March 2007 Archives

Welcome!: This interview is part of an ongoing series of chats with artists about their creative process. You can find the full set of interviews, including musicians Van Dyke Parks and Jonathan Coulton, and SF Chron columnist Jon Carroll, all at www.about-creativity.com. You can also subscribe to future interviews here. Thanks a lot for dropping by, -Cecil

Photo credit: Scott Beale / laughingsquid.com.

In 2001, Ze Frank achieved net notoriety when a birthday party invitation entitled "How to Dance Properly" became an early viral video. This spark led to zefrank.com, home of a host of projects, including interactive flash toys, animations, essays, videos, and a wide variety of collaborative ventures. Over fifty million people have visited zefrank.com to date. From March 17, 2006 to March 17, 2007, he wrote, produced, and starred in The Show with zefrank, a wildly creative online daily video program.

Frank's an adjunct professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Parsons School of Design, and SUNY Purchase. As a speaker at events like the TED conference, PopTech, and Flash Forward, he covers topics ranging from the new creativity to contagious media to airplane-cabin safety cards.

We spoke in February 2007 as his year-long run on The Show neared its conclusion.

Ze Frank on the Web: zefrank.com, The Show with zefrank

Cecil Vortex: Are there any techniques that you use in your creative process that help you generate new ideas?

Ze Frank: Self-awareness is one of the big keys. If you read a lot of the psychology literature on creativity, one of the only real, solid correlations with being able to shift your creative output is the belief that you can change it. So for me -- I think I picked this up in a Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi book -- I've spent a long time just trying to figure out the kind of cycles that I go through, trying to pay attention to the different kinds of states that I find myself in.

There are times when I feel like I'm craving what I call unsolvable problems, and I have the kind of energy you need to move forward into uncharted territory and brave that side of things. And then there are other times when that seems like the most difficult chore in the world. So I've also gotten pretty comfortable knowing when I need to pick up solvable problems. Programming definitely fills that void for me. Also illustrating, doing little illustrations, things like that. This is a long-winded way of saying that I think I've got a range of techniques that feed into how I'm feeling at that particular moment.

CV: Do you have any day-to-day habits you rely on?

The coffeeshop is fluttering today.
Six or seven denim-coated guy-legs
shock the tiled floor.

Silent soft bouncing.
They shake the air. Crinkle your vision.

There's a lot of energy under these tables.

Well, my head is spinning. I woke up this morning 100 pages shy of the target. That's no good. And I can't say I caught all the way up either. But here we are, 11:30 PST, and I'm on page 396, so that's something. About 30-40 pages short. But back in the game, I tell ya.

And I was having good fun too, right up until page 394, when I ran into this: "You are a good man, but kind of disgusting, with all that hair growing out of your face, and you always smell like coffee."

What the hell is that? I mean, how can I not take that personally? He might as well have added "and your name is Cecil Vortex." It was all I could do to not light the book on fire. But I resisted because I'm strong like that.

In cheerier news, happy to see the Chums are right around the corner (in the rear view mirror for those of you on track). I think you probably know by now how much I enjoy the Chums. Should make for good reading tomorrow morning over...coffee. Damn you Pynchon!

Happy also to see new 'marchers on the trail. Welcome! And delighted to see that Steve Evans has baked up another batch of piping hot madeleines.

Tuesday 4/3: I'm hoping to meetcha at the bottom of page 488 where, ominously enough, nobody's talking "to anybody for a while unless they [have] to."

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 488. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil

"They used to call me 'Gentile Joe'" he said.
'Cuz my name is 'Joe Gentle.' I loved the Jews. Oh sure.
I loved the Jews and the Jews loved me."

Pulling out tinted photos of foxy showgirls from the '30s.
"The ladies, the ladies. Oh sure."

Stacked instruments
music stands and guitar picks
dirty music sheets for sale

dog at his feet and
three 17 year-olds he was
charming us now.

We loitered and listened to old stories
put across with a lewd twinkle just right.

"Here, have a patch cord," he said when we moved to leave.
"Have a drum stick." I still have that drum stick.

****

Legends from My Childhood, #4, card art by eb.

Thanks to everyone who came out -- we had a great crowd, with 50+ folks packing the house and 21 readers. Great words. Great food. Great Blacksmith Cellars grape. And swell hosting by Tim and Mary from Wilmot's Books. Thanks to all and hope to see ya in June at the next event......
-Cecil

Hi all,
Just a quick reminder for Bay Area folks that tomorrow night is the big open mic, aka Wilmot's Mic-less Open Mic III, featuring original work by local writers. Fabulous wine provided by our excellent and award-winning friends over at Blacksmith Cellars.

