A Sense of What it was Really Like For You
re-inspiration for clients and friends of www.InspiringWebCopy.com
an “aperiodical”—to speak when I am moved to speak
issue 43-49, June 2009
Note--the photographs by my father in this issue may not display in your email client. To see them you can go to www.inspiringnewsletter.blogspot.com. Thanks.
Issue 43, Tuesday June 9th
Mozart Makes You Happier
The benefits have often been touted for increasing intelligence*. But can it make you happier too?
After a few minutes of research, I was firmly convinced it can--my memory is not clear now but I think one of the things about it, the Divertimento in E flat, is the almost ludicrous upbeats to the continuing phrases. As I replay it in my head I'm not finding the spot, but I remember being struck by that. It's just not right to be that happy! Maybe it's the viola accompaniment, the repeating pattern. Nope, it is the three up beats in the second theme, and the whole sense of this very silly thing being taken absolutely seriously that seems to reset priorities to a healthy and appropriate lightheartedness.
(Update--later the same week I, normally very self-conscious in public, found myself singing the first movement in the subway station. I never do that with Mahler, occasionally with Brahms, hoping my voice will sound reasonably operatic, but with Mozart it's just not possible to stay self-conscious about one's performance because I'm having too much damn fun.)
--
*I've also read somewhere that research on "the Mozart effect"--in raising intelligence-- was actually inconclusive but had gotten hyped by the popular media. While the Mozart Happiness Effect remains to be validated by further scientific research, it's also pretty obvious if you do a controlled study on yourself for two minutes.
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Issue 44, Wednesday, June 17
A Sense of What It was Really Like for You:
inspiring Interview with Eric Myrvaagnes, photographer
I've grown up with my father's photographs and took it for granted that every father must take such beautiful pictures and see so much in nature. It was a bit surreal to be interviewing him, and it allowed me to see his work again with new eyes. It's also been an honor and privilege to work with him as an un-coaching client, and not only has he learned something new in each conversation we've had, but I've learned something fascinating that has fed my soul. This interview captures a little of what he says when he's made comfortable to speak.
IN: What inspires you to photograph?
Eric Myrvaagnes: Hm. One of the things that interetsed me abut it first was that you cudl point this device at something that you saw that was interesting and be able to remember it later.
Also, my first experience wiht a camera was seeing my older brother, he'd gotten one and was interested in the process, so he was developing his own photos. We didn't have a darkroom, so he got contact sheets and chemicals and trays and worked in the closet, and I remember he would work so long that at the end his leg would have cramped up so much he had to be helped out of there. And I was very intrigued that anything could be so interesting to someone that they would be willing to undergo physical discomfort.
I go to Plum Island and feel a very moving spiritual presence in the patterns of sand and water and light, and these move me really deeply. . .
Then when I was at Greenwood [Music Camp], I borrowed his camera and took snapshots of people. I remember that at first they were self-conscious and put on a face when they saw me with the camera, but soon they got used to seeing it and ignored it, so I was able to get natural expressions.
Untitled (Vermillion Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, July, 2004)
The clash of the clutter of rocks with the unreal-ly smooth water in this feels so sad and right to me.
--JDM.
Then at Harvard someone suggested I get on the Crimson photo board. I learned more from that than from my classes. But it began to look like the assignments from that would take 40 hours a week and maybe I should start going to at least some of my classes.
A classmate of mine saw my photographs and thought they were pretty good. I was able to sneak into the Kirkland House darkroom after hours, thanks to his expertise at making master keys, so I worked in there. He also encouraged me to work on my landscapes, and introduced me to the photographs of Ansel Adams, Minor White, and Edward Weston. I saw an exhibit of Minor White's at MIT and was so amazed I wrote him a letter. He invited me to take his workshop, so I did. Taking the workshop with Minor White was life-changing. And he validated things I'd already felt to be true but hadn't been able to articulate, and got me to really see, in closer detail. The lessons from Minor White and Paul Capinigro keep coming back, and I begin to understand things now, fifty years later, that sort of went over my head at the time.
IN: What inspires you now?
EM: It's strange, since I started with portraits and have done very little with people since then. Most people do tend to get self-conscious; it's such an effort to get them to look natural. I guess that's what attracted me to rocks, sea, sand, trees, and wilderness, nature never seems to be putting on a face for the camera.
