the improvised life’ and see if a great tagline comes to mind.

You have a unique view. We need your help!

Make Your Own Music

D-I-Y Pallet Chair (And Stool and Lamp)

Duct Tape and Phone Book Dress

50 Dangerous Things Your Kid (and You) Should Do

A Modernist Island Retreat (On a Budget)

What Unkempt or Messy or Shabby Can Mean

Essential Chocolate Cake for Improvising (Recipe)

Strategy: Cool (un)Plywood Storage Cabinets

Leaving Secret (or Surprise) Presents

…and don’t forget the Surprise Box!

…

06.04.10 | comments (24) | in community, inspiration, inspiration blogs + sites, paths + processes, principles |

woodpile as art

Alastair Heseltine is a Canadian artist who makes art and objects by interweaving wood (he especially loves willow). We were knocked out by his woodpile and by his artist’s statement; we don’t know when we’ve seen one that said so much in so few words:

“I am a sculptor working with mixed media relating to the environment. Imagery is guided by the inherent nature of material and by construction systems evolved through mindful observation and play. I also draw from the full spectrum of routines and activities that support my practice: Design, craft production, farming and rural life.” read more…

05.16.10 | comments (5) | in art, inspiration blogs + sites, materials, paths + processes, people, principles |

“always turn shit over”

Draplin/Flickr

The other day Reference Library posted an image from the Flickr archive of a brilliant junk collector and “seer” of things. It was of the UNDERSIDE of an old light bulb package: the red-striped ends of its six sides folded into an elegant overlapping “star” like some beautiful Japanese Packaging. The only editorial comment was in the form of the posts title, “Always Turn Shit Over”. Now there’s a life principle! Turn stuff over, on its side, inside-out, upside-down… to get a view you didn’t expect or might not have imagined on your own.

You can do the same thing with ideas: turn them over in your mind, every which way…

05.11.10 | comments (5) | in inspiration blogs + sites, paths + processes, principles, projects + play, reimagine, rules for living, strategies |

ann herbert: unaccumulate

“The answer is zero.

Let go of everything that can be let go of. Unaccumulate.

Notice a new way of figuring out. If many places are held by nothing at all, more actions are possible.

More actions are likely–all that room.”

Anne Herbert’s blog Peace, Love and Noticing the Details continues to knock us out, remind us, teach us.

howard rheingold: on becoming (“life…forks every day, in every moment”)

Recently, Lydia Wills alerted us to an entry from Howard Rheingold‘s astonishing blog Howard’s Butt “about his rectal cancer experiences –about being cracked open. He is an amazing person…one of the earliest internet folks who knew it was going to change the world.” Rheingold’s writing sent us to his website and Wikipedia to find out more about him, and then all over the web, as one thing led to another: Rheingold is a future-thinker who saw the power of the internet and wireless devices to create communities WAY before anyone else did, and then he started living that vision… He had a hand in the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog and early internet ventures like HotWired (Wired Magazine’s original web presence), wrote ground-breaking books about technology’s new paradigms and collective intelligence, gave a TED talk about collaboration, and lectures at Stanford and U.C. Berkeley.

In all the work that we came across, Rheingold shows enduring courage: to think for himself…say what’s what…and be comfortable being an outsider (which just about anyone who is himself is), not to mention writing a blog about rectal cancer and putting pictures of butts all over its home page.

Here’s a post Rheingold wrote in anticipation of the radiation oncologist’s verdict the following week. ”Feeling Like a Hard-Boiled Egg” is about the armoring we create to survive and that life cracks apart, and what that process is really about: read more…

04.28.10 | comments (1) | in community, identity, inspiration, inspiration blogs + sites, paths + processes, people, principles |

when pretty or cool = a bad idea

Emma's Design Blog

A couple of years ago, we started a file called “bad ideas”. These are ideas featured in shelter/style magazines that look really good, but practically speaking, are really bad. They’d come back to haunt you in no time. Stacked magazines seem like a perfect, charming solution for a table leg, but have you ever TRIED to stack magazines more than a foot high, which, with their glossy paper, are nearly impossible to keep from sliding around, much less as a 2 1/2 foot support for a slab of glass? (Unless, maybe, you bore a hole through them and put a pipe through the center to secretly hold them together).

We’re got nothing against cool-for-the-sake-of-cool design. But we really mind design that masquerades as a practical idea and has a lot of back-end problems. read more…

04.06.10 | comments (7) | in learn, media, outside, paths + processes, principles, reimagine, strategies |

j.k. rowling on the fringe benefits of failure

One of the big fears (and realities) that can keep us from trying things out, taking them to the next step, or persevering with an idea, has to do with failure. We can judge ourselves like crazy for having failed at something in the past OR be terrified that we will fail in the future; both of those notions stymy improvisation and creativity and LIFE.

