Crossroads Dispatches

speak to my soul

Today, I walked a fair distance  to go to the cafe that speaks to my soul.

There's another quite functional cafe around the corner from me. Were I  wanting coffee, it'd do.

"We're spiritually starved in America and not underfed, but undernourished." - Carol Hornig

At this cafe poetry flows. The main elements: warm blond woods everywhere, hardwood floors, sunlight streaming through glass, no wifi, owners that know your name. Fired play and rainbowed glass art. Wall of teapots: flowered teapots, porcelain teapots, shiny silver teapots, glazed teapots. Cerulean blue plates, giraffe bookmarks, sleek Italian almond hazelnut ginger lemon syrups, intricate little jewel boxes fluttering memories of Murano colors and Venetian sunglasses, undulating anemone ashtrays. Enormous pottery redolent of a woman with an alabaster jar, or maybe something you'd heave to the well for your daily quench. One jar like colossal conch shell, another jar amazonian emerald endive leaves, another striped watermelon ribbons of clay wending vine-like toward the minaret neck.

"It's meant to evoke the way an artist would live." - Ian Schrager, hmmm, does art speak to soul more than design?..."Rather than just slapping art up on the walls of the [Gramercy Park] lobby and guest rooms (although they'll do that too), its spirit will permeate the place."

From this cafe I twitter: "I imagine schools where weaving daydreams & sculpting magicscapes *IS* paying attention". In my journal, I twizzle with twitter poetry reserved for the walk home: "in my cosmic clan, we thrive on iridescent icosahedron not iPhones, fey not Facebook, music not Myspace (twitter is an exception ;-)"

I comprise storylines for performance art, plays, playgrounds. I ought to be able to write anywhere, be anywhere, thrive equally anywhere. The reality is some places sing and speak to my soul, while others are muted, holding back their song.

"If we are sensitive, we can feel when environments are awakened. Human beings can be more or less awakened. So can trees or a mountain, canyon, hilltop, or a particular street corner in our neighborhood. When we are sensitive, we can feel these things. When we expose ourselves to that awakeness, to that environment where spirit and matter are harmonized, it helps us awaken. Ultimately, that's what satsang is. That's also what meditation really is." - Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing (practically have this Harmonization chapter memorized)

It's so simple really I'm confounded why I ever second-guess my heart and gut: that cafe feels warm, feels good to me. Simple.

p.s. A walk on a gorgeous day is better than icing on the cake. Twittered these via text messaging enroute: round table convenes outside.princely jasmine, regal agapanthus, sheathed magnolia knights in armor share tree w/ grail cups of perfumed bliss and: Summer of love: walkin 2 café where every1 knows yr name & spot bold california poppy orange 72 Volkswagon bus 4 sale.tempted

fifth dimension: and love will steer the stars

"My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso." - Pablo Picasso

"Each of us are on the spiralling journey of our Soul, and conspiring (beathing together); it only seems we are here buying and selling," I twittered earlier today. I was thinking about how to answer a request from a young marketeer who is going to begin blogging for their company.

I don't write about marketing as a separate music genre any longer. I see this entire universe as music, birthed from primordial sound. Being poetic, I'm being quite literal as well.

"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument." - Carl Jung

I see trios and intimate bands drawn together the way tuning forks quicken. Interlocking with other bands the way the flower of life mandala twines. Resounding resonance amasses in waves of mass movements. All is vibration seeking to sing in tune, in harmony. Melody harmony rhythm arises in symphony, each crescendo and finale fluidly leading to the next improvization with perhaps a fluxing dance ensemble of instruments, a new merry band of pranksters. The music goes on and on, even the gaps, the silence, the shuffling of feet is incorporated into the river of music.

"When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality." - Dom Helder Camara

I was thinking about 5D the other day, and came across The Fifth Dimension's "Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" 1969 video. (Recommended listening. Groovy planetary zooming and zipping. Very apropros, and I'd have embedded right here if it'd been allowed.)

If you had to pin me to define 4D, I'd say that's the imaginal realm, or wherever it is you deem your ideas come "from." If you had to pin me to define 5D - well, honestly if you're pinning and I'm defining we've definitely left the realm of 5D - I'd say that's the realm where your soul is singing in a conspiracy of beauty, a concert of One with a kaliedoscope of sacred mirrors.

Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius - "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", The Fifth Dimension

Regardless of appearances in flatland, we are never mute.

Yet what is the soundtrack of our lives humming?

I sing the body electric
I glory in the glow of rebirth
Creating my own tomorrow
When I shall embody the earth - "I Sing the Body Electric", Fame

I'm not sure how long I can keep up the 3D tone here at this blog.

Some people claim they don't understand when I write 4D. This is an example of the way I write when I'm firing all 4D cylinders: Nonlinear sworly soup w fractal laser fog and buzzing prana and ringed torus serpentine infinitudes of delish delight de light.

The vibration is moving, morphing and will probably end up of its own accord somewhere else. Kind of the way I just started adding photos from Flickr one day, and that morphed to art from my friends and famous artisans, and finally that sashayed its way into what you see today.

