It’s also the case that I try to do creative work: building interactive and engaging websites, collaborating with people to find innovative solutions to challenging problems, creative writing, creative thinking, and more.

Sometimes it can be a challenge to do creative work surrounded by pieces of infrastructure that don’t elicit creativity, and that sometimes even discourage it.

For a while now, I’ve been starting my day with coffee or tea poured into one of two hand-made mugs that I bought earlier this year.  The mugs were made by Ben Clark, who is an amazing potter and teacher from Richmond, now living in Cincinnati.

The mugs are still “built” items as opposed to “naturally occurring” ones, but they are built in a way that I can marvel at and appreciate what went into that process.  They are elemental, with the textures and ingredients of their making on display as you use them.  They are a simple and singular result of an inspired creative act.

And so when I start my day with these mugs, I feel a little more connected to the sources of creativity and inspiration that make me feel most alive in my work, and in my life.

For some people, it’s ceramics that have that effect.  For others it’s plants, or sculpture, or art on the wall.

What pieces of your surroundings bring you inspiration and creativity in your work and life?

Every year, high school students around Indiana are encouraged to submit their films for judging and showing at the festival.  The top ten or so films are selected by a panel of judges, and then shown at the screening night (which was tonight).  Before the screening is a panel discussion with professional filmmakers and those involved in the film industry.

The event has gotten better and better every year.  Tonight there was a great panel that included Zack Parker (long-time filmmaker from Richmond who has produced two feature films), the Herbert brothers (who created a Superbowl commercial that recently won $1 million in a contest!), Erin Newell (the director of the statewide film initiative Film Indiana), and Krista Hoffmann-Longtin (who has been involved in Indiana film stuff for some time now).  The quality of the films were a clear step above last year’s submissions, with better sound production, plots, directing and photography all around.  There were three documentaries and an animated short!  Horror, comedy, romance and more!  Even the format of the evening was more energizing, with Oscars-like introduction and award presentation, and a great MC in Scott Tucker.  Well done, all for free.

Again, I’m not sure why the auditorium wasn’t packed.  Sadly, there were no submissions from Richmond students that were screened, so perhaps we’re a bit behind in encouraging our young folks to consider filmmaking for fun, inspiration, or even a career. I’m hopeful that we’ll do that and more, encouraging support for this artform in non-highschool settings too (e.g. have a 48-hour film project here).

Hopefully more people will become aware of this refreshing and impressive burst of creativity on display, and ask what we can to do take better advantage of it in our community.  If you’re at all interested in the creative arts and filmmaking in particular, I hope you’ll consider coming next year.

The Reader is one of those films that haunts my thoughts and dreams for some time after I’ve seen it – in part because of the subject matter, and in part because of how beautifully and authentically it was rendered.  Director Stephen Daldry rightly relied heavily on the amazing ability of his cast to communicate so much through the slightest changes in expression or well-timed pauses, and the cinematography only complemented this by just getting out of their way.

The weight of the story revolves around a very specific plot twist that ripples out into the parts of the movie you’ve already seen and every scene after, but the emotional components of the movie as a whole span no less than every challenge a human being and its culture might face in a lifetime: love, war, genocide, justice, family, aging, integrity, honest, class, fear and more.  The film also reminds present day viewers that the Holocaust is not just a part of history – the things that happened then are very much still playing out today in ways someone of my generation can probably not imagine.  There are no sweeping conclusions or black and white moments of morality here – it very much shows the complexity of being human, and that we are all under construction until the very end.

If you appreciate gray areas in what it means to be human, you will probably also enjoy Then She Found Me, which Helen Hunt directs and stars in.  Despite the other big name cast members – Colin Firth, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick – this is no nicely wrapped romantic comedy.  It cuts to the bone of what it means to be in love, in partnership, in a family and shows no mercy in trying to genuinely portray the gut-wrenching ups and downs that comes with it.  It’s not all painful and there are moments of joy, hilarity and redemption that are only possible when a filmmaker helps you fall in love with the characters at some level, but this is not brain candy by any stretch.

A favorite exchange in the movie’s recurring theme of what it means to love, and then hurt the ones we love:

I know what I did to you. To you in particular.

Like a worst nightmare kind of thing, right?

I knew that.

Even at the time, I knew that.

- What else? – I’ll do it again.

I will. I’ll hurt you again and again.

Not like that.

You’d have to leave me if I hurt you like that.

If we were together, you’d leave me if I hurt you like that again, wouldn’t you?

Yes. Yes, I would.

Good.

But I’ll hurt you in other ways. Little ways. I won’t mean to, but I will.

And sometimes, I will mean to.

This is quite an offer you’ve worked up.

You’ll hurt me, too, you know? You’ll hurt me and change on me.

You might leave me after you promise you won’t. How about that?

- I wouldn’t. – You might.

- But I wouldn’t! – But…

you might.

Yeah, I guess I might.