Wilmot's Mic-Less Open Mic II, December 2006

Hope to see you there tomorow. You can find all the details (plus a picture of infamous world-eater Galactus with his snugglies) right here.

I write espresso poems now
the way I used to write about cigarettes.

My old fumbled word love to white ash
the hard-dented tan filter.
The clouds! Oh those sainted particles!
The courage of my glass ashtray!

All swapped for
a slight-stained saucer
a cup
a cat-like crema.

How long till they turn you against me?
What will I smoke when you're gone?

It's been about three months since I posted a new song to the ole Virtual LP -- the last number being Welcome to Your (Doom of Clowns).

Happily, I found a little time this past weekend to record a tune I'd written a year or three back. The song's called Styrofoam and it features lead vocals by the notorious Xian who did, I think, a rockin' job.

Thanks for listening and hope ya enjoy the results.
-Cecil

time: 2:09 seconds; specs: 2 mb (yes, incredibly -- another 2+ minute long song!)
Press Play to play.

Almost 2 months in (!) and on the one hand, bodies are droppin'. On the other hand, we have something like 17 or 18 folks still with us, which is certainly a record for this deep into the journey.

I think RaptorMage is right when he says its the nature of these DMs to feel impossible. We're looking for books that aren't page turners and then we're reading those books slow. It's a challenge for sure. The one book in the series that really flipped itself for me was Pale Fire, and that one almost felt like we were cheating.

I remember in Book I of Don Quixote feeling like it was just going on and on and slipping away from me. But Book II picked up and good Lord the ending of DQ was beautiful and worth the trip.

With Gravity's Rainbow, there were points when I was downright angry with Pynchon. And the last 20 pages still sounds like dogs barking to my brain. But there are so many parts of that GR that I'm glad I experienced. With AtD, I'm still enjoying the individidual segments. I'm still not pulled to pick the book up from the shelf. I'm still, unfortunately, about 40 pages behind. (Ack!) But I'm still hanging in there, watching as old pals (Merle, Dally, Kit, Vibe) come back into play, as a few characters start to become borderline real. Maybe at the end it'll add up to less than the sum of its parts. Maybe it'll rise to some shockingly coherent crescendo. I'm game to find out.

Doubt ye not the Week-8-summarizing skills of so-called "Steve Evans," whose madelienes await ye here.

Tuesday 3/27: Let's hop, and/or skip, and/or jump on over to page 428, where someone with a silly name is leaving "the Mysteries of Time" to others.

(in other words: please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 428. Try to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

(I miss) Pugnax!
-Cecil

I took my kids to SFMOMA today for the first time, and they each had a line I feel compelled to share.

Sam (6), on Lesende by Gerhard Richter: "I'm just blinking 'cuz I'm so amazed."

Susannah (9), on A Leaky Ride for Dr. Leakey: "That's what my imagination looks like."

At age 12 he was like me.
Tall for his age. Uncooperative hair.

I moved away and he sent letters:
"I'm growing up! I'm kicking ass! I'm dating girls!"
I didn't believe it.

Five years later, I was back in town for a visit. His mom was gone.
Copies of High Times magazine spun out over the glass coffee table.
And it was true -- he was a ladies' man. Muscled. Martial arts master.
"Where did you come from?"

We went out that afternoon and drank vodka in the daylight.
He showed me some kung fu moves in a completely non-threatening way.

Later I met up with friends of my parents
and tried to pretend I was sober over
lasagna and Seven Up.

Was he still good at math? I have to assume
he was still good at math.

****

Legends from My Childhood, #3, card art by Whitney F.

Recently dubbed a member of the "Poetry Pantheon" by The New York Times Magazine, Bob Holman has previously been crowned "Ringmaster of the Spoken Word" (New York Daily News), "Dean of the Scene" (Seventeen), and "this generation's Ezra Pound" (San Francisco Poetry Flash). His latest collection of poems, a collaboration with Chuck Close entitled A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, was exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum during the Venice Biennale and published by Aperture in fall 2006.

Holman ran the infamous poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café from 1988 to 1996. In 1995, he founded Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records, the first-ever major spoken word label. In 1996, the TV series he produced for PBS, The United States of Poetry, won the INPUT (International Public Television) Award. He is Visiting Professor of Writing at Columbia School of the Arts, Founder/Proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, and Artistic Director of Study Abroad on the Bowery, a certificate program in applied poetics.

Bob Holman on the Web: The Bowery Poetry Club, Bobholman.com, A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, by Bob Holman and Chuck Close

CV: Are there any habits or tactics that you use to help feed your creativity?

