connecting*the*dots

America Supports You: Sesame Street Teaches Troops’ Kids Coping Skills

[…]

“Military children are not the only ones who are involved in separation and deployments and the like,” he said. “One of the benefits that you get by doing something like this is that you’re also able to reach, say, kids from the State Department, kids from oil and gas companies, people whose parents are moving around and deploying all the time and undergo excessive absence much the same as military kids do.”

(via Neatorama)

While listening to KQED (out of Northern California) this afternoon (I love the Rabbit Radio widget), I came across this interview with Eric Maisel. Maisel is a "Creative Coach," spending his time helping creative people (primarily, artists and writers) understand their own temperment, so that they can better apply themselves to their craft.

Maisel argues that creative people are stubborn by design, beginning at an early age. He uses examples of how specific social conditioning exercises, such as the direction to color within the lines of a coloring book, creates children who are more apt to conform in society and not follow their creative tendencies. I found that one example very interesting, as I vividly remember as a child pointing out the devisive nature of the lines in my coloring book by always lining the edges of the images with strong, thick strokes, while lightly "coloring-in" the interior of the object with the same crayon.

If I were to apply Maisel’s position to my actions as a child, it’s as if I were emphasising the borders of expectation, illustrating the very nature of their confining strokes, while simultaneously remaining safe within their domain. Well, if that were true, at least it would explain my choices to join Beta Theta Pi in college and a few conservative corporations over the short course of my career.

Maisel also discusses creative temperment in context to bipolar disorder; how in order to be creative, one has to be viscerally ready and able to fail, as creativity relates to the cycles of life and death, success and failure, planning and stumbling, etc. His understanding of cyclical conceptualization, with abstract formation and pragmatic execution is pretty spot on. Kay Redfield Jamison, an accredited psychologist suffering from manic depression, has written about the same connections to the artistic temperment for years.

The thing about our culture is that people aren’t considered “creative” unless they do something different from the normality of society. Contributing expressive, innovative or valuable output within the productive cycle of culture is a clear way to be recognized as different (Van Gogh), yet so is the temperment to the approach of creating differentiating output (Van Gogh).

Maisel and Jamison’s observations are very telling of the temperament of society itself.

i remember the day i saw you for the first time
how you danced with the wind
swayed as a matter of fact
i knew in that instant my heart was jacked
stolen.
lost forever
caught in the breeze you controlled with ease.
why try to fight what you can’t control?
so i gave in to my desires
and i gave in to the moment
i was weak
i was in need of closure
trying to wrap it up in a ball
and toss it to the curb
to lose the jones for her touch once again
i needed to move on
one thing i knew for sure
is that i needed closure
then you started to sway in the midst of my gust
i must have been crazy to let on the need i had for you
how did i let myself fall?
why couldn’t i deal with my shit first before involving someone like you?
a sweet soul, tender to the touch
good to the core…
i tried to ring you in
i tried to have it all
you and all of my insecurities abound…
i knew better
but became intoxicated by your touch
your smell
your being
and now that i have buried my past with her
you are no more
but a moment of bliss
is better than a lifetime of remiss
so i’ll take the tryst
with blood clenched fists
i’ll move on and resist
the thought of your kiss