The Happy Show, by Stefan Sagmeister @MOV

So, I finally got to myself to The Happy Show!  Terry and I went yesterday.  Like freeform cheeseballs, we listened to Pharrell's Happy on my itouch as we danced our way into the exhibit.  Why not?!

I've been very excited about the show, having streamed all I can find on-line in the way of interviews and talks with Sagmeister.  For over a decade, he's been researching and experimenting with what makes happiness, and his own in particular, and the show synthesizes some of what he's discovered.

Here's a slide from a TED talk he gave - it really grabbed me, so I screen-grabbed it, and then changed the colours.  It's an outline of what he's discovered "works" for him, a concept I'm now fleshing out for myself (I'll share my list when it's done).

Here's his list.  Some of the maxim's show up in the exhibit.

And here's a bit of The Happy Show, as experienced by me and Terry yesterday.

The start of the show:
pick a gumball from the numbered tower that best measures my state of happiness,
ranging from 1 - 10. 

I picked tower 6 ... and got 2 gumballs! 


One with a smiley face,
and one just all yellow without a face.

A very awesome interactive piece, expressing the maxim:     being not truthful works against me. 

This is me and Terry discovering it - then we started dancing in front of it, and running back and forth. 

Yes, we were the loud ones at the show.

Our answers to the question: what is your symbol of happiness.

Trying to look good limits my life.                                                                              Good maxim.

When I read this, first at home and then again at the show, each time I thought it referred to the concern with how we look in terms of our appearance: as in how we're dressed, our hair cut, and so on.  Surface.  (Maybe it's the clothing designer in me.)

Terry read it as meaning a concern for how we appear to others in terms of our behaviour, our choices, our way of living, our gestures, and so on.  Substance.

Either way, the concern for looking good is limiting, restricting our spontaneous expressions of self, arguably (maybe) censoring those most authentic manifestations of who we are.

Grooming vs/ hygiene, and finding the limiting line.  Authenticity vs/ obnoxiousness, and the location of that line.  

Perhaps, the boundaries to watch out for are the ones that maintain balance.  

I've long believed in the social function of beauty, what some call looking good, my take on it extending from surface to substance.  It's good to be reminded of this.

I'm struggling with very big decisions right now, and finding myself ricocheting around a triangle whose points of contact are faith, fear and flakiness.

I love Sagmeister's take on flexibility and how it interacts with flakiness, so I'm working it into my mind model as I make this big decision.

His piece is in black; the coloured stuff is mine.

---

His work plan for a sabbatical.                  
I took notes (well, a photo) to inspire my own scheduling 
                                                              of the impending vastness of time before me,
                                                                                                         the vastness I'm stepping up to.

Another maxim:                                     assuming is stifling.  

What I like about this is its activeness.  

 Unlike that other one, 
assuming makes an ass of you and me, 
Sagmeister's angle tells us 
something useful to consider 
in terms of 
our expectations
our intentions
and most interestingly (to me)
our agency
in the ways we live
and engage 
with what's around us.

My conclusion.
                This is a shot of an old installation I put up in my place a few years back.  

Leaving the Happy Show yesterday, I thought of it as my response to the experience I had there.

dernier mot:
As Terry and I watched the 12 minute clip from Sagmeister's The Happy Film,
 I commented on a sense of melancholy I feel coming off the man and his work;
  Terry called it longing, which is a good word for it too.
Sagmeister rates his own level of happiness quite high,
and there's tangible euphoria in what he makes,
yet ...   
 Maybe Terry and I are off the mark,
yet ...   
  I now wonder about the possibility of being happy and wistful at the same time.
I think it's possible.
I think it's common.
I think it's human.
I think it's ok.