Well done.

And lastly, you know what the exact opposite of well done is?  Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End, that’s what.  Hopefully most people know by now that seeing a “3″ of any film franchise is a big risk to start with, but for some reason we tried it out, and we quit halfway through (which, for a 3 hour movie, was still quite a bit of time wasted).  I’m here to warn you off of this movie, so I won’t offer any analysis other than to say that it’s clear the script for this movie was essentially vomited out of of someone’s brain while they were under the influence of some sort of illegal narcotic, and then hurriedly made into a film before anyone could say out loud what they must have all been thinking: “we are doing this to make enough money on opening weekend to cover our costs and a little more, and we don’t care if it makes absolutely no sense at all and totally wastes the talent of our cast.“  Mission accomplished.

Seen any good films lately?

• Friday’s episode of On the Media was excellent as usual, but did an especially good job of covering the strange way the 11 PM Eastern network television calling of the election works, cognitive dissonance around the world about electing Barack Obama, and difference between real grassroots organizing and just another marketing campaign. Great stuff.
• Clearing Up Basic Misunderstandings – some interesting post-mortem thoughts on the McCain/Palin ticket from Alan Pavlik.
• Last political links, I promise: What the silence in Grant Park said – yes. The one where she makes her post-election political statement – nicely put. Got to admire the geeks who were behind the flood of website traffic leading up to and on election day.
• Whitewater Valley Artists Consortium – I think I’d known these folks had a group, but just now found their website. Glad they’re here!
• Drama Prairie Dog – can’t stop watching it!

Some topics I’m thinking about, and may eventually blog about:

• The possibilities and problems of pacifism, from a primitivist perspective
• Even though complex relationships bring joy, how do we navigate the complicated privacy and sensitivity issues that come up when we wear multiple hats, and even sometimes have competing internal agendas?
• How to talk usefully about peak oil and relocalization with those who haven’t encountered the concepts before, and who might be personally resistant to exploring them further?
• Where we could set up a Flash Mob event in Richmond?
• Psalm 40:1-3
• The over-saturation of “green” messages, products and events.
• The cultural and economic advantages of having community and retail spaces that take advantage of “swerve,” compared to single-destination lifestyles

How about you…what’s on your mind?

Flash mobs are interesting to me for a few reasons:

They’re usually groups of strangers who don’t necessarily have anything else in common, coming together to do something out of the ordinary for just a few moments.

They tend not to be activists protesting anything, and generally aren’t trying to make any particular statement beyond an artistic one.

Participants in flash mobs make themselves vulnerable to the surrounding passers-by. In the “freeze frame” versions, they’re sometimes photographed, touched, pushed, even hit. But they are putting themselves out there to be a part of something bigger than what one person can do alone.

Most notable is the wide range of reactions that the mobs get from those who aren’t in on the action. Some people have that “wow, is this the end of the world?” look on their faces, while others are just in gleeful awe that their understanding of the space around them has been challenged. Still others go about their business, pretending not to notice, or in some cases, are actually oblivious.

I’d like to think that I’m aware enough of what’s going on in the world around me that if all of the sudden people stopped moving in mass numbers in a public space, I would notice. (Depending on which M. Night Shyamalan movie I’d seen recently, I might also run like hell.)  I also really appreciate the notion of creating something totally unexpected, something that redefines reality, even if just a little bit.

As we head into Election Day here in the U.S., I find it worth thinking about the power of mobs of strangers to create unexpected outcomes in our public life, and the choices that the people around them make about whether or not to notice, or to care.

What part will you play?

You can watch more Flash mobs on YouTube.

I’ve seen Matt’s studio in Austin and I’m so impressed with the “handmade” nature of so much of what he does – music, carpentry and beyond. He’s quite a guy. You can check out his website (which I designed) at dancingcarpenter.com; you can order a copy of his album Imaginary Muses from there as well.

I also enjoyed the Screenwriters Panel hosted on Saturday morning, which had a great variety of screenwriters with varying experience and knowledge, so it really painted a neat picture of what an aspiring screenwriter might expect along that journey. I was sort of embarrassed about the degree to which I think I’d put screenwriters on a distant pedestal, at least in the context of what I might ever hope to do with that form of writing. But these were real, grounded, creative people who got to see their words turned into films (and sometimes even have creative control in that process), and they seemed very satisfied about it.

I guess most impressive for me was getting the sense by encountering them and their work up close that most of the world’s filmmakers are driven by a passion for their ideas and their craft, and a desire to bring a realization of what’s in their head to the screen to share with others. It’s easy to forget that this is what the art is about, and not what is represented by and manifested in your typical Hollywood blockbuster. I came away from the weekend with a sense of renewed enthusiasm that, insofar as filmmaking can be a worthwhile way of communicating and spreading new ways of looking at the world, and making connections with our fellow humans in new and exciting ways, it’s something in which I’m personally interested in being a part.