Creativity Abounds and The Emmys Happened

If you've been here before, you may know I consider it a mandate of my obsession to debrief my readers on recent awards shows, how brightly the fashion shone, and how deeply I was inspired by this speech or that one or the video montage set to the theme from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. (That happened. That song makes anything matter.)

And I did, indeed, glue myself to a chair before the 64th Annual Emmy Awards. I enjoyed Julianne Moore's neon dress and Tina Fey's Grecian silhouette and Julie Bowen's every blond and dewy detail. I loved the bit where Julia Louis-Dreyfus read Amy Pohler's acceptance speech "by mistake" and the one where Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert tried to keep Jon Stewart from the stage. I loved the stage and the montages before each category. And in every way, I felt it was well-done and lovely except for the red carpet when they kept talking about how sweltering it was. Again. And again. And again.

But whereas usually I watch with at least figurative pen and paper so that I can take at least figurative notes on every detail that inspires me to create, this time my figurative pen and paper were still capturing all my thoughts from the STORY 2012 conference in Chicago. I returned on Saturday. Picture a train, speeding through Illinois farmland. Picture a woman in a soft, gray hat. She spent part of the ride devouring a novel by the same author whose memoir she recently loved. She spent part of it replaying in her head the songs and quotes from the musicians and presenters of STORY. And she spent the end happily stretched across two seats, dozing from the exhaustion of it all.

I watched the Emmys last night. And I loved them. But only two days before, I sat in a room with my own network of filmmakers, songwriters, producers, and those who pen their art. And I'm struck by the idea that neither room had bigger ideas or better execution. We are all the same. We create.

(photo by @danieljohn)