Author Archives: oinsketta

Real time

In real time, sometimes, we get our ass kicked.  I feel it at the end of every two hour workshop with nine energetic and creative kids I work with on Thursdays after school.  I leave it all on the field, and feel like I’ve had my ass kicked and accomplished nothing.

But I remind myself every week, after I revisit the frames and sounds they’ve made, that real-time ain’t the only time.   Tweaking, combing and refining, I’m thrilled with what we accomplished, in spite of everything.

Good to remind ourselves to appreciate the blessings we are too preoccupied to recognize.

Experience

Deeply experienced things remain, even years later.  The moment, the light, how things smelled, facial expressions, every tiny unverifiable detail is contained in the memory.

I remember sitting on a stone bench on a cool evening, watching a gangly puppy’s uncontrollable excitement as he discovered the delights of eating deer shit.  “Let’s not mention this to her,” my friend says, laughing, raising a shot of excellent scotch.

Painful experiences are also in there, no doubt.  The blessing is that the beautiful experiences, though sometimes more subtle, more elusive, are just as strong as the other kind.

 

My Father’s Wit

My Father’s Wit

 

My father, may he rest in peace, was one of the fastest people on his feet I ever knew.  At least as far as a clever rejoinder, he was very quick on the draw.  He wasn’t always good at responding to other situations in real time, few are.  Those quick on their feet in every situation are the stuff of Hollywood movies, there aren’t many of them.  But in conversation my father was as quick as anyone in the witty comeback department.

I’m reminded of this because I was just lamenting to myself that I need to get more chores done, crucial unpleasant appointments made, business taken care of, in addition to daydreaming and planning all the time.  Granted, my daydreams and plans seem to be budding and I can almost see the flowers that will be the fruits of this long labor of dreaming and planning, but still, I need to do chores.  I also recognize that I’m fortunate, at the moment, that I am not lashed to the wheel of having to work to pay my rent  today, or tomorrow, although that day is looming.  So while I was bothered by my reluctance to take care of needed chores, and reflecting on my good fortune not to have to report to some hideous job every day, my father’s voice came into my head.

“You’d complain if you were hanged with a new rope,” said the old man.

It’s in the delivery

It’s in the Delivery

 

Back when I had a sense of humor, this was intuitive.   A slight pause, a turn of the head, the tone of voice, a small gesture of face or hands to set off the moment right before the laugh.   There’s probably no way it can be taught, people we know are either funny or say “I suck at telling jokes.”

I was reminded of this recently watching somebody coach somebody else on how to read a line so it would be funny.   The line was OK, I thought to myself, but if you have to coach somebody on how to deliver it to make it as funny as you wrote it, maybe the line should have been written better in the first place.  This is a touchy subject and I didn’t touch it, although I got my greasy fingerprints all over it just now.   Vhoops.

But delivery doesn’t just go for jokes.  Skillful delivery is crucial in getting any message across.  People, as a rule, don’t give a rat’s ass about anything that’s not already on their mind.   We are a self-involved species.  So how a thing is delivered to us will decide whether we hear it or not.  Also how the message will make you feel to receive it.  Compare:

I don’t mean to bring you down, and a lot of people, I know, have been doggin’ you and criticizing where they should either be quiet or praising you, but I couldn’t help thinking that your last post, even though it was pretty good, I mean, I thought it was good, well…. a lot of people could say it was kind of preachy and superior.  I’m just telling you this so you won’t think these people are right, I didn’t find it very preachy and superior, only a little bit, and it really didn’t bother me that much.

and

I like your recent post.  You’re surely aware that some could be put off by what they will consider preachiness or superiority, but for my money– preach away, my brother.  As for the more priggish in the congregation, let the dead bury themselves.  In fact, I’ve got shovels in the trunk.

Then again, what the hell am I doing here, preaching to the choir?

A Thousand to One

A THOUSAND TO ONE*

I take those odds, because, what is to be gained in that one-in-a-thousand shot is great and, also, I don’t have another plan that makes sense.

A fellow blogger had a great unattributed quote, maybe it was his own.  I love it.  I’ll find the link to his page of quotes and put it here later, there are some good ones.  This quote really spoke to me:

Forget the thousand reasons the thing won’t work, remember the one reason that it will.

People make more daring, brave and foolish bets daily.  Millions line up for Lottery tickets every week, people bet the house and farm on the spin of a roulette wheel, accidentally put desperate, impossible pressures on their children, work hundred hour weeks expecting the reward of a comfortable retirement, if they don’t die trying to gain that comfortable nest egg first.  This short list does not include the many brave and wonderful things people continue to bet on, in spite of the poor chances of success.  People do all kinds of things in the teeth of long, if not impossible, odds.

Here’s my bet:  I am right to believe that children, once they are free to follow their imaginations, in a safe, protected place, will learn all kinds of things along the way.   I am betting that many among them will teach their peers what they have learned.  I am betting they will also produce materials that can be used to teach other kids.  I am betting everything I have on this longshot horse.  It is a wonderful little horse that I raised myself from a tiny pony that used to sleep at the foot of my bed.

* yo, WordPress, what’s with my titles not showing up anymore?

Viral youTube video

Yesterday a friend asked me what a viral video is.  He’s from a generation before mine and grasping such things is not intuitive, as it would be for an eight year-old raised in this digital world.   I described the phenomenon, telling him about a chilling video I’d seen a week ago, along with 2.000,000 others.  Today you can click here and join the more than 10,000,000 who’ve seen this truly devastating story told by a 15 year-old who killed herself a month after making this short film, two days before someone reposted it and the tragic, engrossing short went viral.  Make sure to read the full comment below the video, at the bottom is the suicide teen’s original message of hope in a world of cyber-bullies and schoolyard monsters.

Looking at the latest clip by the animation workshop I noticed a clip called “dontwalkuponme”.  The title comes from the blustering line spoken by a trash talker immediately before he got his ass kicked.  The woman shooting the scene is a supremely annoying provocateur, with a braying voice yelling way too close to the mic.  She did a decent job with the camera, though, I have to give her that.  I sent this clip to my friend who’d asked what a viral video is,  it had been posted only 12 hours before and already had 26,000 views.  An hour later, when I refreshed the screen, I saw it had been viewed another 14,000 times.  When I looked again 6 hours later it had reached 76,000– before being online 24 hours.  You can see how many more have seen it so far by clicking here— though, do yourself a favor and turn the sound down if you watch this stupid little fight.

I was pleased to see that my session 3 animation with the kids had gone from 17 to 26 views meantime.  Of course, that doesn’t include the kids or their parents, I haven’t sent it to them yet.

What Would Gandhi Do?

Let’s say someone made multiple derogatory comments about your religious group, asked you to do favors under a tight deadline that you delivered and that they then ignored, made a promise to you they then violated and informed you of in a cc in an unrelated email?  Let’s say the success of your fledgling nonprofit organization was in some way dependent on this person and that the broken promise related to the very existence of that outfit.

Few would probably blame you for being upset, hurt, angry or all of the above.  The question is, what would Gandhi do?  The other question is: what would Bruce Lee do?

I wrestled with these questions for almost a week.  It was not an easy wrestling match.  In the end I decided that Gandhi and Bruce Lee would do the same thing.  Take a minimalist approach that deflects action back on the other party.  Responding to the cc’d email that informed me he had no intention of keeping his promise to the organization I wrote: don’t worry about it.

It didn’t take long for him to put on his clown costume and begin capering.  But I’m not worried about it.