Crossroads Dispatches

everyone brings something to the table

"2 years later. August 29th, 2007. Hurricane Katrina. Will you simply stop and reflect? Or, start to be a part of the solution? Marinate." - hip-hop artist and podcaster Clarence Dykc sez via twitter

Purposefully decided not to comment on the two-year anniversary of Katrina yesterday, though I read others' blogs. Railing and raging ain't cutting it for me.

Being part of the solution personally would involve rolling into action. Not because I have to do, and not because I should, simply because my heart pulls me.

Creating a triangle of art/live community center of sorts and arts collective in New Orleans that links up creatives there with centers in San Francisco and NYC, and cross-pollinates them all. Speakeasy cafes for salons and shows and supper teas on the ground level...but I digress.

This "solution" became clearer for me only after I stopped and reflected. Contemplated. Then conversed with many, many folks that most often became friends while I was in New Orleans this spring.

It's no secret if you've been reading this blog for a while that I've been thinking more and more about community. The history of social movements. What kind of planet I want to live in. How I create that world.

"We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor." - His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

I don't need my neighbors to be my very best friends. Yet there is something vaguely troubling that the way neighbors often deal with issues like the disabled car in front of the house, or music and voices in the backyard that obviously bothers them is to call the police rather than simply knock on the front door of the house, and have a short discussion.

I don't need the bank teller to be dearest confidant. Yet, there is something vaguely troubling when they avert your eyes when you're trying to find out about a continual series of fees on your statement hurriedly brushing you off, "You really should call the 800 number. I can't do anything about it." (BTW, reflected far long enough, I am no longer a Wells Fargo customer.)

I wholeheartedly agree with Stowe Boyd's post, "Anne Truitt Zelenka and Steve Rubel on Web Friendship", especially when he writes:

"[T]he new nature of connected friendship is taking on the shape of the Web itself:

1. it is increasingly open (much of our fraternizing is in public),
2. tolerant of diversity (I disagree publicly with my friends, but I accept this as part of friendship, not a blind gang-like sharing of narrow perspectives; and they are from all over, all colors, all shapes and sizes)
3. bottom-up (its not because we work together, or because we are members of some organized group)
4. personal (I don't belong to cliques, but am connected to individuals)
5. flowing (people's relationships are constantly changing, and shifting in complexity).

Many would look at the new state of friendship and suggest that something has been lost when you don't have a small group of friends that all know each other, that invite each other over to bbqs every weekend, and who all attended the same schools, workplaces, and places of worship. But I believe that we are moving away from a narrow, parochial, and inbred sort of friendship." - Stowe Boyd

Yesterday I read a New Orleans' resident Jonathan Bailey's blog post, "7 Lessons Learned 2 Years After Katrina". His lesson number 3 was:

"Disasters Bring People Together, Politicians Drive them Apart: Racial tensions in New Orleans have always been high, but immediately following the storm, an atmosphere of cooperation filled the city. That is, until our mayor gave his famous “Chocolate City” speech. Then everything changed for the worse."

Divide, and conquer. A very, very ancient tactic to breed war and conflict - and maintain the illusion of control and power over others. So, if we want to reclaim our power, sometimes the simplest of things to do start by meeting me at the table. We'll see where things go from there. Stretch me, why don't you?

I believe that everyone brings something to the table. That we as human beings have more common interests than separate. If only we would sit down together, share some bread and tea, and converse.

"The origin of the word "community" comes from the Latin munus, which means the gift, and cum, which means together, among each other."  - Bernard Lietaer, Beyond Greed & Scarcity

I love writer and yoga instructor Jeff Davis' work and workshops (I speak from personal experience). Just recently I noted he was on the same page as I: "He is converting his farmhouse and barn near Woodstock, NY, into a simple place where active visionaries can gather." In the same article, he wrote:

"We conversed. And to "converse," after all, suggests a "turning with." One turns with the to other. Although conversation likely once referred to a monastic mode of life devoted to conversations with God, out of the monastery our daily conversations can let us hear how "all that is" speaks through strangers and lovers." - Jeff Davis, author of the book, The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing, "Talking 'Bout My Transpersonal Generation," Common Ground mag, July 2007

I've always been inspired by the Salon movement, housed in salons (rooms) in French homes fomenting the French revolution and a flowering of the arts and letters, as well being entranced with the way cafe societies threw together writers, politicians, philosopher-thinkers, artists, scholars and general ne'er-do-wells into one pot to stew, and ultimately learn from each other. (I've always been inspired by the Italian Renaissance, too.)

Vicki Robin, co-author of Your Money or Your Life (that was a life-altering book when I read it about eight years ago), also began Conversation Cafes. She shares: "I once asked a Dane how Denmark had resisted the pressures of globalization [i.e. conformity]. He said two words: study circles. Most Danes throughout their adult lives have the habit of conversation about things that matter in small groups.

"Why Conversation Cafés? Because when you put strangers, caffeine and ideas in the same room, brilliant things can happen. For that very reason, the British Parliament banned coffeehouses in the 1700s as hotbeds of sedition. Might we brew up a similar social liveliness now?" - Conversation Cafe website

p.s. More in next post, including how to roll your own Make Tea, Not War Communi-teas in your community. This is just a heads up that I'm hosting a few communi-teas to promote peace: general theme, Greetings and Gleanings. Held in common spaces, community spaces, gardens, parks, backyards, arts collective lofts throughout Bay Area from 9/9 through 9/11. To make it accessible to all walks of life, there is no cost. First one, 9/9 at the community garden on 23rd and Shotwell, San Francisco, 1-3 p.m. Also check twitter.com/panmesa for updates.

Bonus: Whether they walk their talk or not, I know not. But I am digging their self-organizing philosophy: "Forget what you think you know about activism and community service. Forget the Non-Profit Industrial Complex with its centrally controlled organizations. Forget grant applications and fundraising drives, complex tax codes, and government regulations. Forget political correctedness, groupthink, forced neutrality and censorship.

Burners Without Borders (burnerswithoutborders.org), a new movement for social change borne out of the Burning Man Festival, does away with all that bureaucratic detritus. Taking its cue from Doctors Without Borders, Burners Without Borders is led only by an idea: that of a boundless, leaderless movement, based on gifting and community, that seeks no publicity, recognition, money or power. All it seeks to do, like its progenitor, is to build community through addressing social needs, creating art and healing the deep wounds of a disconnected culture in the throes of anomie." - "The Revolution Will Not Be Invoiced," Common Ground mag, August 2007

Art Dining Room Overlooking the Garden, by Pierre Bonnard (" At the insistence of his father, Bonnard studied law, graduating and practising as a barrister briefly. However, he had also attended art classes on the side, and soon decided to become an artist."); Le Moulin de la Galette, by Renoir; Apple Picking, by Camille Pissaro (the women appear to be gleaning) 

the muse in the Face of humans, angels, dolphins, daffodils

"Tantrikas write poetry, not philosophy", Pavarthi said once. I marvel at the need for a book on how to write a love letter...as if it weren't innate.

