Scriffles: A Whack on the Side of the Head. PO!

Be Foolish. Break the rules. Be impractical. Get out of your box. Look for "wrong" answers. Seek ambiguity. Make mistakes ... and set your creative self free.

These are the first words on the blurb on the back of A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger von Oech.
The book comes with a deck of cards with inspirational wisdoms to answer the question: What should I do? How do I solve this? What are my options?
This is a book I've returned to time and again when turmoil and disquiet takes over me - my mind, my life, me and I feel alone and no one can advise me.

Sure it's nice to seek out ritual and familiarity in such circumstances.
My life - like most people's existence - is dominated by ritual as rigid as a Japanese tea ceremony.
But one of the mainstays is to seek out a "Whack in the Head" inspiration when I feel like a sea snail in a desert.

When life is staid - or stayed - there's an inkling that starts whispering and ends up screaming "GET OUT of the BOX!"
It only seems sudden, when I stop - maybe in a fit of anger, maybe in a torrent of tears, maybe just numb and exhausted or depressed.
So then I ask ME - "What do you want me to do differently? This is what is. What more do you need?"
And me tells ME get me: new pair of sneakers, a new TV, an overseas trip, a new program, a new swimsuit...bla-bla-bla-bla-bla...

"NO! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no...
Try "Po".  I learned today about Edward de Bono's idea of Po.
Po glistens in the sunlight like the sun on water where a silver fish jumps. 
It's cheeky. It's dangerous. It's so full of potential.
It's an alternative answer.  Instead of "no" and instead of "yes" - choose "Po", create a new idea.
It's the same reason, I think, that I'm now hooked on Julien Smith's blog http://inoveryourhead.net/ (In Over Your Head)

In today's blog ( http://inoveryourhead.net/becoming-child-like/ ) he writes about creativity training and developing a management concept of rewarding adaptability in employees.
He sees merit in having childlike thinking... and he thinks it's something important enough to debate. 
He thinks it would help society in so many ways if companies rewarded adaptability and creativity in employees.

I don't know much about management theory and practice but I do believe that there's a galaxy separating it from creativity and adaptability - and that is why whole industries and dare I say civilizations are struggling today. 

Was there ever a time in history when conformity was not the "normal", "expected", "rewarded" behaviour of our race?

As my father drummed into my head from birth: "Some people are followers and some people are leaders - you can't change that, it's human nature."

Take that a step further.  Leadership is about "power". 
"POWER" requires structure, structure requires conformity: hence religion, sports leagues, governments, families, gangs and companies.
This is the way I understand how society is managed - our civilization is being challenged today. And I don't think people recognise it.

Our education systems aren't adapting, families aren't adapting, companies aren't adapting... 
It's been a while since I read Bertrand Russell's "Education and the Social Order" but what I remember goes like this:

"Education" is about making good citizens: kind of like training good soldiers, follow orders, be efficient, get the job done, don't stir the pot...
The other side of "Education" pitches a flipside: reach your full potential, explore ideas and be creative... 

PO! 

Doesn't that actually require people to think for themselves, be creative and adapt?
I think we need a social compact - for everyone from the retirement home to the cradle.
For the elderly: "My Life's a 21st Century Adaptation".
For the middle aged: "Work in Progress".
For youngsters: "Evolve with me" - or something.

I firmly believe that you can not change people - people are whatever they are - you can only try to win them over or retreat.
Only they can decide to change.
So ... "Po" people ... are we Po people? I think we just dream about being Po People.
We make movies about this all the time: A Bug's Life, It's a Wonderful Life... didn't Charles Darwin base his whole thesis of evolution on it?

I love nonsensical thinking -There's improvising, there's creativity - and then there's ethics ... What's fair? It's a leadership issue.

If we're all out of our depth here then who's the Atticus? He's the wise man in the Pulitzer Prize winning book To Kill A Mockingbird.

When Scout (a little girl of 10) stands on Boo Radley's porch and sees things for the first time the way he sees things in the street where they live, tears spring to my eyes every time:

"I had never seen our neighbourhood from this angle. There was Miss Maudie's, Miss Stephanie's - there was our house...
"Daylight...in my mind, the night faded...A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishing pole behind him. A man  stood waiting with his hands on his hips. 
"Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend ... 
"It was Fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk, Fall and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces. 
"Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate silhouetted against a blazing house. . . Summer, and he watched his children's hearts break. 
"Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.
"Just standing on the Radley porch was enough. """

Everyone MUST have an Atticus in their life - every life depends upon just one person like Atticus being there for us.
If there's a community - how wonderful?
And sometimes, even a book will do.
I always feel like Scout standing on that porch seeing it for the first time... 

