16/05/2010

Does where you live affect how wildly you dress?

Some days I dress a little wild. Others I’m almost invisible.

Ornate headbands are one of my favorite things. That’s not me in the photo but I would wear that darling whichgoose headpiece. It’s whimsical, playful and pretty and I like feeling like that sometimes myself.

And yet – would you wear a headpiece like this (there are woodman versions too, and let’s not forget Oberon, King of the Fairies!) as part of your every day outfit. If not, have you ever thought about why not?

It’s great we have clothes to keep us warm and to wrap our psyches up in. Clothes and accessories display our mood or attitude to the world in a heartbeat.

Of course, lots of people play with this by dressing crazy or hiding a volatile personality with drabness.

As well as the individual manipulations we can practise with clothes – teenagers dressing alike in tribal Gothicism or branded sports gear – staunch individualists making a statement with way-out unknown adaptations of ‘normal’ clothing – we’re also at the whim of where we live.

Dress-style is naturally climate and locality-dependent. Take a bikini-clad babe away from Freshwater Beach in Sydney and drop her in central London and people would perceive her to be a completely different kind of person based solely on her attire. In London, she’d be seen as someone flaunting convention. On Freshwater Beach she’d be following it.

Interesting, isn’t it? I have a theory that the vibration of where we live influences our personal style by either fostering a creative spirit or suppressing it. And clothes have such a powerful effect on how we feel about ourselves.

I think it’s something to do with the collective consciousness of the people in a geographical area, combining to create a kind of ‘acceptable standard’ of ‘threshold’ of clothing.

Some cities are just more creatively vibrant than others. Glasgow and London, New York and Sydney, for example, have high thresholds of creative dressing, perhaps raised by high numbers of creative individuals.

I had a stark experience of this when visiting a friend in Wellington, New Zealand (which has a wonderful open, cultural vibe). I bought a plain wire tiara, its dull metal hand-twisted into simple flower shapes and happily wore it about town.

As I was about to board the plane back to Auckland, it struck me that, much as I adore Auckland, and it is a vibrant, creatively-nurturing place, people there would genuinely and kind-heartedly think I must surely be on Day Release.

Have you caught yourself not wearing something you really love because you don’t want people to misunderstand you? Or the opposite?


Image borrowed from whichgoose. Join thousands of other people who have loved and bought her natural hair crowns and accessories from her whichgoose Etsy shop.

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06/05/2010

3 dangerous secrets to effortless creativity

Years ago I was asked to give a presentation on ‘Creativity in Advertising’ to a class of Communication & Media Studies students.

Oh! The illicit thrill of rebelliously plotting to tell them some of my secrets. Secrets which were dangerously, diametrically-opposed to what other experts were telling them.

I knew these secrets had the power to save these students a lot of future stress and creative angst so I figured it was worth the possibility of being laughed out of the lecture theatre.

To predispose them to listen, lessen the imminent shock and stretch their belief about what is possible, I gave them all chocolate bars. Yeah, that’s right – bribery.

Here are 3 of my dangerous, yet proven-effective, secrets to effortless creativity:

1. You need to take your ego out of the project at the get-go. It’s not about YOU for now. It’s about creating something. You can step into the limelight after you’ve created the thing. This letting-go-of-ego liberates you and quiets the critical voice in your head that stifles creative thought. It’s a technique that becomes easier over time as you develop confidence in both your abilities and the next two techniques.

2. You are more creative when you practise no effort at all. Deepak Chopra expresses this beautifully in a life-context when he talks about The Law of Least Effort. (I’m not talking here about the discipline you need to manifest things in the world. I’ll talk about that in another post.)

Do NOT, no matter what anyone tells you, think you have to spend hours sweating and thinking and rehashing a project, task or brief. The time you spend on a job – contrary to what your client, boss or ego might think – has absolutely no bearing on the value of the idea you come up with. They don’t relate at all! It is not difficult to have an idea, and it’s just as easy to have a brilliant idea as a lame one. It takes your mind less than 1 second to have an idea. An idea or creation is not better because you spent from 9am until 9am the next day thinking about it, in fact it will likely be awful.

