Creative Think

Waking Up with the Goldberg Variations

Remember when you were in high school and you fell in love with a particular song, and you wanted to hear that song every day for a month or perhaps two? And every time you heard it, it made you feel really, really good? Remember that?

Well that's what's happened to me for the past two months with J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations — in my opinion (and many others) one of the greatest pieces of music ever written (1742).

I've been familiar with the Goldberg Variations most of my adult life, but it's only since I listened to musicologist Robert Greenberg's lectures on Bach (from the Teaching Company) that I've begun to get a real appreciation for what Bach created. In particular, it was lectures 29-32 that did it for me. This is what the catalog says:

"Lectures 29–32 deal with the Goldberg Variations, probably the most singularly unified, most spiritually esoteric work created during the Baroque. In this intimate keyboard work, consisting of a theme, 30 variations, and a reprise of the theme, worlds of numerical, religious, and metaphysical symbolism have been found. The Goldberg Variations is a work of almost unbelievable substance, a whole infinitely greater than its 32 constituent parts."

There is a wonderful complexity to the Goldberg Variations that I've been slowly penetrating. All I know is that every time I listen to this piece, I feel better than when I started! I especially like the ten canons.

I own three recordings of the Goldberg Variations, two by pianist Glenn Gould and one by the great Polish harpischordist Wanda Landowska. My favorite is the legendary first Glenn Gould version (recorded when he was 22 years old in 1955); it's full on energy and sparkling clarity. I also like his second version made in 1981 just before his death (it's slower and more introspective).

Would you like to hear samples of the Goldberg Variations? Go here to hear!

But even better than that is this video I discovered of Glenn Gould playing almost the entire work. It looks as though it were made around 1981 (shortly before his death). It's 47 minutes long. I've watched it three times. You can clearly see a great artist lovingly playing a great work of art. His fingerwork is a sight to behold. [If you don't want to watch it, you might try just having it play in the background. Even better is getting the CD.] Have fun!

I'd be curious to hear your recollections and/or feelings about the Goldberg Variations. Also, if there's a piece of classical music that really moves you, I'd like to hear about it as well!

Be Willing to Be Led Astray

It's been a while since we've checked in with Heraclitus (the ancient Greek philosopher whom I consider to be the word's first world's first creativity teacher). Let's do so now and see what advice he can offer us. His words for today are:

“Expect the unexpected,
or you won’t find it.”

As always, Heraclitus can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The creativity strategy I see here is:

“Be willing to be led astray.”

When we explore for ideas and information, sometimes we find things that are better or more exciting than what we were originally looking for. Thus, we need to keep our minds open to unsought-for possibilities.

For example, in the 1930s physicist Karl Jansky improvised a new antenna to study the effects of telephone static. Instead, he discovered radio waves from the Milky Way galaxy, and in the process helped create the science of radioastronomy.

In 1856, chemist William Perkin searched for a synthetic quinine to combat malaria. Instead, he discovered a dyestuff (he called it “Mauveline,” which the public shortened to “mauve”) that was the first practical synthetic color.

In 1984, biologist Alex Jeffreys studied the gene for the muscle protein myloglobin, hoping to gain an understanding of how genes evolve. Instead, he stumbled on a stretch of DNA in the middle of that gene that varied greatly from one individual to another. This led to his pioneering work in the creation of “DNA fingerprinting,” which has revolutionized not only forensic science but also other disciplines such as anthropology and epidemiology.

Think of the times in your own life when one thing has led to something entirely different. How did you get interested in your line of work? How about the times you’ve gone to the library in search of a particular book, and then found something even better on the shelf behind you?

As writer Franklin Adams put it,

“I find that a great part of the information
I have was acquired by looking up something
and finding something else on the way.”

Here's my question for you: What mindset do you adopt when you want to see and take advantage of the unexpected?

This is what I do (sometimes it works fine, and sometimes less so):

1. I try to loosen my preconceptions about what I expect to find in a situation;
2. I pay special attention to the anomalous things I come upon rather than ignoring them; and,
3. I try to use what I discover as stepping stones to something very different.

