For our new section, Kids’ Art of Doing, New York University student, Carson Meyer, talked to 12-year-old prodigy Benjamin Krasner.
We’ve all seen them—the bite-sized violinist effortlessly playing Chopin or the 5-year-old with a fine art career—and wondered: What’s it really like to be a prodigy?
Continue reading “Kids’ Art of Doing: How Does a 12-Year-Old Prodigy Make Friends in College?”
This advice may seem counterintuitive. When presenting yourself in the online dating world, isn’t the goal to reach the largest pool of possible matches? So you hide your quirks and put forth what you think will be the most widely appealing, least offensive version of yourself. Right?
Wrong.
When we interviewed the founders of OkCupid (the hippest online dating site with 7 million members) for our upcoming book, they told us this kind of thinking is an online dating “fatal flaw.” And they should know. These four math nerds from Harvard are the Nate Silvers of finding love online—number crunching their teeming mass of statistical data to provide insights into what really works in digital dating.
Sam Yagan, OkCupid’s CEO, enlightened us: [Expand ]
“Getting people to kind of like you is a waste of time.You’re looking for the two or three people who will love you as you really are. If Dungeons and Dragons is your thing you want that person who will say, ‘Oh my God! You love D & D? I do, too!”
In other words whether you’re like the pair above—iPhone-using, Mickey-Mouse-loving, tatted hipsters—or [insert truthiest description of yourself here], express who you really are in your profile and photo. Then your chances are better that someone who will be attracted to the real you can actually find you.
This idea of showing who you really are can also be applied to your work life. Most of us have faked it in a job interview, pretending to be the sort of employee we thought a potential boss was looking for. Predictably the results (if you even get the job) are disappointing to that employer and yourself. And if you’re selling a product or service why try to appeal to every demographic? Instead let people know what is truly unusual about what you’re selling to attract the core group of people that can’t live without it.
OkCupid Fact: The first time an OkCupid-paired couple sent in a baby picture OkCupid’s CEO thought, “We effected the creation of a human life!” But, now, he says, “We’ve done that tens of thousands of time over.”
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The Art of Doing Artist’s Interpretation Project is a collaboration between us and imaginative artists we choose to depict superachievers from our upcoming book from Plume/Penguin coming out Jan 29, 2013. (Which you can preorder here!)
When we wondered who could best portray the trailblazing erotic filmmaker Candida Royalle, we immediately thought of fine artist Robert Piersanti who has devoted the last ten years of his life to painting a stunning cast of sensual and strongly independent women including rock n’ rollers, burlesque performers, barmaids and other locals from his Jersey City neighborhood.
Royalle (who we interviewed for our upcoming book in a chapter on How to Make Erotica that Turns Women On) was a porn star in the 70’s and early 80’s. She came to hate the way the business represented women as sex objects to serve male fantasies. So she quit. And then she struggled with what to do next. She believed in a cinematic sexuality that would celebrate the human body without demeaning women but she felt that the traditional male-centric adult film industry had gotten it wrong. The question she asked herself was:
“What would erotic films be like if they were made from a women’s perspective?”
[Expand ]
In 1984, when few believed there was a market for erotic films for women Royalle took the leap and formed Femme Productions. She opened up a whole new way of portraying women’s sexuality by producing films with realistic plots, believable actors and depictions of naturalistic lovemaking rather than the gymnastic, porn-by-the-numbers, money-shot-ethos of traditional pornography. Royalle was a game-changer in her industry and a godmother to women filmmakers who followed in her field.
Despite what you may think about adult films, Royalle can be a model for those of us who have become disillusioned by our workplace or the industry we work in. Rather than to wallow in the psychic space of feeling exploited and discouraged by working in a business whose values conflicted with her own, Royalle challenged the status quo. Of course, she had no guarantee of success. But just as with pioneers of other industries, if she hadn’t tried she never would have come up with a whole new way of doing things.
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In most elections the partisans already know who they’re voting for—their votes are based on policies not necessarily politicians. But in an election as close as this one to persuade the small slice of “undecideds,” both Obama and Romney (and their army of supporters) have used every means to shape their story including advertising, stump speeches, visual presentation and robo calls. And just as much effort has been put into destroying the narrative of the other guy.
Although a thousand tangents have been taken and small bore arguments made by the candidates, Obama’s storyline could be summed up as, I inherited a mess that I’ve done a lot to fix and if you elect me again I’ll continue fighting for the Middle Class. And Romney’s might be summarized as: I’m a businessman who knows how to get this economy going.
