Saturday, 26 October 2013

you cant go out like that


When I ran into Art Burshy yesterday evening and asked about his day he sighed and a serious frown shaped his face while it lost its kindness.
The words that came out seemed to be pushed by a stronger force inside, sourced with a barely controlled anger and concern as he started his story.
The night before he had seen his daughter go out; she was going out with a new boy friend.
Sure, she had described the boy friend to him; he is a few years older and was very popular at school. He had doubled a class and was now in his last year.
Art had been pushing his prejudices away, wanting to trust the judgement of his daughter.
He had stopped himself asking how much older the boy was, because a 'few' years older can be in a range between 2 and 8 years... quite a difference (at least at this age).

In his imagination he had thought of several things to do:
- follow his daughter to check out the boy...what does he look like, how they are together...and maybe then then he would show up all of  a sudden and confront the boy with a BIG smile, shaking his hand firmly.
- search the boys address and pay him a visit with a clear low-voiced message: "if you hurt my daughter I will break your legs", or
- check out who his parents are, and call them with some questions...did the boy already talk about Art's daughter, or is this one of his many flirts...
But he pushed these ideas away as he knows this will not work in the end, ad\nd damage his relationship with his daughter.

But now he saw her just before she left he was shocked on how little she was wearing.
He lost his regular calmness, which normally allows him to explore and influence his daughter (at least that was what he told himself).
He threw out the words while noticing his own voice was louder than he had intended. But it was too late, the words had been said, and the tone had definitely had an effect on his daughter.
"You can't go out like that!!! All men are basically sexist manic perverts" seems to be what he had said.
Pretty heavy stuff for a self proclaimed open minded artist.
She became silent, and carefully selected her words when replying:
"But dad, you are a man yourself"
These words echoed in the room and Art realised he had lost more than just this battle of words.
His daughter, gifted with a sharp brain and sense of opportunity had hit a very delicate spot here, and selected the right mental-chess-move.
Either Art should take back his statement and saving his daughters image of him as a respectable value-driven father, far away from classifications related to sex, pervert subjects and manic behaviour. Or he would maintain his statement to warn her for mankind, while accepting the consequences of how she sees him.
Either way, in 5 minutes this could not be managed, just before sending her off on her way to a party-dance-and-whatever-more night.
So he did the only thing he could reasonably do; he said to her he had been too firm in his statement, that it would be good to talk about it later, and he wished her a wonderful night with her caring and gentleman-boy-friend. This is what she deserved, and he wanted to let her leave only with a great sense of confidence and expectations that would guide her behaviour and experience that night...

Looking back while both drinking a cold glass of liquid bread (the way we refer to beer), Art started reflecting on what happened.
Art has been young too, something which is hard to imagine for his kids. Behind the wrinkled bearded appearance of this artist lies the same soul of the little boy that had been uncertain and low in self confidence when he was young.
As a boy he had noticed what happened between boys and girls, and having had enough time to reflect on it, he had created his own theory.

Girls fall for self-confident boys, or in fact boys that act confident and are 'cool' or 'chill' or whatever term is used by youngsters at the time.
When boys are truly in love with a girl, especially when being young, the last thing they feel when being close to her is: confident. So generally girls spend 0 attention to these boys.
The boys who actually do not deeply love the girls, but fancy some sensual (and mostly sexual) experience, they do act confidently, and get the attention.
The girls adore these boys and somehow these boys get their girls to do much more than is good for them, or that fits with the level of sincere passion involved.

Sure, Art Burshy knows now that there could be exceptions, and he hopes he can raise his children to be confident and look for the right qualities in others. But still he observes the same mechanics in place nowadays. He heard that nowadays boys come up to girls in parties and rub their bodies against these girls, and these girls just have to accept it. Frequently multiple boys at the same time. It's like dry sex in a way.

Art feels sometimes like his own parents, when they had warned him for certain parties, for drinking alcohol and for sex-related fears. He does not want to feel like such an old-fashioned parent, but what-the-f**k...this is shockingly disrespectful and pushes daughters into a behaviour and view of their body that is not good, and undermines their sense of self.

And Art truly still feels that many (if not all) men have a deeper natural desire for sex.
 Deep down they have this sleeping hunting-instinct, and for example also Freud has clearly described this sort of subconscious mind-triggering instinct. And the only way to influence this mind-domination Art explained to me in a formula.
Art's drawing in the cafe
Replacing B by an atractive C
Say mans current situation is A, and his desired state is to reach sex (let's call that B).
Then the only way to prevent men to go to B is not to forbid it.
Generally forbidding things actually focuses the attention on the negative, creating even more triggers.
Like when you say "don't look down" to your kids when climbing a mountain. The first thing they do is look down below.
So the only way to prevent someone to go fro A to B is to provide a very attractive alternative C.
In case of men this traditionally could be religion and/or a sort of strong belief.
But better is if C would be a deeper love for a muse, a woman they truly adore.

The same philosophy about A-B-C he normally applies with his children.
If there is truly something that he feels is not good for them, he tries not to focus on that topic, and just provide a very attractive event C that will capture their attention.

But this requires a controlled state of mind, and clearly this night this was not the case, and he had destroyed more than ever his relationship.
Well, after drinks Art slided of his chair, crawling to get his coat and with low eye brows he started his long walk home.
I wish him wisdom and strength for the battles to come.

Sunday, 20 October 2013

How it all started


Art has been looking for broadening his base of income as times are still not at a point where money comes flying in the door. In general he has observed that during times of crisis people are less willing to buy art of upcoming artists, and they mainly stick to the mainstream art that in their view will probably keep its value.

In general Art never really understood why people buy art as an investment, for several reasons:
- it is pure fiction to think that art will be a safe investment. Even if you look at the numbers some 80% of art never reaches the value for which it was sold. Maybe a bit better when you buy through major auction houses like Sotheby's (but even there only 50 % ever reaches the price that it was sold for.
- it is not the artist you are paying in most cases; you are paying the agent, the gallery and the 'brokers' that have cleverly invested in the piece of art that you happen to like. It is a self sustaining cycle of optimists (and opportunists) that keep telling each other how valuable the art works are. And it is actually quite sad for the artists that they often only receive very little of the actual price being paid.
Could you imagine what it is like as to see your art work being sold at Sotheby's for 200.000 and not receiving a dime of the money. Knowing that you had sold it at a friendly price a few years ago to a 'friend' who loved the painting and asked for for a nice price as a favour?
- art is more about the genuine story and expression it brings than the monetary value it represents. Ironic that part of the increasing prices raised have come from museums, at times when they were creating or enriching their collection. They invest huge amount of money to make these works of art available for everyone to see in the museum...

In general Art Burshy feels that people should buy art from the artist purely based on what appeals or speaks to them. Often you can learn from the artist how and why they make these art works, and it adds to the story and meaning that it has for the one who buys it.

That had been originally the reason that Art Burshy had started coaching people who wanted to buy a good and affordable piece of art, and advertised as an Art Coach in art related magazines. But despite a few successes and loads of gratefulness from his clients, he discovered that it did not bring him lots of money. And even an artist needs to eat, so he decided to extend his job to become a Life Coach.
When I asked about it, Art explained me that coaching about art and life is not so much different. Basically art is about people that go on a quest to discover life and make less compromises on the way. These people we call artists, but in fact they are the ones that truly live their dreams, and accept that as a consequence they give up on material wealth, keeping up appearances and other stuff that is attached to people's ego.
In addition Art noted that people only buy an art piece once every few years, where people that had screwed up their lives would need help for a longer time; so a more sustainable business case.

Art Burshy's new Life Coach business does attract some special type of people. They seem to come crawling from the deeper and hidden caves of society, hideouts that would make Al Quaida terrorists jealous.
And this morning Art had a new client; a man that came rolling in his office, hanging in a sort of device which he seemed to control with a joystick. The man started explaining how he had gotten in this situation, and all quite a dramatic story.
Art asked the man what he expected from a Life Coach, as he had observed many times that people nowadays project hope as well as failure onto anyone that is given a role in their lives.
The man said that he hoped he at some point could lead a normal life, be freed from his terrible dark thoughts and grumpiness, liberate him from being a victim of society as a whole, bring quality and joy in his life. The man wanted Art to deliver those things that everyone had promised him before, but had not been able to bring.

