The Healing Power of Art

Today marks two months since my mother passed and a month since my last blog post. I’m still occupied with what I wrote about in that post: clearing out clothes, cleaning up clutter, making phone calls, and signing documents. There is progress being made on all those fronts, thankfully. I still haven’t had a service for Mom yet and I don’t know when that will happen. Mom wanted to spare me the stress and pain of having a rosary and funeral Mass and instead opted for a Memorial Mass whenever I was up to it. For a number of reasons, including emotional and financial ones, I just haven’t felt ready.

What has been helping me, at least emotionally, has been art. I think many of us were reminded during the lockdowns of 2020 just how much art matters. When we couldn’t gather to see live music, or an art exhibition, or take in a movie or a play, there was a sense of loss. This loss, coupled with not being able to be in the company of family or friends, has led to isolation and depression.

When my mother died, I suddenly found myself alone in a house that I had lived in for the better part of 38 years. I had moved away twice during that time, but those times were brief and over twenty years ago. I see her everywhere I look: her furniture, her style, her “stuff”. This isn’t a bad thing, but I knew I had to start making changes so this place would feel more like mine. Hanging some new art on the walls was a place to start. Thanks to a website called Artfinder, I came across a talented woman named Kathy Morton Stanion. Her paintings spoke to me and I purchased this piece that immediately enveloped me in a calming, peaceful embrace.

Kathy and I exchanged many emails back and forth and we found out we shared things in common. Her beautiful painting marked one of the first steps in my healing journey.

The second artist who has helped me is a talented singer, songwriter, and pianist named Natalie Nicole Gilbert. We’ve followed each other on Twitter for a long time and I don’t know how that started, really. We never interacted until after Mom died and her latest album was being released. Its title is perfect: Recovery. This album is all about recovery in its various forms and its release and appearance in my life is more than coincidental. It’s perfectly timed by something more powerful than me.

As with Kathy, Natalie and I have shared some wonderful interactions and again, found lots of common ground. This is the power of art, of connection, and of well, technology. Despite the negative aspects that social media and the internet in general can draw into your life, it introduced me to two women who are bringing beauty into the world one painting and one song at a time. They and their art are making a stressful, sad, difficult time easier for me. This is how art can heal and uplift. We’re all artists in some way. Think about how can you bring healing and joy into the world. You don’t have to paint or sing.  A kind word. A listening ear. A cooked meal. Anything done with love is art. And more love and more art is exactly what all of us need.

Marking Time and Making Space

Today marks exactly a month since my mother died. While time has gone quickly, it has also moved at a frustratingly slow pace. Even though I’m in the house by myself, I’ve spent the last four weeks seemingly in constant communication with the outside world. I’m making calls, receiving calls, compiling documents, waiting for documents, or faxing and emailing documents. I expected this, having been through it before after my father’s death, but I was 30 years younger and probably more patient then. I also had my mother there to at least to share the grief and busywork.

I’ve been trying to go through all of the “stuff” that makes up someone’s life, but that has been difficult. Four years of full-time caregiving meant that my priorities weren’t on housework. They were on crisis management. I was on-call 24/7, in a constant state of fight or flight. Every morning I’d wake up, walk to her bedroom and wonder, “Is this the day I don’t find her breathing?”.

So, there is clutter. Lots of clutter. I have managed to get rid of some of the items that I never really liked or that just aren’t my style. What I haven’t really begun to tackle are her clothes. My mother took great pride in looking nice and well put together. Everything matched. Gloves and scarf, shoes and handbag. For my cousin Amanda’s wedding, for example, she found this lovely gray, Vera Wang dress on sale. She had the gray shoes, the handbag, the perfect jacket, and the gray pantyhose. It took her months to find matching lingerie, but she did. Even though she was the only one who knew the lingerie matched. In fact, that lingerie cost more than the dress!

So, looking through her closets, I pick up a cashmere sweater here or a jogging outfit there and I smell the perfume she wore most of the time: Estee Lauder White Linen. This stops me straightaway and I cry. Sometimes the tears are big, mournful, grieving tears. Other times, they are happy tears remembering a time we went to the museum or to dinner or sat around watching episodes of Eastenders or Call the Midwife.

