Mark This

Art and the art of art

Mark This — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:36:30 +0000

Where would we be without creativity, well I wouldn’t be here if not for the creative thinking of all those who managed to do their thing. And the same can be said for you and everyone you will or could ever meet. We are all an expression of many creative instincts.

Pic credit to Deb Boogaard via vi.sualize.us

So considering that creativity is somehow responsible for most of the living things around us I reckon it is worth some thought now and again.

I find that the creative output, art, music, writing, dance……etc. engages me more readily when I have a connection to the person who is being creative. So without really trying that hard I find that many of those I am lucky to be surrounded by tend to be creative. I would describe most people I know as open minded and creative in the ways they put their lives together.

Pic credit to daveycoleman.deviantart.com viaTellylin on Pinterest.

Much of the creativity I see around me often seems to go unrecognised, it might get noticed but the effort to produce something just to bring pleasure and add interest is sometimes overlooked.

I would not describe myself as an artist and that is fine as it looks like a hard and often lonely path to follow. The need to share our emotions with others through a creative medium is part of the fabric of being human. I noticed a post on the web recently about some cave art drawings that go back over 40 thousand years. It is probable that people were creating art objects long before that but that they haven’t survived the wear and tear that comes along with hanging about on this planet.

So where is my creative instinct and how does it find an outlet? Well this for one, writing about the things I see around me and way that I feel about my life and the opportunities it delivers, I find creative. I have had other creative outlets in the past and most of those I have written about elsewhere on this website. These days I find a lot of satisfaction in listening to others describe how they feel about whatever gifts they have been born with and are lucky enough to have identified.

So what is your gift? What is it you love to do? How do you express the way you feel? What medium do you use to engage with others in an emotionally meaningful way?

I noticed several pieces around Newcastle recently and then by coincidence came across the person responsible for these works of art via a link on the web. As far as I know I have never met this person but through spending some time looking at what he decides to offer the world, I feel I know something about him already. This is one of his pieces;

And you can more of his work or contact him here; http://www.scottdonohue.com/

I hope you too are surrounded by people who are keen to express themselves and have found their natural gifts, it makes the world such an interesting and engaging place to be.

Think I am off for some creativity training………. cya.

How can I not….

Mark This — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:28:13 +0000

There are certain things that happen in my life and they become part of the fabric of what I am. All through time humans have gathered and joined in with all sorts of rituals, it seems there is an innate human tendency to do so. I was taken to church as a youngster and that could get heavy on the rituals and stuff but the first time I saw a football pitch in a stadium…… I had found one of the rituals that would last my whole life.

I still like football. But not all the time, most of the time I have a life to live and watching all the available football would pretty much wipe any sane human out, but when you happen to sit down to a match you wanna see and it turns out to be one of those rare near perfect jobs……

By the way I would apologise if you are really easily bored by football but considering the title of this category, you kinda had it coming!!!

I guess that it is not the football itself I want to write about as that has been covered by better writers who are more inclined towards the details than me. What fascinates me is why it is that this simple idea of 22 people kicking a ball through some posts and into a net is so engaging for people right across this planet. When I go to a match in a stadium it brings something out in me that doesn’t have any similar comparisons. I suppose a good live music gig has some overlap but it not the same.

I can see links with some of our most basic human behaviours and when I first saw footage of chimps hunting I could see how any group of simians engaged in a shared aim seemed to share certain individual and team actions.

If you have read any of my others ramblings on this site you will know that I am interested when ever we encourage each in the group to express their natural talents so as to contribute to the overall aim. How often do we see humans (particularly males) helping and supporting each other to be the best they can be at something?

So I love being part of that mass (mostly male) energy that is focussed on one outcome, playing well. I have often been involved in the discussion about the relative pleasure of watching your team get beat but play a great game, and watching a boring match that your team win by the solitary scrambled goal. This hints at why it is I want to be involved with the game.

I like to see people do what they love to do well. If I see anyone completely commit to the activity they are engaged in, I find that rewarding and endlessly fascinating. It can be watching someone serving in a cafe, someone making something with their hands, or listening to someone describe an issue they need to work through.

So for me football fulfils several of my needs and pleasures. The feeling of being part of a group who share the same vision, the excitement of being part of a large crowd, the sense of taking part in something ancient and timeless and the sheer joy of watching people do what they do well as a team.

I realise as I am writing this that although I have put lots of my ideas and theories on this site I haven’t actually said much about myself and my background, so that is my next focus then. Meanwhile if you support a football team I hope they are playing well and if you are so inclined I hope they are winning lots of silverware.

