Art


Sometimes writing is peaceful and flows. Sometimes it takes work, toil, and struggle.

Before I had an outline and composition that worked for this book, I wrote a lot, but kept having to restart. I was spinning my wheels. Then I started working with a coach. She didn't know anything about sustainability or stewardship, but she knew about writing. I could separate my two broad challenges---structure and content. By structure I mean the craft of writing, which included composition, time writing, focusing on the reader. I'm not e. e. cummings. I'm not trying to change the form of books. Shakespeare's sonnets were no less creative for sticking to the sonnet form. She knows writing and enabled me to separate out the craft so I didn't have to worry about it. Once I had an outline I liked, I…

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The Story of Plastic Animated Short Video

Anyone who knows me knows I read and watch a lot on sustainability and the environment. Most of their information I already knew or I find they disengage people. The Story of Stuff team's work stands apart, especially The Story of Plastic. I recommend watching all their videos, starting with the short below, since you're here. Following last year's panel on the awesome, tragic movie, The Story of Plastic, they've released a short for its anniversary. In their words The Story of Plastic (animated short) pulls back the curtain on the plastic pollution headlines, revealing the true causes and consequences of the global plastics crisis. This animated short is a companion piece to The Story of Plastic (documentary), which premiered in April of 2020. https://youtu.be/iO3SA4YyEYU…

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Progressing From DJs to Dirt

My first business was based on an invention of mine that looked amazing---an optical device that animated still images to people in motion. For the business, we installed them on subway tunnel walls to show ads to riders between stations, sharing revenue with the subway system, before everyone had animation devices in their pockets. Outside the business, I also explored the medium as an art with properties unlike any other, which led to shows in galleries and museums. Since they were internally lit and glowed from the inside, they also looked great in dance clubs. In those younger days I frequented a few, which led to the installing the displays in VIP rooms. Then a friend connected me to the people building Crobar and the…

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Thoughts on singing

I posted a few months ago my before and after two months on my singing practice. People I talk to have heard me talk about how much I'm growing to love singing, not that after only singing a few months daily I've caught up to a skill level a lot people probably got as children. I just barely sang before. Any art allows us to express ourselves in new ways, especially our emotions. Until practicing, I never notice that singing is probably our most accessible and most expressive. Nearly all others require practice, technique, or equipment just to start, like a paint brush, a pencil, an instrument, a script, a block of clay. Off the top of my head, only singing and dancing anyone can…

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A lovable bigot is still a bigot and a lovable polluter still pollutes.

Kids today might not have watched All in the Family, but it was huge in its time and focused on a clash of cultures. Quoting Wikipedia, All in the Family is an American television series that ran for nine seasons, from 1971 to 1979.The show revolves around the life of a working-class father and his family. It broke ground on issues previously considered unsuitable for a U.S. network television comedy, such as racism, antisemitism, infidelity, homosexuality, women's liberation, rape, religion, miscarriages, abortion, breast cancer, the Vietnam War, menopause, and impotence. Through these controversial issues, the series became one of television's most influential comedies, bringing dramatic moments and realistic, topical conflicts.All in the Family is often regarded in the US as one of the greatest television…

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Book 3, first draft done

I finished writing the first draft of my third book to be published. I count my first two books, which I self-published, in a different category. No one has read a word of this one yet. I'm prepared that others may think it sucks. The next step is to start editing, enough to include something great in the proposal, most of which I've written, but it needs to include a chapter or two. I signed up for a writing workshop, which helped guide and motivate me. It has worked wonders, and I expected a lot. I've attended every session, reflecting on what I learned. I mark this evening as the milestone of finishing the draft since I sent it to the workshop leader for my…

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442: Jonathan Hardesty, part 1: The Journey from Absolute Rookie to Mastery

Longtime listeners and readers of my books and podcast know I draw the analogy to learning and mastering a skill to learning to play piano or a sport. You start by playing scales or practicing groundstrokes. Likewise with leadership or taking initiative, acting entrepreneurially, both performance arts you can master. Also acting in stewardship. People don't get that learning to cook without producing tons of garbage took training from when I started, producing a bag a week. Maybe I should explain better. Some listeners my have heard how I once found but lost a web page of a guy who sketched every day for a year and posted each day's sketch. Chicken scratches for 300 days, then a month of interesting stuff, then beauty. Anyone…

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Is the best book on pollution and depletion a picture book you can finish in a sitting?

