John Cleese on Creativity, and the random pinging of my mind

(Warning rambling post approaching....yep, my mind's at 'that' stage again).

I was trying desperately to find this video to share with you this morning:

Yes, it is half an hour long, but trust me....if you are at all interested in creativity and want to increase creativity in your life, this is half an hour worth spending. Seriously, watch it.

The problem with trying to find it though was I watched it over the weekend because I'd seen someone tweet about it. And you know me and my memory, if I don't write it down immediately in my notebooks (or evernote it, or pin it) I forget the details, and sometimes forget all about it.

I even forgot who tweeted about it.

Hopeless.

So I typed "John Cleese Creativity" into youtube, and although I didn't find the above version I wanted to, I found this shorter and slightly different one by the great man.

Which with my tangential pinging brain, caused me to think about the other great speech I know John Cleese for, his eulogy for Graham Chapman:

Which caused me to look to see what Graham Chapman had died of. I hope people are as irreverent as this at my funeral. I hope people can remember that I made them smile or laugh once or twice. I hope more than one person says fuck. I like swearing. It's an artform that not enough people understand. Have I told you I have Peter Cook in my head and he's constantly swearing? Now you know I'm mad :)

Which made me think that if I had to go to a funeral tomorrow, I don't actually have anything black to wear. I'd be fine if I was going to the type of funeral we like back home that are colourful celebrations of life.....but I don't know how they do things in America, perhaps colours are considered disrespectful. I don't know. Perhaps you can let me know.

So anyway, my brain was thinking about funerals and black clothes.

And then a piece of news on the radio said that the most listened to songs on British radio last year were Adele's Someone Like You, Adele's Rolling in the Deep and Take That's The Flood.

I wasn't sure if I knew how The Flood went....so I checked it out on youtube.

And I love the video, it reminded me of home, of the times I stood on Putney Bridge watching the Boat Race.....and the shot when they row past one of my favourite bits of architecture in the world, Battersea Power Station at 3.44 made me tear up.

And I thought of this week's Sew Weekly challenge. It's circle skirts this week. For weeks I thought I knew what I'd be doing. I was going to do something black and white, just to be different, because for the past 15 weeks I've been all about the colours. And I wanted to do a London version of some of Frankie Morello's Souveniur of Italy pieces from his Spring/Summer 2012 collection:

I bought the black fabric for the circle skirt last week in a Goodwill thrift store (charity shop) and picked up a bargain men's pleated bib dress shirt to customise to go with it. I was going to experiment with bleach painting and do a London skyline like this around the hem. And up the sleeves of the shirt I was going to do Big Bens ala Morello's Leaning Tower of Pisa blouse.

But yesterday, getting upset about writing the childhood memories post for last week's Sew Weekly challenge, I decided I didn't want to do black and white. I thought I needed silliness and colour.

So brainstorming, searching the internet for inspiration and checking out Pinterest, I found this stuff:

Source: manisharora.ws via Tempest on Pinterest

 

Source: thebeverlyroom.tumblr.com via Tempest on Pinterest

 

Source: etsy.com via Tempest on Pinterest

 

And decided to make a Circus tent/big top skirt with gaps in the curtaining to reveal glittery performers, animals and clowns. And I even have suitable fabric in my stash.

But back to this morning's pinging session.....so to recap, I was not going to make a London skyline circle skirt. I was definitely going to make a Circus Big Top circle skirt. Definitely.

Then I watched that Take That video. And the images made me pine for London and made me think about black and white again. And I got all morbid. So being on the Take That vibe I thought I'd find one of their songs that makes me smile.

So I looked up Shine:

Which made me smile, because the lyrics always seem so appropriate and it reminded of when I worked on Shine Radio and all the fun with Ben and Chris and Serena.....and nailing all the difficult words they put in my news stories on purpose including being a wiz at foreign tennis players names....

And then I noticed a new Paloma Faith video in the sidebar. I love Paloma, I wish I could be more like her style wise. She seems to wear EXACTLY what she wants to and just doesn't care what people might say.

So I watched some her videos, randomly thinking they might inspire future Sew Weekly challenges.

And then I saw the dress:

So guess what I'm making for the circle skirt challenge this week.....

(And yes, this is how a cyclothymic's brain works every minute of the day, not being able to hold onto any thought for longer than 5 minutes and no being able to remember stuff unless they write it all down......well at least when I'm near the top of the cycle, the madly creative top curve.....I thought you might be interested, and if not, at least I've now written down a sort of plan for this week, because I'll probably forget ;)).