Creative Calamities

The past couple of years I have spent a summer afternoon in Astoria Queens, New York at the Musical Saw Festival watching Natalia Paruz, The Saw Lady and musicians from around the world of all ages playing the musical saw. And when I say musical saw some people have custom made musical saws and others perform with saws that they literally purchased off the shelf at a hardware store. Natalia’s saw doesn’t have teeth because the New York Police Department won’t let her play in the subways with a toothed saw because “it can be used as a weapon.”

A week from now, Saturday, August 7 will be the 8th annual Musical Saw Festival. Each year she also has a small art exhibition focusing on the musical saw, which includes a painted portrait that I did of her playing the saw.

I first met Natalia back in 2008 when I began working on a series of photo essays and paintings of street musicians. Last year at the Musical Saw Festival I watched as she and 52 other musical saw players played their way into the Guinness Book of World Records for the “Largest Musical Saw ensemble.”  That night I pulled a saw out of my tool box and gave it a try. I didn’t make what I would call “music’ but it was certainly playable.

Last year’s record setting performance

My Photo Essay from 2008

I was scheduled to begin teaching a two-week course in Flash animation this week for teens, but the class was cancelled due to low enrollment. Drats!! But I’m scheduled for a second session and I created this over-the-top promo to stir up some interest and get my teaching career started.

The style of the piece is modeled after one of my favorite on-line teachers, Andrew Kramer of VideoCoPilot.net who has tons of free tutorials as well as (highly recommended) products for sale on his website (that’s where I got my music for my promo). Kramer makes the finished product so exciting that any student of motion graphics and visual effects will sweat blood to achieve the same, but rarely do they with Kramers videos on hand.

I also recommend Chris Georgenes‘ book, How to cheat-Adobe Flash CS5 (although I am using the CS3 edition). If you want to learn character animation he is one of the best having done Flash animation for broadcast TV. Check out his work at MudBubble.com.

The other day while having a conversation with my wife, I held my hand in from of my face and exclaimed, whoa!! She asked if I had lost my wedding ring again. I said no, just an idea on a modification of a watch design, and sorry to disturb what she was saying. My mind just wandered a bit.

I felt really bad that ideas are popping in my mind in the middle of conversations but the other day I read in The New York Times an article entitled, Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind. It extolls that wandering minds and daydreaming are great for creativity. The opening line . . . At long last, the doodling daydreamer is getting some respect.

So the next time I zone out in the middle of a conversation I can just explain that I was working.

I carry this memo pad with me whenever I can to jot down fleeting ideas, inventions and designs that waft across my consciousness.

As I prepare to begin for my first teaching job at a junior college, I felt I needed insight into how teachers deal with students beyond just the teaching of materials. A few years ago I read the book Angela’s Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt. He tells of his poor and “miserable” childhood in Ireland. I loved the book and knew he had later written a book about his years teaching English in the New York Public school system entitled Teacher Man.

I finished the book last week. It put my mind at ease to learn from his experiences and to know that he didn’t always know what to do, took risks and experimented in order to find his way. To know that he survived 30 years with all manner of students; the good, the bad and the imposing students with black belts in karate gave me comfort.

Yesterday I had an interview a the Bronx Community College for an adjunct position. I arrived early and wandered through the empty stifling air conditionless building, popping my head into old and weathered classrooms.

Outside the Art Department office, there was a bust of Albert Einstein. A wad of gum stuck in his right nostril and there were traces of gum that has been scraped from the other. I smiled to myself and though I can do this.

Often while enjoying a meal or walking down the street something ordinary and often fleeting may catch my eye. In the middle of dessert to the surprise of my friends I began admiring the artistic quality of my half eaten dessert and had an impromptu photo session with my brownie and gelato.

Abstract Dessert: For a moment it was art.

Today I met Guillermo an old friend from Miami at MoMa for an evening enjoying art. We chatted about the art, why he liked Clifford Still and why I liked Mark Rothko. We both enjoyed the fact that quite often we couldn’t understand why certain pieces were considered good enough to warrant a space in the museum.

