What is a Life-ist?

In this Bloutcher (rhymes with voucher-comes from BLog jOUrnal skeTCHbook newslettER)

• Announcements
• What is a Life-ist?
• Reflection at year end

Announcements

• Project Renewment is a grass roots movement begun by Bernice Bratter and Helen Dennis and offers a trailblazing retirement model for the generation of career women just now leaving the workforce. To learn more about Project Renewment and the book which spurred it click here. I will be speaking to the Project Renewment Group on January 22nd in Los Angeles.
  
• I spoke at the International Positive Aging Conference in Los Angeles at the beginning of the month. The IPAC brings together professionals from diverse disciplines who are trying to change the way people think about and behave toward aging. The conference was filled with people who are creating innovative models related to life transitions, creativity, wellness, community. One of the key players in organizing and sponsoring the conference is a unique educational institution called Fielding Graduate School whose students range in age from their 20's to their 70's. To learn more about Fielding click here.
  
• Karen Mandell, (yes, my wife) conducted an inspirational workshop entitled Calling Calliope; Finding Your Voice at Midlife and Beyond. As part of the workshop she read some of her award winning poetry. If you would like to purchase one of her chapbooks for $6.50 just let me know and we will put it in the mail to you. There are two to choose from: Rose Has a New Walker and The Story We Think We Are Telling. Take it from an unbiased source--these poems really speak to the soul through the surprises contained in everyday experiences.
  
• Karen and I have been invited to do a program at Esalen (Karen a two day weekend workshop entitled "Calling Calliope; Finding Your Poetic Voice," and me a 5 day program entitled "Life Change Studio; Navigating Transitions in Turbulent Times") Karen's program runs from November 11-13, 2011 and mine runs November 13-18. We'd love to see you at this magical place in the Big Sur.
• It feels good to have capped the year with the production of Unlocking Your Creative Mantra, co-created with Donna Krone. My personal Creative Mantra is CREATE, INTEGRATE, MAKE A DIFFERENCE. I try to live my Creative Mantra every day so it has been very meaningful to bring this sketchbook into the world at this time and to receive such an affirming endorsement from Kris Costello, the talented host of Wellness Talk Radio in Los Angeles. Kris told me: "Unlocking Your Creative Mantra has transformed my life. It has given me a true compass." If you would like to learn more about Unlocking click here.
  

What is a Life-ist?

There's a fascinating description of an artist at work in Martin Gaylord's book Man with a Blue Scarf; On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud, Thames and Hudson, 2010.

Gaylord sat for a portrait painted by the great contemporary English master Lucian Freud. He describes Freud's affect as he is working on the portrait.

The tension of working can make LF seem very agitated at times. He gestures; he raises his arms in a movement half triumphant, half despairing, like an Italian taxi driver encountering a perplexing configuration of traffic. He mutters to himself. His bouts of concentration apt to begin with an especially hard stare, followed by a deep sigh. He steps forward and back, and on occasion darts forward and springs away from the canvas, bringing his mouth down in a one-sided grimace. Sometimes he touches the picture with a brush like a person making contact with something intensely hot; or charged with electricity. The paint continues to spread across the canvas in tiny, incremental stages.

So let's pull out some of the phrases here:

agitated at times
half triumphant, half despairing
encountering a perplexing configuration of traffic
mutters to himself
deep sigh
mouth down in a one-sided grimace
intensely hot
charged with electricity
in tiny, incremental stages

Please read these phrases again.

Now I challenge you to tell me whether he is describing someone working on a painting or someone trying to navigate change in his/her life.

Instead of Lucian Freud working on a portrait this description could probably fit any one of us working on our life.

If you are thinking: well then, are you suggesting that my life is a work of art? That living my life is a creative process? Then you are quick. You see, I believe that art and life are not separate things. Art is life, only representing it in a different form. I also believe life is art, only engaging it in a different form. The language may be different, the tools may be different, the medium may be different, but they are both a fundamentally creative process--that is, they are both messy, exhilarating, frustrating and non-linear. And both take place in that murky swamp called The Unknown. After all, we do NOT know the outcome when we begin a journey of change. So I believe that the process of creating Art provides profound insights into the process of creating our lives. I call folks who share this perspective Life-ists.

The truth, though, is that change is not easy. We stumble, we question, we wonder if it is worth it. So, if you are finding change difficult from time to time. If you feel blocked or frustrated or lost, I would like you to read the following piece of advice from Leonardo Da Vinci to an artist:

"Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen."

Now I would ask you to read Da Vinci's advice one more time. Only this time substitute the word "life" for the words "work" and "it" when they appear.

Yes, Da Vinci may be giving advice to someone who gets stuck on a painting or an invention, but you and I know he is also giving advice to each of us about our life. After all, Da Vinci is a Life-ist of the first order.

Reflection at Year End

In many ways this has been a remarkable year. Becoming a Life Change Artist came out in August and I have heard from folks all over the globe including Australia, Bali, New Zealand, Turkey, Serbia, Jordan, South Africa, Russia, Canada, USA, and all parts of the Eurozone. Even Mongolia. People have shared the meaningful impact Becoming has had on them. My co-author Kathy and I have been deeply moved by these messages partly because they validate the reason we wrote the book--we wanted to touch people's lives and provide a sense of hopefulness related to personal change--but also because it confirms that people in transition are seeking connection with fellow travelers. The world is in transition and this makes personal change inevitable. It is our belief that these transitions are opportunities for personal growth and when properly equipped we can individually and collectively make a difference.

We would love to continue to hear from those who have taken the journey through the pages of Becoming.

Of course the most wonderful thing of all this year has been spending time with my first time grandson Baylor. He is a wonder of spontaneity and surprises and makes everything he encounters a candidate for creativity. I have begun to sketch out some ideas for a painting.



