Crossroads Dispatches

The Gift, The Gift Gift

"And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space." - Khalil Gibran, from poem Giving

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"Originally published in 1983, The Gift is an inquiry into the place of creativity in our market-oriented society. Starting with the premise that the work of art is a gift and not a commodity, Lewis Hyde's revolutionary book ranges across anthropology, literature, economics, and psychology to show how the "commerce of the creative spirit" functions in the lives of artists and in the culture as a whole."

I was already thinking along the lines of this little book when I read the first few chapters this summer. Tara Hunt gifted it to me (Tara's two cents on The Gift).

This book tends to be more scholarly and philosophically denser than spritely visual poetry of graphic novels that capture my lilting lyrical life these days. However, I dare anyone to say the chapter on Walt Whitman and his gift wasn't pure magic. The book itself was  written by a poet exploring the themes of how an artist thrives in a world that takes priceless to mean worth zilch at the market stall. So it's close to home, for Lewis Hyde himself.

Does art flow through you like a gift? Yet it doesn't feel like other things, including money, are flowing in?

If you've ever wondered if there could be a "better" way than the current set-up to share your gifts with the world without compromising the inspiration plus keep a roof over your head, this book is a good foundation to have that kind of conversation that results in direct action in the world. Nigh, a revolution in the world.

On 7/13/07, the day I received "The Gift" I wrote a conspirator (conspire: inspiring each other):

"We get to create a parallel universe that coexists w/ the service to me mine my economy... until the latter collapses like berlin wall. A velvet revolution. or vermilion. the art currency is just the entryway to temple of future now."

I believe the lines between artist and patron have blurred altogether. I believe we are in dire short supply of either these days.

In this day in age, we're all the Medicis. No matter if you envision yourself as the prototypical starving artist. Yes, you too. Me too. So, I'm sending "The Gift" to artists creating the next Renaissance. For every dollar you contribute, I'll contribute a dollar to buy and ship the book out up through a grand collaborative total of $1110.00, or Christmas Day, whichever comes first. 

I've never one to mix giving with Christmas before - foregoing the exchange of presents as prescribed, obligatory event, this includes Valentine's Day and birthdays - but this year is an exception. If you would like a copy of The Gift sent to you, please include your Twitter account below in the comments or direct message me via Twitter, and I'll get back to you for your full mailing address. Please don't email - if you email me, it's more than likely lost in the avalanche and in the spam.

How It Works: There are no strings attached. No quid pro quo expected. No thank you notes necessitated. There is no catch. The criteria is that you must write your request in comments on this post before Christmas Day, Tuesday, December 25th; and you must supply US address; and I'm limiting the absolute total USD to a matching gift challenge so that the giving cycle engages many more people than just the two of us.

Only one book per person, or per USA mailing address (share). (That ought to go without saying, and I trust my regular readers, but this is  public after all. If you're even fluttering a thought about gaming or finding loopholes just remember I'm an artist too; this will thoroughly stretch the bank for December as it is...$555's more than my rent.) The book may or may not arrive by Christmas Day (it will be ordered by Christmas Day) depending on when you asked the universe.

Chip in for the matching gift fund here. Nutcracker Suite nutshell: So, if you chip in $15, then I'll match another $15, and so forth up to $555 in matches.

Enjoy all your gifts this season!

p.s. Does this mean you need a Twitter account? So far, yes. (It's free.) I might extend the offer later to non-Twitteristas, but this is my sneaky way of getting you to join. I'll be using Twitter to spread the actionable part of the The Gift ideas further in 2008 more so than this blog, so that's the plot if you're wondering. I'm over at twitter.com/eve11, btw.

Art credits. Why it's from the fresco cycle in the Medicis' Magi chapel, of course. Lorenzo was a fine supporter of the arts, and a poet himself. A detail from the "Journey of the Magi Cycle"...that magi trio being another fine set of givers.

(I have to wonder if we'd have Michelangelo works at all in this day and age without Lorenzo's support. Hmmm....)

Next, "Figures of Peace and Music" from the Salon of the Muses in the Villa Medici in Florence.

buildings (frozen music) will be temporary like concerts

"The ancients and our modern quantum physicists are in agreement; everything in the universe is in a state of vibration which means they are in motion and all objects in motion create sound. This includes every portion of the human body." - Jonathan Goldman psychoacoustics teacher and musician, "The Sound of Science," Common Ground magazine, May 2007

"Now, the need for BEING SPACES is nothing new. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined 'The Third Place' in his 1990 book 'The Great Good Place', and described it as a celebration of the places where people can regularly go to take it easy and commune with friends, neighbours, and whoever else shows up." - Trendwatching March '06 report: Being Spaces & Brand Spaces

I read this in the book, Darkness and Scattered Light, and thought of you, fellow bards and druids. And I thought too of what I imagine a clan of artists would move through the cosmos like:

"The architecture of the future, I imagine, will be modeled on the architecture of matter itself, seen not in its aggregate nature as plastic material to be molded into shape, but in its musical structure as a crystal or as an archetypal geometrical form. The acoustical space of the ancient pyramids, cathedrals, and mosques is a celebration of sacred geometry....

