Crossroads Dispatches

the emotional terrain through which true artistry will lead

Once I communed in foreign languages that translated into a computer's DNA of zero's and one's. Eventually executable applications made way for executing marketing campaigns - it was a stepping stone to being with beings (although computers are a strata of existence, for instance, they purr when you play them fractal animations).

My marketing stint was an exploration into what made humans tick, why we needed what we needed, desired what we desired after my first career cranking out virtual 3D metaverses to Internet shopping carts. Marketing, though, bringing me much closer to the mark, still skated the surface with regards to genuine no-strings-attached intimacy and the depths of connection.

In an Irish pub in SoMa whose threshold graced a stained glass Celtic spiral of life overhead, Hugh McLeod bought me a pint of cider. I opened a book Hugh hauled across the pond on his most recent visit West, "Herd: How to Change Mass Behavior by Harnessing Our True Nature," by Mark Earls. (Hugh touts it and its author very, very highly.)

The words that caught my eye in Herd's [hmmm, why do my fingers want to type Heard!?] neon rose jacket were: "...we are at heart a 'we-species,' but one suffering from the 'illusion of I'." Flipping through the book, another quote pops out: "Interaction is what jazz music is all about. - Stan Gertz." Nice.

Let's toss out the marketing consultant/guru/pundit angle for a moment although it's all inextricably integrated, and peer at the cartoonist. The artist. (And Hugh considers himself a cartoonist foremost.) What truly imprinted for me about Hugh was the spontaneity with which his pen flowed out stream-of-consciousness cartoons onto business cards during a group picnic lunch at South Park.

No pre-meditation, no wrangling and tussing about with words and contorting shapes over and over with revisions and drafts until just the precise perfect note was hit in some long-suffering artiste pose. Pure flow.

His flow-ering pen inspires me to more ephemeral art. If you can't pack it and carry it with you and blurt it out and give it away on the spot, then - maybe you're holding onto too much. Maybe you're holding back too much.

Maybe we're confining art too much? To canvases, to mausoleums, to bound leather journals.

The artists that stop me in my tracks are the ones that inspire me to create on the spot myself. Wow! Give me a sketchpad now! Where's my camera? Oh, a poem is jiggling out. I must jot these rushing lyrics.

A Twitterista friend (one of those secreted away in protected mode, so I'll not say whom) wrote today:

little boy watched saul's children of night w/ me. asked "did he say dragon did he say monster" i explained saul wanted those words in poem

then boy composed 2 of his own poems

I have a hard time articulating what I felt when I read that tweet. This little boy, a very little boy indeed, wanted to do his dance after hearing a poet play his pipe. That's seldom the response, really. The spectator may think a lot of things, from: "wow, wish I could do that" to "I can't ever enthrall like that" to "now that was the shit" to "that's just his hobby, right" to...

I smiled at two poems writing a little boy, because the little girl within me had the very exact same response, though mine was a singular longer one. After an evening of YouTube and Saul Williams (I also adore When the Clock Strikes Me) with a bit of La Bruja (and here's an interview with hip hop poet Caridad de La Luz) thrown in, I wrote the most amazing poetry - you'll just have to take my word for it as I prefer to share the first reading aloud at an intimate face-to-face open mic night.

I haven't quite placed the magic ingredient that separates the artist that dazzles from afar, with a charmed audience drooling at their genius, with the ones whose brilliance extends to kindling a fire in ourselves...but that's what I am personally aiming for.

So I wonder aloud that if passion is fire is hearth, then if it doesn't have something to do with its anagrams too: hearth -> heat, heart, Earth, art, hear.

Especially heart.

On Saul's MySpace page, he writes a very endearing open letter to Oprah sometime after an Oprah segment on rappers and hip-hop. (Saul Williams is an indie hip-hop/punk spoken word artist and musician I wrote about in the last post.) This is the excerpt that reallllllly grabbed at me, although the entire letter is exemplary in its warmth and candor. It may also explain why I'm no longer interested in busyness anymore, rather out to live my making as art:

"On your show you asked the question, "Are all rappers poets?" Nice. I wanted to take the opportunity to answer this question for you.

