Now Available for Purchase: Guerrilla Girls Like FARC Poetry

Guerrilla Girls 👍🏽 FARC Poetry is a collection of poems by one of the leaders of the FARC, Jesús Santrich.

The second narco-trafficker ever to become a member of Congress in Colombia – the other being Pablo Escobar – this is the first ever English-edition of his creative works ever published.

Reading this will give you insight into Santrich’s love for guerilla women, revolutionary men, deep appreciation nature, and how he views his relation to the struggle for a Utopian new world.

While both claim to be incolved in the cocaine trade, it goes without saying that given his infamy and that you can find his photos on INTERPOL Red Notices that Santrich keeps it way more real than 2 Chainz..

Go to Amazon.com now to buy and read one of the truly dopest poets out there!

Review of Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown, CEO of the celebrate innovation and design firm IDEO, is not a book by a renowned designer for other designers. Instead, this is a guidebook for leaders – in the creative field and those outside of it – for how it is to bring design thinking into all aspects of a business enterprises’ products and services. Design thinking is a unique approach to creative problem solving that can result in powerful, effective solutions to abstract, multifaceted problems. Throughout the book, Tim Brown cites examples of this from his worth with multi-billion-dollar manufacturing companies; recently founded start-ups; NGOs in the developing world; and health care centers seeking to ensure that they are on the front lines of innovation in order to ensure that the quality of care given to their patients is the best in the world.

Defining design thinking in a paragraph allows to give an overview of what it entails, however, it is best viewed as a set of approaches to problem-solving that includes prototyping early models; testing variations of product or service; scripting improvisational interactions; surveying and anthropological research, and all around obtaining a better contextual view of those involved in a given service milieu. After all, “By testing competing ideas against one another, there is an increased likelihood that the outcome will be bolder, more creatively disruptive, and more compelling” (67).

While engaging with a company that uses design thinking as part of their design process means that deliverables will takes longer to arrive than traditional companies, it’s this sort of divergent thinking that is the route, not the obstacle, to innovation.

While Brown provides a simple set of guidelines for creative leaders, which I’ve copied below, he is more focused on showing how design thinking can be applied to improve the quality of the interpersonal dynamic between companies and their customers.

The 6 Rules for the Best Design Approach

  1. The best ideas emerge when the whole organizational ecosystem – not just its designers and engineers and certainly not just management – has room to experiment.
  2. Those most exposed to changing externalities (new technology, shifting customer base, strategic threats or opportunities) are the ones best placed to respond and most motivated to do so.
  3. Ideas should not be favored based on who creates them.
  4. Ideas that create a buzz should be favored. Indeed, ideas should gain a vocal following, however small, before being given organizational support.
  5. The “gardening” skills of senior leadership should be used to tend, prune, and harvest ideas. MBA’s call this “risk tolerance”. I call it the top-down bit.
  6. An overarching purpose should be articulated so that the organization has a sense of direction and innovators don’t feel the need for constant supervisions.

Brown believes, like many others within the current design and marketing field, that there has been a qualitative shift given the internet. For Brown, we now live in an “experience economy”. This shift is described as one people are no longer mere passive consumers of products and services, but are now more likely to actively participate in some manner – whether it be writing an online review; joining a groups related to a product or service online; or even becoming an advocate of the company in some way. Functional benefits alone are no longer enough to capture customers or create the brand distinction to retain them. Because of these new customer needs and demands, companies must not just innovate their products but also their services. This means that management must sometimes follow the lead of those on the front lines of customer service – after all, the best experiences are not scripted at corporate headquarters but delivered on the spot by service providers

With service-oriented design thinking implementation is everything. An experience must be finely crafted and precision-engineered as any other product, something that is illustrated in the anecdote he provides about Snap-On Tool’s engagement with IDEO. Wanting to ensure that they had a larger place in the market during the upcoming revolution in mechanically-oriented computer technology, IDEO helped craft a narrative of the company’s growth that highlights the strong sentiments of product loyalty automobile mechanics felt for their tools. By designing an interaction, something that allows a story to unfold over time, they were able to better visualize themselves continuing to be a market leader in an age of electronic diagnostic tools.