Read the creative brief, manifesto, task at hand, project, whatever it is you’re looking to create. Absorb it fully, note down the first ideas and thoughts that come into your head. Stop thinking about it. Go do something else or at least think about something else. Your subconscious mind is far more powerful at working things out that your conscious mind, so let your subconscious do all the work for you. Novelists rely heavily upon their subconscious to keep track of the intricacies of complex narrative, character traits, plot development, geography, dynamics. So leave the project for a couple of days or hours, as time allows, and then re-read your brief or task and let your subconscious ideas and thoughts come through. Then let your conscious mind kick-in to edit, add, subtract, refine.

3. This is the biggie. Please suspend your judgment for now and just try this next time you are seriously stuck having slammed into a brick wall and are now glued to it with your nose getting scratched on the brickwork. When you get stuck, when you are completely overwhelmed, lost or panicked or you just had some very bad news and yet still have to come up with something, ask the angels/god/fairies/your spirit guide/whatever external manifestation of power you cherish, to help you.

Stop laughing you over there! I’m serious.

I once had to write 3 huge business-to-business brochures for IBM about some computers that cost about million dollars each. This project was killer because I didn’t know if what I was writing made any sense at all – it was in a different language, since I had no training in computer science, I couldn’t understand the technical information I was ‘translating’. I was so lost I burst into tears at my computer! In complete desperation I asked “the angels” (no, I don’t now who they are exactly either) to help me.

I’m here to tell you this worked. I felt a shift come over me, some kind of intangible support, i switched off my brain, let my fingers press whatever characters they wanted on the keyboard and pretty much channeled all three brochures. The client loved my copy. Would I tell IBM that “the angels” wrote it for them? Em, HELL NO!

You don’t want to be pulling this big bunny out the hat too much. It’s where you go when you are really desperate – white-knuckled, sweat drops on brow, crisis.

I remembered these 3 secrets because I used the 3rd one last night.

I became completely bloody-minded with ridged determination that I would put a favicon in the browser bar of my website URL. This involved delving into FTP stuff on my host server and while I fancy myself as a creative geek gal who likes dabbling in CSS – this was w-a-y beyond my level of experience.

So after four attempts at shoving html cluelessly in any old place like someone fumbling to lose their virginity, I sent a Tweet out saying:

Dear Fairy Godmother of Favicons, please come and help me now. I have tried and tried and tried and still no favicon on my website. Thanks!

And not long after, this Tweet:

Thank you Fairy Godmother of Favicons, your wand was swift and I am very grateful. Take care.

Who knew Twitter was our communication channel to higher powers? Check it out – my favicon is up there in your browser window, channeled by me from some other entity and because I was kinda ‘listening’ and acting intuitively, I can’t remember how I managed that. Nice favicon, huh?

Yep, there y’go – my ego just kicked back in.

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24/04/2010

The unexpected benefits of being tiny

I am so tiny I am riding a bird! We are flying through flower beds and I can see huge, juicy caterpillars.

I remember the vivid imaginings reading Thumbelina gave me as a child. How extraordinary to feel myself so tiny. How different the whole world looked from this perspective.

Did you read Thumbelina when you were little? Do you remember seeing things differently in this way when you read fairy tales?

We learn this powerful mental technique as children. How many of us retain it for use as a grown-up?

In sweet irony, years after imagining I was Thumbelina, an ad agency paid thousands of dollars to send me on a “creative thinking skills” course designed to ‘teach’ us writers and art directors how to do exactly this!

We, as adults, were taught how to “reframe”.

‘Reframing’ is the incredibly useful creative technique of looking at ordinary things – people, situations, experiences – and, in the case of this course – products and services – from brand new angles; changing your size in relation to them, their size, how they might interact in unusual ways with the world around them.

It’s a very effective device for solving creative problems, breaking through creative dead ends and igniting fresh ideas.

If you’re working on a new product launch – maybe a natural fruit juice – one way of using reframing is to imagine the juice to be HUGE like an ocean – oh, now you have an idea of a sea of fruit juice. (How many ads have you seen using that image?!)

Now imagine it tiny – ah, a dewdrop of juice on an aloe vera plant, magnified. (Again, no doubt you’ll have seen that image selling everything from skin care to bottled water.)

I’ve found reframing to also be a great way to jolt yourself out of a groove of negative thinking.

