ExcellenceOr Perfectionism?

Why did God rest on the seventh day?  Because He had done His work so well on days one through six that He did not need to go back over it and tinker with it.  Artists who want to be Spirit-led would do well to learn from this.

I heard this from Randy, one of my four crazy friends.  Randy is an artist, and we were talking about the relentless perfectionism that makes artists go over a project again and again.  He said God had told him, “I’ve called you to kingdom excellence, but not to compulsive perfectionism.”

Then God had explained, “When I created, it was finite.  Day by day, I finished the day’s work, and it was good.  Then I didn’t go back over it again and again.”

Rndy’s words struck a nerve with me.  As JoAnn and I prepared her book, Mind Lost Mind Found for self-publication, we  created so many versions of the cover that it became a family joke.  There’s nothing wrong with trying one font and then another in a layout; nothing wrong with the tinkering we did.  But the work began to seem infinite.  Before long, I decided not to use the word “final” in a file.  Soon we would have “Final #3” or “Final #5” and all the way up to #8, only to start over again the next day.

Of course, we’re not God.

But as Randy noted, he’s learning to trust the flow of the Holy Spirit as he works, and not second-guess everything every step of the way.

 

As Randy and I visited, his wisdom washed over me.  It was very timely as I prepare to write another book – What The Blood Of Jesus Has Done For You.

It should take about a month to write.  It’ll be short and user-friendly, with a lot of word pictures.  I include editing and revising as part of the workflow, but won’t let it become obsessive.

Sometimes the hardest part of an artist’s job is knowing when to leave something alone.  Tinkering doesn’t always make the work better.  Sometimes we ruin it.

Anyway, I look forward to starting the book, but it won’t be this week.

Nevertheless, I’m still planning one more editorial step in the workflow.  When the whole thing is finished, I’ll read it from one end to the other and allow myself to rewrite the weakest section or chapter – and that’ll be it.

Thanks, Randy, for a word of wisdom that’s sure to save the Smith family a lot of grief.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2011, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

Conviction, the Beginning Of Wisdom

I shared this testimony in our Gathering last Sunday.

By talking with other creative people, I have learned that I’m not the only one who finds the computer world maddening.  Writers, movie-makers, musicians, graphic artists, and more spend hours learning to use the programs we need so we can do our creative work.  But the computer engineers and software developers keep improving what they gave us earlier.  Last year’s program may not work on this year’s computer, which has downloaded operating system upgrades every week or two.

By the time I was starting to get familiar with Adobe CS3, I suddenly have to learn CS5.  MS Word likewise works differently than it did a few years ago.  In other words, any project that used to take me fifteen minutes now takes half an hour or even an hour or two.

I’ve come up with a slogan that describes the wonderful world of computers and software:

 

The more they improve it, the worse it gets.

If I were the only one who feels this way, I could assume I’m just getting cranky in my old age.  But a lot of creative people wish they could give more time to their work – coming up with new ideas – instead of spending so much time mastering new technology so they can continue to do what they were able to do last year.

But my Bible reading recently took me to Philippians 4, where I read, “Do all things without complaining and disputing.”  The Holy Spirit convicted me that I needed to make this verse a rule of life.

It’s one thing to make a decision in the peaceful practice of reading scripture and meditating on it.  It’s another thing to follow through when using the “Find And Replace” feature in Word and in InDesign, and learning that an hour’s worth of corrections have been lost because Command-S doesn’t save the files I was working on.  I got madder and madder, then remembered the verse God had convicted me with.

The conviction of the Holy Spirit is the fear of the Lord, and it is the beginning of wisdom.  So I decided to replace complaints with thanksgiving.  I thanked God for my computer and my software, even if I couldn’t get them to work.  I thanked Him that help would come, somehow.  Then I went to bed and slept.

I woke up, knowing how to start making the computer save the changes I was making in a long document.  I spent a few hours working on it before we had the next Gathering.  By now, I knew that God had showed me how to make my programs work.  The method was tedious, but it worked.

More important, I had experienced again what I shared in my 31-day devotional, “Learn To Hear From God.”  If we respond to conviction when it comes, we are investing in the fear of the Lord.  Often it proves to be a beginning of new wisdom.  In my case, I received wisdom to solve a technical problem because I said yes to God’s conviction.