And you'd think looking backwards with 20/20 hindsight that I planned this as some master strategy seeing as most of my new blog readers come from Google's image search function.

No calculation. No strategy. All I did was glide with the music.  

We might say that the group Fifth Dimension won the musician's lottery in recording the hit classic "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" if you ascribe to randomness.

We might say that they were astute marketers following their strategy marketing plan if you ascribe to MBA theories.

When you flow with the Tao - that's living in 5D. Following instinct after instinct, that divine music within collaborates with the divine music without until the seam is seen through and through as a construct, a figment of the imagination, so "within" "without" is simply "with" - that's living in 5D.

The Fifth Dimension was simply jamming with the universe, in five dimensions:

Florence said, "It was a real fluke. We were performing in New York City and Billy lost his wallet in a taxi. The man who returned it invited us to see a play he produced. [Interesting how the music weaves together perfectly.] The play of course was Hair. Well we heard Aquarius and we all just looked at each other and said 'We've got to sing this song. It's great.'" It was producer Howe who suggested splicing Aquarius together with lyrics from another number in the musical which became "Let The Sunshine In". [No coincidence: If you've become aware of 5D, you'll know how the solar star fits in.] He got together with arranger Bob Alcivar & put the two songs together, making them work as one single. "We recorded that song in Las Vegas, in this small studio," says LaRue. "Our voices were all tired, we'd been performing there for over a month. It was the quickest thing we ever recorded and it was one of our biggest hits." [Yup 5D simply glides.] They were very close to the railroad tracks, and while they were singing the final chorus, a train rumbled by. You can still hear the locomotive, though, just barely, on the final master.

"Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" remained in the #1 spot on Billboard's chart for 6 straight weeks and remained in the Top 40 for 16 weeks. Both the single and album "Age Of Aquarius" went Gold and received two Grammy Awards for Record Of The Year and Best Contemporary Vocal By A Group. They were also nominated for Album Of The Year. The song was also nominated for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist. The song eventually sold over three million copies, making it the biggest selling single that year. The original song was over 7 minutes long and it was Bill Drake of a Los Angeles radio station who suggested the song needed to be shortened to about 3 minutes; so Howe released 2 versions, one just over 3 minutes and one under 3 minutes." - The Fifth Dimension, profile from ClassicBands.com

p.s. Nope, multidimensional and hyperspace art is not a throwback to the sixties. I'm just playing with the 1969 Fifth Dimension mythos. Much hyperspace art has not been created yet, although it's all been created too, and at the same time simultaneously. Here's a modern hyperspace artist, Paul Laffoley's work, The WORLD SOUL of Plotinus - travel between two and three-dimensional forms (2001).

Art: A multidimensional Buddha photo, by Celia Fenn, from her newsletter, Earthlog May 2007: ("This image conveys the feeling of the Buddha energy in the 21st century, for me. It is a "multi-dimensional" image. It was taken into a shop window, in a street in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, when I was there last month. There is the image of the Buddha "floating" in the foreground. Then, the reflections of the buildings in the shop window, and if you look very closely, you can see me, taking the image, with my friend, Jeanne. There are layers of imagery creating a "holographic" image of the Buddha energy in a specific place and time."); Fifth Dimension 1970 album cover, Portrait; Dawn Grace's "Soundtrack of Our Lives" concert poster via the interdimensional ezine, Turntable + Blue Light); Hair original publicity poster (looks like infinity symbol, eh?); Paul Laffoley, The WORLD SOUL of Plotinus - travel between two and three-dimensional forms (2001).

Bonus: I glid across this more scientific and mathematical blog, Dialogos of Eide, that seems to speak frequently of 'extra' dimensions. "Plato," the author states, "Dreams of science came later in life, although I had this predisposition to always wanting to know the mysteries of life." (Me too.) This post, "Vision", resounds loud and true, including this quote from Dr. Michio Kaku's article "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey, A look at the higher dimensions":

"Why must art be clinically “realistic?” [Even artists have confined Reality.] This Cubist “revolt against perspective” seized the fourth dimension because it touched the third dimension from all possible perspectives. Simply put, Cubist art embraced the fourth dimension. Picasso's paintings [just a coincidence that I started this post using a Picasso quote, and later in a Google image search for "fifth dimension poster" found the science and cosmology blog...and found this article...yes, it's all One Co-incidence fluidly fluxing] are a splendid example, showing a clear rejection of three dimensional perspective, with women's faces viewed simultaneously from several angles. Instead of a single point-of-view, Picasso's paintings show multiple perspectives, as if they were painted by a being from the fourth dimension, able to see all perspectives simultaneously. As art historian Linda Henderson has written, “the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry emerge as among the most important themes unifying much of modern art and theory."

Bonus Deux: Snippet from Ascension Magick (not Christopher's complete description of Age of Aquarius): "The fabled Age of Aquarius is promised to be the Golden Age reborn. The reason for this is that Aquarius is the sign of universal sisterhood/brotherhood. Aquarius is the sign of freedom and individuality, where all are able to freely express themselves.

seek Consorts, not converts

Allow yourself to feel the magnetic attraction of two iron filings drawn to each other. Or observe tuning forks. The art of resonance is so much closer too where I'm at these days.