Have a wonderful holiday season and healthy, vibrant, creating New Year!

The Things Inside

Bloutcher rhymes with voucher and is a factor of:
BLogjOUrnalskeTCHbooknewslettER

In this bloutcher

• Announcements
• The Things Inside
  

Announcements:

• Holidays are approaching. Consider a gift of Becoming a Life Change Artist by Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan. Order here. Also consider a gift of newly released Unlocking Your Creative Mantra by Fred Mandell and Donna Krone. Unlocking will ignite new levels of creative energy in your life. Order here. Even better, consider giving both as a gift!
• I have been out on the speaking circuit lately and have received many requests for copies of the power point slides I have used. I automatically make the slides available to attendees. I thought it might make sense for those who have not been able to attend any these talks to make a general offer to send a pdf of one of these presentations. If you would like to receive a complimentary pdf of a presentation entitled: What the Great Masters of Art Can Teach Us About Navigating the Second Half of Life with Vitality, Creativity and Meaning please just send me an email by clicking here and I will be happy to shoot you the pdf.
  

The Things Inside

The remarkable Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa who passed away a few years ago made an utterly stunning film called "Dreams." It is composed of several vignettes inspired by Kurosawa's own dreams. One of them, entitled "Crows," begins with a Kurosawa alter-ego, a young man, in a museum staring at a series of famous Van Gogh paintings when he is literally drawn into one of the paintings--The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing. The French washerwomen, now unfrozen, begin shouting at him to watch out for Monsieur Van Gogh. "He was in an asylum!" they giggle. Wherein the young man takes off in search of the great artist. Only now Kurosawa takes the viewer into a virtual Van Gogh world, as his alter ego trudges through Arles, wheat fields, down dirt roads, resplendant in thick impasto brush strokes--ochres, blues, greens, vermillion. The scenes vibrate with brilliant color.

When the man finally finds Van Gogh, the master is hard at work and asks the young man "Why aren't you working?" He then goes on to say, "All of nature has its own beauty. I lose myself in it. I devour nature completely and whole. It is so difficult to hold it inside." And then he packs up his easel and marches over the hill out of sight until a sky full of crows explodes over the fields

and the young man is back in the museum looking from the outside in again, staring longingly at the painting as though he had lost a world. As though this real world were a mere pale reflection of the actual painting.

This is one of the visually most stunning scenes I have ever seen in a movie. Chopin's haunting prelude #15 in D flat adds to the surreal experience of being IN the painting. Click here to listen.

So what's going on here? Is Kurosawa as mad as Van Gogh? Has he lost his ability to distinguish reality from fantasy? Or is it as simple as one master paying homage to another?

I think there's a lot going on here. But one thing in particular strikes me. It is, as Van Gogh says, "so difficult to hold it inside." Van Gogh gave us the gift of expressing in color what was inside him. He literally created a new visual language. We all recognize it today. He could not resist it. It was inside and it had to come out. From my perspective it seems Kurosawa is telling us we cannot keep our nature tamped down forever. We cannot hold it back. Our personal nature has the force of real nature. What Van Gogh expressed through painting, Kurosawa expressed through film and we can express through the way we live our lives. We each have the opportunity to find the language, voice, courage with which to express our true nature. That is how we create not only ourselves but the world around us.

So a question bubbles to the surface: Imagine, for a moment, you are at a museum or a concert or reading a novel or listening to a poem and you could both imaginatively and in reality step into and live in a particular painting or be the music or be a character in a novel or take wing like the words in a poem. Which painting, music, novel, poem would you choose? What does that tell you about your true "nature," about the things inside you, and how you are or are not fully expressing it in the world?

The Big Wiggle

In this Boutcher

• What is a Bloutcher?
• The Big Wiggle
• Announcements

What is a Bloutcher

Folks have suggested that I should remind readers what a bloutcher is and how I came to give it that name. First, bloutcher rhymes with voucher. Second, I created the name from BLogjOUrnalskeTCHbooknewslettER because none of those things by themselves matched what I was interested in doing which is to COMBINE all of them as a way of reflecting on and sharing the creative process (of/in living and working.)

The Big Wiggle

In my last bloutcher I offered readers the opportunity to identify with a straight line or a wiggly line.

Well, the results qualify as a landslide. Only one person identified with the straight line--she was very focused on finishing her dissertation--and still admitted "in a more general sense I really relate to the big wiggle." Here are some other responses.

"Who would have thunk it but I'm totally wiggle."


"My life is very much like the squiggly line right now and that's the way I like it. I feel totally unencumbered."


"I'm definitely the wigglie line. Some folks think that just because they have clear goals things are going to go in a straight line. Yeah, right!"


"I'm definitely a squiggle! I pity the individual who either has, or thinks he has, things figured out and is on a straight track."

Soooo, virtually everyone is sympatico to the wiggle. This doesn't surprise me because I have come to refer to the creative process, aka life, as The Big Wiggle.

And what makes life a big wiggle?
How many times have you changed your mind?
How many times have you had to start over?
How many times have you made a mistake?
How many times have you gone down the wrong road?
How many times have you given the right answer but asked the wrong question?
How many times have you wondered--"coulda, shoulda, woulda"?
How many times have you had the rug pulled out from under you?
How many times did things "just not work out the way I thought they would?"
See what I mean?

Pablo Picasso understood this when he said "I start with an idea and then it becomes something else." He got The Big Wiggle! Of course he was speaking about art and the creative process, but you and I know his comment also applies to life and work. After all how many of us are doing what we thought we would be doing when we were 18 or 28 or even 48?

So I think there's a big deal implication to The Big Wiggle view of the world.

