![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/226\/2013\/11\/Cravis-in-the-Dark.jpg\" "\\"Cravis")
<\/a>What is Hi 5 to the Face? Find out here.<\/a><\/p>\n This week, Hi 5s go out to\u2026<\/p>\n Fast Company\u2019s Eric Jaffe:<\/strong> For this fantastic article on \u201cWhy Creativity Thrives in the Dark.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve known instinctively since childhood that I\u2019m more creative in a dimly lit, or dark, room. And since high school I\u2019ve felt frustrated in rooms brightly lit with fluorescent panels, sensing my best creativity and capacity for learning is going to waste beneath them. Under fluorescent arrays, I feel like a bug on a bug zapper. I learned to save my homework until I could get home to my bedroom, control the light levels, and really concentrate. And I learned to write stories in dark rooms, dreaming myself into other worlds, with the focused beam as a desk lamp like a lighthouse calling me through the fog, wild ideas coming to life in the shadows around me.<\/p>\n Every day, I look for an opportunity to spend time in a cave of my own design, where I will have the strange sensation that I am truly waking up. Lately, that has become extremely difficult, as the only cave I have time to visit is my car during my commute, and I can\u2019t get much writing done there.<\/p>\n This article doesn\u2019t just back up my convictions. It affirms them with \u2026 can it be? \u2026 SCIENCE.<\/p>\n It may not help solve my current challenges. It may not provide me with the time I need or a space of my own. But it tells me I\u2019m not crazy for believing that light makes a huge difference in my creative life, and that I\u2019m not crazy for thinking that my work is harder in a bright, harshly lit, wide-open space.<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n NPR\u2019s John Burnett and my lifelong friend Todd Fadel:<\/strong> For working together to make this article about the volatile combination of beer-drinking and church<\/a>\u00a0happen. This article led to a live chat at NPR in which Todd threw down all kinds of wisdom.<\/p>\n Oh, and here are two pictures of two Todd Fadels \u2014 a beardless one, and the one who plays a dwarf that was cut from Peter Jackson\u2019s The Hobbit<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n Sam Phillips:<\/strong> For being one of the most relentlessly creative artists I know, for releasing one of the most wildly inventive albums I\u2019ve heard all year (Push Any Button), and for writing this commentary on how visual art inspires her music<\/a>\u2026 for The New York Times<\/em>!<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n Mike D\u2019Angelo:<\/strong> For writing the first concise review of 12 Years a Slave<\/em> I\u2019ve seen<\/a> that is both an adequate description of the film and a thought-provoking one. He writes:<\/p>\n In the film\u2019s most extraordinary moment, a despairing Solomon looks directly into the camera, as if asking those of us in the audience how we can sit there and dispassionately consume his pain. Few viewers will have a ready answer, apart from the duty to stare our country\u2019s shameful legacy square in the face now and then, acknowledging that it happened. Like\u00a0Schindler\u2019s List<\/em>, to which it\u2019s frequently been compared,\u00a012 Years a Slave<\/em>\u00a0tells a story with a somewhat happy ending, but never loses sight of how many others met a much sadder fate. (Bear in mind that Solomon could be freed only because he had started out as free, which was an accident of his birth. For most African-Americans on plantations, it was 75 years a slave.) As both drama and cinema, the film is merely solid, impressive. As a cultural object, however, it\u2019s essential.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2022<\/p>\n Matt Zoller Seitz, James Rocchi and John Sayles:<\/strong> Matt and James, for his review of the new John Sayles movie Go for Sisters<\/em>. And Sayles for being, well, John Sayles (director of The Secret of Roan Innish, Lone Star, Limbo,\u00a0<\/em>and several more favorites) \u2014 one of the most consistently intriguing filmmakers and thoughtful storytellers in cinema today.<\/p>\n Matt Zoller Seitz writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n Sayles is never better than when he\u2019s delving deep into characters working together or at cross purposes, and pointing out how the reasons that people give for doing things are rarely the real reasons. He also gives you a sense that these characters existed long before the film began\u2014that they have tangled personal histories that affect their decisions in the present. \u2026\u00a0It\u2019s the sort of film that isn\u2019t afraid of pausing the story to let the characters deliver amusing anecdotes or heartfelt confessions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And James Rocchi says<\/a>:<\/p>\n Regardless of its pros and cons,\u00a0Go for\u00a0 Sisters\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the latest from John Sayles, marking his 18th film since his debut in 1979 \u2014 is, in its way, a small miracle: A film about people, and about people with real lives, that could stand in its own way as half of a double bill with\u00a0Jackie Brown<\/em>, a similar film about how both goals and risks become much more immediate in the later stages of life. Almost no one makes films like this anymore \u2014 whether at studios, or, for that matter, independently \u2014 but Sayles is still out there, not only making actual films about actual human beings, but doing so superbly.\u00a0 It is not, as some might think, that the American cinema has passed Sayles over; rather, it has rushed by him, and in doing so made a huge mistake.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2022<\/p>\n Jackson Cuidon:<\/strong> For this deep-thinking review of Free Birds<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, in which he writes:<\/p>\n It\u2019s telling that a kid\u2019s movie that nominally celebrates what may be the foundational American holiday, Thanksgiving, actually ends up being a love letter to the most purely-American philosophy ever invented: pragmatism, which says, \u201cnothing means anything, objectively. Whatever meaning is, you\u2019ll only find it by making it yourself. And you\u2019ll know when it\u2019s real, because it\u2019ll work.\u201d What\u2019s more American than that?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2022<\/p>\n ESPN\u2019s Rick Reilly and filmmaker Ridley Scott:<\/strong> Reilly for having the courage to speak the truth at ESPN<\/a>, which I\u2019m sure earned him the wrath of a torch-wielding mob. And Scott for having the guts to make a feature film on the subject<\/a> \u2014 a very bold move indeed.<\/p>\n I had the privilege and pleasure of editing a blog series on this very subject, composed by Dr. John Medina, New York Times-bestselling author of Brain Rules<\/em> and Brain Rules for Baby<\/em>. If you scroll down through the archives of his blog Brainstorm<\/em><\/a>, you\u2019ll find that 13-part series, in which the science supports our worst fears about what football is doing, and has been doing, to players who have entertained us for decades.<\/p>\n We cannot just sit back and enjoy our Monday Night Football like we used to. Not unless we harden our hearts to what we now know is happening out there.<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n