Scriffles: Sniffles, smiles and goodbye to old times.

Today I packed up my things at the Courier-Mail, Queensland's major metropolitan newspaper.
I remember the job interviews: two. I didn't get it the first time.
I almost cried today when I said good-bye to a few people - particularly one feisty sub-editor who used to play cricket at night in the corridor and used to tease me when I first started.
But he teases everyone. ;)
And another cheery soul - who's a gardener too.  
I walked out with an armful of personal belongings and a lifetime of memories and experiences which created the person I am.
I started out with the motto: no one owes you a living; keep smiling; and NEVER GIVE UP.
I still believe this - though I've grown a little tired of working to pay taxes that the government gives to those who think that the world owes them!
I never gave up. I know this could make me a little infuriating at times. But I'm so proud of myself.
I didn't win awards - got a few honorable mentions.
I didn't set the world on fire - but I managed to change a few lives for the better and help a few people in times when circumstances had conspired against them horribly.

On the huge 50th anniversary celebrations of the end of WWII (pretty sure it was that), I talked to a meek Aboriginal woman, one of the official invited guests because she was the widow of Australia's only Aboriginal pilot.
As we stood in a gallery of memorabillia, after the grand speeches by all the ministers and such, she told me that she was sleeping in her daughter's garage on an old mattress.
She had health problems (had half a lung out). Her husband, who never smoked before the war, came home smoking like a chimney and died years later of related health problems but the Federal Government refused to give her the full war widow's pension because they didn't think his health problems had anything to do with the war. The next day, after I wrote the story, I get a phone call from her.  They finally gave her the full pension.
 
I've covered almost every round from police and courts to education and local councils.
One chief of staff once told me: "Sometimes we don't know how you find theses stories".
I replied: "Cold calling".
That was about the time I'd dug up a story about an Aboriginal principal at Cherbourg State School called Chris Sarra. He'd reduced the truancy rate at the school by some 80 or 90 percent or something (it's a while back now).
The photographer beamed the photo back and I rang the story in - it was on the front page.
That was new technology then. Chris Sarra went on to become Queenslander of the Year or something - and the then Education Minister Anna Bligh (now our Premier) congratulated me the day of the front-page story. We were at the turning of the sod for the Catholic University at Banyo.

One editor once told me that he thought I was shy.
I thought that was interesting theory I didn't think that this editor was particularly observant.
 
I'm sure a shy person could never do this job.
I remember standing with another woman, a photographer, on the doorstep of a family home on dusk out a few hours west of Brisbane. It was the day of a terrible tragedy.
We walked into a darkened home, on the eve of Good Friday, to talk to the grieving parents of a teenager golfer who'd been killed by a falling branch on the course.
I remember there was a rifle hanging on the wall in the lounge room.
I remember writing the story on the drive back to Toowoomba and phoning it in while we got takeaway - I think that was about the second time I'd eaten McDonalds in my life.
I remember a tiny, tiny story appearing in the paper the next day. I remember the disappointment.

If there's such a thing as shy and determined then I'm it - I think a job changes you if you do it long enough.
This job takes a high personal toll - you work nights, you work weekends, you work public holidays, you work Christmas and you work Easter.
A guy who wanted to make me his bride when I was 21 - I didn't want to be HIS bride at any time - was sat beside me at a wedding years later.
He told me: "So what's it like sleeping with a different man every night?" I simply ignored him and turned to talk to someone else.
Man! Maybe now that I've divorced this job I'll have time for something like marriage.
I never thought I could do both well.

Since 2006, I've worked on the website, couriermail.com.au
Been sorting things out, throwing things out, and a funny thing happened.
But also finished a multimedia project that I designed and shot and edited.
My last story for the Courier-Mail was about a poet named Kath Walker.
I think I finally did the story justice.
 
You see when I was at uni I thought, arrogantly, that I'd get her story if I just asked her. I took the ferry to Stradbroke Island and cycled along a long dirt road to interview her at her home - without doing any research.
She didn't give me her story. She gave me quite a tongue-lashing actually. I was angry for some years afterwards.
But now I understand. Here I was, a snotty-nosed, privileged white girl studying journalism at the University of Queensland who'd failed to do any research apart from reading her poem Son of Mine in school. I still love the poem.
The irony is that half my life I had to churn out stories without doing research because news is all spur of the moment - NOW! Right NOW! kind of stuff.
Not for the faint of heart really.
Maintaining heart while developing grit - that's the secret.

So see how far I've come in the past two years in terms of telling a story using multimedia skills: I've learned to video edit, shoot better video with good audio, flash design, photoshop and music composition.