What if our educational system spent time teaching us how to navigate the "something else" Picasso talks about? I am not suggesting we forego the basics. I am suggesting that we teach the "oops, the rug has just been pulled out from under me" skills. The change skills. The embracing uncertainty skills. The creative skills. I recently polled an audience of 125 people regarding whether they were currently doing what they thought they would be doing 10/20/30 years earlier. Somewhere north of eighty percent of the hands indicated they were doing something different from what they had expected to be doing--and, as one person in the audience noted, that's if they even had an idea of what they wanted to be doing. If 80 percent of the people are currently doing "something else" then we know there's been a whole lot of wiggling goin' on. So doesn't it make sense not only to "educate" people to prepare for the 20 percent of what they expect to be doing but to also prepare them for the 80 percent Big Wiggle?

But the real message in this is that the The Big Wiggle is where we spend most of our time. The Big Wiggle isn't the exception. So feel it! It's where we are domiciled. TBW is home.

This isn't only true in terms of life skills but leadership skills as well. After all, YouTube started as a way to share videos for dating purposes and became something else. Facebook started as a self contained system for Harvard students to be in touch with each other and became something else. Wells Fargo started with a bunch of ponies and became something way else.

Educate for The Big Wiggle!!

Perhaps no other artist embodies The Big Wiggle more than the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock who began to drip cans of liquid enamel paints on a canvas he had spread out on the floor of his barn studio. Visually step into one of his drip paintings and you're not sure which side is up. I don't care what the art critics say, you can't convince me he ended up where he thought he would.

So if you're feeling tossed about by TBW, you're not alone. I would suggest you use it as a creative opportunity. Here are three things you can do to wiggle The Big Wiggle.
1. Drip paint--that is, try something new. You know, the thing you've wanted to do but have put off. Just start it. You might become famous. At least, you will end up doing something else.
2. Step back from the canvas of your life by suspending the governing "shoulds" in your life and asking these three big questions:

• What do I really want to do?
• How do I really want to be in the world?
• Are there things inside of me that I really want to get out but have been tamping down?
  

3. Find the irony in your life, that is the incongruity between the actual outcome of events in your life and what you had expected and ask yourself what makes this incongruous. Then ask how you can create greater coherence between what you expect and what you want to get.

Announcements

• Reminder: As the holidays approach please consider a gift of Becoming a Life Change Artist; 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life. I am more than happy to sign a card with an inscription that you can insert into the book. Just send me an email with the name of the person(s) and anything you would like me to incorporate into the card. To order the book please click here.
  
• Speaking of gifts I am extremely excited to let you know that Donna Krone and I have just come out with a wonderful and we believe inspiring workbook/sketchbook/guide we call Unlocking Your Creative Mantra. I reference the power of a creative mantra in Becoming a Life Change Artist. If you would like to spark new levels of creative energy, get focused on what really matters to you, create a framework for wise decision making, then Unlocking is the perfect gift to yourself or others who are at a crossroad in their life. If you would like to order a copy just click here.
  
• I also encourage each of you who are interested in issues surrounding the second half of life to consider attending the International Positive Aging Conference. Attendees are committed to shifting the paradigm related to aging in America. I will be presenting at the conference and I am thrilled that my wife Karen will also be presenting a program entitled: "Calling Calliope; Finding Your Poetic Voice at Midlife and Beyond." For details click here.
  
• In my last bloutcher dated October 20th I noted an article on the decline of creativity in the US that appeared in Newsweek and the IBM CEO study that identified creativity as the number one need for corporate leadership. Well, there seems to be confluence of these articles. In the Tuesday, November 9th op ed page of the NYTimes David Brooks wrote a worthwhile piece on the importance of creativity in the years ahead entitled The Crossroads Nation.
  

Percolating or Procrastinating

In this Bloutcher:

• Percolating or Procrastinating?
• Announcements
• A Percolating Question

Percolating or Procrastinating?

My last bloutcher elicited an interesting set of responses. I wrote about a photo I had clipped from a New Yorker magazine because it grabbed my attention for reasons I could not explain. I pinned the photo on my studio wall and over the next several months allowed the photo to percolate in my awareness until I finally began to sketch it and then ultimately develop a painting inspired by the photo. I've had readers ask: When does percolating become procrastinating? One person mentioned that percolating can be deadly because rather than confront the thing and do something about it the whole thing simply dies.

So here are some thoughts.

Leonardo Da Vinci is said to have worked on the Mona Lisa for 26 years, carrying it with him on his various peripatetic journeys across borders, bridges and City States. Was he percolating or procrastinating?

Wilhem de Kooning, the great abstract expressionist, worked on his seminal painting Excavation for almost a year before throwing it in a garbage heap consigned to the city dump. It was rescued by a friend who talked de Kooning into re-engaging with the painting. From start to finish it took almost two years. Was he percolating or procrastinating?

So one way to look at it is that ultimately the measure of whether we are percolating or procrastinating is in the result--whether it takes one week or one decade. If something worthy emerges from the time + the engagement, then it is percolating. Creativity has its own natural life cycle. And percolating is an essential element of that life cycle.

Now I know that is not going to be a satisfactory answer for everyone, especially for those under the gun of a deadline. After all, deadlines introduce consequences. (Let's leave aside the question of what would the Mona Lisa or Excavation have been if they had been produced under a deadline.) I will acknowledge that deadlines change the dynamics. We may sacrifice the full maturation of the creative process by adhering to deadlines but, hey, that's a reality. We do the best we can with the time we have.

So here's a little secret I discovered. We actually know when we are procrastinating, when we have tipped from percolating into procrastinating. I have rarely found a person who is not aware of when s/he is procrastinating. The problem isn't recognizing it. It's what to do about it.

