ALEX NOBLE - WRITING JOURNAL-2015

MoreThan Singing, More Than Speaking - With Jocelyn Rasmussen

 

 

www.morethansinging.com

 

MORE THAN SINGING, LLC is committed to creating a world where:

• People have affordable access to tools and information to help them realize and develop the power and beauty of their voices.

• People feel comfortable to sing which supports self-esteem, expression and harmonious community.

• Singing, recognized as a complement to wellness and growth, is utilized to improve concentration, imagination, productivity and emotional balance in diverse settings.


W H Y   I S   I T   M O R E
T H A N   S I N G I N G  ?

Jocelyn hears more than singing in the human voice. She hears the beauty of a life speaking its truth and passions, the resolution of a human spirit in word and song.

 

See Biographical Information About Jocelyn, Below:

 

 

"I Want You To Want Me" - Interactive Art Installation - MOMA

 

Make Your Own Beautiful Book - Print on Demand!

 

A Book Published by Blurb: See Blurb Bookstore

 

Full Information at: www.blurb.com

With Blurb, you’ll find all the tools you need to make your own photo book, whether you’re making a personalized wedding album, cookbook, baby book, travel photo book, or fundraising book.

Count on bookstore-quality printing and binding, and a range of choices from Hardcover photobooks to Softcover paperbacks in an array of trim sizes. Use any of our free online bookmaking tools to create your own book.

Learn how to publish a book and much more with our free how-to tips and tutorials or watch our two-minute BookSmart video and see how easy it is to make a coffee table photo book. Be sure to register and subscribe to Blurb emails to get the news first on Blurb events and promo code coupon offers.

 

 

Digital Photo Journals and eBooks: Try Mixbook!

What is Mixbook?

Mixbook is the easy and fun way to make completely customizable photo books, cards, and calendars on the web – for free. With Mixbook, you aren’t limited to static pre-designed templates – our powerful design software gives you the freedom to lay out and design your creations to your heart’s content. We’ve dedicated ourselves to bringing you the best experience in creating photo products so that you can make keepsakes that truly reflect your vision. With Mixbook, you can truly Make It Yours™.

Full Information at the MixBook site: www.mixbook.com

Read What Educators are Saying About Mixbook

The Joyful Art of Maira Kalman

 

Cover for "Stay Up Late"

 

Maira Kalman's art is whimsical, funny, childlike and fairly leaping with gorgeous bright color, as you will see when you visit her website:

www.mairakalman.com

A Tour through her magical, sometimes wacko world is guaranteed to brighten your day.

Assignment:  Get a box of colored pencils, or some watercolors, and create something delightful in your journal.  Paint Now! GO!

 

 

 

 

"By the time the wise woman has crossed the bridge the crazy woman has crossed the water."

 

 

Hafiz - All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.

Make a new water-mark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.

Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You.

From: 'The Subject Tonight is Love'

Translated by Daniel Landinsky

 

    

The Blossoming of Creation - Visionary Artist Leigh McCloskey (TEDx Talk)

 

 

 

 

An artist must always strive towards what he does not know.

On a certain level IDEA gives rise to a form or vessel within which to explore its creative potential. This form can be a sound, a symbol or a universe depending on the strength of the idea. This is the basis of my work as a painter and as a creator of forms.

The creative force behind my art transcends any definition I apply to explain it. Art cannot be explained so as to compress it into obeying the intellect. It can only be draped with meaning for the sake of economy. If a painting is good it will not remain static or secure for long.

Any appearance of solidity or stability is a mental composition made up of an infinite number of bits of information. Without conscious work to try and continually push the parameters of thought and form awareness becomes congealed. Awareness is based upon ideas which in and of themselves possess a force or will to expand and grow. When this force is too quickly inhibited by the intellect or a prevailing belief system it dies leaving only a sense of the structure which the idea possessed, but not its living insight which would have continued to lead to new awareness.

 Leigh McCloskey

www.leighmccloskey.com

 

WE ARE NOT BORN INTO TIME WE ARE BORN INTO CREATION

WE ARE EACH A PHOENIX A UNIQUE BLOSSOM OF CREATION

WHOLE-HOLY-HOLOGRAPHIC

EACH OF US WEAR THE ROBES OF OUR SACRED DNA

AND LIFE IS OUR INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCESTORS

LET US BE WORTHY OF THEM

AND THIS GREAT, DIFFICULT AND NOBLE ADVENTURE IN CONSCIOUSNESS, ART

AND MEANING CALLED BEING HUMAN.

