Strands of Genius: Undiscovered Werewolf, Entertain to Fame, Beautiful Words
plus our thoughts on: niblings
WRITING FROM | Beersheba Springs, TN
WORKING ON | Recovering from a surprise birthday party, workshops, the last meeting of our second Experimental Community, an article, travel planning, chasing signatures, checks and testimonials.
LOOKING AHEAD
May 10 - June 4: Nashville, TN
June 4-9: Beersheba Springs, TN
June 9-14: Nashville, TN
June 15-30: New York, NY (R)
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Rosie surprised Faris with a birthday bonanza! 30+ fully vaxxed loved ones secretly made their way to the Cumberland Mountains and much was celebrated. It was wonderfully refreshing and emotional to be around a bunch of fantastic humans again. Thanks so much to everyone who could be with us in person and to those that sent heartfelt missives from afar!
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
puzzles and clues, incredible sneaky organizing skills, old and new friends, great weather, an incredible variety of hard seltzers, hugging people, playing games, white elephants, community cooking, collaborative clean up, our second ELC community’s graduation, the lights coming back on today and the guys still working on the power lines out front.
:: THE LINKS ::
OF WOLVES AND MEN?
What if John Steinbeck, giant of American letters, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, famed for his realistic rendition of Depression era poverty, wrote a werewolf novel? Beast of Eden! The Grapes of Wolf! What’s that? He did?! It’s called Murder at Full Moon (of course!) and even features illustrations by Steinbeck - but we may never get to read it. (Guardian)
LET US ENTERTAIN THEM - WHY FAME MATTERS
Faris’ column this month looks at the key ingredient in successful advertising - fame. Paul Feldwick’s new book Why Does the Pedlar Sing? explores the importance of fame in advertising and why the industry became squeamish about embracing that. Succesful creative leaders have always intuited that publicity is key. As Posh Spice wrote in her autobiography “Right from the beginning, I said I wanted to be more famous than Persil Automatic.” (WARC)
WHAT MAKES A WORD BEAUTIFUL?
Faris is an unabashed fanboy of words - but what makes some more beautiful than others? The sounds, shapes, the structure and how it interplays with the meanings… This short analysis also contains a curated collection of favorites: caesura, flibbertigibbet, taffeta, and sesquipedalian. (British Library)
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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: MAKING SPACE ::
(Get it? Lol.)
:: AND NOW… NIBLINGS ::
From the list of beautiful words above…a very useful one! We love our niblings!
Please don’t hesitate to hit reply if there’s a project where you could use some outsourced thinking ;) We’d love to collaborate.
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
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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 :)