Crossroads Dispatches

the next great unknown

At first I didn't connect a friend's email subject line:

row row row your boat gently down the stream

with the "truck art" I saw last night when I went for a walk. 

I mulled over that "last great unknown" phrase. So I memorized the line "last great unknown," Wyoming, Powell and resolved to look up the website when I came back home from my walk.  I already knew of Powell since I've run many of the canyons* (Lodore, Westwater, Desolation, Gray, Cataract--alas not Grand Canyon) that he would explore in his expedition. 

As I walked I also became less perturbed and more curious about the sensations of the flight-or-fight stress response that were threatening to debilitate my entire being (releasing cortisol, adrendaline and what-not). Logically, there wasn't a reason. I wasn't being chased by a woolly mammoth. My mind, as was its habit, was simply freaking out in wanting to know for certain what was next (even a lie would suffice to pacify it). It wasn't getting any clear signal that could serve as any reference point--and that was its issue. I don't know if the feeling is what what we commonly call 'fear' is as this physiological response felt even more primal and fundamental than emotion.

My fears weren't quelled, but there was the insight that it wasn't going to get what it wanted. And somehow there was relief in this answer answer: Actually, there is no last great unknown. It's just the next great unknown, and the next. The only drama in all this is fabrifactured when (and if) I think life and I are two separate entities at cross-purposes.

I do not think humanity has even touched the surface of what is possible when we don't rush around looking for surety of shore, when we don't hole up in cozy lakes... but allow the current of the mighty river its due. When I remember that the Unknown is also You and I, is Us, is All, then the 'have to know' rift disappears.

The U-Haul Venture Across America website on Powell's 1869 river expedition is curated really well (pleasantly surprised), and I thought it spoke in everyday language to facing the unknown, embracing its call, and the spirit of expedition. 

"Hello, my name is John Wesley Powell. It is the 24th of May 1869, and the good people of Green River City have turned out to see us start. Today we begin our expedition into the last great unknown within the continental United States. I am proud to say that I am a self-driven, self-taught man of action, and am determined to conquer these unmapped, uncharted rivers and canyons, knowing that if I should fail, sure death awaits me and my crew. The nine men making the expedition along with me are prepared to embark on what I believe will be a 10-month journey throughout lands into which no one has ventured. It is my future goal to ultimately be able to guide Americans safely into the West. I seek knowledge of, and want to explore, what many believe cannot be done. Native Americans have told me that to enter the canyon is to disobey the gods and should not be done.

I have chosen a different path than that of my father, but believe that my calling lies in the depths of the canyon walls, or perhaps rushes through the rivers’ water. I see many people here today at Expedition Island in Wyoming that I shall later invite to join me on this adventurous expedition through writings I intend to note in my journal. As our expedition into the American West is about to begin, and final preparation is quickly coming to an end, I would like to take a moment to write down how I came to be here today."

I also found it inspiring that Powell feels as if he is following a 'calling' or nudge that's bigger than his parental conditioning or any sense of self-preservation--and he is going to follow it--come what may.

Also this diary passage resonates with me because Powell ventures forth with an ensemble, and as I've come to realize that atriums are more my style than freelancing solo in a coffee shop, reading that really struck a chord. In fact, I just landed today in Silicon Valley on a scouting mission because I want to be engaged in an expedition with a shared purpose again (and that takes place face-to-face, not just virtual teams). 

I noted too that Powell decides to keep a diary in order to share his journey widely. This one feels far more courageous than tumbling down thick Western rivers in petite wooden boats, but I've seen that, for me, it is important not slip into hiding, and keep on sharing, out loud--especially in these exciting times.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream. 

* I lived in Salt Lake City and my ex-husband was an investor in Adventure River Expeditions (three things I love) in southern Utah (it's been acquired, so not A.R.E. now). 

p.s. If you're in the Bay Area, I'll be here thorugh June 1. I'm investigating an accelerator idea, and some other quixotry. It's too much to go into in one blog post, but you can check out my bookmarks under Education and Innovation to connect the dots and get a sense. If you tend to work best with a group of peers and partners, drop me a line.  

Image Credits: U-Haul, John Wesley Powell's expedition 1869 photos from their own expedition photographer ("Powell's Grand Ambition" covers the difficulty of the Grand Canyon portion of the journey); Swimming Cities of Switchback Seas is a sculptural floating city assembled by Swoon and crew.  

I'm not going to wait twenty years to see if we can make a living off what we do. - Guy Laliberté

The only place I found in Las Vegas that feels like my kind of 'home' is a cafe (and Red Rock Canyon). The owner is Brazilian, and opened the Sambalatte "lounge" as he named it, one year ago. No doubt naysayers thought September 2010 was a horrible time to open a coffee shop--pastries, cappuccino and chatting all discretionary luxury in times that sees Vegas with the worst unemployment rate (14.2%), the most foreclosures; the state of Nevada has the number one spot in terms of declining income, and second state in terms of poverty rate increases of the nation.