What the future cathedrals of Chartres will be, I have no way of knowing, but I imagine someone playing a musical instrument and expressing with it certain images in algebra and topology; as the instrument is played, the physical form of the building is created. Perhaps my fantasy is simply one of a Bach-like God sitting at the keyboard of the universe, but I imagine a future architecture in which you turn on a building the way we now turn on the lights. These buildings will be temporary like concerts, and not enduring like the pyramids; and so when the use of the building is finished, the people can move on. The culture will be similar to the nomadic way of life of the old paleolithic hunters and gatherers; the people will carry their cultures in their souls, and so familiar will they be with earth, wind, and stars that civilization will be unnecessary ."

Art: Aerie © 2007 Timothy Lantz; Eurydice © 2007 Timothy Lantz

p.s. Feeling more in a curatorial and twittering mood of late. (And should you connect dots of Popup plus Being Spaces plus (Still) Made Here reports sans the commerce you may ascertain some parts of what been concocting lately.)

postcapitalism muse-collaborators playing in concert

What would you think if I sang out of tune

Would you stand up and walk out on me?

Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key

Oh I get by with a little help from my friends -John Lennon and Paul McCartney

I'm focusing on being clear on my intentions today. So I shall be taking my magic markers and butcher paper and charting mind maps and creating havoc. 

You may wonder how in the heck I am surviving without visible means of income. Short answer: Oh I get by with a little help from my friends.

Somehow over time, and quite organically, a small circle of artistic friends (my family helps too) emerged. When one of us is strapped for cash, another has just sold a painting. We share.

I keep feeling this clarity of an art colony that keeps appearing like a mirage in the desert of my soul and it's not going to be be based on your typical transactional economy. It's a leap beyond even the most conscious of capitalists.

We see all types of law of attraction courses and gurus talk of attracting money. For me and I'm finding a few others, that system is obsolete. I'm creating something altogether different.

I tend to ask questions like, "If I was dropped (and hopefully not on my head) on a virgin planet with some friends, what would we create?" We are not beholden to laws and scriptures and traditional systems and the ruts of "this is the way things have always been done." A fresh slate. What then? What would we create?

I walk into a cafe yesterday in San Francisco after scouting for a room to rent. Absolutely no one peers up from their laptop. That type of silence doesn't hum like that palpable diamond Silence hush that animates life.

(Hu)Man as an island onto himself holds no appeal for me. So, when I think of Abundance, the qualities of unity, exuberance, friendship, mutual inspiration and community appear, rather than what my bank statement shows or what type of car is parked in front of my mansion.

"A live concert is exciting to me because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage." - Elvis Presley

These are just a few snippets from a few tales that have kindled my thoughts along these lines. They all underscore collaboration with other kindred souls working playing in concert. 

"With an average life expectancy of 78 years for men and 86 years for women, Okinawans are among the world's longest lived people. More important, elders living in this lush subtropical archipelago tend to enjoy years free from disabilities. Okinawans have a fifth the heart disease, a fourth the breast cancer, and a third less dementia than Americans, says Craig Wilcox of the Okinawa Centenarian Study.

What's key to their success? "Ikagai certainly helps," Wilcox offers. The word translates roughly to "that which makes one's life worth living." Older Okinawans, he says, possess a strong sense of purpose that may act as a buffer against stress and diseases such as hypertension. Many also belong to a Okinawan-style moai, a mutual support network that provides financial, emotional, and social help throughout life." - "Secrets of Long Life," National Geographic, November 2005 (via my post, "For Every Lynch Mob, There Are a Hundred Moais")

images Photo of spontaneous a.m. jamming at a cafe during the Cajun Zydeco Nights Festival in France; Eurydice, by Timothy Lantz (musing about music and sound a lot)

in praise of idle imagination

"Everything in nature contains all the power of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

That's Forbes.com Thought of the Day today. Quite remarkable, eh? Something to wonder... (Hint: that stuff ain't green strips of crinkly paper nor metal discs.)

Forbes.com? Well if truth be told when other twenty-something girls were reading Cosmopolitan and my cubemates read Byte, I was devouring Fortune. Later I switched to Fast Company and Industry Standard (and even Wired) as soon as those came into being. These days I don't read those either.

Found objects can be media and media can be found objects too; so I just happened to spot Forbes' 90th anniversary issue devoted to networks at a brand new newstand on Decatur Street manned by a brother and sister team.

So something about that Forbes anniversary issue brings me face-to-face with my guilt. These days I play (you might witness activity that resembles work), and I imagine (you might witness activity that resembles innovation).

"Oh, so you're a lightworker," one says.

"Aha, you're a starseed," another says.

Nope, believe it or not, the sun ain't a lightworker either. The sun simply shines. If I believed I was working, I'd quit. (I must cease justifying being. I Am. Period. What's to explain?)

Yet, yet, I want to defend imagination as being USEFUL. Oh, yes, I could write a treatise in defense of imagination. And part of me knows that would be imagination's death knell.

I happened to stumble into the WOMMA Conference. (I kid you not, "my life is science fiction", I did not know it was being held until the night when I run into Jory in the French Quarter.) There, Ron Key from Converseon is giving a talk on Second Life, karmic communication, cultural anthropology, the Second Life Liberation Army among other sundry and related topics. He talks of the backlash against commercial entities on Second Life: "In the context of the fantastic, their brands as they exist in the real world are boring, banal  and unimaginative."

Wow! That line would certainly be in my beginning paragraph...if I were writing a treatise defending imagination's utilitarian, practical purposes.

This imagination series has been tough on me. Inspiration, that I can do.