There is a history of marketing as being the art of persuasion. These days even the art of seduction reeks of too much effort.

One dramatic personal shift I noticed since I started this inspiration series is that I no longer seek converts. I don't care to convert anyone, even something as sublime as quote convincing unquote you to attune to your own inspiration and guidance.

Rather I am interested in consorts. My ideal partners in inspiration and creation are muses, collaborators, playmates, lovers (either literally or figuratively) - and preferably all in one. (This includes you dearest.)

DEFINITION con·sort (kŏn'sôrt')
n.

1. A husband or wife, especially the spouse of a monarch.
2. A companion or partner.
3. A ship accompanying another in travel.
4. Partnership; association: governed in consort with her advisers.
5. A group; a company: a consort of fellow diplomats.
6. Music.
   1. An instrumental ensemble.
   2. An ensemble using instruments of the same family.

I don't even care to seek out consorts. We collide together quite serendipiously and easily.

And so a multi-year experiment came to conclusion this weekend.

I already knew from losing nearly everything in 2001 that friends were more valuable than money, so that wasn't the experiment. It was closer to Einstein's query. Einstein once wrote at the most important question a human being could ask is, Is the universe friendly?

I didn't know the answer. My hypothesis was Yes. But I'm all about the Red Pill, the actual truth even if it is not what I would like to hear. And I'm not sustained by philosophy or systems of belief - only direct experience sticks to my bones.

So this past November, circumstances forced my curiousity to directly confront my fear of dying (these days I lean towards believing folks are more afraid of living than dying), of starvation, of abandonment. What if I didn't tell a soul that I was absolutely flat broke (by the time I revealed I was, I was at a turning point of coming through it)? What would happen? Could I rely on total strangers too? Could I rely on the beneficience of the infinite? And all this in America of all individualistic places?

"Once when [Jack] Kerouac was high on psychedelics with Timothy Leary, he looked out the window and said, 'Walking on water wasn't built in a day.'" - Allen Ginsberg

Walking on water wasn't built in a day, but doesn't take that long either.

My first week here on a chalk blackboard near Flanagan's Pub I saw scribed: "Every living vessel is sacred."

Saw Michael Cain, a neon and light and glass artist here in the Bywater - at the edge of 9th Ward of New Orleans - speak about two week ago. He said that when you pour light into a form, that adds a life force to it, that's why some of his glass art looks like it has a personality inside it (I'd say soul myself).

Cain turned the lights off, and in the dark one could see the vessel glowing.

I noted while there was a beautiful presence trapped in the vessel. Though it also came across as sterile static inert.

Behold! when a human touched it like the boy I witnessed, the light snaked and bamboula'ed* in step with the caresses and I suppose it was like lovemaking.

* an afro-cuban sensuous dance that urban artist Marcus Akinlana told me was "the dance of love" and quite popular in Nola; p.s. both my parents are from Cuba

And that dance of light conveyed essentially what I learned in my experiment about life and giving and receiving and Einstein's question.

Take note and recognize the consorts that come into your periphery these days; welcome them into your center. Your individuality will be ripened in their presence. And vicely versa.

p.s. Anyone that really knows me knows that I adore Jack Kerouac. Jack is my alter ego, my buddy, certainly my consort, my muse, & my co conspirator.

images Bamboulized and Barrelhouse Boogie by New Orleans artist Marcus Akinlana

forty days of everyday inspiration

"The muse strikes 365 days 24/7. Ignoring the muse because it doesn't appear at first glance to sing in lock-step with the rest of the world tune is the real challenge for most artists, designers, entrepreneurs." - This is Not a Marketing Blog post

Over the forty days I'll share tips for everyday inspiration. This won't be philosophical, but practical. Here and now, this moment, this day, this week are we attuned and thus creating inspired products, inspired films, inspired paintings, inspired marketing campaigns, inspired suppers, inspired friendships, inspired lives?

Why forty days? It's long enough that we can get into some depth. The forty days that Jesus spent in the desert has been personally symbolic to me, and this line:  "I shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God" is the inspiration for the book I started last May. Also today's Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the 40-day Lent period (here's Wikipedia, however I resonate more with this "New Meaning to Lent") which extends through Easter.

"Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is the high point of Carnival followed by the quiet of Ash Wednesday...It is a time when the flesh and all of the material pleasures that it apprehends are set ablaze in the passion of the moment. The fat, so to speak, is in the fire and one is left with the ashes on Wednesday." - from Mardi Gras page, New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple

For me, it's hard to hear the word ashes and not think of creativity rising from the ashes like the phoenix. I once wrote: "Experience everything in your life, witness from the heart and it'll be fodder for self-expression and growth and poignantly reaching into other's hearts."

"Poetry is just the evidence of life.
If your life is burning well,
poetry is just the ash."- Leonard Cohen

Following threads of inspiration yesterday, also known as web surfing, I land at: "Note the fact that the Greek word for Spirit, πνευμα which can be translated as "air in motion" or wind)." Basically I'm in the mood to delve into the source of creativity and cater to its whims.

