Jump Starting Creativity – Taking Off and Soaring

Have you ever had one of days where things went from sleepy time boring to speed of light synapse. . . like the difference between driving a 1978 Ford Fiesta and stepping on the pedal and going zero to 60 in 2pointsomethingseconds in one of the new sporty Teslas? I had been bored and nearly comatose . . . couldn’t put creative thoughts together if I needed to and then . . . I opened an email and my attitude and mind jumped forward, backward and in-between. My mind and creativity took off . . .

My friend Dick Dorsett is hard to describe. He’s the kind of person who would try being a circus act, biking across Nova Scotia and Oklahoma, or teaching children in Southeast Asia how to use a paper microscope. His wife is a saint. He just sent me a note “Her name showed up in my mailbox. I was not familiar with her, but decided not to delete the email until I could look closer. There was a zoom tour involved, but somehow it caught my attention. Scroll down and you can read a synopsis of her exhibit and how the story of a family adrift at sea caught her attention. Liz, of course, ordered a used copy of Survive the Savage Sea. It’s on my “to read” stack now. But the bigger discovery is Nina herself.”

The Jitney’s Just a F**king Bus. – youtu.be/7t3sVs60ofU?list=RD7t3sVs60ofU

Nina is, was, or will be Nina Katchadourian. I searched for her on Youtube. I watched her video “The Jitney’s Just a Fu**king Bus.” Tall and very thin Nina sang, played guitar, played a Roman goat herders flute, and danced barefoot in the sand with the waves behind her. My mind immediately paired her with my cousin Jaime Moyer dancing in kind abandon. Jaime and Nina do not share the same body style, but the creative juxtapositions flooded my mind.

Jaime is the queen of L.A. (and beyond) improv. You may recognize her from K.C. Undercover, Two Broke Girls, and AP Bio. Nina has one video where she very carefully sticks shark’s teeth under her upper lip and smiles. Jaime is non-stop spur-of-the-moment. Nina is deliberate and loves to put books on her shelves (left flush) with the titles easily read and making coherent sentences as your eyes go from one book to the next.

From Nina and Jaime, my mind flew me back to the 1980s and a friend who was a performance . . . artist . . . weird . . . well, he would use Scotch Tape to transform his facial features and he once called and left me a forty minute recording of him playing violin. He couldn’t play the violin . . . but I listened. I thought, “Surely it will end or there will be a message. But, no. Have you ever listened to violin for forty minutes with a faint smile on your face like you were waiting for a punchline? It never came. I think we used him as a guest in our Spud Goodman production.

I went back to my email from Dick to read more comments about Nina, and there was an email from my friend Jim Harris right next to Dick and Nina. Jim has about twenty years on me. He just recently quit tennis. I quit about thirty years ago. Jim sent me a joke about a guy ordering a pizza . . .

Is this Gordon’s Pizza?
GOOGLE:
No sir, it’s Google Pizza.
CALLER:
I must have dialed a wrong number. Sorry.
GOOGLE:
No sir, Google bought Gordon’s Pizza last month.
CALLER:
OK. I would like to order a pizza.
GOOGLE:
Do you want your usual, sir?
CALLER:
My usual? You know me?

The joke went on and on. I was beginning to miss the forty minutes of violin. However, the tone of the day had changed. I was amused. I was bemused and hoping to never be demused. Ideas were rising. I was fully awake. Thank you, Dick, Nina, Jaime, Scotch Tape, and Jim.

Nina on Facebook – facebook.com/nina.katchadourian

Jaime on Facebook – facebook.com/jaime.moyer.7