Imagination brings me the brink of what I'm comfortable discussing openly in society. My own imagination brings me to the brink, period. Unless it's imagination in the service of some utility, uh, it smacks of idleness. What's the purpose? What's the point? What's the bottom line?

Imagination feels more shamelessly wantonly childishly pleasurably ticklishly blatantly wildly

... than inspiration.

"If the Devil finds a Man idle, he'll set him at Work." - J. Kelly, Scottish Proverbs, 1721 (Although I fancy the Turks proverb better: "The devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil." - Colton, Lacon, 1820.) (via The Phrase Finder)

B.C. Forbes' words echo on this network issue backpage ("Thoughts on the Business of Life") admonishing us not to let our opportunity slip, ending with this: "Opportunity can be spelt with four letters. These letters are not L-u-c-k. They are W-o-r-k."

I feel queasy counting the number of times phrases from the backpages (memorializing advice from their 1917 "Thoughts on the Business of Life") are bandied about like "well-directed labor", "habit of work", "rid one's self of a sense of discomfort...do something", "the foe is strong and desperate", "the reward of duty", "hit him first and hit him hard", "I saw there was opportunity...so I became interested in oil."

Oil, Mr. Rockerfeller? Four letters and they are not L-u-c-k, Mr. Forbes? Hmmm, could it maybe, just maybe, be

P-l-a-y?

"To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make." - Truman Capote

Luck, I think...hmmm, I recall the artist I met last Saturday. She likes to delve into shamanism, and she said some of the oldest shamanistic traditions are in China.

"The Chinese believe in three things," she tells me. "Luck." She pauses for effect. "Heaven. Earth."

I smile. Three things? They are collapsing into all one and the same.

In the Forbes issue, it also says:

One person tells me, "I look at my watch to see the time. I look at my Blackberry to get a sense of my life." - Sherry Turkle, "Can You Hear Me Now?", Forbes, May 7, 2007

"The Internet thus adapts to market principles. Hello, pop-up ads; farewell, open-source programming. The Internet idealists are doubtless benevolent creatures. So, perhaps, was the apatosaurus. Said Adam Smith, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." - P.J. O'Rourke, "Adam Smith: Web Junkie", Forbes, May 7, 2007

Benevolence?! That's what drives open source? Oh, my, the Internet may surely be your undoing (as it was mine).

Conversation today (& nearly everyday):

"What do you do?"

"Whatever I want to do." (Try saying that guilt-free.)

"You must have savings."

Try again. I'm not a trust fund baby. Do we bake bread, brew beer or do what we do because we're ordered to by management, or The Market? Do we work in order to pay rent, put our kids through college, and other such "own interest"? Why do we do?

"There are different types of enlightenment, but one of the really important ones is just that: It's going from trying to seek enlightenment, where you are driven by a sense of deficiency, of valuelessness, of lack of fullness - to discovering that ever-present wholeness. Then there is that "enlightened duality," where even though you're aware of the great perfection, you are still driven, not out of lack but out of overflowing." - Ken Wilber, "Creative Friction: Community and the Utopian Impulse in a Post-Modern World", What is Enlightenment, April-June 2007

So, I'm done, really, truly, finally, being apologetic. Or guilty.

I don't need to defend imagination for its own sake. Or beauty for its own sake. Or being for its own sake. I'm so with Yeats:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. - William Butler Yeats, Ode to a Grecian Urn

Bonus: There's a lot more in that Networks issue. Mostly, actually, it's a good issue. Here's some great quotes:

"The Internet has taken place with startingly little planning... The most universal and indispensable network on the planet somehow burgeoned without so much as a board of directors, never mind a mergers-and-acquisitions department." - (from "Other Comments" section of compiled quotes in May 7, 2007 Forbes) James Gleick, New York Times Magazine

"Google is proud of its Ph.D.'s and its eigenvectors. So be it. But mathematics can take you only so far. At some point you need a more human touch - gut instinct or wild imagination." - Jimmy Wales, "Open-Door Policy", Forbes, May 7, 2007

p.s. Hanging out a lot at the Iron Rail Collective and picking up 'zines. Picked up a manifesto by Emma Goldman. "Goldman was taken aside at a dance by a young revolutionary and told it did not become an agitator to dance. Goldman wrote, "I insisted that our cause could not expect me to behave as a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. I want freedom, the right to self expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."

The first few times I read Goldman's quote, I thought it read everybody's right to be beautiful, radiant things.

images Picasso's The Bathers reminds me of imagination ("Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."), and these bathers look devilishly idle; and also his Three Musicians and Three Dancers

Make Money the Middle Way: Harmonize Spirit and Matter

Steve Pavlina has a terrific Dec 6th same-wavelength article, "Making Money Consciously" where he talks about money and the congruence of personal value and social value.

I love the article, but disagree on one point: "[W]hen you attempt to satisfy your personal values without providing any real social value, you get the starving artist syndrome. You may be inspired by work that totally fulfills you, but it won’t pay the bills."

It is true that many artists are all about personal self-expression period ("I" artists), yet I continue to meet "We" (aka Steve's "contributor mindset") artists that are also starving because they themselves denigrate its social value.

I wholeheartedly recommend Alex Grey's The Mission of Art which discusses art's social and spiritual value and how over the centuries art has steadily shifted away from being about higher purpose.