I've read a lot of books on nature. Most focus on facts, figures, and information that don't help. To the extent they provoke emotion, they do so heavyhandedly, lacking genuineness or authenticity. If you're explaining, you're losing, as a former U. S. President said, and most books on nature explain. I just finished a book, Over, which you can review online in its entirety for free. It's mostly a book of photographs. By aesthetic standards like composition, color, line, and form, the photographs are beautiful. Like many great works of art, it says something I knew but in a way I didn't know it could be said. It illuminates my understanding of myself, what human means, nature, beauty, and purpose-level parts of life. By measures…

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Why I’m singing

I came to singing for polluting less, I'm staying for self-expression and discovery. If you want to know what inspired me without all my talk, jump the last video at the bottom of this post. If you know of a better singing performance---I could imagine its equal, but not sure anyone could better it. As for me and singing, if you haven't listened to my podcast episode recording my before and after practicing singing, the tears, and overcoming shame, I recommend it. Here it is: https://player.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/431-sing-every-day-and-unplug I'm only a couple months in to . . . to what? Just singing to myself in the park. Nothing to be proud of or to show off. Still, I love it. As Martha Graham said Nobody cares if…

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Man Ray, the great artist, on his greatest satisfaction

I found a video I saved from ten or fifteen years ago, when I was showing my art in galleries and museums while backing up my hard drive---the closing minutes of a documentary on Man Ray. At the time I was watching all the videos on artists I could find at the library. For those who don't know him, he was big. From Wikipedia: He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Man Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which…

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431: I sang every day for two months, unplugged (still going)

What do you do if you use less power? No social media? No listening to music? No TV? Sound like a fate worse than death? Inspired by guests on my podcast who find amazing activities to live by their environmental values, I committed to turning off all my electronics to sing every day. I've almost never sung in my life beyond Happy Birthday and The Star Spangled Banner so I'm mortified to play my remedial results live, but I love it. I know I'll keep going so today's recording isn't the end. I recorded singing a couple songs at the beginning. to record I opened the laptop, all other times I sang with the power off. At night I had to open the door to…

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Emotions following a summer of BLM, a winter of insurrection, and ongoing pandemic

This version of this song has brought me to tears lately, no exaggeration. I like the images in this video: https://youtu.be/LkQzsDav-oI Reconciliation and cleaning up The song is about the opposite of division. It's about generosity. Not that one video will heal much, but I hope it helps. Many voices are speaking loudly in America today. I don't hear a single one that speaks for me or nearly anyone I know, but I hear many that speak for themselves. Multiple sides accuse the other of hatred. I hear no one saying how much they hurt, but they sound like they do. Nor is anyone saying they'll listen to others and help make them feel understood. I've been singing this song during my daily picking up…

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Sketch for book or TV series introduction

I've mentioned working on my book, which I intend to translate into video somehow---TV, movie, net, not sure. I'm at least a hundred pages into the first draft. I'm going to start sharing what I'd call sketches here of parts of the book that I think stand on their own. I'd love your thoughts. Any book I write needs to be personal, so I have to introduce myself. Experience has taught me that my education leads some people to see what I do as less attainable. On the contrary, much of my education taught me compliance, not to think and act for myself. While it gave me facts and access to finance, consulting, and the military-industrial complex, I didn't want to enter any of those…

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Mastery illustrated

What does it mean to master a field? It comes from practicing, performing, reflecting, and practicing more. The result is liberation and freedom. Self-expression. Seeing mastery happen before your eyes Everyone who masters anything goes through a similar process that includes inexperience, looking less than amateurish, practicing, reflection, self-doubt, despair, progress, regress, anxiety, improvement, moving backward, mentoring, and so on. Years ago I found a site that showed the sketches a man did every day for a year. You could see him mastering the craft from sketch to sketch. The site disappeared and I've had to resort to describing the effect of seeing that process. My friend told me about an artist, Jonathan Hardesty, who documented his deliberate effort to master art. Someone made a…

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Want to play Carnegie Hall?

Want to play Carnegie Hall? . . . or your equivalent---meaning performing at your peak level? If so, the question of how to make it there is not what notes do you play but how to get there. The answer is to practice, practice, practice. Play your scales. Run drills. Rehearse. Mastery takes work, time, discipline, pain, and such. Mastery delivers those things too. It's worth it to master a performance art. The result is freedom, clarity, expression, and more.

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I confess I don’t get a lot of poetry

I'm reading a book of poetry a friend just published. I like a few poems---generally the big ones like Ozymandias and Sonnet 116. I haven't read much Whitman, but occasionally a work of his has drawn me in and enthralled me. The year I lived in Paris I saw a live performance of Rimbaud's Une Saison en Enfer in French, though my French wasn't great so it lost me quickly. I posted almost eight years ago a poem I've loved since college, In the sea of Iwami by Kakinomoto Hitomaro. I've liked plenty of other poems, though I contrast my moderate interest in learning poetry with a few physics memories---walking through the shelves of the physics library as an undergraduate and graduate student looking at…

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Superman and picking up garbage

As you probably know, I pick up at least a piece of litter every day from the ground and put it in a trash can. I'm not reducing the amount of trash, but at least saving some from reaching the ocean. More importantly, I'm developing skills, experiences, and beliefs about changing culture around trash. Since restaurants and bars started serving outdoors on mostly single-use plastic, the amount of litter has skyrocketed. Every trash can in my neighborhood is filled to overflowing by around noon, spilling into the gutters soon after. People's slightest whim for, say, water instead of waiting an hour, leads to trash that will last centuries. I end up picking up ten or more pieces a day, just pieces in my path that…

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Should NYU-Tisch change its name?

