Like every good red blooded hipster/musician/artist I love browsing through thrift stores. As often as I can I hit up the local goodwills, salvation armies, and local thrift shops in search of a great jacket, boots, shirts, ties, records, books, etc… It’s a thrill to capture that once in a lifetime thrift store find.

One thing I realize as I shop is that the old saying is very true. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. These are things that people have donated to simply get rid of and I have found them and almost cried with joy over my six dollar vintage pleather boots. My wife doesn’t understand my passion for thrift store finds, but she takes joy in my joy and that means a lot to me. It got me thinking about the way we approach art and our preferences for certain types of it.

Take music for example. There is definitely music that I like and music that I don’t like. For instance, I love Wilco, but I very much dislike Nickelback. I could list the reasons why, but that is really irrelevant. We are all free to like and dislike the art we choose. However, we are also free to keep our opinions to ourselves in order to edify another human being.

See I have a dear friend who loves Nickelback and at the risk that she may read this I will tell you I have never shared my distaste for the band. When she listens to that band she is inspired, challenged, and emotionally charged. Even though Nickelback is trash to me, it’s a treasure to her. Therefore, if I value her why would I ever want to communicate to her my distaste for Nickelback? To make me feel superior? To exemplify my seeming superior taste in art and music? To make her feel inadequate as a music lover? Why? What good would come of it?

You may say well, you could help her to deepen her taste in music a bit. Well, if I wanted to do that why express why Nickelback is bad, when I could just talk about why Ryan Adams is so good and introduce her to simply different music. Jesus told us to encourage one another, but especially in the art community we love to make ourselves feel superior by playing the role of the critic.

Brian Houston, pastor of Hillsong Church, tweeted this the other day, “Better an artist than an art critic-chef than a food critic-muso than a music critic-church builder than a church critic!” I think that’s very true. It’s forever easier to be discouraging than encouraging, it’s easier to tear down than to build up.

Remember, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but God doesn’t treasure the treasure, He treasures the person and so should we. It doesn’t mean we can speak our opinions, it doesn’t mean we can’t dislike certain bands or songs or graphic artists. But we need to do all we can to be an encouragement to artists, art lovers, and humans in general. We need to speak the truth in love and not in vain conceit. We need to take joy in the joy of others.

So many of my friends are working by themselves and at home nowadays. You can create music, graphic art, videos, etc… all from home and never share the same air space with a client or people you may be working with. Community in our lives is consisting more and more in the digital realm than in actual human contact. Which is not inherently bad, but there are some dangers for people who work by themselves all the time.

I’ve observed these in quite a few people over the past several months and all of them are people who work alone and are either videographers, photographers, web programmers/designers, or musicians. I watched twitter, facebook updates, blog entries, and other social networks and compiled a short list of things to be careful of as we are working alone and remotely.

Here are some things to remember:
1.) People are humans, not avatars
- When you work in the digital realm you tend to view people in a less than human way. I saw someone I highly respect wish death on a celebrity in a tweet. This celebrity is a father of 2, a husband, and a fellow human. Some times we all joke, but when you work alone and/or digitally it’s easy to see humanity in people less and less and view people in 1s and 0s or as characters. These are people and we all have to remember that. It’s easier to hide behind your computer and blast people passive aggressively than to have human conversations about tough things.

2.) Negativity is waiting to consume you
- It’s easier when you’re alone to get upset about something and let it fester. You have imaginary conversations with people about “what you’re going to say” or “what you would say”, but you never really have a face to face interaction. When we experience emotions like anger they are more easily taken to an extreme when we’re alone. If you get upset about something don’t let it breed into negativity. I’m glad that co-working is becoming so popular for people in this world. I think it’s helping bring unity, positivity, and joy to people who work by themselves a lot. I’m really thankful that I have friends and people in my life that help me manage my emotions in a healthy way.

