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Anthony Daniels, better known as C-3P0

This weekend I saw Star Wars in Concert. It was an absolutely amazing experience, despite only catching the last half of it. It was an incredible show, the sound was great, as was the orchestra. The visuals were fantastic, a mix of excerpts from the films, live shots of the orchestra, artists’ renditions (I think I recognized some of Tommy Lee Edward’s art) and lasers, so many lasers.

One of the highlights for me was Anthony Daniels’ performance as the narrator. The show was organized by character and theme, and Daniels (better known as the droid C-3PO) was given the task of putting each of the performances and accompanying visuals in context. In other words, he told the stories of the Star Wars universe.

But this post is not about what he did, but about how he did it. It would have been easy, and satisfactory, for Daniels to tell the story in a way that was suspenseful, or scary, that got us caught up in the story of the moment, and wondering what would happen next. He did not do that. Instead he gave a celebratory, or one might even say patriotic, telling of the story.

The room was filled with people who had seen the Star Wars story multiple times. These were people who were coming, not to experience the story for the first time, but to celebrate it, and to share it with their kids. Daniels’ reading celebrated a story complete. He told the story as if it were our own, and in his telling helped to make it ours.

So how does it connect to scripture? If you’ve gone to a church, so many times we’ll hear portentous readings of scripture, that are independent of authorial intent. The reader rarely stops to consider what role this particular reading plays in the larger work. Is this retelling of dire straits a part of a larger passage celebrating God? Is this story a warning, wisdom shared (apparently) to a beloved son, a persuasive argument in the face of accusations or a celebration of identity, and the journey to it. I believe that if we, like Daniels, kept in mind what a particular passage is supposed to be doing, and imbue our reading with this purpose, the use of Scripture in our worship services will be a lot more powerful.

The LXD: In the Internet age, dance evolves … | Video on TED.com.

Imaginary Foundation: Make a difference. via BoingBoing.

Download the PDF. Print it. Stick it up somewhere.

Why?

Because, to be honest, there are too many voices that say that we are powerless, and that the machine goes on whether we want it to or not.

Those voices are wrong.

But first we need to decide that we will.

I love design, and one of the more recent things I’ve been fascinated with are kinetic type videos. Type is very communicative, there’s a lot you can do with just type and motion. Here are a couple of videos that illustrate it

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Typefaces give us signals from erik spiekermann on Vimeo

. via Presentation Zen

And if you don’t mind some (a lot) swearing check out the Pulp Fiction speech.

Though this may be horrifying to several of the readers here, I’ve never been a huge Coldplay fan. The following video, may make me reconsider

YouTube – PS22 Chorus VIVA LA VIDA by Coldplay acoustic guitar version.

A while ago I linked to a TED talk by Jose Abreu, on transforming kids through music. From what I can tell, this is what the folks at PS22 are doing in their own way.

edit:via Eugene Cho

The bible records that on the cross, Jesus quoted the first line of this poem. Today as Christians celebrate His resurrection, take a moment to hear the rest of it.

The 2009 TED conference recently concluded, and I’ve been slowly looking at some of the video. The video embedded  below is of Jose Abreu. Abreu founded a youth Orchestra called El Sistema (The System) that has transformed the lives of many Venezuelan children. He’s also the winner of this year’s TEDPrize

Jose Abreu on kids transformed by music | Video on TED.com.

I would love to take a similar idea and adapt it to rural Jamaica. Quite frankly, it’s probably something that would work pretty well on the East Side of St. Paul, or in North Minneapolis.

FFFFOUND! | theloniusmonksnoteshk0.jpg 600×816 pixels.

Thelonious monk gives good music and life advice.

Notes by Thelonious Monk

That last note is worth a blog post by itself

A while back, I was on Pilgrim’s newsletter committee. I was on it to specifically do some design and layout stuff. I spent a little time and came up with the following design. It was meant to be printed and photocopied in black and white, and mailed out to some of our members. Pilgrim has always been a place that was proud of it’s history and tradition, but also was friendly and open, so I tried to capture both in the design, and keep it relatively light.

It was never used partially because of some wierdness that I’ve never completely figured out, and partially because I was the only person with InDesign, so nobody else could edit it. (Plus I never got any actual articles to be laid out). Anyway, enjoy the pics. Let me know if you have any critiques. Click to make the images bigger.

The front page. My plan was to have the masthead image be an image of the featured ministry that month/quarter

This was a pain to figure out. I still do't like the use of space here, but there are some things I really do like (like that baseline)

The back page: I actually really liked the back page.

edit: And now that I’m seeing this on my blog, I’m definitely noticing some design similarities here.

So if people have followed my blogging in the past, you probably know of my love for the moleskine. If you check out a lot of my art posts and a chunk of my uncategorized posts, you’ll notice that a good amount of those are sketches that I used to do in one.

Keane Fine does something similar, but his moleskine does not only serve as a sketch book but as a journal, and is a pretty good one as well. You should check out his site. Oh yeah, and wish him a happy birthday