In the course of his narratives, we are provided many examples as to why Tim Brown thinks that we should think of a designer as “a master storyteller whose skill is measured by his or her ability to craft a compelling, consistent, and believable narrative. It’s not an accident that writers and journalists now often work alongside mechanical engineers and cultural anthropologists in design teams.” Whether it was in IDEO’s work for the European Union to determine how it is that the elderly might use technology to ward of loneliness and build community; helping Gyrus ACMI develop new techniques and instruments for non-invasive surgery; or Marriott to improve the experience of their customers – it’s clear that design thinkers view the world in a radically different manner.

What sort of divergent thinkers should be searched for? Both on the side of those that are on the creative teams and the extreme users of products and services.

Extreme users because they “are often the key to inspirational insights. These are the specialists, the aficionados, and the outright fanatics who experience the world in unexpected ways. They force us to project our thinking to the edges of our existing base and expose issues that would otherwise be disguised. Seek out extreme users and think of them as a creative asset.” (232).

As for those on the team, Tim has a lot to say about the kinds of abnormal people that should make them up. Citing findings from The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin he states that “thinkers who exploit opposing ideas to construct a new solution enjoy a built in advantage over thinkers who can consider only one model at a time.” Integrative thinkers know how to widen the scope of issues salient to the problem. They resist the “either/or” in favor of the “both/and” and see nonlinear and multidirectional relationships as a source of inspiration, not contradiction.” Reading this felt like personal validation, as in my work experiences I’ve frequently felt like the odd person out for the conclusions I’ve reached on issues and how I get there.

In the last section of the book, Brown states that a number of commercial trends convergence points to an inescapable realization: that design thinking needs to be turned toward the formulation of a new participatory social contract. While I agree with him to an extent, I found it interesting that despite his multiple laudatory references to William Morris, founder of the English Crafts movements, there’s no comment made on his socialist orientation.

To me, one of the defining characteristics of avowed socialists is their ability to use what Brown calls design thinking to see that another world is possible, that the conditions of misery in which many people live need not be so and that with collective human action this is malleable. I think it would have been interesting to explore this given the nature of the digression from how to apply design thinking in the business world to the world at large, but that’s better suited for another book.

Review of Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky, productivity expert and founder and CEO of Behance, is a guide to developing execution skills on an individual and organizational level. The book is in large part about how to use design principles to organize projects. While PMP is the standard for approaching project management in the United States, the reality is that often times the smaller scope of projects for companies with under 50 workers and start-ups don’t require someone with this specialization. Furthermore, the reality is that creative environments are no conducive to such organizational demands for specific procedures, restrictions and processes. The creative worker’s generalized rebellion against these is part of their recognition that there is no one best process for developing ideas. This does not, however, mean that chaos should reign but that other methods must be developed.

The book begins with a discussion of the Action Method, which is a set of general principles and means for organizing workflow such that there is a bias towards action rather than reaction. According to Belsky: “The state of reactionary workflow occurs when you get stuck simply reacting to whatever flows into the top of an inbox. Instead of focusing on what is most important and actionable you spend too much time just trying to stay afloat. Reactionary workflow prevents you from being more proactive with your energy. The act of processing requires discipline and imposing some blockages around your focus.”

In order to prevent this, he provides a number of techniques – such as breaking processes into elementary, actionable steps; maintaining a backburner of low-priority items; and keeping up a daily practice of journaling to ensure that there is as little as possible that is interiorized and thus likely to be forgotten about or causing sub-optimal work due to stress.

There are a large number of actionable insights from the first third of the book as it relates to personal workspace within a company as well as hiring and managerial practices. Some of the takeaways can be summarized as such:

  • Generate ideas in moderation (more is not always better).
  • Act without conviction to keep momentum and rapidly refine ideas.
  • Encourage productive conflict within your teams to refine ideas.
  • Seek competition; it will boost accountability and strengthen your approach.
  • Reduce bulky projects to just three primary elements.

