How the hell can I train my creativity? It’s not that I have a button on my head which I press and ideas start flowing!
These were my first thoughts when I started advertising school a month ago. But, I have to admit that creativity did actually start to visit me more often this last month. Maybe we all have deep down inside our minds some imagination wells, who, just like oil wells need to be pumped out in order to be productive.
I also made a strange discovery: I identified my imagination pattern! And guess what? It stems from the first book I ever read, Roald Dahl’s “The Big Friendly Giant”. Whenever I try to pen down a script the dream labels in BFG’s cave pop into my mind, complete with Quentin Blake’s fantastic illustrations. And don’t you dare think they’re not cool. To wit:
“I is inventing a car that runs on toothpaste.”
“I is able to make the elektrik lites go on and off just by wishing it.”
“I is only an eight-year-old little boy but I is growing a splendid bushy beard and all the other boys is jalous.”
“I has a pet bee that makes rock & roll musik when it flies.
“I is abel to jump out of any high window and flote down safely.”
“BFG: Of course you like it. It is a phizzwizard! It’s a ringbeller! It’s whoppsy! This will be giving some little tottler a very happy night when I is blowing it in. Look in the jar carefully, and I think you will be seeing this dream.”
I think this perfectly explains my inability to produce any serious, scholastic work, like the dissertations I so badly have to write by June. Oh, well, at least I somehow tapped into the imagination wells.
image from bbc.co.uk
quotes from http://bms.westport.k12.ct.us/mccormick/rt/rtscripts/rtsbfg.htm as I only have the Romanian translation.
Juicy
April 5, 2008
Telenovela- now with 110% more juice!
image via notcot.org
cinema-Lego-phy
April 4, 2008
I don’t know about kids today (cos I’m an old, old person) but when I was 7 I really liked playing with Lego. I’d go to my friend’s Alex house and together we’d stage some awesome “productions” with our toys. I’m telling you, soaps, telenovelas, thrillers, rom-coms and horrors all together couldn’t match the sheer craziness and magnitude of the twists in our Lego shows. 
If only we were so full of ideas now.
Imagine how giddy I was when I ran across this video for camera pop band Camphor. The song’s called Castaway and it’s a stop motion animation with…Lego! Y-haaaa!
Protest in style :p
April 4, 2008
The Umbuster, from Icelandic designer Sruli Recht- the perfect accessory if you’re an anarchist planning to protect yourself from the bullies in the police force.
And, you have to agree it’s much classier than carrying a police baton (“pulan”) like my friend Bubble did, in high school.
Image from Sruli Recht via http://nickpapageorgia.blogspot.com/
High school forever
March 2, 2008
Maybe it’s the day I spent with my best friend since high school, Virginia, just relaxing and chatting as if we had no care in the world. Maybe it’s all the old classmates, acquaintances, boyfriends, etc. from high school I keep bumping into so often lately. Or my recent infatuation with the Gossip Girl series. Or the fact that I’m about to finish University and take the final plunge into adulthood (gosh, that sounds so dramatic and pretentious). I also remembered a friend’s comment from a year ago: “This is high school! Even though all these people are in their 20s they’re all fighting for the titles of most popular, nice girl who is admired by guys, party queens and kings, jocks and cool nerds!”
I’ve been overcome with a sort of nostalgia for my teenage years. The excitement, the feuds, the “clans” (bisericute in Romanian), the class trips, the crazy parties, the bitchiness. And then I realized that people outgrow their teen years but don’t necessarily outgrow all their adolescent habits. Show me a so called grown up who doesn’t bitch, binge drink or eat, go all adventurous from time to time and, sadly, who doesn’t back stab or try to undermine you by stealing something you value (idea, job, clothes, boyfriend, group of friends, so on). This is life. And I guess it’s those emotional and insecure teen years when life is at it’s most earnest.
So, in celebration of those stranger than fiction high school days I give you some illustrations from the book “Dear New Girl or Whatever Your Name Is”, a teacher’s collection of the notes students exchange in class. I’m also posting a brilliant stop motion animation, proof that the book really tickled a lot of creative nerves.
http://media.npr.org/books/holiday2005/dearnewgirl/lion_lg.jpg
http://media.npr.org/books/holiday2005/dearnewgirl/tomorrow_lg.jpg
http://www.fecalface.com/content/IMG_3521.jpg
The stuff dreams and nightmares are made off
December 12, 2007
Fred Astaire movies+ Looney Tunes+ Red Rose of Cairo= Vielfalt by Jakop Alhbom
