"How David Beats Goliath" by Malcolm Gladwell

I just read an excellent article about the importance of effort. Gladwell posits that effort is more important than ability. He backs it up in true Gladwellian fashion with copious amounts of examples. Any article about an Indian software geek coaching a team of nonathletic white kids who reach the national "little-league" championships, while at the same time weaving stories about Lawrence of Arabia and David and Goliath, is an interesting read.

The article is from the New Yorker and can be read in full here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell

My Greatest Lesson in Life

“Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon

One of the greatest things I have learned is the ability of the human spirit to grow stronger through failure. After graduating high school and through my early twenties my goal in life was to get by with as little effort as possible. This was true of academics, sports, art, and so on. I didn’t fail at anything; I just skated by in life. It wasn’t until I failed miserably at life that I actually learned something important. This all hit me while I drove from to the Bay Area from Los Angeles, coming back home to live with my parents. I had just spent the previous five months hopping from couch to couch, with no money, debts mounting up, miserable, seeing my life go nowhere but downward, at times sleeping in my car, knowing people I shouldn’t, and truly and honestly not caring about life. In retrospect, I can say I had hit rock bottom, but it is because of this failure that I can say today that I am driven for success, not in the monetary sense, but in a sense of self-worth and the worth to those around me. All of a sudden, I cared about my life with vigor and enthusiasm. How can I grow, learn, and contribute to society? That was when I decided to go back to school. I always loved to learn, I just didn’t give it very much effort. I now understand the incredible value of effort. Without effort nothing truly valuable will be gained. So I hit the books hard. Surrounding myself with the readings of Dickenson, Emerson, Whitman, Hughes, I learned about the human condition; I learned that failure is something everyone goes through; and I learned that I was a better person because of my “L.A. experience.” I realize the importance of learning from failures and using them as a driving force to be a better person.

This night drive back from Los Angeles was quite the emotional moment, which cannot be put into words. Another thing that occurred to me during my night drive up I-5 was the concept of selfishness. I was convinced that I was never a selfish person. Nothing could have been far from the truth. I was only out to serve myself and never thought about others. It was all about me. “I” wanted not to work, so I was lazy at work; “I” wanted to choose my job, so I was homeless; “I” wanted to get decent grades but still party, so I received mostly Bs and some Cs. Today, nothing could be more satisfying than giving back to others. This could be as simple as sharing a poem to a friend whom I think would find inspiring or uplifting, to teaching young people the value of art, and to engaging in critical discussion about the meaning of a short story with my parents and classmates. In the end, sharing with others only enriches my life.
I no longer skate by in life with as little effort as possible. Instead, I take life and tackle it’s greatest difficulties. How can I contribute to society and become a better person? Where is my greatest weakness and how can I grow as a human being? Life is difficult and I learned that the hard way. Yet once I learned this vital lesson, I do not just accept the difficulties, I seek after them. My greatest advancements, not just in academia but also in life, have come as a result of my greatest difficulties. I am currently in the hardest moment of my life: working full time while taking classes, continuing my love for art and photography, and inspiring and teaching others about all forms of art (visual and non-visual). While I am not suggesting that everyone needs to have such a dismal failure in life to grow and learn, my failure (or rather my learning from my great failure) has made me an exponentially greater and richer person.

In a way, the way I use my failure to drive my success reminds me of Sherman Alexie’s character Thomas Builds-the-Fire. Thomas is a storyteller and, like most Native American Indians, he has a painful past. His father died fighting for a country that tried to kill him and his mother died giving birth to him. Yet the pain of these memories does not confuse and consume Thomas. Instead of wandering in search of his identity, the pain seems to make his purpose more clear; he uses the pain of his past as a driving force for his measured determination. I too use my past to motive my future successes.

artists function

"The artist's function is to reflect the culture back to itself, not solve its problems." ~ Poet Brenda Hillman

Why art?

Art is a condition of human life. In Karl Paulnack’s welcome address to freshman at Boston Conservatory, he talks about the amazing amount of art the Jewish people created while at concentration camps during World War II. He says,

why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy [creating art]? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with [art]? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen (composer); many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, ‘I am alive, and my life has meaning.’

(Substituted art for music—in this case the words are synonymous). When the city of New York (and the country of America) looked for something to help heal the wounds after the attack on 9/11, they turned to art. Art is an essential means of expression that is engrained in our biology. Without art, truly, culture does not survive. We as artists bear responsibilities similar to surgeons. We heal wounds, we save lives, and we give reason and meaning for life.

anything is possible!

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The Red Wheelbarrow

"The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.



This superb, simple poem is intensely thought provoking. I won't go into what I think about it, nor it's meaning. In fact, I think it isn't meant to mean anything other than what it is. It reminds me of "Fountain' by Marcel Duchamp in the way it makes you consider something in a new way. The one problem I have is the lack of emotion. It spurs conversation and thought, but doesn't spur my body and heart. Yet it is still a remarkable poem.

why do I photograph?

I have been questioning a lot of things trying to get a deeper understanding of art, photography, and what their roles in my life are. I have come to a conclusion; albeit I am not sure if my answer is true, but it feels true. There is a poem I just read by Robert Hayden called "Those Winter Sundays" that sparked my theory.

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Why did Robert's dad, even in the cold of winter on Sunday mornings, get out of bed before anyone else to warm the rooms for his family, even when he would get no appreciation? The answer is love. You do things out of love that have no logic, but you feel with every bone in your body you need to do it without care if you get appreciation. In fact, quite often, love can feel lonely. Art is that same kind of love. It can be lonely, it can be frustrating, and quite often it goes unappreciated (even by yourself). Yet you feel with every part of you that you need to create, you need to express yourself. When I take a photograph that moves me in a peculiar way, it just clicks and everything feels right. So when I struggle through days, weeks, and months not knowing why I photograph or where it is all going, I need to realize that photography is a part of me, like a child is part of their mother. I will give my heart to art, even if it won't give back to me. So that is why I photograph. It is a part of who I am. It is a part of my genetic make up. It just feels right.