The second part of the book focuses on the social, community elements within which creative enterprises occurs. The section on Dreamers, Doers and Incrementalist posits that there are three archetypes for those within the creative business world. The Dreamer is the one that is full of ideas and able to come up with solutions from a wide range of knowledge. These are the people that relish in ideas, but have trouble managing clients, staying organized or accountable, etc. The Doer is the inverse of this. They are able to help Dreamers translate the ideas through a series of specific processes and steps, as well as ensuring that the stakeholders are informed of what is going on and that the bills are paid. Belsky cites a number of famous businesses where such pairs were able to lead their companies to great success. Tim Cook & Steve Jobs of Apple; Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight of Nike; Barry Schwarz and Calvin Klein are some examples of these. The Incrementalist archetype is the combination of Dreamer and Doers. These are rare people that because of their independent attitude and capabilities must learn to work together – as the Doers and Dreamers seem naturally inclined to do – lest their projects falter due to being overwhelmed by the fact that they don’t trust other enough to help them.

The third part of the book covers how to be a respected and effective leader of creative teams.

Incorporating fun into projects whenever possible to keep minds fresh is one of the many pieces of advice that he gives. Citing his interview with Ji Lee, the creative director of Google’s Creative Lab, he illustrates how it is that a number of his personal projects have seen themselves applied in various ways into the professional field – which explains why it is that the company famously allows for 20% of the projects worked on by their workers to be personal projects. After an excessive focus on trying to solve problems, after all, an intellectual plateau can be reached – which is damaging to a creative enterprise.

Additional insight includes picking an appropriately balanced creative team. While it’s understandable that those with a “creative background” would be chosen, the variety of insights gained from having informed perspectives that are vastly different in their composition is also important. This is also why it’s suggested to involved potential end-users of products and services into the development process – something which many companies’s now practice.

Sharing appreciation is also important for managers. Most of the creative workers surveyed cite their rationale for departing a particular enterprise as stemming from a poor work environment wherein compliments towards good work is rare. Belsky cites an instance of going to a storytelling workshop in order to see how it is that merely focusing on the positives within a first edit/prototype story can lead to changes that are encouraging rather than covertly critical.

The section on self-leadership I found to be particularly engaging. In my interactions with a number of team leaders, I’ve frequently seen people acting in emotionally detached, mechanistic manner. Many of them did not seem to have psychologically developed themselves enough to direct their emotions as it relates to work situations in a positive manner, and so did not make the sort of decisions or communicate in a manner with their employees such that it garnered respect and confidence in them.

 

Review of Steal Like an Artist

I picked up Steal Like an Artist at the Delray Beach Library for a buck and read it over a few hours.

Written prior to Show Your Work,  but like his other book, Austin Kleon work is filled with practical insights for approaching the creative process, examples of the advice in action and techniques for getting a better understanding of one’s own position in relation to one’s chosen family of creators and other issues of practical concern to a creative.

One such instructional section that I like particularly related to homage and inspiration in relation to one’s creative work and process.

Creation as Curation

All great artists are voracious consumers of cultural products.

I’ve spent more money on my personal reading library than is really sensible given my financial conditions – but the sense of joy that they haven give me, of being able to look back at notes that I left for myself or seeing which passages thought were important at the time and so underlined them amuses me to no end so I feel that it is worth it.

Then there’s the smell of books…

Anyway, Kleon’s advice is to make an assessment of where it is that you’re taking from, to ask yourself why, to really determine how the pieces of what you read gets more or less mixed within your self and how it makes it’s way into your art.

You know who really killed it on this mission before Kleon ever wrote about it? Henry Miller. His works The Books in My Life, The Time of the Assassins, not to mention sections throughout his oeuvre, all do this and help world build him as someone equally worthy in status to those he names.

