Welcome to Awedacious Ideas, a weekly summary of what we’re reading, listening to and contemplating as we build a case for awe in the change-making space.
This week’s recap
We thought about time, both the ticking of the clock and the deep time that permeates everything we do, and how we do it (including the urgency of our climate crisis) Beyond the Tik Tok
We workshopped with innovation platform, Fashion for Good. If you’re interested in all things fashion and sustainability, you may even find some awe here.
Syncopation
The practice of displacing the beats or accents in music or a rhythm so that strong beats become weak and vice versa.
Syncopation adds punch and surprises to music by disrupting the expected rhythm - it’s what keeps us hooked by creating an intriguing contrast between the syncopation and the main beat. While most melodies have a steady beat, syncopated rhythms play with our sense of timing by shifting the emphasis to the normally unstressed beats. Basically, syncopation is a fancy term for a timing upset - the notes land where you don't expect them.
How might awe be a syncopation for our climate movement? A beat that brings us to movement, to dance forward - instead of marching?
Sycopation is the disruption of normal flow. The clock is a downbeat. Between the imperial strokes in down beat, there are so many other strokes. Syncopation turns our flow into a dance beat.
- Greg Ellis
Savouring; the key to the hedonic treadmill
The hedonic treadmill is a metaphor for the human tendency to pursue one pleasure after another.
When you wake into a bakery and smell the freshly baked bread, it can feel like the most incredible thing. But it quickly wears off. It would take you stepping out of that bakery for a moment, to return and savour the smell once again.
We’re reading Savouring - A New Model of Positive Experience by Fred B. Bryant, Joseph Veroff
Albatrosses
This week we spoke to Chris Jordan, an award-winning wildlife photographer about his experience experiencing and creating moments of awe through his work.
His story as an activist shifts from leveraging fear, to leveraging beauty during the filming of his documentary, Albatross. He fell in love with these birds, and once we watched the film, so did we.
To me, the real challenge, is to develop the capacity to hold it all — to simultaneously feel hopeless and hopeful, and to feel horror, and be connected with beauty and love. I believe all of our hearts are big enough.
- Chris Jordan