So a couple of weeks after I first wrote this post I am in the front room of my partners house on a Sunday morning. She lives bang opposite a playing field with two full size football pitches. This morning there is a team in all red and a team in black and white hoops. The reds are getting the better of team in hoops and I stand watching with my Sunday morning cuppa, the left back for the hoops goes to clear a ball on the edge of the box and sets up the perect volley for the advancing red number 9……. bang….. top corner and the reds are patting each other on the back and that. Meanwhile the distraught hoops left back in on the ground feeling like an idiot, he lies there in pain and humiliation for a minute or two when his team mate walks across, offers him a hand to get up and gives him a consolation pat on the back. That is what I love about the personal and public drama of football.

Most people on the planet involved in football are not running out into a 100k capacity stadium and getting paid a small fortune each week. They are instead, running around a field on a cold Sunday morning for the sheer thrill of joining in a beloved, meaningful ritualised group activity. So when you next hear someone holding forth about the evils of football and footballers, remember that they are not talking about the 99.99% of those involved in a game I admire and enjoy, they are talking about what the corporate media have convinced us if the only game in town.

Oops, the hoops just let another one in…. oh well, it’s only a game.

The tao and the new science

Mark This — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:24:10 +0000

I was watching a TV programme a few days ago and it was looking into the search for the Higgs boson particle. As the presenter described the background to this hypothetical particle I could feel myself smiling at the idea that there was once a void when matter and anti matter were in balance and then some pertubation affected this balance and suddenly, bang everything we now see around us was created right across the universe all in one event.

Well when I first came across the ideas around the tao I was attracted by the concept that before everything we see around was here, there was a void, a place where all was in perfect harmony and there was no activity just an equal balance between yin and yang. Then some small perturbation…….. and the ten thousand things (taoist expression indicating everything) were bought into being.

So after thousands of years we find that mathematicians and physicists combine to produce a world view that is remarkably similar to one that was put together by observing nature and natural cycles by curious types who were generally more chilled out than most.

This thought process brings me back to reading the Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. For some reason I remember the person who suggested I should read it and where I was at the time.

From these thoughts I take the idea that as humans immersed in (and an integral part of) nature and the cycles of nature, where better to look for explanations of what we are and what we have to do to be true to our own individual and collective natures.

Thinking this through also helps me to understand my own interest in taoism, science and being out and about soaking up the wonder and beauty of our natural environment.

Whether or not we locate and find the Higgs boson, I hope we manage to always place ourselves as an expression of nature and not above or beyond it.

That bird song outside my window just drew me back to my senses and my nature. Lush!

If you have 3G you have it made

Mark This — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:15:22 +0000

I wrote something about grace a while back and I want to add two other G words to this, generosity and gratitude. I reckon if you can waltz through life with your grace, gratitude and generosity in tact….. you have a fine chance of having a great time.

Quite often when I ask a client what they want the answer boils down to more money. This is a legitimate goal and if that is what will get you the peace of mind and comfort of body that you really need then good luck.

Somehow when ever I ask for further details on the sort of life the person wants, the less appropriate the answer “more money” is.

What most of us seem to want is to spend time behaving in a way that enables us to feel good about ourselves.

Recognition and respect might be a more accurate answer than more money.

What do I have to do to earn respect and recognition?

Well if you try to bring grace to your thoughts and actions, if you can be generous in thought and action and if you can be grateful for all the opportunities in your life………

Give me a shout if you feel that your life could be more satisfying and fulfilling.

New year and new opportunities.

Mark This — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:02:08 +0000

Thanks to everyone who has been a part of my life in 2011. It is through the support and comfort to be found in friends and family that I gain the strength to keep pursuing the ideas and dreams that make my life complete.

I hope you have people around you that are happy to support and care for you when you need it. If so, what do you then invest your energy in? What do you use your energy to achieve?

Over the next year, 2012, I hope to build upon those relationships I already have in my life and bump into some new ones too.

If during 2012 you feel you want to do something different and make changes in the way you manage the important relationships in your life, give me a call. I love hearing from people who are determined to focus their energy in a way that aims to makes the world a better place.

Peace and harmony all round for the new year. Mark This.

When I think about it……

Mark This — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:19:57 +0000

More often than not when I ask someone about a plan or a decision or an action they are reviewing they will say “when I think about it now…….” or “if I had thought about it………..”