The genius, as far as the marketability, of Hip Hop is in its competitiveness. Its roots are as much in the dignified aspects of our oral tradition as it is in the tradition of "the dozens" or "signifying". In Hip Hop, every emcee is automatically pitted against every other emcee, sort of like characters with super powers in comic books. No one wants to listen to a rapper unless they claim to be the best or the greatest. This sort of braggadocio leads to all sorts of tirades, showdowns, battles, and sometimes even deaths. In all cases, confidence is the ruling card. Because of the competitive stance that all emcees are prone to take, they, like soldiers begin to believe that they can show no sign of vulnerability. Thus, the most popular emcees of our age are often those that claim to be heartless or show no feelings or signs of emotion. The poet, on the other hand, is the one who realizes that their vulnerability is their power. Like you, unafraid to shed tears on countless shows, the poet finds strength in exposing their humanity, their vulnerability, thus making it possible for us to find connection and strength through their work. Many emcees have been poets. But, no, Ms. Winfrey, not all emcees are poets. Many choose gangsterism and business over the emotional terrain through which true artistry will lead."

When we awaken our heart, perhaps then, we awaken as art.

ART YouTube video of Saul Williams orating "Children of the Night" (that's Ken Wilber introducing him in the circle); I cannot recall source of this Brooklyn, NY graffiti whatsoever, if you know, fill me in

p.s. As I've said trillions of times, I don't regard creativity as a segregated aspect of life, I regard it as every moment's expression of life.

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.

jammin with the active side of inspiration

"The conclusion is always the same, love is the most important and still the most unknown energy of the world." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

That's the quote on the Toubab Krewe CD surrounded by images of the band members with local musicians and children in West Africa. I had the pleasure of seeing this Asheville band's labour of love at the Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans a week ago Sunday.

Pure devotional music. Not everyone would describe Toubab Krewe's music as thus, yet I do. 

The intensity of love and light was beating loud. So easy to close your eyes and sway to the rhythm. Best meditation I'd had in months: I know that when the diamond tingles in my head in that sweet giddy way. They were enchanted too.

"Human beings, vegetables, or comic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player." - Albert Einstein

I'm shifting focus slightly as I promised to the active side of inspiration for remainer of the series.

Active? (Uh, does that sounds like drudgery?) Don't get me wrong, if it smacks of work even a tad, it's not inspired. It's closer to rejoicing - being propelled by joy. It's closer to dancing. What makes your heart dance?

If you can't whistle and sing and tap dance while you work, start resurrecting a few of the practices that do make you dance - baking homemade sourdough bread from stratch and maybe your own yeast from the ether, listening to the morning dove's coo coo coo, throwing stick for your dog into the gurgling creek while you two hike, planting sunflowers, basil and eggplants into the earth, writing love letters and leaving them in a library book for someone else, lingering over a cafe au lait and almond croissant in the courtyard at Rue Pagan as sparrows congregrate, or literally dancing, or whatever, oh, you know what wiggles your bones into dance.

"There was a star danced, and under that was I born." - William Shakespeare

p.s. It's the spring equinox tomorrow. I may not write as I'll be gutting a house in the Lower Ninth Ward, assuming I can get to the ACORN building by 7:30 a.m. that is. Try: Bask as much in the sunlight as you can. Walk more outside instead of driving. Hold meetings at outdoor cafe (weather permitting) instead of the conference room. Open up the windows.

Bonus: Am I advocating irresponsibility - if it feels like work - do not do it? Hmmm, quite probable, yes. But, then again, I don't exactly see the virtue of puritan work ethic like everyone else. I believe a labor of love isn't labor. It's that power of love that works miracles all of its own.