One of these days, I’ll get through all the stuff that made up her life and integrate the bits that give me joy into the life and home that I’m now creating for myself. I came across a poem by Seamus Heaney called “Clearances” that he wrote after his mother’s death. I found these lines particularly meaningful:

The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned
And we all knew one thing by being there.
The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open
High cries were felled and a pure change happened.

What’s Your Number?

We often hear people say, “It’s just a number” when speaking about age. Okay, I get that, but numbers do dominate our lives. Test scores validate and rank a student’s progress, what the scale says can determine how you feel about yourself on any given day, your salary is an indicator of your worth to your employer, and yes, the date on your birth certificate can affect what you and others feel about your own viability, desirability, and cultural relevance. In essence, numbers can dictate your “shelf life”.

When it comes to age, the numbers game has always troubled me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt that time was my enemy. I was always running out of it or wasting it. This “time bomb” constantly ticks under the surface of my daily life, but it’s guaranteed to blow at least two times during the year: New Year’s Eve and my birthday. Unlike people who see both of these days as markers of new beginnings, I see them as grim reminders of all that I’ve failed to do, change, or achieve since the last birthday or “Auld Lang Syne” sing-along. This feeling has only gotten stronger the older I’ve become. Today is my 53rd birthday and to be blunt, this has been a shitty year. I’m not going to bore you with details of angst and woe, but trust me, life hasn’t been some Hallmark Channel, happy clappy, fun-filled adventure. Think Sharknado and you’ll be on the right track.

So, unless I want a sequel of deadly flying sharks symbolically destroying my life again until my next birthday, I need to change my mindset. With the patience of a gnat on crack, “instant gratification or bust” has been my unsuccessful mantra so far. What to do, what to do?

I have a telephone consultation with a therapist this afternoon. That’s a start. I’ve done therapy before. My problem isn’t knowing what my problems are. I can analyze, diagnose and talk my issues to death. The trick is making the changes necessary. I’m looking for coping strategies, a bullet point list of steps to take. No more attempts at past life regression or cooing “there, there” to my annoying inner child. That’s all fine and good, but I need to see some results in the here and now, not in the hereafter.

The other thing I’m going to do is continue to find examples of people who’ve accomplished goals later in life. I stumbled across a great reminder on Twitter this week about the actress, Kathryn Joosten, who didn’t start acting until the age of 40. She didn’t get her big break until 20 years later when she was cast as Martin Sheen’s secretary, “Mrs. Landingham”, on The West Wing. Writer and activist Charlotte Clymer shared Kathryn’s story on Twitter as a response to the ageism she sees permeating our culture. I’m going to re-read Kathryn Joosten’s story every time the time clock is ticking like a time bomb in my head. Just like internalized homophobia, internalized ageism is just as detrimental as anything the outside world can do. My birthday wish? Less sharks and more serenity.

 

Synack Solution Explainer Video Script & Video

I wrote this script while working at RocketWheel Productions.The script and video were finalized and delivered to the client in July, 2017.

Cyber attacks dominate the news and the boardroom.

Attackers are savvy and persistent. To defeat them, you have to be even smarter.
Do your cyber defenses measure up?

They will. With Synack.

Synack’s crowd sourced penetration testing platform reinvents how enterprises and government agencies think about security.

How do we do that?

We pair the world’s best hackers with the most advanced scanning technology to find critical security issues that other solutions simply cannot detect.

The Synack Red Team consists of the top security researchers in the world who think like adversaries but are highly vetted and act as allies.

Synack’s proprietary scanning technology, Hydra, constantly scans all of your assets, and alerts the Red Team of any attack surface changes or suspected vulnerabilities.

All testing activity is routed through our secure gateway, Launch Point, enabling real-time monitoring and auditability.

The Synack Mission Ops team analyzes and prioritizes all vulnerability submissions so all security intelligence passed to your teams is realistic and immediately actionable. And we help your team verify that patches have been applied.

