Issue 391
A notebook about how we work, and learn, and love and live.
"It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative." - Doris Lessing
One of the challenges of living in a culture that puts a 24/7 news cycle at its cultural center is that bad news sells while good news doesn't. For example, early this month Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world democratically elected a very popular leader - President Joko Widodo, affectionately known as Jokowi - who is a model of good governance. Yet the news sources were silent.
As Doris Lessing reminds us, the stories we tell have the power to recreate us. Here's a few that I found this week.
Happy Friday.
Learning
Research shows that just imagining improvised performances can elicit the same flow-like states as when jazz musicians sing.
Credit: David Robert Bliwas/Flickr)
"What's so fascinating is that we saw very similar brain patterns and activity whether they were actually scat singing or just imagining an improvised performance."
Article: Imagined Jazz Improv Changes the Brain Like Real Singing
Learning
Five errors in thinking that prevent leaders from recognizing new and powerful trends.
"It’s said that innovators can see around corners. It’s true. They do see things the rest of us miss. But they do so because they’ve created the conditions for innovation to thrive—and those conditions start with the way they think."
Article: 5 Cognitive Biases Blocking Your Success
Learning
This dream is made of you.
I don't know about you, but recently my own dreams have been Fellini-like fantasies of surrealism. They often occur on giant landscapes with casts of hundreds. For example, this week while enjoying an over-the-top reception hosted by people who had more money than I'll ever understand (and I have no idea how I knew them or why I was invited), I enjoyed a Vietnamese pulled-duck appetizer (is pulled-duck even a part of Vietnamese cuisine?) while thinking that Debbie doesn't like duck, though she was somewhere else at the same party at the same time. So, I was fascinated to stumble upon two articles that seek to explain my wonder-filled dreams.
Article: Weird Dreams Train Our Brains to Be Better Learners.
Article: Dreaming Is Like Taking LSD
Storytelling, Creative Process
Tom Vitale recounts his time as Anthony Bourdain's director and producer.
"A natural-born exaggerator with a superb taste for the absurd, Tony was the ultimate storyteller. Tony’s way of looking at the world, his ability to transform the bland everyday into a fantastic reinterpretation of reality, only seemed to add more meaning and truth to the original event.
“'Both versions of the scene will begin with the same shots of the train approaching the station. Keep my version straightforward, about food—with a passing reference to the hungry kids,' Tony said, talking a mile a minute, pausing only to light a cigarette. 'We want to leave almost no hint of how badly things spun out of control in my version, skim over the ugliness and culpability and shame and spare the viewer the awkwardness we felt.'
"Trying to focus over the sound of gunshots in the background, I struggled to keep up, scribbling down Tony’s edit direction in my notebook. We were standing in a modest backyard in the Hezbollah-controlled Dahieh suburb of Beirut, waiting for the cameras to finish setting up a family meal scene. As was often the case, while shooting one show, I’d be overseeing another through the post-production process. And, as was also common, the edit—in this case Madagascar—had hit a speed bump."
Book Excerpt: “A Glorious Mess.” On Confronting the Complexities of Storytelling with Anthony Bourdain
Learning
How to be creative and resilient in a tidy-minded world.
"...the most powerful part of the book isn’t in the examples of corporate or creative success, but in the realization that mess — the autonomy that comes from discarding inflexible rules and neat labels — is important even when we don’t actually want it. The mess with the greatest transformative edge may be the one that forces you out of your routine despite your certainty that what you’re doing works just fine already, thank you very much."
Book review: ‘Messy’ Proposes a Flexible Approach to Life
Advertising, Social Messaging, Corporate Social Responsibility
An ad campaign urges the world to welcome girls into roles that the toy industry doesn’t typically associate with them.
"It’s a commonly asked question: Would you give your son a doll? Most answers would be: hesitant – and the numbers prove it. A new study suggests that, because society still values “male” qualities, boys are still discouraged from playing with toys they associate with girls. And girls are discouraged from playing with toys that require building, tools and problem solving. So how do we get little girls ready for such a world? Lego says we don’t; we get the world ready for girls, starting with toy marketing."
Article: Lego is Gearing Up to Ditch the Gender Bias from All of it's Toys, Starting with a New Campaign
Oneliners
Article: If Sapiens Were A Blog Post
Article: How to Disagree
Article: The Resilience of Nature Gives Jane Goodall Hope
Playlist
"To the beat of her swishing hips and swaying percussionists, Camila Cabello's famous 'Half of my heart is in Havana' reverberates across this musician-packed Miami set, with an at-home ease that feels novel for the global popstar.
"Born to a Cuban mother and Mexican father in Havana, Cuba, Cabello is no stranger to blending borders and connecting worlds. As the final performance in (NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts) Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration, her El Tiny concert epitomises the cross-cultural, transnational musical identities we've centered over the course of the series. Each unique arrangement of her universal hits represents and explores a new facet of the identities and experiences that make up Cabello."
What I love is how she channels a really, really big band with horns and back-up singers into a really soulful and intimate sound. And they do it in an apartment, with a deck, on the Atlantic.
Article/Video: Camila Cabello: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
Image of the Week
The image of the week is titled, Pink-Footed Geese Meeting the Winter, by Norwegian birder, photographer and guide Terje Kolaas. The image won him Photo of the Year in the Drone Photo Awards, 2021.
"Thousands of Pink-footed Geese roost in central Norway in spring, on their way to the breeding grounds on Svalbard in the Arctics. Probably because of climate change, they arrive earlier every year and often the ground and the fields where they feed are covered by snow when they arrive. The geese tend to use the same paths, so when waiting for them in the air with a drone, photos like this one are possible."
Article: Drone Photo Award 2021
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