Yeah, whatever they said, he did it anyhow.

And, I can state that Sambalatte is always bustling and buzzing. I've never seen the place even slightly waning in traffic.

So, over a week ago there, I languidly pick up a book in their community bookshelf titled Cosmos and Psyche. The gist is the author applies Jungian microcosm and macrocosm archetypes of the history of the modern individuated man (roughly the year 1496 with Pico della Mirandola's manifesto Oratio ) against the cosmic planetary alignments in those five hundred years. Author Richard Tarnas concludes that right now is identical to cosmic archetypes and planetary alignments with the attendant tensions and tumult that catalyzed the High Renaissance five hundred years ago, stating "this too was an epoch of extraordinary turbulence and uncertainty, and also of great cultural creativity and dynamism."

In my world, it is a ripe time for Renaissance.

And it's also why my G+ tagline is Renaissance gal.

*****

"What would you write about if you could start over with a blank slate?

No preconceived notions. No promises. No history. No expectations from your readers. Starting from zero, right here, right now."

- Ev Bogue on Google+ yesterday

*****

  
"To answer that call meant gambling everything Cirque had earned so far."

I originally began to be intrigued with the back story of Cirque du Soleil because of a new project (more soon--next post). By serendipity, while browsing a local magazine at the wonderful Sambalatte (see above), I read:

"Twenty-four years ago, Guy Laliberté developed Cirque du Soleil with a grant from the Canadian government. The former street performer intended for his creation to last only a year, but the popularity was unprecedented. Cirque du Soleil continued to perform and Las Vegas is now home to seven Cirque shows. Forever on the cusp, the performance company and its founder recently achieved two new milestones.

In September 2009, Laliberté left behind this planet for a new adventure. Boarding a Russian Soyuz Capsule, he was launched 220 miles above Earth. During his space flight, Laliberte took hundreds of photos that would eventually become a coffee-table book called Gaia. Proceeds from the limited-edition book will be donated to his foundation One Drop, which is dedicated to bringing safe and clean drinking water to disadvantaged communities." - Vegas Rated, Issue 1, September 2011

In a book I just checked out from the library, we harken back to 1987 when Cirque was invited to perform for the first time ever outside Canada. But the LA festival didn't exactly want to pay for their travel expenses. Conundrum: ""I thought, 'I'm not going to wait twenty years to see if we can make a living off what we do. The opportunity is here, let's make a deal. I told Thomas Schumacher, 'Give us the opening slot, promotion, and one hundred percent of the gate.'"

. . . The simple truth is, at that particular moment in Cirque du Soleil's history, it could only afford a one-way trip to Los Angeles. Transporting the cast, crew, and equipment across the continent from Montreal to Los Angeles stretched Cirque's finances to the very limit. If they didn't earn enough money at the gate, Cirque could not afford to return home. Cirque du Soleil would end there." - Cirque du Soleil: 20 Years Under the Sun--An Authorized History, by Tony Babinski

(In retrospect, LA Festival organizer Thomas Schumacher says it was the worst deal he ever made. Guy Laliberté says, smiling, "He thought he was saving money, but he could have made a bundle if he'd kept part of the gate.")

*****

"The greatest audacity is the riskiest. In 1987, Guy Laliberté bet everything on that first trip to Los Angeles. Negotiations with the L.A. Arts Festival had been spotty: Guy felt the Festival wasn't prepared to share Cirque's enormous financial risk in traveling to the States. So they decided to go it alone, making Cirque a "fringe" event, the Festival providing only ticketing services, promotion and a listing in their catalogue. It was also agreed that Cirque du Soleil would do the opening of the Festival. Getting to L.A. cost Cirque every penny it had; if Cirque failed, Guy knew he'd have to sell the tent just to get the artists home. Audacity won.

Audicity. Audicity. Audacity. Use the word often enough, it turns into gibberish, a meaningles sneeze. What in the Sam Hill does it mean?

Franco thinks a minute. Audacity is rejecting everything you have done before, he says.

Even if it worked." -- Cirque du Soleil, edited by Veronique Vial and Helene Dufresne 

*****

 "[Renaissance artists] understood the imagination as a magical power that can “lure and channel the energies of the anima mundi.” - Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee

That sentence is the main theme I'm working with lately. Did the original Renaissance just 'happen', or was it lured into form by pure vision of each as powerful as a magical incantation?

*****

One story from Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries by Peter Sims:

Pixar was coming off a three hit homerun, and hired Brad Bird as a director who was coming off a Warners Brothers failure, The Iron Giant. Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs, and John Lassiter told Bird, "The only thing we're afraid of is complacency--feeling like we have it all figured out. We want you to come shake things up. We will give you a good argument if we think what you're doing doesn't make sense, but if you can convince us, we'll do things in a different way," Bird told Stanford professors Robert Sutton and Hayagreeva Rao. "For a company that has had nothing but success to invite a guy who had just come off a failure and say, 'Go ahead, mess with our heads, shake it up'; when do you run into that?"