Before year-end, I shared the provocative question, "What's your dream?". Yet never shared my answer. Here it is, distilled down from five words to four: GLOBAL AWAKENING THROUGH ART.

That might beg the question, What is art? For me, art is a crystallization in form of simple formlessness of beauty, peace, glory, harmony. I think that there's a distinct possibility that beauty and harmony prevail on almost any universe, although I cannot know that for sure, so I'll focus on this universe. This planet Earth.

My dream came from inspiration, and you can probably guess that's a bit too big for me to tackle all by my wee self. Yet you're never ever all by with your wee self with inspiration whispering into your ear.

Still, I've not mentioned anything about partners in inspiration. Thus far what I've written it's been you and Her. And me and Her.

But what about us?

What about human muses? What about fellow artists? What about faeries? What about angels? What about daffodils? What about tomatoes? What about cacti? What about dolphins? How does life animating these sentient beings spark inspiration and aid our mutual dreams?

This blog started as an attempt to gear up for a worldwide journey to the creative class centers of the world. I'm less intested these days in investigating collective creativity than I am in sparking and living it.

As I wrote an acquaintenance last year whom thought my core strength was as a buzz marketer: "[M]y true interest is in how movements are born, things like civil rights movement, sixties, Italian renaissance, etc. And even how communities come together after disaster to rebuild such as Indian Ocean tsunami, 9/11, Katrina, 1906 SF quake." That's definitely buzzing, but it's more about spreading beauty and grace like wildflowers and circulating it about like bees for a different objective: a social art that speaks in the sacred tongue familiar to each of us.

So I suppose my truest interest is collectively creating a new world where matter itself is penetrated and enlivened by the most sublime of essence.

Thus it must seem mighty strange that I talk more about being true to your own self here than collective creativity. Yet without a strong commitment to your own uniqueness and integrity, any collective could devolve into groupthink (and sterile soulless) mobs.

I met a few folks from a New Orleans collective the other night. "I loved you the first moment I met you," said one who'd I met at a neighborhood tree planting of grape myrtles and magnolias and live oaks a week before. "Your energy. You love people," he said by way of explanation. He introduces me to the other artists.

We talked about having a video interview on Wednesday at their studio space since they seemed to intensely grok my rebirth motif. After the St. Claude Gallery Night, somehow Wednesday seemed too far off to delve deeper into conversation (& conversation being an art form all of its self).

We spontaneously ended up chatting late into that evening at their collective space. Anything I could say about the group right now would sound trite in letters and punctuation and line breaks. You know mutuality and love when you feel it.

We mistake lovers for Love. And I do have a tendency to fall in love with the human incarnations of the Muse. (Yes, they can certainly be male.) Yet that's not absolutely necessary.

"Now that doesn't negate the fact that honestly, yes, in fact, what I wrote last two days is sparked by your presence (it doesn't need to be local for me to feel it) and paradox too in knowing it's ultimate Source which is about you too but doesn't stop there. Doesn't stop period. So it's like a love letter to Russell. But even more it's a Love letter to Love." - from an email I wrote to a muse last year (name changed to protect the Beloved ;-))

The wealth of heart full art from Dante shows what I mean. Dante wooed Beatrice in his heart, without ever consummating any tangible affair.

It'd be a travesty to restrict love to your Muse. Or delude myself into thinking they are The literal source of inspiration. They embody for me the source of inspiration, which is quite an important distinction. When you are with them, you are arrested and they easily strip you to your undefended heart, a bursting of love and creativity with every melting (or meeting) that crosses your path. They simply rekindle the god in all things. (Thank you to Nola spiritual teacher Judith Linden for the term "undefended heart").

As I've been told that New Orleans is the root chakra of the country. I interpreted that base chakra's concerns to revolve around survival and security. A friend corrects me: "It's more about integrating the primal." Primal? My mind jumps to the animalistic savage undomesticated Lilith (who unlike the dust coalescing into Adam) was fashioned from filth and sediment.

Days later, what's primal is answered because the Muse has that way about them:

you have a sweet unobtrusive way of
opening
my heart into its natural innocence

nigh impossible to shield it

and who'd want to (even out of habit)
i'd miss the overwhelm of perfume of the night-blooming jasmine
and the long moan of the train like an church organ on Press St and
its freight car graffiti proclaiming "You Are your Art"
and the clouds shifting slow over the levee

something (someOne? mySelf?) spoke to me in the silence
the other day and it said to me:
"There's a primal heart, Evelyn. There's a primal heart too.

That's where
music wells up from." - email today to a recent muse

This subject is so rich and so deep, I don't know where to go next and maybe that might be enough for today anyhow. And maybe too I'm afraid I might dissolve into the ether of it all.

I think I will share two snippets from selections sent to muses in my past that speak of muses and musing:

So I came to this Rilke poem (I love Rilke) referencing the courtesan, poet and accomplished lute-player Tullia D'Aragona that I wanted to share with you...

Die Laute (The Lute)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

I am the lute. Perhaps you'd like to dress
my figure in your words. My curving stripes
you may describe as if I were a ripe
full-bodied fig. Why not over-stress

the darkness you perceive in me? I shared
Tullia's darkness. I've even more than she
had in her private parts and her bright hair
shone like a ballroom. Sometimes we

performed duets: her mouth took up the sound
that swelled from me, embellishing my song.
Against her softness I held tight and strong
until our intermingling was profound.

they write: By the way, the Rilke poem is incredibly comforting and erotic all at once. How can things do both at the same time?

[Another letter:]

After Michelangelo's muse and confidant (doubtful they ever took their communion into lovemaking, sometimes even sex is superfluous), Vittoria Colonna died, he began work on the Florentine Pieta, and envisioned it as a sculpture of Vittoria/Mary Magdalene - because she was Magdalene to him. Michelangelo wrote in his letters:

"How can it be, Lady, as one can see from long experience, that the
live image sculpted in hard alpine stone lasts longer than its maker
whom the years returned to ashes?

...

and I know, for I prove it true in beautiful sculpture, that time and
death can't keep their threat to the work. Therefore, I can give both
of us long life in any medium, whether colours or stone, by depicting
each of these faces of ours; so that a thousand years after our
departure may be seen how lovely you were, how wretched I, and how in
loving you I was no fool."