While Alex' work is not my own aesthetic style, there's no denying that his artwork resonates powerfully in spiritual energy and his Chapel of Sacred Mirrors gallery boldly proclaims upon entering his and all the sages' philosophy, " Surrender to Love." Oh, and he's definitely not starving.

"For him, the process of artistic creation holds the potential of transcending the limitations of the mind and more fully expressing the divine spirit. He also believes that art can induce within the viewer an elevated state wherein spiritual states of being are attained." - Wikipedia entry on Alex Grey

While I was in Manhattan in September, besides Grey's gallery I was captivated by  Comme des Garcon's fashion designer Rei Kawakubo's SoHo shop. (Plus this time it's absolutely my aesthetic style.) A hushed silence falls as you enter. I have walked into temples and climb mountaintops that had less palpable energy. The clothing was vibrating...spirit infused in matter. For me, there is no greater purpose than being a vessel for the harmonization of matter and spirit, unveiling "heaven on earth".

"When spirit and matter are in harmony, it's as if a third entity is born - that's really the Buddhist "Middle Way." The Middle Way has nothing to do with the notion of being halfway between two opposites. The Middle Way is when spirit and matter are in harmony - when the inherent oneness is realized. Spirit and matter are not two different things, they are aspects of the One. This is the realization of our true nature.

As humans we become identified with matter. Matter includes every subtle and gross manifestation. Matter is anything that can be touched, seen, felt, perceived, or thought. A feeling is matter and emotion is matter, as is a body, a car, or a floor.

The essence of matter is spirit. Matter is animated by spirit, by the life force, and they cannot be separated. Although we can speak about them as if they are two things, if we take away the life force, there is no matter. It's not as if there is dead matter. There is no matter.

Part of realization is moving from identification with matter (which manifests as personality, or "me") to identification with spirit. True enlightenment is when spirit and matter are in harmony...

If we are sensitive, we can feel when environments are awakened [matter and spirit in harmony]. Human beings can be more or less awakened. So can trees or a mountain, canyon, hilltop, or a particular street corner in our neighborhood. When we are sensitive, we can feel these things. When we expose ourselves to that awakeness, to that environment where spirit and matter are harmonized, it helps us awaken. Ultimately, that's what satsang  is. That's also what meditation really is. We are exposing ourselves, and then, quite naturally, spirit and matter harmonize [within yourself too]. All of a sudden it just clicks, without you doing anything. The less you do the better.

When we relax and allow this natural harmonization, there is a deep awakening to the beauty of our environment, just as it is, and to the beauty of our own selves. That's the Middle Way, but it's not really in the middle: it's all encompassing." - Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing

Why not make your next artist date (a weekly beauty date with the muse as suggested in The Artist Way) at an unsuspecting place that's not supposed to be 'spiritual'? Feel your way, what draws you? Maybe instead of the gallery, it's the park bench or cafe across the street? What's surprised you?

p.s. Chapter 5 on "Harmonization" in Emptiness Dancing can inspire artists of all kinds. It's one of my favorites in one of my favorite books.

p.p.s. Gotta love Kawakubo's bio: " the designer behind the 'comme des garcons' label, kawakubo, studied philosophy at keio university in her native tokyo. untrained as a fashion designer, but having studied fine arts and literature, she conveys her ideas verbally to her patternmakers..."

And about commes des garcons: "Specialising in the unorthodox, Comme des Garcons is the too-cool-for-school must have label that constantly pushes the boundaries of fashion and design. Whether it be the creation of Guerrilla Stores, which pop up in unlikely places only to disappear just as quickly, clothes constructed around the intangible, or an anti-perfume created to smell like a flower that doesn't exist, Comme des Garcons tops the lust lists of those who believe that envelopes are there to be pushed, fun is to be had, and life shouldn't be taken too seriously." 

How Many Lives You Planning to Have?

The recent release  of the very first San Francisco Bay Area Michelin Guide recalled Alan Ducasse and my admiration for him. Currently Ducasse is the only chef in the world to own and operate three signature restaurants each honored with three Michelin stars. 

What really impressed me is he strikes me someone whom lives life to the hilt. No, not speaking about life balance (yech). Rather full - not frenzied, not stressed. Embodying: "Wherever you are, be there totally."

"Even if he appears...to be a very busy man who has clocked up hundreds of flying hours between Monte-Carlo [sic] and Paris, and Singapore and New York, he always takes the time to taste: a new Italian olive oil, a Lebanese cheese rolled in pepper, a leavened bread, or a wild strawberry, for ever [sic] sharpening his senses and his savoir-faire." - Alain Ducasse official biography, via "Turbot Without Genius: The Travails of Alain Ducasse", Caffeine Destiny online magazine (great profile of Ducasse, highly recommend)

In 1984, Ducasse survived a near-fatal plane crash that killed a number of his companions. I can speculate that the scepter of death enhanced his appreciation for life and the deathless. Knowing that winter is around the corner makes the harvest festivals that much more convivial and zesty. Pass the bread with a hearty laugh, pass the wine down the table. This day, this day, this moment, this morsel, this sip...