Bird's ideas for The Incredibles were estimated to cost $500 million and take ten years to accomplish based on current processes. If and only if he could figure out how to lower those estimates, he could proceed with his vision of numerous, rich characters. "In order to help shake things up, one thing Bird did was to seek out people within Pixar who he described as black sheep, whose unconventional views could help find solutions to the problems. "A lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things," Bird said. "We gave black sheep a chance to prove their theories and we changed the way a number of things are done here." Eventually, Bird's vision for The Incredibles was within technical and fiscal reach and ended up being cheaper per minute than Pixar's previous movie.

Ed Catmull studied Toyota's concept of a learning organization after watching computer graphics giants (once) like Evans and Sutherland and SGI fail despite their lead and despite access to great talent. (I once worked for E&S, before I got into all things Internet.) They are okay talking about mistakes, and there is a cultural "willingness to be challenged."

*****

 

 

"Come my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world." - Tennyson 

*****

"I founded Charles Schwab in 1974, when America was confronting a crisis of confidence similar to today's. We had rapidly rising inflation and unemployment, economic growth grinding into negative territory, and paralyzed markets. The future looked pretty bleak.

Sound familiar?

Yet I had faith that our economy would recover. My vision was simple: Investors deserve something better than the status quo. I launched the company with four employees, a personal loan on my home, and an audacious dream. I didn't know exactly how we were going to do it, nor could I foresee that over the decades we would end up building a business that serves over 10 million accounts. But we went for it." - "Every Job Requires An Entreprenuer", by Charles Schawb, Wall St. Journal, September 28, 2011

*****

  "Personal Renaissance", by James Burns and the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and 1500 people who worked on it. The Mural Arts program employs prisoners, addicts, and youth who previously spent time in juvenile detention "in a way a regular employer might not. Later on, the program helps them find long-term work." - Yes , Fall 2011

"Great art is never silent, can't be ignored, and serves poorly the status quo." - Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

*****

Ellen Kullman was a VP running a $2 division and managing about 6,000 employees at DuPont, when her manager asked her if she would start a new services division from stratch. When she said yes, half her peers believe she'd been summarily demoted; "the other half thought I was crazy." Her story sums up:

"I don't know if I would have become CEO if I hadn't done this. When you're an engineer, you learn to go with your head. When you're starting something new, you have to go with your gut, too. We're a 209-year-old company. We won't make it to 300 if we only ask, is my polymer better? Now when I go through strategy reviews, I say, 'That's what it is. What could it be?'" - "DuPont's Ellen Kullman on Her Risky Path to the CEO Job", Bloomberg Businessweek, September 19, 2011

 "Life should be lived on the edge of life.

You have to exercise rebellion: to refuse to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge - and then you are going to live your life on a tightrope."

- Philippe Petit, who walked across the twin towers on a tightrope in 1974, in the documentary Man on Wire

*****

"All the things that really matter to us are impossible, you know. They say translation is impossible; sure it is. We do it because it's necessary, not because it's possible.

Writing poetry is impossible. I don't know how to write a poem. A poem--there has to be a part of it that is not my own will; it comes from somewhere that I don't know. There is so much that comes out of wht we don't know and what we don't have any control over. I think that is one of the only things we can learn as we get older is a certain humility." - W.S. Merwin, poet laureate and Pulitizer Prize winner in interview, Yes magazine, Fall 2011

*****

"If you put off everything until you're sure of it you'll get nothing done."

- Norman Vincent Peale

ART CREDITS: 1000 Ways to Escape by Souther Salazar; photo of O Cirque du Soleil show at Bellagio hotel via BestofLasVegas.com; Flickr photo of Rainbow Village by zosoiv7, "this tiny village in Taichung, Taiwan was painted by Mr. Huang Yongfu, an original native of Hong Kong";  it was once known as a military dependents’ village but the painter, 86, covered every square inch in art (via HonestlyWTF blog) ; Before That Dream is Tamed, by Souther Salazar; Personal Renaissance mural by James Burns and the city of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

The more experiments the better. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

After watching this video "The Dare of DIY" by Tara Gentile, on how the handmade, DIY, artsy, "why not?" culture is akin to entrepreurship and tying the two into a tapestry, I'm adding Tara Gentile into the ally category, too.

Tara shares that a common thread among the handmade, DIY, indie set is the burning question:

Can it be done?

The business of sharing your stuff out in the wide world can also be looked at in the same adventurous spirit of the creative act. Tara, quoting landscape designer Steve Gerischer from the book, Made by Hand, shares, "Look at it as an opportunity to try stuff out, "Ask yourself, "What do I get to do?" not "What do I have to do?""

