Imagining what can be found

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"The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. By poetry I mean the imagining of what has been lost and what can be found - the imagining of who we are and the slow realization of it." - Allen Ginsberg

A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.

I like Ginsberg's definition of poetry as an imagining of what can be found.

To me that imagining is a lot easier when I stop and notice some of the cool things that others have tried and discovered, or are trying and discovering today.

Here's some human brilliance I picked from the learning garden this week.

Happy Friday.

Learning, Personal Development
The youngest Australian Olympic champion in history

The smile of accomplishment

A great place to find hope for the future is in our kids. Last week 13-year-old Arisa Trew made history at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics by winning the gold medal in the women’s park skateboarding event.

In this video of all of the finalists, the commentators articulate the difficulty and execution of her athleticism and art. Her confident smile showcases her ability to perform under pressure on the world’s biggest stage.

Video: Teenage Podium Sweep in Skateboard Park Final! Arisa Trew 1St, Cocona Hiraki 2Nd, Sky Brown Bronze.

The afternoon she won her medal it was 1 AM in her home town of Currumbin Waters. But her classmates at the Level Up Academy saw her do it in real time, together. They were all sharing a sleepover at their skatepark to watch her make history.

Video: The Skateboarding High School Where Arisa Trew Hones Her Craft | ABC News

Culture, Celebration
The patron saint of Woodstock

Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm landing at JFK airport to "handle security" at Woodstock. Image by Lisa Law

56 years ago today, just as Santana was finishing their set and before Canned Heat took the stage, it began to rain at Woodstock.

This should have been a disaster. Organizers had planned for a crowd of up to 100,000 and most guesstimates put the final attendance tally conservatively at 400,000. Sanitation, food, water and medical supplies were woefully inadequate, and the New York State Throughway had been closed due to gridlock. And many festival goers were tripping, some on notoriously bad acid. The last thing anyone had anticipated was torrential rains.

But the gathering had been advertised as "Three Days of Peace and Music" and in the end it was. The event was notable for its lack of formal security. The organizers had hired the Hog Farm, a commune of traveling performers to help maintain order and provide assistance. When asked of their role one of their leaders, Wavy Gravy, replied "We're mostly just gonna try to be groovy and spread that grooviness through everybody." Gravy named himself the "Please Chief" of the Hog Farm's "Please Force". At one point the governor wanted to declare a disaster and bring in the National Guard to "restore order", but the Hog Farm's non-confrontational, we're-in-this-together approach prevailed.

Video: Festival Security | Woodstock | American Experience | PBS

Article: The Kindly Career of Wavy Gravy

Learning, Creative Process
Bill Evans on jazz, creativity, and tapping into the "universal mind"

In 1966 Steve Allen hosted a documentary about Bill Evans and his approach to learning and creating. There is gold in these frames.

"I believe that all people are in possession of what might be called a universal musical mind. Any true music speaks with this universal mind to the universal mind in all people. The understanding that results will vary only insofar as people have or have not been conditioned to the various styles of music in which the universal mind speaks. Consequently often some effort and exposure is necessary in order to understand some of the music coming from a different period or a different culture than that to which the listener has been conditioned."

And he's just getting started.

Video: Legendary Pianist Bill Evans Documentary. He discusses his technique, playing and arranging.

If you can't take 45 minutes to watch the whole film, take four minutes to listen to him break down his learning process.

"Of course I learned mostly on the job, you know, and and then I started to learn about changes and harmonics and what how a tune was built harmonically, so that I could remember the harmony and be able to play without music and be able to substitute one harmony for another or to change the harmonies and so on.

"Now the whole process of learning, the facility of being able to play jazz, is to take these problems from the outer level one by one and to stay with it at a very intense conscious concentration level until that process becomes secondary and subconscious.

"Now, when that becomes subconscious then you can begin concentrating on that next problem which will allow you to do a little bit more, you know, and so on and so on."

Video: Bill Evans on Problems

Creative Process, Listening
"I began to think that maybe listening was the whole deal."

Given that I call my own brand-finding process "Listen First" this post had me at hello.

Adam Moss in the afterword to The Work of Art:

"THERE IS A PHRASE, variations of which many of the subjects of this book ended up uttering at some point. As they were describing why they did this or that, they would say they “listened” to the work, or the work would “tell” them what to do; the work would “speak” to them, as if a character in a book or a color on a canvas could issue orders. Tony Kushner asked his Angels alter ego, Louis, to explain the play to him; Cheryl Pope waited for the mother in her picture with no face to tell her whether she wanted a face. For a long while, I dismissed this phrasing as cliché — more of the empty language people often employ to describe how they work because creation is so hard to describe. Eventually, however, I began to think that no, maybe listening was the whole deal."

Blog Post: Listening Is the Whole Deal

Habitat, Architecture
Embracing emotion as function, and two other ways to shatter the "architectural blandemic"

Heatherwick argues that architects must consider how their buildings appear at street level. They should have enough complexity to engage the interest of passersby.

"In 2023, (architect Thomas Heathrwick) launched his campaign “Humanise,” delving into why architects make boring buildings (and have for the past 100 years). He talks about the consequences and the impact of modernism; he calls Le Corbusier the “king of boring” and argues that to re-humanize our buildings, we must focus on emotion. Additionally, one key observation is that Heatherwick rarely deploys popular catchphrases like 'environmental sustainability' or 'social housing,' which are often used to initiate discussions about the current state of our built environment. Instead, he highlights a broader issue that goes beyond function, operation and construction, advocating for a change in design philosophy." - Eirini Makarouni

Article: Ode to Joy: 3 Steps Architects Can Take To Make Buildings Less Boring

Related Article: “Humanize”: Thomas Heatherwick’s Crusade Against Boring Architecture

Communication, Visual Identity
The Harris-Walz logo references Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 campaign to face off against then-President Richard Nixon.