"I always determine the sexual capabilities of a woman by the way she eats fruit. When testing a potential bedmate, I offer her an apple or pear to see how she eats it. Small mincing bites - the ladylike kind - they are not good. But if she crunches the fruit, salivates with pleasure and crinkles her nose in enjoyment, this girl, my friend, should prove to be a redoubtable love partner." - poet Gabriele D'Annunzio in The Sex Life of Food: When Body and Soul Meet to Eat

Kathy Sierra beat me to a good marketer is like a good lover post that I half-promised as a series. And I've adroitly avoided writing about slow sex, too. Someone that enjoys that pear fully will redoubtably also plunge into life, plunge into business, plunge into sex, plunge without hesitation. They savor the time to know their customer because they enjoy everything thoroughly. In some ways, what can I say about slow sex? It comes down to sheer enjoyment and exuberance. People and food are by far the most glorious, curious things to explore and discover anew over and over again. Why rush through it?

Business is all about people - particularly marketing and sales. Yet for all my exuberance for people I've told myself repeatedly that "I don't want the hectic life that inevitably comes with being a 'successful' owner." I think that may explain why many many other women defer from the highest ranks and CEO status too.

"Men are afraid. They are in hiding. They are attached to values and attitudes that, for women, are peripheral... In close company with women they are caught between an image of themselves that is crumbling and an anxiety about joining woman in her freedom, her courage, her worldly intelligence, her sensorality," says Daniel Odier.

Yes, I nod. But then you read about Ducasse. And then you read about Len Evans. (Ricardo Semler also tops that list.) And I wonder if I've just bought into assumptions about how 'success' is be achieved and why.

And so I've mused: Do I chose a fulfilled life, or a fulfilled business....Why or? Why not and? Why not ingest: I imagine that yes is the only living thing (e e cummings).

Len Evans set the stage for the Australian wine industry by simply wanting people to "drink wine for the sheer fun of it." Sheer fun of it: that's exuberance.

"One summer evening 15 years ago Len Evans grabbed a good bottle of burgundy and led me out to his veranda for the would-be son-in-law conversation. As the sun fell behind the Hunter Valley's Brokenback range, we got to the part where he gauged my prospects. I was struggling with some banal career decision: one path boring but financially secure, the other much more interesting but relatively poorly paid. Seeking approval, I ventured that the sensible thing might be to go dull and safe. Len thought for a moment, turned to me and asked: "How many lives are you planning to have?"
...
Most of the time, the expression "living life to the full" is a platitude. Len turned it into a masterclass, and we were his students. His professional face was that of the wine man, and according to those equipped to judge, he had few rivals in the world for depth of knowledge. Fewer still could match his palate; none could equal his contribution to Australia's wine industry. But to celebrate that expertise alone is to limit him. To my eye, his greatest love was people. His adored wife Trish, his children and grandchildren came first, without question, but I know of no one who took more energetic pleasure in friends and strangers, entertaining them with wine, song, fine food and, above all, laughter. - Steve Waterson's tribute to his father-in-law, Len Evans in "A Man in Full" (via Jill Fallon's Legacy Matters  blog)

Thanks to Alain and Len for simplifying business for me: 1. Simply This. 2. Simply Yes. 3. Enjoy.

Bonus: These two posts totally get to the heart of the sheer enjoyment of people thing. They made my day when I read them this week. Trust me, go read:

Soulful Relationships, by Steve Pavlina. Snippet: "Total strangers would just open up to her and tell her their darkest secrets in the first 10 minutes of conversation – I could scarcely believe it.  I had to ask this woman how she did it, and she explained that it was the result of a particular mindset she had about people."

Give Free Hugs, by Patricia Digh of 37 days. Snippet:

"It is joyous. It gives me hope. It lowers my blood pressure.

My friend, Madelyn, first told me about this video. “Emma might really like this,” she said. “I’m sure you can find it on YouTube.”

My daughter, Emma, did like it. She not only liked it, she loved it. “That really makes me happy,” she kept saying after watching it. “I just love that.” Her face glowed, sometimes a rare event in the universe of studied coolness that often marks these teenaged years."

p.s.  A long time ago I owned a framed calligraphed quote that read: "Life is not a dress rehearsal". Yet this title is just asking for some smart-alecky Buddhist response, eh? "How Many Lives You Planning to Have?"

"Yes, I remember some incarnations, but are they mine?" says one modern day occultist. Hmmm, well what if there is no reincarnation of souls, just reincarnated thoughts spinning....and Nirvana is right here, right Now?

images Winecrush harvest grapes from The Wine Institute; pear from Flickr's Tillwe. I had a yummy Bartlett pear salad with baby greens, gongozola and walnuts for lunch today. The pears from the farmer's market are supple and succulent right now.

Women Have Shopping Blogs, Men Have Cool-Hunting Blogs and Other Venus-Mars Petite-Grand Tales

I'm still a little woozy - although I admit I like word woosy better: oozy; wet - from BlogHer. Not to mention hungover from all my deep hanging out excursions to downtown purveyors throughout Silicon Valley in the days preceding and hence. (I hardly imbibe; I'm talking over-stimulation-mental-overload-heady.)

So before I start, I've breathed, ate, drank the 10X return in five to seven years tonic to the point of oblivion. (My career's been primarily in high-tech. And start-ups.)

And so naturally I too disparaged those obviously unambitious women that didn't have a clue about leverage, and scaling. The worse thing you could call one of those women entrepreneurs was....shall I dare?

