Art – Things I've Been Thinking http://urbanhonking.com/thingsivebeenthinking Mon, 31 Aug 2015 01:37:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Rain Dragon http://urbanhonking.com/thingsivebeenthinking/2012/04/16/rain-dragon/ http://urbanhonking.com/thingsivebeenthinking/2012/04/16/rain-dragon/#respond Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:55:46 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/thingsivebeenthinking/?p=89 Continue reading ]]> I heard about Jon Raymond soon after moving to Portland in 1995. I came here to make a movie, and Jon had just made one. A feature based on the newspaper comic strip Crock. He shot his live action version of trails and tribulations of the hapless French Legion unit out in Sun River, using his friends as cast and crew.

I wanted to meet him. And since this was back in when Portland felt small I met him without much effort a few weeks later.

When I made my own feature film, about high school kids into fantasy role-playing games, I followed his example and used my own friends as cast and crew. I asked Jon to play an Orc for one of the epic battle sequences. He eagerly agreed, and played his Orc with both menace and dignity.

We cemented our friendship, I think, when we were featured in a Willamette Week article concerning young creative people in town. During the photo shoot we both naturally migrated to very back of the herd of 20 or so 20 something’s, farthest from the camera lens. Jon easily persuaded me to join him in slyly giving the camera the finger, which meant that we while were included in the article, we went missing from the front cover.

In the intervening 15 plus years I’ve watched Jon mature as a writer and artist. He’s written books, screenplays that have gotten produced, a few more I’ve had the privilege of reading that haven’t, and last year collaborated with Todd Haynes writing the Mildred Pierce HBO miniseries.

I’ve just now had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy of Rain Dragon, his new novel about a couple that moves to Oregon to work on an organic farm.

After telling him how much I loved the book, Jon shot back that I might be the perfect audience for the book.

And I suspect I am. For starters, I’m the kind of person who thinks working on an organic farm is ripe for comedy and satire, but I also kind of wish I had spent a year working one.

I’m also a fan of wonderfully well-written prose that’s evocative and lyrical, but isn’t afraid to be crass on occasion to make a point, all of which the book is. I also appreciate that the story is set in our world, not some literary construct. There are pop culture and contemporary references that not every reader will recognize, but that make the book real and relevant.

I also love how much Rain Dragon is about place. It’s about Oregon, physically, and anyone living here will recognize the landscape he describes. But it’s also about Oregon spiritually; the pioneering spirit and rugged independence are central themes.

But the lights really clicked on for me when I heard Jon being interviewed by one of my students, Boaz, on the pedal powered talk show.

Jon talked about how he felt envious of authors like Walker Percy and Graham Greene who incorporated their Catholic upbringing into their work, until he realized he had a faith of sorts to bring to his own work. Not a specific religion, but more as he describes it the “vibrations, synchronicity, and magical thinking” that informs the various belief systems and approaches to work and life folks experiment with out here.

He had my attention. As some of you know I’ve embarked on a side career in life coaching. I recently took a 2-day intensive course called Foundations for Coach Leadership, and this past Thursday I conducted my first client session. I had one another Friday.

Rain Dragon’s second half concerns itself with the organic farm’s foray into organizational management training, which is essentially corporate life coaching.

It’s safe to say the book arrived in my hands at the right time, or in the vernacular of Jon’s book, an instance of perfect synchronicity.

While I am now even more obviously the ideal audience, I think the book has a lot to offer everyone. There’s love, there’s loss, there’s drama, all the good stuff that make us turn the pages of a book.

But the organizational training aspect is what makes this book really unique. Not just for anyone interested in coaching, but anyone interested in how companies work and how the most innovative ones have captured our imaginations.

The workers of Rain Dragon put the employees of a timber company through a series of two-day encounters. They ask the corporate officers and middle managers of the timber giant the same questions every large, thinking corporate organization has been asking itself over these last few decades.

What kind of a culture should a company create? How do you get the best ideas out of our people? How best to optimize potential, improve morale, and resolve conflict? And ultimately is it enough to create a product or provide a service or does a company need to stand for or mean something bigger?

There are as many answers as there are CEO’s. But the answers West Coast companies are coming up with seem to be the ones getting all the ink. Think about Keen, Nike, Whole Foods, Umpqua Bank, eBay, Craig’s List, Amazon, Google, Instagram, even Wieden+Kennedy, where I work.

Think about Apple.

The same hippie capitalism that Steve Jobs and the founders of so many of these companies are playing with is, at least to me, the central concern of this book.

If you, like most of the reading world, has read or is reading the Steve Jobs book, read this book. Let me see if I can express that as more of a back of the book blurb.

“Rain Dragon is the literary companion to the Steve Jobs biography. It’s a rare and enlightening window onto the process of self-examination that happens when a company challenges it’s self to think about it’s self.”

Well done, Jon. I loved it.

]]>
http://urbanhonking.com/thingsivebeenthinking/2012/04/16/rain-dragon/feed/ 0
Mike Daisey and Me http://urbanhonking.com/thingsivebeenthinking/2012/03/21/mike-daisey-and-me/ http://urbanhonking.com/thingsivebeenthinking/2012/03/21/mike-daisey-and-me/#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:47:43 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/thingsivebeenthinking/?p=79 Continue reading ]]> Surely, you’ve heard something about Mike Daisey over the past few days.

In case you haven’t, or haven’t been paying close attention, here’s the quick recap.