"If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it." - Toni Morrison (thanks for the quote, Tracy)

So in the spirit of Lent, which is more about a deepening abidance in that sweet wind, I'll explore practical ways that we allow ourselves to be swept off our feet and bring that sensitivity into our lifework. This video helps us get started:

image Marc Chagall's Promenade

Bonus: Delving into the creative mind... The Friends of the Western Buddhist Order has two articles Mind creative and Mind Reactive and Fields of Creativity on the creative mind ("spontaneous, the mind that is aware") versus the re-active mind ("doesn’t originate anything, it just re-acts, and the reactive mind is therefore the dependent mind; it is the repetitive mind, it is the mechanical mind")

The Science of Getting Rich (entire text online) was the impetus for the movie The Secret. The author continually reassures that the creative mind is not the competitive mind. For instance: "The mind that seeks for mastery over others is the competitive mind; and the competitive mind is not the creative one."

recent reader exchange on art, meaning, compromising, love, money, what i stand for

In the spirit of not shying away from aggressive questioning and open dialogue, as this is quite representative of many private exchanges between artists, I present a recent email exchange. The reader has agreed to participate here anonymously (thank you).

Subject line: Harsh Feedback

Hi Evelyn,

(Forgive my familiarity in greeting you like that.)

No problem, that seems like a fine way to greet me. Blogging isn't as formal as it appears.

I have been a regular reader and subsriber for several months now.  I "virtually" fell in love with you via your writing and had to keep up with everything you wrote about.  Your insight into the simplicity of life and social interactions etc were inspiring or at least encouraging.  Your sensitivity to others and your willingness to express sincere feelings about life were captivating.

Thank you.

Now the complaint.  Lately, you have been writing more about yuor marketing ideas.  I know that when I started reading your blog that marketing was the ostensible theme, but it was not very evident.  To be quite blunt, I am somewhat offended by the appropriation of spirituality and art by commercial ventures for the sole purpose of enriching the capitalists.  I feel it is ingenuine and expoitative.

Fair enough. There are those that are upset by the increase (it's always been there) in pseudo-religious-spiritual-mystical-metaphysical (their words typically). Well, actually, some say they are quite "offended".

It's nigh impossible to make everyone happy.

Which isn't my intent. Hard enough to make myself happy, eh?

Oh, I'd hazard a guess what you are picking up is some of my own resistances and reluctances. Writing from the surf's edge of your own fear doesn't have the same presence, same voice.

I'll get to those in a sec. [On second thought, I only addressed maybe one fear in this exchange.]

And I'm spending more time at home alone (sans car in a very very suburban area) and I really thrive around people (you can see why I want the community teahouse), and it's winter (alas no flowers to talk to either), yada yada.

Where do you really stand?  Is CASH so important? When you said you could barely afford to help Wyatt for his trip ne N'lins, was that just a temporary mishap?

A temporary mishap lasting, oh, about six years. I made $0.00 last year. Sure, that's temporary as everything else.

I'm not so sure that I find the strict renunciate path so noble. It has it's own willfulness, and thus it's own darkness. Buddha had gathered quite a few disciples even before the big e-day at the bodhi tree. They'd all abandoned him when he quit being an ascetic.

This is not about cash and not not about cash.

I wrote the other day to Wyatt since he spoke of "wyld adventures" that my life is becoming a "perpetual expedition in grace."

Sometimes grace wants to hand me a check, or give me work. Whom am I to decline the gifts of grace?

I don't tend to talk about the romance part of my life online, but last year a beautiful soul kissed me at the W Hotel (a capitalist, a philathropist) with net worth I'd guess in the 8 figures, and last year a beautiful soul kissed me at the Hotel Utah whom was currently homeless and headed back to Nola to begin entirely anew.

It was interesting noting the reactions of my friends. Everyone had an opinion of whom was worthy and whom was not, typically based on their own opinions and preconceptions revolving money and self-worth and the state of the world.

I fall silent more and more when people ask me to take sides, it's becoming increasingly impossible to choose whom to love anymore. I love people indiscriminately, on both sides, including those I'm not supposed to love, whom I don't even agree with, and who don't even share my ideology.

When I walked into Alex Grey's gallery, the Sacred Chapel of Mirrors, in Manhattan two days after 9/11/06, I knew immediately he was (what is classically termed) awake because in huge lettering in an archway entrance it read:

SURRENDER TO LOVE

I think in the end, all the misguided meanderings that people take on the journey (and boy I have plenty of tales and they're not all pretty and light), is because we suspect there is something true and desirous in that, SURRENDER TO LOVE, and we just don't know how.

There is something that wants to manifest itself in the world through me, we could call it a teahouse, but until you see it yourself, I cannot explain it adequately. If left to my own devices, I think I'd be perfectly content hiding out in a cave in Tibet, or like the
Chasing The Lotus movie triggered for me, was my tendency to escape and go surfing in Bali or Maui or Costa Rica.