But don't you dare call her a "lifestyle entrepreneur". Though her original goal was to spend more time with her kids, she is also highly ambitious. In 10 years, she hopes to have a $25 million firm "with New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles on the letterhead," she says. - "Bootstrapping: Lesson 3 Work from Home" story on Small Biz Booster, founded by Yvonne Shortt with $865, Inc. July 2006

"BlogHer blows up"

...is the headline in the Business section of the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm reading that front page this past Friday at the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company hours before I head over for BlogHer Friday night welcome reception.

I notice a thread at the conference - both in the panels and about the conference itself: we're grappling with with the stay-small-don't-sell-your-soul or monetize-it-baby question. Is bigger always better or is small the new big question. The What is success question. The tug-of-war reflects my own internal state of mind lately.

Friday I chat with Teri Hope, the owner of Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company, talking about the recent article "Stanford's Boulevard of Broken Beans." As her lease expired at a Simon Group owned mall her Palo Alto Coffee Roasting Company and Cafe Noir espresso bar closed because Simon, whom bought the mall from Stanford University, only wants national chains with national marketing budgets as tenants. Economies of scale, that's Capitalism 101, right?

"Last year, the first BlogHer convention was patched together by three gals and a slow server, and attracted a couple hundred female bloggers.

This year, things have blown up. In a big way."

Patched together wasn't exactly my impression of last year's BlogHer. Blown up has a many connotations too. Author Justin Berton appears to imply BlogHer's the real deal now - what with somewhere on the order of 700 to 800 women attending. Real stalwart sponsors like GM and Johnson & Johnson. Now that's success.

Towards the end of the session "Is the Next Martha Stewart a Blogger?" a web 2.0 male executive addresses the panel (knitting, jewelry, gardening, food): "[Martha Stewart and] Oprah really managed her brand. It sounds like what you are doing are lifestyle business." Egads. Not yet another lifestyle business. You poor dainty creatures, you're thinking small.

Teri Hope is a woman who trekked 100 miles round trip for a cup of North Beach espresso and coffeehouse discourse in the 70's before creating and running her coffeehouse in 1982. And a Hawaiian coffee plantation: "The vision was seed to cup." No, no, no, she explained, to VCs, financiers and franchisers. Small, purposefully.

At the Martha Stewart panel, Margaret Mason observed the scorn given to women points of view and worldviews ("you doing, what, a wedding blog?"): "Women have shopping blogs, but men have cool-hunting blogs...that's ok, we'll be laughing all the way to the bank."

If mommy blogging (and mothering) are radical acts in this day and age, then let's up the ante and be full-blown revolutionaries. Let's operate lifestyle businesses if we want to. (Not just women here: Metrosexuals, LBGTs, men who live/lived in Europe and renaissance souls value lifestyle and lifestyle biz too.)

BlogHer coorganizer and cohort Jory Des Jardins replies on the heels of bloghersphere conversations ("you gals sold out") on "what does it mean, to "sell-out" and the cusp of a decision to play ball or stay small.

Play ball or stay small is not exactly the choice.

It's not about smaller. It's closer.

More intimate. Human-scale over economy of scale. My favorite ease-of-humanness-imbued Web 2.0 companies include women on top: Caterina Fake - Flickr; Mena Trott - Six Apart; and (not technically Web 2.0) Mitchell Baker - Firefox.

Human-scale: Post-industrial, boutique, artisan, epicurean, handcrafted, hand-wrought, warmth, care, attention, devotion.

The big boys want to play boutique too. I glance down at Friday's Wall Street Journal Money & Investing front page: "The agility of a boutique. The reassurance of a global powerhouse." The UBS Global Asset Management advertisement continues to boutique-ize their copy: "agility, innovation, and personalized service."

To see the future of business, walk into a McDonald's in Columbus, Ohio. In that extraordinarily ordinary Midwestern city (trust me -- I grew up there), Mickey D's has begun rolling out a new look, one that owes to more Greenwich Village cafes than to exurban drive-throughs.

As Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin explained recently  "McDonald's is ... transforming its harsh, plastic-heavy interiors into soft, earth-toned places where you might linger with your laptop in an upholstered chair beneath a stylish pendant light."

The Starbucks-ifcation of the golden arches is another indicator of how deeply a design sensibility has seeped into American business. - "Good Investing by Design," Yahoo Finance's The Trenddesk, Dan Pink, July 19, 2006

How quaint, McD's copying Starbucks. It wasn't so long ago that Howard Schultz sat in one of those cozy Milano cafes that triggered the Starbucks epiphany.

Schultz's vision of coffee and community was formed during a trip to Italy in 1983. The espresso bars of Milan and Verona were teeming with people stopping in for good coffee and some company. Bring this to the U.S., Schultz thought, and people will definitely come. - from Sally's Place for food, beverage, and travel

Faun Skyles is opening up a boutique within the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company boutique - a petite grocery & wine-and-cheese bar where today Teri sells beans and coffee-ware at the coffeehouse "offering artisan cheeses, gourment speciality items, charcuttie, sandwiches and featuring local wines!" Faun was previously the wine and cheese manager at Stanford Shopping Center's [also closed post-Simon] Oakville Grocery.

Faun tells me the reasons she enjoys the personal touch of a small business: "You become part of the community. You know your customer's tastes, you watch their children grow, you set roots down in a place."

Before I leave, Teri brings out her collection of now rare books from her market research days in the early 80s including one called Penny Universities: History's Colourful Coffee-Houses and The Romance of Coffee. As I recounted to a close friend, I left wistfully fantasizing how cute it would be to own a petite literary bookshop with a side salon de thé attached. (I'm a tea gal myself.)