When we talked to Richard Gerrig, an author and professor of psycholinguistics who’s researched the cognitive effects of narrative, he told us that anyone under the sway of a story can be transported: [Expand ]
“You are so immersed in the narrative and involved with the characters that you are not just identifying with them, you become part of their world and have a stake in the story.”
In other words, in the grips of a story, we experience the narrative in the same way we would if we were actual participants in that story. An effectively told story can so weaken our rational powers of cognition and reason that the story can seem to become proof of its own content.
And in this election both Romney and Obama are vying to be the one who tells the story that “transports” more voters than the other.
Storytelling, of course, is an art not just practiced by politicians. Many of the superachievers we interviewed for our upcoming book recognized the power of narrative. Whether it was to develop a brand or sell a product or even market a rock band, the men and women we talked to told us about how they had put great effort and thought into shaping narratives to communicate with their target audiences.
One of our favorite lines was uttered to us by Michael Sitrick, an L.A. crisis manager, who rehabilitates the tarnished reputations of misbehaving celebrities, CEO’s and elite athletes. In its brutal simplicity, his line could be the motto of any political candidate, party or operative hoping to win an election:
“If you don’t tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you.”
On Tuesday (or who knows when), we’ll see which candidate was the better storyteller. [/Expand]
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The coming of Hurricane Sandy reminded us of the adventures of one of the superachievers we interviewed for our book (due out Jan/2013).
Jessica Watson, a young Australian, sailed solo around the world, at the age of 16 on 34-foot sailboat. As dangerous as the conditions may be for those on Sandy’s path, Watson, who encountered squalls and storms during her 7 month journey, had no evacuation plan.
During one storm in the Atlantic Ocean Watson’s boat, Ella’s Pink Lady, underwent one knockdown after another. The boat turned over 180 degrees and Watson was flipped upside down in the cabin and left clinging onto the handholds with her feet touching the ceiling. [Expand ]
As we write about in our book (Chapter 31, “How to Sail around the World”), Watson found ways to manage her emotions to deal with each obstacle throughout her epic journey. The advent of a storm like Sandy is a reminder of how our lives can be interrupted by tumultuous events. And what Watson’s example teaches us is that when forces outside of our control—such as losing a job—throw us off course, it’s those who can deal head on with their own emotional state who are more likely to overcome and continue on.
As Watson told us,
“The success of your trip is as dependent on your mood as it is on your rigging. You’re down there in the middle of the ocean weeks from land or help. You can’t just say, ‘Okay I’ve had enough.'” [/Expand]
Alec Baldwin tells us how being funny on one of TV’s most celebrated shows, “30 Rock”—heading into Season 7—owes as much to humility as talent.
When we asked—okay begged—Alec Baldwin to talk to us about how to be funny on TV for our book, he hesitated, telling us, “You know, I’m not funny… it’s them.”
Them is “30 Rock”’s co-head writer and show runner Robert Carlock and the dozen or so geniuses, oddballs and misfits that make up their storied writer’s room. Including, of course, show creator and other co-head writer, Tina Fey. Baldwin wouldn’t hear of discussing how to be funny without one of them.
So in the midst of their harried writing/shooting schedule last spring, we got a twofer, Baldwin fresh from the set and Carlock, looking as if he hadn’t slept in days, for a discussion for our book on just how complicated—serendipitous, precise, demanding and rewarding—TV comedy, really good TV comedy, is.
Given Baldwin’s bombastic image as corporate overlord Jack Donaghy, his sometime mercurial off-screen persona, and the famous egocentric personae of mega-watt stars in general, what surprised us most was Baldwin’s humility. For those in power—and even for the rest of us mortals— it’s not always easy to be humble enough to admit that we depend on other people. But Baldwin, who fell over himself complimenting the show’s writing staff, described his relationship to the writers as,
“A singer/songwriter thing. I’m just getting up there saying the lines they write and giving them everything I got.”
Baldwin’s version of “giving them everything I got” is emphatically not to rework the writers’ words. Instead, envisioning himself as the singer to their lyricist, Baldwin defines his art, as finding all the rhythms of the script “to get the juice out of it”:
“I might choose a word to pop for emphasis. And then decide where to take a pause and why. Bada-boom bada-boom bada-boom. Stop. Emphasis. Feeling.”
Carlock, too, acknowledges their critical interdependence, adding,
“When you’ve got people like Alec Baldwin doing the acting, you can only blame yourself when it doesn’t work.”