Art looked at the man for some time and wondered what was the best thing to do.

"Wow man, that's f*cked up! Don't think I or anyone else can help you. Hang in there dude..." he whispered with an understanding and humble smile on his face.

When Art told me all this I was flabbergasted...had Art gone insane, was he a heartless bastard, did he not care for the poor man and his miserable life?
Art however told me that he had done this on purpose.
Too many times people are comforted and told what they want to hear. And so many times this creates unrealistic expectations.
Sure, no person likes to crash the hopes of other people (maybe some psychopaths excluded). And as a consequence we tell patients a beautiful story, at best including something that should give the patient a hint of reality, but not too much, as we need to protect this unfortunate and fragile patient.

Art said he has seen the same happening in companies.
Poorly behaving and performing employees are tolerated because "it is actually not sooo bad", or "there are other problems that are bigger" or because managers do not really know how to bring the bad message, and they are afraid not-to-be-liked.
Consequence is that these people often live in their own happy world. And on the side the signal to other employees is that 'this behaviour is okay', and actually makes these people wonder why they are still doing their best. In the end in some 2 years these situations turn around the culture of a team, and sometimes of the whole company.
Instead one should a) give feedback, b) explain what you expect from the person and c) ask the person how he thinks he will get there, and which supports he needs on the way. Art has seen it work several times. And if it does not work? Then the story ends...

As a true artist our friend Art Burshy feels that people are entitled to hear the truth. Sure, they initially might not ask for it, they might not yet want to be awoken from their hopeful imaginary dream, but in the end only the truth will help them find their real way in life. Often what limits them in one part of their life, also ruins other parts of their lives, often without them knowing which behaviour is at the source of it all.

So, Art had decided to tell this man the truth:
- do not expect your coach to change the whole situation
- accept your situation and decide what you want to change, and where to lower your expectations
- give up feeling like a victim; it stands in the way of taking ownership
And Art would be happy to help the man, but only when he himself would first give up on all his projected expectations. When he would go back to a basic level of understanding and accepting his true situation, and then ready to rebuild a more healthy view of himself, the world around him and his journey forward. He should act like an artist. As a true artist dives into himself and into his own darkness, and comes out even more capable of sharing the brightness of the light and all its colours.

Sunday, 13 October 2013

Salt is really bad for you

You will have noticed that Art has been on vacation for some time. He was in Greece and enjoyed the traditional Greek dishes. Well, in Athens all meals were fine and he would really enjoy the well-filled spanakopita, the nearly-burnt souvlakis and juicy moussakas. But after arriving on a small island, to be honest he did not so much appreciate the local delicacies, as it seemed that all fish and vegetables were thrown directly from the sea into a greasy and 'ripened' boiling oil. Also he felt that the meat balls and other meat dishes were made from the same very old, very dead and very dry goat.
In general Art is happy to eat a diversity of food, and always discovers special local dishes that are very tasty. In this case however he developed a habit of compensating the dishes with simple fresh vegetables, lots of brilliant olive oil and loads of salt. He would some evenings just love to take some bread and simply use it as a sponge to suck up a mix of oil and salt, and frequently adding garlic.

Now, being back home for some time, he somehow still kept some of the vacation habits. A breakfast with Greek yogurt (but not from Greece as it seems when you read the small letters on the wrapper) with a generous topping of tooth-aching sweet honey. And always some oil and salt to go with lunch and dinner.

Art knows that basically salt is one of the worst things to eat, and also that the honey is a pretty good sugar-booster. But when this evening during dinner, his daughter states "Dad, salt is really bad for your health" he frowns and looks her into her eyes.
Normally Art would be willing to recognise his own failure to control this addiction.
But when his daughter brings it up with a tone like 'I-got-it-all-figured-out-and-know-whats-best-for-you' it triggers some goose bumps and allergy rash in his neck. So, the last thing he feels like is confessing his guilt, and he thinks of how to tackle this 'attack' in an adequate way.

He thought of different ways of replying:
a) counter attack : pointing out to his daughter that she herself has some very unhealthy patterns, and that one should first look at ones own issues before interfering with other peoples habits. But that would sound a bit sour and ruin the atmosphere at the table.
b) plea guilty, and admit she is right; indeed salt is bad. But this would automatically raise the question: "why don't you stop it, if you know it is bad for you". This would easily create issues, as Art is supposed to be some sort of a role model for his children (like any dad I suppose) and they could use this later as an excuse-why-they-do-not-have-to-follow-his-rules. Pretty dangerous therefore, and maybe a discussion Art should avoid.
c) solve it with a bit of humour, enlarging the issue to huge proportions and to its extreme. This would not invite for further discussion and would sort of push the topic away. Sure, it might be coming back later as a boomerang; his kids are pretty clever, and will raise the topic at a later point in time. But for now maybe the best thing to do.

In general Art had discovered that his children are getting more confident; things go well at school, they have nice friends and are pretty popular. And although Art Always wanted his children to be confident, he now sometimes observes that they go the other way; they get a sort of winners' behaviour, they lose connection with the ground and go flying.  They feel they have got life all figured out, and they are happy to tell other people again-and-again how they should live their lives.

Art has seen winners' behaviour many times, also with artists and at businesses. Some of the symptoms are:
- not really listening, mainly waiting for the next moment to share some good advice and insights
- providing you advice when you are not asking for it
- relying on a few simple tools or rules to explain all that is wrong in the world
- seeing every success as a confirmation of their great and unique approach
- a talent to mis-interpret other peoples experiences into what they consider be the wrong approach.
And, not without shame, Art needs to admit that he has had some winners' behaviour at some point in his life too. Probably later than his children, because he came out of his youth with some serious self-confidence-issues, and as such it took him quite some years to come to a point where he could manipulate himself to feel confident based on some successes.

So, in the end it is good if kids feel confident enough to show some winners' behaviour, and probably better not to 'crash' their confidence by heavily attacking their premature ideas and their way of expressing those. At the same time keep asking questions and hoping their experience will provide them with gentle corrections that bring them back with both feet on the ground.

Our Art Burshy sincerely wonders if he is the only one facing this type of issues, and mental struggles, and experimental influencing of children. Well, in the end he just feels that doing his best is the maximum he can do. And he decides to ignore the saying he uses himself so often:
'the way to hell is paved with good intentions', also when raising kids.

Saturday, 6 July 2013

managing the supplier's account manager

Art Burshy is in business again, having a meeting with his IT-supplier.
He was hired as an artist to bring some unconventional solutions to something that has been broken for a long time: IT.
Probably much more is wrong, but things that are broken often become visible at the moment it gets translated in procedures, systems and programs.
And so Art would actually like to understand how the IT supplier works, and what makes that they do not always deliver quality.
And quality is an overrated word actually, and Art Burshy does not understand why people get so confused about it.
Delivering quality is just about meeting expectations, isn't it.

There are people and companies that feel that they only need to deliver 'what-has-been-formally-agreed' but they just forget that this will lead in the end to a frustrated customer; a customer that will leave once he has an opportunity to escape. Managing expectations is therefore as important as delivering what formally has been agreed.
And often - in the experience of Art Burshy - there are somewhere contracts and in some cases even advanced Service Level Agreements that intend to define in the tiniest detail the actual 'quality' to be delivered, but where after all negotiations the "L" part of the SLA has been forgotten. SLA's then become a set of worthless descriptions of how things should work. And nobody will bother to read them after the contracts have been signed.

For this meeting today Art did some pre-work and listed some of the issues that his teams experience, many of which Art has seen before when working with IT suppliers:
- it seems they do planning and monitoring by the famous Advanced Stack Management mechanism; whatever comes in last they start working on, forgetting all about the less sexy existing projects that were on the stack before. And then you need to frequently call to get things from all below in the stack to be moved on top.
- There is also something like a basic minimum size for any change: even the smallest change takes months to be studied and in the end cost a massive amount of money and time to be delivered.
- they often think they know better how the business works than the business people themselves. This often results in solutions that have a very strange impact on the client and users. Worst is when they tell you that they have taken priority decisions on your behalf, especially when the impact can not be undone.
- they do not understand the topic, you spend lots of time explaining and every time it turns out this leads to "new functionality", requiring more time and containing a nice gift called "budget overspend".