For instance, here's a comment I wrote a while back in response to Tara Hunt's post, What Boutique is: Part I:

"Sometimes I also call boutique artisanal, or right now as I’m back from Sundance Film Fest, indie spirit. (Indie: independence alone does not guarantee a ’boutique’. I noted that Krups sponsored the New Frontiers on Main cafe with local Salt Lake Roasting Company’s coffee. The owner is devoted to scouring the globe for the best coffee in the world for over 40 years, and the Krups marketing guy said that’s why they chose them as a co-sponsor. Nope, not every independent coffeehouse is boutique.) [BTW, I used to live in SLC and can testify to Salt Lake Roasting Company's devotion.]

Some luxury stuff is boutique, and vice versa. For instance, in Saratoga, CA I adore the jewelers Deja & Co. Astronomically pricey, yet I feel a boutique vibe there whenever I go in. Deja herself is charming and warm and the space is warm and inviting rather than pretentious and ‘exclusive’. Who else has baby blue walls, fresh flowers and an adorable chandelier — and that’s just the bathroom?

This level of devotion, not just attention, to detail stratifies the boutique from the mere luxury. A boutique is typically a labor of love for the owners. And I find it’s the owners that I also fall in love with at boutiques. Luxury alone all too often is a sterile, cold beauty rather than the effusive, gracious beauty of boutique.

The small production runs I find are typically because of this devotion to detail - for instance, the butter for the chocolate might simply taste better hand-churned, and thus it results in small batches. Small production is the result, but not the objective necessarily."

Bonus Deux: Toubab Krewe live on YouTube (ah, still have to be there to truly feel the presence)...

images New Orleans artist James Michalopoulos' oil paintings "Marigny Dreams" (24 X 36) and "Bearing Crosses" (20 X 40). His gallery is in the Quarter, on Bienville between Royal and Chartres Streets. At the Louisiana In Words book signing yesterday, I heard that Michalopoulos is also involved with the boutique Old New Orleans Rum, "batch produced",   distilled and bottled on Frenchmen Street, which was a sponsor for yesterday afternoon's literary & social event.

inspiration, not just for sissies and poets

Day 9 of everyday inspiration. Glancing over the last week's worth of posts, it's easy to surmise inspiration is stuff for the tea and crumpets crowd. Maybe, one too many nymphs, goddesses, faeries, eh?

Too girly? Fair enough. Oh sure, I brought men into this (Graves, Keroauc, Yeats) but for godsakes, they're poets! So this post is for the manly man in all of us.

Inspiration ain't sissy stuff. She's manna for the bold and hearty. Think exploration, expedition. Ernest Shackleton. John Wesley Powell. Everest. Yet all that terrain isn't terra incognita anymore. Where you go shall be.

I said She would not shipwreck you among the rocks along the voyage. She's a fair wind, she is. What I didn't say is you won't believe it. Time and again you will second-guess the route: Has She gone mad? I can't do that! I can't navigate that!

"I saw a delicate flower had grown up two feet high between the horse's feet and the wheel track. An inch more to the right or left had sealed its fate, or an inch higher. Yet it lived to flourish and never knew the danger it incurred. It did not borrow trouble, nor invite an evil fate by apprehending it." - Henry David Thoreau, Walden Pond, Chapter 4

There's something compelling about someone who unapologetically is true to themselves. They live with gusto without hesitation, without wavering. Unshakeable. It's really quite captiving, alluring.

I know, I know it seems paradoxical that yielding, that being open, is strength.

There is a directness, a power in that unimpeded flow that looks like strength and integrity to others. And it is. It's not appearance.

I used to have a type of man I went for. The kind that hurtled themselves down tumultous Class V rivers. Launched themselves without a care in the world down a vertical notch zigzagging down a cliff on skis. They test the limits of their endurance in triathlons and ultramarathons each time topping the last adventure.

"The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive." - Joseph Campbell

They exuded that Outside magazine kind of rugged strength. No wusses here from the Outside view. Yet, feeling they had to be "in control" counterintuitively led to a walking on eggshells strategy that rippled through from the Inside out in everyday matters and life. You'd never know it from the Outside, but Thoreau knew what he was talking about when he stated, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."   

Courage and perservence takes the finesse of inspiration.