Translating an uplifting experience in words, unless you're very good with words (and most of us are not), the person you're talking to gets that you had a sublime experience, but has no sense of what it was really like for you. This is what painters try to do and photographers try to do.
Things that interest me now--I used to think that content was more important, but I no longer think that, now what's most interesting and compelling to me is how an image is a metaphor--for a feeling or idea not directly to do with the thing itself. This is in my tar drip photographs and Plum Island sand pictures--their not about sand or water, but the interaction of shadow and light in sand and water produce forms that can be very expressive. . .the way tonalities can come together in the moment to produce very expressive images. One thing I learned during the first Minor White workshop was that when forms and shapes and sense of lighting all comes together the scene comes alive--or is living but at the moment everything comes together I'm privileged to be able to experience the life of the scene (trees, water), and this sense of the scene coming alive is a very important thing for me.
Untitled (Newton, late 1990s)
My father knows more about the life-cycle of tar drips than anyone else I've met, and can recognize the "signature" styles of the different road repair crews in Newton.
--JDM
In the context of our lives as a whole, how can photography most nourish people?
One thing that drives the impulse in both serious and amateur photographers is that you experience something that gives you great joy and you want to share it with people. For example sunsets and rainbows, even though millions of pictures of them have been taken, when you're experiencing it it still feels sublime: this one moment is happening. Translating an uplifting experience in words, unless you're very good with words (and most of us are not), the person gets that you had a sublime experience, but has no sense of what it was really like for you. This is what painters try to do and photographers try to do. I go to Plum Island and feel a very moving spiritual presence in the patters of sand and water and light, and these move me really deeply--one of the challenges in photography is to determine what aspects of an image will convey it to someone else? recently I have been getting there. It's taken responses from viewers giving me feedback to know.That kind of sharing can happen, but it doesn't happen automatically by taking a picture at a time when you're out there, that's where skill and experience are necessary. When I'm looking at something mundane or ugly, if I can see beauty and can present it in a way others will see--one way is my tar drips--a number of people have said they have started looking at pavement in an entirely new way, after seeing those photographs. Also graffiti on an abandoned railroad car in Kingston: "I never knew rust could be so beautiful."
Untitled (Plum Island, January, 2006)
Most people are in a rush these days--anything that can encourage people to take some time out to experience something beautiful can be nourishing.
If you could hang an exhibit anywhere, if you had a magic wand, where would you want to hang it?
At a good museum like the MoMA, but partly because people who go to museums are looking for that kind of experience. But on a more mundane level, I like the idea of more exhibitions are the Newton Library, because people who go there are a trained audience and are used to having a comment book and a regular invitation to respond to what you see, and people give feedback.
Is there any last thing you would want to add?
Your style of interviewing encourages the interviewee to come up with a pretty good "artist statement"--it's a good way of getting people to think about what makes people tick. I'm delighted, and I hope this has helped you in your quest.
Thank you for giving the interview, it was a pleasure.
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Issue 45, Thursday, June 18th
They Don't Need to Be Persuaded
My mastermind partner again twisted my head around. I thought I'd already covered the entire idea of the need for my purpose (my gift, what I'm best designed to do) to be operating only in a circumstance when the client wants me to succeed, without opposition). But hearing the same idea come out of his mouth, again, pulled me into a state of feeling how appealing that would be, to be working with someone who didn't need to be persuaded that what you have to offer is of value. It would be so much more pleasurable to be able to put one's energy into doing the work rather than into asking oneself the "what's wrong?" questions of "why is this person not persuaded that what I have to offer is of value?" To be putting one's full attention into being curious and asking questions.
In that way John Dempsey inspired me again.
It's also interesting to note that, in so doing, he persuaded me of something--a return to the belief that this kind of situation could be, that it was possible. If another person wants this, I felt there must be lots of people who want it, and if lots of people want it, then we ought to be able to find those people and work with them. Anyone who appreciates not having to persuade someone of their usefulness will be able to value the idea of not requiring others to do this. But I'm pretty sure this was persuading without an effort to persuade, since we were actually talking about his practice this week, not mine.
