Lois Farfel Stark's Blog: Lois' Lens

World Premiere of Seismic: Music and Animation Inspired by The Telling Image

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine receiving the Wildcatter Award for Creativity. Never did I imagine my book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times, to be the inspiration for an original musical score with animation. Yet that is what ROCO, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, has done. The commissioned music and animation had its world premiere at Miller Outdoor Theater in Houston, Texas, on Friday, Sept. 29th, 2023. All of these events fill me with wild gratitude.

I’m excited to share the music and animation for the event from ROCO: Tectonal by Anthony DiLorenzo (composer) & Cynthia Wong (animation).

The Shape of Thinking Through Time

“Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside the Earth is available…a
new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.”

— Fred Hoyle, British astronomer, 1948

Kick up your perspective. Stretch your imagination. The James Webb Space Telescope is delivering startling new images of the universe from as close to the origin of creation as humans have ever peeked. In some images, what looks like a black canvas with single stars is actually dark space where each point of light is a galaxy. It boggles our sense of time and space. Now add the realization that information from the James Webb Space Telescope is delivered in infrared light and humans cannot see infrared. NASA must translate the data into colors and forms that humans can perceive. So even as we are humbled by the enormity of the universe, add another dose of humility, knowing that what we do see is only what our limited visual spectrum allows

I’ll be speaking on this and more—in April at the Renesan Institute in Santa Fe! Read below for more details on the event, which will be hybrid in-person and via Zoom.

Renesan Institute for Lifelong Learning: The Shape of Thinking Through Time

DATE: April 10, 2023, 1:00pm - 3:00pm
LOCATION: Online via Zoom and In-Person: 1200 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87505, Renesan Institute
COST: $20
Shape itself can help us read the past and glimpse the future. A web shape summarizes migratory humans’ worldview, imitated in round thatched huts, kivas, and Stonehenge. A ladder mindset arose with urban humans, reflected in structures from pyramids to skyscrapers. Today networks master our lives. What’s next? From web to ladder, network to next, we shape our world; then it shapes us.

REGISTER NOW

A full High Five to celebrate!

A full High Five to celebrate!  Five book award competitions have chosen my book The Telling Image Shapes of Changing Times. It won Grand Prize Best Nonfiction 2019 from Next Gen Indie Book Awards, where it was recognized with a ceremony in Washington, D.C. during the American Library Association Convention. It was selected for the  Nautilus Book Award, which honors better books for a better world. The National Indie Excellence Award and the Independent Press Award also chose it as their winner. News of my fifth book award was just received from NYC Big Book Award, which selects for great ideas from around the globe. The Telling Image took home awards in three categories: Photography, Coffee Table Book, and Book Interior Design Nonfiction.

It is gratifying that ideas that sleep in my mind awaken in books that reach other minds. It is thrilling when my book is honored for its writing, photographs, design, cover, and quality. Writers write in isolation, not knowing if the words will land with welcome by readers. When awards are received, it lets the writer know that an invisible full circle has occurred - that an unknown reader and an unknown judge have sent their nod that an idea transferred from my mind to theirs. It is a sacred circle. 

Exploring Creative Thinking in an Uncertain World

I was interviewed by the Angles of Lattitude Podcast on my book, The Telling Image, and what it’s like to be a creative thinker in a time of uncertainty.

When you’re learning something new, using a circular or global way of learning to connect the dots might make more sense to utilize than a linear model. What is the shape of your thinking?

Learn more about The Angles of Lattitude Podcast here

One Source of Wisdom is a Wider Lens

I was also interviewed by Rob Kall of the Bottom-up show on how the future is embedded in the present… to deeply see the present we need to embrace paradox, hold opposites and accept complexities with infinite causes and consequences.

New Podcast Interviews and Talks

In July, I was interviewed by A Pretty Normal Podcast, a show that re-imagines what society considers normal. It was interesting to dive into my past as a documentary filmmaker and how I came to write my book, The Telling Image.

I also gave a talk to the Institute for Spirituality and Health in Houston, Texas. Some fantastic conversation came from the questions asked in the Q&A that I’m still thinking about today. You can watch the talk via Youtube.

The Telling Image is a bestseller on Amazon and you can grab your copy here. We can read the past and glimpse the future by watching when shapes shift. See what you think.

You Are My Other Self: Recent Articles and Mentions

The virus may be invisible, but the rush of human activity reducing to a hush is visible on seismic readings. The Earth itself knows we are ceasing from disturbing her. Coronavirus lockdowns have changed the way Earth moves.

Breakdown or Breakthrough: Changing the Covid Crisis to Opportunity (International Coronavirus Journal)

Each day the Coronavirus unfurls in new dimensions, statistics, challenges. In April I wrote a feature and in May it was published in an International Coronavirus Journal. The exponential nature of this virus' spread and its consequences continually surprise. May strength and imagination be with everyone dealing with its developing consequences.

Through this pandemic, we relearn we are part of nature. Viruses are part of us, between us, in us, connecting us. Viruses are highly adaptive. They mutate easily. Maybe they are teaching us how to evolve.