By imagining the issue or situation you’re experiencing differently you can find new ways of responding to it. (Also, I’ve just remembered, there are great NLP techniques that use reframing by taking a ‘problem’ that’s holding you hostage and then imagining it as a tangible shape so as to see it shrinking and shrinking in your mind’s eye – or a loud sound made quieter for those more auditory than visual among us – and thereby diminishing its negative impact on your thinking.)

Many of the games you played so naturally, so effortlessly, as a child are valuable tools to continue using as an adult. Think about what games and “let’s pretends” you enjoyed and consider applying them to issues, people and experiences you have as a grown-up.

But, oh, let’s not get bogged down in too much rational thinking. Of course, one of the most entertaining applications of reframing is – imagining you are Thumbelina. Which bird are you riding today?

The Thumbelina image above is a shadowplay toy – one of a range available from Isabellas Art’s Etsy shop.

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23/04/2010

You are allowed to read comics, y’know

Jonathan Ross: Comic book hero ———————————-> Inner Wild poster boy

It’s a beautiful thing when an adult continues to adore, honor and promote an activity they’ve loved since childhood.

When they’re not too shy to admit to the whole world that they still compulsively love – let’s see – comics – for example. Indeed, they feel so ‘obsessive’ about comics that they decide to write and produce a comic book themselves, nearly forty years after falling in true love with comics aged 11.

All bow down to darling comics poster boy, maestro liberator of Inner Wildness in both himself, his talk show guests, and no doubt everyone who meets him, devoted family man and dog-hero, Mr Jonathan Ross.

Mr Ross has teamed up with famous comics illustrator, Tommy Lee Edwards, to create TURF, an all-new four-issue miniseries. ‘Set in 1920s New York, TURF offers a twist on the hard boiled crime thriller, adding vampires and aliens to the traditional mix of booze, broads and bullets’.

What struck me endearingly in my solar plexus while reading the Guardian’s interview with Mr Ross the other day was when Mr Ross talked about his desire to fulfill one of the dreams he had as a little boy and manifest something tangible:

“In a way,” Ross jokes, “this is my mid-life crisis. But rather than buy some tighter jeans and a motorcycle, I’ve said to myself, finally do some of the things you’ve always wanted to do. Because even though I’ve done hundreds of hours of TV and radio …

” …what I’m aware of always, and it’s grown to slightly trouble me as I’ve got older, is that all the shows I do are somewhat parasitical, in that I’m feeding off others. If you do a movie review show or an interview show, you’re talking to other people about work they’ve done.

“… Even though we’re creating something in the moment that doesn’t exist anywhere else, without them [my guests] I haven’t got anything.

“And so I thought I really want to make something of mine.”

Ah! I love that. What a great guy. And listen up – if you’re reading this and feeling like re-awakening your love of comics, call this your permission slip. And you might want to give Mr Ross’ TURF’ a go. You’ll find a fab interview about it with Comics Alliance here.

If anyone titters at you while reading your favorite childhood or new-found comic just smile with contentment as you remember that when talking comics, Mr Ross is able to involve intellectual debate and big concepts like ‘cultural zeigeists, textual juxtaposition, Proustian connections and narrative arcs’ Woo-hoo!

[Meanwhile, may I just say that I loved Oor Willie, The Broons, Dandy, Twinkle, Jackie et al and yes, I admit I did have a weird, insatiable appetite for Commando comics when my tomboy phase peaked during a rain-soaked holiday on a Scottish island, plus I was a teenager when Viz, but I don't think I'm a comic person at heart. I keep involuntarily skipping the pictures which defeats the whole purpose. I have tried with Neil Gaiman's graphic novels, but I did the same with them ... BUT I am loving reading vintage 1950's Bunty annuals to my daughter! What-ho!]

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20/04/2010

Zen and the Art of ahem, Doodling

Doodling. What’s that about? Do you doodle?

If you’re a doodler, I applaud you. No, really. You have mastered the art of letting go. You know how to let your mental hand-brake off, flow in harmony and draw without aim. You are a Zen guru.

If you’re like me and don’t doodle, let’s start so we can groove to some Zen. Let’s give ourselves permission to doodle.

