The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020 14th January 2021
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  1. Welcome To The Zone!
  2. The Zone: No. 2 – Oct 22, 2020
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  10. The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020
  11. The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
  12. The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
  13. The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020
  14. The Zone: No. 14 – Jan 21, 2020
  15. The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020
  16. The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020
  17. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Creativity as a simple three-step formula, a free streamable Hayao Miyazaki documentary, the importance of music in movies, and much more in The Zone No. 13.

We finally got some snow, yay! It’s colder now, and it seems that the fine weather will continue if you’ll forgive me the pun. (I love Pink Panther, see it if you haven’t). Anyway, SNOW!

A red squirrel hiding nuts in the snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
A red squirrel in my garden, hiding nuts in the snow.
  • The Key to Creativity? Jootsing, meaning “jumping out of the system.” (Douglas Hofstadter coined the term). Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett breaks down creativity into a simple three-step formula:
    • Understand a particular system and its rules, for instance, painting.
    • Step outside the system and look for something that undermines those rules.
    • Create something new based on the findings.

For example, Picasso had started learning drawing and oil painting as a seven-year-old, tutored by his father, and studied at prominent art schools in Barcelona and Madrid. Then he broke the rules and created Cubism.

“Creativity, that ardently sought but only rarely found virtue, often is a heretofore unimagined violation of the rules of the system from which it springs.”

Daniel C. Dennett, Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking
  • Pablo Picasso‘s complete name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Mártir Patricio Ruiz y Picasso. That’s a mouthful (23 words).
View of Houses in Delft, Known as ‘The Little Street’ by Johannes Vermeer, 1658.
View of Houses in Delft, Known as ‘The Little Street’, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1658.
Stars in the outskirts of the dwarf galaxy Caldwell 18 (NGC 185) as well as distant background galaxies (which appear as extended patches of light). Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Ferguson (University of Edinburgh, Institute for Astronomy); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
The dwarf galaxy Caldwell 18 (NGC 185) and distant background galaxies (which appear as extended patches of light). Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Ferguson (University of Edinburgh, Institute for Astronomy); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
  • NASA has released 30 new space photos to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Hubble telescope’s launch, and they are awesome.
  • The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a site and YouTube channel (and a forthcoming book from Simon & Schuster) that “defines neologisms for emotions that do not have a descriptive term.” The site’s creator, John Koenig, makes up the words but partly bases them on “research on etymologies and meanings of used prefixes, suffixes, and word roots.” A few examples:
    • aftersome adj. astonished to think back on the bizarre sequence of accidents that brought you to where you are today—as if you’d spent years bouncing down a Plinko pegboard, passing through a million harmless decision points, any one of which might’ve changed everything—which makes your long and winding path feel fated from the start, yet so unlikely as to be virtually impossible.
    • flashover n. the moment a conversation becomes real and alive, which occurs when a spark of trust shorts out the delicate circuits you keep insulated under layers of irony, momentarily grounding the static emotional charge you’ve built up through decades of friction with the world.
    • exulansis n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.
  • Jack Pierce is a musician and movie and TV composer based in London. His video about how music affects characters or scenes in movies is short and to the point. Very educational.
Cat with tie and glasses

My Zone

A Quote I’m Pondering

There is only one time that is important— Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.

Leo Tolstoy, What Men Live By and Other Tales 

From My Photo Archives

Close up of deep blue sea. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Deep Blue Sea

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