Engaging with the world, heck, people might judge me, perceive me as being abnormal. [Which I am ;-)] But this vision isn't mine, it has a life of its own. And it wants to be born.

As to surfing the edge of my own fears, this is what I wrote to a friend:

I'm getting a sense the "lack of money" is a convenient way to get off the hook.

Therefore, whew, I don't have to step up to this big hairy audacious goal and calling. (Do you 'believe' in calling?)

I think I remember grokking that when I saw the "Conversations with God" movie, the main character went through a homeless phase.

But seeing the end of the movie and where his journey took home, I could sympathesize why someone would (unconsciously) chose homelessness rather than touring and speaking and lecturing about God to audiences around the world (out loud!).

Well, ultimately, I guess it's never about the money itself is it? It is what it represents to us.

Still knowing this (not entirely new revelation) hasn't gotten me unstuck yet.

Helpful even to me just to be writing all this down. Thanks!

namaste, e

They write back:

It's never about money.

Just as greenbacks used to be a proxy for gold and now are a proxy for a mythical concept (a dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States—the largest debtor nation on the planet), money is a proxy for labor or craft or service.

Money, unfortunately, is also a proxy for "value" and in this society that sometimes means self-esteem. Your rejection of money could be a rejection of the whole system—not a crazy idea.

But I think you're onto something even deeper when you look at the lack as being a means of releasing you from responsibility. What other, if any, responsibility does it release you from? Other than touring and speaking about God (i.e., or whatever your calling is); what other things don't you have to do because you lack money?

My ideas around 'marketing' are so out there, I'm not sure anyone in the field would consider it marketing. It just looks like talking to people one on one, and going into business with friends to them. So it is. So it is.

I like to keep the moniker of "marketer" around just because it irks so many people. Would it be possible to maybe fall in love with someone (egads, a marketer!) that they're supposed to vilify?

I just read this in my inbox today (funny coincidence):

"Perhaps my dead comedian friend Bill  Hicks had the right angle, "If you work in advertising or marketing; causing  us all to work at jobs we hate just so we can buy shit we don't need (okay,  I'm adlibbing here . . . that last part is stolen from "The Fight Club") --  do the whole freakin' world a favor -- just kill yourself."* (There is no punch line so don't scroll down looking for it.)

*(Okay . . . I'm not REALLY  advocating that you kill yourself (even though Bill was) -- a small flesh  wound will be pennance enough. Could you just find something else --  anything else -- to do for a living? Something with the potential to  actually provide some benefit for humanity? What a concept,  eh?)"

I miss who I thought you were.  But I'll keep reading, hoping to get glimpses of insight that are meaningful.

One day I sincerely hope, we shall cease to fall in love with images of people, and we'll simply love. Thank you for your willingness to stick it out as I go through this roller coaster.

much love, e

p.s. I think it's a whole other exchange to address this statement, but will get to it too:

"I am somewhat offended by the appropriation of spirituality and art by commercial ventures for the sole purpose of enriching the capitalists.  I feel it is ingenuine and expoitative."

image Cecily Brown's Teenage Wildlife

dude, Radical marketing, surfing Blinks & remembrances of things Before they happen

"Direct Marketing by the Numbers", "E-Mail and Online Marketing", "Marketing Writing: The Art of Persuasion", "Copywriting That Gets Results", "Sales Lead Management", "Power of Market Research"...reads the list of courses when I flip open the UC Santa Cruz Extension in Silicon Valley catalog lying on the dining room table.

I scan the abstract for "The Power of Market Research" (historically one of my favorite marketing tasks) and a few bullet points pop out:

• Assessing and defining market trends: segmenting the target market, trends driving user demand, market risks and opportunities and market forecast

• Profiling the customer: surveys, focus groups, user perceptions of products and demand for specific features

• Using market research to drive the business plan: investment analysis, program risk, profit plan

A new course piques my interest:

NeoMarketing (new!) ...explores the emerging paradigm shift from traditional push marketing to consumer-driven, anytime-anywhere pull marketing... Participants will learn about new techniques (online word-of-mouth marketing, viral marketing, and social networking) and new tools (forums, wikis, blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds, and wireless). Based on the fundamental principles of marketing, NeoMarketing utilizes new technologies for even greater competitive advantage. Emphasis will be placed on how to integrate the new techniques and tools into traditional marketing plans and how to measure the results..."

I close the page, and set the catalog down. Glumly.

I'd royally flunk these courses. Purposefully.

I don't market many of those ways anymore.

And that probably explains why I'm not writing much these days about marketing. I enjoy doing marketing but not explaining hows since.... I'm on the lunatic fringe.

That's not necessarily meant to be a derogatory term, the lunatic fringe catches onto future trends way ahead of the alphas and the alphas adopt ahead of the bees whom really spread the buzz  (according to The Anatomy of Buzz-speak) to the mainstream.

Lunatic fringe: kinda edgy and hip-sounding, but let's face it, everyone thinks you're looney as they sidle away (as if it might be contagious).

Eccentric, witty artist to me at Web 2.0 party last week: You're probably the only person here who'll talk to me for any length of time.