I think I’ve been too uptight to doodle. I must allow myself to doodle more and not be hung-up by my ridiculous notion that some invisible person is judging my subconscious by my tunnel and train, lit candles and rocket and cloud doodles. (Joking!) Side-note: Actually, maybe I’m not joking. I had a traumatic doodle experience years ago at a fancy-pants international advertising seminar. I happily doodled while the presenter spoke. Lovely. A whole page of doodles. Then the person next to me smiled lasciviously at me, nodding at my scribbles. I looked at my doodles – all phallic, I mean the whole page was full of penises, most with scrotums! WTF?

Now I’ve processed that particular professional embarrassment, let me get back to what I was saying. ‘Doodling’ isn’t just one of the most delightful words ever invented. (Dr Seuss has used it with oodles of noodles of doodles and other fun flapdoodle.)

It’s an art form, of course. A creative outlet. Perhaps for some people stuck in monotonous activities doodling is a much needed outlet for trapped creative juices.

I wonder, do you have to be ‘bored’ to doodle for it to count as authentic doodling?

Some people are incapable of just being still and I guess a lot of them doodle when they are not able to fiddle or wiggle.

Have teachers destroyed the therapy / art of doodling by confiscating pencils from doodling pupils? Or have they made it an artful act of rebellion?

When does a doodle become an artist’s sketch? Eh, dunno.

If you doodle, what things to do doodle? Are there certain times you find yourself doodling? Do some people sit down especially to doodle? That would be meditation then. Does that intention mean it’s not really doodling? Is doodling just an undervalued pastime that eases crushing boredom while on the phone or otherwise ‘trapped’ somewhere?

Has doodling by people in dungeon-like prisons prevented insanity? And does scratching the passing of days on a prison wall count as doodling?

Do doodles often inspire new ways of thinking, new pieces of art, new adventures, new engineering designs, new buildings, new websites, new ideas?

What about tagging and graffiti? Is graffiti al fresco, feral doodling? The mild-mannered doodle taken to dangerously exciting levels by the more anarchistic among us?

Where is the line between doodle and art? Is it a pencil or pen line? Do art gallery owners use the word “doodle” as an insult?

I wonder if what makes a drawing a doodle is that your mind is tuned-out while creating it? And if that’s the case, doesn’t that make doodling one of the finest “in-the-zone” kind of creative endeavours?

Has doodling dwindled in direct proportion to our increasing use of keyboard instead of pen and pencil?

So many questions. Well, why not? I am mentally doodling. You know, doodling is valued enough by humankind to have its own National Day – the next National Doodle Day is 11 February 2011. So make a wee note of that in your diary and be sure to doodle around the date.

The illustration above was doodled by President Herbert Hoover. You can see a fascinating selection of doodles from US Presidents like JFK and Reagan (“All the Presidents Doodles”) here.

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16/04/2010

Why have men stopped making things?

Why do so many men these days, particularly young men, not make and build tangible things like their grandfathers did?

I’m stipulating men not because I’m a sexist flower but because unlike men, for whatever reasons, women have retained hobbies through recent decades (why is the idea of having “hobbies” so cringe-inducing?).

Women are knitting, sewing, scrapbooking, painting, quilting, decoupaging cross-stitching, doing leatherwork, making paper sculpture into the small hours all over the world. Sewing cafes are springing up like Sweat Shop in Paris.

What are men doing?

Not much it seems. On Etsy, a site where you can buy and sell handmade and vintage goods, the proportion of women versus men is outrageously, stupendously, shamefully unbalanced – 96% women, 4% men (according to a 2008 study) given that all humans benefit from creating something tangible in the world. Uh-huh, a website where you can sell anything you make with your own wee hands is predominately used by women!

Humans, c’mon, this is sad.

Making stuff is a creative process that is deeply meaningful and, I believe, fundamental to our sense of wellbeing. Being in the zone when creating with your hands. Feeling the sense of accomplishment, achievement and resolution at having manifested something new in the world, no matter how hideous or lame it may be, are crucial feelings.

Why have most men in developed countries turned their backs on whittling, turning driftwood into furniture, making clocks, weaving, building bookcases and treehouses and all the rest? Is it to do with technology and global business? Are men using their creation vibes to instead make intangibles like websites, companies, design?

I’ve worked with so many designers and art directors who are brilliantly creative in their jobs but who are easily crushed when their ideas or designs don’t fly for whatever reason.