In the research my co-author Kathy Jordan and I did for our book, we found that the best way to preempt procrastination is to regularly engage in "preparation practices." These are activities which help us separate from the problem we are trying to solve and stimulate a state of mind which predisposes the brain to creative insight. In other words, preparation practices are a form of percolating that move you toward creative insight. Examples of preparation practices include meditation, yoga, going for a walk, riding your bike, even taking a shower. I suggested to one marketing executive that he write down the problem he was trying to solve in the form of a question. I then suggested he put it in his desk drawer and go to the museum for a while and enjoy the art work on the walls. After 45 minutes he rushed back to his office flooded with all kinds of ideas. Unknowingly he had engaged in a preparation activity.

Da Vinci recommended simply going away for a period of time. He meant separating yourself from the thing about which you may be procrastinating. Go some distance, he advised. That way "the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen."

On the other hand, de Kooning went on bike rides. That helped him "keep my eyes fresh."

Ultimately, though, we need to honor percolating. Not rush it. Percolating is a kind of pre-wisdom, a prelude to wisdom, wisdom in the wings that ultimately gets shaped into its appropriate mode of expression. A gift.





Announcements:

• If you are in the Minneapolis/St Paul area please join me at a joint meeting of the Minnesota Coaches Association and the Minnesota Career Development Association. I will be presenting a program entitled: Navigating Change at Midlife and Beyond; The Great Masters of Art Reveal the Secrets to a New Paradigm. To register go to: http://www.minnesotacoaches.org/ OR http://mcda.net/events/navigating-change-at-midlife-and-beyond/
• This is a season of change. And Thanksgiving is around the corner. So I had a thought. If you would like to give Becoming a Life Change Artist; 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life as a gift to someone I am happy to write a personal note to the recipient on a handsome Thank You card that you can insert into the book. Just let me know the recipient's name and anything you want me to include. If you want to take advantage of this just send me an email at fred@fredmandell.com

A Percolating Question:

Which image below best captures how you are thinking about your life at the present time? And what does that say about where you are in the change process?



Percolating or Procrastinating?

I am Man. Male.

In This Bloutcher

• I am Man. Male.
• Announcements
  

I am Man. Male.

That means I don't ask. At least in public where I might be embarrassed for not knowing. I don't ask for help. Or anything else that might hint at a handout. I figure it out. I am good at repartee, not disclosure. I'm the hunter. I capture or conquer. I provide.

I am a craftsman. I know how to make things--that's THINGS--and make them work. Homo Faber--Man the Maker, the fabricator. I don't whine. I solve problems. I'm a man. Male. And I am lonely.

Being Male means innovation, yes. It is practical. It has utility. Creativity, eh. Pure whimsy. What's its purpose?

Being Male inhibits my creativity. Creativity flows from vulnerability. From longing. From wonder. Not from solving but from touching the untouchable. Not from the hands or the brain or even from the wits, but from the firmament. Look up, O Male. Take in the stars. Close your eyes and see!

Please excuse the above rant--well, actually don't excuse it. I wanted to give you a sense of where one of my paintings came from. It speaks to the sources of inspiration. And the peculiar process of creating. I'm sure we have all experienced it at different times and in different ways.

Let's go back to the day I was leafing through a copy of The New Yorker and came across this photo.

It caught my attention for reasons I could not explain at the time so I tore it out and kept it in my studio for many months. Whenever I looked at the photo I couldn't escape the feeling that it was something more than a photo of a man running down the street in a suit. Perhaps he was Modern Man? Post Modern? Whatever that means. On the run in any case. But from what and toward what? And then he seemed so alone. I was also reading about and looking at the work of Spanish painter Francisco Goya at the time. And was both floored by and inspired by his painting The Dog (1820-23), a foreshadowing of post modern (whatever the hell that means) angst.

That is when I started sketching out some possibilities. Example on the right.

And then I moved into painting. I might stumble across something in the process, I thought. I didn't need an answer at the outset. I just needed to get started. Sometimes I have a title in mind before working on a painting and I keep it. Other times I end up changing the title. And still other times I don't have a title until the end, if even then. And then I change it. This one I called "Running Man" and I have kept it all the way through. The quote in the painting is from Ecclesiastes: "Running Man is like a breath...his days are like a passing shadow."



That doesn't mean I didn't run up against problems while working on it. In fact, at one point I was so frustrated that I made the above entry which kicks off this bloutcher (I am Man. Male.) in my sketchbook. Ouch. Did I really mean it? Do I really believe this? Does being Male limit creativity? Neuroscientists are discovering that creativity is a whole brain activity (versus an exclusively right brain activity) so perhaps creativity is enhanced through the union of opposites--the best and worst of male and female.

And what does the experience of creating the Running Man painting say about the creative process of living and life change?


Here are a few quick thoughts:

• Sometimes the best way to engage an idea is to separate from it. [Thank you Dr. George Klavens for this notion.] Instead of pursuing it, let it pursue you. Sometimes you simply have to let an idea float. It's not ready for prime time or for action.
• Creativity does not occur through thinking but when emotion and thinking combust with each other. When we are considering life change or are in it we need to listen to both our heads and our hearts.
  
• And, finally, when you and the idea are ready for each other it only means the work is just beginning.
  

To comment, click here.
Then scroll down to comments.