Me: Probably right.

Lewis Carroll's imagination took flight I imagine precisely because he didn't give a hoot if you thought he was looney. He mastered a coy blending of logic and fantasy that slipped in confoundments and startlements.

Carroll always leaves me feeling saner in a world that irrationally worships the rational. Carroll always leaves me questing: Is the universe a comedy?:

"“Its jam every other day. Today isn’t any other day, you know”, said the Queen.

“I don’t understand you,” said Alice.  “Its dreadfully confusing!”

“That’s the effect of living backwards,” the Queen said kindly.  “It always makes one a little giddy at first … ”

“Living backwards!”  Alice repeated in astonishment.  “I never heard of such a thing!”

“But there’s one great advantage in it … that one’s memory works both ways”, said the Queen.

“I’m sure mine only works one way. I can’t remember things before they happen”, remarked Alice.

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked." - Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll via Crossroads Dispatches' reader (at least that how I think we met) Michael Gisondi's motivational newsletter

If you would ask me what kind of death sends shivers down my spine - it is not a demise from an illness like cancer, nor being hit by a bus, nor being mauled by a shark, nor being bowled over by the freight train force of a tsunami.

Nope, none of those. I have a fear of being burned at the stake.

The only salve I have found to keep this fear at bay is to hang out more with artists - they're all loonier than I. (Don't restrict yourself to living artists in your hood. Try Salvador Dali. Jack Kerouac. David Lynch. We could go on and on.) In their presence, a welcome mat unfurls, "Finally, girlfriend, where have you been hiding?"

one a.m. in December, wyatt texts: whoA! slow down...endorphins!

me: what r u talking?

wyatt: movies in my head gotta write to music

Ah, so it works the same way for others too.

I saw the stunning Chasing the Lotus at X-Dance Film Festival last week. I knew right then and there that surfing was my true heart's sport. (In my tangible life, my sports have mainly been endurance-related: ultrarunning, hiking and backpacking, river running.)

When I changed my blog's descriptor a few months ago, I don't think it was an accident that I used the words "from the surf's edge on innovation, design, marketing, the art of living and anything that screams Life."

radical: from 1970s surfer slang meaning "at the limits of control."

The etymology of radical also means getting to the root, going to the essential. The essence of.

With 20/20 hindsight I realize it's been my saving grace that I'm too lazy to mess around with focus groups and stats and playing the numbers game (whether that's tossing out 10,000 flyers or scoring a link on Engadget's blog or an invite to Oprah). So I stumbled onto a marketing that suited me and a marketing that distilled to essence. A marketing that got ultra-specific right down to the individual human rather than sending out blasts in hopes that 2% of someones, anyones, might bite.

So I haven't gotten around to answering the thin-slicing your brand, thin-slicing stores, tag (yet). Because I don't thin-slice. ("What we feel as intuition is really the result of unconscious rapid cognition", opines Paul Marsen's summary of Blink. Thus thin-slicing is a 'neat cognitive trick'.)

About six years ago I took a course on intuition because I honestly didn't know what 'intuition' really meant or how it really operated in my own life. I was guided by my intellect and rationale and control and will. All I knew going in to the course is that I must have really been out of touch with my intuition and ability to 'read' people when I took the dot-com CTO position with founders that wildly blind-sided me.

So maybe Blink is about rapid cognition. That's a fine subject.

But that's not at all what I'm doing. Ease is my byword. Sounds so easy, ease.

Ease sometimes finds me surfing the edge between exhilaration and terror (as if screaming through the roller coaster ride does anything). Oh, yes, the Queen foretells that living backwards (that's the codeword) will be giddy at first.

And radically, dude, I'm ceding control more and more often to a non-cognitive (yet not supernatural) intelligence that I cannot define. Let the ocean do the work, man, rather than bracing myself at the limits of control. (Drag is decidely not ease.)

Neat cognitive tricks are just that. Far far too much efforting. I am a supreme surf bum, alright. I'm not killing myself manufacturing waves when there's gorgeous blue swells coming to me all the time.

Steven aka Vaspers the Grate has no idea how much I fully think he comes close to hitting the mark with his e-book (intended as a parody, hmmm...): Spiritual Slothfulness: Laziness as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life. As if this doesn't come straight from the mouth of a surfer, I don't know: "Achieve tremendous mystical powers and insights, by doing next to, or exactly, nothing!"

Anyhow, not like I'm going to reveal my radical looniness all in one swell, but this is a bit closer to how my intuition works in practice:

"...Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again." - from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

"Oh, dear! What nonsense I’m talking!" she mumbles to herself. "It's high time to bid adieu and hit the waves."

p.s. Probably not the smoothest post I've ever written. But considering I started off typing this post with tremoring hands and hyperventilating, well...

