The Take Away

Carr Leon Hagerman
Artist. Performer. Author. Tinker.

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Carr Hagerman

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Please Don’t Move Me In the past year there seems to be a surge in “movements” in our country. Everyone from social change advocates to green energy proponents,  management gurus, health care experts to the preachers of jack-you-up want you to join their cause and movement.  Some movements have played an important role in change and the advancement of an idea, like the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, while others seem to flare up as a response to more recent events, such as the Occupy movement. There are movements in form for art and architecture, language and design, but regardless of what causes them, or whether or not they’re necessary, we seem to identify with the idea of a  movement. I don’t think much of movements and won’t join them. Movements don’t need enough from me, except to attend a meeting or rally, make calls or carry signs or buy some stuff.  I have to join up with the cause and put my name on the mailing list. They don’t require my thinking really, don’t advance the notion that I should study a position or even have my own specific ideas. Instead, when I’m part of a movement I’m giving up my individual voice to blend in with the mass, to believe in a “unified vision”, and to chop wood and carry water for the ideas and the leaders who are pushing the movement. The same holds true in business. Motivational leaders want you to “join our movement” so you can follow the bouncing ball, buy the tapes, read the books, and make sure you have the right color and brush to paint inside the lines. In nearly every case, movements are about giving up yourself for someone or something else. Though there is value in learning and expanding and being part of something cool, mostly what we really need is less stuff we “really need” to do. I don’t believe it’s a good thing to give up our own voice and ideas to become a faceless body for the agenda. In our own workplaces and lives, we can give ourselves over to the conversation about what’s important, that’s a good thing it seems to me, but we should do so with our name firmly attached. Since we spend so much time with others at our workplaces, committed conversations about things that matter can sometimes “move” things, but without the cost of giving up our identities in the process. So, be a bit careful about joining a movement, instead, think about engaging in the marketplace of ideas in your own way, in a commerce that needs both of us to think together. If at any time someone shows up with a bullhorn and some signs, it might be a good time to excuse ourselves and look for a different place to talk, someplace where we can think clearly and hear one another speaking.

Please Don’t Move Me

In the past year there seems to be a surge in “movements” in our country. Everyone from social change advocates to green energy proponents,  management gurus, health care experts to the preachers of jack-you-up want you to join their cause and movement. 

Some movements have played an important role in change and the advancement of an idea, like the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, while others seem to flare up as a response to more recent events, such as the Occupy movement. There are movements in form for art and architecture, language and design, but regardless of what causes them, or whether or not they’re necessary, we seem to identify with the idea of a  movement.

I don’t think much of movements and won’t join them. Movements don’t need enough from me, except to attend a meeting or rally, make calls or carry signs or buy some stuff.  I have to join up with the cause and put my name on the mailing list. They don’t require my thinking really, don’t advance the notion that I should study a position or even have my own specific ideas. Instead, when I’m part of a movement I’m giving up my individual voice to blend in with the mass, to believe in a “unified vision”, and to chop wood and carry water for the ideas and the leaders who are pushing the movement.

The same holds true in business. Motivational leaders want you to “join our movement” so you can follow the bouncing ball, buy the tapes, read the books, and make sure you have the right color and brush to paint inside the lines. In nearly every case, movements are about giving up yourself for someone or something else. Though there is value in learning and expanding and being part of something cool, mostly what we really need is less stuff we “really need” to do.

I don’t believe it’s a good thing to give up our own voice and ideas to become a faceless body for the agenda. In our own workplaces and lives, we can give ourselves over to the conversation about what’s important, that’s a good thing it seems to me, but we should do so with our name firmly attached. Since we spend so much time with others at our workplaces, committed conversations about things that matter can sometimes “move” things, but without the cost of giving up our identities in the process.

So, be a bit careful about joining a movement, instead, think about engaging in the marketplace of ideas in your own way, in a commerce that needs both of us to think together. If at any time someone shows up with a bullhorn and some signs, it might be a good time to excuse ourselves and look for a different place to talk, someplace where we can think clearly and hear one another speaking.

Source carrhagerman.com

As I have grown older, particularly in the past couple of years, I’ve become more curious about craftsmanship, not just in the things I purchase or browse, but the nature of craftsmanship in my own works and those for whom I am close.  It wasn’t until I began working with photography, and eventually video and audio, that I began to have a sense of my own level of craftsmanship, which I see now as a complex conversation between myself, ideas, the materials I have to work with, and the way and manner they interact with life.

I have observed how easy it is to be seduced into activities that diminish my thinking, that pull me into the undertow of distraction and a kind of meandering uselessness. The drone of nonstop texting, information overload, gadget masturbation and a nearly myopic hedonism (read alcohol) can sever the creative mind from the delicate nature of quiet craftsmanship and creative reflection. 

To pursue an expression of an idea into some form, whether it be writing, photography, music or performance, requires presence and practice. It’s requires our best thinking, quiet, and the application of discipline and experimentation. Experimentation is useless without reflection and thoughtfulness.

I could go on.

I wish our institutional school system could be re-invented.  In it’s place I’d build neighborhood studios, lofts, labs, theaters, learning playgrounds full of the best technology old and new. I’d also return to some form of apprenticeships. Learning is organic, and the more we approach learning and education as a dynamic choice, rather than a linear necessity, a demand and command structure, the more likely it seems to me, we will turn out enlightened, curious, engaged and delighted human beings who want to build beautiful things, including a new world.

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