These four pillars make up the Synack solution and empower you to face security issues head on.

Synack’s web-based client portal provides real-time visibility into testing activities, intelligence from the Synack Red Team, and detailed reports on when, what, and how your assets were tested.

Why do customers choose Synack?

Efficiency.

An assessment can begin within 24 hours. With the world’s best hackers on your side, you’ll find and fix critical security issues faster and more effectively. And you can easily scale your testing programs as needed.

Visibility.

Synack provides a dynamic client portal with on-demand insights instead of just static reports.

Results.

Synack reduces business risk and increases resilience to attack. A realistic view of your security weaknesses ensures you can be proactive, not reactive.  

Discover.

Prioritize.

Remediate.

Adapt.

Let Synack show you the better offensive approach to security.

Trimming the Fat From Your Explainer Video Script

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE ROCKETWHEEL PRODUCTIONS BLOG ON JANUARY 11, 2017.

Trimming the fat. We do it to meat, we do it do our diets and organizations and governments try to do it to their budgets.

When it comes to explainer videos, we need to trim the excess fat from scripts. This isn’t just because of our shrinking attention spans. That’s a factor, but we should want our scripts to be lean and mean because it makes for better videos.

My friend, screenwriter and screenwriting instructor, Madeline DiMaggio, always tells her students that when writing for television, every word needs to count and must move the story forward. If it’s true in television, it’s even more so in explainer videos.

In an earlier blog post, I mentioned the importance of crafting an outline before writing that first script draft. The outline provides a helpful structure as you write the first draft.

In the first draft, you’re not concerned with trimming the fat. In fact, we often write the first draft fatter and then the fat trimming happens in the subsequent drafts. Even these fatter first drafts still tend to be leaner than they would be if we didn’t have an outline as our guide.

Now we can work with the client on trimming. First, we just cut out extraneous words by finding a simpler, more efficient way of saying the same thing with fewer words. This is the wordsmithing phase. We’re not making wholesale revisions that change the meaning of the narration at this point.

Depending upon how close the script is to the target length, the client may decide they like the flow and agree to keep the longer length, or we start making tougher decisions about what bits of narration have to go.

This can be a difficult exercise when there are a lot of stakeholders on the client side who all have their favorite features or benefits they want in the video. This is often when the client works internally on revisions to gain consensus. When we get the script back, we review and if necessary clean up via wordsmithing or suggest additional, more substantial edits.

Once the script is as lean as it can be, the storyboarding process starts. Sometimes minor script changes arise as the visual elements come together, but the fat trimming is complete. Now the magic of bringing a client’s story to life can really begin.

Blackbaud OmniPoint Explainer Video Script & Video

I wrote this script while working at RocketWheel Productions. The script and video were finalized and delivered to the client in June, 2016.

Every constituent in your database, every attendee at your annual gala, every casual constituent for your cause has the potential to be so much more.

Like Marc here.

Marc could be your next monthly constituent, major giver, or chairman of the board, if you just had a solution that helped you know him as a person, customize his communications, and understand what resonates with him. 

Designed for nonprofits with built-in best practices from for-profit companies, OmniPoint Enterprise Marketing Suite is an integrated set of really, reeeally smart marketing tools.

And not just any really smart marketing tools, but the exact tools needed to tackle the unique challenges faced by marketers at non-profit organizations today.

Challenges like data quality assurance and data integration across multiple channels…

…campaign segmentation…

…message personalization and timely marketing automation…

…and visual insight into campaign performance.

With this single, comprehensive solution, you can significantly strengthen your marketing efforts. Because OmniPoint brings together data from across your organization, you can see your constituents as people, not pieces.

Suddenly, Marc is more than just another name in your housefile.

He’s a constituent who’s given annually on “Giving Tuesday” for the last three years.

He’s a fundraiser who ran a marathon to raise money for your cause.

He’s a passionate supporter who prefers to get personalized updates from you over email, not snail mail. 

OmniPoint gives you a more complete picture of who Marc is, so you can create and send customized messages that matter to him, when and how he wants to receive them.