When I’m in a hurry or narrowly focused on a task, I have a hard time adopting this mindset. That's because I tend to filter out information that strikes me as irrelevant. Conversely, when I’m relaxed or playful, there’s a greater probability that unexpected things flow my way.

What works for you?

How to Build Traffic on Your Site

For the last couple of days, traffic has been way up here at the old Creative Think blog. "What's causing this?" I thought to myself. Was it:

—Readers recognizing the amazing wisdom of my posts about Vowels and Spaces?

—Another link from Kathy Sierra (known around here as a "Kathvalanche")?

— Bruce Nussbaum wanting permission to put the Ball of Whacks on the cover of BusinessWeek?

— David Armano creating a new line of bathroom icons dedicated to me based on my critique of "Ed the Experience Diamond"?

—Liz Strauss hinting that I'm the mystery speaker at her SOBCon07 in May?

— Paul McEneny giving me control of his blog for a week because I'm the 1029th commenter?

— Mack Collier deciding that Creative Think was an "honorary marketing blog?"

— Seth Godin asking me to write a foreword to his next creativity book "No Skin off of My Head"?

— My link to Nedra Weinreich's Social Marketing University?

—Jonny Baker telling his many readers to find a religious truth or two in this blog?

— Ann Handley, Valeria Maltoni, CK, and Ann Michael putting out a joint announcement that reading Creative Think is good for developing your feminine side?

— Mike Wagner coming out of retirement to promote those amazing vowels and spaces?

No, it was none of those things. What was driving this traffic spike was a post I did last week when I was in Berlin entitled  "Giant Beautiful Naked Older Women In Public!"

The post was about a 40 foot high (12 meter) billboard in downtown Berlin sponsored by Dove skin creams featuring older women. It was attention grabbing, and showed several photos.

Little did I imagine what the search engines would do with the title of my post. Type in "beautiful naked women" in Google and on the first page you've got a link to my post (just above "Russian escorts" and below "Nude Celebrities.) Something similar happens when you Google "older beautiful women" and so on.

I learned a fantastic truth: Sex sells on the Internet!

So, there's your lesson for today: put "Beautiful Naked Women" somewhere in the title of your post and you'll get lots of traffic!

Give Me Some Space (Between Words)

Sometimes just the smallest little change to an existing way of doing things can have enormous — and unexpected — positive consequences. Here's one of my favorite examples of this phenomenon.

One of the most significant but unheralded communications developments of the past 1,500 years is the adoption of spaces between words.

Notice the words you’re currently reading. They are separated by spaces, written in lower case letters, and easy to read. Prior to approximately the eighth century AD, however, Latin and Greek were written in capital letters in a “run on” fashion — that is, without spaces between the words. Here’s an example:

THEREARENOSPACESBETWEENTHEWORDS
MAKINGTHEMMUCHMOREDIFFICULTTO
READINASHORTPERIODOFTIME.

As you can see, this type of writing slows you down. In ancient times, though, Latin and Greek texts were almost always read out loud. (This method is known as “reading by ear.”) Ancient readers, sufficiently familiar with their own language, easily identified words by sound instead of sight, and had little difficulty. Thus, word-separating spaces were considered unnecessary.

Such familiarity wasn’t the case in later times. Eighth century AD priests, living at the periphery of the former Roman Empire, had a weaker grasp of Latin, and so couldn’t always determine where one word ended and the next one began when reading Mass. The priests solved this problem by inserting spaces between the words to serve as a recognition aid.

Over time, the addition of the spaces created an unexpected benefit: faster reading. That’s because if you can see the beginning and ending of a word, you'll recognize it more quickly; moreover, the brain can sight-read words in much less time than it takes to speak and hear them. By the twelfth century, most of the literate world had adopted spaces, and sight-reading became widespread.

Question to think about: Think of a current project you're working on. What can you do (in this project) that would be the equivalent of adding spaces? How might that make it better?

Tribute to Vowels: The Greatest "What If" Ever?

In my opinion, one of the most important “what if” questions ever asked was posed in the eighth century BC by an anonymous Greek scribe looking for ways to improve the reading process.

