Appreciate

Appreciating the creativity of others helps you to develop your own creativity.

-- doug smith

Five Minutes: Just So That You Know

She wrapped the bandage, even though the cut was still bleeding.

"Hold that over your head," she said. "Do it now."
"For how long?"
"Until I tell you to stop. Unless I forget, then maybe ten minutes."
"That seems like a long time."
"Just hold it over your head. Have I ever been wrong?"
"..."
"I head that."
"What?"
"That silence. You know I'm right so just keep holding it up."

It felt like the bleeding had stopped but his heart was still pumping rapidly. His pulse was a cadence even a marching band could hear.

She opened the window. A quick breeze blew a paper off of the table. It floated a moment and before it drifted to the floor the cat batted it around, keeping it aloft like a balloon.

"Can I put it down yet?"
"No. Did I tell you to yet?"
"..."
"I hear that..."

The cat pounced on the paper, smashing it to the floor. The cat resumed washing some essential piece of fur, over and over, over and over.

"You can put it down now."
"Thank you. I was just about to ask."
"You're not bleeding out. It was barely more than a paper cut."
"It hurt."
"You're a woosh."
"..."
"...!"

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FIVE MINUTES
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1. Write for exactly five minutes, then stop.
2. Find a random image to add

Picture This: No Flowers For Her

You can't go wrong with flowers, right? Isn't that the universal way to show that you care, to show how sensitive you are, to rekindle the flames of love?

Maybe. But I don't recommend sending flowers to more than one person at the same time. Not on Valentine's Day anyway. Imagine that? Yep, I've done it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again (because I do think that it's true) the truth will always bubble to the top. If you send two people flowers, at least one of them is going to find out about it. Especially if you tell her.

Why would I tell her? Because the truth always bubbles to the top.

Why would I tell her? Maybe I've got a romantic squash wish. Set up the romance, and then find creative ways to squash it. Like sending flowers to more than one person on Valentine's Day.

Not a good idea.

The truth didn't come out at first. It took months. But when it did it was about as popular as a burp during meditation. A fart during yoga. A laugh during a funeral. Not good, not cool.

But the truth comes out.

I fixed it, though. I found someone else completely who doesn't even like flowers. No flowers for her. It does not impress her, it does not please her, she'd rather not have them in the house. So, no chance of sending her the wrong flowers.

But what do I do when she's mad?

-- doug smith

Picture This:

1. Find a random image
2. Write for five minutes only, inspired by that image.

Picture This: Renewable History

The course title looked so interesting that she could not resist. Renewable History. What if she COULD go back in time? What would she change? What would she fix?

Would she go right for the really big stuff (President Kennedy don't go to Dallas!) or simply fix the relationships she'd messed up. And, oh, she'd messed up a few.

Maybe it was her attention span. She'd stay interested. She get passionate. She'd be all about the all over of everything connected with her partner and then...and then her partner would do something so annoying she just couldn't believe it. A misplaced fart. A dirty toothbrush. A wet toilet seat. A scratch on the car.  That was the picture. She could never picture herself staying with anyone forever, even though she always said that she would.

Isn't that what they wanted to hear?

Like that dinner at that Mexican restaurant in Louisville. She liked it really spicy. Her partner was a spice wimp. He couldn't take the tears. Wasn't that always the case? He couldn't take the tears.

She could take the tears. She could let it rip. She could tear up a relationship like it was nobody's business -- and wasn't it just HER business anyway?

Five minutes, she thought. Five more minute of this and I'm out of here.

Renewable History. Hmm. She thought. Maybe Tennis 101 is a better choice...

-- doug smith

PICTURE THIS:

1. Pick a random image
2. Write, inspired by that image, for five minutes and then stop.

Improv Music: back stage at the new moon theatre

back stage at the new moon theatre - the bizarre ensemble, from the album even numbers.

Living Creatively

One of the best things about improv is that it stimulates your creativity. The subtle feeling of not knowing what you will do or what will happen next seems to open a door to the muse and allow technicolor waves of insights to leak thru. Those insights aren't always funny. They are not meant to be. Those insights are not always brilliant. Those are the odds. The insights ARE meant to generate more insights and more fumbles, practices, missteps, dreams, and drops.