In 2007 I produced an ambitious Australia Day project on Australian Citizenship: http://media01.couriermail.com.au/multimedia/2007/01/070125_citizenship/citizenship.html

And in 2009 I leave on this note: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26235864-16821,00.html

Scriffles: Freaking out just a little bit. And it's not even Halloween yet...

This is going to sound really pathetic. This is the first post I've written since my computer hard drive died and took everything,
and I mean everything, with it. I can't even attach a photo - unless you want to download a raw file, and I know you don't -
because I have to re-install Photoshop and every other program etc...etc...etc...

I'm sure it's happened to you at some point.
I just wish I'd backed up the family photos - some of them are burnt into my memory.
Maybe the memory is more powerful than a jpg. That's why I'm backing off.

I'm distancing myself from this computer. I've got a green screensaver with a ladybug on a leaf.
Lady bugs are good luck - that's what my Grandmother used to say.

This will either happen over a long period of time or I will wake up one morning and
blitz it. We'll see. Nothing behaves the way it used to...
I counted on my computer to remember how I liked things and where things were.
Only 18 months ago, this is how it all began between us with a blank space.
What a strange feeling. People said changing jobs after 20 years must be like getting divorced.
I agreed because I don't know what getting divorced feels like - to share a life and then lose it.
I think this is more like divorce.

I know that it's not all bad. It's kind of good because it motivates me to do other things.

Luckily, I don't store my writing on this computer. I write long hand.
It's been my saviour over the past week - I've been able to keep my head because I knew I had kept it safe.
So don't let this happen to you. Back up.

I went to see AstroBoy yesterday when the repair shop gave me the bad news. http://www.astroboy-themovie.com/
And now I feel like Dr Tenma - he builds a robot to replace his real son and discovers he can't replace his son.
Not that I thought my computer was my son but now I realise it had a personality - a very cluttered, busy, personality.

I liked Astro. Magnficient character recreation. But my God didn't they pad the script out with some shit! Sorry.
They recreated the pathos and then they stuck three unnecessary characters into the script - Dramaturg please!
I could've done without the robot revolutionaries. A fridge?
The wiper and squeeze bottle on the other hand made me laugh out loud.

Well, it's Halloween tomorrow. BOO! Though I've already had a good scare.

Scriffles: Quincy Jones in the car, The Finn Brothers on the stereo.

Ever since I sat down to write I've been listening to Everyone Is Here by the Finn Brothers. It just goes around and around and I never grow tired of it.
I found it in a clean up tucked away in a little shelf.
Part of Me Part of You, Won't Give In, Luckiest Man Alive... really, really good.

Only a few months ago I followed the advice of one of the many online gurus and decided to change three daily habits, forgive myself something.
I wanted to forgive myself for being so slow to change jobs. Security.
When I finally quit my job to finish this book I've been developing, I was happy.
I'm not saying it's not stressful. But on all my journeys I take Quincy Jones because the radio blab I used to listen to really jangles me.
Long ago I bought this CD out of a bargain bin because I wanted to learn about music.
I picked this one up a self-titled CD called Quincy Jones.
Amazing how it can still the mind, it's like sitting beside the sea or a bubbling brook.

These artists are forces of nature. Thank you God. Off to yoga now - after morning coffee. ;)

Cast Your Fate To The Wind: Quincy Jones
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Scriffles: The Great Betrayal.

On the weekend I was catching up with a friend who has children. She laughed when she told a story about how one of them had told her that they were trying to be really good in the run-up to Christmas so as to get as many presents as possible. I said if they get any more than they already do they'll need a mini-skip for wrapping paper.
While we laughed I pointed out that this whole idea of being rewarded for being good when we're children is quite a serious issue because when we grow up and leave school we discover that being good is not really what it's all about. We learn this concept the hard way - but I think some are born street smart, or maybe they just has street smart parents.

I won't call it wise because being street smart is one thing but many people I think carry such bitter resentment after discovering that there's no Santa Claus that it rankles and they become masters of schadenfreude - they are cruel to others and delight in others pain because its like payback for this "great betrayal".
This is not smart it's shallow. My friend and I pulled the concept of "being good" apart - can you tell? - and we agreed that you can't tell a seven-year-old being good is probably not going to lead to success in the long run because then how do you then control the child?
There's another catch here. Children watch what their parents do and then do the same.
Is there a cycle here?
We wonder what's wrong with young people perhaps we should look to our own behaviour - if their parents are cruel to people and gossip behind their friend's backs what do you think a child learns? Certainly not good values.
This is an even worse betrayal I think.
Being a parent is a serious business - I'm just an aunt.
But when I look into the eyes of these children who are seeking understanding I feel so strongly that I can not betray them.
If they give me their trust and their attention and they want me to read with them or teach them printing or carve a pumpkin for Halloween and just sit down around a campfire and talk - I want to give them my time. Their parents spend time with them, they love spending time with them - most of the time.
If I only had $10 for every time someone told me that it's easy for me because I can give them back.
But you see the kids know that I don't have to spend time with them. I'm just their aunt. I want to spend time with them.
I'm assuming that's why they like me. I can't think of any other reason.
Half the time it feels like the rest of the world really doesn't have time for anybody - doesn't it?

