Emerging from the rubble once again, the next live solar crash event will be on April 10th, 2010 at the El Mocambo Night club.
Join the Facebook page and see http://event.solarcrash.com with more details to follow.
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creativity
More than 130,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs in this Great Recession. Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives.
You can watch the whole thing online for free until tomorrow by subscribing. HT: Cruciformity
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A friend was recently commenting on how Eminem sucks now because his latest releases have been garbage and nothing has ever compared to his second album.
While it’s debatable by some whether Eminem’s work is ‘art’, it bothers me when we treat people like products.
What we produce is a part of who we are, but it’s far from the sum total.
It’s a sick world when we’re valued solely by what we’ve accomplished last.
Whatever you do, don’t live for the crowds. They’ll consume, critique, and discard you as soon as you’re not hiting it out of the park again.
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Rob Bell’s latest book Drop Like Stars explores the relationship between creativity and suffering.
If you’re familiar with Bell’s sermons, tours, and previous works, it won’t be phenomenally new content. In fact, the book almost stands in defiance of content, as I’m guessing if all the text was put into a Word document it’d be about five pages worth.
It’s really an over-sized coffee-table style book, and it’s visually beautiful. You’re not paying for content but an guided tour on some of Rob Bell’s best thoughts. In typical fashion he shares intriguing off-beat research and stories to draw you in.
Two things I think we can learn from the book. One being that he’s able to convey deeply biblical concepts in a language that anyone could understand. He speaks on very core issues of suffering and creativity, which is something everyone stumbles through in some way or form.
Secondly, I think we can all learn a bit about the packaging. I think it takes serious guts to fill two pages with only three words. Bell really practices the less-is-more paradigm here, and it’ll definitely irk plenty of people who pay for the book.
If you truly believed that less-is-more, how might you be doing things differently?
See here for a lot more online resources by rob bell
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I finally got around to compiling a highlights video of last Sunday’s Solar Crash event, Love Comes Down.
It’s pretty hard compressing a whole evening of footage, but I tried. I know less is more, but I tried to create one video giving everyone a bit of time.
Let me know if you’d like to help or be a part of the next one!
If you weren’t there, here’s a taste of what you missed. enjoy!
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Solar Crash goes offline again this Sunday with “Love Comes Down“.
Creativity. Spirituality. Art. Music. Dance. Community. Cause.
Doors open at the El Mocambo night club at 6pm, Show goes live at 7pm.
See you there!
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Having been an Anne Rice vampire chronicles fan, it’s been a phenomenal journey following her through her Christ the Lord series.
Rice always writes beautifully, but the Road to Cana stood out above the rest to me. She tackles the difficult balance of what it means to be fully man and fully God while developing both throughout the story. She interconnects biblical stories while using plenty of artistic license to stimulate fresh perspectives as you read the gospels. ie. who’s wedding was he at when he turned the water into wine?
As with all her books, Rice does an impressive effort in shedding light on the historical and cultural settings. ie. What was it like to be a man in his 30s and unmarried during those times? She explores the very mind of Christ as it is written in the first person and shares the struggles he may have went through. Without fail she describes his tenderness and deep love for humanity.
The book was so captivating and imaginative I’d recommend it to just about anybody, where ever they are in their spiritual journey. I applaud Anne Rice for wrestling through this and sharing it with the rest of us.
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Planning this night was like crafting a night of beauty. Unlike a wedding, I didn’t really have a template to work from. Yet, I really feel that many of the elements in what happened that night are things the church needs to be seriously looking into today. Some key factors in making the event an engaging experience…
- I held off on just asking any friend of mine to help out. I figured if the event is going to be diverse, than those leading and contributing need to be diverse as well. I was hoping to have as many circles and networks intersecting as possible.
- Prayer and interdependence. At first I felt like I was making some of my requirements for the evening too lofty, but word eventually caught on to more than we could handle. I was getting demo tracks and myspace links every day with people wanting to be a part of the event, which wil be fantastic for future events!
- Not everyone contributing was necessarily even from a common faith background. I simply challenged every artist to reflect on the theme of Solar Crash – what would it look like if heaven and earth collided? If not heaven, than their own concepts of paradise of a better world. The hope was that this would challenge artists to reflect on a profoundly biblical theme, without being religious in anyway.
- Performers and artists that were of a Christ-following background were told not to be explicit about Christ. Rather than simply declaring the name of Christ, my hope was that people would encounter the person of Christ, through the music, arts, and conversations.
- The Venue – I could have easily acquired a church venue for free, but I painstakingly looked for something different. Some art galleries in the distillery district were asking for 25-30 thousand dollars! I ended up stumbling upon the El Mocambo and getting an awesome deal (that’s a whole other story). Everyone from U2, to Blondie, to the Stones, to K-os, have been on this stage. I loved the grittiness of the nightclub, and it went along with the themes of convergence and redemption.
- I partnered with a causes worthy of our time. Raising the village in conjunction with Living Water International. We committed upfront we would find a way to pull off the event while giving 100% of ticket sales to the cause. We didn’t want people to simply be engaged and have a good time, but that everyone might be informed and involved with making the world a bit better.
- Risking a much smaller turnout, I told Christian’s not to come, at least not alone. Last thing we need is another event for christians anyways. The hope was to create a non-oppressive atmosphere for spiritual engagement.
- We made multiple points of entry. People were invited to a an arts night, a creativity night, a friend’s show, a party, a charity, etc.
- We used online technologies to engage and collaborate ie. wordpress, google docs, picasa web, facebook. (I looked into online ticketing but the 2-3 percent cut was too much for me.)
- I chose not to advertise publically. I realized there was no way for me personally enage hundreds of people in conversation, so the hope was to trust the community itself, and that everyone who was aware of the event, was invited and brought in by an intentional Christ-follower (Of course, plenty of people walking by heard the awesome music and paid to come in as well, which was great)
- Variety. I held out on many to have a wide variety of visual and performance arts. We wanted rock, hip hop, soul, dance, spoken word, paint, photography, sculptures, etc. I almost had a magician even, but things didn’t work out. The hope was that it might spark the god-given creativity within every individual that evening.
- We had collaborative art projects. Everyone was encouraged to make their mark during the night, and not to simply be a passive participant.
- Lots of other details to the preparation, but again, I can’t stress enough the amount of people who helped out behind the scenes!
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