Laynie Tzena
My blogs
| Gender | Female |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Artist and Business Owner |
| Location | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Introduction | I'm a multi-disciplinary artist (writer, performer, visual artist) and do creativity development, helping people expand how they use creativity. In business, this translates to marketing (choosing the right name for your company; finding your best customers; writing material that speaks directly to those customers; adapting to changes in the market, new kinds of competition, etc.), negotiation (understanding the value of a given product/service you are buying or selling), and business trouble-shooting. Outside the business world, many people have creative projects they've been meaning to get to, and I help them "get off the dime." I've been teaching writing and working with writers on a variety of projects for over 20 years. Many years ago I created the "Write About Your Life" training, and still love helping people tell their stories. My own creative work has appeared in venues ranging from museums and galleries to stage performances, and has been published in magazines. |
| Interests | Art (writing, music, visual art [esp. photography, film, and sculpture]), creativity, innovation, interdisciplinary partnerships, languages, literacy, micropreneurship, microfinance, urban planning. |
| Favorite movies | 20th Century, My Man Godfrey, North by Northwest, Casablanca, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, Small Change, Love on the Run, The Last Metro, Manhattan, Annie Hall, Shampoo, The Apartment, Sunset Boulevard, The Giraffe, Sleepless in Seattle, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Gorgeous!, Green Card, Local Call!, Wings of Desire, Emotional Arithmetic, Amelie, Max Minsky and Me, Sixty-Six, Aviva My Love, So Long Are You Young, Three Mothers, The Last Waltz, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. |
| Favorite music | Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Joanne Brackeen, Michel Petrucciani, Jessica Williams, Geri Allen, Billy Taylor, Dave Frishberg, Tom McClung, Anat Cohen, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Esther Phillips, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Betty Carter, Eddie Jefferson, Sheila Jordan and Harvey Swartz, Tim Moran and Tony Vacca, Randy Weston and Roy Brooks. Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Supremes, Otis Redding, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison, Geoff Muldaur, Bad Faith, The Beatles, The Allman Brothers, The Band, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Fleetwood Mac, the Roches, Great Big Sea, Face, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Mike Marshall, Kaila Flexer, Les Yeux Noirs. Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Paul Simon, Carole King, John Sebastian, James Taylor, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Ira Marlowe, Beth Neilsen Chapman, Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, David Mallett, Bonnie Raitt, Richard Thompson, Carrie Newcomer, John Gorka, Christine Lavin, Mose Allison, Judy Collins, Phoebe Snow, Roberta Flack, Rita Coolidge, Linda Ronstadt, Aaron Neville, Dr. John, Taj Mahal, the Klezmatics. |
| Favorite books | Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, The Little Disturbances of Man, The Jewel of Life, Black Tickets, The Nimrod Flip-Out, It All Would Have Startled Columbus, Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States, Metropolitan Life, Without Feathers, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Panther in the Basement, A Tale of Love and Darkness, The Path of Least Resistance, Working it Out: 23 Women Writers, Artists, Scientists, and Scholars Talk About Their Lives and Work, In the Land of Israel, A History of the Cinema to 1970, Telling it Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film, Dialogue with Photography, Photographers on Photography. Cookbooks: Joyce Goldstein's Back to Square One, (Rockfish with Indonesian Sauce, Sopa di Lima), James Beard's How to Eat Better for Less Money, (His Lentil-Chard soup! Honey!), Cookin' Healthy With One Foot Out the Door, Moosewood Cookbook, North African Cooking, South American Cooking, Tassajara Bread, Tassajara Cooking, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, (which, fortunately, includes lapsed vegetarians), and too many others to count. |