That photo still of Matthew Barney and Bj?rk (in this post, abandon self to The kiss). Wow. I love it for its frank eroticism. I love it even more because they've laid aside the battle agenda, softened the firm grip on the knives, and surrendered to a deeper call even though it didn't exactly make a lot of sense in context:

Hey, we were supposed to... The warrior gives way to the adventurer.

"A 'warrior' shaman tends to personify fear, illness, or disharmony and to focus on the development of power, control, and combat skills in order to deal with them. An 'adventurer" shaman, by contrast, tend to depersonify these conditions (i.e., treat them as effects, not things) and deal with them by developing skills of love, cooperation, and harmony." - Serge Kahili King, Urban Shaman (comprehensive review/summary at Innovant blog)

Marketing guru Seth Godin has a few themes in his writings, much circles around being original, and thus abolishing mediocrity. Uniqueness inherently stands out. And so it follows that you can't be unique in the way I'm unique. (Duh!)

There are no best practices for product development, innovation, marketing, etc. contrary to what you may hear. That's following the herd. Rather, follow your inspiration.

That inner strength rippling outward that comes from following inspiration, in that, mediocrity vanishes. It's mutually exclusive.

"What is mediocrity in life? It is the failure to let the inner brilliance shine. Medieval theologicians described this personal brilliance in the Latin word  scintilla, the spark that lies at the heart of a person. When that inner glow shows itself in personality, way of life, values, and expression, mediocrity disappears.

...Mediocrity covers over this life-giving scintillation in yourself and the world. But the person alive to life and calling and love responds and shows herself. She makes every effort to let that light shine, whether it is within her small family or in the greater world. The arc of scintillation depends on fate and destiny, but the spark is important to everyone." - Thomas Moore, Dark Nights of the Soul

In a provocative piece about mediocrity in the music world in yesterday's San Jose Mercury News, "Why commerce is killing the true spirit of hip-hop", music critic Davie D shares that hip-hop icon Nas is tired with same old retread themes of sex, violence and bling, and the way the labels seem intent on stifling artistic originality. In a bold (hmm, inspired?) stroke, Nas titled his new album "Hip Hop Is Dead."

In a separate section of the article, we learn that ?uestlove of The Roots song "You Got Me" (on YouTube) with Erykah Badu (and she is something herself) was "overtly positive" and summarily rejected because as the labels and stations are "intent on investing in songs with sexual and violent themes." They ponied up one million dollars to encourage airplay on the radio (oh, that kind of payola is nothing new in the music world, what's new is they defied the prevailing judgment of 'this is what sells'). The song won an Grammy.

In a Stereo Warning interview (that clearly shows us The Root's roots are embedded in inspiration) with ?uestlove, the interviewer states: "He also told us most hip-hop artists are broke, both financially and when it comes to meaningful lyrics, which of course we know is at least party caused by a rotten attitude of "sell big or get out" at major record labels."

In an ode to James Brown, author Steve Palopoli in writing about his song "The Payback" notes Brown's compelling originality:

"Possibly the height of James Brown cool, this is where he let his unique street lyricism get right up in your face. This song contains several of his most mind-boggling lines, including "I don't know karate, but I know ka-razy!" Theoretically that last word should be "crazy," but only a phonetic spelling can even begin to do justice to this lyric. Who knows if he meant to say "crazy" -- it seems like in James Brown's mind, "ka-razy" might be a real thing, like he had to make up a new word just to describe how much crazier he was than everybody else. Even when his poetry went that far out, Brown was able to take the listener along with him..." - "I Ain't Talkin' Just to Tease", Metro Silicon-Valley, January 3-9, 2007

Thomas Moore recommends taking a look at biographies. "There you will see how differently the spark shines in people. There you may also discover, as in a mirror, your own spark, and you may find the motivation to unveil your own numinosity. Too often the modern man and woman allows that spark to remain outside, in someone else's life - the cult of personality and celebrity."