Why? Because so much of their ego is tied-up in what they make at work since they don’t have an outlet for creativity at home. While they are well-paid to have the creativity sucked out of them at work, what does it do to their own creative spirit, the spirit that spends all its time locked up at work?

It’s even more disheartening when you consider how much women like men who’re ‘good with their hands’!

Lots of professional men I know refuse to fix or repair things saying, ‘why do it yourself when you can pay a man to do it for you?’. Well, there’s everything right about that. But that’s not what I’m talking about. (Even while it might make a guy feel great to fix something tangible like his grandpa would have done.)

What did you like doing when you were little? Do that again. Yes, I really am including Airfix kits. What did your dad, granddad, uncle or other man in your life show you how to make? Have a go now. Remember, reconnect, recreate.

An ex-boyfriend of mine, a supremely creative person who inexplicably has his own successful accountancy business, had to be coerced to walk into a model shop at age 40 to buy his heart’s desire, an Airfix airplane kit.

He was embarrassed. I mean WTF is going on with that? Why? I can’t see Tim Burton thinking twice about nipping into a model shop and spending days gluing bits of plastic together to create a replica if he fancied it.

I suspect the men who’ve made and created empires like Richard Branson and the Amazon dude also have hobbies that involve making other things manifest with their own hands. I am sure the physical manifestation of a toy airplane, a wooden birdhouse, a metal coat hook, lollipop stick cabin or whatever, actively helps men create business success.

Etsy dominated by women? Men without tools? Why? What is going on?

Men need hobbies. Someone start a movement.

POST SCRIPT: 16.04.20 I sent a Tweet out asking some lovely men whose opinions I value to comment on this post – Leo Babauta, Jonathan Mead,  Charlie Gilkey, Jonathan Fields, Tim Ferriss, Glen Allsopp, Chris Guillebeau, Alain de Botton. Imagine my utter delight that two of them noticed my request and responded below. Click ‘comments’ to see.

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12/04/2010

Borrowing beauty – how libraries help us embrace transience

I used to want to capture beautiful things and keep them close. I used to be sad that flowers died. I used to cling on to good memories. I used to have huge bookshelves groaning with books.

I don’t know why it has taken me so many self-help books, and traumatic experiences, to get to grips with the joy of experiencing fleeting loveliness – feeling the beauty deeply and effortlessly, letting it go – trusting that the world is brimming with beautifulness ready to be noticed.

Borrowing beauty in experiences, people, giving, seeing, feeling is a natural human state. Modern marketing seems to have divorced us from this state by creating artificial desires and offering attempts to fulfill them. By creating insecurities in us (the marketing ‘problem’) and seeming to provide self-actualisation in various shades (the marketing ‘solution’).

I don’t believe we are meant to hold tight. I do believe we might hold dear, however. Time is of no consequence; a moment of deep appreciation is a gift more rare than years of remembering the beautiful thing is there with you in the other room somewhere.

It is a lovely way to live. I think of the word ‘transience’. Previously I would have felt transience was a melancholy state. Now I rejoice in transience. We are all transient here, everything is. The secret is to embrace that and allow the pureness of being in the now to overwhelm us for that moment.

So it is after this lengthy somewhat tangential introduction that I mention the luscious beauty that is the new cover designs by Klaus Haapaniemi for two well-loved Patrick Suskind novels. I can look and look at these illustrations and — is it because of the www which allows me to see these covers whenever I want? — not need to possess them even while I love them.

As I said, I used to need to own books. Collect and imprison them in huge bookshelves. I don’t have that need any more.

Years ago a friend of mine was baffled by my buying books instead of borrowing them from the local library. I was baffled by his read-and-return attitude. I thought him superficial. Now I see he was wise.

After several years of borrowing books of all kinds from local libraries I find the library a magical infinite universe of books. I can even pre-order new books, order others and it’s all free so you can gorge yourself with anything – take a pile of books out, maybe only read one, take them back.

I think most people don’t realise how luxurious, how decadently indulgent, libraries make reading.

I can read volumes of reference and non-fiction books and not pay for them and float about in fiction from any era, not simply choose favorites chosen by a particular book store chain or independent book shop.

I do feel slightly uncomfortable about my love affair with libraries (and librarians, who are always lovely!) because I am also a novelist and of course if people don’t buy books, well, em, what then dear reader?

