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My siblings and I finally finished the invitation for our parents’ joint sixtieth birthday party. It’s just a family thing - the four of us are planning a surprise - but we really wanted the invite to be awesome.
Shockingly, this idea actually worked on the first try, even though we’re a bicoastal family!
You may not be able to read it, but my parents are getting a poster-size printout which is not only readable, but intended to be hung somewhere in our house. The upshot? They’ll be spending a mysterious weekend of joy with their (affectionately-named) miserable children!
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This is technically yesterday’s thing - I may finish today’s before midnight, but maybe not. It’s more words from my parents’ birthday party invitation.
I had fun with cut paper!
Also with pennies!
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My siblings and I are working on the invitation for our parents’ joint sixtieth birthday party. (It’s a surprise! But fortunately they don’t read this.) We’re doing it Human Calendar style, with photos of us holding the various words of the invitation. So today I made three of the words of the invite.
(That last is a CD label that I repurposed. I’m going to have some fun with making words out of paper collage tomorrow!)
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I haven’t made one of these since grade school, but my partner promised me he’s going to wear this to work tomorrow.
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Having recently read Pride and Prejudice, and thinking of the Emily Dickinson game design challenge, I thought my creative act for the day would be sketching a Jane Austen game design.
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As my thing for today, I ran a five-hour storytelling session (Ars Magica, for the gamers in the crowd) with my partner. He wrote about it here. Also group photo, minus the two people who were cleaning up pizza boxes at the time!
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It was a rough day. I’m turning to my go-to art form.
Discussion of “The map is not the territory” in my research seminar somehow led me to writing this (moderately sexy) little poem about love.
Departure
Hip to hip,
lip to lip,
kiss to kiss,
this to this,
that to that,
tit for tat,
we go to a place
where there’s no coming back.
Mind to mind,
intertwined,
love to love,
hand in glove,
heart to heart,
torn apart,
I’ll make you my map
if you’ll make me your chart.
Eye to eye,
sigh to sigh,
touch to touch,
much too much,
head to head,
locked in bed,
we’re never alone
with whatever’s ahead.
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I think my favorite aspect of thing-a-day is being inspired by everyone else’s projects. I keep adding new projects and media that I want to try!
Today’s adventure was learning to bead. After salivating over Elizabeth’s ametrine and copper necklace, I dragged my boy down to Chinatown, where we acquired beading supplies. I’ve never made jewelry before, but with some how-to tips, a good pair of pliers, and an “Intro to Jewelry” kit, I managed to make this:
More details behind the cut!
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Today I figured I’d try to apply some of the lessons I’ve learned from improv to written drama. I’m always better improvising than trying to write things down, because my internal critic is super-hard on me as soon as I put fingers to keys. So! I present a brief dramatic interlude, on the theme of At the Crossroads.
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I thought I’d “follow instructions” by sitting down at the piano and following along with some sheet music. I ended up playing several Chopin pieces out of the book my favorite piano teacher gave me for my high school graduation. (She inscribed it “To Jess, for your passionate nature,” which still made me a little weepy after all these years.) A couple of them I’d played before, a very long time ago, but I also tried to dig my way through two I’d never tried.
After that I figured it was time to make my own music, so I set up a mike and recorded three one-minute improvisations. If you’re hearing similarities between them, it’s because I was deliberately trying to improvise on a very simple theme!
Links:
Improvisation 1
Improvisation 2
Improvisation 3
(Apologies for the terrible mike quality!)
What I learned? I’m damn rusty when it comes to making music, but I really enjoyed doing it, too.
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Often, the hardest part of making a thing is deciding what thing to make. So I’ll be using this place as an idea dump, especially for those days when I don’t feel like making anything at all!
Making might mean:
- cooking a recipe I’ve never tried before
- writing fairy tale poetry
- experimenting with photography
- messing around in Flash
- writing Storytelling for Lovers
- playing a game (and writing it up)
- doing a game design sketch
- writing my yearly Valentine’s Porn
- electronics work (maybe I’ll finally make that lamp)
- crafting something from ReadyMade
- knitting or cross-stitch
But there are probably things I can (and like to!) do that I’m not thinking of.
I’m totally not even ready to think about themes yet, but I’m accepting suggestions!
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It’s stupid for me to be doing this. I mean, really stupid. Really really stupid. Eight-shots-of-tequila stupid. I’ve got my quals on February 29th; it’s a full-day exam, and if I fail, I’m more or less out of the dissertation running. But I can’t spend all my time studying, right?
Stupid or not, I just can’t turn down the chance to remind myself that I have a creative life - and, even better, to share the creative process with a group of people I respect and admire. Here’s to happy creating together!
