When you begin to share, really share and mix and blend and mash it all up, you begin to loose the thread. It becomes difficult to remember how everything is connected. Who owns what? Who created which piece of the tapestry becomes less and less important. It is at this moment, knee deep in creation, when you look around and find yourself immersed in an unnameable magic. I have been riding a wave of unprecedented creativity since the beginning of the year. Here is what some of it looks like.
A few weeks ago, I created this mash-up and wrote this post about it. The post created one of my favorite exchanges in the comment sections about art and life and openness. A few days later, Keri Lee Beasley shared this amazing Ted Talk with me by Brene Brown I encourage you to watch it in it’s entirety:
I was so moved by her message that I had to give it life in my new favorite medium- the mash-up. This time I used music from Noise Professor. Who had created the music for another project of mine- a musical, photography/poetry thing I am doing with Zach Chase.
I hope to write more on her talk and ideas later, as I see her research as validation for my entire philosophy, but for now, I will let her words and the music sum it up.
Vulnerable Stones of Stones by intrepidflame
Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Open up. Share wholeheartedly. Make connections. Let’s have this chat in the comments. What do think?
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Yes! Reminds me that mashups are exponential, and also reminds me that TEDx Berkeley is coming up in a couple of weeks and I get to go again! Last year, a single sentence (or rather the profound thoughts behind that sentence) tweaked my whole outlook on life: “Always be prototyping.” Hopefully another super sentence is waiting in the wings…
My first mash-up experience. It’s really powerful. Music speaks to such a primitive part of us – something so raw. Thanks for including my work – it’s an honor.
Thanks for taking the time to listen Brene. I am thrilled you enjoyed it. Your talk has really resonated with me and I am looking forward to reading more of your book and hopefully connecting more often through various social media. I respect what you are doing and saying and feel your work serves a very important role in the world today.
As for the mash-up, I was originally going to take snippets and play them over music, but I couldn’t help hearing Justin’s voice. His voice seems to mirror the desperation and fear many of us feel when we sometimes go a bit over board and open up completely without a net.
Anyway, I am glad you liked it. I tried to keep your talk in context and let it flow.
I saw the video a few days ago and it still haunts me. I really like how her research and passion for it made her come to a crossroads in her life: the need to take a good look inside yourself before you attempt to make sense of the world. I think that is what we all do when our jobs are more than a means to make a living. For me, teaching is the viewpoint to grow in my life. It’s the car I’ve chosen to do my journey.
But I digress from your post. Back to connections.
I’ve been thinking that sometimes the passion that makes us share has a blinding force as well. I think we are online to obtain not a just a connection, but its so desired effect. It’s as if connections were a means to something, which is so difficult to describe and so distinctly personal that, for simplicity’s sake, let’s call it connection, or openness or sharing. I think those words are the underpinning grammar of learning magic.
The mash-up you made is like an entry to your mind making connections. It’s so much more than “yeah, I love the talk”. As I listened, I felt as if you had heard another TED talk. I was wondering if you had picked up the same traces that made me like it. Probably not. However, you left towards the end the line that sums it all up for me: ‘our imperfections make us beautiful’.
We cannot take for granted that we all mean the same by sharing and being open. I think that most of us who have edublogs have the shared experience of not having had these dialogues so fluently or frequently in our f2f contexts. Finding interlocutors is the only way to grow, so here we are making connections, which are crucial to our learning. As much as it still surprises me that here I am in Buenos Aires talking to you -who must be sleeping- in Jakarta, I’d like go past the being wowed to move on to the topic of genuine connections.
I’m quite sure I don’t get sharing and remixing the way you do. I don’t think I would feel inclined to try to produce something like this in future. And you know what? It’s not necessary. I’m here because somewhere in a stream of tweeted and blogged thoughts I felt quite at home in what you say. That prior connection makes me curious and willing to understand where you come from to mashup like this. I don’t intend to find similarities. I’m not scared we may disagree either.
I think that many bloggers try to find sameness and then get their sensibilities tied up in offence. But validation seeking, though necessary, doesn’t make us grow. That’s not what openness looks like to me. I think we need to connect to go beyond the hype, the passion and look for something more profound. It’s easy to pick up the jargon, the talk of technology in education and blog it out loud. We need to have the skill to tell the validation seekers from the genuine sharers. There are many more blogs today, but it’s still hard to collect many more examples and models, let alone new meaningful connections.
I still read and comment in the same blogs. Writing hasn’t become any easier for me. I spend a long, long time to produce a post. My teaching, what I do in class, has probably not changed that much outwordly, but it feels different for me and I see its effectiveness when my students get that discovery look in their eyes. How can that be assessed?
Vulnerability is not something I’m good at. Hence the many drafts posts I’ve written that have never seen the light. Sometimes I feel I cannot express it clearly, sometimes I don’t know if, by passionately disagreeing, I disappoint people in my closer circle of connections who may have taken for granted my views. The point is that when I sense we can share enough core values, I need to disagree with you. Not in a reactive way, mind you, I think it’s part of identity building.
You see, I reread this and I don’t think it makes any sense. And if it did, again, it’s so easy to misunderstand. It’s (oh) so difficult to know another person. It’s so tempting to assume we have found likeminds. It’s scarily normal to close doors when we find differences. Yet I think that what we do with all those differences in the middle of so much shared ground is the learning that matters most.
A few lines from John Donne come to mind now,
“Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.”
If we could remain calm when the truth as expressed by our online friends does not match our illusions. If we could embrace the differences and strengthen the connection from there -without any need to call it literacy or hasten to shout that technology enabled it. Maybe we can leave technology in the back seat and drive ourselves with the self-reliance that empowers us to judge a sour face exhibiting little understanding and go for it anyway.
Thank you for triggering this Jabiz.
Wow! Claudia. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to really delve into these ideas and share them with us here on my blog. It makes me so proud that there is this level of depth in my blog. People really seem to be thinking and tackling big issues.
We are all headed in some direction, sometimes leading, sometimes following. Sometimes moving forward. sometimes in circles. But we are in it together and that is all I ever wanted from my words.
You said,
That is the beauty of it, you never have to. We are hear to see what the world looks like through each others’ eyes so we can revel in the similarities and learn from the differences.
We share what we see and feel so others may connect with us. That is the nature of all art and connection for me. I want to see out from your eyes and have you see through mine.
You said,
and that feels great. Let’s flow on together!
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Hi Jabiz,
Love the mashup–so interesting. I would love to share it on my blog, too, if that’ s okay with you.
I wrote about Brene Brown’s TED talk, as well (back in January, I think). I think it’s definitely worth listening to and re-listening.
Best,
Elizabeth
P.S. Who is the person talking on your mashup recording who’s upset about sacrificing personal relationships for art?
Hi Elizabeth,
The voice is that of Justin Hall- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Hall
from this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx8rDD1ekGU
please feel free to share the mash-up. Thanks for reading.