Tag: Ze Frank

A chat between Hank and Ze

Hank Green and Ze Frank talking about creativity (among other things). Some tidbits from the podcast:

This question of where ideas come from, I think it’s central to my life and certainly a lot of other creative people. And I think that the importance often comes from some sort of an urgency that we have to not only have ideas, but to have ideas that feel like you. In addition to that, it’s like there’s one thing to have an idea, but then there’s another thing to decide to make it, you know, birth it.

You know, I don’t know how it plays out in your mind, but I have a lot of thoughts and have a lot of ideas and there’s a lot of possibilities and you do have to kind of like feel them and feel what the possibility space is around them, you know?

That’s something that I think you get better at over a creative life is having an instinct for the shape of an idea and whether or not it has the qualities that you know are going to mature into something or kind of allow you to play around in a way that feels right. Yeah. So, you know, in a lot of cases I’ll sit on stuff for years even because I don’t have the shape of the thing.

Ze Frank

Also:

Ze: For me personally, I actually feel like I want to make things that are uncomfortable.

Hank: Do you want to make things that are uncomfortable for you?

Ze: For me to make, you know, generally that there’s stuff that kind of comes easy to you. And this is, you know, everybody knows this is that, you know, you get frustrated with people for not doing the stuff that they can just do, right? Um, and yours is sort of like, you know, make another funny thing.

Hank: Come on. Like, play the hits.

Ze: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think that making things is about becoming. That’s the joy of it is is that you you see something develop and birth. You feel yourself getting better through the struggle. You feel like some kind of emergence that happened like there’s a journey. And um comfort to me is usually a sign that you’re off from the meat of it.

(The quotes are pulled from Youtube’s auto-transcript mode, so apologies for any grammar errors.)

The Happy List

If you haven’t gone through the archive of A Show with Ze Frank, I highly recommend it. The topics range all over the place, and the tone can vacillate from serious to silly from one episode to the next. There are a lot of times where I feel like he’s struck a chord, and says or shares something that deeply connects with me and my own experiences.

I could keep rambling about that (and maybe I will, sometime), but I actually wanted to share a particular video that I think poses a good question, about what makes us happy. Go ahead and take a minute to watch it, I’ll wait.

I love this concept, and is one I’ve thought about a lot in the past, the notion of the little moments or vignettes of experience that allow you a moment of happy contentment. It’s part of what I try to get at when I talk about the notion of “Festina Lente”. Being present in the moment, not rushed. Attentive. (It’s also one of the things I enjoy about Amélie — savoring the little moments, cultivating alternative pleasures.)

There are a lot of moments I appreciate, but here are a few:

  • Walking through dry leaves in the fall.
  • The smell of the woods and the fields after a good summer storm.
  • Biting into the first apple of the season.
  • Watching snow and ice melt into the brook on the first warm day of spring.
  • Watching traffic lights sway in the evening winds in the summer.
  • Watching a full moon rise over fresh snow.
  • Cooking and sharing a large meal with people I love. (There are reasons I try to celebrate both Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving!)
  • Feeling the cool air on my face from the comfort of a warm bed.
  • Cupping a warm beverage in my hand after being out in the cold, feeling the heat seep into my fingers.

How about you? What are the moments that make you happy when you catch yourself being present for?