Advertising is a useful bell-wether for changing attitudes so maybe that’s why more and more companies are using the idea of slow to hawk their products. Examples abound. In Japan, for instance, Volkswagen launched the new Beetle with the slogan “Go Slow.” This morning I opened up a magazine and found an advertisement from Camper, a shoemaker that believes that slowing down is the first step to living, working and playing better. The company motto is “Walk, Don’t Run.” And the current ad promises “Slow shoes for fast people.” Wonder if they’re having a January sale….
Category: Miscellaneous
Slow museum
I suppose it was only a matter of time. The world’s first Museum of Laziness has opened in Bogot·, Colombia. It is full of hammocks, sofas and beds for lounging. Funded by the municipal government, the aim of the museum is to challenge the modern obsession with work and wasting time – and to find a balance between striving and skiving. The only catch is that it is not a permanent museum. It closes next week. So if you’re too lazy you’ll miss it altogether…
Read the BBC report by clickinghere.
Slow improv
I love improvisational comedy. It has a high-wire act quality that adds an extra edge and energy to the humour. It also seems like a very fast art: you have to come up with killer lines or movements in the blink of an eye. But now it seems that the Slow philosophy is making inroads in the world of improv. Apparently there is a Chicago school of improv that is more patient, less frenetic and built more around characters and ensemble work. Read an intriguing chat-room thread about itHERE. Meanwhile, Katie Goodman, a smart, funny and very thoughtful actress-director-writer is just finishing up a book on how to use the tools of improvisiational comedy in everyday life. One of the things she is exploring is how finding your inner tortoise off stage can allow you to be calmer, sharper and more creative when you’re actually in a fast-moving game of improv. You can find out more about by clickingHERE.
Slow Reading
I love that Woody Allen joke where he says: “I took a speed reading course. We read War and Peace. It’s about Russia.” So much of the beauty, texture and meaning of a text gets lost when we read in a hurry. And that may be why Slow reading is in the ascendant. Toning down the speed means you get more pleasure and comprehension from the text. Apparently the earliest reference to slow reading is from Nietzsche in 1887. ClickHEREto read a fascinating and thoughtful Wikipedia entry on the subject. It was notwritten by me.
Best job in TV?
Last Friday I appeared on an Argentine TV show called Mañanas Informales. It’s one of my favourite shows for talking on. It manages to be noisy and dynamic without being stressful. One reason for this may be the Laughing Trio. In one corner of the studio, three rather scruffy young men sit in front of microphones sipping yerba mate and providing the show’s live laughter soundtrack. They whoop, whistle, make cheeky remarks and laugh with infectious gusto. I know they’re laughing to order but the effect is still the same: I find them hugely amusing and weirdly soothing. Certainly beats the hell out of the canned laughter that blights so many sitcoms. I even feel a bit envious: if you have to work in TV, then what better job could there be?
Slow photography
Just been to the How We Are exhibition at Tate Britain.It traces British life through photographs taken from as early as the 1840s. Some of the prints are stunning, others are moving or witty. I love the mug shots that were used to identify suffragettes and keep them out of the London art galleries where they had vandalized paintings in the name of female suffrage. Photography is a wonderful art form in the right hands, and takes on more depth, meaning and texture with the passage of time. But the exhibition left me feeling that we have lost something along the way. In the old days, when photography was slow and painstaking, you thought hard about what you were recording and how you were recording it – and then you cherished the print afterwards. In the digital age, photographs are so fast and easy to take that you hit the shutter release without even thinking. And then you leave the images on your computer hard-drive because you’re too busy to make prints. It all feels very disposable.
Slow Dancing
A wonderful video installation called Slow Dancing is now running at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York. Five second clips of dancers in action (ballet, tap, flamenco, break dancing, capoeira, etc) have been slowed down to last between eight and 12 minutes. Because they are shot in high-definition, that means you can watch a single strand of hair fly through the air or a gesture ripple through a hand finger by finger. Some feel this creates a new art form. The dancers feel amazed, perplexed and strangely vulnerable. The curator talks about the beauty unleashed when we decelerate long enough to take in the details: “What the dancers’ being slowed down does is to reveal all of these beautiful, subtle changes in faces and bodies. This camera allows us to read moments that pass so quickly they don’t register.”
Slow down with a siesta
Today is National Siesta Day in Britain! And siestas are the ultimate expression of Slow. Taking a post-prandial snooze seems like heresy in our fast-forward culture, but actually it’s very good for you. It can boost productivity by over 30% and almost double your alertness. It can also enhance memory and concentration, reduce stress and the risk of heart disease by 34%. It can even help you lose weight. So what are you waiting for? I’ve just finished lunch and that means one thing: zzzzzzzzz
Slow oratory
I love the fact that so many young people are coming round to the idea that slower can be better. Recently, Carrie VanDusen, a final-year student at Apple Valley High School in Minnesota, got all the way to the finals of one of the most presitigious public speaking tournaments in the US. Her topic was the Slow movement. She came fourth, which is pretty amazing, especially when you consider that she spoke to an audience of 3,000.
Slow space
I’m in Toronto for a three-day conference called IdeaCity. It’s an amazing collision of ideas and dreams. One of the comments that has struck me most came from a physicist. He explained that 75% of the energy in the universe comes from empty space. This is wonderfully counter-intuitive. I may be stretching things here but it also seems like a nifty metaphor for the power that is unleashed by slowing down. When we become still, it looks like nothing is happening but in fact, beneath the surface, all kinds of extraordinary thinking and exploring is going on.