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!

• Speaking of snow … you know how much I love words, languages, and idioms. This is how we should talk about the weather! ‘Many Haws, Cold Toes.’ And Other Arcane Ways of Saying It’s Going to Snow a Lot.

• 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).

• The Rijksmuseum has made 709,000 Artworks Available for Free Online. The artworks are public domain—downloadable; you can print them, order posters, or make your own creations.

• Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli and the creator of many lovely animated movies – My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Kiki’s Delivery Service – is one of my favorite directors. Imagine how happy I was when I discovered that the Japanese public broadcasting company NHK followed him and his creative process in a documentary that aired in 2019. The 4-part documentary 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki follows him for seven years while he was working on his two final features Ponyo and The Wind Rises. You can stream it for free until 2026 and is available in English and other 10 languages.

• 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.

• There’s a live lightning map, so cool!

• January 14th is the Dress Up Your Pet Day. You’re welcome!

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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

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