A little background: at that time, the Greek alphabet — like previous alphabets such as the Phoenician (on which the Greek one was based) and the Hebrew — consisted only of consonants, no vowels. This writing system made reading a slow and imprecise process. To understand a word, the reader had to guess the missing vowel sounds between consonants to correctly grasp the meaning.

For example, a modern English equivalent might be, what does this two-consonant word stand for?

bd

Does it stand for “bad”? How about “bed,” “bid,” “bod,” “bud,” or even “abide”? As with most other cognitive activities, context and experience would be the guides to interpretation.

Much of creative thinking involves looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different. And that’s what this innovative scribe did. As he pondered the alphabet before him, the “what if” question he must have asked himself was,

“What if I looked at these symbols in a different way, and let some of the letters represent the vowels we actually speak rather than just consonants? What would be possible?”

The eventual result was the creation of seven written vowels  (alpha, epsilon, eta, iota, omicron, upsilon, and omega, shown above). By combining these with existing consonants, he — and the other scribes of the period who contributed to and adopted this convention —

created the first fully phonetic alphabet.

This is a truly powerful invention! A fully phonetic alphabet — that is, one capable of expressing all the spoken sounds in a language — enabled writers to translate spoken words into written words, and readers to do the opposite. The fact that children could easily learn this new system certainly contributed to its success. Thus, with the addition of vowels, these early Greeks both simplified and gave new power to writing and reading. Considering the importance of language to our thinking processes, it is difficult to understate the significance of this development.

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Think vowels are amazing, but there's something even better? I'd love to hear your nomination for the greatest "What If?" question ever asked.

Giant Beautiful Naked Older Women In Public!

Special Alert: The Creative Whack Pack is now available as an iPhone App. Go here to check it out. 5-Star rated!

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When I lived in Germany in 1971 and 1973-74, I was struck by the use of female nudes in the mass circulation newspapers and magazines such as Bild Zeitung, Bunte, Stern, and Spiegel. But back then, the models were usually in their late teens or early twenties.

Earlier this week, I was walking along the famed Unter den Linden in Berlin. Towering above everything was a 40 foot high billboard from Dove featuring three giant nude women — but these women were in their 50s and early 60s. Quite captivating!

The tagline says: "Beauty knows no age."

Since today is my 59th birthday, that's an idea I can ascribe to (and so does my wife)! I guess we've all come a long way.

Here's a closeup of the giant woman on the right (she looks pretty good).

Berlin's Holocaust Memorial

Earlier this week, I visited the new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin (dedicated in 2005). It consists of about 2,700 stone slabs in a large field located near the Brandenburg Gate (a very central location), and was designed by the American designer Peter Eisenman. It is called the "Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe." 

This is a view from the edge. The nearer slabs are shorter, and the ones in the middle are taller. Initially, I got the feeling I was looking at a grave yard with a number of tombstones. There are no signs or plaques on the slabs. They "speak" for themselves.

But as I walked into the Memorial, the paths descend and the slabs grow taller, and I began to get a "walled in" feeling.

As I continued to walk in, I was no longer able to see the whole Memorial, only just the slabs immediately near me. This happens fairly quickly.

At the middle, the slabs rise up to about 10 feet or so, and I definitely got a "closed in" feeling. The orderly grid in which the slabs are laid out made me think of the highly organized Nazi killing machine that carried out these murders.

As I walked out, the slabs got shorter and the paths rose up, and it was possible to see the whole panorama once again. But I had an instant recollection that I had just been in a dark, penned up place.

Public reaction for the Monument has been generally favorable. The main criticism has been that it is only dedicated to the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, and not to the communists, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others who also died in the camps.

Berlin Film Festival

I am at the 57th Berlin Film Festival (aka Berlinale) for four days (en route from Egypt back to San Francisco). I believe there are about 19,000 movie industry professionals here from around the world. Some of the super-duper huge celebs include: Clint Eastwood (promoting "Letters from Iwo Jima"), Robert de Niro and Matt Damon ("The Good Shepherd"), and Richard Gere (promoting peace).

