Category: story

courage, fear, home, story

My Year of Hopefulness – Honest conversations

Christa Avampato

This morning I broke down a little. After the initial shock of the apartment building fire, I went into panic mode when considering the legal binding agreement of my lease. Could I be held accountable for the remainder of my lease? If I didn’t pay it, could I be sued? I wound myself up, immediately firing off emails asking for advice. I even talked to a personal friend and family friend who are attorneys. Then I met with a broker who showed me a few apartments and he wound me up all over again. By the time I sat down at 11:00AM my head was hurting and spinning.

So I took it to the extreme, my usual MO when trying to calm myself down. Okay, what’s the worst that could happen? I wouldn’t get my deposit back. I wouldn’t get my September rent back. I’d be held liable for the remainder of my lease or be taken to small claims court. That’s the worst. And it sucks, but as I learned this weekend, it just sucks.
So rather than continuing to wind myself up, I decided to pick myself up, cart myself off to my own apartment, and meet with my landlord, explaining that I just cannot stay. And I took LOTS of photos. It’s just not livable and it’s not safe. The whole subway ride I just kept repeating to myself, “I just want out of that place and into some place safe.” And I could swear someone said “okay”.
I took a deep breathe and explained my feelings to my landlord. I choked up a little bit and was mad at myself for that. He looked at me with a bit of surprise. He couldn’t believe that I even thought he would hold me to the lease, keep my deposit, and keep my September rent. Not at all. He released me from the lease, will return my deposit, and refund my September rent. Of course. No problem at all. My lease is null and void and his insurance will cover the lost rent and deposit.
That’s all it took – an honest face-to-face conversation and knowing exactly what I wanted and why. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are far worse that what actually comes to be. Far better to get it all out there in the open than bottle it up. The result is likely to be better than anything we imagine.
art, story

My Year of Hopefulness – Giving the visual arts its fair share of attention

Christa Avampato

If you want to learn about the importance of impact in visual messaging, consider this: the average amount of time a painter has to engage a potential purchaser of his work in a gallery is 15 seconds. That’s about how much time people spend looking at any one painting as they’re strolling through an art space. In 15 seconds, the artist who likely spent hours, days, or months creating a single piece of work must make that viewer think, laugh, cry, and wonder. 15 seconds to make an impression, or not. In other words, the painter must immediately elicit some type of strong emotion and curiosity or risk being passed by and forgotten.

In writing, we give authors a decent number of pages before we decide to continue or put down a book. We’ll watch a TV show for a few episodes, a play for at least the first act, a few songs on an album or at a live concert. Visual artists barely ever get a fair shake. And here’s why it’s even more tragic: our minds physically cannot take in every detail of a painting in 15 seconds. But it’s exactly those details that will make all the difference in our opinion of a piece of work. In 15 seconds, we aren’t giving the artists nor ourselves a fair shake and my guess is that we are missing a lot of beauty and a lot of joy through this self-imposed limitation.

For the sake of the art world, here’s my suggestion: slow down and open the mind. I’m guilty of museum fever. I have to get through as much as possible as quickly as possible just to say I’ve seen it. Bad idea. Very bad idea. I have a tough time recalling details of works if I take that approach. So on my last visit to the Met, I went more slowly and I did less. I went to see one small showcase, Raphael to Renoir, and then let myself just wander and enjoy whatever happened to catch my eye for about an hour. I spent that hour looking at a handful of works and I took the time to enjoy, appreciate, and question each one. It was the best visit I ever had to the Met.

The visual arts can be overwhelming but they don’t have to be. Take small steps, question why the artist chose specific colors, textures, or points of view. Read the back story on the work if it’s published alongside the work in a gallery or museum. Take time to consider all the choices that could have been made and why an artist specifically made the decisions to create the work that now stands before you. We’ll be better off for this exercise – we’ll learn how to see and appreciate more of the world around us – and visual artists will finally get a chance to inspire us at least as much as other artists.

The painting above, Blank Image, was painted by Kyle Waldrep and is on display at the School of Visual Arts on the UCF campus. Oil on canvas.

New York, New Yorker, story

A Cartoon a Day to Chase the Blues Away

Christa Avampato

February can bring out the blues in all of us. Yesterday I went hoem a bit early with a massive headache – the perfect storm of gloomy weather, flourescent lights, and 8 hours toiling away in front of a computer screen. I’m lucky that an enormous part of my job requires me to read close to 100 news sources every day – from newspapers to blogs to magazine to trade journals, and many of them contain creative content.

One of my favorite daily checks is the blog created by New Yorker cartoonists. I wish I could draw well, or rather, I wish it didn’t take me so long to draw well. I long to be one of those people who easily takes ink to paper to draft up a piece of witty genius in a matter of minutes. Everyone’s got to have a goal to reach for, right?