Image borrowed from Penguin Books/Klaus Haapaniemi. Thank you for making the world more beautiful.

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09/04/2010

Are you a bulb or a trumpeting flower?

Is it Spring in your neck o’ the woods? It is with me, inside and out.

Outside my window gentle wild primroses, regal purple pansies and sunshine daffodils are bursting out amongst the papery fading white crocus petals and vanished snowdrops.

I took this photo:  for you to see the glorious, flamboyant trumpeting daffodil I was looking at just now.

I was thinking about the deep renewal that Spring brings us. I am really tuned-in to this awakening and as it resonates with me I feel it all accelerating and gathering momentum.

I think the seasons bring us a natural cycle that is healing for us. We can be nurtured by simply noticing what happens during each season and perhaps mirroring the natural energy radiated by the plants, insects and animals.

In Spring we see glory vanquishing adversity everywhere. Brand-new ghostly shoots burst out of bulbs underground, pushing frost-hard soil aside with slow determination. Shoots poke through brown earth and turn instantly bright green in the sun’s rays, capturing energy for the flowering to come.

Amazing.

Hibernating animals awaken. Will we?

Birds gather twigs and soft nesting materials like our husky’s wool fur. We wrap his molted fur around a stick and hang it near the feeder. Tiny birds tease out little pieces of fluff until their beaks are so full – a ball of fluff bigger than their heads – that I don’t know how they can see where they are flying. But they seem to know what they’re doing.

It made me think how we humans are naturally part of the raw energy and renewal, the awakening and thrust for living that happens in Spring. I wonder, do our body cells respond in some biological way we don’t even know about? If we weren’t quite so wrapped up on layers of plastic and synthetics and the pressing needs of living in a modern city, drugs and foods to salve and suppress us – would we too feel the overwhelming, intense leap in sex-drive that other native mammals like hedgehogs are feeling in Scotland right about now?

It’s entirely possibly that modern issues with sex drive, and lack thereof, often appropriated to “stress” might be connected to our disconnect from natural seasonal cycles?

How about you? Do you think right now your inner self is like a tight, power-pregnated bulb buried deep down yet full of remarkable potential? Or are you beginning to stretch a tentative shoot? Perhaps you are already in gigantic, glorious, hallelujah bloom: a giant daffodil of a person trumpeting your wonders for all. Crikey, you might even be one of those folks dancing naked around a bonfire in an enchanted forest tonight!

You could, of course, be a dormant bulb. Nothing wrong in that. Squirrels need food and they love a dormant bulb. Otherwise, if you’re thinking of releasing your potential – now’s seems like a pretty good time to get growing and unfurl little flower. Nature is with you.

Image made by my daughter and I using Rosie Flo’s Garden colouring book.

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08/04/2010

Domestic archaeology <————– finding your buried treasures

[Have I just coined a new phrase? "Domestic archaeology" - I like it.]

Everyone loves finding treasure; it’s primal. It’s even more rewarding when it’s treasure you made yourself and forgot about. You mainly forgot about it because it was buried among the masses of stuff you have in your home. Dig through that stuff and you’ll find your very own buried treasures.

One of the sublime joys of decluttering is that when you declutter you simultaneously reframe all the things you have collected in your home. You look at everything with a fresh perspective and see it differently.

When you go through all your belongings, deciding what to keep and what to, ahem, ‘pay forward’ to the local charity shop or bin, you don’t just get a rush of feeling lighter by having less, you love the things you keep even more. You appreciate them. When you decide they can stay, they are the ‘chosen’ things, they are intrinsically allocated a higher status.

Like the little watercolor painting above, for example, which I made of my cat Mr Smoochy back in 1996. (I only know that because I cleverly wrote the date in the painting!) I found it in a tiny sketchpad in a box of books and papers.

I do not know why I am loving this little watercolor so much it now has pride of place in my kitchen. I suspect it has less to do with the fact that my Mr Smoochy died ages ago and much more to do with honoring something pretty that I made in a moment of whimsy – yikes, 14 years ago.

Now I look at it all the time and get little pangs of pure loveliness.

Out of my (fewer) piles of ephemera comes my little piece of art treasure.

Yeah, go through your boxes and see what beautiful things you’ve made in the past. Dig them out of the dark and enjoy them in the space and light you’ll create decluttering.

Image made by me.

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