Announcements:

• On October 4th, 7 p.m., I will be speaking at University of St. Catherine, Jeanne D'Arc Auditorium, 2004 Randolf Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota, sponsored by the pioneering organization SHiFT. Topic: What the Great Masters of Art Can Teach Us About Navigating the Second Half of Life with Vitality, Creativity and Meaning. Start time is 7 pm. Admission is free with donations accepted. For reservations simply email: DavidBuck4@gmail.com
• There is a movement afoot called Positive Aging. For those who are dissatisfied with the old model of aging as one of decline, stepping away and retreating then please check out the 4th International Positive Aging Conference in Los Angeles December 7-10. Go to the Life Planning Network website at: http://www.lifeplanningnetwork.org/index.cfm?action=main.conference10
• I will be speaking at the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE) on October 16th at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. http://www.arohe.org/conferences.php
  

Art & War

In this Bloutcher

• Announcements
• Art and War; and a Gentler Order of Feeling
  

Announcements:

• If you are in the Boston area, please join me at the Newton Public Library on September 13th, 7 pm, for an Author's Talk and book signing. I will be discussing Becoming a Life Change Artist; 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life. Get there a little early because I will have a special guest handing out some special goodies! Thank you to Discovering What's Next and the Newton Public Library for sponsoring this event.

• Anyone who cares about creativity and its importance in American life and business should check out the article in Newsweek that appeared a few weeks ago: The Creativity Crisis. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html. It's time to take this seriously. At the very same time that this article is sounding the alarm, the 2010 IBM CEO Study shows that CEOs identify creativity as the number one need in business leaders.
  

Art and War

All the recent news about combat troops leaving Iraq and the ongoing concerns about Afghanistan brings up for me the very strange relationship between Art and War.

For one thing artists such as Picasso have been credited with introducing camouflage into modern warfare. Now that's a strange footnote to military history! And Leonardo Da Vinci was the man who both painted the Mona Lisa AND invented prototypes of war machines such as the tank.









Leonardo's Tank


WWI Camouflaged Boat


But for me the most compelling story about art and war relates to a lesser known but remarkable French sculptor and artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

At the beginning of the last century he was unknown in his native France but hung out in London with some of the artistic greats such as Jacob Epstein and Ezra Pound. By the time he enlisted in the French army at the age of 22 at the outset of WWI he had already produced over 120 sculptures and 2000 works on paper including pastels.

Gaudier-Brzeska sent several letters from the front in which he describes the day to day scene around him. "Human masses teem and move, are destroyed and crop up again. Horses are worn out in three weeks, die by the roadside. Dogs wander, are destroyed and others come along. The bursting shells, the volleys, wire entanglements, projectors, motors, the chaos of battle do not alter in the least the outlines of the hill we are beseiging." Trench warfare was brutal, often fought hand to hand. Corpses laid in the wasteland between the two encampments.

At one point Gaudier-Brzeska wrestles a mauser from a dead German soldier and takes it back to his trench during a break in the battle. In a letter he reflects: "It's heavy unwieldy shape swamped me with a powerful image of brutality. I was in doubt for a long time whether it pleased or displeased me. I found I did not like it. I broke the butt off and with my knife I carved in it a design, with which I tried to express a gentler order of feeling which I preferred."

In the midst of this horrific devastation the young Gaudier-Brzeska finds it within himself to reconfigure a weapon of killing into a "gentler" form.

Two months after he sent this letter, Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in battle. He was 23 years old.

Art and War. Artist and Soldier. Creator of life and Destroyer of life. How do you explain this side by side capacity for brutality and gentelness? Where does it come from? These opposites contained within us?

To comment: Click here. Then scroll down to comments and click again.

Grandma Moses & The Wisdom of Chickens

In This Bloutcher

• Announcements
• Grandma Moses and The Wisdom of Chickens
• From My Sketchbook

Announcements

• If you're in Boston mark September 13th @ 7 pm, Newton Free Library. I will be doing an author's talk and book signing. I will also have a surprise guest who will be bringing some surprise goodies! Bring a neighbor.
  
• Charlie Finesilver whose story appears in Becoming a Life Change Artist (he sold his plumbing business and then he and his wife joined the Peace Corp in their mid fifties) reports: "Your book pretty much captures my life experiences and changes. But I must tell you that I have been dressing like Monet lately, which has been getting a lot of attention..." Let's hear it for Charlie and his inner Monet!!!
• And if you plan to be in Central New Jersey on the evening of September 21st, I will be speaking to the New Jersey Professional Coaches Association in Edison, New Jersey.
• If you are a writer or interested in writing and books consider contacting my co-author Kathy Jordan. She is an active member of a remarkable on-line organization called SheWrites--over 9,000 strong women who have formed a community related to writing and books. You can reach Kathy for more info at http://www.drkathyjordan.com/contact/
  

Grandma Moses and The Wisdom of Chickens

"If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens."



Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses) spent her first 70+ years raising 10 children and working at broidery. In her mid 70s she picked up a paint brush for the first time. She died in 1961 at the age of 101 with a reputation as one of America's pre-eminent folk artists. She was still painting.

But if she had not painted the last quarter of her life she tells us she would have raised chickens. What are we to make of this claim?

For one thing, she was clearly not full of herself.

For another, she is going against the grain of a popular view that seems to be out there today. Many folks seek a purpose or passion in life. While such a quest is certainly worthy it risks the effect of making those who do not find a single purpose or passion feeling somehow inadequate or with a sense that something is missing in their lives. They may feel somehow diminished. Perhaps even on the periphery. But what about those who have lots of interests? What about those who cannot seem to find that one true passion? What about those who believe there is more than one of us in each of us?

Grandma Moses to the rescue. You can always raise chickens. Or shell peas. Grandma Moses understood there is more than one possibility in our lives. More than a single scenario or narrative. I cannot help but think that some of us have multiple passions and purposes. Contradiction? Well, I take comfort in Grandma Moses and her chickens and also in Walt Whitman.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes.