Even though it’s so foggy out right now that I can’t even see the lake that’s only a few hundred feet from me, I’m smiling because of the cartoonists over at The New Yorker. This month, the New Yorker Cartoonist blog is features Michael Maslin. I love the honesty and simplicity of his cartoons and the stories they present. Check him out at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists

art, story, writing

The monsters are coming! The monsters are coming!

Christa Avampato

There are a myriad of things we can point to in the marketplace to illustrate the trend of fascination with fantasy, magic, and fairy tales. One of my favorite examples are the Ugly Dolls and the little monsters that seems to be popping everywhere from coin purses to water bottles to stationery. A face only a mother could love has become a face that everyone loves because of its sense of whimsy and approachability.

Today I read a blog post at http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/next/ about a whole new monster phenomenon. Stefan Bucher an LA designer created a blog with no motivation beyond plopping a small amount of ink onto a piece of paper every day and filming how he made that plop of ink into a monster. He then posted the videos to the blog. Then someone left a comment on the blog with the first of what would be many elaborate stories about the monsters.

Story creators from Marines to kindergartners took pen to paper and in the process of creating their own unique stories about the monsters became very attached to them. Bucher’s characters generated so much chatter, that companies like Starbucks and Target, brought him to have imagination sessions. Creativity spawning more creativity – what could be better?!

To see Bucher’s blog, visit http://344design.typepad.com/

creativity, story, TED, women, writing

A Woman of Her Words

Christa Avampato

“What is truer than truth? The story.” ~ Jewish Proverb

TED recently posted Isabel Allende’s talk on passion. In a room full of scientists, technologists, and innovators, Allende talked about story telling, about women, and about the importance of having a warrior heart. She speaks bravely with humor, honesty, and grace about the state of women in the world, and the picture is bleak, though hopeful.

When the news reports talk about war casualties, 80% of the people they are talking about are women. The women of war have suffered unbelievable cruelty and horror. They have endured gruesomeness beyond measure, in the lands formerly their homes and in refugee camps. Once they are displaced by war they have hardly anywhere to go and hardly anything to take with them: women own 1% of the world’s assets though do 2/3 of the labor.

In the world of philanthropy to help the needy, again women lose. Even though they comprise 51% of humankind, women’s programs receive only $1 for every $20 that is donated to men’s programs.

After all of this sad news, you may wonder where in the world is that hope I mentioned in the opening paragraph. And here it is: the stories of women are haunting them so much that they cannot help but write them down. We are becoming an entire generation of story tellers. 35% of on-line teenage girls have created a blog, in contrast to only 20% of on-line boys who have done so. 57% of people in the news industry are women.

The trend of Tech Fatales is emerging: Women are more likely to use mobile phones, digital cameras, satellite radios, and DVD recorders. Why? Because to listen and tell stories, we must connect. We don’t just want to contribute and make this world better. We are striving to make it good.

Allende talks about a woman whom she met in a refuge camp named Rose Mopendo. After tragedy upon tragedy, Rose and her 9 children finally made it to the U.S. In Swahili, “Mopendo” means “great love”. And what we love most is the truth, and so we must love and propagate our stories.

So it is no wonder that we are writing history in our own hand. Allende goes on to say that “heart drives us and determines our fate. It matters more than training, more than luck. The world needs dissidents, mavericks, rebels, and outsiders.” If this world is to be a better place, it needs us to rise up, to question everything, to put ourselves out there as risk takers and rule benders. And then, please, write it all down. We can’t afford to have anyone forget the lives we have lived.

To see a podcast of Allenede’s talk, click this link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/204
The picture above can be found at http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Georgia_Okeeffe/red_canna.jpeg

cancer, happiness, Robin Roberts, story

Making sense of a mess

Christa Avampato

There are many antecdotes that people use to comfort themselves or those they care about when something in their world goes wrong. “You’ve got to turn lemons into lemonade.” “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” “It’s a character builder.”

I was watching the news a few nights ago and Robin Roberts from Good Morning America was getting her head shaved because her hair was falling out from chemotherapy. They showed a clip of an interview with her asking her why she would subject herself to something like that on national television. And she simply said, “Because my mother taught me to make my mess my message.” So much more more powerful than making lemonade or building character.

Making your mess your message actually gives you something to do with what’s wrong with your life at the moment. That can mean cancer, a broken relationship, a lost job. You can scoop up your sorrows, however many there, however intensely they make you feel, and put them to work. And it helps you get through it, connects you to other people going through a similar situation, and helps them pull through too.