Theft and Art

Emerging from historic, symbolic culture – all art is theft.

Technology certainly changes society and the realm of the possibility, but at a fundamental level, nothing is new under the sun.

For instance my favorite novel by Milan Kundera is  The Unbearable Lightness of Being. This is literally an updated, inverted Anna Karenina. Star Wars is based on numbers myths from antiquity. I’m living my life largely based on Henry Miller’s and the goal of my creative work is to turn Dostoyevsky on his head. The list goes on, the take away being that the quest for excessive novelty can lead to bad art and that transformation rather than mere imitation of work – as in the above – is new and ought be viewed as such.

The “Rules” for Creativity

In my preparations to move out of the country I went through a number of old boxes that contained documents of works that I’d written when in my late teens. Reading them 15 years later was amusing, not just because of the vast divide in perspective that has developed since then but also as I realized that I was not waiting for something external to validate my creative journey but that I just did it.

I also came across the 1930’s type writer I’d purchased for myself and a number of notebooks that I collected my various art compositions in. Seeing these made me recall my college days and how much I loved working with a small group of friends to make collages, drawings, paintings, and performance poetry.

It’s these sorts of experience, Kleon says and from experience I concur with, that help build up a more holistic approach to art.

The book is a quick read and cheap so I highly recommend it to all.

And if you have the time watch this Tedx Talk by Austin, it’s worth it.

100,000 Digitized Art History Books Now Freely Available Online

Celebrating its 4th anniversary, the Getty Research Portal has been redesigned to more easily download 100,000 freely available digitized art history texts. You can search through the entire collection directly, or filter by creator, subject, language, source, or date range.

Thanks to the freely downloadable materials, creatives looking for inspiration as well as scholars and researchers can now view copies of rare books and other titles without having to travel to specialty libraries.

Walter Benjamin Wrote Sonnets?!

Carl Skoggard is indeed correct when stating in the opening of her article Read Early Sonnets by Walter Benjamin, for the first time in English: Heatbroken, One of the Great Thinkers of the 20th Century Turned to Poetry that it is little known that Benjamin wrote poetry.

I’ve read several of major work by Benjamin and was totally clueless. Needless to say, I certainly plan on getting a copy of his book of sonnets to gain a new perspective on the man. For those that may also be interested, read the LitHub article and/or sample some of the poems in the collection below.

Sonnet 1

Disburden me of Time from which thou’rt vanished
And of thy presence free me from within
As in the twilight hours red roses free themselves
From all mere marriedness of things

The heartfelt homage and the bitter voice
I forego calmly and thy burning lips
And yet more burning brow enshaded purple
Just below the black gleam of thy hair

So may that image fail me too of praise
And ire which thou wouldst offer
Underway while very like a prince

Thou didst the banner bear its symbol to unriddle
Plant in me thy sacred Name instead
Name without image Amen without end.

Sonnet 34

I sat one night to ponder on myself
And round me thy sweet life did stir
The mirror of my mind glanced back
As hadst thou just looked out from in its depths

Then came the thought: Thou sucklest me
Into thy breath I shall my self surrender
For like grapes hanging are thy lips
Which have mute witness borne to inmost things

O friend thy presence has been wrested from me
Like one asleep whose hand looks for the wreath
In his own hair so in dark hours I for thee

Though once thy cloak did round me go
As were there dancing and from within the midnight throng
Thy look did snatch the breath out of my mouth.

Sonnet 45

My Soul why art thou always in search of the Beautiful one?
Long is he dead and the rotating globe so
Attends to its spinning that no one still misses the hero
My Soul why art thou always in search of the Beautiful one?

Why dost wake me O Lord with such weeping and groaning?
Ah I was looking to sleep and lamenting disfigures
My desolate state in which Desolate one thou dost share
Why dost wake me O Lord with such weeping and groaning?

And so one night I held in my heart a debate
Falling mute and ashamed I determined on silence
No longer my sorrow to show to my Soul

No more to wake her my griefs to assuage
Though see from her mouth sleeping she allowed to ascend
So many a sorrowful song Her tears flaring like candles.