3.) Don’t forget to listen
- The internet is full of opinions. Much like this article. I observed some patterns, but even this is basically an opinion. Sometimes I, as a blogger, tweeter, etc… can get so focused on expressing my opinion that I don’t listen to anyone else’s. I’d rather express and defend my own ideas than listen to and learn from other’s ideas. Listening keeps us humble, teachable, and helps us to see things from the perspective of others.

I know that working remotely is the future and it’s here now. It’s cheaper, easier, and allows us to be at home with our families more. But there are great things to be said for sharing air space with people who think differently than we do, express themselves differently, and rub us the wrong way sometimes. Co-work, get outside for some fresh air, be positive, listen, and remembers that avatars are people too.

There are few things that translate from culture to culture and are mutually understood. Math and music immediately come to mind, but there is a “language” I think even more understood and valued than either of those and that language is time.

Time is the most valuable commodity we have in this life. We cannot create more of it and every second is equally valuable. They are moments and opportunities for us to give to someone else as a gesture of love, value, and importance. The breath you just inhaled and the 5 minutes you’ll spend reading this blog entry you will never live again. You will never be younger than you were a moment ago.

I’ve been enlightened to this truth in a couple of huge ways lately. The first was when some friends of mine recently returned from Africa and told us about the value of friendship they discovered. In the culture they visited if a friend came over you were compelled to quit doing what you were doing and spend focused time with your friend to express your love for them. I’ve also noticed recently in my son’s behavior that the more time I spend with him the less he misbehaves. I’m not talking about time correcting him, just showing him how much I love and value him by spending time with him.

In every moment of our lives we choose what we value. Contrary to popular belief our human brains are not able to focus on more than one task at a time. You may be able to work while listening to music, but what’s actually happening is you are making small quick choices as to where your focus goes. (click here for proof on this theory).

This week I encourage you to discover what you value most by keeping track of your time. Just do it for one day. Write down how much time you spend on everything you do that day and at the end of the day you’ll see what you value most. How much focused time are you giving your spouse, your children, your friends, your family. Are you constantly splitting your focus? Are you so devoid of margin in your schedule that nothing is getting focused attention? I sure get that way, but taking stock is the start to re-prioritizing the most valuable commodity I have. Time, focused time, is the most intense expression of value, love, and importance we could ever give to someone.

We have been recording a worship album for our church over the past couple of weeks and throughout the sessions we have had 39 musicians and vocalists come through the studio to be a part of the record. It would have been simple to have studio musicians come in and play on the album and do it much more quickly and honestly a little better. However, our vision was so clear and it’s been confirmed in conversations, evidence, and even magazine articles.

During the tracking I got the new issue of worship leader magazine in the mail and I usually read the ending article first (not sure why I just do). The article, written by Bob Rognlien, was a great confirmation. He spoke in the article about how our worship has become the work of professionals rather then the work of the people. It’s not uncommon for most churches to pay professional musicians to provide the music for their worship services. Which I don’t have a problem with at all. But what Bob addressed in the article, which I agree with is that the Spirit of anything is lessened to a degree when people are hired to do some thing in which they are not spiritually, emotionally, and physically bound to.

What I mean is a professional musician who only attends a church simply for the pay doesn’t have the level of investment as someone who serves, gives, attends, and is connected to that body or believers. Neither is better than the other, but the church benefits more from the later. Now we obviously need quality art and quality musicians. But these past couple of weeks I’ve seen the direct value of raising up quality musicians to be a part of the body of believers at Northstar and how that effects making an album of worship songs. The heart behind this album and the unity in purpose in incomparable.

I’m not saying paying musicians is wrong. I’m not saying that our ministry is better than someone else’s. What I am saying is I saw the direct result of worship being the work of the people and not the work of professionals. There is a greek word for worship in the New Testament “leitourgia”, which literally means “the work of the people”. I am thankful for God creating a team of people who love Him, are committed to His church, and are committed to making the best art they can for the glory of God and benefit of His body.

