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Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

Art Therapy and Cancer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 29, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

No one needs to be told that art is healing. I find it can cheer me up when I’m just having a bad day. I even tell coworkers who are stressed out, “Go over to Fort Point and look at some art.”

But for those who care more about data than folk wisdom, there is research.

Genevra Pittman writes at Pacific Standard, “Music, art, and dance therapy may relieve anxiety and similar symptoms among people with cancer, according to a new analysis of past studies.

“Researchers who analyzed results from trials conducted between 1989 and 2011 said the benefits tied to creative arts therapies were small, but similar to those of other complementary techniques such as yoga and acupuncture. …

“The analysis included 27 studies of close to 1,600 people who were randomly assigned to receive some form of creative arts therapy or not, during or after cancer treatment. Patients with breast cancer or blood cancers—such as leukemia and lymphoma—made up the majority of study participants. Music, art, and dance therapy programs varied in how often sessions were conducted and over what time span. …

“On the whole, people with cancer who were assigned to creative arts treatments reported less depression, anxiety, and pain and a better quality of life during the programs than those who were put on a wait list or continued receiving usual care.” More.

I didn’t get into art therapy when I had cancer, but I’m sure I would have liked it. I did have a booklet created by past patients that contained daily readings, and more often than not the choices hit the spot. The patients named the booklet “No Other Way but Through.”

Photo: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Art therapy program

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Playwright in the Window

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Deanna Isaacs has a funny post at the Chicago Reader. It’s about the Storefront Playwright Project.

“Tired of sitting around watching paint dry?” she asks.

“Then get yourself over to 72 E. Randolph, where, thanks to the League of Chicago Theatres and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, you can watch a real, live writer at work.

“The Storefront Playwright Project is putting 27 authors on exhibit this month in the big front window at Hot Tix/Expo 72.

“Never mind that writing is right up there with sleeping as a potential spectator sport, so stimulating that the writer him- or herself often has to bring the action to a complete stop in order to check e-mail, clean a closet, or book a flight and get the hell out of there. …

“Guessing that dramatists would be more dynamic at work than, say, novelists (readily observed in deep rumination at most any coffee shop), I stopped by last week, when Emilio Williams was on display.

“The playwrights each take a four-hour shift. Williams was a couple hours into his afternoon stint, gamely focused on his laptop, which was perched on a small white table and hooked into a large screen mounted in the window. The big screen faces outward, allowing passersby a look at the creative product the instant it emerges from the writer’s brain. …

“Behind the glass, Williams pursed his lips and crossed his ankles. …

“He leaned his chin on his hand and scrolled through several pages of dialogue that went something like this:

“Mar: Done?

“Ted: Yep.

“Mar: You don’t sound very enthusiastic.

“Williams paused.

“He blinked.

“He scrolled again.

“And then, it happened!

“On the big screen, before my very eyes, the cursor hesitated. It stopped. And it backed up, deleting as it went, wiping out ‘tucitcennoC’ and replacing it with ‘Lake Geneva.’ ” More from Deanna, even funnier.

Readers may recall several posts I wrote on a playwriting class I took the summer before last. (For example, here.) I thought the class got playwriting out of my system. Should I reconsider now that playwrights have the opportunity to sit in storefronts where strangers can watch them think?

Um, maybe not.

Photograph: The Chicago Reader

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Music for a Small, Perhaps Grateful Audience

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 7, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Jim Dwyer writes lovely human-interest stories for the NY Times. On September 5, he wrote about a guy who plays music by the Hudson River for an audience of birds, fish, and whatever friends or strangers wander by.

“On Tuesday morning, Jose Modesto Castillo, retired from a job in a plastics factory, walked just about as far west in northern Manhattan as it is possible to go, to the end of a long pier fingering into the Hudson River at Dyckman Street. A harmonica rigged to his head was just a breath away from his lips. Lashed to his hands with hair ties were 17 miniature percussion instruments made from items like a Snapple cap, the lid of a prescription bottle, a Spider-Man figurine, the shells of plastic eggs that once held toys from supermarket vending machines.

“Strike up the one-man mambo band.

“Mr. Modesto’s mouth danced across the harmonica, and his fingers made rhythm out of junk. He played and he bobbed. At the end of the nameless number, he raised his arms as if waving to the Palisades on the far shore. Suddenly, he noticed that he was being watched, and called out, ‘Hello señor,’ and burst into a laugh.

“It was the Tuesday after Labor Day, the first day after the spiritual end of summer, though not yet the true beginning of autumn. At the pier and tiny cove on Dyckman Street, calendars were beside the point. Mr. Modesto, 66, comes every day to play, even if only the birds and fish are there to hear him.”

Some artists can get joy even if no one is around. As a musician, Modesto sees potential in bottle caps and plastic eggshells the way a painter might see it in clouds or the sun on the subway stairs.

Read more.