"If we were to start now and talk about our boat in Miami, people would look at us like, 'you ain't got no boat in Miami, get out of here!' For us, it's just more believable to be ourselves." - ?uestLove

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

Yesterday, I shared a snippet from "The First Word", an essay on writing by Jack Kerouac. Jack can be pretty forthright (and I adore him for that): "If you don't stick to what you first thought, and to the words the thought brought, what's the sense of bothering with it anyway, what's the sense of foisting your little lies on others, or that is, hiding your little truths from others?"  

"Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself." - Richard Bach

I'm so inspired by ?uestlove, that I just have to quote this snippet from the Stereo Warning interview. Note that how he follows the beat of his soul, whether or not it is in vogue:

"Even though hip-hop is a genre, it's just an amalgamation of all types of music. That's something the godfather of hip-hop, Afrika Bambaataa taught me. He would DJ a party in the Bronx and he could play the Commodores in one moment and then turn around and play Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones. You do that today at a hip-hop party, you're liable to get beat up. But Afrika Bambaataa felt there was hip-hop in that song because there is a long percussion break in the beginning. That's how I approach my music now when I present it live. There is rock stuff that we can do that can still have a hip-hop feel to it, as in something that you feel in your soul. There's a way to talk to different audiences. By day I can do a song with Mobb Deep and then by night I can do a song with Bob Dylan and it will still all make sense." - ?uestlove

Another musician with cojones (see video below ;-)) is Michael Franti. Julian Walker just saw him in concert, and is thoroughly impressed: "Though the man is all himself, what ensues is a concert that leaves me making comparisons to Bob Marley, John Lennon, and Peter Gabriel." This interview with Michael Franti blew me away (check out video). Another man of inspiration for sure, and thus a man of strength:

Bonus: (Exercise should you choose:) Follow the clew that seems the most outlandish to you now. Pay attention to what sparks you when you read about other's inspiration and courage. Entertain the possibility of this way of perceiving your hero's journey:

"Amor Fati – "Love Your Fate", which is in fact your life." - Friedrich Nietzche

"Nietzche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called "the love of your fate." Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, "This is what I need." It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment — not discouragement — you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You'll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes." - Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion 

images Wright Barker's Circe via GoodArt.org; 13th Warrior via Free Land of Fantasy; painting of Lancelot origin unknown: "On the battlefield, he is almost unbeatable; as seen here where he spares Arthur's life. In his adventures, Lancelot slays all manner of annoying evil knights, and is granted, due to his purity of heart, a vison of the holy grail"; african dance photo via dance.net 

Accept No Imitations

Tom Guarriello  asks: What do you thin-slice when you walk into a store? (I've already spoken at length that I don't thin-slice...)

So what do I pick up when I walk into a store?

Here's part I of my two-part answer.

Regardless of the category, I'm completely won over by shops that are uncompromising in their conviction to follow the beat of their own drummer. 

While I have my leanings toward a personal style and aesthetics (Anthropologie gives you a clue), I can sense and feel and appreciate any place that embodies their own version of Emerson's dictate: "Insist on yourself; never imitate."

I guess I'm picking up the company's indie spirit. Not my indie spirit, their indie spirit. ("To me, indie means your impetus is a vision, and typically one you cannot shake off. The impetus chose you, grabs you, and not the other way around.")

An example of a store that's faltered in following the beat of their own drummer is San Francisco-headquartered The Gap.

One retail expert attributes their current problems to fact that "the company stopped meeting the needs of its core customers, whom she described as "ageless, classic, all-American.""

Another retail expert notes they swerved from their vision of classic to fast fashion "trying to compete with youth-oriented, flavor-of-the-month brands like Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters."

"For me, the epitome of Gap cool was a campaign the company rolled out in 1993 featuring a series of unposed, black-and-white photos of cultural icons like Jack Kerouac, Miles Davis and James Dean dressed in chinos." - David Lazarus, "Gap lost its basics instinct", San Francisco Chronicle, January 26, 2007

Hmmmm...Jack Kerouac. Miles Davis. James Dean. None of them imitators.