 

Watch live streaming video from etsy at livestream.com

And loving this sentiment, from same book, Made by Hand by Mark Fraenfelder (a few sample chapters in PDF here): "I am at my most creative when I do something I have no experience with." says Andrew Anker, SAY Media (SAY Media is behind Typepad, where this blog is hosted, btw).

Another gem from Tara's video presentation at the Etsy Labs gathering: "You have no preconceived notions about how something is going to turn out, you have no specific expectations, you have no instructions, you have no role models,--you just kind of give it a go. That's really the crux of experimenting."

BONUS: This post is eye-opening belief-busting one to ponder: "Can You 'Get Right' by $100."

ART CREDITS: "Home Sewing is Easy" is a detail of a printed, novelty cotton fabric--tres cute----via Sew Tessuti.

hunches messes serendipity accidents research & where do good ideas come from

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein

I'm not sure when it happened. It might have been one of the museums in New York City, which one isn't important as I packed in the Guggenheim, the Met, the MoMA, New Museum, PS 1, and a few others into the last two weeks of September. It hit me that I was not an artist, by any strict definition. What I actually care about is inspiration, improvisation, infinity, and innovation at the broadest levels. Levels that may not be confined in a particular artifact such as book or painting. Add ideas. I care about encouraging a diversity of inspirations in all manner of fields that may not fit the "art" category.

I also realized around the same time (someone else's epiphany which I just re-stumbled upon) that art is putting ideas in form. So I ended up coming full circle. As that is what I want to do... put ideas into this formscape we call reality.

I don't care if it fits in a museum, or on an iPad. Maybe it's a spaceship. Many it's a new way to exchange resources. Maybe it's a business. Maybe it's a new way of wellness (prefer that word to health). Maybe it's a new method of agriculture.

"Thomas Edison didn't tinker with building a better kerosene lamp; he abandoned the use of fire--the only human-generated source of light since prehistoric times--and broken through to a new source. That was a quantum leap in creativity. If you are the creator of your body, what is the quantum leap awaiting you?" - Deepak Chopra, Reinventing Your Body, Resurrecting Your Soul

In a nutshell, what I want to do is a lab for exploration and uncompromised inspiration.

"Lab" sounds dry, so sometimes I use the word atelier instead. Mostly it's a space for people to mingle at the hazy hunch stage of ideas. A place to discover and be bewildered by other hunches that may at first seem opposed to yours or plain odd or not particularly relevant. It's not necessarily a magnet for "like-minded" people (as often I find that limits my imagination to more of what I already know rather than exploring what I don't know that I don't know).

"There's nothing we really need to do that isn't dangerous." - John Cage

It's actually a real, geographical place too. Even with all my Internet experience (in the industry from 1995-2005), I cannot find the "form" or format that this would work online (yet?).* Although I am itching to do something right away.... so at least here on the blog, I will share wild nuances from a variety of sources, intriguing possibilities, and open-ended (not leading) questions that let you unfurl your own self-created outcomes.

      "Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas Edison

"Messes can also be beneficial in presenting unexpected connections and juxtapositions. These often lead to new ideas, explorations, combinations, and solutions." - Keri Smith

Steven Johnson asks a most intriguing question: "What are the spaces that have historically led to unusual rates of creativity and innovation?" (Short 4-minute video with author of "Where Do Good Ideas Come From?" here.) I was really struck with the idea of richness of diversity as important factors to "good ideas". In fact, page one of Where Do Good Ideas Come From? starts with a narrative of Charles Darwin being mesmerized by the profuse bounty of species supported by the coral reefs around the Keeling Islands. Another story shares how if Johannes Gutenberg hadn't mingled outside his context with the vintners of Rhineland, Germany the trained metallurgist would "merely be a pioneering typesetter making an incremental improvement on Pi Sheng's moveable type," rather than the inventor of the printing press.

"The natural state of ideas is flow and spillover and connection. It is society that keeps them in chains." - Steven Johnson, Where Do Good Ideas Come From?

"Ideologies exclude openness, diversity, resiliency, and multiplicity, the very qualities that nourish life in any system, be it ecosystem, immune system, or social system... Ideas are living things; they can be changed, and adapted, and can grow." - Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest

I was looking for a gift for my 5-year-old cousin yesterday, and was surprised to see one of Keri Smith's journals in the children's book section (mind you, not even the independent reader part of the kiddies or YA section). I guess only one as a child would think to purposefully wreck their pristine journal, or explore the world. I plop down in an armchair with Mess: The Manual of Accidents and Mistakes. (And already cradling The Accidental Billionaires among a hefty pile in my arm. When I open The Accidental Millionaires, it falls to beginning of Chapter 21: Serendipity. Serendipity is also a chapter in Steven Johnson's book, Where Do Good Ideas Come From?)

