Saturday, January 7, 2012

give me more. slowly.


we move fast. expect concise[ness], clarity, efficiency...all things quickly and to the point, for us to process, quickly, and move to the next. good, at times, in our time strapped business world. but it's an over used maxim and we've fallen victim to the illusion that anything worth knowing comes in easily processed bytes.

we're at risk of losing the beautiful, comple,x metaphor, the well crafted allegory.
i'm reading melville's 'confidence man.' in a sentence that reads more like a paragraph it takes him well over a hundred words to say 'the ferry is crowded and people keep getting on and off.' he dresses the mundane with the extraordinary, concluding with this 'like Rio Janerio fountain, fed from the Corcovado mountains, which is ever overflowing with strange waters, but never with the same strange particles in every part.' it's fucking beautiful, and anything but concise. you'll of course argue that this language and pace has it's place, just not in the business world. i'll say the business world is no different than any other part of your world. evoke the floral. be long winded and inspire.

Monday, January 2, 2012

finds: free knowledge?

i've never really dug too deep into off campus courses, or the multitude of free classes out there...but i came across this list today and i'm pretty psyched to dig in: FREE CLASS via open OPEN CULTURE. go us.

finds: via retronaut "space oddity" for babies


retronaut is quickly becoming one of my most favoritist places in the digital swamp. i can't get enough. and here's proof. david bowie's "space oddity" as a children's book [i know]. get out of here. i'm off to find this. read the whole thing here.

post: did a little more digging on this - it was a pet project of an amazing [and new favorite] illustrator: andrew kolb check out his stuffs. all super. but sad news is that someone from the bowie house came by and made him remove any association to space oddity. zzzzz. go suits.

col*LAB*orate V: yo yo and lil buck


i may be a little behind on this, but in morning readings this beautiful collaboration between cellist yo yo ma and dancer lil buck popped up. dig.