BeautyDialogues

Michael Katz

I get a LOT of e-newsletters but there are only a few I actually read. This small list includes Jeevan's BK Communique, which I wrote about the other day, but another comes from Blue Penguin Development's Michael Katz, who coincidentally helps people learn how to write these things.

Michael really understands the secret of a great e-letter, which is - in a nutshell - to claim your reader's immediate attention by focusing on what THEY want to know, rather than what you want to tell them.

Cultivating a distinctive personal style that's aligned with your purpose, as Michael does, is also important to e-marketing success. Plus he's absolutely hilarious, which never hurts.

Michael has been a guide to me for many years now, and if you're thinking of starting an e-letter of any kind (and imho keeping in regular contact with your audience is essential to any successful communications strategy), I can't recommend anyone better to study and learn from.

American Beauty Dialogue

I was watching American Beauty last night and found myself once again mesmerized by that perfect scene where the young videographer-next-door shows his new love the "most beautiful thing" he's ever seen... footage of a plastic bag whirling in the wind, dancing with a pile of leaves.

Apparently it was this very image, which he experienced in real life, that inspired Alan Ball to write the screenplay, and Ball's words, Rick telling Janey about shooting the scene, carry the sensation:

"It was one of those days, when it's a minute away from snowing. And there was this electricity in the air. You could almost hear it. And this bag was just ... dancing ... with me. Like a little kid, begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That was the day when I realized that there was this ... entire life ... behind things. And this incredibly benevolent force who wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid. Ever.

Sometimes there is so much ... beauty ... in the world. It's like I can't take it. And my heart is just going to cave in."

The sensibility that went on to provide us with five seasons of Six Feet Under (probably one of the most profound treatises on death American popular culture has ever produced) ends his debut film script with an echo of this moment in a voice-over from Janey's dead father Lester, who's just been shot:

"I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me. But it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me, like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude."

I'm struck by the experience Ball describes twice in his film - of expanding with emotion, almost to the point of collapse - juxtaposed with this ephemeral image, which is repeated in the dying father's visual sequence as well.

It's like he's trying to make visible, audible, the sheer, unpredictable, and almost-impossible-to-bear beauty at the very heart of life.

My Friend Fletcher

My friend Fletcher (has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?) started blogging again after several months of hiatus (or neglect, take your pick); check out the new Fletcher's Blog. Fletcher's a digital artist with a keen eye for the bizarre and the wonderful and I think you'll enjoy his work, especially if you're partial to street photography and astute political commentary.

Here's one of my favorites from his Carnaval photo shoot:

Promoting Yourself

I seem to be on a real video kick lately. :-) Here's one that came though this morning from Berrett Koehler Publishers. They have a fantastic editor for their newsletter, Jeevan Sivasubramaniam, who always cracks me up. This video is a great example of his sense of humor used to illustrate a valuable lesson.

The video's about authors and promoting books, but the points are equally valid for anyone making a public offering in learning how (and how not) to promote yourselves:

Responses to What's Possible Now

I've received some great responses on Seesmic from my question about what's possible now that wasn't possible before as a result of this new communications technology, and I thought I'd share a few of them with you. They're all short - most of them around a minute - so enjoy!

The first is from Julie Gieseke from Map The Mind, who brings up several things that have been important to me about using this technology - the power of deepening connections, and the freedom it gives us introverts to be deliberate and thoughtful about our communications:

Next, Otir from New York talks about the way her own access to knowledge has been exponentially increased by the advances in these tools over the last ten years:

These next two are from software developer Clarence Westberg. In the 1st he talks about the incredible expansion of community this new technology brings, and in the 2nd he amends that statement by pointing out who is excluded from this brave new world:

Finally, media inspiration and video adventurer Howard Rheingold talks about the challenges and opportunities he sees opening before us now in using these tools:

A Question for You

I was playing with Seesmic this morning, and realized I could make a little video for you there. So I used it to ask a question ...

Design Deliberations

I was reading something in Chris Brogan's blog the other day on blog design, a solid informative post about basing each design decision on its congruence with your blog's intended use. At last count this piece had drawn 61(!) comments from his readers, many of them appreciative of Brogan's suggestion to use a thinner header to take full advantage of valuable page "real estate".

I  wrote a long comment myself, in part promoting the idea of a more expansive banner, because sometimes an image is as valuable (if not more so) as anything else you could say. This fact may not be immediately apparent in the largely left-brain logic of the marketplace, but it is no less true. Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind gives a wonderful exposition of why right-brain creativity is an increasingly important component in today's world.

