2 – Made To Move

MODULE TWO

Core question

What moves you?

Core practice

Discover what moves you before you try to move anyone else.

Good art isn’t static. It’s dynamic, emotional. Good art moves. As such, good art-makers know how to move people. And the best art, we can all agree, is the kind that moves, yes? And yet, before the maker can move anyone else, she must first be moved herself.

The good news?

You were made for this.

In 1868, Isaac Newton published his book, Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis. It is believed that he first started studying the effects of gravity after watching an apple fall.

“Why did it fall, and what determined the speed at which it fell?,” he pondered.

It is believed that this incident, along with his curiosity for seeing stars and planets floating overhead without falling to the ground, led him to develop what we now know as the laws of motion.

If you can recall that long-lost lesson from high school you might remember the following:

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

This law is often called:

The Law of Inertia

This means that there is a natural tendency of objects to keep on doing what they’re doing.

All objects resist changes in their state of motion. In the absence of an unbalanced force, an object in motion will maintain this state of motion.

Now if you think about this a little more esoterically, what I’ve just described is the story of us. It is the story of humanity. It is the story of you and of me.

You and I will just keep going the way we’re going unless something disturbs or disrupts us. And this is where art as movement comes in.

Love is not a feeling. No matter how much you feel, love means nothing when unrelated to action. Love is action. In order to engage in effective action you must first find something that you value and put it in the center of your life. When you put your life in the service of what you value, that action will engender other values and beliefs. Through engagement, things happen. Movement is all. Keep moving and yet slow down simultaneously. In Latin this is known as festina lente, “make haste slowly.” Inside of this paradox, you make a space where growth and art can happen. Within the framework of art, you will find a special freedom and the space and time to explore complexities. It does not cost you anything. It costs you your life. – Anne Bogart

Anne Bogart is a famous theatre director and a personal hero of mine. She writes so well about the act of making. As she states above, for her, the core of moving people is based out of love. If love is an action, then art must find its basis in love and must work to move from the inside out. From the artist first and then to the audience.

TIME OUT

Before moving forward take some time to reflect on this passage. As you think about your creed as it stands today, answer in your workbook and in the Facebook group, the following:

What it would look like to put your life in service of love, meaning, and movement?

So, how do you move someone?

Ok, ok, enough about me, you might be saying.

If our work is to move people, isn’t that what we should be focusing on? The people we ought to be moving?

Yes. Eventually. But it should not always be your primary focus.

If the artist wants to move people…

Or in other words, if the artist wants to make her audience feel loved…

…she must understand what she loves first.

So, how does THAT happen?

Let me tell you a story.

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand

Of precious wood. When it was finished,

All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be

The work of spirits.

The Prince of Lai said to the master carver

“What is your secret?”

Khing replied, “I am only a workman:

I have no secret. There is only this:

When I began to think about the work you commanded

I guarded my spirit, did not expend it

on trifles, that were not to the point.

I fasted in order to set

My heart at rest.

After three days fasting,

I had forgotten praise or criticism.

After seven days

I had forgotten my body

With all its limbs.

“By this time all thought of your Highness

And of the court had faded away.

All that might distract me from the work

Had vanished.

I was collected in the single thought

Of the bell-stand.

“Then I went to the forest

To see the trees in their own natural state.

When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.

All I had to do was to put forth my hand

And begin.

“If I had not met this particular tree

There would have been

No bell stand at all.

My own collected thoughts

Encountered the hidden potential in the wood:

From this live encounter came the work

Which you ascribe to the spirits.”

This story comes from the Taoist, Chinese monk, Chuang Tzo and it does such a lovely job at helping us understand the work we all long to do – work that is meaningful and moving; work that comes from within us rather than work that is forced upon us.

Let’s take a few moments now and break down the story into a few pieces we can apply.

The story begins with Khing being given a job.

Now, unless you are a full-time artist who creates only for yourself and never ever has a client commissioning work, then this application probably isn’t going to work for you. However, if you’re like the rest of us, you probably know what it’s like to receive an order.

Like us, Khing has been given a job, a very specific job, a very specific story to tell.

But instead of focusing on that task alone, his very first move is to do the inner work of reclaiming his true self – a work he does without ceasing Once he understand what it is that has moved him, he creates something he loves. He discovers what moves him first but uses the commissioned work to do so.

There is a misnomer that says that for the artist to create work from deep within, it must be work that he creates himself. This obviously isn’t the case.

Take note: Khing uses the client’s commission to do the deep work.

Parker Palmer, in his book, The Promise of Paradox, describes what the Woodcarver does just before he creates as “the work before the work.”