Baldwin and Carlock’s ability to park their egos allows them to recognize it isn’t all about them, that others’ work is indispensable. This quality of humility reminded us of the findings of Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, and others who have examined the role humility plays in leadership. It was a quality that we found talking to many of the other superachievers we interviewed for our book. And whether in a high-pressure environment, a factional workplace or even just dealing with a difficult co-worker, we can all apply this quality of humility to our own vocational lives. Without it, we may consider contributions of others to be superfluous or even detrimental to our goals. The workplace becomes an incubator of infighting and inefficiency. After all how much of a success would “30 Rock” and Jack Donaghy be—with millions of viewers and piles of awards—if Baldwin had refused to give the writers’ lines “everything he got,” believing instead he could throw away the script and improve the show by improvising his own lines?
30 Rock Fact: “30 Rock” that was called “The funniest comedy of the past decade” by Newsweek, has garnered 90 Emmy nominations, resulting in 14 wins.
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Imagine being in the position of asking a question—the question—whose answer may decide who will become the next leader of the free world?
There is non-stop coverage of how presidential candidates are prepared for their debates by cadres of political operatives, who advise them on body language, zinger usage, deportment and even substance. But what about the moderators?
Being a moderator of the presidential (or vice presidential) debates makes the job of a NFL replacement ref look easy. The moderators must manage the pressure of appearing in front of tens of millions of people at one of the most pivotal and analyzed moments in the election season, as well as be a tough but impartial questioner and handler of two very forceful opponents fighting for the most powerful job in the world. In today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere, around the clock news cycle and real time Tweeted critiques, moderators who were once respected as journalists, are now considered fair game—as when during the Republican primary debates Newt Gingrich dramatically confronted CNN’s John King for his line of questioning
What struck us in an excellent The New York Times process piece by Jeremy W. Peters in which he digs into the behind-the-scenes preparations of the four upcoming debate moderators, was their two-fold process. The moderators focused as much on managing their emotions as on mastering the subject matter of their debates.
Here are some of their practices:
ABC’s Martha Raddatz (who will moderate the vice presidential debate)
CNN’s Candy Crowley
CBS’s Bob Schieffer
PBS’s Jim Lehrer
Moderator of the first 2012 presidential debate, Lehrer acknowledged that it’s a “rough rough world” and and that with it will come “smears.” On his preparation, he added somewhat ellipitically, “If I’m not physically doing it, it’s in my head.” But perhaps having moderated 12 presidential debates, for him, it’s just another gig.
Although only a handful of people will ever moderate a presidential debate, we all have moments when our success will be determined by a performance—whether it is a job interview, a pitch or a negotiation. To increase the chances of pulling it off, we can look to the simple two-fold preparation of the debate moderators—school yourself in the knowledge you need and manage your emotions. And perhaps even remind yourself if you do have stage fright and slip up, at least you won’t be mocked, vilified and accused of electoral manipulation by political pundits all over cable news and talk radio.
Josh (co-author of “The Art of Doing”) never would have been able to create his fine art project of a fictional celebrity, Gigi Gaston, The Black Flower, had he not stolen from the history of graphic design. He studied—then methodically recreated—the design styles and photographic trends of fanzines, 45 and LP covers, American and European scandal and celebrity magazines from the 60’s and 70’s, to create a fictional but ultimately believable, archive of his star.
Pablo Picasso was a genius at being a thief. “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” he allegedly said.
When Picasso first saw African artifacts, he was inspired to “steal” the style, features and motifs, and commit the revolutionary act of inventing cubism. And of course he wasn’t the only one. Instead of merely copying from Masters who came before them, other groundbreaking artists stole from styles outside the realm of what was considered acceptable fine art—Andy Warhol stole from commercial art, Cindy Sherman from film stills, Jean-Michel Basquiat from folk art, Damien Hirst from utilitarian museum displays.
Because these artists had the audacity to steal from outside the boundaries of their worlds and create styles that had never been seen in galleries or museums, their work had shock value—gold in art world currency. The new imagery had the power to make viewers not only re-examine but often rethink their original perception of the source material. After Warhol, can anyone look at a Campbell’s soup can as just a can of soup?
Cross-disciplinary thieving doesn’t (and shouldn’t!) apply just to artists. If you’re going to write a romance novel, why not steal from pornography and end up with a “50 Shades of Grey”? If you’re going to start a cable channel, why not steal from the Hollywood feature film aesthetic and end up with an HBO? If you’re going to launch a social media platform, why not steal from mobile text messaging and end up with a Twitter? And by being the first, you become the standard by which all followers will be judged.
So whatever it is you do, whether you’re an artist, a startup entrepreneur or a magazine editor, look to influences outside your chosen field to find inspiration and the shock of the new.