Why is it so hard to detach our primary reactions from a situation as it is happening and think about what outcome we want?

The more attached we are to those involved in a situation the harder it is to seperate our initial feelings from our actions. If we see someone we love and care about in a situation of danger or being harmed most of us will rush in and make whatever noises we can to defend and rescue them. And yet so often when we look back and reveiw those urgent actions we say “thinking about it now I might have done that differently, I wanted to make things better but actually…..”

I would not like to live in a world where we detached our primary feelings from the way we respond to others all the time but is there a case for learning to put a measure of fore thought into our decisions, even those that demand an almost immediate response?

When making a decision we bring into play our rational practical understanding, our evolutionary hardwired response and our emotional feelings about those involved. So we have head, heart and gut all operating towards how we will act in any situation.

It seems to me that when I talk about thinking and making a decision based upon those thoughts I intend the phrase thinking to include head, heart and gut responses. Thinking has become associated only with the brain, while for me it must incorporate our whole selves and all that goes to make up that self.

There is something about this split way of looking at ourselves and the world that is at the base of so many behaviours that end up increasing difficulty and misunderstanding. It can be seen in so much of our culture, behaviour and language.

The idea that any action can be seen in isolation to every thing that has gone into arriving at it (ie everything) and that we can separate our own selves into mind, body, soul, personality, background, gender, race, etcetera may be useful for some of our day to day functioning but as a way of seeing the bigger picture and the long term impact……. it is an obstruction.

So much of my personal and professional work (that is an example of an artificial seperation!). So much of my life is tied up with bringing all the parts that we see as unconnected into one holistic experience. When I ask someone a question, it is not important whether the answer is correct, it is important only that by asking the question and allowing the time and space to answer that question honestly, the person asked can find new and illuminating ways of seeing the world and thier part in that world.

We are often in a situation where we have a decision to make and we might see that as a cross roads, which of these roads shall I take? The question is not which is the correct road but “what is it that I am looking for?” or “what would do I hope to find at the end of the right road?

There is a film I like called The Girl on the Bridge. A character in the film says the line; “There is no such thing as the wrong road, only the wrong company.”

Photo (C) by http://www.martin-liebermann.xn--de-02t/

This photograph is from the photographer Martin Liebermann. I didn’t originally give him credit and apologise for that. You can help me redeem my mistake by going to have a look at his site. He has produced a lot of inspiring work and I especially love the enigmatic feel of these; http://www.flickr.com/photos/liebermann/sets/72157594577356798/show/

How many times do you hear someone reviewing where they are and coming out with things like, “I only started doing this because….. someone else wanted me too….. I needed to earn some money and it seemed like a good idea at the time….. I didn’t know what else to do….. it’s what you have to do isn’t it?….. that is what everyone did….. I didn’t realise it would be such a big deal….. it is what my friends and family always did”…………………………………?

I started this post not knowing where it was going, I had a fleeting thought about the phrase “when I think about it” and how curious that sounds. Surely we can always think about it? That doesn’t mean what we do will always turn out the way we expect but it does allow us to take time out and be clear about what we expect and what having that expectation fulfilled would mean to us and those around us.

So find someone you can think with. Someone who will allow and encourage you to consider options and veiws that may not normally be your immediate or usual response. It seems that we are taught to or learn to be scared of thinking about ourselves in any broad or radically different way. When our norms are challenged we often put up a rigid defence, but surely it is only through having the confidence to share our ideas with others without the fear of judgement or ridicule that can we really grow, and without growth, there is only stagnation.

If you struggle to find someone who will allow you this space, give me a shout, it is what I train and aim to do.

You wear it well

Mark This — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:43:51 +0000

What do you do well? Often when this question is asked we will explain that something unexpected went wrong and we managed to limit the damage. I have been thinking recently about behaviours I practice that are actually positive. By this I mean that as a result of my behaviour I am presented with the option to think differently about something and I gain a new way of dealing with life and all it’s opportunities.

Imagine seeing life as a series of patterns. If you have read some of my other posts you will know that I am attracted by patterns and this goes right back to my earliest memories. The way I behave seems to move in patterns. When I was a young child if I didn’t want to do something or wasn’t allowed to continue doing something I liked doing, I would throw a tantrum. I would cry, shout and make a big physical demonstration of my feelings of hurt and frustration. As I got older this gradually changed and these days it is very rare to see me lying on the ground crying and flailing about.

