My guest post for lauraroeder.com, “Improv Tips for Entrepreneurs”, dropped today. Use improv comedy skills to boost your creative output - even on your own!
Give it a read & let me know what you think.
- Jay
| — | Frank Barron |
| — | Play Power: How to Turn Around Our Creativity Crisis – an excellent read by Lara Seargeant Richardson in The Atlantic (via curiositycounts) |
“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.”
- Aristotle
“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrr…”
- Willful Ignorance on the Attack
“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.”
- W. H. Auden
“Perhaps it is I who knows best why man alone laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
| — | John Keats |
fare una bella figura - In Italian, “to cut a good figure.”
I learned this phrase long after I visited Italy. But, man-oh-man, from Cinqua Terra to Rome and beyond did I see it in practice the entire time I was there. From the way Italians walk, talk, and dress to the mesmerizingly polite and stylish way they cut in line in front of you when they know you’re a tourist*.
I, however, am finished with “cool.” Pretense, artifice, all of it. My fashion sense has been headed down this road for quite a while, despite my wife’s best efforts. I am a Dad, after all. (High-waisted jeans, anyone? Black socks with shorts, perhaps?) But mostly I am done with trying to be slick in my interactions with others. And other’s interactions with me. Just say how you feel, apologize when you’re wrong, let me know when I’ve hurt you - and I’ll do the same, okay? Cool is so fucking overrated.
I coach my improv students to abandon being coy or obtuse when they begin to create a scene. Get your scene partner and the audience on the same page as quickly and directly as possible, even if it’s awkward, and then play! That’s the fun part!
Fare una bella figura is multifaceted and extends beyond dressing well and looking good. It encompasses poise, manners, and grace. Admirable to the last and never to be abandoned. And I enjoy pretty things and pretty people anyway. But let us please dispense with the guarded “cool” by which we often interact. If I enjoy your work, want to be your friend, or just think you fare una bella figura - I want you to know. Even if I’m awkward**. Then we can move on to the fun part. Cool is so fucking overrated.
- Jay
*I was wearing cargo shorts.
**I am.