"The sonnets of Michelangelo, recently given to the world, were written when he was nearly seventy years old. Several of the sonnets are directly addressed to Vittoria Colonna, and no doubt she inspired the whole volume.

A writer of the time has mentioned his accidentally finding Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna seated side by side in the dim twilight of a deserted church, "talking soft and low." Deserted churches have ever been favorite trysting-places for lovers; and one is glad for this little glimpse of quiet and peace in the tossing, troubled life-journey of this tireless man.

In fact, the few years of warm friendship with Vittoria Colonna is a charmed and temperate space, without which the struggle and unrest would be so ceaseless as to be appalling. Sweet, gentle and helpful was their mutual friendship. At this period of Michelangelo's life we know that the vehemence of his emotions subsided, and tranquility and peace were his for the rest of his life, such as he had never known before...

Michelangelo died at Rome, aged eighty-nine, working and planning to the last. His sturdy frame showed health in every part, and he ceased to breathe just as a clock runs down." - snippet from web-books.com on Michelangelo

Thinking of you. What a gift you have been to me, Russell.

He writes among other things: And you, me.

p.s. All Muses are gifts. And gratitude the offering that needs no impulse.

images William Blake's Beatrice Addressing Dante; Michael Parkes' Beatrice Alone; Odilin Redon's Beatrice; and John William Waterhouse's Dante and Beatrice.

tell me when i'll open my eyes

...all this feels strange and untrue…

In the Snow Patrol video for ”Open Your Eyes” below:

…the viewer’s P.O.V. is that of a driver racing through Paris at dawn, recklessly running red lights and generally cruising through the streets (sometimes the wrong way down one-ways) without  ever once stopping — except at the very end. Legend has it that director Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman), who licensed the film to Snow Patrol, shot it in one take without getting a permit, and was arrested after its first screening.

Set to Snow Patrol’s pensive, anthemic music, it’s exhilarating, eerie, dreamlike. - via Fred, from Very Short List

I adore Paris. I adore dawn. This time of year feels like the dawn of the year, the advent of spring. The New Orleans Mardi Gras was adopted from the carnival, the festival, in Paris.

Yes, it's Mardi Gras today.

No, I'm not in New Orleans.

I witness that thought, “I should be in New Orleans” (it appears to have an annoying perky voice) squeaking, grating. In contrasting to inspiration, which has the quality of a light breeze: a "still, small voice."

“All this feels strange and untrue.” (”When you argue with reality you lose - but only 100 percent of the time,” I hear Katie purr.) So no I should not be in New Orleans evidenced by the simple fact that I am not in New Orleans. Rather I am in San Jose. The geisha like purple magnolias, white and pink plum blossoms, dripping branches of cherry blossoms and lavender bushes are blooming. And I'm here writing this.

New Orleans isn't a matter of if. Simply when. Possibly it's the next full moon. The video project inspiration is gelling with a working title, ”Rhyme and No Reason.” Rather than a quick trip to Nola, it appears I will be languidly getting to know this earthy, gritty voodoo mistress of a city and its peopling while entertaining with tea at my parlour in a shotgun in Marigny (Law of Attraction at work here ;-) he, he, that's kind of an inside joke.)

Tom Piazza, a New Orleans music writer, says that in New Orleans they “participate in life as it unfolds.” Life is “lived to the hilt.” (That's not the exclusive domain of a single day like Mardi Gras.)

“The French Quarter is the last quarter of Bohemia [in the USA] - a place in love with life,” wrote Tom Williams, later changing his name to Tennessee after a bus deposited yet another soul passionate for the literary and the arts. Historian Louis Powell says Nola became the literary capital of the South in the 1920s and 30s because it was “where you could expatriate without going to Paris.”

I can feel it's time to be utterly reckless this Dawn. I have a smoky rouge stationary box collaged with vintage postcards of Paris scribbled:  “Paris… en flanant.” In French, flanant means to roam aimlessly, to hang out deeply, to sashay, to slowly lounge, to wander like a pilgrim, like a lover, that is:

“The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too be lovers in disguise.” - George Santayana, The Life of Reason

So I will be in New Orleans… en flanant, shortly, and not a moment too soon or a moment too late. I mentioned that my fortune cookie the other day after the hot and sour soup and tea were cleared away read: "Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”  At the same neighborhood dumpling nook, yesterday's cookie reads: "Do what you can with what you have, where you are.” Eternal fortune cookie advice for every instant of life, eh?

Still I can feel it's time to be utterly reckless this Dawn. And not only in my imagination. I have a whimsical way of living in the imaginal and arriving at the same lessons, yet sometimes you know it's a go in the real world. I wrote this piece, 'What is Your Genius?' in mid-December inspired by a desire to accompany Wyatt across the country on his way to Nola. It was looking like he could not make it in one shot, and he was kicking the idea of heading to San Diego and cutting across the country from there.

The whole thing intrigued me as a soul, as a writer, and I mentioned I wanted to tag along. On Dec 6th, he emails from the Palo Alto library:

Have you ever traversed this fine country of ours without reservations?

What a fine question. Without reservations? Have I done anything without reservation? A cruise through this world without hesitating, without reservation and gleefully greeting the rising sun in its full glory. Yes, it's high time to live life to the depths.

And open my eyes.

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." - Henry Miller

Bonus: From the New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple: "In Carnival the World erupts in cascading delight. Bodies give themselves to the revel and in so doing open their spirits to the sweet touch of revelation. Masked faces twist in the abandonment of self. Behind the great mask of Carnival, the small masks worn in the everyday world disappear. Sacred time touches all action, as clocks round their regular twelve, twelve, twelve with unnoticed precision. The Carnival, the Revel is ever Now.

A primary attribute of Carnival is release. This release is definitely not from the World. The World, together with all the marvelous experiences it offers, is a part of liberation. The release is from a vile smallness to a more complete awareness of our ways and states of being.

There is no growth; we are ever complete. What increases is awareness, the ability to focus one's attention and to appreciate that in the final, formal elegance of maya (illusion) the ultimate beauty of spirit is revealed."

On Afrocentric Voodoo: "Within the voodoo society, there are no accidents. Practitioners believe that nothing and no event has a life of its own. That is why "vous deux", you two, you too. The universe is all one. Each thing affects something else... Music and dance are key elements to Voodoo ceremonies. Ceremonies were often termed by whites "Night Dancing" or "Voodoo Dancing". This dancing is not simply a prelude to sexual frenzy, as it has often been portrayed. The dance is an expression of spirituality, of connection with divinity and the spirit world."

images Yemaya (illustration source), a santeria mother goddess also venerated in the eclectic blend of New Orleans hoodoo/voodoo (santeria is prevalent in Cuba where my family originates) ; Steve Moga's photo of 'bead house', in Faubourg Marigny, New Orleans, taken January 26, 2006

yet another way to Demo, to Launch, to Lunch, to Flock, to Frolic

I want to jump in the fray around Demo this week with a pre-announcement. Since everyone's asking what I'm baking these days, here's a peek inside the oven:

Imagine walking right into a set, a living theater of sorts, a pop-up teahouse and brasserie evoking the artistic foment and intimacy of the Parisian salon.