 

The Web's Secret Stories - Jonathan Harris (TED Talk)

 

 

Please, please, please watch this!  It is wondrous. It will cheer you up!!!

Assignment:  Enjoy this inspiring TED Talk by Jonathan Harris, on his remarkable project, "We Feel Fine."  In your journal, write a short entry in terms of how you are feeling right at this moment.  This is a good bit of Soul Yoga to do regularly. 

The Mayan Songs of Dzitblache - Flower Song

 

The Tzolkin Mayan Calendar

 

The Songs of Dzitblaché include most of the ancient Mayan lyric poetry that has survived. In these songs, the poet speaks of personal feelings and ideas, of love, philosophy, ancient rituals and spiritual values.

The original title page reads, "The Book of the Dances of the Ancients that it was the custom to perform here in the towns when the whites had not yet arrived. This book was made by the honorable Mr. Bam, great-grandson of the great Ah Kulel of the town of Dzitbalché in the year 1440." The title, "Songs of Dzitbalché," was given to the collection by the first translator into Spanish, Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, and it is by this name that it is generally known. Written above the title is the word kolomché - a ceremonial dance.

Source:  http://www.red-coral.net/Dzit.html

 

FLOWER SONG  

  The most alluring moon has risen over the forest;

it is going to burn suspended in the center of the sky to lighten all the earth, all the woods, shining its light on all.  

Sweetly comes the air and the perfume. Happiness permeates all good men

Paolo Coelho on Internet Freedom & Links to Free Books

Excerpt: When you’ve eaten an orange, you have to go back to the shop to buy another. In that case, it makes sense to pay on the spot. With an object of art, you’re not buying paper, ink, paintbrush, canvas or musical notes, but the idea born out of a combination of those products. ‘Pirating’ can act as an introduction to an artist’s work. If you like his or her idea, then you will want to have it in your house; a good idea doesn’t need protection. The rest is either greed or ignorance."

"My Thoughts On S.O.P.A."
by Paulo Coelho

"In the former Soviet Union, in the late 1950s and 60s, many books that questioned the political system began to be circulated privately in mimeographed form. Their authors never earned a penny in royalties. On the contrary, they were persecuted, denounced in the official press, and sent into exile in the notorious Siberian gulags. Yet they continued to write. Why? Because they needed to share what they were feeling. From the Gospels to political manifestos, literature has allowed ideas to travel and even to change the world.

I have nothing against people earning money from their books; that’s how I make my living. But look at what’s happening now. Stop Online Piracy Act (S.O.P.A) may disrupt internet. This is a REAL DANGER, not only for Americans, but for all of us, as the law – if approved – will affect the whole planet. And how do I feel about this? As an author, I should be defending ‘intellectual property’, but I’m not. Pirates of the world, unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written!

SMASH Books - Another Way to Keep a Journal!

 

 

Check out a whole lot of SMASHBook Stories at:

 

http://www.smashstoriesblog.com/

 

Read a SMASHBook story from Charlotte in France:

 

Advice to New Writers from Po Bronson

 

Full Biography and other information about Po's books and articles at:

http://www.pobronson.com

 

Excerpt:

Find a few good role models. You only need a few, maybe only one. Let them inspire you. Art reacts to art. All good books are a work of art that is a creative reaction to other art.

Always tell a story. It grounds the reader in a shared experience.

Understand voice. Write the same sentence ten different ways by imitating the writing voices of ten different writers. 

Practice plots. Understand different ways to tell the same story – the difference between hiding a surprise and foreshadowing it, for instance. Starting a story in the middle versus its natural beginning, et cetera. Learn what creates suspense, forward lean, keeps the pages turning.

Journalism first or fiction first? (Grad school in Journalism or Grad school in Creative Writing?) There is no way to answer this. This is an artificial question. It reveals a thirst, a hope, that the journey can be shortened, that there is a shortcut. It can’t. Journalism (facts) or fiction (style)? Both. Both. Both. In no particular order.

Don’t be a snob. It’s good for people to read, so whatever they read, no matter what it is, be glad they're reading.  

No matter what your style or genre or form, even if it's journalism, read John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" very carefully and try some of the exercises. Realize that once you command these skills, you can break every rule he teaches, but these are the basic skills.

Work on your weaknesses. Find out what you’re hiding from.

Stop looking for shortcuts.