More about this  at http://www.squidoo.com/learn-to-hear-from-God-day-21.

I shared the testimony on Sunday, but took the laptop to the Mac Superstore, and Gary solved the problem.  He changed a couple of administrator settings, and everything has worked beautifully ever since.  Command S now does what it should, and my project will now be easy to finish.

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2011, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

A Moment Of Heaven On Earth

I meant to post this link when I received it a few months ago, but haven’t had time to until now.

Maybe you’ve already seen this video of a Random Act Of Culture as the Opera Company Of Philadelphia performed the Hallelujah Chorus at Macy’s in Philadelphia.  If you haven’t, take a few minutes to watch it – if you have, you might want to see it again.  Here’s the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp_RHnQ-jgU

Watch the faces as people hear the music, realize what it is, and stop to listen.  Some perhaps experienced it only as an unexpected moment of culture, but others obviously saw the event as a call to worship.

Who knows – maybe you will find an opportunity to use your art to slip a kingdom-of-God influence into a determinedly secular culture.

 

Here are the people who made this event possible — I’ve simply copied the text posted with the video on YouTube.

http://www.operaphila.org/facebook — On Saturday, October 30, 2010, the Opera Company of Philadelphia brought together over 650 choristers from 28 participating organizations to perform one of the Knight Foundation’s “Random Acts of Culture” at Macy’s in Center City Philadelphia. Accompanied by the Wanamaker Organ – the world’s largest pipe organ – the OCP Chorus and throngs of singers from the community infiltrated the store as shoppers, and burst into a pop-up rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah” at 12 noon, to the delight of surprised shoppers. This event is one of 1,000 “Random Acts of Culture” to be funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation over the next three years. The initiative transports the classical arts out of the concert halls and opera houses and into our communities to enrich our everyday lives. To learn more about this program and view more events, visit http://www.randomactsofculture.org. The Opera Company thanks Macy’s and the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ (http://www.wanamakerorgan.com) for their partnership, as well as Organ Music Director Peter Conte and Fred Haas, accompanists; OCP Chorus Master Elizabeth Braden, conductor; and Sound Engineer James R. Stemke. For a complete list of participating choirs and more information, visit http://www.operaphila.org/RAC. This event was planned to coincide with the first day of National Opera Week.

 

For clues about upcoming Random Acts of Culture, find us on Facebook http://www.operaphila.org/facebook or follow us on Twitter http://www.operaphila.org/twitter

 

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2011, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

 

 

 

Creativity Includes Organizing

Genesis 1 shows that God organized as He created.  On day one He made light; then He put the light over here and the darkness over there.  On day two, He put one kind of water down here and another up there.  On day three He put dry land over here and seas over there.  Organizing was part of His creative process.

God has been convicting me lately that I need to organize my work, just as He organized His.  He used time, dividing His projects into different days.  People like to argue about how long God’s days are, but I’ll leave that to the experts.  All I know about each day is that it seemed to have three ingredients:  He made something where there used to be nothing, He organized it, and He finished each day by sitting back to look at what He’d done and to say, “It’s good.”

Have you ever noticed that the artists who manage to get their work out to the public are very organized?

When I first began recording music – we’ve given a corner of the living room to recording – I began filling my computer with files:  file 1 was a Cubase file, files 2-4 were the individual tracks in the Cubase file; file 5 was a rough mixdown of the Cubase file so I could put it on a CD and listen to it in the car; file 6 was an mp3 I could put on my iPod.  Six files per song – and two hours of recording on a Saturday afternoon could generate six songs with six files apiece, or a total of thirty-six files.  Then later in the week, I might record again…

The same process applies to graphics, writing, and videos.  I won’t spell it out here, but often it takes several versions of the same file to finish a project – and several more if I format it for print, for internet, for CD, for DVD, and who knows what else?  Then I might want to save a half-finished version to use as a template for future projects.

It’s taken me years to learn that just creating something where there used to be nothing isn’t enough.  I need to include organizing as part of the creative process; only then can I find the file I need so I can look back over what I’ve done and sigh with satisfaction, “It is good.”