“Before I turn to my work in the world, I have inner work to do.” – Parker Palmer

I can’t stress the importance of this statement.

If we are to make moving work that moves others, we must be moved first.

And before we can do this, we must go inward.

The poem gives us three, powerful examples of how to put this into practice.

ONE

By this time all thought of your Highness

And of the court had faded away.

All that might distract me from the work

Had vanished.

The boss asks how you did your job so well and you answer, “I completely forgot about you and the organization. I just made what moved me.”

Parker Palmer writes:

“When we attuned to the expectations of the boss or the corporate culture rather than to the soul’s imperatives, we cannot co-create anything of truth and beauty.”

Another way to say it, when we think only about the audience, we intend to move before first being moved ourselves, what you make simply won’t ring as true. When we think of pleasing our boss without any care for ourselves and our own hearts, we can’t create true and meaningful work.

TIME OUT

In your workbook and in the Facebook group, describe a time where you created something where you thought only about what your boss or client would think.

How did that make you feel?

Of course, there is an interplay of these concepts we must address. Obviously we need to create work that is appreciated by the people that write our checks and yet, at the same time, we must create out of our unique selves.

Think about it in terms of your life.

Are you living a life that you want to live, or are you living a life that someone has dictated for you?

TWO

I was collected in the single thought

Of the bell-stand.

A “single thought.” Amazing.

Can you think of the last time you had a single thought? I can’t. In fact, as I write this I’ve got the Apple WWDC Keynote going on in the background, I’m in a co-working space where I can hear 3 other conversations going on, Spotify is playing my latest playlist, and my phone keeps buzzing with voicemails and texts.

In our world of distractions, the maker must be able to weed out frenzy, and think singularly.

In my interview below with designer, Paul Jarvis, he talks about our problem with distractions and the lengths he goes to ensure he isn’t distracted. As you engage this week’s workbook, do whatever you can to eliminate distractions!

THREE

Then I went to the forest

To see the trees in their own natural state.

When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.

All I had to do was to put forth my hand

And begin.

Finally, the work takes him to the forest. Into the forest and then back out into the world, changed, different. Into the forest to find his own truth and then back out so he can help others find their own truth.

Into the forest, without a perfect plan, he removes unhelpful voices, removes anything that might distract, and simply begins.

I’ve said it a couple times to some of you via email and in our Q&A time, but Make Better isn’t a quick fix, but way more like a desert experience. If you do the work, I believe you’ll come out on the side more whole and ready to make beautiful things. But to get there we must be okay with being uncomfortable. For it is from these desert or forest experiences, after we’ve bled from the sand whipping our faces or the branches slicing our limbs, that we grow.

And absolutely none of this can happen unless we understand, like the woodcarver, what moves us first.

Case study: Our Common Mug

Even when we’re looking for what moves us, sometimes it takes another path to help unlock new realms of creativity.

These paths and detours are what I like to call side projects. There a millions of reasons why none of us have time for extra work, but time and time again, they have shown me that they have the power to unlock new things that move and always refine my “why.”

I had been in a creative rut in my everyday work for months and just wasn’t feeling particularly moved by anything. It was then that I took a trip out to see my best friend, Jarrod, that an unexpected idea led to a new facet of my “why” and a brand new project.

As we discussed in Week One, everything begins with a reason why.

It is the WHY that ultimately captures the hearts and minds of our fellow humans. Beginning with the WHY clarifies what we must do well to succeed and unifies those collaborating on the project. Work, especially that of the self-initiated variety lives or dies on the strength of the WHY.

This is the story of our why behind Our Common Mug.

In a posh cabin, deep in the woods of Arizona, with our bellies full of Pinot Noir and barbacoa, my best friend from graduate school, Jarrod and I, talked of a project. A project that would give us something to work on together and something that would be an expression of our relationship.

Sadly, the project came as a result of our geographic distance. He and his family live in San Francisco and my family and I live in Chicago. We also knew we weren’t alone in our sadness about our distance – it exemplifies many of the people we know and love. Much of the world no longer lives near the people they love. 

Our Common Mug’s first and foremost WHY was a desire to create together and to be close to one another.

The idea was simple:

Log on, purchase a pair of identical handcrafted mugs. One would ship to you and the other would be dispatched to your beloved along with a handwritten note dictated by the buyer.

Here’s the story as it appeared on the website:

In graduate school, we were together every day doing all the stuff best friends do. Coffee, class, gym, dinner, study, laugh, Wii tennis, repeat. Until one day, life pulled us apart.

One of us drove across the country. The other flew west. Families started, jobs began, and the distance grew.

Two-thousand miles and two time zones made everything from finding a time to talk to finding an affordable flight nearly impossible. As we struggled to stay in touch, we longed for the everyday rituals we once had – like morning coffee.