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From My Sketchbook

My sketchbook is a hodgepodge of stuff. I sketch. I journal. I admonish myself. I motivate myself. I chronicle fleeting ideas or capture quotes. Sometimes I do all at once. As I did on this page.
Aren't we all a little strange?

Book Neat, Life Messy

In This Bloutcher

• Announcements
• Book Neat, Life Messy; Or Seeing Matisse's Basket of Oranges in person for the first time

Announcements

• My sister Miriam reports: "My iPhone has now stopped auto correcting bloutcher (to butcher) and has started autofilling "bloutcher." Made me think: iPhone therefore iAm!

• An idea to unabashedly promote Becoming a Life Change Artist. Recommend the book for book clubs you are part of

• I will be speaking to the New Jersey Professional Coaches Association on September 21, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn, Raritan Center, Edison, New Jersey. Topic: "The Great Masters of Art Reveal the Secrets to a New Coaching Paradigm." You can find a full listing of future speaking and programs on the events page of my website: www.fredmandell.com
  

Book Neat, Life Messy

Matisse's painting Basket of Oranges, 1912, is luxuriously succulent. Just ask Pablo Picasso. You see, Picasso and Matisse were great artistic rivals, yet Picasso was so smitten by Basket of Oranges that he acquired it in the early 1940's and kept it in his home until his death in 1973. Today, it hangs in the Picasso Museum in Paris.

I first encountered this painting in an art book. The color was so vibrant, the design so balanced and clean that I acquired a photographic image and set it on my desk. I marveled at the creative prowess of Matisse that he could paint something more perfect, more flawless than the original basket of oranges. Whenever I got hungry it seemed to fill me up. I don't mean to over romanticize the thing but the painting did nourish me.

Then I visited the Picasso Museum in Paris last spring with great anticipation at seeing this painting. As I approached it I was struck from a distance by its enduring luminescence. The pinks vibrated, the oranges pulsated, the very painting seemed to want to leap from the wall.

But as I got closer something strange happened. I was no longer looking at a photographic representation of the painting in a book, but the real McCoy, up close and personal and what I saw really set me back. The surface of the painting had been worked and reworked. Parts had been scraped out and other parts had been painted over. The surface was not photographically smooth but scratched and thickened. Certain sections looked almost primitively dabbed at as though they had been put there in a fit of frustration. Yet, despite these many "imperfections"--or perhaps because of them--the painting took on a new kind of breathless beauty for me, one born out of the struggle to not accept the ordinary.

I walked away from Basket of Oranges in a sweat. I felt I had not only encountered a great painting but I had been taught a life lesson. Real life like real painting is a messy process. What may seem effortless from a distance or in a book is in truth the outcome of struggle, emotional ups and downs, fits and starts, tears and fears. It can be plain ugly.

Life can be like that also. We experience moments of grace and beauty. We aspire as Joseph Campbell said for the "experience of being alive" more than we aspire to the meaning of life. Most of the time, though, we are at the easel of our lives dabbing, scraping, painting over, scraping again, experimenting and wondering how to get the most out of ourselves.

Matisse's greatness is in part due to his willingness to endure the messiness of it all in order to create something extraordinary. I can't speak for Picasso but my hunch is that he may have bought the painting to remind himself of that as well.

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The Day Cezanne Turned Leadership Upside Down

In This Bloutcher(TM)

• Announcements
• The Day Cezanne Turned Leadership Upside Down

Announcements:

Believe it or not today is the official release date of Becoming a Life Change Artist; 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life. You can now actually order and receive a copy. Lots of credit goes to our amazing agent Joanne Wyckoff at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth. zshliterary.com. Thanks also to Esmond Harmworth for his initial encouragement. And thanks to our Penguin Avery Group team for all they have done. Lucia Watson, Miriam Rich, Lisa Johnson, Adenike Olanrewaju, Gordon Lindsay, Jessica Chun, Megan Newman, Bill Shinker. A Great Group!

All you folks in the environs of Denver, please join my Co-author Kathy Jordan at the Tattered Cover Bookstore, 7:30 p.m., August 12, Highland Ranch Location.

I am currently on a national radio interview tour over the next several days. This means I sit at my desk and get interviewed by radio stations around the country. These include: KLPW, "Lifestyle Matters"; KAHI, "The Mary Jane Popp Show"; KAAM, "The Breakfast Club"; WGET, "The Breakfast Nook"; WUML-FM, "It's Your Health Radio"; KEEL-AM "David McMillen Show"; Lifestyle Radio Network, "The Frankie Boyer Show"; WDEV-FM "True North Radio." Among others.

Please join me on August 10th at the Brookline Booksmith, Brookline at 7 pm for a talk and book signing.


The Day Cezanne Turned Leadership Upside Down

Several days ago I met a good friend Ellen Glanz for some ice tea. Since there were no seats available in the Starbucks we decided to take a walk. There are three things you should know about Ellen. She is incredibly bright and curious. She was born with a unique insightfulness gene. And she has a wonderfully uplifting smile. She's also an accomplished management consultant and photographer. And we never know where our conversations will take us. So maybe that's four or five things.

Our conversation turned to the subject of leadership and Ellen was curious how my involvement with art might have influenced my view of leadership so I told her about an experience I had which profoundly changed the way I look at leadership.

Several years ago I enrolled in a drawing class. I had not taken an art class since the seventh grade. My instructor was a very perceptive yet gruff critic. In the middle of my second class, he stopped in front of my work, folded his arms across his chest, and began shifting his eyes between my drawing surface and the model. "What are you trying to do?" he asked, his voice tinged with genuine puzzlement.

I explained that I was trying to render on the page what I saw with my eyes.

Well, it was as though I had lit a match to Vesuvius.