These IT teams are often busy 'improving', trying to better serve the business, and so they create a magic innovative concept called "the account manager", which is the guy that Art is now talking to.
Key elements of the account manager:
- basically he has no power nor information to commit to anything
- when he can blame someone else he is happy to do so, as long as he himself is not in any danger and it distracts the discussion from tough topics
- he presents failures as consequence of other companies or teams, agreeing 'it is ridiculous' but very carefully avoiding taking any ownership of the subject
- successes however are the direct fruit of his intervention, and are harvested multiple times during meetings while leaning back in their chair with a satisfied grin on their face.

In addition such Account Managers often first try to deny the issue or tend to explain why the business sponsor has the incorrect view. This time it is the same again, where the account manager provides a fuzzy answer as part of the conversation tactics called: if-you-cant-convince-them-just-confuse-them.
But Art Burshy has prepared and then shows him:
- a list of all the issues, supported by mails confirming they should have been caused and should be solved by IT
- charts showing the average time it took IT to come back on issues and requests
- average overspend compared to original plans
- many more charts, some just made up by Art Burshy in an effort to get through the denial phase.

When confronted with all this the account manager initially starts to bring up objections, but after Art provides more and more information showing the ultimate disaster the account manager turns silent. His head becomes more and more red and at a point he opens his mouth, ready to raise his voice to tell Art Burshy that this is all so unfair.

At that point Art lifts his finger and warns him not to raise his voice.
Art Burshy has observed this habit of people; they think that by raising their voice they actually can add more power to the impact of their statement. Art feels it is often more a sense of weakness and the covering up of low self confidence.

In the end they go to the real topic; identifying how they will follow up, and what the next steps are to start working on the key improvements.

When Art Burshy came back from this meeting I asked him why he had approached the meeting this way. It does not seem constructive to so heavily attack the account manager, does it? Especially using fake statistics seems a bit unfair.
He shared with me his 'interesting' view:
- statistics are always a limited interpretation of reality, often oversimplifying how a complex situation should be seen. So presenting wrong statistics or wrongly interpreted statistics is only as bad as using real statistics.
- people only learn when they are in pain, or at least heavily frustrated. He tried before on a peaceful way, but this leads to the regular behaviour of denial, complaining and finger pointing.
- these account managers are often not really appreciated by their own teams. IT people that do the actual work are much more motivated when talking to the client, rather than receiving interpreted information from an account manager.
- often the account managers are the ideal source of misunderstandings; they do not understand IT and they do not understand business and so it is good to get them out of the way or at least get connected to the people that do the actual work.

Art just left while I finished making my notes, leaving me a bit puzzled. It is funny how he looks at it with such brutal simplicity, making many assumptions. And yet, I can't seem to find where his approach will fail. Guess time will tell.

Saturday, 29 June 2013

Magic solutions and methodologies explained


Our friend Art Burshy is still working as an interim manager.
And as any new manager he feels the need to make an impression, a need to change
Like dogs always feel the need to pee over any object on their way to mark their territory.
But Art resists; he knows that it is good to first know more about the service and the team before making any plans to change.

He does however get several calls every week by people congratulating him with his new job and offering 'help'.
Art first wondered how they all knew...but when asking to a recent caller he found out the truth was rather simple....
all these people had seen it on his LinkedIn profile and on other social media...

Although Art Burshy is not convinced by all the services being offered, one stood out; the company promised a methodology that could solve all Art's problems.
As a start it was already interesting that they 'knew' Art Burshy was facing problems, especially as Art had just arrived and did not even know himself.
So Art thought there were 2 options:
a) this was a ridiculous sales pitch, and he could have quite a laugh making fun of them, or
b) it actually works, and then you could not afford to miss out on it.

Art Burshy in general does not religiously believe in methodologies.
Sure, methodology can be useful when based on insight and experience. Main added value is that it provides you 'a structure of thinking' and a way to see whether you missed anything in your approach.
There are in Art's view however a few issues with methodology:
- they often become the leading and 'sexy' company goal (the Holy Grail), where they are just a tool to be used in the right way to achieve a true business goal. People then focus on implementation and completely lose track of reality and what they really should deliver to their clients
- when implemented too literally they become a rigid framework, they create bureaucracy and actually make people stop using the key element of working: common sense.
- methodologies are often poorly implemented, not enough adjusted to the specific company, by not so intelligent people and with a lack of understanding. And then those people conclude that 'the tool is no good'.
'No, you just professionally screwed it up yourself' is what Art Burshy would be happy to tell them.

Art also has a view of the types of methodologies, and he has given them 'easy' names:
A. Wrapped Common Sense methodologies
These are basically ideas and methodologies that any kid could think of, but they are branded with a marketing sauce to make them look better.
B. The Statistics Guru methodology
In this case someone has decided to analyse many companies, managers, success stories, f*ck-ups, put all these numbers in a tombola and hen looks at correlations. And the correlations become 'rules' or 'guiding principles' and before you know you have a religion based on these quantitative observations. These ideas often are correlations; tings that tend to occur in parallel, but not really representative for loking at what actually caused all these things to happen.
C. The Western Chop-it-up methodologies
In Western societies people have been raised with structures and certain mantras to address issues. What people get taught from young age is to put their structure on the world. And if it does not work? You need to push harder. Many methodologies are made by those people and they just cut the subject in pieces and describe how to change each piece, trusting that in the end - voila - the whole has been cured by changing all  the pieces.
D The Mix-it-and-rename methodologies
And here we are with methodologies that combine multiple different and completely unrelated elements to form their own methodology. Like using Greek arche types to analyse company behaviour; as if the Greek arche types are not just a set of characters based on funny stories invented when the Greeks were having drinking parties.
Art Burshy also had the idea at some moment in time to create a methodology like this.
For example you could mix:
- Old Chinese wisdom and process thinking, adding Yin and Yang to the lives of people working in factories and large office floors
- Humour Concepts and Change Management, so at least people will have fun going through all the insane changes that companies go through nowadays, or
- kids language and coaching; and creating groups of kids to coach the boards of large companies. And would be fun to have CEOs and other big bosses explain their business to an 8 year old. Probably these kids would have more interesting questions than a regular company board.

Well, all very interesting of course, but in the end Art Burshy had the session with the company that promised to have the solution to all his problems.
It turned out quite fun, when Art asked 'So, as you can solve all my problems, maybe you can start by telling me which problems I actually have?'
This created a pretty puzzled expression on the consultants face, but he recovered and explained about statistics of all the problems that companies have. And how they had combined several concepts to build one that could be used anywhere. And the good things is, it comes with a computer program and an App...
Art just started laughing so loud and could not stop; this was just too hilarious.

After half an hour the consultants left, smiling with their mouth, but a puzzled frown on their face and a traumatised look in their eyes.
Sure, Art had wasted 30 minutes of his precious time, but at least he had a good laugh. And that is quite rare in business nowadays, isn't it...


Sunday, 23 June 2013

exaggerating experience is not always helpful

Art Burshy has found since some time an interim job.
Miraculously he had been asked to temporarily take a position as manager at a financial institution.

Art told some of his friends, and all thought he was pulling a joke. And why would that be; why could an artist not be a manager at a financial institution?
Sure, Art can think of a few reasons or prejudices that would make it "improbable":
- where artists strive to reach an ideal without really looking at money as a purpose, the purpose of financial institution is to make money
- people at financial institutions seem quite homogeneous; many middle aged men with standard shirts and suits. And Art Burshy has noticed that people at work look frequently at his beard and clothing style, even taking the liberty to make negative remarks.
- where people and businesses in finance try to be predictable and deliver predictable results (is that what they call reliable? ) artists actually try to avoid being predictable.
- where people at financial institutions often seem bored, but get stuck there as wages are so great; artists use boredom to be the basis of reinventing themselves and search for new directions and inspiration.
- where financial institutions do large efforts to install values and become socially responsible, artists take values as their basis and spend their days reflecting on themselves and their social context.