Even though our daily routines were different – both now with babies and briefcases – we started each day with a cup of coffee.

That’s when it hit us…

What if instead of just coffee, it was the mug we had in common?

AND what if that mug represented everything about the distance we disdained and the friendship we desired to deepen?

Like the length of a string that used to connect best friends between tin cans and tree houses, Our Common Mug has become the new piece of string that connects us.

Quite literally, Our Common Mug became the physical expression of our desire to connect the disconnected.

The first two customers were Jarrod and I and within three months of opening the store, we sold out. We were overjoyed, but also a little melancholy. Selling out so quickly meant that there were many others just like us who desired connection. And yet, because the WHY was so strong, it easily resonated with others just like us.

Our WHY was to connect and yet it was also because we both valued the power of side experiments. Jarrod is a consultant for Fortune 500 companies and I’m a creative director at a large church in Chicago. Often our work is thrilling and often it isn’t. We knew that if we are to survive doing what we’re doing for long we must also seek little side experiments. 

The mugs had arrived, the shipping supplies were readied and we began packing. It was then that Jarrod discovered this lovely Brene Brown quote.

“The truth is, rarely can a response make something better — what makes something better is connection.” – Brene Brown

The ways we can respond to any situation are virtually endless, but here are a few awesome ones I tend to employ: make a judgement call; place an undue emphasis on someone’s personality vs their context, which may actually be defining their personality; or I simply blurt out whatever is on my mind. Awesome, right?

But, if Brene’s words are true, then none of my responses (no matter the situation) will make anything better, even though they might make me feel pretty good inside at that moment.

I want something more. Something deeper. Something actually transformative.

I want connection.

But connection takes work, time, love, and a hell of a lot of imagination.

Those little white mugs being delivered around the world are tiny artifacts that I imagine one day might be dug up to tell the stories of connections instead of responses. Imagine the story of a girl leaving college who just wants to tell her Dad that she’ll be missing their morning coffee routine, or the story of lifelong friends, one of whom is nearing the end of her life, or the story of a brand new love looking to deepen their connection.

We always hoped these mugs would be more than just mugs. We hoped that when someone bought a mug the transaction might be deeper than just a response to a feeling about another person. In the end, we hoped, like what Brene alludes to, that these mugs would be vessels for connection.

The snow swirled outside my window as I looked over at a table strewn with corrugated boxes, piles of hay, hand-stamped tags, stacks of shipping labels addressed to people all over the world, piles of notes from people telling them why they love them, and a small batch of white mugs embedded with what looks like a piece of blue string wrapped all the way around. Each and every artifact covering this table makes me think of my best friend and all the reasons we started this little experiment.

Why am I telling you all this?

First, I want to give you all the reasons why you simply must have a side experiment. Side experiments force you to practice new skills (I don’t know how to run a tiny mug business), face your fears (what if this experiment ends my relationship with my best friend?), and imagine a hypothesis beyond what you know as reality (what if this actually made disconnected people more connected?).

Again, for us, the hypothesis was: could we create a product that embodied our relationship, didn’t end our relationship, and caused others to deepen theirs? 

(Our “why,” remember?)

Secondly, I wanted to give you all the very legitimate reasons why we almost didn’t start this experiment in the first place. I have a new family, a taxing job, and not a ton of money to lose on experiments. Jarrod has a new family, a taxing job and also not a ton of money to throw away. Pretty good reasons not to try something new if you ask me.

And yet, I’m of the opinion that if you don’t experiment, if you don’t risk, if you don’t step out and propose a hypothesis that doesn’t currently exist, if you don’t find a why you believe in, you cannot grow.

Want to grow? Want to be truly creative? Want to figure out what really moves you? Try doing something you don’t know how to do.

Like start a small mug company.

Sure Jarrod and I made plenty of mistakes along the way, but in the end, we made way more wonderful things than mistakes: we made a better friendship and we helped others do the same.

Later this week, I’ll email a short lesson on brainstorming side projects as yet another way to discover what moves you! In the meantime, share with us what you think YOUR side project might be over in the forum.

INTERVIEW WITH DESIGNER, PAUL JARVIS

I’ve recently become a huge fan of the work and words of Paul Jarvis. In this week’s interview I asked Paul about his own creative process, how he is able to make things he loves while working for other people, and what moves him.

Interview links referenced:

Now, it’s time to get to work.

Download this week’s workbook if you haven’t already and begin to answer the questions.

Don’t forget to share your thoughts in the Facebook group.

And as always, please email me with any questions at blaine@letsmakebetter.com.

ADDITIONAL READING & RESOURCES