Scriffles: Beauty and use-by dates.

I met up with a friend who's a new mum on the weekend.
I joked: "It's just like playing dolls again."
Tiny feet just like the baby dolls you have when you're growing up.
But when mum and daughter play those eyes light up, oblivious to the attention of everyone in the cafe, mum delights in showing off her giggling content baby.
That's beauty. Innocence really.
Sad that we take that innocence and throw it into the mix to mix it up with other motives.
Once they take that beauty and use it to evoke these emotions just to sell you laundry powder or toilet paper - it's something different.
People are in love with youth and beauty - youth has a use-by date (on the outside). Beauty doesn't.
Beside us in the cafe were two women. A young woman taking her elderly grandmother out for morning tea.
Mesmerizing beauty - and I'm not talking about the young girl's appearance. I'm talking about her heart.
They were engrossed in conversation. How wonderful! - said my friend.

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Scriffles: SPAA. Screen Producers Association of Australia conference in Sydney. What a day! What a difference!

I caught the 470 bus back to Lilleyfield in Sydney's inner west this arvo. 

I'm sitting at my sister's computer writing this post with crickets screaming outside the window.
Imagine a ceaseless, breathless scream. That's the scream I had inside from just after 5pm when the head of the ABC Kim Dalton started speaking at SPAA till dinner time.
Dinner and with my niece blowing soap bubbles, the dog dragging toys outside - who can stay angry at Kim Dalton.
I'm attending the Screen Producers of Australia Association annual conference - I joined this year.
And today I discovered that my opinion of the ABC has changed - I didn't even realise it. 
Cultural institution. Yes. But what kind of culture? And do we need the ABC to preserve Australian culture in the digital age?
Especially if it's going to make a profit off the back of public subside in the name of preserving free-to-air television in the digital age under the guise of protecting Australian culture.
So preposterous! 689 hours of Australian ABC content in the past year.
And who watched? He warned that Australian culture may become the property of telcos without proper regulation and policies.
Is it safer in the hands of the ABC?
He talks about the diversity of the ABC.
But if independent producers decided to distribute their product online, create their own channels, is that not diversity and Australian content?

The conference started yesterday on such a high note with comedian Ahn Do telling the story of his family coming to Australia as refugees.
He took his father's advice: give it a go... contribute to this great country where anything is possible... 
That's what opened this conference.
Ahn Do made us laugh and cry and he challenged producers to just do it.
I recorded it when I realised that this is a moment all Australians deserve to enjoy.
I pulled out my flip camera - I don't have a proper edit program with me so I'll try to attach video files as I can.

This is Australian culture and it's not coming out of the ABC.
But this afternoon room full of independent TV and film producers sat there without raising the hard questions - I wonder if we heard the same message??
They don't need the ABC. That's why the ABC boss is worried and asking the government for new regulations a new cultural policy.
He couched it in terms of a threat to the viability of the independent production industry - I think that's interesting considering everything else that's being said at this conference.

The first session this morning was with Brian Seth Hurst (The Opportunity Management Company) - who didn't bother turning up for a round table session I was enrolled for with three others in the afternoon.
But anyway we actually had a good chat without him. He outlined the new digital landscape of participation, giving the audience a voice, yadda-yadda...it's not new actually. It was a 101 in digital media.
Do I need to say that this session was not as well attended as Kim Dalton's session?

Mr Hurst struggled with Australian broadband...the stuff he spoke of is not possible in Australian because ... us has bad reception. ;)

He's now working with Chris Sandberg, the CEO and founder of The company P, which produced a fully interactive drama called The Truth About Marika, for Swedish TV.
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The Truth About Marika won an Emmy last year for best interactive drama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Marika

Mr Sandberg was at Mr Hurst's talk this morning and when I approached him for a brief conversation he said the TV networks don't really have a big part to play in the future digital world.
Not if they think that they are going to control the universe - or at least the digital landscape - as they control the airwaves today.
The greater proportion of content in The Truth About Marika was user generated, he said.
But this was a case where a network came to him and asked for it.