A laidback running showcase for eclectic installations of provocative and live social art, aesthetic and green designs, Web 2.0 demos (including a boutique digital screening room, etc.)

A convivial spa of conversation catalyzing fertile verges.

A community space for people to commune with people of every stripe. (Devoted but not pushy about transforming "the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.")

Each production comes once around for less than a season, never to be repeated again, to instanteously pop up in another incarnation somewhere else in the Bay Area (initially).

This time, the swirling philosophers and literati of a Vienna coffehouse with Art Nouveau vibe

(exit stage left)

Now, the Silk Road beckons saffron and cinnabar colored plush pillows spice-laden opium den  (sans opium)

(exit stage right)

Now, what does your fantasy fancy?...

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players" - Shakespeare, As You Like It

I haven't seen anything quite like it I can point you to. But something about Colette's in Paris reminds. Something about New Frontier on Main at this year's Sundance Film Festival reminds: 

"New Frontier on Main is Sundance's newest venue, showcasing moving-image [video] installations, live performances, microcinema screenings, new media technology, and the Rabbit Hole, a DJ lounge cafe." (more in this great article, "Sundance's New Frontier preserves artistic integrity", Variety, January 17, 2007)

"I've always loved DEMO-style conferences (like the one going on in Palm Desert today) where entrepreneurs show off their creations for the first time to an audience of their peers, the press, and investors." - Jason Calacanis, "Taking the payola out of DEMO-ing: The TechCrunch 20 Conference (or, I'm back in the conference business baby!)

This doesn't replace any expos or conferences, but I'm yearning for gatherings more sassy than a conference, and I'm willing to bet others are too.

I applaud the launchpad that Mike and Jason are giving visionaries to demo their dreams based on merit, not who's able pony up fees:

"It is a well known secret that if you are willing to pay the $15,000+ fee, your startup will really need to suck to be turned down." - Mike Arrington, "The TechCrunch20 Conference"

I don't have my model entirely cranked out, yet. But, claro que si, it's about the artists, innovators, entrepreneurs pushing the edges.

p.s. Comment, blog, email, text, or call 408 513 7324 if you are interested in participating in anyway.

dancers? investors? musicians? VJs/DJs? sponsors? videographers? filmmakers? accountants?  real estate gurus? conceptual artists? chefs? burners? producers? set designers? experimental theater folks? etc. etc?

(I'm notoriously behind on email, but I will get back with you.)

Blogging as Live Theater, A Theater of Engagement

"I remember speaking to one film director who deplored the fact that he had to write an article about his film. In his words, he'd be happy to talk about it as much as he could, but writing was weighing him down. As the person who, instead of a silver spoon, was probably born with a pen, I obviously asked what he didn't like about writing. His answer was that writing was 'a lonely experience'." (from Notebooks, by Julie Delvaux  - a writer's blog which I stumbled onto via a Google search for Andre Breton and homo ludens)

Been diving head first into Living Theatre, Artaud's Theater of Cruelty, Jerzy Grotowski, Antero Alli's Paratheatrical Research, Peter Brook's Happenings (and book by same name) and especially Brook's incredible book "The Empty Space", and performative installations.

More so the ancient theater of carnival, ceremony, festival, rites, and the tour de force of the unknown and the modern theater of World of Warcraft and Second Life, than necessarily Les Miserables on Broadway.

It couldn't have been merely coincidence that as I dwelve into theater, I find myself seated the other day at a tea lounge next to the experimental theater director for foolsFury: ("We crave thought-provoking visceral experiences that use all three dimensions, and multiple senses. [Bingo, I crave that too.] Our work incorporates a wide range of arts, including physical movement, music, audience interaction, circus and dance skills.")

The foolsFury ensemble had just completed a seven-day sequence performance at Yerba Buena Gardens from 365 Days/365 Plays. The idea was conjured by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks after she commits to writing a play a day every day for a year. Starting November 13, 2006, "the 365 Days/365 Plays National Festival will present the work simultaneously across the country, creating the largest collaboration in the history of American theater." (Now that sense of creating daily, unfolding without a sense of beginning-middle-end, and collaboration sounds so like social media.)

"Theatre isn’t about narrative.  Narrative isn’t necessary.  Events will make the whole." - Peter Brook, "The Empty Space"

Below I share some raw (yet moderately edited or they'd be much more muddled) musings from some correspondence with social interaction designer and friend Adrian Chan.

In the post "If Not on the Day I Die, Then Not Today" I wrote that two of my life goals were writing a book, and creating a documentary film. Although I'm not so sure either of those two engage me with people quite enough to suit my inclinations.

Lately I find blogging more akin to theater, more like performance, than the process behind creating either a book or film.

"Theatre exists in the here and now. It is what happens at that precise moment when you perform, that moment at which the world of the actors and the world of the audience meet. A society in miniature, a microcosm brought together every evening within a space. Theatre's role is to give this microcosm a burning and fleeting taste of another world, and thereby interest it, transform it, integrate it." - Peter Brook

I've written for 'mass' media, from my college newspaper (I started off in journalism before switching to computer engineering) to tech magazines, and been interviewed for television. The lack of an immediate, live audience gives it a different feeling all the way around than say blogging.

The last taped TV interview I did, I was engaged with the interviewer, but totally divorced for any concept of people in the 'audience' because there were no people in the audience except for the camera people. I didn't have any sense of connection to any audience due to the recorded aspect of it and the time lag to its eventual viewing.

The distribution is scattered so it feels like the taped interview itself (object) has the connection to the audience, and so it's decoupled from the stage (me, interviewer, and the set).

In social media, the distribution is coupled to the stage (i.e. whether it's the MySpace profile or a blog) and near-live performance, (yes, there is syndication possibility). But I also have a direct distribution mechanism via RSS, Feedblitz, etc and therefore direct, near-immediate, connection to an audience. It's nicknamed the World Live Web for a reason.

"The only thing that all forms of theatre have in common is the need for an audience. This is more than a truism: in the theatre the audience completes the steps of creation." - Peter Brook, "The Empty Space"

Whereas to me mass media, feels more like distribution is coupled with the content: the script or screenplay or newsstory, or to a recording of a past performance.