One of the great things about a blog is how easy it is to change it, and I tend to be continually tweaking and fine-tuning my "look and feel" and sidebar content. This new banner, for example, is a radical departure from what I've done here in the past.

Even though it intuitively felt right, I must admit at first I was nervous about using black in the beauty dialogue color scheme, since I usually have a more literal focus on light. Then I saw these lines from Anam Cara, by John O'Donohue, and knew I was ok:

"We need a light that has retained its kinship with the darkness ... All creativity awakens at this pivotal threshold where light and darkness test and bless each other. You only discover balance in your life when you learn to trust the flow of this ancient rhythm."

The power of visual language is undeniable, perhaps because it speaks not only to our conscious, logical brain, but also to our unconscious, poetic intuition and imagination. Like Pink, I believe that gaining intuitive fluency is one of the most important skills you can develop, as a designer and as a human being.

But what do you think? What are some of the design decisions you have made and why did you make them? Where does your own balance lie between logic and intuition?

Visual Conversation

The one-dimensional language of text all alone on a page is a thing of the past - more and more our online communications are being enriched by images and audio, and video is everywhere.

I was taking a walk with the fabulous Howard Rheingold (what's a little name-dropping among friends? :-) last week along a wetland stream at the base of Mount Tamalpais, and as always I learned all kinds of wonderful new things from him. Here's one I can tell you about - Seesmic.

Seesmic is the ultimate Web2.0 communications vehicle. Linked into Twitter and YouTube (so far), Seesmic is a video-based conversational forum and social networking site. It was started by a charismatic Frenchman, Loic Le Meur, and people from all over the world have joined him there so the threaded video conversations are happening in several languages. It's still in alpha, but you can sign up for it and Loic will send you an invitation code.

Now that I've already dropped his name, let me talk about Howard for a moment. He is one of the coolest people I know - not just because he's famous (in my world at least) and has written lots of fabulous books, but because he is absolutely genuine, and because he's so curious that he knows an awful lot about everything and is totally willing to share what he knows. He's been doing lots of video himself lately, and recently launched his own video blog. His latest entry is a hilarious attempt to multi-task while making a video.

Oprah in the Morning

Admittedly I'm a little behind the curve here, but this morning i took my iPod out for a walk (this is a new-to-me technique I'm experimenting with to motivate myself to walk more regularly) loaded with the first session of a free 10 week class that Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle are presenting online. The class is based on a conversation between the two of them about the ideas in his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose.

Co-sponsored and (at least partly) powered by Skype, the ground-breaking capacity to broadcast this series to half a million people around the globe alone would be enough to turn on the light in my geeky little heart, but the content too (at least what I've heard of it in the first 45 minutes) is spectacular.

There were several highlights (not least of which flipped the idea of finding what you want to do in this life ala JFK, by suggesting you will only ever find out by asking Life what it wants of You) but my favorite part was Tolle talking about flowers as "representatives of the spiritual". Flowers are more delicate than the plants that hold them, he says, their matter less dense, more etherial. So by being still with a flower, being present with it, you are face to face with a direct source to the divine.

I knew it! :-) Of course, as he goes on to say, being Present is itself a direct source to the divine, but it is easier to access your own sense of Presence in nature, and particularly around flowers. This makes perfect sense to me and I love how we can all know something - what is more captivating to a human (not to mention a bee) than a flower? - and then discover layers of 'fact' that tell us why it's true.

I'd heard about this series before - it started 4 weeks ago on March 3rd - but for some reason it took a while to grab me (you can still download the audio files from earlier classes and join for future broadcasts). I'd heard Oprah talked too much, and of course the first week was a bit of a disaster, but as my friend and colleague Steve Borsch wrote in his blog Connecting the Dots, they came out of the technical screw-up with colors flying. And as for Oprah talking too much - she may be a public presenter down to her core, but like a female Bill Moyers she obviously believes in what she's promoting here and her excitement about this topic and this medium is infectious.

She says this is the most exciting thing she's ever done, and you can hear it in her voice. Not only is she understandably excited about the possibilities of our ability to reach millions of human hearts around the globe - she, like several other influential people I can name, is truly experiencing a spiritual awakening during this crucial time. And not a minute too soon, I say. Not only that, she has the resources and is so media-savvy that she actually has the potential to share her personal experience in a way that may help catalyze the large-scale awakening the world needs right now.

Go, girl!

Be the Change

I get occasional mail from KarmaTube sharing inspirational videos, and this one was so good I wanted to share it with you here on the Beauty Dialogues. It's 2 minutes of pure 'Yes We Can", set in a traffic jam in India.

Be the Change! Do that seemingly small thing, and see what happens...