"In the film ["Broken Fall"], there is an interview with an old Dutch sailor that sums up [Bas Jon] Ader's work perfectly. He speaks indirectly about the process of improvisation, but the connection made from it is that point of Ader's "falls" is not the falling but the moment (1/10th of a second) where he makes the decision to let go. That is the moment of transcendence when you leave everything behind and leap into the unknown.

As improvisers, artists, or experimenters, we are trying to re-create that moment--when you leave everything behind and leap into the unknown. Because we've done it before and it's addictive--that seductive release, a sense of giddyness mixed with fear [note: like a roller-coaster!]. For an instant you get a feeling that you are really doing something worthwhile, living out on the edge of something big, yet unnameable. A kind of opening (with all the vulnerability that comes with that).

We all know what it feels like to fall, but how many of us have experimented with gravity as a medium? Isn't falling or breaking things something we only do by accident? What does it feel like to throw yourself off balance on purpose?

Definition of "mistake" or "accident" (for the purposes of this book): Happenings or occurences by which the creator does not have complete control over the final outcome (end result) that result in conclusions the creator did not predict. We might also call them "experiments."" - Keri Smith, Mess: The Manual of Accidents and Mistakes

* Online, folks tend to share ideas that are already fully formulated, or something they already know pretty well (in an educational or consultative manner, a how-to). Rarely do we share wisps of half-baked visions, yet it's precisely hazy hunches colliding with one another that Johnson says is important to breakthrough creativity. Here's that short vid:

 

Bonus: Another video. In my opinion, this TED video doesn't do the book justice. But anyhow, at 7:23 there's a picture of a "messy" (and fruitful!) co-mingling of ideas where Johnson states: "The spaces that have historically led to innovation tend to look like this--This is Hogart's famous painting the kind of Political Dinner at a Tavern--but this is what the coffeeshops looked like back then. This is the kind of chaotic environment where ideas were likely to come together, where people were likely to have new, interesting, unpredictable collisions--people from different backgrounds... This is what your office should look like--that's part of my message here." And if anyone can tell me the name of the painter and the painting, I'd be grateful. I thought I heard Hogart, but a search yielded zip.

but first we need to tea, er, eat

I started to write the headline, "but first we need to tea." Whoops, that's a typo. Or, perhaps, a Freudian slip. So I've left this so-called typo in. I'd just concluded reading TwitterPOET's "Saving Web 2.0 From Itself (A Proposal)." And for some reason I was riveted to his last line, "But first, we need to eat."

I know Paul didn't intend it that way, but it evoked that starving artist syndrome, even though now we are speaking of starving would-be social media innovators (certainly artists when they are following the muse foremost, and not the purse.)

And it reminds me of the sticker plastered to the pane of the newspaper stand at 24th and Mission that reads: "Give Me An Art Grant." What? Are you waiting or something? If it's yours to do, come hell or high water, you'd have to do it anyhow.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Go read Paul's proposal in its entirety (and I totally concur that Web 2.0 train is running amok with tons of Gaggoo companies - those me-too's vying to be bought out by patron Google's and Yahoo's of the age) or this snippet (substitute "everyone in the ___ world" with arts, media, food, etc. too):

"Now imagine if everyone in the tech world could afford to pursue their own personal projects, taking risks and innovating on the fly, without ever having to worry about paying the bills, feeding the kids, or keeping the lights on. With the simple introduction of a universal guaranteed baseline income (paid for by restructuring our tax code), we could all spend a little less time working at shitty jobs, and a little more time experimenting and sharing our discoveries with the world without worrying about monetizing it.

Because when you get right down to it, that’s what web 2.0 is about: creating applications which change the world. It’s not about VCs, angel rounds, and getting Techcrunched. It’s about using technology to empower people to contribute to the social good.

But first, we need to eat." - TwitterPOET, "Saving Web 2.0 from Itself (A Proposal)"

At this particular moment, I'm supporting two artists, including myself. Our expenses are less than $1000 a month in San Jose, CA - yes, you read correctly San Jose, California, USA, and not San Jose, Costa Rica. San Jose, "the capital of Silicon Valley" happens to be a city that the U.S. Census Bureau claims brings home the highest median income in the USA, so I'm atypical of neighbors in my zipcode.

I'd been accustomed to close to a six-figure income, and facials at the spa and the brand-spanking newest hardcover books and gee, isn't it the season for eggnog lattes. These days I've made a resolute commitment to buy if and only if it's a "connective transaction" - and not to mention, I'm also on a "fast" of sorts to clear ALL toxins from my life (subjects for another post).

By being thoroughly mindful and consciously alert of whom I'm patronizing and why I'm transacting, I've found it easier than I ever imagined to live prosperously on what most Americans might consider to be poverty level.

Funny, I don't feel improverished. As long as I have a pen, and a scrap of paper - and am using the two to string words together, I am a writer. And even if those two things were wretched away, simply I am would be glorious too.

