Contagious Creativity

I kept thinking about my experience at the Toyota dealership yesterday...how so many people started conversations with me as I sat there stitching.  They either asked what I was doing, shared stories about people they knew who did cross stitch or told me which crafts they loved to do.  It made me start to wonder if being creative could be contagious.

Oddly enough, Nick came home after a really rough day at school and wanted to show me a link he’d found on you tube from Oprah’s 24th season kickoff featuring the Black Eyed Peas .  Watch how the one person they had dancing sets off the entire crowd.  Even Oprah was astounded! Now my girls like this song even more than before!

Sometimes Creativity can also be a way of making your point or getting even.  If you’ve never seen this astounding video shot by Halifax native Dave Carroll, you really need to check it out.  After almost a year of trying to get United Airlines to admit that they’d mishandled his luggage and broken his guitar, he wrote this song as a Creative way of showing his side of the story. He posted it to You Tube and after 3 days, it had over a million hits!  Needless to say, United began to notice the negative publicity buzz.  There is even a second song that almost rivals this first one, but I will let you go hunting for that one on your own if you want to.

Both of these video clips show that when faced with apathy, indifference or injustice, Creativity will always triumph!

INHALE:  We cannot control what life throws at us.  We can choose, however, to try to react as Creatively as possible.  Today, a bunch of football players tried to play computer games in Office Tech class because all their work was done and the typing tutorial was too boring. I went over to the bookcase, grabbed a few dictionaries, opened it to the page with the word FOOTBALL on it and told each one of them to type in the entire page as practice if their typing skills were so advanced.  All of them were back working on their projects within a few minutes.  The next time you are confronted with a problem, take a deep breath and try to find a Creative solution.

EXHALE:  When the going gets tough, we all need a little inspiration.  Today’s exhalation is to sit down with old magazines, fabric swatches,  paper scraps, stickers or anything else FLAT that inspires you.  Collage them down in your book in a random or orderly fashion (depending on which soothes your creative soul today) so that the next time you are feeling down, you can open your book to this page.  As the weather grows a bit colder, I already feel the urge to put in pictures from this summer or colours that will make me feel warmer on a blustery winter night.  If you are a knitter, beader or more tactile Creative soul, don’t worry... there are lots of three-dimensional challenges rattling around in my brain for later.  Just get in the habit of working flat for now...

By the way, if you’ve been enjoying this blog or find it WAY off base, please feel free to comment or share.