CLEVELAND (February 7, 2010) Susan Weber's video, We can do anything | The Dream On Kids 2009, was released on YouTube th

I used to think imagination preceded art. If dreams run rampant, haunting the day with their memories, that’s inspiration, right? If feelings are ripe, it’s time to create something. Yes? 

Then there was that time I stepped out of my comfort zone into an acting class taught by Scott Plate. Asking his students to journal about their experiences, he promised to read every word. I soon began to richly dream, and freely add the findings to my journal. 

The dreams were vivid and complex, my sense and sensitivity at full tilt. A gift, I thought, that just when assigned the task of introspection, dreams should surface, ripe with illustration.  

Bill Moyers recently aired an interview from 2004. He asked Maurice Sendak, author illustrator of ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ how he calmed his own demons.

'Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can't explain. I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I'm here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me.'
Maurice Sendak, Bill Moyers Journal

Elsewhere I’ve tracked the rational act of making this video.  Here you’ll find the visceral exposé. 

I’ve been Paul Fresty’s friend since our paths crossed in a songwriter circle many moons back.  Suddenly last summer, my imperious muse bade me go see Paul’s Beatles cover band (Revolution Pie) perform for a crowd of groovers and shakers.  Beatlemania was palpable as the stars, settling over the lovers of magic like a sweet dream.  My hand knew not whither to aim the lens in the midst of this wide angle lovefest.

What you see here, to the sound of one fine band and its devotees, is how one of those Beatles tunes moved me.  To film it.  To seek out images worthy of its joy.  To combine, revise, revisit, refine - and finally send it all up to the webiverse for you and your fond friends. 

Anyone who’s edited video knows you floss your ears many times with the audio tracks in play.  Thanks to Revolution Pie, mine was a happy duty.  As for the visuals, well, what better excuse than classic McCartney-Lennon to delve for the best in humanity?

Friend of this site mccn sent me a photo of Ernest Hemmingway kicking a can, part of a thriving Artist in Action photo series.  A companion photo to your left comes from a Wikimania 08 conference, a type of gathering that involves a lot of not shutting up.  As for making something, there is always a good possibility of being inspired by a bunch of sojourners to go home and dig in with the muse.

Ironically, if I spend much of this morning organizing my thoughts around the issue the two photos raise, I’ll be kicking my can of worms, video editing and production, down the Saturday avenue of procrastination (in good company, apparently). 

So I leave you with a thought fragment, along with everything the photos conjure in your inner-sphere --

When we become artist-politicians, looking outward to the next vote from onlookers (or our own critical mass), we’re more likely to punt and shrug our way to the periphery of the making core. 

Wiser guys than I know this well.

I understand that the politically safe move would be to kick the can further down the road - to defer reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term.
Barack Obama, September 9, 2009 address to Congress

Artist in Action.  Oxymoron or precription? 

Most of the available footage for Wide Open is from a stationary camera.  When I zoom in to vary the perspective, I like the graininess of the close ups.  So I decide to go for the black and white, jittery look of old footage.  Think CBGBs in the 70's.

Behind the scenes at Cleveland’s Museum of Natural History are cavernous rooms of shelves and cabinets packed with our past, meticulously catalogued and preserved for our future.  The public sees only the tip.

Robert Wright says there’s hope for the world.  In The Evolution of God, he documents progress through time: how we conceive of divinity, and how our views of God influence our actions.

This was the wise grandma blessing Rita Conway gave to grandchild Katie on her maiden college voyage.  'Have fun and play hard!'

By all accounts, mine included, Mrs. Conway was a remarkable, infatigably genuine woman who couldn't keep herself from loving you, you who stands before her at this moment, even had she tried.  And why would she try?

We buried Rita yesterday.  In her memory, I hold up some creative souls I've noticed lately, hard at play.  As with Rita's life, their potent love inspires me.

Sour, a band from Japan, makes a music video out of geometrically choreographed fan clips.  The music is good, the editing tight, the effect - a kaleidoscope of community.  YouTube excels at this.  This is what people choosing to pool their strengths for the sake of a worthy project looks like.

Love with legs.  That's what Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, calls justice.  She and her cohorts shepherd would-be pastors to pastures of plenty.  Plenty of need.  Plenty of problem solving.  And the need is fairly divided between the poor who need opportunity and the elite who need meaning richer than accumulated wealth. 

Justice is nothing but love with legs. Justice is what love looks like when it takes social form.
Serene Jones, Bill Moyers Journal

Prosperity - posterity - depend on this version of hard play.

And what exactly is posterity?  Bill Moyers asks double Pulitzer Prize winning poet (accolades never fail to impress, no?) W. S. Merwin if he's more concerned with posterity now, in his 80s, than in his youth.

The poet, like good poets everywhere, specializes in love with legs.  The legs of his poems become those of his listeners.  When he reads Yesterday, hearers rush from the reading to call their fathers.

So when asked about posterity, Merwin has a simple answer.