Still, at the same time it is obvious to Art Burshy that artists like himself can have an added value in these type of organisations. Primarily around bringing inspiration at times that the primary focus seems to be on cost cutting and efficiency.
Well, here I stop Art from speaking as this is his typical pet peeve, and I heard this story many times before.

Mr A. Burshy (at least that is what is written on his business card) is reviewing candidates for the person that will replace him and take the permanent position. Going through stacks of CV's and letters Art observes a few trends:
- people overestimate relevance of their experience: I guy that mobbed the floor at Goldman Sachs describes himself as Floor Manager and feels he has sufficient financial experience
- people exaggerate their experience; a guy that started his career at age 22 gave as his first position: Senior Manager. How can you be a good manager if you never did a normal job before?
- loads of spelling and language mistakes; very odd to display such sloppiness when the job description asked for accuracy.
- managers seeing this job as step 2 of 21 on their way to the top; Art Burshy feels that such motivation is not right. You should become a manager because you like to work with people and enjoy to see the team grow. Any other reason will make managers run away from their position when the first difficulties arrive.

Actually here Art agrees with the view he once heard that "a manager gets the people he deserves within 2 years". If a manager manages terribly in the end people reporting to him will change behaviour and become completely dysfunctional. This is - in the view of Art Burshy - why many managers change jobs every 2 years. He calls these managers seagulls; they fly into the company, covering it in a shitload of problems, and fly away after 2 years to the next company to start all over again.

And yes, now he is reviewing the CV of a person claiming to have 50 years of management experience. So, what would that mean:
- either the man is retired or started managing at age 3
- maybe this guy solved the time travel-challenge and manages in several time zones in parallel?
- he is too stupid to understand there are limits to exaggeration
- it is a typo, and should read 20 instead of 50...
Well, Art is not gonna read any further. It is not his task to take time to understand people that are incapable to communicate; it is their task to convince Art.

So, Art continues with the stack classifying the candidates in "Good", "Bad" and "Terrible". And actually Art has gone quite mild in his judgement:
Good - when it is possible that experience is somehow relevant for the job
Bad - When there is no relevance at all
Terrible - When the persons experience is not relevant and he/she displays pathetic or stupid behaviour through their letter or CV.

Unfortunately the bucket for "terrible" is almost full, so Art will need to empty it or even be milder than before and put them on the "Bad" stack.

Saturday, 15 June 2013

Control devices


Art Burshy is this weekend going to Paris for another visit.
Fully prepared he leaves the hotel room and like a true tourist he holds a map of Paris in his right hand.

There is so much to see in Paris, so Art just loves to walk around.
He actually has a bit of a strange approach to explore the city:
Step 1 - completely get lost
This step in Paris is not so difficult. Just walk into some of the older parts, taking the small streets, and before you know you have no clue where you are.
Step 2 - get more lost
This step is just asking Parisians the way to a certain place; they will happily explain but in the end you will really not know where you are. From experience it works best to ask the way to a place a bit further from where you are, or even better, to a non-existing place.
Step 3 - integrate
At the place where you end up, completely lost, you look for a typical local cafe. You mostly recognise by
(i) the cafe is very small, and you should have hardly any space to enter through the door.
(ii) the owner stands behind the bar and a few customers sitting at the bar (or rather leaning over the bar),
(iii) and best indicator would be the teeth of the man behind the bar; proper signs of smoking and drinking should mark his smile, and a look on his face showing an absolute non-interest to welcome you as a new customer.
No matter what time, you order a glass of red wine and sit at the bar.
You look grumpy and non-interested while sipping from the wine, and after some time you ask (in your best french) whether there is anything interesting in the area.
Insist, also by complimenting the bartender saying he must know the area so well, receiving so many guests and having such a nice cafe.
Step 4 - define your target sightseeing
If you had truly interesting advice at the bar you go for it and see where you end up.
If not, check where you are on the map, and look for the nearest attraction.

Well, and here Art is standing in the Paris streets, the map of Paris in his hands and looking around to see where he is. All of a sudden he observes the people around him.
Where are they going? Are they tourists or Parisians? Do they manage without a map?
Then he realises something weird...they are all watching a small device while they walk...
Art wonders:
- Do these devices tell the people where to go? The people look like zombies, so that might be the case,
- Who controls these devices? Which superpower is controlling these zombies?
- Are these the famous "Smart Phones", and would they replace the intelligence of "not-so-smart" people?
- Is there a risk that someone takes over control of all Smart Phones and start screwing with our minds, controlling mankind ?
Ah well, Art observes his brain starting to make strange thoughts and developing weird feelings of anxiousness when reflecting on these suspicions.

Art just feels it is a shame to see people rushing through the areas, focused on the devices and in a hurry.
They miss out on so many things:
- the rays of light colouring the houses warm yellow in the morning,
- the new fresh green leaves on the trees,
- the sound of the first birds singing in spring,
- the many types of creatively dressed people passing by.
Art feels it is better to run less, and enjoy more the walking.
And there used to be times where he tried to convince others, but if people would not listen. As long as people do not experience pain they will just not reflect on changing.
So Art stopped, and just tries to maximise his own pleasure walking through life.

Saturday, 8 June 2013

getting stuff fixed


Art Burshy had issues this week in his bath room.
Basically his boiler went out of order, and he had no hot water anymore.

Well, no panic for Art Burshy, our artist can deal with this type of practical discomforts.
He called the landlord to see that they would come to fix it, and after trying a few times he actually got a woman on the phone. She asked him several questions that Art answered with the greatest politeness...they were obviously gonna solve the issue.

Fortunately it was spring so he did not need the hot water for heating his house. Although spring this year has been extremely cold so far. Art even started wondering whether this global warming of the planet is again a kind of marketing campaign for some producer. A producer that will soon surprise us with his magic solution for global warming, and earning a shitload of money by selling a cure for an issue that does not exist.

Well, even though spring is a bit cold, the heating is not such a big issue. As Art gets a bit older he does really enjoy heating up his apartment, though.
Art even enjoys dancing naked in the heated house, acting silly, mimicking ballet and getting all carried away. Some time ago he discovered that the neighbours opposite of his apartment could actually see him. And initially with retrospective shame he wondered how many times they would have seen him performing his naked Swan Lake performance.
Nowadays he actually does not mind anymore; what could happen if they see him?
Sure they have seen other naked people before.
There is no law forbidding you to dance naked in your apartment, and shocking your neighbours.
What is the worst that could happen?
And after some time he actually started liking the idea of the neighbours seeing him...to execute his RIGHT to dance naked in front of them.
Art started thinking that at some point it could also be a good statement against the current social obsession with nudity and sex... Nowadays if an artist makes a beautiful portrait of a naked body, it directly creates loads of attention and negative response, considering it as some sort of porn. At the same time the whole Internet is swamped with hardcore porn movies and pictures, but as it is not in our face every day we do not really seem to care.

Back to the reflections about hot water...
Well, clearly the current situation meant that Art had no hot water for showers. He started writing down  all the options for the time it would not get fixed:
1. Was this the moment to start having cold showers. Art had heard that a cold shower is actually a very healthy habit, and helped relaxing your body. Was this maybe a sort of sign from some divine entity to make a change in his life.
Well, as (a)Art does not believe in classical view of an almighty God, and (b) after all it is just a small issue of not having hot water, he decided it was not a meaningful event causing him to change his life so dramatically.
He actually could not imagine cold water would be good; at moments he could see himself even dying in the shower under and freezing cold spray of liquid ice drops.
2. He could also just have no showers at all...creating a spiritual freedom of his body, freedom to be dirty...and smelly too probably.
3. It could be a reason to call old friends that did not live very far, asking if he could have a shower at their place, or
4. Aaah, yet another option; he could go to a public swimming pool! Directly he imagined himself diving in the large pool, and everyone running out of the water when the water turned slowly yellow and brown from Art's dirt. It would be nice, and he would have all the pool to himself.