Drops and dreams. Dreams and drops. The creative process is messy.

Living creatively is your specialty. Go for it.

-- doug smith

Dance!

I'm not a good dancer. I used to think that I was, but then I figured out that it was my partner who was such a good dancer that she could also make me feel like a good dancer. It was wonderful. And, when I realized later, when she'd moved on to a new partner, that I was NOT such a good dancer, at first I wanted to stop dancing. It was so disappointing. It was all just an illusion.

And then, I realized. It didn't matter. There are degrees of dancing. Somewhere there are people who dance even better than my former partner. Somewhere there are people who can hardly dance at all. No matter where we start, in dancing or in leading, we can always level up. Start where we are and get better. And, realize that the dance is not about us at all anyway. The dance is, and always has been, about your partners.

Your creative muse likes to dance. It will open up new roads to you. It will light you up and allow blood to flow to the places that make you tingle. It will make your art more alive, your improv more convincing, your life more light.

Listen to that muse and walk past the edge of whatever is stopping you. It doesn't matter if anyone is watching.

Your creative muse likes to dance. Dance.

-- doug smith

Workshop: Improv for Everyone

Anyone who knows me well knows that in addition to facilitating leadership workshops and helping people solve problems and achieve their goals, I am also a creative artist enthusiastic about improv.

If you're in or near Bucks County, PA, here is a great chance to explore and practice improv.

Sign up here

Five Minutes: The Parade at the Hub

She spilled her hot coffee right in my lap. I didn't know if I was more angry or more in pain. She'd been balancing a full arm load of books, her phone, and her hot coffee. Oh, if only the phone had landed in my lap.

"Oops, sorry..." she said, as if she'd tapped my shoe with her toe.
"What the heck! Are you kidding me?" I think I said, although it might well have been peppered with some saucy language often heard in a commercial kitchen or volunteer fire house. I was not please. She kept on walking.

The coffee, about half escaped and half still in her cup, caused me to jump up and though I had nothing to spill, my journal did hit the floor and tear the page I was writing on. Stream of consciousness meet scream of coffee.

She kept on walking, still holding half a cup of coffee and whatever important information was displaying on her phone.

Be calm, I told myself. Maybe I shouldn't have been sitting on the floor. Maybe I should be glad the whole cup didn't hit me. Maybe I should change my pants.

Coffee. It's so much better to drink it than to spill it.

-- doug smith

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Five Minutes:
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1. Write without stopping for five minutes.
2. Add a random (if possibly related) image.

Five Minutes: Find Your Voice

I sat in the back of the church, in what was now her office but was once the crying room, the place where people could be in church with their crying babies but be behind a glass wall. It was her office now. Not much need for a crying room. The church didn't see many babies these days. Mostly the few people who attended had gray hair. Or no hair. They walked slowly. And if they cried, it was oh so quietly.

They did cry. Quietly.

The minister was soft spoken. A kind man. A decent enough speaker but the rare paster who was truly a minister to the people and not an ego driven speaker. But he wasn't here. It's Tuesday. A parade of hopeful teens were getting their voice lessons, hoping to be on American Idol or some other talent show. Hoping to get into the high school musical. Hoping to set the world on fire and be famous.

They didn't know the odds were slim and...to their parent's delight the voice teacher had a rep. She had a track record. She was more than a miracle worker, she was a winner's coach. Some of her students really did go on to stardom. Beauty pageant winner. Broadway star. TV personality. Her patience, her persistence, her insistence drove these young people to ride their own enthusiasm ever upward. There was just one thing everyone needed to do more of. Much more. Much, much more:  practice.

"I know you didn't come here to pay me to watch you practice," she said, cheerful and resolved and not at all angry. Her patience was unending. "So maybe you'd like to practice more this week between lessons, sweetie..."

She called everyone sweetie. Or dear. I asked her to call me something else, something she didn't call anyone else, so she called me Honey. And then, soon enough, she started calling everyone Honey.

But that was when I really was her Honey. And that was when she did still help create stars.