"No, no, no," he erupted. "Follow Cezanne. For you, Cezanne should be the beginning and end. You do not see in order to draw. Cezanne teaches us just the opposite. You draw in order to see! Drawing is a search. It is discovery. If you take anything from this class it is this: You do not see in order to draw, you draw in order to see!"

Cezanne Self Portrait

Now that was a mouthful. And totally liberating. Cezanne caused nothing less than a revolution in my understanding of drawing and art in general. You draw in order to discover. You learn through the process of drawing. In that moment I felt as though I had rediscovered art.

Now what does this have to do with leadership? Over the years I have had many discussions with individuals who aspired to grow as leaders. Many times, they ask: "What would you suggest I learn in order to be a better leader. I need to learn in order to lead." My response would often involve a combination of some reading suggestions, a call to become a keen observer of other leaders and the encouragement to seek new "stretch" assignments.

I still believe that is sound advice. But Cezanne has totally turned my thinking on its head. Now I share a different perspective. Cezanne advised that one does not see in order to draw; rather one draws in order to see. So now I humbly suggest that one does not learn in order to lead. Rather one leads in order to learn. I am not speaking here about technical learning--that's basic. I am talking about the deeper learning and insight that builds wisdom and contributes to one becoming a more effective leader. I am talking about modeling a new kind of leadership.

I'm not alone in thinking this way. Peter Drucker wrote eloquently about his belief that the leader of the future will not lead by knowing, especially since the complexity of today's world does not allow one person to know all things, but will lead by asking questions.

What is new for me in this, though, is the sequence and emphasis. For a long time I thought one needed to develop an area of expertise before assuming a leadership role. I realize now that there are at least two kinds of learning. The first is what might be called technical learning, the kind that is necessary to develop one's baseline competence. The other, and in many ways tougher, kind of learning might be referred to as leadership wisdom, and that only comes from a willingness to step into the unknown by doing, processing, reflecting, reintegrating--in other words, by constantly reinventing oneself through learning the lessons of leadership. This kind of learning is generative/regenerative and a source of self renewal for individuals and organizations. And it is a fundamentally creative process!!

This is why I believe Cezanne's understanding of drawing so profoundly mirrors a critical lesson for leaders today. Just as he suggested that one does not see in order to draw, but one draws in order to see--so too is it important that leaders do not learn in order to lead, but they lead in order to learn.

Ellen then brought me back to earth. She mentioned a few books I had not read and flashed her terrific smile. And then she said, "I really like these upside down walks. We never do know where the conversation will lead."

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Pizza, Dead Bodies and the Creativity of Limitations

In this bloutcher:

• Response to "Welcome to My Bloutcher(TM)."
• Pizza, Dead Bodies and the Creativity of Limitations
• Announcements
• From my sketchbook: Self Portrait Done from Car Mirror While Waiting (Again) for Karen

What a great response to "Welcome to My Bloutcher(TM)."

Thanks for all your wonderful feedback on the maiden voyage of my bloutcher. It seems to have hit a cord. And has raised a few very serious questions.

Jeff Weinberger wants to know: "Is the act which defines writing a bloutcher bloutching? Can we conjugate a new verb 'to bloutch?' Can I kvetch when I bloutch?"

Howard Stone has inquired: "Is bloutcher now an official scrabble word?"

These are serious questions which I need to ponder. As always, your thoughts are welcome.

How Bloutcher?

BLogjOUrnalskeTCHbooknewslettER = Bloutcher. Rhymes with Voucher.


Pizza, Dead Bodies and the Creativity of Limitations

A good friend of mine, Frances Caravana, recently sent me the following story.

An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey. He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult to work, as the ground was hard. His son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent, I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days. Love Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son. Dear Pop, Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried. Love Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left.

That same day the old man received another letter from his son. Dear Pop Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances. Love Vinnie

This story reminded me of what the late great Gene Cohen called "practical creativity." Cohen provides another illustration in his book The Mature Mind.

His in-laws, both in their seventies, found themselves emerging from a Washington, DC subway into a raging snowstorm. Since it was rush hour there were no cabs to take them to their dinner host's home. Gene's father-in-law noticed the steamy window of a pizza shop across the street so the couple trudged through the slush, stepped to the counter and ordered a large pizza for delivery.

When it came time to pay he said, "Oh, there's one more thing."

"What's that?" asked the puzzled cashier.

"We want you to deliver us with the pizza."

Now that was brilliant. And the pizza cost less than the cab ride--even with the tip!!

These two stories got me thinking. We often assume that creativity thrives when it does not have any constraints imposed on it. Where our creative instincts are freed from limitations and allowed to soar unfettered in whatever direction they choose. The reality may be quite different, however. Creativity may derive from just the opposite. Try this. Creativity sprouts when it is faced with limitations, sometimes severe limitations. Limitation, not freedom, is its birthplace. It is the very nature of creativity to be born out of the tension between perceived and real constraints and the need for new possiblities. Vinnie, of course, had severe limitations.

In fact, the jail bars are a kind of metaphor for the way we are all imprisoned in some form or another by ours assumptions. The presence of the prison walls created a basic tension and inspired an entirely new approach. Vinnie turned his imprisonment into an asset. He knew the feds would bite because he knew what their assumptions were. So, unable to physically help his father, he ingeniously converted your everyday U.S. Postal Service into a co-conspirator. And bite they did!

And what about Gene Cohen's in-laws? They were surrounded by limitations. The inhospitable weather. The absence of taxi-cabs. It was the very severity of these limitations that led them to such an inventive (and cost effective) solution.

So what can we glean from Vinnie and the in-laws? What are the critical elements that make creativity work when confronted by limitations?