Sure this isn't a company, but I think the moral works, and it's the first story that came to me when I thought of epitomizing "following the beat of your own drummer":

"For three months he was a dishwasher for $9 a week in a second-rate Harlem restaurant. Sometimes he didn't even have a horn to play on. "I was always on a panic," is one of his best-known quotes. He slept in garages, became completely run down. "Worst of all was that nobody understood my music."

...[Charlie] Parker tells: "I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there's bound it be something else. I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it.

Well, that night I was working over 'Cherokee', and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive."

..Tony Scott relates: "And Bird [Charlie Parker] came in one night and sat in with Don Byas. He blew 'Cherokee' and everybody just flipped... When Bird and Diz [Dizzy Gillespie] hit The Street regularly a couple of years later, everybody was astounded and nobody could get near their way of playing music." - Joachim Berendt, The Jazz Book: From New Orleans to Rock to Free Jazz (newest edition: The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond)

p.s. I recommend these two embodiments of following-their-own-beat marketing blogs: Kathy Sierra and Tara Hunt.

Bonus:  "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession... Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much... Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (via Brian Johnson's comment over at my friend Siona's blog)

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

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)

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.

This is Not a Marketing Blog

Oh dear, I've dropped off the top 25 marketing blogs (yet again). I hang out with a lot of marketing bloggers and I like to write about marketing from time to time.

One could argue quite effectively that Kathy's #3 Creating Passionate Users isn't technically a marketing blog either. It's much more. (And Kathy recognizes that this is much more a marketing blog.)

Actually I don't consider this a marketing blog. I have to even remind myself of this because it's easy to get off-purpose if I listen to what they say.

I started this blog (my second attempt) to have a space to chronicle a pilgrimage-to-become-a-book around the world to the creative class centers of the world. What makes certain regions hot-beds for art movements, renaissances, fecund proliferation of profuse creativity and growth?

It was also an exploration in what Peter Drucker calls the two basic functions of business: "Marketing and innovation produce results, all the rest are costs."

I changed my mind about the yearlong journey, but my original passion around innovation, visionaries and the synergy of collective creation has never waned.

I always feel like I am writing for and talking with...

entrepreneurs (including social entrepreneurs), marketing veeps, CEOs, small business owners, advertising creative directors, inventors, big picture thinkers, visionaries, iconoclasts, filmmakers, screenwriters, writers, poets, sculptors, mavericks, musicians, performers, explorers, weavers, pilgrims, philosophers, conductors, yogis, journalists, research directors, designers, developers, activists, ministers, essayists, actors, dancers, synthesists, monks & passionate creators and innovators everywhere

Once I wrote:

I overheard Robert Scoble last week explain, "Blogs are aggregators for passions." Envision that.

That's why blogs are like places for me. Places for people. What is the place like? What types of people would hang out there? (Nope, not demographics, perhaps ethnographics work here.) For instance, I picture this blog as a salon, or an artist's colony (and I define art broadly). And many tech blogs evoke a sense of BarCamp or FooCamp all year long.

Most creators and innovators actually have a instinctual knack, a very good gut level instinct for marketing. I picture Phil Knight, Howard Schultz, Steve Jobs when I say that. Lately I picture Colette, the owner of "the most progressive boutique in Paris, if not, on this ever shrinking globe:"

"Colette’s sharp wit and scrutinizing eye, which unmistakably picked the “it” items season after season since 1997..." - "Colette: The Fashion Trailbrazer", Factio Magazine

Bottom line, creators and innovators just are not fast followers. We blaze our own trail.

So I notice that the number one culprit that gets in the way, for me, maybe for you, is second-guessing ourselves. "But the SEO consultants says...," "But Advertising Age says..."

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.

"We're so lucky we don't have to create the brand out of thin air. We just tell the truth and the brand builds itself." - Thomas Mahon, English Cut from Hugh's gapingvoid's "Case Study: English Cut"

So if this blog does have anything at all to do with marketing it will be to remind over and over and over again because it's easy to get lost in the noise that it's simpler than you think. Just listen to wee voice.

images Flickr photo by chellyc