Art

Chalkboard Thoughts — Dec 22, 2020 —Episode 7 —  It Gets Lighter From Here

#ItGetsLighterFromHere from Twitter

It Gets Lighter From Here is an initiative by Culture Central, a collective voice for arts & culture in the West Midlands, U.K. Please see below the explanation by Culture Central for the initiative.

About It Gets Lighter From Here

21 December is the shortest day of the year. It is also the last Monday before Christmas, the start of a festive season that is likely to be seriously overshadowed by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

On the night of the 21st — the Winter Solstice, marking the shortest day and longest night of the year — we want artists and cultural institutions across the West Midlands to come together to provide multiple moments of happiness and hope under the banner: It Gets Lighter From Here.

This is why over 35 organisations are realising a number of digital micro commissions, each no more than sixty seconds long, which will be released across various social media platforms creating a region-wide celebration of hope, optimism and possibility for the future, and of the value in creativity and the arts.

The project aims to involve a huge cross-section of artists and art forms — from theatre and dance, to spoken word and music — from the most internationally renowned to the most recently emerged.

Content will be shared via the hashtag #ItGetsLighterFromHere, reaching substantial audiences and networks from across the participating organisations, artists, region and beyond.

Following the event on 21 December, the collection of work shared across social media platforms may be assembled into an online collection that will be available for sharing into 2021.

I was inspired to create my own short production based on the above initiative, I wasn’t commissioned to contribute, but I thought I would anyway.

How to grab your window of opportunity!

Hugh MacLeod

Vincent van Gogh made some breakthrough paintings for about 5–10 years, before his life ended.

Andy Warhol was making some pretty radical art for about six or seven years, before going all popstar-formulaic for the rest of his life.

The Beatles had been together just over five years, before they started running out of gas.

Doonesbury was the world’s greatest comic strip in the early seventies, but around 1977–1980 it started losing a lot of its early charm and became a bit more “manufactured”.

J. K. Rowling spent a decade writing the Harry Potter books, then kicked back, a very rich woman. Fair enough.

The Clash, the greatest punk band ever, had a good run of about five years, then imploded.

Even Pablo Picasso, probably the most inventive artist in the history of the world, maxed out at Guernica in the late 1930s and coasted till he died in the 1970s.

And businesses are not that different.

They’ll do amazing work for their first decade as a growing concern, before going public and becoming same ol’, same ol’ commodified, or being bought out and swallowed up by a larger competitor (or going out of business altogether).

What does this tell us? That even with the greatest creators in the world, inventiveness is not unlimited. The gods give us a brief window, and we either jump through it or we don’t.

Five or ten years is not a long time. Five or ten years goes very fast.

Know this when your time comes, and act swiftly.

I received this article via email from @gapingvoid and thought it was too good and I had this overwhelming feeling to share it. You can see the original email below and here. Note they misspelled van Gogh’s surname, oh my I was distraught about that. A fellow Dutchman and they misspelled his name!

Hugh MacLeod

Evil

Thankfully his older brother and friends who were much older and stronger were nearby outside the school to protect him from any danger that could have been nearby. Just as well because Michael was not as strong and tall as his peers, which meant that he was very vulnerable to being chased down and beaten up.

It was probably one of the first fearful moments in his young life and an event that will unlikely ever be forgotten by him.

It was lunchtime in Amsterdam outside the Moreelse Mavo School where Michael attended with his older brother and his twin sister. The school was very close to the Vincent van Gogh museum and the main cultural area in the centre of Amsterdam, including the Rijksmuseum and the Concertgebouw.

The man looked vicious, angry and on a mission to harm Michael. All Michael could do was to run to his older brother at full speed, whilst being chased by a much older man, who was now running at full speed and catching Michael metre by metre.

JIMMY, HELP!!!!

Jimmy heard him and immediately came to the rescue with his friends who stood together like a solid wall of muscle and strength. Michael quickly hid behind them and the man walked in the other direction whilst keeping his arm and index finger outstretched pointing at Michael whilst muttering the words, I WILL GET YOU! (Ik krijg je wel).

To this day young Michael had no idea who this man was and why he wanted to beat him up. He never saw the man again, but the memory stayed with him forever and the fear of meeting him again haunted him daily for a number of years afterwards.

Michael de Groot