Category: Creativity

Creating something every day for 365 days

Lichtenbergian Goals, 2017

Posted on by Dale

First, a clarification.  These are technically not “Lichtenbergian goals.”  In our official ritual/agenda, they are “Proposed Efforts.”  A subtle difference, and a valid distinction: if we don’t get around to doing one of them, we haven’t missed a goal.  We just didn’t get around to it.

With that in mind, here are next year’s Proposed Efforts.

Lichtenbergianism

I’m carrying forward my 2016 goal to finish Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy and find a publisher for it. It’s just sheer laziness that prevented me from achieving that this past year. As I move forward, I will continue posting chapters to this website (although see below about Lichtenbergianism.com) and about my efforts to implement the strategies outlined in The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published [EGGYBP].

I will also continue building Lichtenbergianism.com, both through the blog and the introductory material.

One of the strategies in EGGYBP is to establish yourself as a speaker/workshop leader, both of which I am extremely qualified to do. I’ve already started putting out feelers and hope to start this aspect of the project soon.

Backstreet Arts writing project

Another carryover: work with Kim Ramey at Backstreet Arts on establishing a writers’ group for her audience. Basic journaling, story posters, whole books, compilations of stories—I’ll start wherever I can and go from there.

SUN TRUE FIRE

Not really a carryover, but if I’m going to compose at all, it might as well be this piece.

[REDACTED] at Newnan Theatre Company

Since it has not been officially announced, I won’t name the play I’m directing for the 2017-18 season at Newnan Theatre Company. Suffice it to say that with auditions in Jan 2018, I will spend most of 2017 preparing for the show.

For this production I am going to pull what we used to call a “full Dale” and which everywhere else is called “standard operating procedure,” i.e., full designs for costumes, sets, and lights, with individuals who are not me in charge of production. Production meetings; crew recruitment; maybe even classes to teach people how to do these things. Reach out to sewing fanatics via Jo-Ann perhaps; reach out to the artists at Backstreet; find people who aren’t involved and drag them into it.

3 Old Men

I want to continue to lead 3 Old Men, of course, but now we have another goal for the year. Burning Man’s theme for 2017 (Aug 24–Sep 4) is Radical Ritual—how can we not at least attempt to plan to go? So there’s that.

I also want to continue as Placement Lead for Alchemy and Euphoria, now that I’ve had greatness thrust upon me. Especially if we move to new land again: I want the opportunity to design a burn that becomes a home for years.

Unsilent Night

This one just developed last week when I was trying to explain the music I had used in the labyrinth for the Tour of Homes, Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night. Years ago I had tried to get in touch with Mr. Kline to see if he’d allow us to do an Unsilent Night parade in Newnan, but never heard from him. When I looked the music up to show people, I was super pleased to see that Unsilent Night now has its own webpage, and that indeed they were encouraging parades all over.

I’ve already made contact and started a Facebook group to begin planning for the event next December.

Establish a routine

I got out of a daily schedule this past summer and fall, so I want to reestablish specific periods of work each day.

Seven goals, some of which have massive subgoals themselves. We’ll see how I do.

Onward!

A fun Abortive Attempt

Posted on by Dale

Remember these?

Here’s one thing I figured out to do with them:

A lovely little package!

From the back:

Oooh, let’s open it!

Ta-da!  Lichtenbergianism Precept Cards!

One side has the Precept and the logo, and the other side…

…has the And so… section from each chapter in Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.

They’re kind of a pain in the butt to make, but if you’d like a set, let me know.

An impulse buy

Posted on by Dale

This item was forced on my attention the other day, and I just clicked on BUY.

It is a deck of blank cards.

I don’t know what I shall do with them.  The surface is too glossy for pencil or crayons.  Perhaps collage.  Markers, I guess.

But what is to be done with them?  A whole set of images/things/something?  Or do I just whip one out and do a one-off creation for specific events?

Hm.

updated to add:

A lot of my vague ideas revolve around this book:

Lichtenbergian goals 2016: a review

Posted on by Dale

For those of you who are just joining us, the Lichtenbergian Society is the group of men who are my soul brothers in creative procrastination. Every year we have an Annual Meeting around the fire in the labyrinth, and part of the ritual is that we propose our Efforts for the coming year, which our Recording Secretary duly engrosses in the journal.

The other part of that process, of course, is to have this year’s Efforts read back to us and to confess our success or failure. Cras melior est is the appropriate liturgical response to any failure.

Since the Annual Meeting is this Friday, it’s time to prepare my soul for the ordeal. Let’s see how I did in 2016.

Here’s the original post, if you’re interested.

Lichtenbergianism

I wanted to finish Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy this year. Somehow that did not happen. Something to do with procrastination, I think.