The older I get the more I realize that words don’t work sometimes. There are some moments in my life that I’m feeling something that literally words cannot describe. All across the emotional spectrum of our lives there are experiences, seasons, situations that we can’t express our feelings in regard. Feelings from extreme grief, extreme joy, calm, peace, but to a degree where maybe these words are not sufficient.

That is where I believe sound comes in. Certain tones, melodies, and harmonies are often used to enhance our emotional experiences in film or at sporting events, but what I’m talking about is trying to express an idea or feeling through the soundscape, the frequency spectrum.

I recently have been working on a project with my friend Wes that is an exploration of expression through the soundscape. It’s devoid of meter or rhythm it’s simple layers of tones and melodies that mean something to us. Our desire is not to be ambiguous but to tell the listener exactly what the song is about. We want to hear back from people regarding their experiences with the songs and what they felt while listening. We want to explore the possibilities of communication and emotional exploration through the frequency spectrum. Here are just a few tools that were inspirational on this journey. We’ll be finishing the project up early this fall and it will be available for free for a short time.

Tools that inspired us:
Thingamagoop 2
Drum Buddy
Bloom HD
Sound Art/Circuit Bending Tools

I am a huge twitter fan. It has seriously worked itself into my everyday lifestyle and I am easily on twitter more than the phone, facebook, or even email. It’s a great way to connect, share, and discover all sorts of information quickly and concisely. However, I also see people using twitter in some really unhealthy ways and just wanted to issue a challenge.

I see people venting on twitter in passive aggressive ways (of which I am guilty myself), I see consistently negative information from some people, and I see hurtful things directed at people.

What you tweet about is a great reflection of what’s on your mind and usually what consumes your thoughts determines what you place importance on. For instance if all your tweets are about Saints football news (just sayin…:) then you probably love Saints football. But as a deeper barometer do this…

Look at your last 25 tweets and ask yourself:
1.) Is this positive or negative?
2.) Is this about me or others?
3.) Could I have dealt with this emotion better?
4.) Is this subject important to me?
5.) How did this make someone else feel?

There may be more questions or different questions you need to ask, but the point is this. We all need to evaluate who we are and what’s important to us on the foundation. This sounds trivial, but at the suggestion of my friend Taylor I did this myself and it was rather eye opening. So take a simple look at your last 25 tweets and see if you are what you tweet.

Part of living vintage for me is keeping things organized and simple. So every time I start using a new app I ask myself is this going to make life easier or is this just one more thing for me to update/manage. I try things for a while and then make a decision whether or not it’s beneficial to my life. These apps below have stood the test of time in my lifestyle and helped me in some significant way. I hope enjoy them as well…

DAILYBURN
Daily Burn is a fitness and nutrition site/app that is amazingly easy, accurate, and accessible. Daily burn is a free service (you can pay and get more features). It helps you keep up with what you eat, workouts, and achieve fitness and weight goals. They have a killer iPhone app that is free and a food scanner app that is only $2. The food scanner enables you to scan UPC codes with your iPhone and enter the servings that you have eaten. Everything stays synced up flawlessly and you can even get perks for inviting your friends to join check it here: www.dailyburn.com

INSTAPAPER
Instapaper is a web service/app that installs a book mark in your web brower that says “read later”. When you are on a blog or site you are interested in, but just don’t have time now to read it just click the “read later” bookmarklet in your browser and it’s instantly stored to your instapaper account. You can go back and read the page/blog and then either delete it or archive it. You can organize your entries in folders for research later if you wish. Instapaper is a free service and their iPhone app is free as well. They have a beautiful iPad app that is only $5. This has been particularly great for storing blogs I come across through twitter. Your instapaper apps and web account also stay synced. Check it here: www.instapaper.com

FLAVORS
Flavors is a web site/service that allows you to link all your social networking information into one place as a sort of digital business card. It’s one place that people can go to view your blog, twitter stream, facebook, etc… They work with over 20 services/social networks so you can connect whatever you use. Flavors is a free service, but if you pay only $20 a year it unlocks a lot of cool features.
You can check my flavors site out here:
www.flavors.me/leebaker
You can check out the flavors site here:
www.flavors.me

I would love to know what you think of these apps and what apps you’re using as well. I am always searching for things that help life to be more simple and accessible.