Photograph: Marcus Yam for the NY Times

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A Building that Fosters Creativity

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

John pointed me to an article on the kinds of work environments that encourage innovation.

Aimee Groth at Business Insider writes, “In his article, Groupthink, the New Yorker‘s Jonah Lehrer says there are two types of brainstorming — a free-for-all exchange of ideas in a structured environment, and a random, unplanned debate. Only the second type really works.

“He says M.I.T.’s famous Building 20 … became one of the most innovative spaces in the country because it fostered the best kind of brainstorming.

“The building was created to provide extra room for scientists during WW II, reports Lehrer, and ‘violated the Cambridge fire code, but it was granted an exemption because of its temporary status. … The walls were thin, the roof leaked, and the building was broiling in the summer and freezing in the winter. Nevertheless Building 20 quickly became a center of groundbreaking research, the Los Alamos of the East Coast.’

“It wasn’t demolished after the war because there were too many students and too little space on campus. So the building became a hodgepodge of offices, with professors and students from all different departments squeezed in small spaces and long corridors. …

” ‘Walls were torn down without permission; equipment was stored in the courtyards and bolted to the roof. … The space also forced solitary scientists to mix and mingle.’ “

More.

Makes me think of the layout at Mass Challenge, the accelerator incubator for entrepreneurs that I blogged about here. (Did I mention that a family member read that post, sent in an application under the wire, powered through layers of screening, and is now working away as part of the class of 2012?)

The Mass Challenge space is not dangerous like Building 20, but the founders probably heard about the benefits of Building 20′s layout through their connection to MIT. The Mass Challenge work space is an unfinished floor in an upscale office building on the waterfront, 1 Marina Park. Everything is open and interactive.

The harbor views are a bonus unknown at Building 20.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Collage and Editing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Sunday evening I went over to Concord Academy to hear Seán Curran talk about how he creates choreography. Betsy, one of the dancers from his company, did a beautiful job of demonstrating what he meant.

As a little boy growing up in Watertown, Seán said, he waited eagerly for the mail that brought Look magazine. He liked to cut out pictures and make collages with them.

He says that his approach to choreography is similar. He arranges many snippets or dance phrases in different ways. His challenge is to edit down the many ideas so that the choreography doesn’t topple from too much weight.

I make collages, too. I have always liked the idea of taking a bunch of random things people have said and trying to make a play out of them, for example.

I also make collage greeting cards. I keep a box of promising pictures, cut from magazines and gallery postcards. I go through the whole pile and set aside maybe 20 items that somehow remind me of the person for whom I am making the card. Then I edit them down to the few pieces that will be best for the particular occasion.

All that happens before I cut the shapes and decide on how to arrange them. Sometimes I do a cutout of a cutout and put something else in the space: for example, I cut a vista out of a painting of a window and put a girl in the space (bottom right).

Here are examples.

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The Value of Daydreaming

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 22, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Science Daily reports on new research that reaffirms the value of daydreaming.

It’s all about letting our conscious mind take a rest while our unconscious mind puts random but important pieces together for us. Getting enough sleep matters for the same reason.

“In recent years, researchers have explored the idea of rest by looking at the so-called ‘default mode’ network of the brain, a network that is noticeably active when we are resting and focused inward. Findings from these studies suggest that individual differences in brain activity during rest are correlated with components of socioemotional functioning, such as self-awareness and moral judgment, as well as different aspects of learning and memory.”

That’s a mouthful, but you know what they are getting at, right?

I can’t imagine life without daydreaming. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem almost afraid of the empty spaces. I think they miss out on a certain amount of insight and creativity.

Read more on the research here.

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Has the Moon Lost Her Memory?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

I tend to think that our creativity comes from our memories, because no one who has ever been or ever will be has exactly the same collection of memories bouncing off one another in exactly the same way.

A recent NY Times science story on a successful artist who got viral encephalitis — and suffered damage to the part of the brain where memories form — doesn’t exactly contradict that view, but it sure raises a lot of questions.

“She is still able to make art, though it is simpler and more childlike than her professional work. Her case is rare, experts say, because few accomplished artists continue to create after sustaining severe brain damage.

“Now scientists at Johns Hopkins University hope Ms. Johnson can help them answer longstanding questions: What parts of the brain are needed for creativity? With little access to one’s life experience, how does an artist create?

“And as Michael McCloskey, a professor of cognitive science at Hopkins, put it, Ms. Johnson’s case ‘raises interesting questions about identity: Here you’ve lost an awful lot of what makes you who you are — what’s left for art?’ ” Read about her.

Although the artist doesn’t seem sad, I think it’s sad to lose memories. I want to keep mine — the bad with the good.

Enjoy this amazing Moray McLaren video about memory, called with irony “We Got Time.”

“Time is a memory
“And memories can make you sad
“With time still in front of me
“Oh we can get it back”

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