Because when you know Marc on a “first-name basis” instead of a [FirstName] basis, you’ll bring in more dollars and support for your cause. Know more about your marketing campaigns. Know your constituents better. Know how to boost your results. With OmniPoint.

Like Sands Through the Hourglass…There Goes My Attention Span

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE ROCKETWHEEL PRODUCTIONS BLOG ON APRIL 26, 2016.

I always tell people that I have the patience of a gnat on crack. I fully admit that patience is not one of my virtues. My impatience got me thinking about my attention span and how it seems to have declined as I’ve gotten older.

Do you remember those reading comprehension tests from school? I used to do really well on them but now, I don’t retain information the way I used to. Is this just the product of aging or is societal change a factor?

I came across an article that says that our attention spans have shortened since the year 2000 from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. We’ve been passed up by the goldfish. Our friendly bowl dwellers come in with an attention span of 9 seconds. Wow.

The article goes on to discuss technology’s role in the decline. So many devices are competing for our immediate attention and our brains have to constantly keep up, and we’re struggling. On a positive note, we’ve become better at multi-tasking!

Here at RocketWheel, we see the desire for “shorter, faster” when people come to us wanting to make videos. Just a few years ago, running times for explainer videos could be three minutes or longer. That is rarely the case now. The “sweetspot” for telling an effective story and keeping someone’s attention is now no longer than 90 seconds. That’s around 210-225 words.

We’re getting more and more inquiries for 30-60 second videos and we have produced videos in that range. The shorter the video, the more precise the message has to be. There’s no time to thoroughly discuss a bunch of features or dive into a problem/solution cycle.

Not every message is suitable for this kind of treatment. But with the popularity of apps like Twitter and its 140 characters and Periscope and Snapchat with their “Mission Impossible” self-destruct set-up, we better get used to consuming and producing shorter, crisper content.

After all, in a couple years we may be vying with the fruit fly and their 3-second attention span.

Junk the Jargon?

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE ROCKETWHEEL PRODUCTIONS BLOG ON NOVEMBER 4, 2015.

One of the main responsibilities I have here at RocketWheel is writing scripts for the videos we produce. I work very closely with the client and our animation team to refine and communicate the client’s vision.

Every industry has it’s own special jargon. This isn’t a bad thing per se because jargon can be an effective way to communicate with people in the same industry. Where jargon gets problematic is when it’s overused to the point where it loses any real meaning or influence.

Two articles, written three years apart, have made me examine my use of jargon and I hope it does the same thing for you.

Ann Handley, one of the foremost thinkers on digital marketing, reminds us in this post that context is everything. We need to know if we’re using certain words to show we understand our client’s world or if it’s just easier to not look for a better word or phrase.

Forbes published a list of the “most annoying, pretentious and useless business jargon” back in 2012 and the list is still relevant today. I was dismayed to see many words I’ve used in scripts, or clients have pushed for in scripts, on this list, including, “Scalable”, “Best Practice”, “Leverage”, “Drill Down” and “Empower”.

It’s not that these words are invalid; they are just overused to the point of becoming irrelevant. Running close behind these words are two phrases that I’m hearing and seeing much too often: “Paradigm Shifting” and “Disruptive Technology”.

Aside from overuse, the main reason that these phrases bother me so much is that they seem to ooze hubris. All clients love their products or services, as they should, but a little perspective is needed. For the most part, a client’s product or service isn’t solving global conflicts or curing a disease.

So, do we have to junk the jargon completely? I doubt that is realistic or completely necessary. But what we can do is promise ourselves that we’ll start being more conscious of the words we use and why. This self-reflection can only make our business and personal communications more truthful and powerful. And who doesn’t need more of that?

Helm CONNECT Explainer Video Script & Video

I wrote this script when I worked at RocketWheel Productions. The script and video were finalized and delivered to the client in February, 2015.

Managing maintenance can sometimes feel like navigating through rough waters.

Do you have enough information to stay ahead of maintenance and keep your boats up and running with certainty?

Are you worried about staying compliant as regulators and customers demand more and more reporting?