On the plus side, I’ve made headway in my own head towards thinking about getting the thing actually published. Part of that effort towards world domination was establishing Lichtenbergianism.com, which is not nothing.

But actually finishing the book? No.

3 Old Men

If my goal was to expand my burner theme camp to include a 50-foot square arena for “yelling at the hippies,” well… cras melior est. We didn’t have enough campers at Euphoria in May, and for Alchemy, we didn’t have enough space.

But there in the last paragraph of last year’s post, look:

I also want to continue working with Flashpoint Artists Initiative, the nonprofit which runs Euphoria/Alchemy, as a small-time volunteer on various projects.

Ha. I was certainly accomplishing that goal, doing my usual webmaster volunteering for the art fundraiser and even going so far as to volunteer to be Co-Lead for Placement, right up until the morning that I woke up one morning to the email saying that I was THE LEAD FOR PLACEMENT, KENNETH.

So if my goal was to remain a “small-time volunteer,” I failed miserably. You can read about it here.

Backstreet Arts

My goal was to work with Kim Ramey as she established a public art studio for the homeless/underserved population here in Newnan.

Cras melior est. I lent a sympathetic ear to Kim Ramey and offered what I hope was helpful advice, but mostly I was missing in action. However, she has forged ahead and this past month the studio (behind Bridging the Gap) passed its inspection and will soon be open for business. I hope I can get my act together enough to volunteer down there and create a space for writing and publishing.

???

This was my Undefined Universe Project, in which I decided not to work on music which had not been specifically commissioned for a performance. As I said in the post,

So my goal is to allow the Universe to send me a project which is attached to actual production.

Cras melior est, although that’s on the Universe, right? I did decide to pick back up on SUN TRUE FIRE on Retreat (here and here), but otherwise the Universe certainly gave me the finger. Oh well. It’s not as if I haven’t been busy or creative in other ways.  Which is the point of TASK AVOIDANCE in the first place, right?

Onward to 2017!

OK, I’m ready for my close-up

Posted on by Dale

It’s done.  Let the offers begin flooding in.

It’s complete with production notes, helpful hints, and all that.

So all you theatres out there with a plethora of little girls—and you’re sick of doing Annie[1]—here’s your next holiday offering!

You can peek at the opening here.

—————

[1] Like all right-minded people.

A Christmas Carol: The Sleepover Edition

Posted on by Dale

Astoundingly, I have not been blogging about this year’s production of A Christmas Carol, my musical retelling of Dickens’ classic.

To be honest, it’s been a scary rehearsal process, starting with the first night of auditions.  Why?  Because instead of the 20 or so adults I needed to perform the roles and sing my not-very-easy songs, I got eight little girls and a handful of teens and adults, most of whom had not done theatre in a while.  And on top of that, several of the adults dropped out the first week of rehearsal; I’m sure they were daunted by the prospect (as you will see).  I’d hate to think they thought it was not going to work.

Usually in community theatre when one does not have the cast one needs after auditions, one gets on the phone and recruits people.  But I was not in the mood, and on top of that I was up to my earballs in designing the nation’s largest regional burn at the time, if you will recall.

And so I made a fateful decision: we would use the performers we had and screw all those people who didn’t bother to come to auditions.  This meant, of course, re-envisioning the entire piece.

Oy.

I decided to invent a frame story—I know, I know, but hear me out—about Natalie Fairgood, a spoiled, horrible little rich girl, who was born on Christmas Day and resents it because she feels as if she never gets enough presents.  That’s why, she says, she celebrates the week after.  This year she’s having a sleepover with all her friends, but she’s been forced to invite the daughter of her mother’s personal assistant, Jessica.

When the show opens, Natalie’s grandfather shows Jessica into Natalie’s bedroom and chats with her a moment before leaving her to wait for the other girls, who are somewhere in the huge house.  When they enter, Natalie immediately begins taunting Jessica, ending in  a meltdown because Jessica is holding one of her dolls.

Grandfather intervenes, and when he offers them storytime to chill them out, Natalie demands a ghost story.

“I have just the story,” he says.  “I read it every year, and I’m reading it now.  I’ll read it to you.”  They all sit, attentively, and he begins: “Marley was dead…”

Figures emerge from the shadows and begin to narrate as well, and soon we are back in Scrooge’s tale.

As the show progresses, the girls go from being passive listeners to Grandfather’s reading to observing the action directly.  Soon they are taking part in the story, using toys and costume pieces from Natalie’s shelves as they become guests at Fezziwig’s party to shoppers on the street to Young Cratchits.

By the time we reach the Finale, they are fully empowered to join Grandfather in telling the story themselves, and that’s the point: we celebrate the power of story, how we listen to stories, become part of them, and in turn pass them on to the next listeners.  Hearing a story changes us.  Telling a story changes us.