When I blog, it feels closest to having a live audience - very very cognizant that I have an audience in a way I never ever felt in other writing, and it's not exactly like speaking one-to-one, face-to-face, or to a small group either.

When I talk to artists, there seems to be two kinds. For instance, there's the "I paint for myself" kind that doesn't necessarily feel moved to share their work. I meet artists like this all the time: there's is no driving compulsion to engage and share, and then there are the performers.

"It is hard to understand the true function of spectator, there and not there, ignored and yet needed. The actor's work is never for an audience, yet it always is for one." - Peter Brook, "The Empty Space"

I cannot write solely for myself. And I cannot stretch and learn without another being being involved. Even with the magazine pieces I only completed them because of the back-and-forth relationship with the editor.

"The actor does not hesitate to show himself exactly as he is, for he realizes that the secret of the role demands his opening himself up, disclosing his own secrets. So that the act of performance is an act of sacrifice, of sacrificing what most men prefer to hide - this sacrifice is his gift to the spectator... Grotowski's actors offer their performance as a ceremony for those who wish to assist: the actor invokes, lays bare what lies in every man - and what daily life covers up." - Peter Brook (on Grotowski's theater), "The Empty Space"

When I look back at times I have actually written (and not merely thought about writing some day), it's always involved others and writing in the present, such as:

1. I write during writer's workshops because we are doing exercises right then and there, and then share them aloud within the group. I meet many writers at workshops that only write during workshops and lie fallow the rest of year. They typically beat themselves up for the fact they haven't written much on their own. I'm starting to think that maybe they are simply shared word writers like I am.
2. Blogging. I have a sense of an immediate audience whether they give me direct feedback or not. I know they're there and they encourage me to lay bare, to stretch.
3. I was struggling after a single day of writing THE book last May, until I seized upon the idea of writing whatever happened in next forty days (and that could include fantasies and flashbacks to past occuring in my mind). And writing it as a letter to a single friend. The focus of writing to a friend rather than writing the Great American Memoir to the void did the trick. Then I shared snippets in my journal in progress via email with an actual friend (and it greatly influenced the direction of the book as well, as nothing two-way leaves any side unaffected.)

Maybe that's where I think the "mass" media thing just doesn't hold water for me, I have been very influenced by readers (often whom have a "stage" and a presence online too). And I've been influenced in ways I'd never have anticipated until I blogged myself.

There is a dynamic moving lively human quality in social media that isn't present for me in other media. Only performance.

Bonus: Wonderful paper where a quantum physicists tackles Brook's theatre, Gurdjieff, Attar’s Conference of the Birds, the invisible, and much more.

p.s. I recommend Peter Brook's book, "The Empty Space: a book about the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate" (it's supposed to be about theatre; hmmm, but i saw it about much much more)

"There is only one interesting difference between the cinema and the theatre. The cinema flashes on to a screen images from the past. As this is what the mind does to itself all through life, the cinema seems intimately real. Of course, it is nothing of the sort—it is a satisfying and enjoyable extension of the unreality of everyday perception. The theatre, on the other hand, always asserts itself in the present. This is what can make it more real than the normal stream of consciousness. This is also what can make it so disturbing.

No tribute to the latent power of the theatre is as telling as that paid to it by censorship. In most regimes, even when the written word is free, the image free, it is still the stage that is liberated last. Instinctively, governments know that the living event could create a dangerous electricity - even if we see this happen all too seldom. But this ancient fear is a recognition of an ancient potential. The theatre is the arena where a living confrontation can take place." - Peter Brook, "The Empty Space"

images VeniceExplorer's Venice Carnival performer; and Venice Carnival jugglers at play

Transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood

I was admiring the manmade waterfall at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco last Friday when it occured to me that there were quotes etched into the granite box canyon.

Aha, it's a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial I realized for the first time (I do live 50 miles away). One quote using the metaphor of black and white keys on the piano particularly moved me. I have tried and tried to find it via Google, alas, I'm not feeling lucky.

There is a threadbare scatter rug in the living room, two chairs protected with plastic, and a couch in need of a new slip cover. One of the keys is missing on the old grand piano. [Martin Luther] King likes to play the piano although, as his wife says, "he starts off the `Moonlight Sonata' as if you're really going to hear something, but he fades out." - "Martin Luther King: Never Again Where He Was"

I find a few melodies reminiscent of Dr. King's vision:

"In terms of Dr. King's clarion calls for Blacks and Whites to sit together and break bread, that noble notion had been echoed in the 1920s by another Black hero from Africa, whose name was Dr. James E.K. Aggrey. To Dr. Aggrey, a graduate of Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, the harmonization and cooperation of Blacks and Whites are similar to what happens when one plays the piano. This African educator underscored that hitting on black notes on the piano can produce some music, and that it is likewise in hitting on the white notes. However, for a true musical harmony, a pianist has to hit on the black and white keys together!" - A.B. Assensoh lecture

So easy to say. The tendency is to stick close to keys just like us. We want to be surrounded by kindred spirits just like us. Marketers splice and dice us into just like us'es.

I tend myself toward the chi chi cafes. You know, the ones with cafe au lait in big wide porcelain bowls and that charmingly aloof French sidewalk cafe waiter attitude. Everyone is wearing the black uniform, reading the Times on Sunday, and checking their Mac or Blackberry.

Last Wednesday, I followed a young Latino with low-riding black jeans and dangly chains into The Hard Knox Cafe situated in a supposedly "sketchy" part of San Francisco. There weren't many folks of my complexion. And besides Theresa, the Vietnamese owner from Texas, I was the only woman present.

And perhaps I was dressed too vintage Bohemian: Whom would walk in to a joint with sheet metal tin walls and red vinyl leather seats and recycled gymnasium floors wearing a green velvet jacket with leopard print faux fur? Nix that - maybe the coat did fit in.

"That's a tough neighborhood," a male friend responded when I squealed with delight he just had to go check out the place for himself.

It took a bit longer than a New York minute, but The Hard Knox Cafe's warmth enveloped me quickly. I was head over heels with this rare gem: an inviting space of radical inclusivity.

"They get an interesting demographic," Joe, the accountant whose parents immigrated to San Francisco from the West Bank, seated in the stool to my left tells me.

(He doesn't know I'm in marketing. Thus far, we'd only yet discussed oxtail soup and my grandmother.)

"Last week, I saw two women, maybe in their 50s, walk right in and sit down at a booth," Joe continues. From his description, you knew they felt as comfortable as if they'd waltzed into a four p.m. seating of a Victorian tea.

From my own impression, I knew I felt at home. Maybe I'm not alone: "please don't tell anyone about this place.  please!!  i am not encouranging anyone to come here so that the lunch wait time gets any longer (is it too late with the 99 reviews?)"