Many institutions are changing their names, dropping connections to "benefactors" whose practices they no longer accept---slaveholders, opiate pushers, etc. Municipalities are taking down statues of slave traders and the like. NYU prides itself as promoting social justice, yet what of Tisch? NYU-Tisch is its school of the arts and one of its most prestigious schools. I love the place---the first NYU school I taught in, specifically the Interactive Telecommunications Program. The students and I---with MTA's Arts for Transit program, and the first company I co-founded, Submedia---created this big public art piece: https://youtu.be/wIfi71_ffG0 Below is just the kids and family from that video. https://youtu.be/anwg1BhkAFU Who is NYU-Tisch named for? According to the New York Times in 1982, "New York University's School of the Arts has been…

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The advice I shouldn’t have taken from a black friend on talking about race

Context Before starting the Leadership and the Environment podcast, I gave a series of talks on environmental action at NYU---my first foray into applying leadership to the environment. By then I had experimented enough an practicing stewardship to have experienced the joy that it brought. I felt compelled to share my results and how to act on them. Every would-be leader of any renown I'd heard speak on the environment presented action as deprivation, sacrifice---a burden, a chore. Before my results, I couldn't promote action if I considered the cure worse than the disease. As far as I can tell, every would-be leader still considers stewardship deprivation, sacrifice---a burden, a chore. They're leading people not to act! Action In these talks I related acting on…

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Beautiful, modern life before plastic, corn syrup, and Walmart

If you haven't seen the pictures recently published by Charles Custer, who drove America's route 66 with his wife in 1950-51, you're in for a treat---and, for some of you, a challenge to preconceived notions about progress. They show in wonderful detail, composition, and style, an America now gone, replaced by uniformity, efficiency, and overpopulation. I'll take the liberty of posting one, but there are 148 of them here, and I recommend viewing them all. Some of the backstory: Charles Custer recently died at 91 years old, leading the photographs to resurface. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote more in an obituary: Charles Custer, dead at 91, with wife Irene Custer took photos capturing a time capsule of Route 66, Americana. What to look for You'll find…

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The Joshua Spodek Show

Growing up in Philadelphia in the 70s meant Bruce Springsteen was a part of my life. I'll always remember a fan in a promotional radio b-roll clip from one of the classic rock stations saying excitedly, definitively, "He's the best, he's Bruce. . . He's the Boss!" One of the earliest albums I bought was Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ. My high school girlfriend's older brother saw every show of his he could. I loved the Beatles most as a kid, but I've come to appreciate Bruce more over the years. I don't know anyone else who does anything like him, so raw, open, and honest, yet able to fill stadiums for weeks on end---not in music anyway. Maybe Muhammad Ali. If Woody Allen kept…

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297: RIP James Lipton, a huge influence and inspiration

James Lipton, who started and hosted the show Inside the Actors Studio, died yesterday. Here are the notes I read from for this episode: I could talk about how much I enjoyed the episodes, his humor, and a few things I learned from his guests that only his interviewing could have elicited but I will go deeper, to share how fundamental his work has been to mine. Many times I've said that if my courses existed before I went to business school and someone were teaching them, I would have taken them instead of business school and gotten more of what I valued. He helped me create them. Context: I had taken leadership classes but, despite high grades from top school, I didn't know how…

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273: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers

I understand why historical reasons lead us to look to scientists, journalists, educators, and legislators for leadership, but they don't know how to lead. They may excel at their crafts, but sharing research however accurate, or stirring controversy, spreading facts and figures, and chasing votes rarely inspire people to change their behavior. I've long looked to Mandela, King, and Gandhi as role models. I'm increasingly looking at leaders who inspire people to act against challenges when they would otherwise feel hopeless, futile, defeated, and complacent. Henry V's speech to the outnumbered British in Agincourt, as Shakespeare recounted, stands the test of time. Now that the science is overwhelming---look at nearly any beach in the world to see we're losing to plastic as just one example---we…

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Here Comes The Sun 2019 brings tears to my eyes

Abbey Road was the first album I listened to until the little orange plastic record player I played it on either destroyed the grooves or the record destroyed the needle. It was the 70s. I didn't know music. My taste has since matured, but I never stopped loving the Beatles. The 2019 remix of Here Comes The Sun differs only slightly from the original but it brought tears to my eyes. https://youtu.be/KQetemT1sWc 1969 was a difficult time, before I was born. I understand John, Paul, George, and Ringo were arguing and breaking up, but I love what they recorded. Hearing it now hit me on two levels. First, 2019 are difficult times too. This new release reminded me of how serious and how wrapped up…

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The Most Romantic Thing I Ever Did

Almost two months ago, I wrote in Mementos of my high school girlfriend how I wasn't sure I wanted to review the mementos. Maybe memories I treasured would turn out ordinary happenings of any young man in his late teens. I haven't read my letters to her, but I read hers to me and was pleased to find something I'd forgotten -- how close we were. More than close. Uninhibited. Something like finishing each other's sentences. Unreserved in our sharing. We got to know each other talking on the phone three hours a night three or four nights a week. We lived far from school in opposite directions and didn't have any classes together, so during school didn't see each other in person that often.…

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