Mike Daisey, heir apparent to Spalding Gray, created a monologue called “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” based on his visit to Chinese factories to see how Apple products are made. He’s brought the show to festivals and theaters across the world.

NPR adopted the show for This American Life. They made it clear to Daisey that the show had to be truthful. Mike said it was. The show soon became the most downloaded episode in the show’s history.

Mike Daisey quickly superceded performer and became the public face of Apple criticism and a media darling.

Then NPR realized Mike hadn’t been so truthful after all. And This American Life retracted a story for the very first time. This past weekend’s episode is some the most riveting radio I have ever heard.

Since coming back on This American Life to discuss what happened with Ira, he has decided he’s not wrong after all. It’s complicated, he argues.

But Google news “Mike Daisey” and you’ll see he’s mostly, but not completely, alone in this view.

What struck me most about my reaction to the controversy is how quick I was to judge. But then I began thinking about my own shows.

It might be a stretch to call Mike Daisey a contemporary of mine. He is the most talked-about and one of the hardest-working performance artist around, while I’ve been hiatus for a few years. But we’ve shared billing at the PICA TBA festival. We both use monologue as our medium. And we’ve both made corporations the subjects of our work.

I’ve made three full-length shows, all variations on the monologue, two of which involved the blurring of fact and fiction.

The first was called An Evening with Bradlee and was completely fictional. I played an invented character with an invented story. I claimed to be a new age dot.com refugee who moved to Oregon from the Bay Area looking for a fresh start and cheap rent. It was comedic, but it was also a way to talk about and get people to think about xenophobia in a different way.

What did the audience make of it? Well, they knew my name wasn’t Bradlee, and that I was playing a character. And I assumed they knew this was an invented story, but I was surprised by how the audience assumed that parts of the show were true. Californians asked me where in California I was from, and were disappointed to hear I wasn’t. Rather than being dismayed by it, I was actually delighted. I liked the reaction so much that my second show was created expressly to make people question what was true and what wasn’t.

That subsequent show, AC Dickson: eBay PowerSeller, was born out of my own experiences. I was a PowerSeller for years, making most of my income selling collectibles. When I performed my show, I was giving people good, helpful information about selling on eBay. My stories were true, and I used my own name.

But I told these stories in such a way that suggested I might be lying, or making it all up. I was purposefully suspect. I looked, sounded, and acted like someone trying to sell you a juicer at a county fair.

Adding to this ambiguity was my thesis that becoming an eBay PowerSeller was important not just for individuals but also for humanity as a whole. Clearly, this was an exaggeration, but I used facts, statistics, and theories to back up my claim. The entire monologue was told earnestly, but I also played the room for laughs.

The show was 99% true as far as the facts went, but greatly exaggerated as far as my opinions. I delighted in how different people interpreted what I was doing. Some audience members assumed it was all made up, others that there was just a kernel of truth. Even good friends who knew I sold on eBay assumed I had made a good portion of it up. On the other end of the spectrum, I had people who came to later shows with pen and paper, taking copious notes on the practical advice and looking on with confusion during the more motivational bits.

So far so good, I think. But then there’s the matter of the show’s finale. The climax of the piece was 5 of my own eBay auctions finishing right before the audience’s eyes. Spaced to end a minute apart, we watched as the bids jumped from $5 and $10 to $50 or even $100 in the closing seconds. It was in these moments that people, regardless of whether or not they believed me, came to believe in the power of eBay.

For the initial run at the PICA TBA festival those auctions were completely legit. I had hoarded some antique toothpick boxes that I knew from experience would get bid up drastically in the closing minute. But as the show started to tour, I had to find new items that I hoped would create a last-minute bidding frenzy. As time wore on, I started to enlist some help. I had people throw a last minute bid or two in there. I manufactured some drama.

I lied. But to me it’s more of a deception. You see how easy it is to rationalize?

I could argue that I was no longer making auctions jump from $10 to $100, but more like $17 to $25, as if the amount matters.

I could argue that I didn’t feel remorse. But I bet Daisey didn’t either, at least not until he got called back onto This American Life.

I could argue that if anyone asked I was honest, I might have gotten a little help, I’d sheepishly admit. But certainly some people left thinking these bids were legit.

Although other people left thinking the entire live-auction part of the show was a complete fabrication that I had somehow created in PowerPoint.

Clearly, Mike Daisey erred in allowing his work to be used on This American Life. The question is did he err in his stage show.

My discretion, I think, pales in comparison to Mike’s. He claimed to have met people he didn’t, and claimed some of the people he did told him things they never said.

And yet if Mike’s biggest crime concerns, as New York Times columnist David Carr put it, the question of “Is it okay to lie on the way to telling a greater truth?”, to which David emphatically answers “No.”

Then is my infraction so different? I was using false pretense to convince my audience of the power of eBay.

Would I do things differently in regards to those auctions? Not before the Daisey story broke. Now, I might.

But more immediately I’m thinking about this issue in regards to a new show I’m developing. Yes, dear readers, a new show is afoot. Without spilling the beans, it’s a show that, like my previous performances, will be designed to make the audience question what’s real versus what’s invented or facetious.

I’m expecting, and even counting on, the audience questioning my intention, credibility, and the validity of techniques.

Do I owe the audience the courtesy of letting them know I’m intentionally confusing them beforehand? And does this blog entry count?

Or will doing so, to quote a character at the heart of the Daisey story, take some of the “magic” away from the experience?

]]>
http://urbanhonking.com/thingsivebeenthinking/2012/03/21/mike-daisey-and-me/feed/ 6