Drawing Connections

It seems to me that lately, I'm putting a lot of effort into making blog posts that are fully credited and in-depth and very thoughtful. Never done that on any of my other blogs . . . I guess getting a little older puts the whole "credit-where-credit-is-due" thing in perspective. Hmm!

I have a video to share with all of you, and it comes from John Green of the Vlogbrothers:

(I would like to mention that as I type, his face is staring at me with this open-mouthed duck face and it's just a liiitle unsettling.)

John Green is really cool because he is THE author who wrote The Fault in our Stars, which was published in January of 2012 and is getting a MOVIE (!!!) in June this year. In addition, he and his brother, Hank Green, have an internet community called Nerfighteria in which people (including this nerdfighter!) come together to decrease world suck by talking about serious issues and thinking complexly about those issues.  The two of them are known collectively as the vlogbrothers, and they post two videos weekly - one by John on Tuesday, and the other by Hank on Friday. In this way, they have gained an incredibly strong following of nerds, hipsters, and everybody in between (because, really, it's just an awesome thing to be a part of).

But one of the things that John Green talks about is how we tend to remember things and get inspiration from things embedded so deeply in our brains that we don't even realize it. Those ideas bleed into our work; they harass us (kindly) in our sleep. They're things that come not just from us, but from the things that we intake - the thoughts, critiques, words, ideas, and memories that we are made up of. He uses an excellent example of a series of videos (or a tape of videos) that he and his brother used to watch twenty years ago. One of the things they both remembered from the series, just from listening to a replaying of a voice clip from the videos, reminded them BOTH of a catchphrase from the ends of the videos, "I gotta go". Turns out that might've been part of what inspired their OWN ending notes to their vlogs: "Brother, I'll see you on-" whatever day was next.

Fascinating, isn't it? Of course, it's even MORE fascinating in the video, which you should watch to make up for my shoddy paraphrasing job, but it also reminded me of another thing: many of the ideas that John Green came up with - well, they reminded me of Austin Kleon. And of a little book called Steal Like an Artist.

See, the reason that this is so interesting to me is that I've been buying/rebuying/reading Austin Kleon's books again, lately. It's even what inspired me to start this blog! And the cool thing about it is that what John Green describes is that it's the exact premise of the book. Isn't that cool? I don't know if John has read Steal Like an Artist or not, or if he's met Austin Kleon, or if they know each other's names, but it was the first thing I thought of after watching the video, and I thought that was rather cool.

So I guess what I'm saying is: watch the video and read the book! Both of them are really cool, and all the related work is too. After all, it's stuff like this that gets our gears going, right?


You can find the Vlogbrothers here! And Austin Kleon here! Check them out, guys!