Month: December 2007

no amateur

Just to prove I’m no amateur, check out the photo of 5 kids under 6 eating a candle-lit dinner. Yes, they’re eating. Yes, I cooked the food (I’m king of the crock-pot). Yes, I’d had all of them (3 mine, 2 not mine) for 5 hours or so by that point. Yes, by myself. (Well, Rune, our oldest, had spent a couple hours of that time at kindergarten.)

kids dinner

Granted, it didn’t last long before the entropy set in and Merrick made his escape.

Granted, the 2 4-year-olds play well together.

Granted, the 2 2-year-olds play well together (unless sharing is required…).

Granted, there was an hour at the play-center at the mall.

Granted, one of the moms was due back within an hour of this photo.

Granted, a double-scotch on the rocks was in my future – but not until after all three of mine were tucked safely in bed for the night.

KUDOS to all the full-time moms out there – especially the single ones doing this 24/7! You all deserve a day off. We love you. And, even when we don’t say it, we truly appreciate all you do. I love the kids. I had a great time with them for the afternoon, but starting companies and negotiating contracts is WAY easier than negotiating toy sharing between 2-year-olds (although those “grown-up” tasks can, unfortunately, sometimes have a lot in common with the kids…).

the business of creativity

I’ve had several conversations with friends and clients over the last few days specifically addressing how to frame the discussion of law, business/art, creativity and spirit in some understandable form. The phrase that keeps coming up and helping people understand what this is about seems to be “The Business of Creativity” where the law element is included in the business/art discussion and the spirit element is rolled into the creativity discussion. I don’t know yet if this really works for me yet because I don’t know if I want to down-play the spirit discussion at all. Maybe I won’t have to short-change the spirit, but I’m not seeing how “the business of creativity” captures everything I want to say. It definitely captures a sub-set VERY well. I pay the bill by helping people with the business of creativity, but there’s more to it.

I’ve been thinking about negative space – the space between objects and classifications. If you think about the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc a little bit, it’s easy to see that these numbers that we think of as “whole” are really an infintesimally small point along the number line. There is an individual infinity between 1 and 2, another between 2 and 3. So, when we think about the “whole” numbers, we’re missing a very great deal of good stuff in the spaces between. I don’t want to make that mistake when discussing spirit, creativity, business/art, and law.

I don’t want to get so focused on the labels or “poles” that the relationships between the poles are not given full attention. It’s the overlap that’s interesting. Perhaps it’s the overlap that gets closest to “real.”

In effect, these poles are only “real” when they are relating to each other, and relating to a whole host of other concepts that are outside of my focus. You could say they are in relation to each other, but maybe the “relation” should be spelled “realation” in this discussion. How about “inrealation” as a unifying label for the discussion? I like that. Inrealation.

What do you think?  Post a comment…

Back on Track

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intersection of law, business, creativity, and spirituality. I’ve been listening to some recordings of Joseph Campbell and reading his work, along with a lot of other great thinkers. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Law enables Business

Business is the vehicle for our Creativity

Creativity fuels the spark of divinity within our Spirit

Spirit should inform Law

Here’s a visual model of what I’m talking about:

Back On Track Model

When you see it this way, you also see that Law effects Creativity – in a left-brain (law) v. right-brain (creativity) sort of relationship. Business and Spirit also interact in a quasi-kabbalistic way with Spirit on a “higher” plane manifesting on the material plane in the form of business.

I think it’s worth examining these relationships, especially in the areas of the overlap.

How can we get more spiritual influence in our legal policy? Should we? I’m not talking RELIGION, I’m a firm believer in the separation of Church and State. I’m talking about SPIRIT – or at least the golden rule, should infuse all of our laws. Can we overcome the greed and short-term self-interest that seems to motivate our law-makers and lobbyists working behind the scenes? Maybe that’s naive, but I think we need to start somewhere.

How can we get more people, especially small business folks (the backbone of our country and future), to understand and engage in the aspects of the law that KEEP them out of trouble rather than waiting until they’re neck-deep in bad stuff to ask for help? It seems that people get upset that legal fees cost so much – but they usually are only engaging with lawyers AFTER they’ve gotten in trouble. I can guarantee that it costs way more to get out of trouble than to avoid it in the first place.

How can we get more spiritual inspiration happening in our businesses? Maybe that’s simply through the Creative process itself. Maybe the role of Creativity is simply to channel a spiritual aspect of existence into our daily lives, which tend to revolve around business. Maybe our arts organizations need to take on more outreach programming (if possible) rather than constantly trying to just get people to come to the museum, symphony, etc. (Of course I recognize that many arts organizations already do great outreach programs.) How can we get more Creative inspiration infused into our legal framework at the national, state, and local levels?

I think if you have read books like Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind, watched Shift Happens on YouTube, engaged in Bruce Mau’s thoughts of Massive Change or even just been allowed to lift your head up out of the cubical and take a fresh look around – these questions should be bubbling in your subconscious.

To use some of the language of Joseph Campbell, I think American Culture is hearing “the call” of the “hero’s journey” into some challenges that we need to face head-on, or be forced to face in a bad way (much like those small business owners who wait until after the trouble starts to create a plan). Maybe an understanding of the interactions above might help us in that quest.

I’m no expert on these topics. I’m as guilty as the next person (maybe more so) of waiting until I’m in trouble to start finding a way out, but I think these issues are too important to ignore. Maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think it is this time.
I’d really like some feedback on this topic and I’ve enabled the commenting feature on the blog again (thanks to some blog-spam software that seems to be working). So, feel free to chime in with your thoughts on this or other things I should be considering. I’m going to keep exploring and writing on these issues and hearing (and sharing) some different perspectives would be great.