BH: I'm a poet, I guess, because the tempo of a poem fits into my life. If I had a different kind of discipline, I'm sure I would write infinitely long novels. Poems ride along on the tip of your eyelash and can come and go in a blink. It's important that you be there when they want to happen. And the way to be there is to give yourself time to percolate; you can read, you can walk, you can sit there and dream.

The other part is to be ready when they are. Which is to say, a notebook and a writing implement are your passport. I love writing in darkened theaters and at art museums. But it's also important to have [these tools] beside your bed so no dream gets lost.

CV: What do you do when you're feeling creatively dry?

Welcome to Week 7 and our slick new server. Hopefully we'll have a smoother ride from here on out. I'm about 20 pages behind right now, still enjoying the ride.

On the thread, it's clear that some folks are falling a little out of love with AtD. Me, I find that when I'm reading it, the love is still there. It helps that I'm a Merle Rideout fan, so I was delighted to see his return. Still, when I'm not reading it, it doesn't linger in the brain or call to me from wherever I dropped it last. So the trick is mostly getting myself to pick the book back up.

I do keep puzzling over these racial/ethnic stereotypes. More than anything it feels like Pynchon's just screwing with us -- trying to get a rise out of his readership. He's got my buttons pretty well configured so far. For example, every time he says the word "invisible" I twitch. Likewise for "explosion."

On the pro/anti-Traverse(seses) debate, I'm with Andy and Cap'n M. in that they've started to really grow on me. They're certainly the most human characters in this crowd.

A few random questions: Anybody have a clear sense of what year we're in now? How old Dally is? What was in that tunnel with Dally and Frank? Mebbe these all become clear in the last 20 pages of the week's reading, but if not, and if you have a theory, shout out.

In other news, Steve Evans has once again come through with helpful notes on last week's reading.

Tuesday 3/20: A good chance for folks to catch up, as we'll be doing a relatively short week. Let's meet at the bottom of page 373, where "we're already ghosts."

(which is to say: please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 373. Aim to get near that target and add a comment by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil

For the past week I've been moving Cecil over to a new server. The work is pretty much done and we're in that interesting limbo where there are actually two different Cecil site's out there and the web is in the process of sorting out which one to go to. I'm told it can take up to three days to fully resolve, but I think it'll be clearer as early as tomorrow night. So I'm going to hold off on posting and opening the new thread up to comments for one more day, in hopes that by tomorrow night, there will be one cecilvortex.com to rule them all.

By the way, in case you're curious, if you got to this version of Cecil, you're looking at the new site.

Less than two weeks from now, on Saturday the 24th, we kick off the third Wilmot's Old-Fashioned Mic-Less Open Mic, here in the famed "Island City" of Alameda. Our first open mic back in September was fantastic. Great readers. Great crowd. Great grape, poured by Alameda's Du Vin Fine Wines. A real treat. Then in December, WOFMLOM II: wonderful readers, bigger crowd despite the rain, world-class wine provided by Blacksmith Cellars. Honest to gosh, a wonderful time. OK. So we're clearly due for a disaster. Dare you miss out? Cozy Galactus suggests not.

      Cozy Galactus, Open Mic Aficionado

Wine once again will be provided by our excellent (and award-winning) pals at Blacksmith Cellars. Writing will be provided by...writers! Hope to see ya there.

• Wilmot's Books: 478 Central Avenue, Alameda
• Sign up at 7 pm; words fly at 7:15
• 5 minutes per reader
• All manner of original prose and poetry welcome
• Directions: 510.865.1443

Shoot me an email to reserve a slot in advance.

Sanctuary #3, 42" x 72" acrylic on canvas, private collection. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.

James Warren Perry is an independent realist artist living and working in Northern California. His work has been featured in over 100 exhibitions at institutions around the world, including Riverside Art Museum; Palm Springs Desert Museum; Museum of Art, Kochi, Japan; Masur Museum of Art; Art Museum of Los Gatos; Bolinas Museum; Texas Artists Museum; United States Embassy, Reykjavik, Iceland; Oliver Art Center; Stanford University; University of the Pacific; Merced College; and the State of California Attorney General's Building. He's the recipient of a full fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and a Marin Arts Council Individual Artist's Grant. His artwork has been featured in numerous publications, including New American Paintings, American Artist, and Artweek.

James Warren Perry on the Web: Jameswarrenperry.com

Cecil Vortex: What helps you generate new ideas?