What many would deem a paltry sum has not stopped me from pursuing my own personal projects on, oh, about roughly 100% of my time. In fact, I'd say it's made it ever easier.

Even if you have a shitty job you can create after hours (and sometimes during hours). Even if you have a shitty income you can create - ever hear of found objects? You'll find that necessity really is the mother of invention. Very often, with money galore at your disposable what is the obvious thing is to throw money at your problems, thus you miss the quirky, the original, and the show-stopping solutions.

Once I was on the founding team of a start-up that had $1.4M in seed capital from very prestigious venture capitalists -- and we whined that it was just not enough. That was the hubris of 1999. Now I know we were just spoiled.

"The following is something to ponder...

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep... you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, spare change in a dish someplace... you are among the top 8% of the wealthy.

If you woke up with more health than illness... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week..." - Author Unknown
(via  Elyse Hope Killoran's November 7, 2007 newsletter)

Perhaps it's not an accident that I wrote "but first we need to tea" originally. There was a time in April 2005 that I was experimenting in freedom. (Oh, that's really my continuous exploration.) I didn't want to dip into my 401K then, and my post-tsunami irrefutable wake-up call said "no" to any corporate gig (my integrity to my heart and soul couldn't be compromised readily any longer), thus I found myself surviving on quite a lot of toast and tea. I have to tell you, unexpectedly, it became one of the most sublime and sensual episodes of my life. For instance, I'd spent the better part of an hour discovering the nuances and textures and tastes of a piece of toast. And I wrote exquisite pieces in my journal while being serenaded by morning doves.

No, I'm not trying to sell you on the penniless lifestyle, my point is if you YOURSELF are not absolutely committed, another's patronage so that you can eat is not necessarily going to light a fire under you.  However, maybe it's time to confront head-on the real issue: root fear of starvation -- among other basic "I won't survive" fears. Because this fear will come back to haunt you in some domain at some point at some time if it's not faced once and for all.

Once you've committed and have a willingness to meet your basic fears of survival (which really are fears of separation), there's no problem finding others that will want to chip in. Myself, I've found I'm only interested in helping those who already invest in sharing their gifts as best they can. I enjoy giving them a leg up. I enjoy witnessing expansion. BUT - if you're waiting for me to give you the push out of the nest to begin your project - and you only need begin, begin anywhere, no matter how humble - then maybe It isn't calling you enough for anyone else to be thoroughly enthralled and engaged in watering your seedling project either.

I know enough VCs to know this is pretty much exactly how they think too. I know a filmmaker that shared this secret with me. She told me this was the Universe's matching grant program: If you take a step, the Universe takes a 100 on your behalf.  

These words from Wayne Dyer that I came across recently in my sorting and re-sorting process (part of the move) spoke to the depths of me, and to this topic:

"It's my effort and my goal to live to God realization as I possibly can - oneness. To have conflict, you need two-ness. You need two people, two ideas, two things that go up against each other. I don't go up against anyone or anything. I feel very connected to the Source from which I emanated - a source of perfect abundance. I just never got separated from it, so I've always known that I am that, and it is me. This is something that's with me wherever I go because I never doubt it. Thinking in terms of conflict or being conflicted about the abundance that has come into my life is just not a concern of mine.

I don't believe that I am famous, because fame isn't located in me. Fame is located in other people. Fame is a component of the ego. The ego says, "I am what I have; I am what I do; I am what others think of me." I try to live in a spiritual consciousness, which says that who I am is a divine creation of Source that lives as a divine creation of Source. When you stay in that awareness, then you create what I call the power of intention. You create the ability to be just like God. [I'd add: And create just like God.] We came from love. We came from kindness. We came from perfect abundance. If you see yourself that way, then you'll attract that into your life. If you see yourself needing to have other people love you and care for you or buy your books or whatever, then you'll attract lacks, shortages, and needs into your life, and I don't have any lacks or shortages or needs. If people only knew who or what is with them, in them, beside them all the time, they would never worry about anything." - Wayne Dyer, "Spiritual & Health", December 2005

ART credits Day, by James Griffin; a still from the film The Fountain (2006); The Fountain, by Kent Williams.

inspiration, freedom...which comes first?

Day 12 of everyday inspiration. I spent most of the day enroute to New Orleans yesterday. I could have walked over Cafe Flora & Gallery with my laptop yesterday, yet I didn't. I wandered the neighborhoods instead.

I say you should never ruin anything started as inspiration by making it an obligation.

A gravelly blues singer pipes in while a girl practices on the piano in the room next door. Madame Marigny, wife of Count Bernard Marigny, haunts the house next door to this avant-garde cafe and gallery. Tales of an old widow who strangled her dog, then hung herself from the attic rafters, they say.

