The Not-For-Profit Human

Something about working at the music school - a non-profit org with a mission and vision that I strongly support - has gotten me thinking about my lifelong goals in a new light.

Before, at the corporate job, I had some personal short-term goals: learn how large businesses operate, learn the theory behind financial modeling, develop basic management skills, etc. But when I thought about my role in the company in the broadest sense, I realized that their understanding of my contributions was far simpler than mine: train her to make money for the executives. Without realizing it, my dedication of time and energy went more toward furthering the lifelong goals of a few people I had never met, than it did toward developing and meeting my own goals.

And so it is we call it "working for the man." Yes, Erica, we've all been there.

Right, I just realized that it is easy to lose sight of your personal goals when someone else pays you to help them achieve their's. And when their only goal is to make money (or not lose money, whatever the case may be) the whole thing just gets ugly. But that's all I'll say about that.

What got my brain turning today was the idea of "misson and vision" - something non-profit organizations are always discussing and re-defining and having big meetings about - and how cool that is. What is even cooler is thinking about these concepts on a personal level.

What would your personal "mission statement" be if you had to write it down? What would your long-term "vision" be for your life? If you were a not-for-profit organization, what would you be called?

This might be fun... post a comment if you come up with some answers.

Influences

I just finished reading My Name is Red, a fascinating novel by Orhan Pamuk, which has set off several internal debates on the creative process, artistic influences, and how these concepts manifest themselves in the present day.

The primary characters in the story were Fifteenth Century painters who worked for the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, a particularly avid supporter of book arts. In the painters’ Istanbul workshop, the masters placed extreme importance on creating exact replicas of ancient illustrations – of scenes from the Koran, or poems by ancient writers. Any evidence of a painter’s attempts to cultivate a personal style was disdained.

Essentially, the creative process in the Ottoman workshop involved exhaustive replication of the ancient masters’ paintings, with the ultimate intent of being able to re-create these illustrations without even looking at the page or the subject.

I have been thinking to myself, since reading the book, how much things have changed – whereas the Ottoman Empire rejected the concept of “style”, our contemporary culture wholly embraces the stylized and new. So much so, in fact, that if the work of an artist too closely resembles that of others who came before, the artist risks accusations of unoriginality. These days, one’s style is one’s art.

That said there is something that remains the same in the creative process of old and that of today. While perusing band websites recently, I noticed a theme that has cropped up in the media surrounding nearly all art forms: creative people consider it acceptable to list their “influences”. It is as though the artist is saying, “you need to know where I came from in order to completely understand how I cultivated my personal style.”

The key difference between ancient and modern art, then, is the emphasis on style combined with an ever-more individualized canon. In this sense, the new creative process is a testament to our globalized, contemporary culture: take the various creative elements you have been exposed to, find the most meaningful parts and work on replicating them, then once you’ve honed your artistic skills, add some personal elements and you’ve created something that is uniquely your own.

I think my favorite example of this right now is turn-tabling. I was listening to the Girl Talk album last week and was amazed at how unique each song is, while the content itself is nothing you haven’t heard before. They don’t even need to cite their “influences” because you can hear every one on the track!

Sites to See

I suppose I have been busy. Here are some inspiring websites for fun and creative motivation:

http://www.rogerbonairagard.com/
http://www.etsy.com/
http://www.thehousetheatre.com/

I love these people! Hope you do too :)

Money actually can't buy you everything, yay!

Maybe its all the holiday encouragement to shop and spend, but I have been feeling monumentally annoyed and generally cynical about consumer culture lately (as mentioned in the previous post). Everything – including many of the things I hold sacred (education, love, art) – has become a business venture and creative marketers are seriously cleaning up. A few examples:

Standardized test prep: practically a pre-requisite for taking any school admissions test nowadays. The prep course, the books, the practice tests online, the online communities… cha-ching Kaplan! These courses cost at least $1000 each, and most law-school / business school hopefuls will not even consider taking the test until they have gone through the course. This seems incredibly wrong to me. You can’t get into a top graduate school unless you have a certain score, and the only way to “guarantee” a good score is to take the course. Essentially, fork over $1000 or face immensely fewer options for school. In a world where academic pedigree and alumni networking are essentially the only ways to land a job, paying for test prep has become as much a necessary expense as paying for the degree itself.

The new wave of finishing schools: apparently no one can get a date on their own anymore. I’m not talking about e-Harmony or J-Date (because I don’t even want to get started on those…), I’m talking about seminars for men and women on how to interact with members of the opposite sex. Have you heard about this? Recently, a friend of mine informed me he had taken a new job as a seminar instructor for Charisma Arts: “Dating, Attraction, and Seduction Tips”. Young and middle aged men pay $1100 for a weekend seminar with him, during which they bar-hop in their respective cities (he travels to them for these gigs) and he encourages them to talk to women, providing tips and confidence-boosting. That is a seriously expensive wing-man, if you ask me.

But I must relate a moment of validation I received the other evening on my way home from work. It was the week of the big Radiologists conference in Chicago – when thousands of the highest-paid professionals in the world grace our city, and all the most expensive restaurants, hotels, and limo companies scramble to accommodate them. Among these establishments is, of course, Charlie Trotter’s restaurant, which happens to be one of the places I was passing on my walk home. The evening was cold and rainy – standard for late November – but I had a warm coat, wool hat and a sturdy umbrella, and I was somewhat happily bouncing down the street (for whatever reason… probably just glad to be leaving work). A large group was standing outside the restaurant as I approached, waiting for a cab or car service, shivering and grumpy. One taller, handsome middle-aged man had a petite woman clinging to his arm, her frozen ankles looking ready to collapse any second in 4-inch heels. He caught my eye as I breezed past and drunkenly blurted-shouted in my direction, “I’m jealous of you!”

It all happened far too quickly for me to respond with appropriate humor. As I turned the corner, I thought of a million hilarious retorts. I could have stopped and pointed out that he had just finished one of the highest-quality meals he would likely consume in his lifetime, yet he was still unsatisfied. Or I could have said simply, “that’s ironic”. Or I could have said “welcome to Chicago”. There are too many great one-liners to list. It was just somewhat wonderful (and simultaneously depressing in a way) that after all the money this gentleman had spent on living “the good life,” in a moment of wine-induced brutal honesty, he admitted to little old anonymous me that he was unhappy.

Conclusion: spring for a good umbrella, rich people.

More Inspiring Words

(courtesy of Page)

Responding to your latest blog (the dictionary one)...

jettison: to throw off (something) as an obstacle or burden; discard
i don't know why, but i'm really loving this word, this concept, these days.

also,
arcane: known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure; esoteric