Why did I decide to change my tantrum throwing behaviour? I suppose I must have made the decision that it didn’t work. I must have thought about the way I felt and realised that although I didn’t like someone else having authority over me I had to accept that I couldn’t always make all my own decisions. I think I might also have just felt self conscious about the way I appeared to others. It was a long time ago and I didn’t keep a diary so have limited evidence to go on.

What it does demonstrate is that I showed an ability to look at and think about my behaviour and change it to better suit the reality that I had to accept and accommodate. As I got a little older I adapted my behaviour to suit a new situation, school. By the time school was coming to and end I adapted my behaviour to attract the attention of girls. This got tied up with earning a living. I had to learn behaviours at work and socially in order to get paid and to get laid, thankfully I managed both of those before I died of poverty or frustration.

The pattern seems to be that I develop strategies that return something that I want or need. These work in a particular time or place and over time can become less effective so I continue to adapt and change my behaviour as I grow older. I guess the key here is what I want or need, if that drives my behaviour and my ability to learn new behaviours then it makes sense that I had better make sure I am clear about what I want and what I need.

I started out with this post thinking about how we learn behaviours that help us avoid bad things happening or reducing the pain of those bad things. What I want to get around to is that I am now interested in looking at behaviours that have a more generally positive effect upon me and the world I live in. I have moved from learning personal survival strategies to a more global view on behaviours that are useful in all situations and times. How do these develop and where do they come from? How do we learn to learn? Where do we invest our time and energy in order to create sustainable and meaningful growth in ourselves and our communities?

I am in mind of two names, Abraham Maslow and R. D. Laing.

Maslow decided that it might be useful to look to people who appear to be living life well in order to work out how to work with people who are not living life well. And Laing suggested that any interpretation of what is and is not sane behaviour might be dependent upon who it is that is doing the judging. They both turned things around completely. They both challenged the previous way of thinking and enabled us to broaden our understanding of human behaviour.

It is through the work of people who challenge and question the status quo that we manage to move not only away from things that we don’t like but also towards what we do like. Often when I ask people what they want I get a description of what they don’t want, their motivation is to remove a negative from their life. Once we can get past this it always seems useful to look at what we would like our life to be like. My experience leads me to believe that motivation comes from moving towards what we want. Tricky thing is, it isn’t always easy to know what we want.

I see people around me who challenge the generally percieved reality and dare to come up with new and exciting ways of describing and living in the world we see around us. It is with these examples that I manage to review, reassess and readjust my behaviour.

Thankfully there are lots of these examples and I came across one recently. In the following film about supporting a bottom up person centred approach to development, I particularly noticed the part where the speaker points out that there are lots of solutions to problems around us but we just have to look within ourselves and our communities and listen to find them. So I look for people are doing well and listen and learn general principles from them. If you choose to watch this, I hope you can find some learning there.

Let it rain

Mark This — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:58:49 +0000

I was walking through the city and it was raining. It was that wet kind of rain, the type that gets through everything. I realised that I was all crunched up and when I became conscious of this, I noticed the tension in my neck, shoulders and back. It struck me that scrunching up and adding tension to my body was not going to stop me getting wet or change the impact of the rain upon me, but as I loosened my shoulders, relaxed my neck, stood up and walked with less crunchiness, I noticed that many others on the street that day were also scrunched up and must have been feeling that same tension I had just decided to let go of.

As I now floated along feeling more relaxed I started to quite enjoy the sensation of the rain on my skin. The rain also gave the town centre a sheen that it normally lacks and the trees and plants certainly didn’t seem to mind.

So why is it that we often do things which don’t make our situation any better and usually make it worse?

Don’t look at me for an answer, it was a genuine question and I don’t know why we do the things we do. I do realise though that whenever I catch myself in any kind of tension I can choose to let go of it once it is recognised. So I guess that it has something to do with reacting to a stimulus without taking control of my reaction. If you have read any of my other posts you will know this is a theme that I keep coming back to. There are times when I enjoy letting go of all expectation and just going along with whatever my feelings dictate. But there are so many other times when I have to admit that I can make a difficult or uncomfortable situation worse.

If I had an internal alarm that kicked in any time I started to feel any kind of tension, I could then check where that tension came from and choose to let go of it. So that is this weeks training motto, every so often I will check how my mind and body are feeling and if I identify any points of tension I will choose to let them go.

Still raining out there but the droplets of water on the trees outside my window look like jewels.

Stay loose.

Run, just run…..

Mark This — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:20:07 +0000

I was walking along Tynemouth beach yesterday afternoon with someone I love and the mood of the day took my thoughts off on a theme of doing what we have to do.