I've got twenty-eight more posts to go. And I will not have my library at my fingertips, although I face a complete set of bound Encyclopedia Brittanicas on the shelf. My laptop keys are sticky forcing me to slow down to the pace of molasses and grits, and repeat words again that didn't come out aright the first strike. The cafe WiFi is slower than the satellite Internet in the remote island village of Koh Jum, Thailand, and so I pause to feel the music between saves and surfs.

Perfect.

Just me, the Muse, pastel colored shutters, filigreed wrought-iron balconies wrapping around corners, the calico cat traipsing through the rafters peering down from the hole in the ceiling, flamboyant Caribbean art, thick broadleafed tropical flora, and Bohemia incarnate.

That's plenty.

We're tricked into believing inspiration strikes when the ideal conditions are established. When you have the security of the day job. Or, if you have a day job it'll be when it's not draining your creativity. It's when the kids get older. When you can get away to that tropical isle or the writer's workshop in the desert. Maybe when you are out on the open road then.

I happened to be seated perfectly kitty corner to a fellow passenger's portable DVD player to watch "Easy Rider" for my first time on the flight over. (Alas, no music since I was reading the subtitles from afar.) There's a scene where a younger Jack Nicholson is telling the characters Billy and Captain America aka Wyatt that people hate them because they hate what they represent.

"All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut."

"Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom... That's what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things."

Of course, Billy and Wyatt are not really free either. Seekers never are completely.

She's in fact waiting for you to quit seeking better conditions, and to stop fidgeting and mumbling that now ain't it.

We've been seeking a sense of freedom first. Yet it's now or never. Freedom comes after, not before, inviting inspiration to work with exactly with what you have, exactly where you are.

She doesn't need you to fix up and thus muck up the raw material of your life as it is. Your so-called limitations are precisely Her fodder.

Sometimes people even impose limitation in order to foster inspiration:

Bernhard Willhelm's philosophy has always been focused on how to make clever projects with no money, and his new project is no exception. The designer's first shop in Tokyo was created by item idem and Asa, a design duo based in the city. The pair imagined a store crafted in the detritus and waste of a consumer-based society, and the avant-garde shop that has resulted from this concept now houses Willhelm's latest collections.

...The design team worked to incorporate Willhelm's widely divergent influences, which range from multiethnic aesthetics to pop culture leanings, culminating in what the duo calls a "junk puzzle interior."

By mixing art and commerce, this concept will evolve into both a shop and an exhibition space, which will live for a few months before evolving into something else. - "Retaliation: A handful of new stores is challenging traditional retail concepts with bold new ideas about how commerce can be conducted", WWDFast, June 2006

One of the most inspirational periods in my life occurred when my car broke down, and I was whining to a friend, "I'm sick of tea and toast" (that's all I could afford for meals). Me, the quintessential restless wayfarer, was also boring of being trapped in Silicon Valley suburbia surrounded by its industrial wasteland without wheels.

It had already occurred to me instead of running from my fear of starvation, that I would face it full on. I'd started to research fasting. I was thoroughly intrigued by Jesus' forty days in the desert, and the thought that man does eat by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God captivated me.

My friend asked me to consider each meal of tea and toast as a feast. What if I pretended with each morsel that I'd never ever tasted a piece of bread before or sipped a cup of tea before? What if my neighborhood became the veritable Garden of Eden? What if instead of a complaint, I transmuted my situation into a celebration? And that's how my forty-day fast of tea and toast became the first draft (or, first scribble) for a book and among the richest, freest days of my life thus far.

"What we were all trying for is to get as much freedom, as much liberty of expression, not only in writing, not on paper, not in talk, but in action, and the whole world today is in my mind strangled." - Henry Miller, 1962, at a literary conference (referring to Beat poetry renaissance)

Whatever your complaints are, your resistances, your avoidances, your limitations, your constraints, your frustrations - what if they actually were the necessary ingredients for the alchemical recipe of creation? Whatever you have to work with, why not entertain the thought that those are precisely the threads that She needs to weave Beauty? That our travails is the travel (etymology of the word travel comes from travail)? That's the way of Her open road?

Bonus:  Use everything that comes your way as fodder. You don't have to go on a pilgrimage to be on one: "For one friend who had difficulty remembering details from his travels, I suggested he take on the task of writing a poem every day during his journey abroad. The daily task proved impossible for him, so he decided to focus his attention on a one-week stretch through Paris, Prague and Florence. To this day, his memories of that time are the fondest of all his travels because, as he has told me, "when everything is a possible poem, the world is suddenly far more interesting." - Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage

p.s. 'Liberty of expression' in the Henry Miller quote, stumbled upon in a book in the French Quarter bookstore Kaboom, is a big clew. Liberty of expression implies nothing about externals.