Art snapped out of his lovely reflections, stopped writing and went on with his life. The day passed and nothing happened really; he called the landlord and nobody responded.
5 days later suddenly a handyman stood in front of his door. Art had kind of survived reducing his contact with cold water as much as possible. He had washed himself with a small wet towel, shivering from head to toe. And after several tries, and a regular "someone will come tomorrow" from the landlord, his moods got as dirty as his skin.
A small smile cracked his face, as he realised misery might be over soon....he even gave the handyman a cup of coffee (not too luxurious, as he worried that the handyman would like it too much and stay longer than needed).
Finally after 5 hours of unclear activity in the bath room the handyman came out. The man in general did not look very joyful; it must not have been his dream to become a handyman. This time he even looked less pleased, with a big frown on his forehead.
He explained Art that someone else needed to come to fix the issue....

Well, maybe good not to describe the language that somehow came from the moving lips of Art Burshy. The handyman however looked unmoved, as if he got immunity for words over all these years where he had to solve the shit of others. And then he left, leaving Art was even more puzzled than before...

Art Burshy took his notes with options from before.
He realised that he lost his joyful pleasure from the time he was first confronted with not having hot water, and all related trouble still seemed quite innocent and small.
Things now really got so bad that he didn't see the humour of it anymore.
Somewhere soon this boiler needed to be fixed, and all space for humour had left through the door.

It was like a list of nice things-to-do becomes loses its inspiration when you have to do them under time pressure.
The moment you realise that you have too little time to do everything, pleasure and energy walk out of the door.
Time pressure turns joyful initiatives into painful energy sucking burdens...
So Art did what one can do best in such cases, back to bed !

Sunday, 2 June 2013

I love you too much


Art Burshy has picked up his routine of making portraits.
Not so much because he loves it, but actually to make some money, and people are generally more interested and connected to portraits than in his regular abstract art works.
And having done some portraits last week he started liking it again.
Sure, it is bloody difficult, especially as Art has decided not to use modern techniques to 'copy' a picture on the canvas.
He knows some artists project pictures on the canvas and then just add paint to fill the shapes, degenerating art to reproduction.
Art feels that in order to make a portrait you need to let the person appear through you.
Sometimes it requires to intensely look at the person, almost meditating, closing your eyes and feel the person inside you.
Sometimes he feels it works like a beam of light that enters your chest and when opening your eyes you start painting.

I asked Art why this is so important and he explained:
When painting you have to exceed the primary aesthetic desire to create something beautiful.
An aesthetic drive limits your freedom of expression; you focus on shape and colour, and reproducing as exactly as possible the image you see.
Even not working with pure copy you can end up reproducing And when you have made one nice line it brings you fear; fear to ruin the beautiful line you made, fear to not create a 'good' image, fear to be make a mistake.
That fear keeps you within the lines, within what a portrait should look like.
It allows the limited and 'safe' rational thoughts to take over the painting, with terrible consequences and mediocre paintings as a result.
You should make every portrait in the full awareness of the mortality of the other person, and it is better to make 1 great painting in your life than 100 mediocre ones.

When however you find a way of painting that purely relies on feeling, and on finding the image that represents how you experience the person being portrayed, then you will have the power to make a meaningful portrait.
The feeling and trance, or maybe a sort of flow, pushes away the fears and opens the space ready to be transformed into a new personal reality.

Art also explained me that he has learnt also to approach people like this, like making a portrait of them.
He is convinced that no matter who and where, you should always approach people with such an open mind, with a modest soul, and willing to let them appear through you.
Almost like allowing them into and merge with your aura (although Art makes clear he is not a believer of 'religious' aura-shit).
Yes, you listen differently when approaching people like an artist.
You provide the container for the other person's expression, you put the other person in the centre, and you ask real questions.
Not the average cold talk, but questions that matter, that are sometimes more difficult but should not be avoided.
And you are not afraid to allow the silence to take over, to notice the breathing, to absorb the emotions that are not explicitly expressed.

Anyway, while Art was explaining this all to me his wife came in, a truly beautiful appearance.
And honestly I sometimes wonder what she sees in this bearded awkward artist with his many moods and strong opinions.

She asks when Art actually will make a portrait of her..?

Art looks at her with love in his eyes and says: "Of course I can not make your portrait...I just love you too much".
And one might think he is making a joke, or he is trying to avoid the discussion, but in Art's mind this is a completely true and sincere answer.
Art in his words loves her so much that making a portrait of her brings him fear:
- fear not to capture her full beauty
- fear of her having too high expectations
- fear of himself having even higher expectations
- fear that it becomes this unfulfilled obsession
- fear of ruining his own image of her; that if the portrait fails the terrible painted image dominates his view of her
And he is not sure he will be able to deal with this fear, and to put the fear as easily aside as when painting the son of the milkman, or his colleagues wife.

At the same time deep down inside he knows there will be a day when he feels like making that portrait, and he will paint her solely from memory and full of feeling, and it will be purely the way she appears through him. And maybe it will come close to the beauty he sees in her.

Sunday, 26 May 2013

Paris waiters never see me


Art has taken his son this week to the French Open tennis championships of Roland Garros.
And the evening before visiting the matches Art and his son visit a nice French terrace, to have a few drinks.
Art has been in France many times and he has made preparations:
- he managed his son in an ironic way about the 'gentle politeness of the Parisiens',
- he warns about paying 8 Euro for a cappuccino on some terraces
- he explains the diverse delicacies that for some other countries might appear a bit strange, like the tail of a pig etc.
- he explains that you should make sure not to end up in French procedures, police issues and formal requests

Still, Paris has many beautiful places and Art loves to spend his time there.
And Roland Garros is a great opportunity to combine it with watching some nice tennis.

When going to the cafe Art took a special wooden sign with him.
After sitting on the terrace for 10 minutes and not being able to attract the attention of the waiter, Art Burshy raises his wooden sign with in capital letters '2 BIERES' and in smaller letters below 'S.V.P.' as you always need to remain polite.

His son looks puzzled and asks him why he brought the sign.
Art explains him that he just has this experience where waiters do not seem to see him.
This happens everywhere, but Art has somehow experienced this more often in Paris.

Art starts explaining about the type of waiters he knows:
There is (a) the waiter that - just when you drink the last part from your glass of wine - stand next to you and offer you to top it up.
And there is (b) the waiter where you are lucky if - after raising your hand for half an hour - they finally see you and after a sigh finally with a sour face ask if they can get you something.

And now his sons attention has been raised Art sees this as an opportunity to explain that this is not unique to waiters; it happens everywhere, but with waiters it becomes clear quite quickly.

Art explains that in many companies there are:

a. the motivated enthusiastic team workers
They are almost always joyful, try to make sure the customer gets serves first, feels accountable for the whole company's performance, is not afraid to do tasks that fall outside his job description and wants to learn more and more. Their focus seems to be more on giving, and having confidence that in the end life will treat them well for it.

b the 'you-should-be-happy-I-work-here' employees with a focus on entitlement
These generally leave no chance unused to check if they are really getting what they deserve; they actually feel they exceed every quality standard and are so exceptional that they deserve to be exceptionally rewarded. If things do not go well they can very well explain that this is the fault of others. And if they do not get what they think they are entitled to, they often start showing diva behaviour.

His son nods. Although it is not clear whether he does it to confirm his understanding, or just to avoid making the conversation on this topic even longer.
Then the waiter actually comes and asks what they want.
"Well, 2 beers I would say..." Art says while pointing at the sign.
"Sure" says the waiter "but 'bieres' is misspelled, it should be with an accent grave on the first 'e' ".
Art does not react, he then orders the beers and also a coke for his son.

And when the waiter has just left to get their drinks, his son says
"well dad, why don't you explain your vision to this waiter..."
Art says "sorry son, what I have learnt in all these years is...never to argue with a Parisian when you still need him".

Saturday, 18 May 2013

How to raise your parents


Art Burshy is reading a book about how-to-raise-kids, while his daughter is sitting on the couch with her smart phone. At some point she looks up and asks what he is reading.