All too often I sputter in frustration, irritated because I can’t find the file I need, or because my hard drive is full and I can’t add a new project.

Genesis 1 doesn’t show God getting frustrated.  Via the language of conviction, He’s telling me it’s time for me to learn from Him.  His ways and thoughts are higher than mine.

When God starts speaking to us with the language of conviction, a landslide of fresh wisdom awaits us as we respond to Him.  For more about God’s language of conviction, click here – the conviction of the Holy Spirit is the fear of the Lord.  This is why I’m so sure a new beginning of wisdom, which includes creativity, awaits me as I respond to conviction.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2011, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

God Reveals Secrets — What Font To Use

Here’s a very simple testimony about hearing from God as I lay out a book for self-publication.

It’s my wife’s conversion story, and when my daughter-in-law pasted the Word document manuscript into InDesign with a 6×9 inch page size, it came to more than 300 pages.

I needed to tweak her layout – Danielle is good at what she does, but we hadn’t known how we would want to format the book.  So now it was time to come back and add touchups.

One was the font:  Danielle had used Times as a default serif font.  But now that we’re in the last stages of publication, we realized we wanted to try another.  I chose Garamond, but JoAnn didn’t like it.  We agreed that I would try another, and we’d make our choices together.

That night I decided to soak in God’s presence before bed.  God graciously took me to a rich place of conviction, calling me into aspects of holiness I’d never thought about before.  Tears were trickling down my face as I lay in His presence.

JoAnn walked in and said, “I’ve been researching online.  The font we need is new times roman.”

I fell asleep soon, and woke up in the morning and went straight to the computer.  It took just a few minutes to change the body text style in InDesign, and now the whole book was in times new roman – there is no “new times Roman” but I figured JoAnn had gotten the word order wrong.  No big deal.

By the time she was up, the job was done and I’d printed a few pages of a test file.  “Here it is, in times new roman,” I announced, “just like what you told me last night.  How do you like it?”

“I like it,” she said, riffling through the pages.  “But what do you think I told you last night?  I didn’t tell you anything.  I came in the room and I could tell God had taken you somewhere, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

We soon realized that I had seen her either in a dream or a vision, and that God had given me the font to use.  And it was ideal; it looks good, and it’s easy to read.  Here are three comments about this experience.

This is an example of abiding and obeying, as Jesus talked about in John 15. God looks for us to respond when He speaks – we call this obedience – just as He responds when we speak – we call this answered prayer.

I’ve written more about this in the 31-day devotional, “Learn To Hear From God”.  See http://www.squidoo.com/learn-to-hear-from-god-day-7

It’s like the give-and-take as a married couple responds to one another’s words.

God didn’t do all my thinking for me. I’m still looking for appropriate fonts for chapter numbers and titles.  No visions this time; I have to do my homework.

Over the years, I’ve seen this again and again.  God often gives a key insight but then lets us work out many other issues ourselves.  It appears He is interested in having us develop our skills; this is why He doesn’t usually give us every detail of a project by revelation.

The whole experience began as I was investing in the language of conviction. The fear of God was working in my heart as I lingered in God’s presence, and conviction – the fear of the Lord – is a new beginning of divine wisdom.

Embrace conviction when it comes, and expect a new flow of wisdom.  More about this at http://www.squidoo.com/learn-to-hear-from-God-day-15

Stan Smith  ::  © 2011, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Can Entertainment Improve Us?

Here’s a poll where you can share whether entertainment has helped you grow.  I posted links to videos of two songs that made an impact on me when I was younger, and that still shape my thinking today. These songs definitely helped me become a better person, as did the book/movie To Kill A Mockingbird.

http://www.squidoo.com/can-entertainment-improve-us-

Leave your own comments or examples here, or use the link and use the poll and the guestbook there.

Also, help us choose a cover for my wife’s new book at

http://www.squidoo.com/mind-lost-mind-found-cover-duel

Thanks for your input.

Which Cover Do You Like Better?

Miracle of miracles!  At last, I’ve almost finished writing JoAnn’s testimony book.  The next step is to change the names of all the characters, hiding the identities of friends who may not want to be known for the escapades of their ill-spent youth.