One can never be certain that burning at the stake is passé even in this day and age.

p.p.s. Wonderful how Lewis Carroll slips into the stream, eh? Mike of White Rabbit Group tagged Tom who tagged me...curiouser and curiouser...!

images artist Lovisa Ringborg's "following the white rabbit"...Lovisa says, "in my work I am interested in the borders between fantasy and reality" - lovely, do yourself a big favor and check out all her ethereal work; artist allibee's "High Priestess" tarot card; artist Sophia Dixon's "Burning at the Stake"; "Alice down the Rabbit Hole" by Fleur Palau

Back To Regularly Scheduled Programming

Not.

I must say I think this post marked a turning point - and if you know how much I cried two days later, a watershed moment would be more apropros term - in this blog.

Not sure we will ever be going back to regularly scheduled programming here.

I am counterintuitive, outrageous, "unreasonable" (as my friend Ruby loves to quip, and she encourages unreasonableness) - and myself. And that's just the way it is.

I heard Sally Clough tell a story and maybe she was quoting from Sue Monk Kidd but I don't really remember about how in Africa the villagers would journey on foot for three or more days to attend a wedding feast. After a few days, they'd need to rest so 'that their soul would have a chance to catch up.'

People used to tell me after they'd first meet me, "You are just like your blog voice." As if that were a surprise - isn't that the point?

But I don't think my blog voice reflected 'me' anymore.

Much of 2006 I'd find myself far yonder skipping merrily on the wedding trek and my blog voice trailing further behind. The last few weeks the flurry of prolificity (writers make up words willy-nilly you know, but I'm startled to find prolificity is an actual word and get this, it means power or character, rather than abundantly spewing words like there is no tomorrow) has allowed the blog voice to catch up a bit.

I don't know what this means, but it doesn't mean that it won't be relevant to business, or relevant to blogging, or relevant to putting the social in social media, or relevant to marketing, or relevant to innovation.

My main focus is visionaries and visioneering, because when you act from that inspiration the rest falls into place. And when you don't, all the advertising in the world couldn't right a sinking titanic.

One topic I'll be delving into more is voice. Here are a few tidbits I recently read:

"Al Gore has often struggled to get his timing right. He ran for President in 1988 at just 39 years old, too young for many voters. He ran again in 2000, took forever to find his voice, and when he did, it was too late. Last year, however, the former Vice President and but-for-chads winner of the 2000 race timed his swing perfectly, teeing up on an issue that has long been his passion : global warming." - "People Who Mattered: Al Gore", Time Magazine, December 25, 2006

"In eight months, Bennett (real name: Anthony Dominick Benedetto)...has become one of the top record-sellers in the U.S... Tony makes his stage entrance in a breathless vaudeville lope. When the applause and giggles have died down, he begins his act, swaying his loose-limbed body, singing in a style derived from several of his colleagues...BENNETT'S VOICE, HOWEVER, IS DISTINCTLY HIS OWN; IT HAS A DIFFUSED, SAND-PAPER SOUND, A QUALITY THAT HE FEELS HAS ENDEARED HIM TO HIS FANS. Says he: 'At first, I tried to eliminate things like that from my voice. But I've decided now to let it all alone.'" - "Tireless, Timeless Tony," Time Magazine, December 25, 2006 sharing snippets from their January 14, 1952 issue (Capital letters are present in the 2006 print version)

"And I think we rediscovered that the medicine we've been prescribing - that successful companies and brands are the ones who stay truest to who they are - is also good for ourselves." - Ben Stallard, Deskey Marketing Services Director, on the volunteer brand makeover effort for Dave's Gourmet, "Is Dave Insane?: Inside a Brand Makeover" Inc., January 2007 (recommend this well-written, and humorous, article)

image my alter-ego Evelyne Axell's La conductrice  et son double (The conductor and her double). Paxell was once quoted as being "Life incarnate." I'll write about her some day soon.

Writing, Like Eyes, Are Windows to The Soul

"Words, like eyes, are windows into a person's soul, and thus each writer, in some small way, helps to enrich the world. But it takes courage to share one's life with another, for we live in a world where every sentence penned can be criticized or praised. But it is a risk worth taking, for a greater vision remains: that through our words, be they fiction or fact, we might touch another soul as we share our stories and song. In that moment, however brief, we suspend the walls of separateness that so often cause suffering and pain." - source unknown, a writers on writing anthology (will update when & if I find out)

images "Girl Reading", by Linda Horvay

But Then Again I Know Nothing About Art

Wow, in a profound rippling thank-you thank-you way, I just read this via Graceful Presence blog and simply had to share. It gets the heart of why I care about art too:

Robert Genn, author of The Painter's Keys, is traveling and visited the Orangerie in Paris where the Claude Monet waterlily paintings are on display. He shared this experience:

I've been in these two rooms for so long that my stomach is concerned. A guard has already determined that I'm planning a heist. I'm sure she has alerted her supervisors. And then there's a man who has been in here almost as long as I. He moves from bench to bench. He has a round, friendly face and an honest smile. I find relief in pretending we have met. We talk in hushed, religious tones. He is M. LeClerc, an actuary from Poitiers, in Paris for four days. He thinks I'm an American. I tell him I'm from Canada. "What do you see here?" I ask him.