"Before Vice President Kamala Harris announced on social media that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz would be her running mate, her campaign had already updated its website with a new Harris-Walz logo. It’s a logo without any bells, whistles, stars, or stripes. Simple and minimalist, it comes in two simple color palettes: black-on-white and white-on-blue. Some online commenters found the logo boring, but the new Harris-Walz branding shows how the VP is putting her own stamp on the campaign she inherited.

"Harris’s longtime supporters might recognize the change as a reference to her first presidential campaign in 2020. When Harris ran for president during the 2020 campaign, she used a “Kamala Harris for the People” identity designed by the creative agency Wide Eye. With tall sans-serif type and a nontraditional color palette of purple, yellow, and orange, the branding was an intentional homage to Shirley Chisholm, a Black U.S. congresswoman from New York who became the first woman to run for a major party presidential nomination in 1972." - Hunter Schwarz

Article: That Boring New Harris-Walz logo? It’s Actually Pretty Historic

Civics, Social Messaging
How Norway's national broadcaster reframed its climate coverage to become the most viewed content they produce.

Astrid Rommetveit, editor-in-chief of climate and investigations, NRK. Clear public guidelines articulate how NRK covers climate, framing coverage as key to reinforcing Norwegian democracy and underpinning public debate. They declare that “Our coverage should primarily be about how action is being taken, not if action is necessary.” Image by Tim Christian Wassmo / NRK

"Four years ago, Norway’s national broadcaster set out to completely reshape its coverage of climate change, restructuring reporters’ positions in the newsroom, and investing in producing fewer, but more widely read, climate stories.

"The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s dedicated climate coverage now consistently receives more views than the rest of the newsroom’s coverage, head climate editors say. In 2023, stories produced by the organization’s climate teams outperformed the average story on the website in 11 months out of 12, often dramatically.

"The experience of NRK, as the broadcaster is known, seems to undercut a pervasive myth among many news organizations: that audiences simply aren’t interested in climate change journalism." - Katherine Dunn

Article: How Norway’s Public Broadcaster Overhauled Its Climate Coverage

One-liners

Article: Co-ops are meeting the needs of Korea’s aging population.

Article: In 1995 Bill Gates explained the internet to an incredulous David Letterman on live TV.

Article: The secret to a better city is more places to sit.

Article: Biodegradable hot/cold tumbler uses thermoplastic made from unused wood byproducts

Article: A map of 6,013 independent bookstores

Playlist

Born in São Paulo to a father who is a composer, arranger, and musicologist, Céu says she learned to appreciate Brazil's classical music composers at an early age. By the time she was 15 she'd decided to be a professional musician. By the time she was in her late teens she was performing onstage with a repertoire of turn-of-the-century carnival music.

Writer Christina Roden describes the music of Brazil as "a natural but extraordinary result of centuries of intercultural confrontations and matings". Céu's songs reveal these many influences, including samba, salsa, choro, soul, rhythm and blues, hip hop, afrobeat, and electrojazz.

In October of 2020, homebound by the pandemic, she recorded this intimate set with just drums and a guitar.

As Rosen recounts in the related article: "When the Portuguese first landed on this immense tract of land in South America, in around 1500, they found several communities of indigenous peoples already present. The colonists had brought their own lilting tunes with them and the local tribes added on a bit of this and that. But it was the influence of slaves taken out of Africa that softened the stately formality of the Portuguese language, as they liberated an undercurrent of sensuality and fashioned a completely fresh sound from a heady mixture of primal rhythms, elegance, sadness, spirituality, fun, and sex."

Céu brings that heady and sensual mix into the 21st century. Yum.

Video: Céu - Lenda (Live on KEXP at Home) (Live on KEXP at Home)

Related Article: Brief Overview of Brazil's Musical Styles

Weekly Mixtape
Inspired by the primal and intercultural groove of Brazil

Playlist: Legend

Image of the Week

The cover of the second edition of Mary Wings’s Come Out Comix. Published in 1974 by the Portland Women’s Resource Center, it was the first comic book about lesbians, by a lesbian and for lesbians. Image via The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

Born into a creative family, in 1973 she was living in Portland, Ore. "One day she found a comic collection, Wimmen’s Comix, which included a stunning story called 'Sandy Comes Out,' about a young woman who announces one day that she is gay."

"But as she read it, her enthusiasm wilted. She felt the author, a straight woman named Trina Robbins, had failed to capture the texture of coming out."

"...That night, back at home, she went to work with her pen and paper, and a week later she emerged with Come Out Comix, her own version of the sort of story Ms. Robbins had tried to tell. It was the first comic book about lesbians, by a lesbian and for lesbians.

"A friend owned an offset printer in the basement of her karate studio, and after hours they churned out hundreds of copies, which Ms. Wings then advertised with fliers around the city. A publisher with national distribution soon picked it up, and within a year Come Out Comix was said to be on the bookshelf of every lesbian in the country." - Clay Risen

Article: Mary Wings, Pioneering Creator of Queer Comics, Dies at 75

What's Love & Work?

Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.

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