Strands of Genius: Quantity vs Quality, 136 Best Internet Videos, Cult Buffet
plus: our thoughts on creativity and commitment to the bit, and a light dusting of snow
WRITING FROM | Nashville, TN
WORKING ON | the School of Stolen Genius
LOOKING AHEAD
Feb 3-16: Nashville, TN
Feb 16-28: Beersheba Springs, TN
Feb 29-March 15: Nashville, TN (Rosie)
March 1-15: London, UK (Faris)
March 4-6: London, UK | Big TV Festival
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Some snow, some sun, weather is fun, but not if you are suffering in storms.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
daffodils (which Rosie thought were called buttercups until yesterday), Nashville’s Sanctuary for Yoga, the Wonder Woman Project, female friendships, YouTube videos on doodling, informal dinner parties where it’s OK if you burn the carrots, King sized beds, The Joker, JoJo Rabbit, rocking chairs on front porches, a light dusting of snow, and hot tea and honey.
:: THE LINKS ::
QUALITY, QUANTITY, CREATIVITY & THE GOLDEN AGE OF TELEVISION
Jonah Lehrer begins, “There are two competing narratives about the current television landscape. The first is that we’re living through a golden age of scripted shows. From The Sopranos to Transparent, Breaking Bad to The Americans: the art form is at its apogee. The second narrative is that there’s way too much television - more than 400 scripted shows! - and that consumers are overwhelmed by the glut.” So why is this a recurring narrative, and what’s at the heart of the paradox? The relationship between quantity and quality, when considering creativity. (Lehrer)
SEX AND SCOTCH EGGS
A twitter user at a vegan co-op in London accidentally encounters fully robed members of a sexmagic cult founded by Aleister Crowley on the way to the toilet. The thread is just the afternoon pick-me-up we needed. (Twitter Thread)
CONDE NAST’S VIDEO EDITOR SHARES 136 VIDEOS THAT BLEW HIS MIND
To celebrate Joe Sabia’s 5 year anniversary leading creative development at Conde Nast Entertainment, he compiled a list of internet videos which have left some sort of impression on him. Sub-sectioned into 7 parts - videos that felt like new forms, wonderfully experimental, artsy, tinkering with clips, brainy, novel pranks and lastly, “just weird” -- this google presentation is perfect for pulling reference points, or simply brightening up a colleague’s day. (Google Docs)
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: COMMIT TO THE BIT ::
On creativity, quality, quantity, and commitment
In Rosie’s family mountain house where we host events, there are many, many pigs. This started as a family joke. The matriarch once received an ornamental pig as a gift, and she was not particularly pleased with it, so she politely banished it to the holiday home. A visiting guest noticed the pig, and gifted another, which was also promptly banished. Big Moms, as Rosie’s petite grandmother is known, mentioned it to her kids, who have quite the sense of humor. And so the story goes, that year there was a deluge of porcine presents. Now, decades later, it is a thing in its own right, running on its own steam, across several generations of family and friends. There are hundreds of pigs in pictures and porcelain and product. In totality, there is a pig thing.
Creativity responds well to commitment. As the article above suggests (by Jonah Lehrer), creativity is a highly subjective endeavor, so the only way to manage risk is to make many things, light lots of fires, embrace a portfolio model of culture production. However, there are various other aspects of the relationship. Many artists become known for a kind of work, which requires one to decide and pursue something specific. Individual things like a photo framed a certain way, take on a qualitatively different creative tone, when collated in large numbers - quantity creates the quality. And deadlines make work happen.
By way of example, Faris has been writing a monthly column about effective brand communication for five years, so he is forced to keep exploring the topic from different angles. Writing this newsletter every week for seven years or so keeps us engaged, thinking and articulating our ideas.
In comedy, when you commit to the bit, you go all in, you sell it, perform it, you don’t undercut the joke by breaching the fiction, you see it through. By committing to bits, creating deadlines that have meaning, you make yourself deliver regularly. (And that’s part of why we are committing to the School of Stolen Genius, because it’s important to us to keep learning and growing and sharing, experiments and ideas!)
:: AND NOW… SNOW DAY ::
It only lasted a morning, but the schools were closed, and Rosie worked from her onesie so it was a real snow day.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Getting to meet like-minded folks is one of the best parts of living nomadically, so please let us know if you see if we'll be in a city near you :)
rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed
Know someone who could use some inspiration in their inbox? Send ‘em our way!
It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)
SPEAKING
We're currently booking speaking gigs for the year.
Check out full descriptions and key learnings from our talks on here:
http://bit.ly/TalkDescriptions2019