When Art thinks about it...his daughter might actually be right; maybe it is better to educate children about how to deal with their parents.
Kids also have the greater incentive: autonomy. Parents just want their kids to be calm and obedient, which does not necessarily incentivise them to be open minded for looking at other approaches.
And actually adults are just big children that have lost the wonderment, and have grown into limited patterns that align with their desire to have continuity of life, lust and income.

Basically insanity and dysfunction gets passed on from generation to generation.
When a parent is traumatised by his own parents he/she will have developed own dysfunctional patterns, that will in its turn screw up the minds of his/her children. Maybe that dysfunction is different (i.e. a reaction to) from the parent's parent, but still it is there.
So the only intervention is actually to teach children to raise their parents.
By the way it is funny to see how many parents look at schools, and blame them for not providing a safe and good educational environment, where actually the largest issue is not how much can kids learn, but how much can we reduce their dysfunctional behaviour and help them become happy.

So Art starts imagining which elements could be in a book; examples of items kids would need to know about parents could be things like:
- you can not direct your parents as somehow they have access to power over your life and decisions, and access to money. That's why you need to coach them.
- do not assume parents act logical or make sensible decisions. Parents take strange decisions based on frustrations, feelings, and dysfunctional behaviour. They will always present the decisions as logical so that children do not see how much nonsense it all is, and how illogical.
- probably manipulation is the best instrument; in psychology it means 'using means to influence people, without those people being aware'. It is generally better than a frontal puberty-revolution.
- reward your parents for good behaviour with what they consider good: being calm, appearing intelligent in front of other people, show gratefulness and compliment them. And most importantly laugh at the jokes of your father.
- build an inventory of your parents own values and statements, so you can feed them back whenever it fits your own agenda.
- look at which friends your parents identify with, learn about them, adore them and use them to bring important messages and learning points to your parents.

Actually, more and more Art starts believing in the sense of making such a book.
Children are not yet spoilt, they still absorb and the book would clearly and quickly demonstrate to be helpful and effective.
Of course, one tiny detail keeps bothering Art; what if the parents read the book and understand how they have been manipulated...would they be adult enough to accept it, or would they destroy the beautiful harmony that has been created by their children through implementing the book's lessons...?


Sunday, 12 May 2013

Even an artist has things to do





Art is on his way to the airport to pick up his wife and youngest kid...
A car in front of him waits a few seconds after the trafic light is green, and then slowly pulls up...
Art Burshy tries to make himself calm, but he can't help this time...
He opens the car window and yells to the car before...
knowing the man will not hear him...
or maybe hoping the man will not hear him, because what would happen if the man got our of his car?!!


In fact Art is aware that he is completely unreasonable...yelling at a car for pulling up a few seconds too slow...
And artists are supposed to be calm, they are supposed to have all the time in the world, they are thought to have slowed down their pace and fill their lives with reflection and search for beauty...


And sure Art has tried to calm himself down, slow down the pace and reduce expectations that were given to him in this culture and by his parents.
He has already forma long time identified many patterns in his behaviour that were far from beautiful and stood in fact in the way of happiness.


So Art has replaced patterns and habits by better patterns and new behaviour.
Actually he hopes that more people would do that; reflect on their patterns that do not make sense and try to replace them.
- like Art feels that everyone in their small circle seems happy, but still complains about the country, about the government. If they would replace complaining by sharing positive comments they would notice how ridiculously often they complain
- like Art sees many people blaming others at work for their own lack of success...sure it's safe and it is a way to put the blame outside yourself, and not accept the real choice you have: a) accept it, b) change it or c) avoid it and take another route/job. Why not next time of failure think of one thing you will do better next time?
- like managers trying to control their team in every detail, removing the most important aspects of obtaining maximum results: inspiration. Only by sharing a goal, and allowing a person to find his way towards that goal you obtain sustainable results. Trust, and let the people tell you how they would like to report about progress and issues.
- like people voting for populist politicians that promise everything and then be disappointed in politics as 'nothing ever gets better'.
- like artists complaining that critics do not understand them, and that they just refuse to see the amazing talent of the artist...
- or Art notices how often parents need to repeat to their kids that they did something wrong...like if the kids were stupid or deaf...When kids make mistakes they know, no need to make it a trauma, just tell them once how you would expect them to deal with it next time, and offer to help them.


Maybe in some way Art Burshy's biggest dysfunctional pattern is that he complains about people complaining...


Another thing is that deeper patterns never really go away. Art has noticed that he thought he had overcome certain bad habits, until....the pressure around him became more pressing than ever, and he observed himself make the same mistakes again.


Well, as said, Art is on his way to pick up his wife, his girl, his muse...he is longing to see her and has still some 5 minutes margin. And probably she will understand if he is 5 minutes late...so probably he has all the time to get theree...
still, Art can't help it...he wants to move on...he wants to embrace her and have fun wis his baby-son... So he yells again "everyone move over and let me through, I have important things to do!!!"

Sunday, 5 May 2013

My baby loves my art

Art Burshy is passionate when it comes to involving children in art.
Making and understanding art can teach many things, about how things really work, and about how to really live your life. A state of mind of which Art feels it is getting more scarce in this world.

Art is a symbol of freedom to follow your own pattern and pace; and for kids this is good to know in many situations:
- it is not terrible if you can not follow the pace at school, it doesn't make you less of a person. And actually Art feels that people in reality only use 10% of what they have learnt in school. And most people are mainly limited by their skills to communicate, not by their amount of factual knowledge.
- it is not a drama when you can not deal with computers or when you are not able to participate in the hundreds of social media forums...Art Burshy lived all his life without it and somehow manages to be happy, without being 'like'-d too much.
- you should not be afraid to let go of things when you struggle to keep up. Too many people for example stay in their jobs while it gets tougher and tougher, working harder and harder. But why?
Probably it is like the famous scientific test with frogs in water...when you put the frog directly in a tub of boiling hot water, he directly jumps out. But when you slowly increase the temperature, the frog stays in and will be boiled to death.
Basically people are not more intelligent than frogs, because when it comes to many things that ruin their lives, they just stay there as the disaster gets fed to them in small portions.

This also touches a popular pet peeve of Art Burshy (one of many, although he might not admit that himself).
His view about working hard and efficiency?
Well, say company A is not happy with how much money they make. 
They hire consultants telling them about the latest trends, and show them how to cut cost, improve efficiency and have less people do more through automation...this to offer services cheaper than competition and make a bigger margin...
and what happens when they succeed...?
Well then competitors hire the same consultants, and end up copying the 'successful' approach...cutting more cost and working even harder...

Result of all this? 
We all end up running harder, in the end for the same amount of money, or even lesssss...
Well, that was a short side track, but just an example why understanding art is important for children, to create an independent mind and the courage to challenge ones own convictions and habits.
And actually, Art feels you do not need to teach children a lot; basically they actually have all required implicit knowledge when being born.
They just tend to push it away because of all the bloody bullshit they get demonstrated and taught by grown-ups.

Then, this afternoon, after a session with his youngest child when showing him some art works, feeding him some art ideas....
this time his baby son took it a bit to literal...he actually started eating the art work...
And although Art Burshy has an open artistic mind...
this pushes it just a bit too far...
and for a moment it looks like it will almost make him angry...
but in he ends up with a smile on his face...
it was only his son getting carried away with one of his art works, that's not such a big deal.

Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Kingdumb ?

Art Burshy has stayed home today, during the inauguration of king Willem Alexander.
Publicly he would say it is a bloody discgrace, not the right time during crisis, far away from reality, and a fake sort of power somehow justified by a God.

But while being home somehow we find him all in orange, drinking traditional Oranje Bitter, and watching while the new king swears to be a good king and respect and build fair laws in the kingdom; one of the smallest countries in the world with all these crazy people that go our all dressed in orange on a day like this.

It is a public disgrace and a display of mass hysteria, but somehow Art finds it also very appealing.
Next time he might even join the balcony ceremony...but that might be some 30 years from now...