Sure you could use software to help solve these problems, but it’s often hard for your people to use and just gets in the way of them doing their job.

Can’t someone make this easy?

Someone did.

Introducing Helm CONNECT. Your easy-to-use maintenance and compliance solution designed specifically for workboat crews and engineers.

It’s web-based so you can use it onshore and on your vessels but your data is always secure and accessible even if you lose your internet connection.

Through configurable templates and checklists, you can build a standardized maintenance program for all your vessels.

And all of this information is recorded in a single place for easy reporting across your fleet.

Helm CONNECT’s simple, yet comprehensive system enables you to be more efficient so you can be proactive, not reactive.

Streamline how you manage workboat maintenance and compliance with Helm CONNECT.

College of Marin Drama Department “Comedy of Errors” Press Release

College of Marin Drama Department Presents The Comedy of Errors

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 7, 2015

KENTFIELD, CA – The College of Marin (COM) Drama Department presents William Shakespeare’s hilarious farce, The Comedy of Errors as the final fundraising production celebrating the department’s 50-year anniversary. This entertaining and accessible work was the first play ever presented at the College in 1964. Directed by COM’s own, James Dunn, The Comedy of Errors is full of chase sequences, mistaken identities, ridiculous brawls and so much more.

“When I think of The Comedy of Errors, I can’t help but appreciate the historical clinic on comedy that is pressed within its pages,” said College of Marin’s Chair of Drama, Lisa Morse. “You can see the humor of Plautus, stock characters of Commedia dell’arte, and the contemporary sit-com all rolled into one production.”

CALENDAR INFORMATION:

WHAT:
The Comedy of Errors, Final Fundraising Event for the College of Marin Drama Department

WHO:
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by James Dunn

WHEN:
March 5*, 6, 7, 13, 14, 20 and 21 – 7:30 p.m.
March 15** and 22 – 2 p.m.

WHERE:
James Dunn Theatre, Performing Arts Building
Kentfield Campus
(Corner of Sir Francis Drake Blvd. and Laurel Avenue, Kentfield)

ADMISSION:
Non-subscription single ticket prices: $20 general, $15 seniors, $10 students/COM employees and alumni

*Pay-what-you-will preview
**Talkback with the director
Proceeds to benefit the College of Marin Drama Department

DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY:

James Dunn: Students have studied with Jim Dunn since he founded the College of Marin Drama Department in 1964. Jim taught full time for 30 years, and continues to teach on a part-time basis.  He served as Chair of the Drama Department until 1994, directing more than 250 plays.  Among his most notable is a 1971 Wild West production of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, which was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland.  To the delight of students and audiences alike, Jim continues to teach Shakespeare and direct spring productions. 

During his tenure at the College, Jim received several honors, most notably, San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critic’s Circle SFBATCC Awards for Directing, the Los Angeles Dramalogue Award for Directing, and the San Francisco Dramalogue Award for Directing.  He was also nominated for the Hayward Award for Excellence in Teaching and received an Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Marin County from the Marin County Cultural Society.  He also received a Milly Award for Achievement in Theatre Arts from the City of Mill Valley, California.  Jim was honored to receive the 2012 Heroes of Marin Lifetime Achievement Award granted by the Pacific Sun and the Lifetime Achievement Directing Award from the SFBATCC. In 2012 the Board of Trustees unanimously approved the dedication of the College of Marin’s – James Dunn Theatre in recognition of his commitment and achievement.

Outside of the College, Dunn was the artistic director of the Marin County Mountain Play for 30 years.  He has also worked as a visiting director at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, Denver Center for the Arts in Colorado, the Julliard School in New York, the Marin Shakespeare Festival, and the Marin Theatre Company.

ABOUT COM DRAMA DEPARTMENT:

College of Marin Drama productions have entertained audiences for 50 years while providing students opportunities to study with professional instructors. Support of this production and others enables the Department to continue the mission of educating students and enriching the community.

Fundraising money from last year allowed the COM Drama Department to finish this year’s season of shows but without a budget increase, the Department must rely on public support more than ever going forward.