"I know nothing about art," he tells me, "But every time I come to Paris I enter these rooms. The collection was closed for some six years and Paris was very dull. These are sublime things. They are beyond words or expressions. They cannot be categorized or listed. In winter they take you to spring. They bring my boyhood and my home. Maybe God is in these things. What do I see? I see sadness and I see beauty. What else do we need? What else do we have?" His face is flushed, his eyes moist. "But then, who am I to say?" he asks. "I know nothing about art. Do you have such experiences in Canada?"

p.s. This is why I adore art (that is, art with heart...it's visceral, you are touched and moved as deeply as the artist themself dissolved into the work, and you don't learn that resonance, or recognition, in art history classes) and this is why I wish everyone would bloom into their natural artistry. And why I adore the Graceful Presence blog (definitely become one of my most precious daily visits).

images Jia Lu's Expression of Joy

Sustenence. I Don't Know At Which Point It Flipped to Being an Art Form.

"He thought it happier to be dead,

To die for Beauty, than live for bread."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

October is the time of the harvest, of the abundant feast, of the wine crush, of ethereal dreams ripening into fruition. I'm thinking these will be the recurring themes of this blog over the autumn harvest season.

And I see Tara Hunt (viva la slow marketing!) is thinking along same lines: "Sustenance. I don't know at which point it flipped to being an art form." That book I'm writing - albeit in fits and starts - was inspired by no less than bread, fasting, feasting, Hansel and Gretel & "man doth not live by bread alone".

Tara shares:

..Like the mature wines we drank in France, they will taste 'right'. The kind of right that happens naturally, over time, like they are supposed to. Like they've waited for that exact moment to dance across our palettes. The difference between having a conversation with an awkward teenager:

me: "So, what do you think of [insert cool thing here]?"
teenager: "It sounds stupid."

...and having a conversation with an engaged, interesting, interested person. One is mildly entertaining and the other awakens your senses and pushes your imagination further. It's like the first sip of a mature wine lays out the bouquet of the ingredients the wine encountered as it went through it's lifetime as a grape and then as a liquid. The vineyards of France talk about Terroir...or the 'sense of place', which exists mostly in geography, but also in the nuances of the life cycle of the wine. A hint of apple? Perhaps the soil previously bore an orchard. The second wave of sensation hits you with a realisation of the history of the wine. We watched Sideways last night (me, for the second time) and Virginia Madsen's character discusses how she loves wine for it's unique history: how she imagines the person who picked the grapes...that with old wine, that person could be gone. Some believe the soul of everyone who is involved in the process of making the wine along the way infuses the wine with their character.

Merci beaucoup, Tara. Perfect.

BONUS: If you are local to Bay Area or are in town, join us:

TUES, OCTOBER 17. Salon #5 at Vino Locale, 431 Kipling Street (at University Ave), Palo Alto, ( map) 6 pm. Vino Locale is an inviting, cozy Victorian home with a slow food inspiried cafe specializing in local wines and supporting local art. In fact, proprietor Randy is the leader of the South Bay chapter of Slow Food USA. We'll start the open mic for lyrical prose, singer-songwriters, poets, etc on themes of sustenance, harvest, bread and wine, and anything really that strikes your muse at about 7:30 p.m. You can read/sing/perform your favorite writer or performers work too!

 

Lovely photographer Mary Bartnikowski, www.bartnikowski.com, whose work is currently on display at Vino Locale will be in attendance.

The theme was inspired by the season, the slant of the harvest moon, and the Italian novel, Bread and Wine. Revolutionary Pietro Spina, the main character, returns to pre-war 1938 Italy after a lengthy exile disguised as a priest:

His journey takes him from the pavements of Rome to the lovingly tended earth of the impoverished countryside, where he rediscovers a way of life attuned to the eternal rhythms of planting and harvesting , the enduring pulsebeat of birth and death. Slogans and political dogma fade beside the blossoming of a vision in which flesh and spirit are as inseparably joined as the bread and the wine that give this masterpiece its title and its theme . - backcover of Bread and Wine, by Italian novelist Ignazio Silone

"Writers and poets have always been fascinated by the mouth, which can probably claim more erotic literature in its own right than any other single part of the body. The language of love is filled with images of the mouth, of food and of eating, beginning with the Bible. "Thy lips, O my spouse," says the Song of Solomon, "drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue...Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits."" - The Sex Life of Food: When Body and Soul Meet to Eat, by Bunny Crumpacker

Since Randy buys his produce at Live Earth Farm, and hey it's slow food, I've already put in my order for 20 people. $20 per person, $30 per couple in advance by Paypal (at my email) or at the door, including wine tasting. Frugal students, inquire separately.

 

PLEASE RSVP by email or 408-513-7324.

Happy feasting and wine-stomping!

p.s. Salonists join in for slow-inspired tao-er power lunches every Thursday at Vino Locale throughout harvest season starting this Oct 12th at noon. No RSVPs needed, simply show up.

images Flickr Olive and bread by Dey; what do you know a search on 'terroir' tag in Flickr yields Tara's own photo of her recent trek to southern France (this grotte is nearby the winery Daumas Gassac).