So, we’re always heartened when we hear the stories of real people who have failed terribly, learned a lot, found their way AND put incredible things into the world…like J.K. Rowling’s story of her “epic failure” years before writing the Harry Potter books, and what she learned from it, the unexpected gifts it brought. She shared it in her commencement speech at Harvard in 2008, which seemed to surprise everybody.

Here’s the video of the whole thing, and our edit of the essentials to read: read more…

03.31.10 | comments (2) | in identity, inspiration blogs + sites, paths + processes, people, principles |

on making mistakes (in public, no less)

This morning a reader wrote to alert me, very gently and carefully, to a glaring typo in yesterday’s post on self-publishing. I wrote “elicit” when I meant “illicit”. Yikes! It got me thinking about making mistakes, (in public, no less) like this one made last night, when I was writing the post late, blind after a long day, moving too fast…

Oh well. Having spent years as a perfectionist, these days I’m opting for less perfection, for trying to get to the point, get things out there, improvise, try stuff, make mistakes. (But then, this is not surgery or flying an airplane.) And when I make mistakes: own up, learn from them, correct them… and try to write enough ahead to give the work to a copy editor (a friend)…

The reader who corrected me this morning also wrote that she loved ‘the improvised life’ despite its typos, and told this story about how it has influenced her thinking: read more…

02.23.10 | comments (2) | in learn, paths + processes, principles |

design as resourcefulness and self-reliance

Pamela Hovland

We were hoping that Constance Old would guest curate for ‘the improvised life’…here is her first (great) post:

“Emily Campbell works as Director of Design for a British think tank called “RSA” (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) which is committed to research and projects devoted to social progress. (http://www.thersa.org/home)

She wrote a terrific essay on her blog Design and Society; it’s called “You know more than you think you do.” The gist is that professional design has alienated the individual, and designers actually have an obligation to design better access for the user into their work: then the user could fix the thing themselves without a degree…Kind of a call to simplify things and empower the individual even in highly designed objects.”

Campbell also designed this poster with Anthony Burrill which should be on everyone’s wall (and in our heads).

Thanks for the photo, Pamela!

02.03.10 | comments | in inspiration, principles, resources blogs + sites, sightings, signs |

vincent van gogh on doing it anyway

Thanks Pamela!

01.26.10 | comments | in art, inspiration, paths + processes, principles, projects + play, signs |

pop-up urban lunch (and other) counters

In my Inbox this morning, the ever-illuminating Manhattan User’s Guide alerted me to a new blog called Pop-Up Lunch. It explores ways New York’s nontraditional public spaces, like sidewalks, steps, and fire hydrants can be transformed into places to eat lunch. Writes blogger AP:

“This blog follows a series of Pop Up Lunches I have staged (some big, some small) and my development of mobile eating tools designed for the sidewalks of NYC. Ultimately, I hope that my efforts might inspire even a handful of my fellow urbanites to reconsider the potential for lunch – to be a joyful daily event – and for the sidewalks of NYC to serve as more than just pathways.”

Pop Up Lunch is totally after ‘the improvised life’s heart. You could easily apply its innovations – and certainly its thinking – to just about any city, and expand the uses for make-shift, jerry-rigged or impromptu surfaces: read more…

11.18.09 | comments (2) | in cheap + great, copy this!, outside, principles, road warrior, sightings |

tool for improvising: embrace mistakes

Today, I found a comment at the end of my post about deferring judgment. It read:

“Is it too judgmental to note that in the U.S. “judgment” is the preferred spelling?”

OMG!!! The sign I had spent forever trying to make was spelled wrong (“judgment” is spelled correctly elsewhere in the post). It is NOT too judgmental to alert me to errors, as I rely on several friends to do; I am typ0-prone. But, there is a story behind the mistake, and as with many mistakes, some redemption. read more…

10.29.09 | comments (1) | in learn, paths + processes, principles |

tool for improvising: defer judgment

When software engineer Gever Tulley left his job at Adobe to start his Tinkering School for Kids, he posted a letter on his blog, ‘some things right ‘, to the people he had worked with. In it, he left them with some “good ideas” like Play! and Instead of Having a Career Path, Always Do the Most Interesting Thing You Can Do!

The real knock-out is ” Number 2: “Defer Judgment” from a sign he saw on the wall of IDEO, a global design and innovation consultancy that has innovated novel ways of collaborative problem solving. read more…

10.28.09 | comments (1) | in inspiration blogs + sites, paths + processes, principles, projects + play |