Celeb high point for me was a brief conversation with actor Steve Buscemi ("Fargo," "Ghost World," "Big Fish") when I asked him if the Sopranos were going to bring him back to life for the final season. He smiled and said, "Even if I were, you know I couldn't tell you."

About 180,000 tickets will be sold to approximately 300 different films from around the world.

These are some of the films I've seen so far.

The best is "The Bubble" (poster with cast at left). It's an Israeli production about a gay relationship between an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian man in Tel Aviv. It's funny, poignant, highly amusing, riveting, and ultimately tragic. After the screening, the film's director, Eyton Fox (director of "Walk on Water"), and co-star, Yousef Sweid, took questions from the 700 person audience. I highly recommend this film. (It has just been released on DVD in the US.)

Another enjoyable film is "Woman on the Beach" from South Korean director Sang-soo Hong ("Woman is the Future of Man"). It's about four thirty-something Koreans who go to a seaside resort in Korea and confront their feelings of love and betrayal. Interesting window into another culture.

I also saw the French documentary "Lagerfeld Confidential" by Rudolphe Marconi. Takes you into the world of Chanel and haute couture icon and super designer Karl Lagerfeld (shown at left). Fascinating stuff. The audience loved it!

Part of the retrospective section was "The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman," a 1963 Japanese film from director Kihachi Okamoto, which dealt with the life of a "Salaryman" and his mixed feelings about World War II and Japan's post-war prosperity.

I love coming to Berlin (my first visit was in 1973 during the Cold War). I remember just enough of my college German to get around, and festival audiences are always friendly!

Sunrise At Karnak Temple

On our last morning in Egypt, we got up very early so that we could go to Karnak Temple and watch the sunrise paint it in different colors. We got there before six and it was still dark. No one else was there except security guards. We had the place to ourselves for a whole hour! It was a very moving experience.

Karnak is a vast complex of temples with columns, obelisks, reflecting pools, statues, altars, and shrines — all extensively carved with hieroglyphics and images. You might say that it was the "Vatican of Ancient Egypt." Much of it was constructed during the New Kingdom over 3,300 years ago.

Over the past few years, I've had the opportunity to visit some amazing sacred places at sunrise: Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Ganges River at Varanasi and the Taj Mahal (India), Machu Picchu (Peru), and Ryoanji Temple (Japan). Our time at Karnak ranks right up there with those experiences. You can really feel the vibes of something special — and mysterious!

Shown below a wall picture and hieroglyphs of my favorite Egyptian god: Thoth. He was the god of Wisdom and writing.

Abu Simbel: "Behold the Greatness of Ramses II"

After Cairo, we flew south to Abu Simbel (about 1000 km) near the Egypt/Sudan border. Located there is the temple the great pharaoh Ramses II built about 1250 BC (shown below).

This monumental work has two fascinating stories. The first is that pharaoh Ramses II built it in the very far south of Egypt just north of Nubia (way above the Nile's first cataract). He did so as warning to the Nubians: “You come any farther north and you’ll be messing with me, Lord Ramses.” The enormous size was designed to awe everybody — potential enemies from over 3,000 years ago, and tourists from all over the world today.

This temple consists of four enormous statues of Ramses (20 meters high) at different points in his life: at left, as a young man all the way to the right which shows an older Ramses. The face of the second statue fell off during the earthquake of 27 BC.

The door in front leads to a gorgeous temple with walls containing incredible art and hieroglyphs. Twice each year (on October 21 and February 21), the sunrise shines through the entry way 75 meters deep into the temple's inner sanctum. Just like something out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

During the construction of the High Aswan Dam in the 1960s, and the subsequent creation of Lake Nasser (which is the world’s largest man-made lake), the entire temple was moved to higher ground from its original location 400 meters away. Otherwise, it would now be under water. This stunning engineering feat was accomplished by UNESCO and many different countries working together.

Later that afternoon we flew north to the city of Aswan and boarded our boat for a trip down the Nile River. The photo below was taken at sunrise near the ancient temple of Edfu. It was a stunning sight!