Jung, Buffy, Twilight, Virginia Woolf -- and Happiness.

I love Carl Jung (the bits of his work that I understand, which isn’t much), and one of my favorite Jung quotations is, “The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”

This video clip is a perfect example – found on my friend Lev Grossman’s excellent blog, Nerd World. I love the fact that Jonathan McIntosh had the creative energy and interest to create this mash-up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight:

I connected with this remix on several levels:
-- Take time for projects – clearly Jonathan McIntosh is following that very important resolution.

-- though I’m not a historic Buffy fan, my TV-writer sister has worked a lot with Joss Whedon, so I always take an interest in his work.

-- I love Twilight, books and movie alike. How much, you ask? I’ve read Midnight Sun. And The Host.

-- There was a split-second clip from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I recognized, of course. Huge raving Harry Potter fan. I’ve got a ticket to the very first showing, at midnight in a few weeks, of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

-- Even my former lawyerly self got engaged in considering the assertion at the end that “This transformative work constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright law.” Why didn’t a case like this come up when I was hanging around courthouses?

Perhaps I should make a new resolution, to “Play with the objects I love.” I’m already doing this with my passion for J.M. Barrie’s The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island. A friend and I are doing an homage to Barrie’s brilliant skeletal picture book – ours is called “Four to Llewelyn’s Edge.” This has turned out to be an enormous undertaking, and so much fun.

Along those lines, I wonder if I could use popular new tools (YouTube, as in the example above, or Twitter, or Facebook, as well as my blog) to shine a spotlight on my more obscure and more demanding passions. I want to highlight the things I love, and to try to entice others to follow me – just as this video made me want to watch old episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

One idea: I’m considering sending out daily Tweets that are quotations from one of my favorite books, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (bizarre: this book doesn't seem to be for sale on Amazon). I would love doing this. I wonder if the book would be interesting to anyone else in that form – if the beautiful writing would be engaging out of context like that – or if it would be too reductive. Perhaps, as in the video mash-up above, new pleasures could be revealed in a work that is usually read in a different way.

Hmmmmmmm.

* Very apt for this subject -- Bricolage Life. Looking at this blog made me want to sit down and MAKE something.

* Follow me on Twitter. I may or may not be sending out Woolf quotations in the near future.

Comments

[Blisschick]

Yes, for some reason, it's hard to find nice editions of Woolf's lesser read works on amazon. Frustrating. Perhaps a trip to London is justifiable? :)

I love The Waves SO MUCH and love this idea of exposing people to her amazing work this way.

A favorite pastime of my partner and I: to sit and discuss the "rules of the universe" comparatively in fantasy television and fiction. Whedon asserts Buffy, the show, is an atheistic universe, and as the creator, he could not be more WRONG! :) Angle, for ex., is NOT an interesting character -- he got his soul through a curse, but, Spike, ah, the ultimate interesting in that he had to fight a battle to win his soul back -- and for LOVE. (Watch out, my geek is leaking all over the place.)

But whoever said an artist can really understand their own work? :) Thank god for readers and viewers.

[Annie]

What an intriguing accomplishment. Creativity is so inspiring. And as for the tweets - seems like trying it would be a good experiment, either way you learn something. Much thanks for sharing.

[Positively Present]

I'd love the idea of reading quotes on Twitter. I'm a HUGE quote fan so this would great for me!

[Tim Woods - LifeCraft: Lifestyle Design Resources]

I feel like this drive to want to make something is growing in society today. I'm not totally sure why, but it's everywhere I look.

Maybe it's because we finally have all the tools we need at our fingertips. But I completely relate. After spending tens of thousands of dollars on 8 years of university education I wonder if what I really want to do is be a potter or a painter --any kind of artistry.

One of my favourite quotes is from Brecht. He said, "Art is not a mirror we hold up to reality, but a mirror we use to shape it." This is all art and even youtube clips shine a difference light on the world.

[Christopher]

Do it! I love getting quotes as tweets - they are a nice interruption to my day to ruminate on something profound...

[bridget]

I'm not a Twitter-er/Twit/Tweeter :), but I do, like you, LOVE Harry Potter. My son & I read all seven books together and I sobbed through the last one. (My son kept looking at me like a was a crazy person.) The series was so good, and I was just going to miss having Harry as a part of our everyday lives.

Also, I finished the last Twilight book recently...I think it was my favorite.

[Nika]

"The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” - That exactly is what I did few days ago- my first "movie" compilation of my son's (10 month old) journey through life, which I published on You Tube and my blog. Until now I had no idea it's such an easy thing to do. Certainly that won't be my last home made movie.

[runescape gold]

I feel like time is going incredibly fast and slow at the same time. The weeks/months seem to be crawling...but at the same time, I turn around on Monday and suddenly it is Sunday again

[WDM]

I love making stuff. Anything. I love using my hands, working, getting paint on myself, burning my finger tips on hot glue guns, sinking my fingers into clay. Feeling the textures of things.

I wish someone had told me about crafting colleges. I would never have gone to regular university. I recently found an ad for craft college and I'm going to look into it. If not now, maybe in a couple of years I can go and really learn the things I want to learn.

Create all you want!!!

PS LOVE the video. Love the Buffy slayed Edward Cullen. But missed the HP reference. Where was it?

[Carrie]

The Waves appears to be available at Powell's Books (www.powells.com), a great online bookseller out of Portland, OR.

[Meream]

How fun! Thanks for posting. :) And I envy your sister for having worked with Joss. He is a awesome.

[Doug Erickson]

Yes. Please tweet quotes daily. I started emailing a Quote of the Day to a few friends and clients years ago, and as they forwarded the quotes to friends and family, who then asked to be added to the list, it got so big, I had to use multiple group addresses. I finally started putting a new one on my web site, and I also Tweet a QOTD, @DougErickson1. I think you may like this one from Jung too: "Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens."

[Berlin Reified]

Gretchen, I discovered The Waves a decade ago and it has made me incredibly happy each time I reread it, or even when I just slip it open to dip into for a moment. Please do the daily Tweets project!

[Lexi]

I must admit that I feel about 10x happier whenever I see a picture or video of Rob Pattinson.

If I'm having a really rough day, sometimes a single photo of him can lift my spirits.

Don't ask ;)