Three things from DAH.

DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I write, organize, plan, produce, manage, direct, act, sing, promote, and make change (not the coin kind).​

First up this week, Limitations … 
I think there are two types of limitations. There are limitations that are solid. Most of us are unable to walk through a wall in our home without a door, for example. Then there are limitations that only seem solid. What if that wall was only paper well painted? Many of life's great surprises come when limitations we believed to be solid prove not so. "The machinery of surprise depends on leading us to reassess what we thought we knew … " (Vera Tobin in her book Elements of Surprise: Our Mental Limits and the Satisfactions of Plot). Breaking through perceived limitations, being surprised by the unexpected, these yield delight and opportunity.
Here's what happens after "surprise!"

Second up this week, Lomography … 
A designer friend told a story (likely apocryphal) about Picasso being confronted by a fellow who asked why he never painted anything realistic. Picasso asked him what he meant by realistic. The fellow took a small photograph of his daughter out of his wallet. "Like this," he said, "A realistic image of my daughter." Picasso replied, "I'm so sorry that your daughter is only two inches tall and flat." Many of us tend to think that photography is a true representation of reality. My mother always wanted her photos sharp and crystal clear, to look like the real thing. But, despite this digital age, there's been a rekindled interest in analog film cameras, including the practice of Lomography, in which old and toy cameras with all their light-leaks and sub-par lenses are appreciated for the strange results -- results that defy the expectations of photo reality to deliver surprise and delight. 
What is Lomography?

Third up this week, Lambrusco … 
"Riunite on ice. That's nice!" Fifty years and more ago the Riunite brand set expectations for Lambrusco in the United States. It was hugely successful! And we all knew (well, most of us believed) that Lambrusco was a thin, sweet, affordable, lightly bubbly red (and sometimes white or pink!) wine from Italy. It surprised me when I first tasted a Lambrusco (somewhat unwillingly) that wasn't sweet but was much darker in color and fuller-flavored than I expected. Lambrusco, in fact, is the name of an ancient and prized Italian red wine grape that pre-dates the Romans. What we understood Lambrusco to be, based on the success of Riunite in the US, was just one type of Lambrusco wine, and not a particularly good type (despite its popularity). We're so easily trained, we humans, to accept limits, to invest in unchallenged expectations. We seem bound for regular surprise or disappointment. 
Lambrusco Wines Worth Drinking

And a little bit extra … 
… SURPRISE by Dorothy Parker: 
My heart went fluttering with fear
Lest you should go, and leave me here
To beat my breast and rock my head
And stretch me sleepless on my bed.
Ah, clear they see and true they say
That one shall weep, and one shall stray
For such is Love's unvarying law...
I never thought, I never saw
That I should be the first to go;
How pleasant that it happened so!

That's all for this week. 
From Mary Oliver's poem "Sometimes" …  

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. 

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