• Define the challenge--a clear understanding of the limitations one faces
• Adopt a Possibilities Orientation--Using the limitations as an inspiration for creativity not an impendiment to it
• Suspend Beliefs--Allowing data to come rather than judging it
• Freshen Your Eyes--Leveraging what is commonplace in the environment in new, different ways
• Play--Make it into a game

Send me examples of "practical creativity" you've encountered. Fred@fredmandell.com

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Announcements:

Join me on August 10th at the Brookline Booksmith for an Author's Talk and Book signing for Becoming a Life Change Artist; 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life. Starts at 7 pm.

And if you are in the Denver area be sure to show up for my co-author, Kathy Jordan's, talk at the Tattered Cover Book Store, Highlands Ranch Location, August 12, 7:30 pm.

Note your calendars for September 13th at the Newton Free Library where Discovering What's Next is sponsoring an author's talk and book signing, beginning at 7 pm. Try to get there a few minutes early because I will have a special guest handing out some yummies. Clue: A Real Life Life Change Artist.

From my sketchbook:

I carry my sketchbook wherever I go. For one thing, I often find myself waiting for my wife Karen. If you know her you understand. On this particular wait I sketched myself staring into the car mirror. I could also have read a book which I often do but in this one moment the goofy expression on my face seemed to capture the existential recognition of hopeless surrender. I also ended up reading a book.

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Finally, please consider Becoming a Life Change Artist; 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life as an interesting read for any BOOK CLUBS you are part of.

Welcome to my Bloutcher(TM)!

Huh?

French philosopher Voltaire bloutchering at his desk in the 1700s.

So I looked up the following in Websters:

* Blog—personal journal with reflections
* Newsletter—small publication containing news of interest to a special group. If you’re reading this you’re special!
* Journal—a record of experiences, ideas, reflections kept regularly for private use.
* Sketchbook—a book of or for sketches. I’m assuming sketches can be verbal as well as visual.

So naturally I came up with the idea of a bl[og][j]ou[rnal][ske]tch[book][newslett]er. Bloutcher(TM). (Rhymes with voucher.) An all in one deal.


My idea is to combine personal reflections, news of interest (announcements, among other things,) ideas and experiences, and sketches both visual and verbal.

Why do I want to do this?

* I’m bored? Nope
* I’m self important? God, I hope nope
* I have something to say? That’s not for me to say
* Can’t help myself? Maybe
* To provoke? Probably
* I’ve never bloutchered before? You betcha
* To live my Creative Mantra? Definitely

(My Creative Mantra: Create, Integrate, Make a Difference)


It’s all about creating possibilities. For myself and others. Pushing the edge. Turning things upside down. Etc.

So what can you expect?

* News and announcements
* Commentary and reflections
* Provocative ideas
* Regular irregularity—that means not every day. Probably not even every week. But you’ll know I’m here.


Possible Bloutcher(TM) Content—At least, some of it.

* Creativity
* Transitions & Life Change
* Art and Life
* The Art of Life
* The Life of Art
* Leadership
* Innovation
* Aging Positively


In this bloutcher(TM)

* Announcements
* First Entry: Love, Hate and Truth

Announcements:

Becoming a Life Change Artist; 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life will be released by the Penguin Group/Avery on August 3rd. To order an advanced copy go to www.fredmandell.com

I will be doing an author's talk at the Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA on August 10th at 7 p.m.

I am working on a creativity tool with Donna Krone called "Unlocking Your Creative Mantra." Should be ready by late August/early September.

My first entry:

Love, Hate and Truth

I have a love-hate relationship with Picasso. I love the way he constantly experimented with and reinvented his art. I hate his overbearing egotism. I love the incredibly human and sensitive figures from his classical period. I hate his personal streaks of meanness. I love his spirit of artistic playfulness and his willingness to take risks. I hate his sexual deceits and conceits. I love his quote-ability. He is probably the most quotable artist in history.

Picasso claimed that “Art is a lie that helps us to realize the truth.” Now it’s always dangerous to interpret what someone means but I think Picasso is speaking to the dynamic that a painting of something is not the same as the original something. For instance, a painting of a bouquet of flowers is not the original bouquet. In that sense the painting is a lie and the original bouquet is the truth. But he is also getting at the fact that the painting comes to be its own truth. It stands on its own two feet independent of the original subject. In some sense you can argue that Van Gogh’s famous painting of sunflowers is more sublime than the original sunflowers themselves. A painting helps us realize a new truth.


Last week I learned that Picasso was talking about life as well as art.

This was brought home to me while speaking to a woman who had been on a remarkable journey of growth and healing. She had been abused since childhood, fell into addictive behavior and ultimately straightened herself out and became a highly productive citizen. But she had recently (now in her mid forties) found herself stuck. In the midst of our conversation she suddenly said, “You know, who I am is not who I am.”

We both fell quiet at these words, silently acknowledging their apparent contradiction. How can you not be who you are? And then I realized she was not so much contradicting herself as she was speaking Picasso-ese. I haltingly offered: “Could you be saying who you are today does not represent who you are underneath—there’s another less visible you trying to come out. You want to create a new visible truth about yourself.” “Yes,” she said, “but sometimes I think it’s just too difficult to figure out how to do that.”

Since that conversation I have wondered how many of us arrive at a point where we realize we are living a representation of ourselves that is no longer who we really are. We have become what Picasso calls “a lie”—we are no longer aligned with what truly matters to us. The good news is that we can “realize” a new truth. That’s one of the things I love about Picasso. His art is an affirmation of new possibilities in life as it is in art. It may not be easy. But it’s true.

Check out the Events tab on my website (www.fredmandell.com) to see some of the events I will be speaking at. Let me know if you would like to attend any of them.

Oh, yes. Since this is my first bloutcher(TM) I would appreciate it if you would pass it on to others you think might find it interesting.