James Warren Perry: Travel is a wonderful way to feed your creativity. You're taken out of your normal context and can assess things in your daily life from a different point of view. I paint all over the world. When I'm off in Southeast Asia and then come back to Northern California, the shapes that seem very familiar to me on a day-to-day basis somehow seem quite exotic.

CV: Do you have any day-to-day habits that you rely on?

JWP: I'm really glad that you used that word -- "habit." Honestly, most artists that I know who have had sustained periods of productivity -- people who have made careers of it -- are very regular in their working habits. They just get up in the morning and they do it. Getting in the habit, that's the thing that will sustain you much more than the stereotype of the artist who's in the throes of creativity.

If you look at how artists have been portrayed in films, most of it's not great. [laughter] I always think of Kirk Douglas in Lust for Life. He's in the throes of madness. Most people I know that are pretty darn good artists, they're just somehow regular people. They just get up in the morning and work.

CV: On your website you talk about the importance of quieting your mind and giving focused attention. Are there any techniques in particular that you use to accomplish that?

the majority opinion that aims to
thick coat
my emulsified flavor.

Froth my cup
dunk its hue.

75 cents is my strong statement.

I will tip you 75 cents
if you'll just

leave me
some bean

slop me
some foam

and let me slide bitten

into
my
bitter oasis.

Until two days ago I was 70 pages behind, but a pair of flights got me (finally) caught back up. If you're one of the many good folks stuck a bit back on the trail, let me just tell ya, all you need is a stop over in Houston (real or metaphorical) and you'll be right back in the game.

In general, I'm finding AtD's kind of like Chutes and Ladders. Sometimes I move slowly. Sometimes I'm zipping on ahead. Occasionally I'm fumbling backwards, trying to figure out just what it was that I must have missed somewhere, somewhere....

This week I used a way-back chute to revisit the attempted hustle in Chapter 3. "At times there were too many cards to count, at others none at all were visible, seeming to have vanished into some dimension well beyond the third, though this could have been a trick of what light there was." (23) That seems a fair description of the way Pynchon uses throwaway characters -- a blurred sleight of hand designed to force us into keeping our our eyes open a little wider than usual.

One of the kicks of the book, I think, is that every once in a rare while all this frenzy leaves us with that Blundellian feeling that we can sense "how everything fits together, connects." Sure, as with Miles, it doesn't always last long. And more often than not, we end up "just back to tripping over [our] feet again." (24) But that's OK. I'm happy to stick around to see if some T.W.I.T. is going to pass around another batch of brain explosives.

Hope you all stick around too. While I'm required by law to love all the 'marches just the same, I'll confess between us that the commentary this go-around has been particularly swell.

Speaking of which, the mighty, the mighty, the mighty Steve Evans has come through with another invaluable batch of madeleines -- the perfect way to flash the previous week's reading into your lizard brain before ambling back onto the trail. And speaking of that...

Tuesday 3/13: Let's meet at the bottom of page 335 and the glory of a "mean, nervous, scheming servitude to an enfeebled conscience."

(which is to say: please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 335. Aim to get near that target and add a comment by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil

A graduate of the American Academy of Drama, Howard Kremer has performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Comedy Central's Premium Blend as well as at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, the Montreal Comedy Festival, and top comedy clubs around the world. He'll be performing at the upcoming Coachella Festival in April, 2007, and his half-hour comedy special airs on Comedy Central on April 6th. One of the stars, cowriters, and cocreators of MTV's Austin Stories, Kremer has sold nine original sitcom pilots to HBO, ABC, NBC, FOX, MTV, and Comedy Central. As Dragon Boy Suede, he performs and records filthy, funny, infectious rap.

Howard Kremer on the web: Dragon Boy Suede on MySpace (adults only)

CV: What techniques do you use to help you come up with new ideas?

HK: I take walks. I find that if I'm stationary, sometimes it's not going to happen. I take drives. I'll force myself to go to bed if I'm not tired, because if I lay there and toss and turn then I get ideas. Other than that I have -- I guess they're formulas? I'll change one thing. I'll look at an object or a situation or a show and just change one thing about it. What if oranges were square? What if Gilbert Gottfried was the star of 24? If you change one thing in a dynamic, it changes all the other relationships, so you start to be able to abstract it and look at it in a different way.

CV: Does listening to music help your productivity or get in the way? For me, for example, taking a long walk without music can be a big help.

HK: Oh completely. An iPod, or even having the radio on in the house, or if you're going for a drive and you have a CD in, you're just not going to really create during that time. Which sometimes is good because you have to absorb too. Joe Strummer said that -- you have to have input to have output.

CV: Can you describe the creative process you use when you're working on a sitcom script? Is there anything in particular that you do to stay focused and get your work done?