I’ve thought long and hard about what I could say to convey why this class is important. Why it is simultaneously the greatest and most meaningful course you can complete, and at the same time the most grueling. There’s a lot of great advice out there already for you to read. So I’m just going to let you read a quote from Ira Glass. You’ll be hearing more about him if you decide to take the red pill and fall down this rabbit hole.
By Alan Levine April 26, 2011 - 10:31 am
That’s a great powerful statement, companion to the concept of 10,000 hours at something to be good (which I wish people would stop crediting to Malcolm Gladwell, he just put it in his book). At my best estimates, I am not even halfway there in terms of time doing photography.
Ira is a genius. I would enjoy hearing him read a software user agreement. I am a TAL junkie. Small trivia is that he went to the same high school I did (I was 5 years later).
But it was listening to TAL while driving, riveted to stories or laughing out loud, that made me realize how creative just plain audio could be– which now I know via ds106 radio.
By Jim Groom April 26, 2011 - 10:38 am
This is brilliant, and the there is a series of videos on storytelling by Ira Glass on youtube that I have been sharing with my students. And I believe this quote is in there, and it really cuts to the bone about what this class is about. It is not about perfection, it is about training yourself to create regularly and put it behind you as quick as the next thing comes. It’s hard work, but it is crucial to begin framing the idea of creativity as a habit —which more and more is what ds106 has become about for me. And the radio and tv just gives it that many more awesome outlets. Thanks for everything this semester Timmmmyboy, you were so awesome!
By Cris April 28, 2011 - 12:51 am
I’m a huge Ira Glass and Ben Folds fan and this quote reminds me of watching Folds and Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer and Damian Kulash (#8in8), four incredible artists, attempt to create 8 songs in 8 hours live in a studio beamed to the world — http://partyontheinternet.com/ They only succeeded in producing 6 in 12 hours and those last 6 hours were amazing. As exhausted as they were, they fought on and refused to compromise their “taste” in any way. Song #4 (about a suicidal squirrel) took three hours to complete with seemingly hundreds of tracks but there was no stopping until it was perfect to them. You should have seen their faces at about 4 am when they heard the “doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot do do doot.” And it sounded so good!
I’ve learned that each new creation reflects the whole of your creative journey — if it’s worth creating then it’s worth “fighting your way through.”
Many thanks for the quote. I’ll take it with me from ds106.
By Timmmmyboy » The ds106 Toolbox May 9, 2011 - 8:44 am
[...] amount of work created during the ds106 course and thinking about the reflective advice given by myself and others, it occurred to me that along the way a lot of us have blogged our process as well as [...]