If you want to truly honor Martin Luther King, Jr. on this holiday entertain the thought of engaging with someone 'different' from you today... and tomorrow... and the next day...it could be as simple as talking to the person seated next to you on the bus.

"With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." - Martin Luther King Jr., "I Have a Dream" speech

Fair warning: you won't be able to stop once you start. 

"That was the beginning of the fight for civil rights. St. Louis started it. And there are six other cases, but I'm not asked to go into that question. But I am only saying that St. Louis, the story of civil rights could be written entirely from the history of St. Louis. But I think, more important, the story of American music. Call it Afro-American, Negro-American or Black-American music, the fusion of it started in St. Louis and is an important story. And let me tell you this. My research shows that it was a fusion of the German talent in St. Louis, its musical talent, the refugees from Germany driven out of Germany, seeking freedom, who came to St. Louis, who set up their sing-alongs and their music clubs, and their appreciation for music, and do you know that the music, the Germans who came to St. Louis invited Wagner, the great composer who also had been exiled and was living in France, to come and live in St. Louis. And there's correspondence between the St. Louis Germans and Richard Wagner inviting him to come to St. Louis and live and finish his composing. And I have often wondered, if Wagner had come here and composed his Ring of music, his great background of German mythology made into music and into drama, what he might not have done with the situation here with the Negro on the steam boats and the music that he was making. So there was a fusion between German technique. Listen, all the early teachers in the west were German teachers, music teachers. All our famous black musicians, Tom Turpin, Scott Joplin, all went to German music teachers to get their formal education. Mr. Handy, who do you think in his book he gives credit to as the man who moved him into music? Down in Henderson, Kentucky, when he was a janitor there and still trying to play and get his band going. He was so interested, this was W. C. Handy, was so interested in his music until he became a janitor in a music school. And the man who ran this music school his name of all names was Bach. Not the great Bachs of Germany but his name was Bach and he was a German. And Handy in his book tells you that he got his fundamental music composition from Bach. So the Germans infused their technical music into the stream of Negro beat and rhythm. And soon we had rag time and the development of blues. And later jazz. That to me is the real America. Negro music is not all African. It is not all tom-tom, they knew nothing about the piano there and the other instruments that have been mastered. The clarinet, the violin. Mastered by Negroes in New Orleans and St. Louis but put to the use of fusing the feeling of the Negroes on the technical basis of German music. And that's why it's lasted. And that to me is the real picture of America. It is the fusion of cultures, not one culture alone, standing and growing by itself. But many cultures being fused and in the background is that fine African feeling of "What race am I? I am many in one. Through my veins there flows the blood of black man, white man, Britain, Celt, and Scot. In tumultuous America. I welcome them all but love the blood of that kindly race that swathers my skin, crinkles my hair, and puts sweet music into my soul." - Judge and historian Nathan B. Young, Oral History Interview by University of Missouri-St. Louis

images Piano Keys by Motts (his site is a very cool photo exploration into urban decay) photo of the Hard Knox Cafe by the KQED Check Please! blog; Rehearsal by Michael Singletary

They figured there was this great hunger for connection

"Bread is like life - you can never control it completely. Come to think of it, bread IS life." - Rose Levy Beranbaum, "The Bread Bible"

"They figured there was this great hunger for connection. That farmers wanted to meet the city people who used their crops. That city people wanted to know where their food came from.

They had no idea if they were right. Everyone told them they weren’t. Everyone told them not to quit their day jobs. Everyone told them they would fail. They figured they wouldn’t be grandiose. For opening day they baked about 30 loaves of bread, 2 dozen muffins and 12 cinnamon buns. When they opened their doors at 10 o’clock … there were 200 people lined up at the door." - "Tall Grass Prarie Bread Company", CBC.ca's Vinyl Cafe (via Siona)

"When is a bakery not a bakery? When it’s a political statement, an architectural pioneer, and a bit of performance art, all wrapped in one." - "Mystery Muffins", New York Magazine, January 26, 2006 (next time I'm in NYC, I'm checking out Birdbath where the walls are made of amber waves of grain)

"In ancient Egypt, the word for bread meant "life," the force of which still shows remarkable staying power, according to the scholarly English food writer Jane Grigson, who, roaming widely in the groves of academe, observed that her scattered archaelogist friends all gave place of honor at their tables to small Near Eastern flatbreads, edible talismans keeping them in day-to-day physical touch with earliest recorded times."  - Michael Batterberry, founding editor of Food Arts and Food & Wine magazines

"Surely it is more than coincidence that the ancient tradition of Hebrew grace before the meal begins with the prayer of thanks for the wine and immediately follows with the prayer of thanks for the bread -- the only two parts of the meal thus honored. Though I don't speak conversational Hebrew, these Hebrew prayers are ingrained in my soul. And I think of bread and wine as the foundation of my culinary existence.

My first experience of eating home-baked bread was not until I was seventeen [she grew up in NYC] and a freshman at the University of Vermont. A local resident paid my boyfriend with a loaf of bread for mowing the lawn. It vaguely captured my attention - he was so pleased about it. He made fried egg sandwiches for us for a hunting trip - something I would normally have rejected on concept (both the fried egg and the hunting) -- but I was in love, it was so cold, and I was so hungry... and it was an epiphany. My first school vacation back in New York I borrowed "The Joy of Cooking" from Rosalind Streeter, a neighbor and friend of my mother's, and made my first bread." - Rose Levy Beranbaum, "The Bread Bible"

"As an elementary human need, bread runs a close third to air and water," says Michael Batterberry. There was a time I zoomed past the elementary.

There was a time I subscribed to practically every technology and business magazine under the sun. (Yes, you could have gawked at the heft of the daily cache in the mailbox.)

There was a time I belonged and participated in nearly every local business and technology organization like NAWBO and the local chamber and the Utah Information Technology Association. There was a time I belonged to quite a number of environmental activist groups like Greenpeace and Sierra Club.

There was a time I didn't want to miss a beat of what was happening. And, so, I missed my life.

This time I belong to one dues-paying organization and it's called Slow Food USA.

p.s. I'm very serious when I say that 2007 will be the year that folks get that social media will be likened to a communal table rather than a printing press. That social media has more in common with barbershops, trading posts, village bazaars, coffeehouses, piazzas and plazas, eighteenth century Parisian salons, troubadours and minstrels, theater, and Homeric poetry than it has with newspapers and television.

Bonus: Of course, there will be a bakery with the teahouse. (I just ordered book "Breakfast, Lunch, Tea" recently about the Rose Bakery in the U.K. with recipes. Also available at many Anthropologie's.) Locally, I am a big fan of Bay Bread and Crepe & Brioche and you can find both in the South Bay at farmer's markets.