Unknown Number Sonnet

Waking were his glances my sole light
For errant traces and the starlight
Of his eyes the only beam
Bestowed upon my sleeping places

Now such companions are no more
Mute did the mirrors of all Spirit shatter
In these heavens which their glistening laugh
More blessedly transfigured with each morrow

Even when they wept they stood as pools
Themselves to nourish by the fall of heavy drops
Whose fragrance would outlast the shower

And in the fullness of their tears
Would those things speak which yet lacked names
Much as leaves may speak in gardens.

Review of “Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing”

Reading Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing by Les Edgerton reminded me how to be attentive to the variety of creative decisions that determine the voice of a work. How they can be interpreted, improved and evolved from different experiential exercises. The book contains focus on various voices – pulpy, sardonic, confessional, etc. – along with “before and after”  changes. Theres illustrate how a few different decisions can radically alter the ease and enjoyment level of the reading. Some of the various traps to watch out for that Edgerton cites are the “beige voice” as well as talking up or down to the reader. As all of the fictive dream – the neurological firings in your brain that are activated during the process of readings words on page or screen- occur as the results of words, best get them right. Right?!

There are, additionally, exercises contained within for identifying the ways in which honing in on voice in specific passages can radically improve the experience of the reader and how some choices can lead to it “going wrong” in one’s writing. For instance, say one wanted to get the reader to slow down. Not to scan the text; as so many are apt now to do. Well, the solution is simple. Place a number of shorter sentences back to back. This is a particularly effective practice following longer expository passages. Explaining difficult things, after all, requires the combination of lots of pieces. Much as in the same way that sentence variation forces the reader out of the simplistic subject verb object constructions.

The book is for both writers of fiction and non-fiction and addresses something that is very important as it relates to today’s media landscape – talking up, down and beigley to the reader. Explaining every and all thing can cause passages to drag on and o n. If they are known by the reader, it’s a bore, and leads to mental lagging. A good writer, Hemingway and others have stated, leaves something for the reader to want to discover. Writing in too high of a voice is the struggle that I’ve had, having an advanced academic background I can sometimes lapse into uncommon terms that are, nevertheless, quite useful for understanding today’s world. But this isn’t all about me. This is not purple prose, either, which I’ve only found in contemporary Latin American literature, is not gone in to but that’s just because it’s so rare in American fictional and non-fictional works that get published.

Edgerton’s colloquialisms, and the linguistic playfulness of the text was, I thought, a little corny at first. However it did grow on me. Plus, I recognized what he was doing with it. Not only was he describing insights into what makes a well crafted writers voice; but he was also demonstrating it! By sharing this, as well as the hat of instructor, he’s helping to show one of the Walt Whitman quotes about – I’m stacatato-cattically summarizing her : “there being multitudes that exist within each of us”. It’s true. There are!

Les’ lessons are follower by exercises to either read, write or re-write. The book is an attempt at a comprehensive attempt to teach the craft of good writing, plot, etc. but just focus on narrative voice and the voice of characters. He lists a large number of books that go into these other areas, and it’s clear with his familiar with them that a lot of experience and time went into the formation of this book.

I finished the book not only informed but also interested in seeing the dynamic that exists in his writing workshops. Having attended several writing workshops as an undergraduate at Florida Atlantic University and in Prauge, Czech republic as part of a University of Michigan program – not to mention other informal gatherings – I’ve always found workshops a productive place where people provide new eyes to help you see things you may not be aware of because you’re too close to the work, or wasn’t aware of some insight or whatever other reason that shows up when people gather with strategic and creative intentions.

I like how following this book one can apply like dissection tools onto the writings of your favorite writers in order to better place their style in history rather than a burden. Stealing can always be great art, but only if it’s great art does it get called great art – not just because it’s just an iteration of the same efforts. That last quote, ya, that’s me. Put that on a goddamn site so i can get me da stats higher.