How are creatives imagining life in a post-COVID-19 world? In our series on Creativity & Culture we discuss innovative solutions in healthcare, the workplace and entertainment.
What do we do with our creativity in isolation? In our conversation series on Creativity and Culture, we discuss how the corona virus has affected our creative flow, brainstorming, virtual co-working spaces and what it all means for the future of work.
What’s fascinating is watching AI move into areas we think of as creative. It’s not difficult to imagine Artificial Intelligence -- or really Machine Learning algorithms -- taking on routinized tasks. But over the past few years, AI has moved into what is typically thought of as creative work. It’s both fascinating and a bit disconcerting to those of us who think of ourselves as creatives.
In this post, I discuss how the movie Parasite inspires us to keep moving as storytellers, how shifting your routine can spark ideas and what happens to your brain when you improv.
I’ve been thinking about spinning bikes, gin and “Chicken Wars.” The viral social backlash to the Peleton “The Gift that Gives Back” ad was fascinating. As Peleton was woozy on the ropes, Aviation Gin swung a round-house right with its “The Gift that Doesn’t Give Back” ad. They cast THE SAME ACTRESS who played the wife on the spinning bike, except she was now commiserating with girlfriends over gin cocktails because (we’re led to believe) she left her husband. KNOCKOUT!
Today we are standing on the doorstep of a new decade, and so I’ve been thinking a lot about the challenges ahead, and the new approaches and ideas we’ll all need to tackle those challenges. Naturally that leads to… brainstorming!
“The only vampire I ever met was in Natchez, Mississippi.” That’s the opening line of a story* I’ve told hundreds of times both to entertain and teach. It’s simple. But it’s a hook I crafted through many drafts and rounds of audience feedback. Why’s it great? And how can you make your own hooks great? I’ll dissect.
Thoughts rumble around in my head like rocks. Boulders, stones, pebbles. They’re rough ideas, starter concepts and floating phrases. And I can hear them crashing, crunching and bumping into each other. This is the beginning of my writing process.
Stylized, Sexy, Provocative and Decadent. Everything You Would Expect from a Grandmother’s Recipe. At 13 years old, Maya Erickson was working in a professional kitchen, tasked primarily with filling cookies and wrapping tuiles. She shrugs this detail off now, as if it’s simply a throwaway line unworthy of her bio. As if most newly-turned teenagers must surely have been like her—resisting the temptation to toggle among their screens and choosing, instead, a highly disciplined path.
When Gerald first saw her, he quickly clocked her as one of the Top 5 best looking girls at the party. Not #1, but not #6 either. She was noted. 15 minutes later—or one beer, whichever came first—she was walking past him on her way to the kitchen, and he cooly, casually broke from his conversation to say hello, then cooly, casually resumed. He was noted.
Noel likes to wait until the very end of the night to sing Beyonce. Before then she's too busy doling out Buds and little bags of Classic Lay's. But by about 1:45, the ten customers at Nick's Lounge, which does karaoke every night of the week, have all sung at least once, and Noel glides out from behind the bar, tells Steve the DJ to cue up a deep track--"'Single Ladies' is so overdone!"--and kills. I mean, she really kills.
