Words I learned today : teal, pier, unfurling, to cling…
OooO
Following the article I wrote yesterday about creativity, I think that the most effective tip, the simplest one, is to walk. It just works : as soon as you’re outside walking because you have to buy a French baguette and two croissants for the breakfast with your lover, you have ideas. Ideas for life, obviously (solutions), but also ideas to write about if you’re a person of words.
I’m slightly disturbed in this process sometimes because I am a little photographer, therefore here am I with my eye, seeing lights and frames, watching trees, doors and gutters.
The creativity book told that walking for ideas works also inside, it’s the movement that works, even around a desk. I was not so sure then I remembered things, like this film editor who always worked standing up in front of his machines. He said that to create (and a film editor creates scenes) you have to “feel”, to be ground-linked, a state you do not have when you’re sitting on a chair.
I heard about many writers or artists (Flaubert for sure, Stravinsky maybe) who wrote/composed standing up in front of a lectern…
And maybe bloggers, I suppose, know this : when your article is done, you post it then you stand up to sip orange juice or to shower or to check your postbox, and bim you’re flooded by new paragraphs, extensions, corrections and new words or pitched four words sentences : you have to run back on your chair with this rush…
OooO
An intern told me about some funny little UK series like “Black Books” and “The IT Crowd”. So I gave it a try (in English with English sub). I’m not used to this humor which is : casual, dares everything, childish and very smart at the same time – messy haired, hilarious, stupid, inventive, poetic and clownesque tout à la fois.
Apart from Friends, what are you’re best funny (unknown) TV series?
OooO
With Christmas coming I miss time but I’ll begin next week : to find 4 or 5 “Best Albums of 2018” lists on the web, study them, YouTube them and try to find nuggets and marvels…
OooO
I’m working a lot on GuruShots, a perpetual multi-challenges full of photographers. It’s really interesting to try to please this crowd while staying myself (and not bending my work towards the community hidden standards (which are ugly to me)). In a way there’s a part of manipulation, excitement (a single picture can get hundreds of likes within minutes), challenge (you have to build some pictures, like this tortoise one) and thinking (you have to prepare, schedule and decide about the little tools they provide you), all this to climb in the hierarchy.
When I write and article about a great photographer, I am flabbergasted : these masters would never win anything in GuruShots : too inventive, too dark, too strange, too empty. They are out of the box…
OooO
“One doest not fit” within his parents or the milieu they grow in (think : “Matilda”), it’s really annoying but also gives a rush to witness… I wonder how many writers came from that, writing to flee…
OooO
So it’s the old story of directors who give everything in their life then become to make bad films (Hitchcock, De Palma, Argento), but it’s not true for everyone (Lean, Kurosawa, Spielberg). Del Toro, I dislike everything, thus I watched The Shape of Water skeptically, and I’ve been amazed by everything : a perfect casting, great music and decors, dialogs, scenario. The traps were many (like to push too far the Jeunet/Amelie mood), and it’s been perfectly done.
Have a nice day! Thanks for reading!
Jean-Pascal
a french toolbox 