CowBird: A Small Community of Storytellers

 

“Of all our truest hopes and desires for our work is that, what we find, we ourselves never knew. It came as a shock. It came as a surprise. It was new. We could never have known what we were going to do before we did it, and in that sense, we discover too. Here is what I’ve got to say to you: there are things in your life you will see; there are stories you will hear; if you don’t write them down, if you don’t make the picture, they won’t get seen, they won’t get told.”

Emmet Gowin

*******

What is Cowbird?

Cowbird is a small community of storytellers, focused on a deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling than you’re likely to find anywhere else on the Web.

Cowbird allows you to keep a beautiful audio-visual diary of your life, and to collaborate with others in documenting the overarching “sagas” that shape our world today. Sagas are themes and events that touch millions of live and shape the human story.

Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance.

What can I use Cowbird to do?

Waking Up: The Enterprise... Is Exploration Into God

Claude Monet - Les Glacons - The Ice Floes

 

 

Dark and cold we may be, but this

Is no winter now. The frozen misery

Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;

The thunder is the thunder of the floes,

The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.

Thank God our time is now when wrong

Comes up to face us everywhere,

Never to leave us till we take

The longest stride of soul we ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.

The enterprise

Is exploration into God.

Where are you making for? It takes

So many thousand years to wake,

But will you wake for pity's sake!

 

  Christopher Fry

From "A Sleep of Prisoners"

*******

Alex Noble:  If ever there was a year to "wake up," this is it. Though we may feel we have insurmountable challenges, though we may look all around us and see nothing but a vast wasteland, though suddenly we may feel alone in a way we have never quite felt alone before, though dreams we had cherished for years may have fallen through or vanished like phantoms, though friends may betray and enemies slander, though we may feel as though we have lost everything and and have to start all over again...

 

Digital Storytelling with Memory Miner

 

Memory of Oceania - Henri Matisse

  MemoryMiner is the award-winning Digital Storytelling application used to discover the threads connecting peoples' lives across time and place. It lets you zero in on the stories depicted in your photos by linking them to each other based on people, places and time.

Visit the site and find out more. (Video)   http://www.memoryminer.com

MemoryMiner represents the first step towards a long term goal: the creation of the world's most extensive network of first-person accounts of modern society and culture. Despite the explosion of digital media in the last 15 years, there remain millions of untold stories "trapped" in boxes of old photos, letters and the like. With this thought in mind, we hope that MemoryMiner will be widely used to bring these materials, and more importantly, the stories that can be told from them, into the networked, digital world.

Digital Storytelling: Examples & Links

 

From a teacher who teaches Digital Storytelling:

http://techteachers.com/digstory/examples.htm

 

Digital Storytelling Examples

This is a collection of digital storytelling examples I use with students and teachers during digital storytelling workshops. I have a comprehensive digital filing cabinet filled with more resources for students and teachers. http://www.techteachers.com/digitalstorytelling.htm Check back often, as I add new examples as I discover them. If you have an example to share let me know! [email protected]  thanks!

 

Creating Your Digital Identity - Exploring Web 2.0 Tools

For expanding your "digital identity toolkit" beyond the text only universe, take some time to explore the wide range of Web 2.0 tools now available for creating a multi-media interactive journal. We might call this the "Digital Journal," where you can collect and link various sites and programs to provide a rich ecology of venues for telling your stories.

Current and emerging technologies give Journalers and Storytellers the opportunity to fully explore and express dimensions of personality in ways that have not been possible until now.

Optional:

Use Google Search to find out about the best products  available, and see which ones you feel might be compatible with your personal JOURNAL - 2012 purpose and goals.

The rapidly expanding universe of Web 2.0 tools currently includes, but is not limited to, blogs, wikis, toolkits, googleapps, comics, open office, cloud computing, social networks, youTube, Second Life, and other programs coming along.

 

Awakening: How Are You Preparing for the New Year?

As you prepare for the New Year, consider focusing on the inspiring events happening all over the world and in your own life.

Write Now!

Use the inspiring words below to make a journal entry focused on any awakening you may be experiencing, and the hopeful events that are happening all over the world, especially as you see evidence of positive  transformations happening in your own daily life.

What will you be doing in the coming week to prepare for the coming year?

(Sharing is of course optional.)

The speed at which you are progressing along the path to your awakening is accelerating as more and more people raise up the divine Light they are carrying so that others may see it and do likewise.  The momentum of humanity’s intent to awaken is now so great that, as divinely intended, awakening is inevitable and cannot be prevented or delayed.  It is your glorious destiny, and the moment at which it will occur is rapidly approaching.