-- doug smith

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FIVE MINUTES
---------------------------------

1. Write for exactly five minutes, then stop.
2. Find a random image to add

You!

You are meant to be creative.
-- doug smith

Improv is LIfe's Attentiveness Optimized

Great improv keeps us in the present. The past is too boring to play and the future is up for grabs so we must live every present moment tuned in, generating ideas, and sharing responsibility. Improv is life's attentiveness optimized.

-- doug smith

Improvise A Better Life

You can improvise yourself right into a more exciting, more fulfilling life.
-- doug smith

Listen and Respond

People leave open offers out there dangling unanswered every day. Improv is all about putting all offers to use. If you want to live and act more spontaneously, listen for those offers and respond.
-- doug smith

The Fast Path

Improv is your fastest path to creativity.
-- doug smith

Learn to Improvise

Learn to improvise and a thousand other important things suddenly become much easier to learn.
-- doug smith

Make Peace With Silence

A truly great improv actor makes peace with silence. Silence from the character and silence from the audience. It's not about the laugh.
-- doug smith

Five Minutes: Train vs. Bicycle

You could hear the train for a full thirty seconds before it got within range. Anyone interested in their own safety would give it room.

We waited with our musical equipment to watch the train pass. No need to turn your back on a train. It's like turning your back on the ocean - you just don't do it. Not if you want to be safe. Not if you don't want to be bad news.

Or, maybe I was overly cautious. My mom filled me with fear saying that a train would suck me right under it and cut off my legs and arms if I got too close. How close is too close? We were nearly too close.

I hear laughter from the band. It was a good night of music and the tips were decent. Plus, the beer was free and flowed plentifully. William even enjoyed a giant marguerita. It took three hours to drink, but there was beer in between. And oh, the sizzling fajitas (which we did pay for) hit the spot.

We played every song we'd rehearsed, and then because they wanted more, we played them all again. We could have gone all Grateful Dead and jammed twenty minutes on two songs, but instead repeated the set. I was ready to improvise new tunes, and we even tried that.

Now the load out and the train. So loud we couldn't even hear Dee's voice (normally audible even in a stadium filled with people) and then it happened. With the train just a few feet away and not slowing for a moment, a bicycle sped across the tracks.

For a moment I saw the rider sucked under the massive train, severed limbs flying in every direction.

But the train missed the rider, the rider missed the train, and life for now went on.

"What the hell! Is he crazy?" she said, now perfectly audible for about a mile.

Trains. Bicycles. And we weren't even in Boulder.

-- doug smith


Five Minutes: Writing improvisationally without filters for five minutes and then stopping. Then, perhaps, finding a random image to go with it.

Five Minutes: Her Plan

That wasn't what she said. He thought it was, but it was trickier than that. It was something so subtle she couldn't even tell that her plan to outsmart him was working.

It was so easy.

He was never smart when it came to her.

Birds flew in his brain erratically ringing bells and rattling shutters as if a hurricane was headed his way. It was. Her hurricane. Her plan of raging menacing love, focused on getting everything in place.

Honestly, he saw her as the most honest person he knew.

Honestly, she mean to be completely honest. At all times. Even (especially) with him. But she lied.

She lied about eternity. She lied about love. And she lied about the body buried in the basement.

Who was that? How did he get there? What did she have to do with it?

He'll never know. He had nothing to do with her for ten years or more and now, back in her life, he has nothing to say about what she did during that time. No reason to get upset about any of it. It was (as Adele sang in the background), water under the bridge.

He preferred Patty Griffin. The bare, essential, raw Patty Griffin that she played the first time they slept together (again). It felt oddly unrelated and yet completely related. What did Moses have to do with this? Who was Lorraine?

It didn't end the way he'd planned. Was it nerves? Was it trouble? Was it all in her plan?

No, nothing was in her plan. She'd planned it that way.



-- Doug Smith

Five Minutes: Writing improvisationally without filters for five minutes and then stopping. Then, perhaps, finding a random image to go with it.

Right here, right now.

The "good old days" probably just means that you've forgotten most of the bad parts.

-- Doug Smith