In Australia we don't have the infrastructure to do it - yet.

The Sydney Opera House program, Kids at the House, runs an annual "Little Big Shots" show.
It's an international film festival for kids. Yes. That's right. The Sydney Opera House. Not the ABC.
And they've been doing for a few years now.
Stories for kids, about kids and sometimes by kids - the by kids is important.

This weekend, my Flip video and I are babysitting. We are going out on the town (Sydney) with two kids aged four and seven.
We are going to shoot and edit video to present to their parents.
This is the start of something BIG!
I'm going to watch Disgrace now. 
Goodnight.

Scriffles: A week in Sydney. A heatwave. A Christmas Carol with questions from a 4-year-old.

Yes, it was 40 degrees in Sydney on Sunday when I had to take a four-year-old to a party and then entertain her seven-year-old sister for a few hours.

We walked from bookshop to bookshop along Glebe Point Road - stopping in air-conditioned shops every couple of blocks.
No air, no air! And I'm not talking about Chris Brown and Jordin Sparks here.

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Apparently, it was no air even at Bondi Beach - no sea breeze. Still oppression. Maybe that's why I decided to start donating to the UNHCR's Emergency Response Team - when their volunteers stopped us along our Glebe climb.
Imagine this kind of heat but being stuck in a massive, humungous refugee camp - no home, no water, no food.
Really. With children. With old people. This is an Australian issue. We have so much space. So much area of land. This whole fear of refugees is so unacceptable.
Security is important but refusing people basic rights - that's not making our world more secure. That's just closing your eyes and pretending it will go away.
This is why I recorded Ahn Do's personal story at the Screen Producers Association of Australia conference last week.
Australians are not by nature mean - not at all. 
They overwhelmingly voted to release indigenous people from protectorates in the 1960s - they wanted them to be counted as full citizens. That counts. Overcoming selfishness and prejudice at any point is an amazing thing.
And in the 1970s, we took in Vietnamese refugees with none of this horrible mean spiritedness - do not get me started on John Howard's role in the development of this ugly character trait.
I had no truck with John Howard until 2001 - to me it doesn't really matter which party rules, it matters that they do the right thing.

It was all this stuff which made me decide to write fiction in 2001 because I started to think the only way to really move people's hearts was to tell stories that touched their hearts - it's not hard news but it's a tougher act.
Why? Because it's about reaching those hearts which have switched off the news.

There was another thing that got me thinking over the past day or so. 

I sat in a dark movie theatre watching A Christmas Carol in 3-D with the four-year-old on my knee and the seven-year-old huddled close.
As each spirit arrived, I needed to explain their presence, their meaning, and whether or not they were good or bad.
You should try this. It's an interesting trial by fire of your own understanding.

Why did Marley go "R--aaaaaaa!" at Scrooge?
Why was Marley angry?
Why was it a flame spirit?
Why did they visit the little boy?
Did Scrooge become good?
Why? Why did Marley have chains?
What's the Christmas spirit?
Where's Santa?
Is that Santa?
Where's Santa?
Do you have the Christmas spirit?

The following morning - no. The entire following day, I was rephrasing my answer and simplifying and refining answers all day.
And you know, I bet children in the 1800s didn't read A Christmas Carol because it's morally complicated - and then try explaining the Afterlife!
These kids like watching Caspar the Friendly Ghost - they don't go into what ghosts are in Caspar.
And even in something like Ruby Gloom - it's not explained. 
Isn't that odd? Well, this issue of turning a blind eye came up really strong out of the Scrooge saga.

Why was Scrooge a bad man? Why did Marley go Raa--aaa!?
Well, because he turned a blind eye to other people's suffering and he didn't care about other people.
It's not enough to be a good businessman. 
See. (YOU Liberals who don't want to change because it's too expensive to change the way we do things to protect our planet from climate change!!!!)
I reckon climate change actually started about the time Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol.
Now it's going to do something about the surplus population!
Probably this summer too.

Scriffles: 8-hour render of 3-minute HD video on 4-yr-old laptop

I took a video of my sister and her girls putting up their Christmas tree thinking I'd edit on my laptop.

But it was no small job. Yes the Flip video camera takes wonderful HD pictures but you need to have a proper computer to edit the video - not a toy. The Flip's edit is basic but effective. You can choose your own music or use provided music which isn't too bad at all.

<p>Decorating the Christmas Tree from Lisa Yallamas on Vimeo.</p><p>My sister and her girls putting up the Christmas tree on the weekend. My little 2005 laptop struggled for eight hours to render this three-minute video which I edited on the Flip video camera's basic program. High Def data and low grunt computer are not really compatible. Beware when you buy the Flip.</p>