thinking thursday.

mind

Things I am afraid to do. To do.

I am a big fan of mash-ups, translations from one form to another, one time to another, one art form to another: sampling of all kinds. So I loved this look at what Van Gogh’s famous self-portrait would look like as a photograph.

body

You had me at curried chickpeas.

I might need some sugru.

soul

Find what you love and let it kill you: “And yet. The indescribable reward of taking a bunch of ink on paper from the shelf at Chappell of Bond Street. Tubing it home, setting the score, pencil, coffee and ashtray on the piano and emerging a few days, weeks or months later able to perform something that some mad, genius, lunatic of a composer 300 years ago heard in his head while out of his mind with grief or love or syphilis. A piece of music that will always baffle the greatest minds in the world, that simply cannot be made sense of, that is still living and floating in the ether and will do so for yet more centuries to come. That is extraordinary. And I did that. I do it, to my continual astonishment, all the time.”

In case you missed it, my move to Wisconsin.

I think our education system is flawed. I think our way of measuring knowledge, learning, success inside and outside of school–all flawed. Tests, bank accounts, competitions–flawed. We are asking the wrong questions–for example, the question is not how can art fit into the measurement system we now have (standardized testing, for one example), but how can we create a new system of measurement? Here’s one principal who learned to ask different questions, who knew that art saves lives by opening space for people of all ages to find out who they are: “In a school notorious for its lack of discipline, where backpacks were prohibited for fear the students would use them to carry weapons, Bott’s bold decision to replace the security guards with art teachers was met with skepticism by those who also questioned why he would choose to lead the troubled school….But now, three years later, the school is almost unrecognizable. Brightly colored paintings, essays of achievement, and motivational posters line the halls. The dance studio has been resurrected, along with the band room, and an artists’ studio.” Art saves lives, institutions, cultures. We need to step back from what we believe is needed to something deeper than that surface need. What the situation seemed to call for was more enforcement; what was needed was more access to deeper parts of ourselves. Art serves an identity function–for individuals, for communities. It is not a quick fix, but a deep fix. Paul Watzlawick talks about first and second order change in his book, Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. What this school principal did is second order change.

word

“The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.” – Pema Chödrön

(Good lord, I love freckles. Photo: Unknown source)