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Issue 46: Friday, June 12th
I said my purpose aloud in a room full of people
I told my artists group about my project of interviewing 100 people in 100 days, and it felt great to say this, and to say something about my purpose: I am pure capacity-to-be-inspired, and there is no way I can guarantee that I will be inspired since I don't inspire myself. I depend on you--whoever or whatever else is present--to inspire me, I don't do the inspiring. I may appear really serious and grim even, and yet when something comes along and inspires me I am ready to perceive it, notice what makes it inspiring, what makes it work, and describe this with clarity, specificity, and appreciation of its pleasurability and usefulness.
One of the other artist's had said something that inspired me to talk about this project--what we say in the group is confidential, so I can't talk about her project here unless/until I have her permission, but I want to note that what I say above had just happened, in fact.
The temptation to lie, however, to be polite and please people, is quite strong--"Sure, that was inspiring," I want to say, though not really feeling it. Technically, everything is inspiring--the fact that I have lungs and can breathe is such a miracle, of magic or chance, however you look at it, that I could theoretically appreciate every breath as inspiring. (That's what the word means, even.) But the kinds of things that inspire me in other people seem, to me anyway, far more interesting to talk about than breathing. I see an image of invisible streams of energy moving around in their bodies, in their abdomens, in particular, as somehow connected with inspiration.
I asked all the artists if I could interview them--that should be showing up here soon.
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Issue 47, Saturday, June 13th
What are the Elves' Treasures?
I was rereading The Elves of Lily Hill Farm, about a woman who is contacted by some elves and, with their help, grows many times more grapes in her vineyard with far less pesticide.
I'd remembered the events in this book with a lot of clarity, and the facts, and thought there'd be fairly little that would be new in a rereading. Yet I was totally transformed.
The passage that especially inspired me--the elves are complaining to her about how humans tear up everything in the fields and leave them with no place to store their treasures! It gave me this wonderful feeling of the happy, giddy joy that elves must take in their treasures, and curiosity about what would be a treasure to an elf, a being of nature, how that would differ from what we humans think of as a treasure (gold and money). What can they be burying in their special spots in the earth that could be allowed to grow and multiply if we did less tearing up of that earth? I was smiling as I read.
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Issue 48, Saturday June 13th
My character tells me he's got a story to tell
I recorded myself reading a chapter of my novel, so I'd be able to listen to it and it turned out my character, who is leading a ritual with some people who are not used to ritual, has a story. He, and I, both thought he didn't really have one, that his was less important than another character's. But in listening to my own voice speaking I had the space to feel what was going on as well as think it, and thereby to realize that something is happening in the novel in this chapter more than any other: he is allowing the other characters to expand their reality.
in this chapter, the protagonist leads a ritual and in the course of it he insists that he is a great poet and also that what the heart feels to be true is true. It is precisely by doing something that annoys them, something that is taboo in our culture--to claim that one is a genius--that he gives them permission to admit that they're geniuses also. My analytical brain had said, Nothing happens in this novel, nothing happens in this chapter, I need to fix it. But my intuitive brain saw a larger picture.
Since we all have an intuitive brain, we all have genius--1,000 to 10,000 times the processing speed of the usual brain we see used in our society.
Issue 49: Monday, June 15th
My Client Reminds Me Reality is Real
My client and colleague called and we chatted for a while. She talked about how it was difficult to see reality at times, when we're not in the right "mood" we can project so many things onto what's actually there that we may as well not be looking. She mentioned that the plants on her walk are actually explosions.
She's been re-reading a book I read recently, Summer with Leprechauns, about elementals, and at one point the leprechaun tells a human that one of the things they want from humans most is for humans to believe in their existence--that human disbelief is actually powerful enough to damage them.
The truth is often like a leprechaun, I find, and Kurt and Patricia Wright describe intuitive brain's voice (which always knows the truth) as being like a prairie dog: the minute it sees you coming, it's gone, popped down its hole. That means we need to make it very safe for the truth to show itself before it will show itself; if we're waiting for the truth to prove itself to our analytical brain, we can wait forever and never be satisfied.
My business has taken me in unexpected directions, and one particular project has seemed like it was failing miserably, running into obstacles at every turn. My client pointed out the similarities with the story we'd been reading--how the initial goal of harvesting 100 tons of grapes and becoming famous in the process eventually came to seem small compared to the larger goal of creating healing, and balance with nature. Was my story really as significant as that one? I felt it was--in a way, comparing them is not the point, but the felt sense of their measure is important.
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