Since there is sooooo many boutique stories and stories about boutiques and my pretty little head doesn't know where to begin or end, I think I'm going to share little vignettes for at least the next week. Tres petite vignettes. Morsels, really: Delicate confections enrobed with a kiss.

vignette

1751, "decorative design," originally a design in the form of vine tendrils around the borders of a book page, especially a picture page, from Fr. vignette, from O.Fr., dim. of vigne "vineyard" (see vine). Sense transferred from the border to the picture itself, then (1853) to a type of small photographic portrait with blurred edges very popular mid-19c. Meaning "literary sketch" is first recorded 1880, probably from the photographic sense.

p.s. If truth be told, the roots thing can freak the Bohemian, vagabond, Americanly-mobile, wanderlust restless side within me. Closer, not necessarily smaller, may mean my tendrils will be inextricably linked and enmeshed in an intricate, inextricable, committed tenderly beautiful pattern.

p.p.s. Maybe woosy is right word when you are weak at the knees because of the charming allure of women's objects of sociability (woos-y: ooze, wet)? And Faun Skyles' Los Gatos Gourmet is tentatively opening September 1st. Don't worry you'll be hearing more...I may most possibly be hosting salons there.

images 'At the Cafe Chaland' and 'La Patisserie' oils by artist Hilarie Lambert. Middle painting: 'Conversation - Terrasse de la Salle Empire - Hôtel de Paris - Monte Carlo' by Gueorgui Chichkine.

The Myth of the One-Woman Inspirational Whirlwind

Marilyn sweetly wrote a comment recently: "I wish someone would just give you a big gob of money with no strings and no stipulations because you are a one-person inspirational whirlwind."

I reply:

"The Italian Renaissance wasn't about one artist, one patron. It was a movement. A concerto with many players in the orchestra. I concur with this statement from the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA: "While the voice of an idea may appear to be individual, in fact the emergence of new ideas is a collective effort."

So it's about whether others can be enthralled by the same vision, join it and embody the renaissance themselves. I'm only one little spark, in the end. The fire must burn of its own."

To that end, I'm going to share little tidbits on salons, art colonies, why artists spark other artists, mutual inspiration, muses, how to stimulate your inner muse, why boudoirs and gardens are tres inspirational workspaces, how to host your own salons, sprinkled with crazy inspirations from this newly minted curator of ephemeral experiential living art.

Fair warning: You must be willing to be daring & looney to the point of frisson. (Synonyms: shiver, chill, quiver, shudder, thrill, tingle). You absolutely must invite people outside your normal social circle. Invite an eclectic combustible crowd of people that aren't "supposed" to go together like the fusion chefs mix ingredients into culinary taste explosions.

Bonus: The heat has driven me back into Starbucks  (my cafes don't have a/c). My choices are Earl Grey tea if the a/c is frigid. The new pomegrante juice/tea blend is pretty good and not overly sweet. This The Way I See It #90 was written on my paper cup. There are many forms to shared spaces. I like the core of this concept:

If we really want to understand innovation and collaboration, we have to explore shared space. Consider Watson & Crick: How many experiments did they do to confirm DNA's double helix? Zero. Not one. They built models based on other people's data. These models were their shared space. Their collaboration in that shared space powered their Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough. If you don't have a shared space, you're not collaborating. - Michael  Schrage, MIT design researcher and author of Serious Play

p.s. I also liked The Way I See It #138:

The good life is the middle way
Between ambition and compassion
Between action and reflection
Between company and solitude
Between hedonism and abstinence
Between passion and judgement
Between the cup of coffee
and the glass of wine. - Jay McInerney
Author of Bright Lights, Big City and The Good Life

image (1) This Year, Venuses Again... Always Venuses! (1864) - Honore Daumier
no. 2 of the sketches made at the Salon from Le Charivati, 1864. French. Honoré Daumier satirizes the bourgeoises scandalized by the Salon's Venuses, 1864. (2) I've no idea who this woman is and I don't read a speck of français or allemand, but she oozed "salon hostess" to me.

Art Inseparable from the Railroad, Insurance Office, Joint-Stock Company

Wow, what an amazing week. Too much to fill you in on and I'm off to Seattle where I'm staying at The Alexis, which according to their site is: "A Work of Art", is committed to the local arts community--we invite our guests to tour the hotel's permanent and rotating collection of original art." Their parent company touts: "Every hotel has a story to tell."

I've been really immersed in art lately. Another show with my friend Ruby this weekend in San Carlos. What strikes me is how folks define art when I'm talking to them. "Oh, no, I'm not an artist..." they insist. Fifteen minutes later I find out they design sets for their local theater or write poetry in their journal or....

This Ralph Waldo Emerson snippet from his classic "Art" essay seems more relevant today than in 1841. What if we elevated eating and drinking, aye, even commerce to art?

The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art must not be a superficial talent, but must begin farther back in man. Now men do not see nature to be beautiful, and they go to make a statue which shall be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and console themselves with color-bags, and blocks of marble. They reject life as prosaic, and create a death which they call poetic. They despatch the day's weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. They eat and drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal. Thus is art vilified; the name conveys to the mind its secondary and bad senses; it stands in the imagination as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with death from the first. Would it not be better to begin higher up, — to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to serve the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the functions of life? Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or possible to distinguish the one from the other. In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company, our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist's retort, in which we seek now only an economical use. Is not the selfish and even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, — to mills, railways, and machinery, — the effect of the mercenary impulses which these works obey? When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature. The boat at St. Petersburgh, which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.