Sunday, 28 April 2013

Why not some nice radioactive red hair

Art Burshy is walking with his daughter in Paris, and a woman with bright red hair catches his eyes.
So he starts imagining what it would be to have such red hair...

He truly feels some nice red hair would reflect his state of mind, his character, his being.
There are so many nice bright red colours like magenta, different sorts of cadmium red or even some crimson red.
In general he finds that people are way to afraid when picking clothes and how they look. Why not going to work with a nice fresh red or bright green hair colour, a way of saying:
- hey, I am who I am,
- it is good to be different and not be afraid of it
- the way I look does not define who I am, it emphasises my true self in my appearance.
- I am not afraid of what people think about me, and not afraid to make fun about myself
- it distracts people on the days where Art does not wear nice clothes, and they just focus on his red hair
- people can always find you in a big crowd, and will more easily remembered.
- at the same time it allows to go incognito and not be recognised by old 'friends' that he actually would not feel like speaking to.
It is also good in a way that it shows we do not take our appearance too seriously; Wouldn't it be nice if our prime minister one day would have some red hair, and why wouldn't the bosses of organisations so come to work with some lemon yellow hairdo, instead of wearing the same grey suit every day and the same shortly cut hair.

Art also remembers when he first decided to have a beard...this lead to so much reactions and several were negative. At the same time it confirmed to him that he was right to do it, that it was a part of him that needed emphasising. Art loves people that have the courage to be different, wear different clothes, have different hair colours. Even if it is a form of rebellion, a way to speak up without sound and so much more natural.
It should be more normal not to appear normal.

Sunday, 21 April 2013

Art concept or business concept




Yesterday I went with Art Burshy to the opening of a new exhibition. And Art seemed quite pleased that some of his paintings had been added to the collection; he was almost showing his joy when we walked towards the gallery.
I could not have imagined how quickly this would turn around just some 10 minutes later.
So what happened?
Well, I was just getting a drink, actually looking for some champagne, as that for me is one of the incentives of going with Art to these exhibitions.
I then saw Art in front of a small art work. It was a tiny white cube that was exhibited just next to a art work of Art. Several expressions crossed his face while observing the cube from really up close. I looked around but detected no security staff that would be at the point of intervening. I approached Art and asked naively "well Art, do you like it?"


Art straightened his back, and looked me straight into my eyes "well Maurice, what do you think?".


These are the trickiest moments with Art; whatever you say will be wrong.
Say that you don't really know and he will say you are a coward, no original thinker and more, until you finally surrender. If you say you like it he will be asking why, what is so special about it, until he finds enough elements to prove you wrong. If you say you don't like it, probably is even more dangerous as he will call you barabaric if it turns out to be a master piece in his mind.


So I said to Art "well, I really don't know, what it should be, and why it should be beautiful"...it was risky, but true, and you cant make fun of the truth, can you.


And then...
Art started to speak slowly...
"Did you see the art work next to this white cube? It is my art work.
Now my own art work is a deeper expression of feelings, part of an effort to capture my deeper emotions, using the skills I have carefully constructed the last 35 years, it is meaningful and as a result it can touch people and confront them with my view of reality...
Then you have this white cube next to it... This is an idea, tranformed into a small piece of wood, painted perfectly with white paint. Sure, I read the idea behind it, which is funny, almost interesting, as it is based on Thought, but very close to existing cliches."
Art's head had become a bit more red, and his eyes started look look more angry.
"Then look at the price....it is way more expensive than my art work!
And this is where the art world is going?
Ideas are more important than expression and personal meaningfulness.
Artists delegating all the making to others, only translating an idea into design...
I heard for example of an artist Hamiens Dirt that turns art into business, having people execute the ideas for him, and the bloody bastard earns millions from art...it is a disgrace...and it is the opposite of what art should be..."


Then I made a mistake, mainly fed by my annoyance of Art again turning a nice exhibition into an energy sucking visit...


"Well Art, but why do you give a f*ck...why would you care?
You earn a living with you art, why do you care that others make good money?
Why are you so arrogant that you allow yourself to judge other art works?"


Art became silent, and I wondered if my angry words had touched him...


Then Art calmly spoke:
" well, forgive me for having a dream and a passion of what art is about.
Indeed I do not know everything about art, but I have seen and created enough crap to know what is good.
The role of artists is to reveal a deeper beauty, a beauty that moves people.
I find it disrespectful that people hijack the art and turn it into something superficial, and focused on making money.
But you are right, why would I care if stupid rich people spend loads of money on such crap?
They do turn conceptual art into a business concept, but why should I care.
I wanna go home and make a beautiful drawing with color pencils, going back to my childhood dream before I became obsessed by making 'art'.
And lets take my art work home with us; it does not belong here."


And so Art took his art work off the wall and out we went...

Sunday, 14 April 2013

Art in business

This time Art is applying for a new job.
It is very difficult as a living artist to get by.
So a side-job would be great to have a bit of stability in life.
And he thought to apply for a managers position...as he feels he could teach people quite a bit.
In his mind companies more and more focus on (a)squeezing the last cost out of the company, (b) monitor all employees' every minute spent and (c)adopting the latest flavor of methodology and (d) jump on the newest managerial hype.

Art Burshy feels it is time to re-focus on inspiration, learning from concepts in art.
It seems so logical that the best performing teams are the ones with motivated and maybe even happy people.
And when overstructuring jobs, the pleasure is structured away, people lose a sense of fun.
And life is not about running and finding the answer to every issue and question. It is about learning to ask the real questions, like an artist.

And wow, somehow to his own surprise now Art even reached the last 2 candidates.
This seemed such a great company; they had a great social campaign, they have an environmentally friendly building, they advertised the need for diversity...
and looking around they could use a bit of diversity... A good moment to hire a nice middle aged artist with a little bit of business experience but lots of life experience.
Nowadays everybody is a manager by the way, so it cant be difficult, so why could it not be Art.

But somehow, in the back of his mind a little alarm bell is ringing...everything here is soo consistent, all the same, same suits, same expression, and...
Well he starts to wonder; despite the advertised company policy, the corporate responsibility programs, the people-are-our-most-valuable-assets program, the fantastic smiles and empathic looks...
he somehow starts to think that just in the end they might stick to old habits...
and maybe not take this unique opportunity to choose an enrichment to what they already have, to hire an artist that is full of energy and ready to get started.

Well, time will tell...

Saturday, 6 April 2013

a bloody original portrait


It has been a long time that our artist Art Burshy made a portrait.
When he was young he made quite a few, and making a portrait is always a struggle.
First of all, it is bloody difficult to make a drawing or painting resemble a person truly.
There were moments where he would start a painting, thinking all the first strokes were perfect, capturing the key features of the face...
and then in the end it turned out to be a completely different person.
Or even worse, he would think it was a success...and then other people would not even recognise the person from the portrait.
Actually he discovered that the worse the start, the longer the struggle, the better the end result.
And it was great when in the end people admired a portrait; it is the sort of painting that is easiest accessible and always results in people admiring your skills.

And....now he realises about portraits that:
- almost every style has been tried, and often better than he could do it himself,
- it is bloody tiring to make them; it makes him focus on skills and the resemblance, rather than enjoying painting and expression.
- in addition there are always expectations when you portray people; they would like to be beautiful and smiling...which is much less interesting than portraying the ugliness and truly dark expression
- there is no representational purpose of portraits; if you want a picture you just take a picture,
- he does not need admiration for his portrait skills, really, sure it is nice but he can do without,
- he is even tired of people having an opinion of portraits, and how good it resembles the portrayed person. Normally people are quite reserved when watching modern art, but once it is a portrait...my God they do have an opinion, and worse, they feel an uncontrollable need to share it with the artist

But...
Recently he could not resist temptation...and he started a portrait.
And this time he wrote down the guidelines for his own painting:
"I shall remain focused on expression and the joy of painting"
"I will make a portrait of the one person that will not have any expectations; myself"
"I will do it without mirror, as I think I should know my own face by now"
"whenever I catch myself thinking of - whether it resembles me - I shall undergo sanctions:
  - throw paint on the portrait to force myself to be less focused on the resemblance
  - drink a beer, even in the morning - not really a punishment but will loosen me up
  - ask opinion of my son, who will always be ready to tell me it is crap
  - force myself to laugh out loud for 5 minutes...
  - and the continue"
And actually he is happy with the result (so far), and remained truly free.