Meanwhile, JoAnn has been designing the cover.  We’ve posted two rough drafts at http://www.squidoo.com/mind-lost-mind-found-cover-duel and if you have a minute, visit the link and vote.  It won’t take long…

We’re learning from the comments people post.  Thanks for your input.

Learn By Soaking

I have to learn a lot of new technology these days, and sometimes it feels oppressive.

It always looks easy in the manual or the tutorial, but even if I follow directions step-by-step, the wrong results come up on my computer screen.  And sometimes the directions are incomprehensible.

“To articulate your bremis, drag and drop it into the orange quemo.  Until your bremis is articulated, you will not be able to save or to export your files.”

What’s a bremis?  As far as that goes, I don’t know why it has to be articulated, but I’m willing to accept that it’s a necessary step in creating a file I can use.  Then I look for the quemo, whatever that is, and I can’t find it or anything orange anywhere.  Otherwise the drag and drop command seems simple enough.

Am I the only one who gets frustrated with this stuff?  Or is there an in-crowd comprised of people who intuitively know where to look for the orange quemo?  I feel like a leper, forever doomed to remain outside.  Perhaps those who create tutorials and manuals suspect that I’ll bring a highly contagious strain of ignorance into cyberspace if they don’t lock me out.

But God…

I was especially frustrated on Sunday as I tried to get my digital music recorder to work.  Finally I lay down to soak or even to sleep – I didn’t care which.  I think I was in bed about an hour and a half; I drifted in and out of sleep.  But I did sincerely attempt to engage with God.  I didn’t seem to connect.

In spite of my feeble prayer life, I got up knowing what to do.  I went back to the tangle of cables, the keyboards, the laptop, the recorder.  Click – click – click – I knew what buttons to push and the recorder began working.

Since then, I have been using the software program intuitively, doing things nobody has ever taught me to do.

Why was the process so baffling before I soaked, and why is it happening intuitively now?  It’s not as though God or an angel came to me and gave clear instructions.

Perhaps the answer is in Isaiah 40: 31 –  “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.”  I once heard a language scholar teach that waiting on God means being braided together with Him like strands of a rope, and the renewing of strength is an exchange of strength.

Soaking can be a time of intimacy with God, a time of being braided together with Him.  Then, in a way I don’t begin to understand, I managed to exchange my ability to use the software for His.

I don’t know how this works.  All I know is that in God’s presence, mental blocks crumble.  It suddenly becomes possible to learn, and to learn quickly.  Art isn’t just a mental exercise – nor is the process of learning to use new media.  It’s also a spiritual exercise of engaging with God, for He alone knows how to unlock the full potential He created within us.  It pays to include soaking time in the process whenever we need to learn the mechanics of something new.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2010, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

When To Edit Inspiration

An artist with an inspiration is like a jeweler with a precious stone.  The artist needs to cut, polish, and set the inspiration God has given, carefully showcasing its beauty.  I’ve just had an experience that illustrates this principle.  Here’s the story.

1.  Learning, tests, and experiments. I’m on several learning curves right now.  One relates to movies: how to use a new video camera, to create sets, to arrange lighting, and to use iMovie to put a video together.  Another relates to music recording:  how to use digital recording equipment, and how to blend the sounds as I use two keyboards at a time.

I learn more by playing around with my equipment than by trying to master the contents of a tutorial.  Just the way my mind works, I guess.  So sometimes I record videos to test light conditions, or music to test sound blends.

2.  Some things don’t quite work. One of my test videos shows me sitting still – I was trying to – but I kept fidgeting.  There was a surprisingly deep look on my face, and I said nothing and did nothing.  So I watched the video and found it ironic and absurd.  I took it to JoAnn.  She laughed her head off.

Later I recorded four solos for a CD, each with a different sound combination.  I decided I could use three, but the fourth didn’t fit the flow of the CD.

Then a few days ago, I was soaking and trying to focus on Jesus.  I remembered my test recordings and realized I could combine the video with the music.  The drama of the music would make the video more absurd than ever.  I laughed and laughed, and assumed this was just one of those times when my mind had wandered while I was trying to engage with God.