I don't want to give away the name of the book I began last May 2nd, but bread is a huge, overarching symbol. One day I was writing during my morning tea ritual in the garden and the Virgin Mary kept wanting to be writ. (I must confess sections read like Christian erotica both literally and in the sense that Rumi writes of the Beloved.)

It's later I learnt that Bethlehem, "the old Hebrew name bêth lehem, meaning "house of bread", has survived to this day." And, recently, I went to see the SF MOMA exhibit of Anselm Kiefer titled "Heaven and Earth" (highly recommend, through Jan 21st). Born in 1945 post-war Germany, Kiefer's studio was "once in a brick factory with massive brick kilns, reminiscent of the gruesome ovens of Nazi concentration camps and 'athanor' the alchemist's "cosmic oven, where spirit and matter are in an ongoing process of creation and destruction."

I'd set my book aside for months and months. It was one famished day in late September while driving around with my friend David that we pulled in to The Taboun because it looked like a quick, healthy falafel meal. It wasn't quick. I had time to learn that taboun is Hebrew for the little beehive ovens. And my order of falafel took so long, I had time to let the outside mural of the monastery nestled in the hills of the Holy Land speak to me and it was clear as a bell it was the time to start the next draft.

One day last week I contemplated that "that miraculous metaphorphosis of flour, water, and yeast, becomes a living thing shortly after the introduction of the yeast, the metabolic action of which is fermentation. Rising bread is a warm and companionable being, if you listen to Rose, who, after a couple of decades of pulling loaves from the oven, can still pose the question, "Could it be that I'm only completely happy now when a bread is happening [the italics are mine] somewhere nearby?""  (- Michael Batterberry)

And I contemplated, "[M]y serious interest in wine began about eight years ago, the same time I started working seriously on this bread book. It was at the Huia vineyard in South New Zealand, when the vintner was explaining to me why he had to cool down the fermenting wine to prevent undesirable flavors, that it hit me how incredibly similar the process of making bread is to that of making wine. Both rely on yeast fermentation, time, and temperature to produce fantastic flavors in the end product. The wild yeast for wine is present on the grapes' skin; for bread it is present on the wheat." (- Rose Levy Beranbaum)

And after months of open-ended inquiry regarding the book regarding the symbolism of the Eucharist, it came upon me like a wisp that wanders to reveal the sun.

Dan asked me about said book recently. Ah, it's fermenting. No wine before its time.

images homemade potato bread " Oh, and the wine was bottled by my uncle!" says my_amii and Hearth by Mooch (who lives "in the City of Dreaming Spires" and posts an image a day) and Bread and Water, A.D. 1999 by Carol Cole, sculpture made with found objects (138 plastic bread bag closers and 98 plastic water bottle caps)

What Are You Optimistic About?

I believe scientists, alchemists, philosophers, mystics, and visionaries ask a boatload of questions.

Mahatma Gandhi said his whole life was experiments with truth. So I was toying with the idea of taking some crescent mat board (locally you can get it at University Art, Palo Alto) and really making a science fair project out of my 2007 hypothesis question.

You know, a step quirkier than the typical magazine cutout what-I-envision-want-desire collage.

In 2002 my question was "What is the meaning of my life?" (Well, I think it was more in the vein of "What the @#*%$! is this about anyway?"). In 2005 my question was "What is deathless?" I'm not to sure what my hypothesis is this for year quite yet, but hey it took me months in junior high to come up with my science fair topic. (Lucky I'm a lot quicker these days.)

"Albert Einstein once commented that the most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether or not the  universe we live in is friendly or hostile. He hypothesized that your answer to that question would determine your destiny." - Wikiquote on Albert Einstein

Keep seeing interesting guiding open-ended questions crop up like: What are you optimistic about and why?

Try that one.

I click with how Robert Scoble has been answering it. It gets to the heart of why I'm really stepping back into social media again.

I was talking to Adrian Chan a few months ago and I tell him I almost got out of technology altogether back in 1994. I stayed in because this thing came along called the Internet that was connecting people to people, it wasn't just human interfacing to machine. He tells me that's why he's into social media too, because he fundamentally cares about "the social fabric of humanity." And I think we were both silent for a second after he said that.

And that's why I think Time was wrong about the Person of the Year: it's We.

Here's how Robert answered What are You Optimistic About?:

Lots of interesting people are talking about the Edge question: what are you optimistic about and why?

Last week I met hundreds of Americans in four cities. That experience made me much more optimistic about the future.

One guy, in particular, gave me a tour of his FEMA trailer in a poor, decimated, New Orleans neighborhood and then took me inside his stripped-out home that had been flooded eight feet deep with water and muck. He was black. I was white. Not that that matters, but in previous decades I probably wouldn’t have been invited into his home. He had an awesome attitude, despite the crap that life had dealt him. He made me optimistic once again that we can take on tough challenges and come through with a laugh, a smile, and a great joke about it all.

But, then I realized why he had a great attitude. He had friends who were helping him rebuild his house. They were working on making their neighborhood better. One stud at a time, one of them told me.

They made me optimistic that my son will see a better world than I’ve seen. One where we can figure out how to bootstrap communities out of poverty. One where we see the last vestiges of “isms” disappear. One where we help each other out — one nail at a time, if need be. - Robert Scoble, "2007 Edge Question: what are you optimistic about?"

And this snippet ties it together. Yep, porches and enough banana pudding for the block are the glue of social capital - I kid you not:

"One other thing Ed has is this infectuous love of politics and love of his local community. I didn’t really grok why so many great American politicians come out of the south until Maryam and I visited a local neighborhood party and had banana pudding on the front lawn of some guy’s house. It was like a Web 2.0 party in San Francisco, except there was a collegiality that just doesn’t happen in SF parties (they are getting too big, for one). I think it was all due to the banana pudding. Maryam and I have been craving it ever since. That stuff is like crack." - Robert Scoble, "Ed Cone, combo of politics, tech, community"

p.s. Robert, I, Anil Dash, and Chad Dickerson will be on the same panel Jan 9th speaking on 2007 Predictions for the Web (in Mountain View, CA; more info) My delicious tags in preparation include blog entries on other's predictions for the 2007 Web.

p.p.s. I'm going to New Orleans finally for my own self. I reckon around Mardi Gras. And Wyatt arrived back in Nola on Christmas Day, very very late Christmas Day, but definitely Christmas Day.

images Porch Party, Charleston 2005 by Red Grooms (American, b. 1937), gouache on paper in the Gibbes Museum

Excavating the Creative Contours of Your Customer

I assume you've read the Anthropologie piece. I assume you read that founder and chairman Richard Hayne's training as an anthropologist was put to use when he spent nearly two years on a "cultural odyssey" to make sure his next post-Urban Outfitters venture was on target.