My article was shared by Reverend Barkley S. Thompson, Christ Church Cathedral Houston, who has his own thoughts to share about the Covid Crisis:

Success Life Masters Series with Eric Reid

I recently interviewed with Eric Reid about my book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times. In these times, we need a bigger perspective. One that lets us read the past and glimpse the future by watching when shapes shift.

Check out the video interview here:

The Fifth Dimension Podcast with Evan McDermod

How can human perception and historical progress be tracked through the years? And based on what we know about the past, can we use it to see the direction we are heading in the future. When looking at different eras of human history, we can see our perception of reality encompassed through our methods of organization. By looking at our past, we can begin to enhance our own perspective to see the interconnectedness that does exist between all humans, and in turn create a society fueled by that widened lens.

The Telling Image Wins Independent Press Award

A happy surprise.

My book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times, just won its fourth book award from Independent Press Awards, an international competition.

This comes on top of being named Grand Prize Winner for Best Nonfiction 2019 from Next Gen Indie Book Awards, a Gold from Nautilus Book Awards, and an Indie Excellence Award. This book was 25 years in the making, so the satisfaction that it was understood and appreciated is immense. Enjoy shape-seeking.

Follow me on social media:

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

A Third Win for The Telling Image

The National Indie Excellence Awards emphasize a synergy of form and content in judging their award winners. My book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times delivers its message through its 200 images, as much as its text delivers its ideas - a synergy of form and content. So I was thrilled to be selected for its Excellence Award for both Arts and Entertainment as well as Cover Design.

As a former documentary filmmaker for NBC News, I had to find a telling image that conveyed the essence of the information that I scripted. In covering foreign cultures or national issues, I realized how important shape is in downloading the world into order and meaning. Shape itself can be a symbol that tells us the thinking, the mental map, of the culture that built a circular settlement, a pyramid, a town square, a roundabout or a downtown grid. These very shapes reflect whether a society is based on equality or hierarchy, on qualities or quantities, on flow or fixed places.

National awards for Indie books are especially welcomed as independent publishing, from university presses to hybrid publishing, are rising dramatically while traditional publishers are merging and shrinking. The more ideas that are shared, the stronger the society. Thanks to awards such as this, merit can still be recognized even within a system where all can enter. I am grateful to the National Indie Excellence Award judges for the difference their recognition makes for independent writers and excited to be recognized for excellence.

A Second Gold for The Telling Image: Next Generation Indie Book Award

The Telling Image Wins Gold

The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times was awarded a Next Generation Indie Book Award in the category of Coffee Table Book/Photography!

Another happy surprise. My book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times won another Gold book award. Next Generation Indie Book Awards will celebrate its winners in a Washington, DC ceremony in June. This Gold adds to the Gold from Nautilus Book Awards. It is gratifying that the book’s ideas and images on our search for pattern and meaning have found their way into the minds of readers.

Images are the dominant language of our time. Visual processing takes up 30% of the brain’s function. It is the first and foremost way we take in the world. The 200 images in this book reveal how humans throughout time, from migratory to modern living, have made sense of the world through shape. So it is particularly fitting that this Gold award is for the category of Coffee Table Book/Photography. The eyes are our portal and pathway. Yet, the way we see and understand the world shifts at pivot points in history.

Pattern recognition is a buzz word of our data processing age. Yet pattern recognition is what humans have always done, ordering the world through shape, from stone circles, to pyramids, to helices and networks.

May images of the circle dances in tribal societies, the skyscrapers of modern cities, the helix of DNA and the links and nodes of networks seep into your eyes and show you how we shape our world, then how that shape, shapes us.

Order Your Copy of The Telling Image

The Telling Image is a Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winner

The Telling Image

Winner of the Nautilus Book Awards

The Telling Image is a winner of the Nautilus Book Awards!

The idea for a book often aligns with a point in time, a story or observation that inspired it. Yet the process of writing a book is more porous than simply a beginning and an end. The Telling Image brewed in me for decades before its publication. After the physical book was in stores and at conferences and in the hands of readers, it still was not in its final stage. The book is simply the suitcase of the multiple ideas that are enclosed. And those ideas embed uniquely in each reader. So a book begins, not ends, at publication. It is never ‘finished’, as its ideas have thousands of carriers in those who read the book.

I was deeply gratified that my book was recognized by the Nautilus Book Awards with a Gold Award for The Creative Process. This felt particularly wonderful to me, as it was a long and meandering thought process that led it from field to field until I found an encompassing way to speak of many things – how we see, how we think, organize, find pattern and meaning – and how the very answers to these questions shift at major transition points in history.

The Nautilus Awards recognize books in many genres that nurture positive change. It aims for Better Books for a Better world. And it combs the world to find the ideas bubbling in all categories, from 36 states and a dozen other nations. We need this kind of harvester in our world. One that looks for the best expression of our highest aims.

Writing is a solitary process. It often feels like a spider throwing out its silk thread without knowing whether it will reach and attach to any destination. It is an act of faith. So it is with great gratitude to Nautilus Book Awards that I can smile knowing that the thread of ideas I flung out to the world was so graciously received.

Order your copy of the telling image