3.  Then God visited me. I was fast asleep, but at 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. I was awakened after dreaming about my absurd video idea.  As I woke up, I felt God’s presence strongly.

Immediately, words came to me.  They were short phrases and sentences, very simple, ending with a scripture.  Waves of conviction swept over me, and I wept and shook for almost an hour.

4.  So I put it together. I had to learn a few things to make it work:  how to add text to various segments of a movie, how to time the text, and how to match the music to the various facial tics recorded on the video.  It isn‘t perfect, but it was good training.

Then JoAnn and I looked at it.  We agreed:  the video with its music is absurd, but the words are profound.  They don’t match.

“At least, it shows that your sense of humor wasn’t impaired by your surgery,” said my wife.  JoAnn was one of three family members who prayed that my weird sense of humor would survive.  “Anybody who knows you will know God has restored you.”

No doubt about it, I’m restored.  My humor is often inappropriate.  So now I’ve recreated the video, this time with 0% irony and 100% sincerity, a tone to match the words.

5.  Should I stick with the original inspiration, just as it came to me? It’s tempting to say, “I want to make this video just the way I saw it when God met me in the night.”  A jeweler might as well say, “I want to present this diamond just the way I found it in the stream.”

But I decided God used the first inspiration to get me to start the project, but then He expected me to edit it.  The highest inspiration was on the words, not the video.  I needed to revise it to frame the words properly.

Version One, the uncut stone, is on Facebook with a testimony about restoration. Version Two is on YouTube, for all the world to see.  Compare for yourself.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2010, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Inspiration Must Be Edited

You may have noticed already that the title of this article is a paraphrase of scripture:  “prophecy must be judged.”

I’ve written a few posts about a CD recording project I’m working on. It features prophetic music, but after two recording sessions, we have enough material that we should be able to edit it and produce a CD.

I wrote a few weeks ago that I had taken time to soak and to listen to whatever God might want to say about this project.  To my surprise, I sensed that He would open the heavens to the participants.  For the word I sensed God telling me, see Open Heaven Arts.

Now, three weeks later, it appears that I did in fact hear from God that day when I was soaking.  Several open-heaven encounters have happened so far as we work on this project.  I’ve posted a summary at Worship In The Open Heavens.  I believe that whatever God has done for our group is a sample of what God will doe for others.

So that brings me back to the title of this article:  I have several hours of inspired recordings, but now it’s time to edit.  Here are a few principles that affect editing.

Why is editing necessary? Because none of us can claim to be verbally inspired, as the writers of scripture were.  No matter how inspired we are today, we must always submit our prophetic experiences – the gift of prophecy, seeing visions, angelic encounters, and so on – for judgment.  Our first umpire is scripture.

“Prove all things.” These words from I Thessalonians 5:21 tell us to judge all things – not only prophetic inspiration as it flows in the church, but also our artwork as a project is in progress.  But there’s something we look for as we judge.

“Hold fast what is good.” The next line in I Thessalonians 5:21 tells us we’re looking for the inspired something that is worth saving.  This is true in the church, and it’s true in the arts.  Let me give examples of what this process looks like as I’m sorting the hours of music files and choosing what to use in the CD.

I found a passage I can’t use because the choice of keyboard sounds didn’t work.  It sounded fine in the studio; later, the recording sounded dreadful.  For several minutes a very sweet melody unfolded.  I won’t be able to use it on the CD because I had chosen the wrong sounds.  But I need to harvest the melody – it poured out spontaneously – to use again somewhere else.

In another track, I experimented with a new sound I’ve never used before.  The concept worked incredibly well, but I’m not sure if it will flow with the rest of the CD.  I may or may not use it in this project, but I look forward to using this sound again in a live setting.

God took us to high places consistently as we recorded, but the quality of our music had its ups and downs.  There were moments of human error, almost always mine.  The purpose of editing is to capture the highest moments of inspiriation, and to let the Holy Spirit be the star.

So we’ll cut out the worst of the mistakes – they simply distract from what God Himself would impart through the music.  But if we feature the richly inspired moments, we can hope that the presence of God we enjoyed as we rehearsed and recorded will spill over into the lives of the listeners.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2010, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com