That the headquarters staff keeps their pulse directly on the customer, not focus groups, on cultural events, not trends research reports. That they say fieldwork is never ever done.

"If you really want to understand your customer, you have to spend a portion of your time excavating the creative edge of the culture that defines her. For Anthropologie president Glen Senk, that means lurking around upscale neighborhoods, looking for blue plastic New York Times delivery bags and calculating the ratio of Starbucks to convenience stores. (Fast Company)"

On August 24, and August 25 I'll be leading two separate afternoon expeditions. Highly individualized excavating-the-creative-edge-of-your-customer safaris into the upscale European-boutique-inspired Santana Row shoppes in San Jose, California. One to five curious adventurers per trip. Absolutely no guarantees of safely returning back to civilization with the same eyes, same senses, same palate:

"In my experience, retailers spend most of their time looking at things from the company's perspective or the marketer's perspective," [Glen Senk, CEO of Anthropologie] he says. "They talk about trends and brand but rarely about the customer in a meaningful way. We're customer experts. Our focus is on always doing what's right for a specific customer we know very well."

The catch: I'm doing this research myself anyway. We'll start the afternoon by having lunch at the one restaurant I've been waiting with intense anticipation to open: Tanglewood Restaurant. (If you have to write a press release, that one's a beauty. It's actually a story. And it's no accident we start the dig at Tanglewood.) So that means you guys and gals split my lunch check, that's it. You must be into slow food and exploration into the unknown: what you don't know you don't know. You must be an independent owner (or marketing representative/agent of), designer, artist, artisan, creator or somehow convince me this would be of benefit to your business if none of those vaguely applies. High-tech companies especially Web 2.0 consumer-oriented would gain insights. This isn't about retail. It's about customer. RSVP: c r o s s r o a d s d i s p a t c h e s +at+ gmail +dot+ com and I'll send details.

Anthropologie: We Spend Money on Experience, Not Marketing

I stopped shopping at my ex-favorite chain store Chico's some time ago. Their catalog still arrives in my PO Box, but when I walk by the store I rarely venture in. I haven't bought anything there in maybe two years. I read with passing interest in the Wall Street Journal that "Chico's Falls Out of Fashion With Investors" (7/28/06): "Chico's shares have fallen more than 50% since reaching a high Feb 22 of $49.40."

Yesterday, I'm walking along the European-styled street promenade at Santana Row across from my new retail chain favorite (I'm more of a boutique gal), Anthropologie, and the pair strolling in front of me start a converation as they walk past a potted profusion of lavender agapanthus and the Crepe & Brioche French Artisan Bakery's stall at the organic farmer's market.

The thirty-something woman turns to her friend and gasps, "I am dying to, but I cannot go into Anthropologie!" She's resisting the urge to browse its "latticework chaise lounges, velvet patchwork pillows, ornate birdcages, leather-bound books, sari fabrics, teak benches...vintage-inspired cardigan sweaters...Chinese pajamas and cobwebby camisoles."

Me, I gave up resistance -- and I'm talking far beyond resisting enchanting lace skirts, guava scented candles and Portugeuse china too.

I feel young at heart these days and, yet, when I walk into Anthropologie, I feel younger still. A sense of wonder and enchantment welcomes you as soon as you open the door. Music streams, a couple sits side-by-side on an antique sofa immersed in a coffee-table book of Leonardo da Vinci's complete works, a mother and her teenage daughter with their coiffeured black poodle buy a whimsical sun dress evocative of Provence for Mom.

Chico's tends more towards a baby boomer crowd and I'm right on the cusp of Gen-X and Baby Boomer. Yet I spot many women both younger and older than what the retail critics cite as Anthropologie's so-called demographic of 30-45 years. But then again Anthropologie could care less about demographics.

John Moore of the Brand Autopsy blog shares:

As a marketer, I adore Anthropologie. They do a masterful job of making sure every store is the same, yet different. “The same, yet different” retailing strategy is something we strived to do at Starbucks and because of me, this article found its way on many a chair at Starbucks’ HQ. In fact, I still freely share this article with retailers wanting marketing advice.

As a human (whom happens to be a woman, customer and marketer and much more), I adore Anthropologie. Here's just one reason why:

"One of our core philosophies," explains Anthropologie president Glen Senk, "is that we spend the money that other companies spend on marketing to create a store experience that exceeds people's expectations. We don't spend money on messages -- we invest in execution."

Experience the Message. Intimately Know Your Market. "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous," said Peter Drucker.

The Fast Company article's author totally understands the wonder and essence of Anthopologie. This article gives insight into far far more than simply retailing. I totally wholeheartedly recommend it.

And you gotta love any story that begins like this:

My mother used to use a phrase, "shop like a Frenchwoman," that I never really understood until the summer we spent a month in Normandy. I was 15, and my parents, along with my aunt (my mother's twin) and her family, had rented an old farmhouse on the top of a hill in the rolling countryside. My schoolgirl French was deemed the most passable of the four cousins', so I was the translator for the women's daily trips to the markets of the little town of Manerbe. There I began to get the picture.

If the twins couldn't exactly talk like Frenchwomen, they could cook with the best of them -- and that started with their approach to ingredients. They would pick over baby potatoes, inspect haricots verts for color and crispness, smell herbs for freshness, and poke and prod everything within reach in the outdoor stalls. They'd move from charcuterie to boulangerie , passing over the pâté for some particularly succulent chickens or pointing out the exact baguette they wanted. As often as not, an unexpected or particularly fresh item would result in a surprise twist in the menu.

It wasn't efficient, but we usually came away with a story: a conversation with one of the shopkeepers, a motorbike run amok in the marketplace, a circle back to replace the tarte Tatin devoured in the car on the way home. And, inevitably, the smells, sounds, and textures of the market seeped into our dinner, adding an intense flavor.

These days, for the most part, shopping like a Frenchwoman is a lost art, having vanished somewhere between the sommelier at Costco and the organic arugula now available in virtually every supermarket in America. The multisensory ritual, with its open-ended sense of discovery and the thrill of the hard-won find, has given way to a uniformity of style -- and a stylish uniformity.

And then there is Anthropologie...

images Yeah, it's a sleeper hit alright. With no advertising, Anthropologie's reliance on its store experience, intimacy with its customer, art, "high touch, not high tech" (says their architect Ron Pompei), evocative soulful catalogs and word-of-mouth makes it seem uber-radically traditionalist. Radical traditionalist, like me. Images from their website.