Week Nine: Curiosity

Okay, I promised a Monday-Sunday format, but once again, things were strange this week. It wasn’t that it wasn’t a creative week for me, it was just unstructured. So the theme this week is curiosity.

Last spring I took a course with Dave Koranda titled “Curiosity for Strategists.” Requirement = be curious. I don’t know if Dave could tell, but I actually was highly invested in the course. By the end of the term we were to take on an individual project to research anything we were curious about and I found that I had a really hard time narrowing this down. I went to lectures, I listened to public radio, even took a trip to NYC, and I found one topic that wrapped a lot of what I was thinking about at the time into one book: The Real Wealth of Nations by Riane Eisler. The book encompasses some obvious and practical solutions in curing our troubled economy. It is food for the humanitarian soul and provides a template for creating a caring economics. Portland has a pretty invested movement around this book.

So after this class, I continue on my quest for existential meaning. This week I decided the best thing for me to do was to be curious.

In light of the economy and all of the “socialist” theory people are throwing around, someone I need to understand better is Karl Marx. I wanted to take a philosophy course, but I can hardly afford my required courses right now. Well it turns out that there is a 400-500 level philosophy course dedicated to Marx and is offered this winter. I emailed the professor and explained my curiosity. I asked him if I may sit in on the course. He said that would be fine if I take the course seriously, attend regularly and try my best to keep up with the reading. I can’t think of anything better than free school. Talk about experimental education! I am pretty excited.

Next thing, I keep asking myself, “what the hell am I really doing?” What does everything mean? (thanks Bybee) I am majoring in journalism and communications and for the last few years I have lived and breathed nothing but advertising (which encompasses quite a bit, and is a pretty fantastic major). It’s all changing so quickly I am not sure where the industry will be next week, let alone the time I go looking for a job. Someone I respect on this issue is former executive creative director of Wieden + Kennedy and founder of WK12, Jelly Helm. Helm has been approaching the industry with a post industrial, post modern point of view. Recently he has developed a lot of great thoughts what he is calling “post-consumerism” and defining the role and need of 21st century brands. This has got my attention.  I have met Helm in the past, and without doing my research, later realized that I blew an opportunity to ask some great questions. Last spring, desgin guru Brian Collins spoke at the One Show‘s student lecture series. He showed us some great work, inspiring examples of past assignments he has given students and then he asked for questions. I asked him if he could give us an assignment. He already had one planned, and he passed out sheets of paper. He told us to write to someone in the industry who we respect and thank them. Part two, ask them for 15 minutes, ask them to meet with you.

For me, this is Jelly Helm. So I wrote to Jelly, and he wrote me back. He agreed to 10 questions, one at a time. My first question:

Q1: In what ways do you see that honesty has or hasn’t existed in the advertising industry so far and how would honesty exist differently within a post-consumer society for 21st century brands?

Jelly asked me if I was serious. I am. He told me this would be a lot more work for me than him- I am game. So he sent me an assignment and it’s due January 5th. I am to research advertising in publications from 1850-1910 and we will go from there. I couldn’t be more thrilled for an assignment.

Next on the topic of curiosity: Reading. I have been trying to get into a book that a friend lent me, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Since Wednesday wrapped up finals for me, I have been head first in this book and so far it is quite delicious and extremely curious. Please pick it up if you haven’t read it already.

A reassuring sign that things are on the right track:

As I was hopping out of the passenger side door of my car, I found a necklace that has been lost for well over a year. The keys, simply intrigued me. And the ‘Q’ is an old typewriter key. At the time, they were out of ‘A’s and I figured that Q could stand for something I really believe in doing, questioning.

So this week, asking questions really paid off. So my question for all of you? How do you inspire others to ask more questions and to be more curious?

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