Wednesday, May 30, 2007

the pursuit and the perception change

I was a big fan of "the show with zefrank" and miss it daily. Last night I was reading an interview with Ze and the statement he made below resonated with me. "blades of blue" exists because it provides me one small outlet for creativity. Ze's statement about embarking on creative disciplines changing our perception has been especially true for me over the course of working on this blog. I added the emphasis on the last paragraph.

"With The Show project, I've also been thinking a lot about this culture of authorship that we're entering into. You've got so many people that are making things now, whether it's emails or instant messages or uploading images to Flickr, making movies, creating audio on cheap prosumer technology.

What's really interesting to me is that, as anyone knows who's gone into a creative discipline, the second that you start doing those things, the world around you changes. If you draw, you start seeing the edges of things, and you start seeing the deformities of their shape when you move around them. When you start playing guitar, you start noticing notes in all the music you play, and in fact, the music that you listen to never sounds the same from that point on.

I think that a lot of people are focusing on the content that's being produced right now. And I think it's the wrong thing to look at. It's actually the pursuit and the perception change that I think a lot of people are experiencing about the world -- that's the thing to focus on and the thing to celebrate."

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow...that's good....

Anonymous said...

Alright Mr. Wilalmlablog, I finally checked out Ze's show because of your gentle nudging, and I see why you miss it.

There's definitely something to what he's saying about this becoming a culture of authorship, and I agree that it's a good sign. It is exciting to see that there are so many people who want to create something. It shows that people are looking to express themselves in interesting ways and that they want more than to sit passively by the TV or play video games.

Your blog and your monthly mixes are an example of this. The myspace pages that people have developed are examples of this. It can be contagious, in a very wonderful way.

Anonymous said...

...as long as the whole hippie thing does not come back...I am ok with free expression...even though a good chunk of Art is lame...but then again art is what the viewer see's in the picture , not really what the artist made the picture of...follow suite for music and movies as well.....

Unknown said...

whiskey: I'm glad you finally checked it out. when you say contagious it makes me think that I should be searching for the whiskey blog soon.

sineddie: there's nothing wrong with a good hippie.

Anonymous said...

I tried to catch up on a year's worth of Ze in one afternoon, and my brain could NOT stop singing, "say the opposite, say the opposite, say the same thing, say the same thing" for at least 24 hrs.

Unknown said...

Ohhhhh....That's one of my favorites.

I also like the song:

"Who like the little little duckies in the pond? I do! I do! I do! A'chicky quack quack."

Anonymous said...

RE: culture of authorship

I love seeing how people are out there communicating with each other and expressing themselves without asking permission to do so. No one told Ze he could or should start his show, he just did it. And anyone can, so now people are finding that they *do* have things they want to say and share with the world.

It is contagious! Still, I don't think I'll start a blog (but then again I didn't think I'd get a cell phone either), but it does make me want to create *something*. Not sure what exactly. I mean, there's the obvious-- continue with the work I'm doing now. But maybe there's something more daring or that pushes boundaries a little further.

Anonymous said...

-- thinking about Sineddie's comments. . .

I think as long as things are still in this open and playful form, it'll still be fun and accessible and interesting. I think once people start calling it "art" is when it becomes less authentic, less honest. People begin to create things in hopes of meeting a standard outside of the truth within themselves.

I'm thinking about Raymond Bradbury when he talks about his Dad telling stories about his youth and how after a few minutes, he really gets in the zone. You can see and hear and feel everything that the Dad did as a boy, and it's really touching and true and moving. Bradbury said in those moments, his dad was speaking poetry, but no one minded because no one thought to call it that.

Unknown said...

"Bradbury said in those moments, his dad was speaking poetry, but no one minded because no one thought to call it that."

I think this is a really true statement. Thanks for sharing that thought.

...not so sure about the almlablog moniker but that's ok.

Unknown said...

I plan on watching all 365 episodes over the course of the next couple of weeks. The first 2 were great!