And by the end, both Scrooge and Natalie have changed.  And so have we.

Script now available upon request.

Unclean! Unclean!

Posted on by Dale

With A Christmas Carol and the Tour of Homes in the books (albeit with one more weekend of CC performances to go), it’s time to excavate the study.

—click to embiggen—

That may not look so bad to you, but trust me—it’s a mess: the detritus of three months of shedding as I move from one project to another.  It will be therapeutic to get everything tidied up/stored/tossed.

And then it’s on to… TBD.

updated:

Et voilá!

—click to embiggen—
—click to embiggen—

Notice not only the clear floor and desks, but the addition of the Assistive Feline™.

None dare call it lying

Posted on by Dale

In her Washington Post op-ed on Friday, Ruth Marcus bemoaned our post-truth PPE.  She’s on point with her facts and her opinions, but on one item she completely missed the boat.

Ironically, while gigging the PPE for “not quite understanding what euphemism means,” she bends over backwards dancing around the hard truth[1]: “consistently heedless to truth”; “untrue assertion”; “untruths”; “chock-full-of-lies”; “truth-impaired”; “unconstrained by facts.”  Only in her last paragraph does she nail it: “The journalist’s challenge is not to tire in refuting the torrent of lies.”

The way to do that, Ms. Marcus, is to use the exact terminology each and every time: the PPE won by lying.  He continues to lie. He is a liar.

—————

[1] See what I did there?

Fantastic Beasts? Eh.

Posted on by Dale

[Here be Spoiler Alerts.]

We went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, because Harry Potter.  It’s a dazzling movie, to be sure, and the performances are all spot-on, with the four main characters especially charming and adorable.

But…

We left feeling very unsatisfied.  The plotting is haphazard and whatever suspense there might be in figuring out what’s going on is dissipated by the most telegraphing since the Titanic went down.  It relied a lot on fan service, i.e., our prior knowledge of the Potterverse,  to keep us on board, and the middle third especially just dragged.

We were appalled at the loose threads in the plot.  What exactly did the newspaper publisher/senator story have to do with anything?  Was it simply for the Citizen Kane shot being destroyed by the Obscurus?  Not enough.  I got the feeling there was a lot left on the cutting room floor, because the paltry conflict within that plotline was never integrated at all with the main plot.  J. Jonah Jameson, Jon Voight was not.

The conflict that seemed to be driving the American wizards (remaining hidden from Non-Maj society, etc.) was never fleshed out, and the “villainous” Mary Lou who rants on the steps of the bank about the danger of witches among us never seemed more than your usual NYC crackpot.  The idea that she posed a credible threat to the magical community was dumb—her headquarters was a rundown hellhole, while MACUSA occupied a luxurious Art Deco skyscraper.

And what was the deal with Scamander’s relationship with the Lestrange girl back at Hogwarts?  We may never know.  We certainly don’t know what it had to do with the current movie, other than to allow Scamander to display some empathy with poor Credence Barebone, whose relationship with Tina Goldstein is likewise never fully explained.  (There is an explanation, kind of, but like everything else in the movie it’s compressed and rushed.)

The final reveal, that Graves is actually Grindlewald, raises more questions than it solves: Graves is head of the Aurors at MACUSA—how long has Grindlewald been disguised in order to ascend to that position??  I don’t think it’s justifiable that eventually the good Potterian will think, “Ah, it must have been Polyjuice Potion,” even though we never see any evidence of that.

(I just went to the Wikipedia article on the film in order to remember the term “Obscurus,” and was shocked to find in the synopsis details that were not at all clear in the movie.  There are also details which apparently the author of the Wikipedia article got from the film which I think are wrong. Sloppy, and I’m talking about the filmmakers.)

The fantastic beasts were fantastic, but again, they felt glued onto the plot.  They were mostly deployed for slapstick interludes, and we never got to be familiar with any of them except for the Niffler and the Bowtruckle (who smacked of Baby Groot, alas).

After we got home, we kept gnawing on the sources of our discontent, as one does, when it finally dawned on us: the problem was not so much with the movie itself as it was that it shouldn’t have been the first Newt Scamander movie.  This was the second Fantastic Beasts film.  The first film introduced us to Newt Scamander as he scours the earth for these creatures, along with flashbacks to his problems at Hogwarts leading to his expulsion, culminating in the rescue of the… whatever the big bird thing was in the second movie… a Thunderbird, maybe?… in Egypt.  This propels us into the second film, as Scamander comes to America to release the Thunderbird into its native habitat in Arizona (mentioned briefly in the film), and gives more breathing space for actual plot.

Somebody really should be paying me big bucks to do this thinking for them.  Jo?