To my surprise, what struck me most and even made me a bit emotional wasn’t the high art. It was a set of pastel colored tupperware tumblers on display in the exhibit, Shaping Modernity: Design 1880 – 1980.

I was swept away is a sort of waking dream. I saw myself back in the home I grew up in. We had an identical set of tumblers when I was seven, eight, nine or thearabouts. The blue cup was “my cup” was till I left for college.

I first became aware of the book Life of Pi more than a year ago, when the image of a small brown skinned boy curled up in a fetal position on a life boat with a tiger four times his size caught my eye, one day at the library. I have checked the book out three times before it finally took hold.

I thought to mention the book several times as it has perfectly enthralled me. I have chucked often, and thought deeply as well. I appreciate the wonderfully sculpted words of the author Yann Martel. One image that made me chuckle with delight was the encounter at a zoo between Pi (the protagonist) and two of his religious mentors, Mr. Kumar and Mr. Kumar.

I have yet to finish, but this quote grab ahold of me last night and I felt the need to to share.

“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”

— Yann Martel – Life of Pi

Just last week I was offered the opportunity to teach a pre-college (teen) class in Digital Animation (Adobe Flash) at Westchester Community College. I am pretty psyched about the whole deal but the big difference here from my past teaching experience as an English teacher in Japan is I won’t be an assistant. I will have the opportunity to experiment and be creative with the curriculum . . . Muuuhuuuuhahahaaaaaaaa . . . . .

I suspect I will have to be a bit less experimental than I am when I cook but I am looking forward to the experience.

As I mull over how I will approach my new role as chief experimenter, I will expect the same from my students. Meaning, I would love for them to take chances creatively.

As I look for inspiration and instruction I am drawn back to one of my favorite video lectures from TED Talks. Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, “Do schools kill creativity?”

As part of my preparation for the art fair last month I decided to finally take the plunge and get myself an iPod Touch. I’d prefer an iPhone but I’m  not ready for a a two year contract.

So I took the plunges and I will never again will I have to explain what it is that I do and hope it is understood. If I go to a job interview and there is a problem connecting to the internet, presto! My portfolio in my pocket will always save the day.

I felt I got my every penny’s worth spent on the device for those features alone.

These days,  I feel like a kid with a new toy as I carry the thing around with me everywhere I go. When I work on the computer I often use it, when I go to bed, I might read a little of an ebook or watch a podcast before lights out. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, unbeknownst to my wife, I can be found surfing the internet under cover of duvet late into the night. In the morning I use it to check my email and listen to the morning’s NPR news report or check the New York Times headlines all before getting out of bed. My iPod Touch has replaced at least $600 worth of other devices that I own and it fits in my pocket. I have probably spent $50 on apps but they too are worth every penny, most being free or a mere 99 cents.

On my iPod Touch I track hours worked and send invoices, I keep track of expenses, study Japanese, study music and write music, I study fonts, find recipes, store maps or find restaurants to restroom locations in NYC, get movies times and reviews. All in the palm of my hand. And I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. I won’t bother to write about how amazing the games are because I would be writing into next week.

I find AppVee a great resource for app reviews because it would take far too long to try out most apps.

The best thing about the iPod Touch for me is I doubt that I will ever grow impatient when left sitting in a doctors office long past my scheduled time, well, unless my battery dies.

After finishing a postcard sketch of a scene on the Hudson River in Irvington, I connect to a free WiFi hotspot and watch an instructional video.

When I cook I find it difficult to stick with a recipe. I almost always throw something in a pot that wasn’t called for in a recipe or buy something strange to cook. Yesterday my experimental nature got the better of me when I purchased a whole fish at my local Japanese food market.

Porgy marinating in soy sauce, cooking sake and sesame oil.

On a whim I decided to challenge myself to cook a whole fish (something I’d never done before). At the check-out counter I felt a bit of pride in my effort as I thought I heard the the woman bagging my groceries say in Japanese to the woman at the register that it was rare to see an American purchasing a whole fish.

But when I made it home and began preparing the fish, I just felt pity for the little guy as I held his limp body in my hands and he stared back at me. Not exactly a fish stick.

The taste was wonderful but I think I will be cooking vegetarian for the remainder of the week.