Telling a Story

I've said many times that, when I write, I'm compelled to tell a story, that telling a story is, for me, what it's all about. Writing is, of course, the way I do it, but it's certainly not the only way. There's music and film, and art. A friend sent me the link to this and I (and clearly many other people) found it incredible, a truly remarkable way to tell a story.

They sent me an explanation to read before I watched the video. I'll add that, but I encourage you to watch the video first.


First read the story..

This video shows the winner of "Ukraine’s Got Talent", Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.


Kseniya Simonova says:
"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger compliment."


I lost no one in the WWII, no father, no grandfather, no one. But so many people did. And, yes, I cried.

Now, if I could just do that on paper...

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Saturday Quotations: Humanity/Talent and Artificial Intelligence/Technology

Basically, it has to seem in sync with my subjects the past three days...to me. Seemed appropriate. Now, let's look in my bag of quotes...

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
--Elbert Hubbard

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.
--Aldous Huxley

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
-- Lou Holtz

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
-- Mitch Radcliffe

A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.
-- Admiral Arthur W. Radford

Chance favors the prepared mind.
-- Louis Pasteur

Designing an object to be simple and clear takes at least twice as long as the usual way. It requires concentration at the outset on how a clear and simple system would work, followed by the steps required to make it come out that way -- steps which are often much harder and more complex than the ordinary ones. It also requires relentless pursuit of that simplicity even when obstacles appear which would seem to stand in the way of that simplicity.
-- T.H. Nelson

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.
-- Robert Half

If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.
-- General Omar N. Bradley

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
-- Stephen W. Hawking

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
-- Sam Brown

Nothing is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood.
-- Freeman Teague, Jr.

One is more admired for claiming to do good than for proving to be right.
-- R. Emmett Tyrrell

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
-- A.A. Milne

Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play.
-- Carl Orff

The reactor constructors claim that they have devoted more effort to safety problems than any other technologists have. This is true. From the beginning, they have paid much attention to safety and they have been remarkably clever in devising safety precautions. This is…not relevant. If a problem is too difficult to solve, one cannot claim that it is solved by pointing to all the efforts made to solve it.
--Hannes Alfven, Nobel laureate physicist

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
-George Bernard Shaw

Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.
-Albert Einstein

Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.
-Pete Seeger

Shigure: Perfect, now why don't you heat that up for us, Yuki?
Yuki: You're kidding, right?
Shigure: Of course, you're not too handy in the kitchen, are you? Well, Kyo, I guess that leaves you.
Kyo: Why do I gotta do it?
Shigure: No, No, it's alright. If you don't mind letting the last of the wonderful beef stew that Tohru put her heart and soul into preparing for us get burnt to a crisp, than neither do I. After all, I suppose burnt beef stew would be just as satisfying as burnt miso soup or burnt rice or burnt eggs or any of the fine burnt dishes Yuki used to make for use before Tohru fell into our lives. Ah well, we all seemed to do quite well on our charcoal-rich diet and I'm sure there's no reason why we won't grow accustomed to it again.
-From Fruits Basket (anime)

For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.
-From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
-From Mostly Harmless

Dr. Peter Venkman: Hey Egon, you know, this reminds me of the time that you tried to drill a hole through your head.
Dr. Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.
-From Ghostbusters

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
- Niels Bohr

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
-William Osler, M.D.

Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.
-Dr. Joyce Brothers

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.
-Oprah Winfrey

I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.
-Douglas Adams

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
--George Patton

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.
-James A. Michener, attributed

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
--Will Rogers, New York Times Aug. 31 1924

I have been told that a young would-be composer wrote to Mozart asking advice as to how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding form and that it would be better to start with something simpler. The young man protested, 'But Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when you were younger than I am now.' And Mozart replied, 'I never asked how.'
- Isaac Asimov, 1920 - 1992

Talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.
- Carl von Clausewitz, 1780 – 1831

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