The sky was in that process of changing from late day to early evening and the season was in that process of changing from Summer to Autumn and the whole feel and look of the scene was beautiful.

Just as my thoughts had wandered into that space where nothing in particular is going on, I noticed a small dog running towards us. It was chasing a hoop type Frisbee and was so focused on it’s need to catch that thing it struck a contrast with my own state. You could see the intent in it’s whole body and mind, it’s ears were flying outwards and it’s eyes were firmly fixed on the one thing it wanted at this moment. It caught the hoop and jogged back to the owner for her to throw the hoop again.

If ever there was an example of something doing what it had do that was it. When I want to get something done that state of focussed attention is my aim. Once I get that right the outcome usually has much more chance of working out in my favour, easier said than done though.

I come across so many people who struggle with staying focussed on what they are doing and they often say things like “I get distracted by other things that need doing.” or “I don’t seem to be able to stay with one thing at a time.” How is it that this dog with brain the size of a small potato can fully focus of the task in hand and yet we complex and brainy humans struggle so with this?

After thinking on this since yesterday it feels that what keeps the dog focused is that it is doing what it wants to do. I am sure it is a combination of genes and experience that drive this hunting and herding animal to chase that hoop. It has an ancient drive and and a current desire to run full pelt and stop that hoop from escaping. I am also sure that it doesn’t bother with too much analysis of it’s actions.

So what do you have to do? What is life telling you should happen to give you that sense of satisfaction?

Well for me a couple of those things are that I have to allow myself to walk along a beach at the end of a weekend holding hands with someone I love and just soaking up that wonderful sense of the light, the air, the sound of the sea and the feeling of the sand beneath my feet. I am not sure I want to know why, I just know that to remain fully human I need to do things for no other reason than I get satisfaction from it.

I guess I have come across another of those ubiquitous paradoxes, I need to have an end in sight when I am planning some activity or change, but I also need to do some things just for the sake of doing them with very little mind of the outcome.

What do you do?

Mark This — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:08:29 +0000

When ever we get introduced to someone new in many work and social situations we often get asked…………………………

I find it quite hard sometimes to answer this question honestly. In most situations it is safe to assume that this question is about how we earn our living. So common responses might be;

I am a farmer.

I am a joiner.

I work in finance.

I run the chip shop up the road.

It is not difficult to see many ways of answering that question that have no connection to how we earn our daily crust;

I often sit and think about how different the world would be if we didn’t feel the constant need to convert others to our ways of thinking.

I sometimes sit with the pigs and just scratch their backs and enjoy watching them bask in pure pleasure.

I calculate mathematical equations from the patterns I see around me, look you see that wallpaper, well the pattern repeats for three rows, then changes for two rows and then reverts back the first three again. The equation for that would look like this…….. oh they have gone?!

I watch loads of really crap reality TV.

So I think about what it is I do and how I could answer that question with any depth and meaning. Having decided to write this piece and having the thought that our beliefs and values are only useful if we then decide and design our actions around them, I find it hard to describe what I do!

Two themes that I have written on within this website are science and Taoism. I am interested in science because it helps satisfy my curious nature and provides techniques for enquiry. I am involved in the philosophy of Taoism because it fits with the way the world looks and works to me. So how do I apply this to my life, what do I do?

For you there may be other tools, techniques, philosophies and ideas that you believe in and rely upon. But the same need to apply them to the way you live applies.

How does it feel when we see someone explaining what they believe in and then demonstrating behaviour that seems at odds with their beliefs? How does it feel when we do this ourselves?

So if I apply the beliefs and values that I hold it affects the way I behave around people. I used to get annoyed when people came out with ideas that I thought made no sense or felt would result in the world becoming a more cruel or harsh place to live. As a result of my curiosity and of working with others who have helped me develop my ability to respond, I am less likely to get annoyed and more likely to listen and try to understand how this person developed these ideas. I like to work out why anyone would develop a set of ideas and beliefs that do not seem to deliver anything positive for themselves or those around them. The idea that you can force someone to agree with you even though they are only responding out of fear or apathy seems like a very poor victory. Why would we do that? I find that question fascinating.

So what do I do?

I like to develop new and more effective ways of interacting with others that allow me to understand what it is in someones life that really drives them to behave the way they do. I then like to look for ways that we can all use to become more aware of the impact of our behaviours.

I also like to hang out with the pigs and then go watch some TV.