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.
Hi,
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Posted by: Marketing Plan | Oct 26, 2009 at 12:47 AM