Mayor Kozak has to be commended - complimented, really - on becoming: colorful!
Bright color - a definitive so-there! statement - energizes, enlivens - while a large part of why the general vibe of City Hall is muted at best is the physical dullness of the premises: surely influencing - while in reverse influenced by - the energy-level of its inhabitants - expressed through hushed color-choices in manner of personal expression and appearance.
Smallishtown politics and the power of beige!
When Councillor Purcell speaks-up emotionally for life-giving color in the possibly suburbia-by-the-lake of Nelson Landing: she has a huge point! Huge enough to as well cover City Hall - a building totally devoid of positive expression of: anything!
Isn't it curious that the White Building - ostensibly the source from which all things affirming flow - is really the Bland Building? With no attempt made ever to color it alive - with individuality of most inhabitants checked at the door upon entering!
Our feast of autumn-colors is over now - we do like color in nature: impersonal and non-threatening there - but the last few weeks have brought up the inevitable heartburn of about 6 drab months. This - no matter how much we profess to love Nelson - a (usually non-declared openly) bummer for many, no amount of Vitamin D, coffee and commenting in the Star will cure.
Getting out for a while is a statement without the commitment of a statement.
For most it's just more splashing in and being splashed by shades of mud-puddle. But then - Nelsonites usually are: minds dressed in Benjamin Moore's heritage-color chic.
The comfort of non-committal in a town where politics are uncomfortably personal; business is uncomfortably personal; the personal is uncomfortably cliquish: and all interconnected by calculated need - often at the same time - can be furtive-making.
Watch it - watch out!
True friends stab you in the front.
Oscar Wilde
Creativity and color are inexorably bound together. Not only as moonbeams and fairie-dust - but also as focused insight coming from being thoroughly informed, particularly in an environment of often seemingly mind-numbing photo-copied routine: like the Council Chamber.
With the energy of personal coloring - showing your true colors - there having the power to turn halfhearted attempts into determined challenges: this leading to solutions of benefit to the greater whole.
The power of transforming never-diminishing stacks of paper into: people!
Applying creativity - as in effective connecting, planning - is part of Council's purpose. As is fostering it as well as the moonbeam-kind.
There has been undefined talk in Council of using creativity in dealing with the panhandling-bylaw impasse: come spring when light(ness) returns. Often it takes creativity wearing sensible shoes to be able to spring forth from the great beige.
Council's reception of/reaction to the cop-shop's Provisional Budget (PB) 2016 - COW 16 Nov, 2016 - is totally colorless. Seeing that this supposedly is an exact rerun of the bizarre PB 2015 - a long eventful year ago! - a possibly gotcha!-question is: Does the NPD today perceive Nelson-in-total exactly as it did one year ago?
Clearly there is no love lost between Council and the NPD in this presentation - but Council not making a public effort at connecting with the cops is not creative - constructive.
A P.R. opportunity missed. The need to be constantly/consistently mindful of the audience - the public! - comes with the territory.
Interestingly - in the same COW - a cultural presentation by the color/creativity-hub Touchstones - heavy on props never used - is completely lacking in color and creative energy: supercilious and boring.
Councillors must challenge their own, each other's and concerned citizens'/groups' individuality openly, strongly! Stroking can easily appear to be beige. As will attempting to safely blend-in-or-maybe-not with what?
Pale silence can be interpreted as disinterest, a hidden agenda, fear, being uninformed or wanting to just go home please now please!
Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
Oscar Wilde
Showtime! Show-and-tell time!
In living color!
Images:
Jean-Paul Goude
Memphis
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