Scratching the Surface from [weAREtheIMAGEmakers] on Vimeo.

Trying to create genuine community is a struggle nowadays. We as a people, world-wide, are very non-committal. We have so little margin in our lives, schedules, and budgets that when something comes along that attempts to unify people (which takes a commitment of time) it’s a struggle. One Australian group of artists has created one of the most solid continent wide artist collectives I have ever seen. We Are The Image Makers is an organization that is creating a community of artists who support each other, organize showings, gallery openings, and training events. They do this through an online magazine primarily, but through lots of grass roots promotion and commitment as well. It’s an example of what I hope exists in my local art community soon. I hope it encourages you.

http://www.watim.com/

Miami Sound Machine was right about at least one thing… The Rhythm is going to get you. Everything is all creation is running on a rhythm. The seasons, the clock, the moon, the tides, the calendar, the sunshine, etc… You could probably think of a million more things in our ecology that run this way. And we as humans were designed in certain rhythms as well.

We and all creation live inside of the circadian rhythm of the 24hour day. We work during the daylight (for the most part) and sleep during the night (again… for the most part). We also live inside of smaller rhythms inside that 24 hours period called ultranian rhythms. Ultranian rhythms are short 90-110 minutes cycles that were discovered during sleep studies, but also echo themselves during our days as well.

The reason I mention these things is because I observe myself and others I work with try and fight these natural rhythms in two main ways on a daily basis. First, we work more each day than we were built to work. I myself am guilty of working 8-5 then going home and squeezing in 2 or 3 more hours while my family is pre-occupied. This eventually wears us down to the point that the things we used to enjoy become laborious and mechanical. NOt to mention the toll it takes on our families. Second, we never give our minds a break. This ensures that the quality of your work will diminish throughout the day. We need to work on a task, single-minded, and focused. Then after about 90 minutes or so take a break and regroup. If you’re in a groove stay there, but most times I find the break is what I need. I wrote half this blog, then went to lunch. I came back and now am making some edits and adding things with a fresh perspective.

We work like dogs then we wonder why we all feel terrible, exhausted, and are so susceptible to illness. It’s become not only acceptable, but honored to over work in this culture. We wear badges of honor when we have left over vacation, work long hours, come in early, stay late, etc… But then we wonder why our relationships struggle, our health dwindles, and our joy diminishes.

God created us with rhythms so working long hours with no breaks, vacations, etc… doesn’t make logical or spiritual sense. When we do these things we struggle to complete tasks, be creative, and catch the details. God built in a rhythm of rest called the Sabbath. He created us to need sleep, food, and mental rest.

The best thing that we can do is keep what I call farmers hours. Get up and get to work. Take breaks, stretch, exercise. Don’t waste time, but put yourself in a rhythm of tension and release at work. Work until 5 (or quitting time) then go home. And when you’re home, be home. Don’t work more at home. You need the separation and your family needs you.

Enjoy what you do and live in the rhythm. Resistance is futile and again, like Gloria Estafan sang… the rhythm is going to get you…

Well, I haven’t done this since I started vintagethought.cc, but I used to do this all the time on the previous blog I authored. Every once and a while I’ll take a collection of songs that have been inspiring me while I work and post them here. This is the 10th installment of Encourage Invention playlists and I hope you like it.

I try to keep the playlist under 10 songs so that you can actually afford to buy the entire thing. Some of the songs I include in the iMix don’t make it through because either iTunes doesn’t sell them or because I bought them from other digital services. So here are the honorable mentions…

- Iron Maiden – Aces High (live)
- Stop for Minute – Keane (feat. K’naan)j
- Between the Lines – Stone Temple Pilots

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT ENCOURAGE INVENTION 10