And now Art even thinks this method could probably also be used in other contexts:
- artists too much focused on making the perfect painting, but maybe also
- people at work losing focus on pleasure and having fun at work
- bankers that are too focused on numbers, forgetting how nice it is to give good service and help an ordinary person
- politicians that are busy with power and influence, that forget the dreams they had at the start
- parents that are focused on what their children should become, forgetting to actively show their love and support

Well, maybe Art should start making such experiments for himself, before expanding this innovative treatment to other areas, don't you think?

Saturday, 30 March 2013

a proper youth trauma


Art Burshy is an open-minded man, and he is happy when he sees his children speak their mind.
But he is now getting a bit tired of his son, complaining that Art has always been such a bad father.
That this has created difficulties for the son to normally behave with others, as his father is such a freaky, socially corrupted, extremely vulgar, cynical loner.

And Art does understand somehow; he himself still frequently speaks about how his childhood has shaped his existence. His role in the family, the role models that his father and mother gave him, and how he dealt with difficult situations, under pressure.
He still observes that the way he acts and reacts in case of issues is linked to the odd way he felt and behaved as a child.
There are some moments he really remembers:
- how he would fight with his brother, who was much stronger than himself, and how he then took revenge, making a crazy caricature-cartoon of his brother... and then his brother just found the drawing very funny, corrupting the revenge
- how he developed his humour to deal with tricky situations and tension between his parents, being the clown
And many things more that make Art have flashbacks combined with emotions.

But whenever he talked about his experiences with his parents at a later age he discovered that the events that he thought were very big, heavy, emotional and burdensome...his parents even did not remember...
He wondered how that was possible...and his son now mentioning this sh*t to Art brings back all these tiring memories.

Art read some books on raising children, and it is amazing that after so many years that humans are walking on this planet, and so many times they have raised their children, that still ideas of raising kids vary soooo much...
and it is very funny, but by the time his kids are getting almost adult he feels he starts to understand.
About how the purpose of raising kids is not to have them sit nicely at a restaurant table, like some book about French kids states...bullsh*t.
Or too religious ideas about guilt, sin and keeping your kids away from evil...hell no, they need to learn to make their own mistakes...
He feels more that raising kids is about respecting them, being there to help them become adults that can live a meaningful and happy life, learning to make their own choices...
And actually that is quite difficult, and there is no secret recipe for raising happy kids, and anyone telling you it is simple just doesn't grasp the depth of the challenge.

At the same time Art has observed that all the negative experiences from his youth have also been important in driving himself as an artist, pushing himself, finding direction, making him dive deeper for inspiration... and actually he feels he would not be at the same place, with the same insights without these things having happened. He even sometimes pities people that grew up in a 'happy' family...my God that must have been boring...and these people must live mediocre lives.
It seems that many famous people and successful business people had a terrible youth, so this could mean:
a) you need to be somehow traumatised to truly be driven to reach success, or
b) it is much more interesting when you are famous to talk about a terrible youth, then to say it was all so jolly happy, or even
c) famous people are just a random statistical group, implying that almost everyone ends up having traumas about their youth, like we always take the worst experiences as a sort of reference and emphasising how special it has been that we have reached our success...

So, Art wonders whether he should tell his son all these thoughts and reflections, but his son will definitely not want to listen anyway...
So, Art decides to tell his son that - if he wants to be famous - it is actually quite good to have a proper youth trauma...

Saturday, 23 March 2013

Inspiration is overrated

So, Art got up, he has to make a new painting for his next exhibition...in fact he needs to make 5!

It all started so great, being invited for this great exhibition in Chelsea, the current walhalla of art in the West of New York.
And when they asked how many art works he would want to have in the show, he enthusiastically said '6 should be fine'...
That was around 6 months ago...
And here he stood, in front of a plain white canvas...with lowest energy ever...
He was angry...but angry for what...and angry on who?
- for the shining white canvas that looked at him, giving him way too many options
- for the loads of ideas he has, but of which none seem really to inspire him now
- for the bloody gallery that kept sending mails, reminders, checks etc, pushing his creativity in their structure...bastards
- for himself basically being way too optimistic
- on his incontinence not being able to keep his mouth shut when being enthusiastic
- AND his ego that just took over for 5 seconds
- for linear time, that passed by so quickly...bloody Einstein saying time is relevant...what a bullsh*t!
- for inspiration that always evaporates when time pressure increases
- for all the distractions and his inability to resist and focus...

Yes, quite an impressive list of things and people to blame...and of course deep down he knew that it was basically himself that was the root cause of all this...but he did not want to hear now, he just wanted to be grumpy.

And he knows the theories about inspiration and the key guidelines:
- find a clear direction for your art works, where you want to go
- limit yourself, just take 2 colours and 1 subject
- and start the journey, exploring and adjusting, each time refining your art work
But he felt already too tired to even select 2 colours...

So, what to do?
He actually felt like taking a nice beer, maybe the alcohol would free him...well, he knows that alcohol does not help the quality of the work...
Or just throwing some paint on the canvas and go 'Pollock'...
Well, he was sure he would find something, and he know he would in the end be on time, but he also know it would be last minute intense stress and no sleep for a few nights

While thinking of all this he started walking to the drawer where he kept his paints, he sighed...slowly preparing the canvas...and a smile came on his face...why did he somehow always have to go through this phase...?
Anyway, inspiration is highly overrated..!

Saturday, 16 March 2013

so you want me as a mentor

It happened this week.
A young artist approached our friend Art Burshy.
The young man showed Art some of his beautiful art works
And just at the moment that Art wondered what the talented young man wanted from him...the question came...
"would you please be my art mentor?"

Art was completely flabbergasted
Silence
    while Art was thinking...
   Was this a joke...?
           What could he possibly teach this guy?
       How did the boy find him?
               Why did he choose Art as a mentor?
  There must have been better artists available? More famous, more influential, more connected, more sane...?!

Art had never been a mentor and wondered what the key role would be of a mentor.
Sure he could give it a try and teach this talented creator one or two things:
- he could be cynical about the boys art works, stimulating him to prove himself
- he would be happy explaining why he (like many others) would have a 0,0001 % chance of being successful
- and if successful he would have 0,001 % chance of making a living of his art works for a longer period of time
- that 80 % of the art works never reach the price they get sold for; so not really a safe investment for buyers
- show the destructive effect of alcohol on the art work results
- how to successfully grow a lack of inspiration
- he could in fact explain a lot of what he knows that doesn't work;
   - how not to make main stream art
   - how not to please the audience
   - how not to have a consistent portfolio of paintings and a distinctive personal style
   - how not to make enough paintings to satisfy your agent
   - how not to spend time marketing and selling your art

Art had been silent during all these reflections, and the face expression of the young man had become less optimistic, in a sort of silence, afraid to breathe, while waiting for Art Burshy to react to his question.

Art decided to challenge the young artists motivations: "why me?! a dysfunctional, grumpy, lazy, cynical and mediocre artist..?"
The boy was persistent and actually seemed to know quite a bit about Art Burshy; his paintings, his concepts and recent exhibitions (the last not being so special as Art did not have a lot of exhibitions the last years).

Anyway, in the end Art actually got inspired, and he could see himself working with this young and enthusiastic 'pupil'.
Not necessarily teaching him a lot.
But maybe more focusing on some key questions that probably any artist should answer on his personal path:
- what does my art mean to me, what makes it so relevant, and how can I make it more relevant
- what is the purpose of art;
- what is good art, and how does it differ from beautiful art or aesthetics
He would need to find his own way anyway, and it was clear he had talent and skills...

And Art actually felt energy coming back...
And sure, Art did not have all the answers; he did not have the illusion to understand the purpose of art.
But somehow this student gave Art himself a renewed purpose, which was quite inspiring - that is, after the initial cynical reflexes that have been carefully nurtured over the years.