Narrative, In Life, Art And Biz
This past week found me facing my creative block and challenging myself toward rejuvenation. It started out with a conversation I had with a theater coach about how speaking can be so easy if you really tap into your own stories. Then, I had my first official booksigning and put a little of that storytelling into action (it helped a ton!). The next day was the beginning of the local annual arts celebration, and the painting, sculpture, mixed media and performance art were incredibly inspiring. It almost makes me want to pull out the old easel and start spending hundreds at the art store again.. well, almost.
Then, some friends and I took Saturday “off” and wandered around the art exhibits again. The errands, housecleaning and lawnmowing would just have to wait. In seeing our hometown as if we were tourists, including lovely weather and lively conversation with mexican food and cervezas in the middle of the afternoon, I felt even more refreshed.
YES – there are different ways to look at the political situation and the election, and you can have hope! YES – there are lots of incredibly talented artists everywhere you look, so remember to go look! YES – I have some funny stories to tell and in telling them, I can share a little about the business of marketing to women, but I can also demonstrate to folks how to better follow their bliss.
Yesterday, in the Sunday New York Tiimes Magazine, there was a short photo-essay, “Fashion Stills,” on how pictures that tell a story are back in style. The piece, written by Herbert Muschamp with photographs by Maciek Kobielski, and inspired by the work of Cindy Sherman, starts this way, “Narrative crept back into art through a side door marked fashion photography.” The entire, very short, piece is wonderfully written, but this paragraph made me think a bit about the speaking gigs that may be in my future, “A narrative does not, in other words, tell a story. A story is told to give the listeners the pleasure of the narrative form.”
It is less scary and more creative for me to think about the knowledge I’d like to share with readers and presentation audience members in terms of narrative. In a book I just bought, I Can See You Naked (Andrews and McMeel, 1992), Ron Hoff writes about how mapping out your “story” in a sort of CandyLand game board style – with colors and shapes – makes your presentation uniquely yours and makes it a lot more fun for those listening.
I have certainly discovered that the narrative of life is more of a CandyLand map than a political science paper outline, so why do we (as business types) so often go back to that dry, unimaginative form when we think about what we want to say and how to say it?
The combination of my creative weekend, and my needing to brush up on my speaking skills, really started me thinking. I highly recommend that you put on some rose colored sunglasses and venture out for a gallery walk or weekend festival in your town.
It’s amazing how one artist’s storyboard writing, costume-making, prop-building Phish concert performance piece about a Mastodon got under my skin.