Overheard, Two Artists: "I Cannot Not Do It"

First artist: "I was reluctant to put my work out there in public because growing up my father would imply, 'Who do you think you are?', 'Who gave you permission?'"

The second artist replies: "God gave you permission."

Last night's conversation continues and I join in. We come to consensus: At some point in our lives we cannot not do it. Whatever It is.

It runs the show now.

You must understand most artists (heck, why limit this to artists? Last night an engineer shows me a poem on Kuan Yin, Jesus, and samsara that a fellow QA engineer at a well-known Vallley company authored; plus of course coding can be art) think of G-o-d as the Totality (aka Inspiration, Infinite Intelligence, Nature, Universe, Source, {insert your sense of where inspiration emerges from}).

I can imagine Guy, the philosophical Belgian co-owner of Mapro resort on Thailand's Phi Phi island rolling the tobacco along the contour of the bamboo table into the sheer cigarette paper and saying: "Now why confine the Totality to any label?"

And now I might out woo-woo Ms. Communicatrix. She writes her major takeaway from SXSW is: "I will probably not make money with any of my online ventures, present or planned. And I’m okay with that."

I’m okay because I no longer need stuff so much as I need happiness. (Recognition is still attractive to me, but I figure by the time I get any, I won’t care much about that, either.)

I’m okay because I saw people up on those daises (which looks a lot like daisies, doesn’t it?) who were making money and people who might never and the only thing that I found compelling in either was the passion that drove them. - "A preliminary and rather alarmingly woo-woo perspective on SXSW"

That was my takeaway too.

My teacher spoke Wednesday about this 'cannot not do it' shift. "Awareness is self-aware. It is empty, it is lucid and it has a sense of love and compassion and well-being... A well-being that spills over. An upwelling that spills over... We feel a deeper call to express realization than to groove in the realization. All of existence shifts into something completely different... This life is no longer going to be about 'mine'... I might have to actually be a servant rather than be a spiritual consumer. You can't become awakened without becoming responsible for what you know."

We become a servant to art. The passion at the seat of inspiration has a momentum of its own. Sandbagging ain't working. The holding-back dam breaks. The river by nature wants to run wild.

Shel Israel at the closing "Naked Converations" session of NewCommForum paraphrases a keynote at Syndicate by Larry Weber. "He says CMOs ask about psychographics, demographics, holographics,...whatever graphics. (Audience laughs). When the only question you need to ask is: 'What does the customer want?'"

Robert Scoble follows: "We're [the blogging community] doing the same thing - obsessing with numbers and lists. I felt lost [in this new emphasis on metrics]. Recently I realized talking to the Hotmail team that the most successful product teams talk and share because... They love product. That's it."

For you the passion could be kite-flying, not Hotmail. "Blogging lets me share my loves. Either love what you do - or go fly a kite... How much do you love your product? "I love my product. I love my company. I love my craft," and everything you do demonstrates that. Every post, every email, every call back."

This isn't the first time Scoble emphasizes passion. But with godzillion blogs and splogs mushrooming everyday it seems to be the ingredient that's neglected these days in the pursuit of technorati rank and googlejuice.

One thing blogging has given me insight into what it is that I cannot not do. I find myself writing about that whether it's on the agenda - or not. Blogging naked has eased me at a pace I can handle (what choice is there ultimately?) to make my avocation my vocation. (BTW my avocation is not blogging.)

Last night I heard a kick-ass presentation that nearly matched Kathy Sierra's SXSWi "How to Create Passionate Users" pres in its intensity and epiphanies last night by the artist and marketer team at Los Gatos-based Marketing4Artists.net.

It basically turns the marketing premise on its head. Sure I've worked with plenty of engineers whose product was a solution searching for a problem, but something else is going on when the inspiration isn't driven by an IPO or sale to Yahoo.

What if your business is art? What if it stemmed from a great upwelling that spills over rather than a quantitative market research study? In fact, you can't even claim it is yours per se but you're a steward of it? Does that turn marketing on its head? What companies do you think started as art, as deep inspiration that needed visible expression?

In the presentation, photographer Marco Zecchin said, "Usually marketing comes from customer needs. Art is the opposite. It comes from the wellspring within."

Their March newsletter kick-starts their premise (snippet below). Hmmm, I think a lot of us can relate.

1) Don't pollute, compromise or dilute your art.

Your art comes from inside you, don't let it be directed by some outside force for the sole purpose of marketing or selling it. Serve your passion.

2) Honor and respect your art.

Listen to what your art is saying to you and therefore to the outside world. Don't second-guess it, just voice its authentic story!

3) Champion your art.

Stand beside it and advocate its rights to exist in the world. Evangelize it!

The good news is that it is much bigger than you are! You may feel shy or timid in championing your art but you are not alone. Take strength from your art's sacred mission.

p.s. Did I say I was exploring art, brands, biz, passion, etc. for week or so? I'm going to go deeper with this topic for much longer I sense.

tags sxsw sxsw2006 marketing art innovation startup passion entrepreneurs inspiration spirituality