I like the Berhard Willhelm interview here: "When he began showing in Paris in 1999, Bernhard Willhelm—a German native residing in Belgium—broke about eight million fashion rules by using colors, volumes and themes that defied categorization... Q: What's your design process? A: It has a lot to do with accident. We [the studio] will get an idea, then move on to the next, working on anything we love at the moment."

images New Orleans photo via California Wine and Food; photo via Laurie Gough's travel and writing website; Parsifal and the Flower Maidens, oil painting by Paul Berenson (of course, Parsifal being the quintessential pilgrim seeking the Holy Grail)

Higher Purpose - Now or Later?

"I’m a firm believer in ensuring one should create a stable and successful position for oneself and one’s family first because it is from there that one is then able to make a greater difference socially (be that for ‘higher purpose or otherwise’)," writes Ben Metcalfe, a former member of Citizen Agency with Tara Hunt and Chris Messina.

I see an interesting conversation about to ensue around higher purpose, calling, and compromising and not compromising art at Tara Hunt's HorsePigCow blog.

"If Al Gore had been interested in the environment from the beginning he probably would have forged a career in politics to become a lowly environmental campaigner. Who knows where he would be now. But I doubt he would have the power and influence to assert his ‘higher purpose’ as he does now given the base he established for himself. Same for Warren Buffet," continues Ben.

I hadn't thought of Buckminster Fuller when I wrote my follow-on comment, but he comes to mind now. I pretty much think of him as one of my own inspirational heroes.

"The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it's really a different kind of life." - Buckminster Fuller

"In 1927, at the age of 32, Buckminster Fuller stood on the shores of Lake Michigan, prepared to throw himself into the freezing waters. His first child had died. He was bankrupt, discredited and jobless, and he had a wife and new-born daughter. On the verge of suicide, it suddenly struck him that his life belonged, not to himself, but to the universe. He chose at that moment to embark on what he called “an experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity.” - Buckminster Fuller Institute

If you're not familiar with the rest of his experiment, here's a bit more on Bucky Fuller. I also remember reading that he would simply go about his work for a new project, and he trusted that he'd get his funding. And it always worked out - oft times in the 11th hour - but if the vision came, it was conceived.

In my comments in Tara's blog, I start: "Whether what I call what I do ‘higher purpose’ or not, all I know that is my inspirations come from a place that feels greater than myself and my own survival and bigger than just expressing myself. Just feel it can’t be only about me and how I am putting food on the table for myself any longer. Once I had strong inclinations and visions, I couldn’t be sure it was in anyone’s best interests to abort them and pretend them away.

To that end, though, I don’t believe that any sacrifice is in order, and I spent far too long on a renunciate path to know that is misguided as well. As Ben says he “infer[s] that one should sacrifice one’s opportunity to become rich and successful in order to strive for one’s higher purpose.”

I suppose that I don’t really buy into that binary view.

I think being motivated/captivated/enchanted by the higher purpose is in itself the driving force that will get one to wake up in the morning and do everything possible to see it through. It’s hard for me to be motivated by the carrot of future riches and future purpose dangling.

I suppose that I have had this VERY same discussion with a friend of mine that is concerned about me: he says that I should be practical and seek my own stability in wealth, and then I can be a philanthropist later. He doesn’t know me (or believe my stories) from my days when this is PRECISELY what I tried.

I came close enough to being a dot-com millionaire on paper. As luck would have it just about the time the whole house of cards was collapsing that I read Randy Komisar’s book in 2000. Waiting for higher purpose someday later he refers to as the deferred life plan.

This is it folks, you can be hit by a truck or a tsunami any moment.

(BTW, his WONDERFUL book for entrepreneurs is “The Monk and the Riddle,” and Randy is a VC at Kleiner Perkins [interview with Randy at Venture Voice]. He’s one to assert both/and too: values driving success. Just recalled that he is Buddhist [since Ben had mentioned Buddhist philosophy]. Another Buddhist book that is about higher purpose AND wealth that I absolutely loved is “The Diamond Cutter”.)"

p.s. The reason I (and many artists I believe) avoid calling,or higher purpose, hasn't anything really to do with fear around money. That's only the obvious excuse.

image Anthony Ulinski's Still Life with Shadow and Yellow Teapots (for sale)

Update: Should I ever meld together reader comments below (thanks Bruce, A Foolish Guy, and TorAa) and my comments here and over at Tara's blog post on higher purpose and Tara's readers' comments, whew, that'd be one heck of a post.

While running around the high school track I had enough time to get a bit more "out of my head", and remember that after my all-so-serious-and-four-year-long-quest that begain "what is my purpose, or in more plebian terms, why is it I would bother waking up tomorrow?" what I've learned is that the people I know that are living their highest purpose do it so totally, so naturally, so spontaneously that I'm not sure they could even articulate it for me. They act and live in lock-step with their heart - and the heart doesn't explain itself. Anyhow, they don't need to: Art speaks for itself (or in other words, explaining kills art).

"The task is not to find the lovable object, but to find the object before you lovable.” – Soren Kierkegaard, “Works of Love"

Often we discount what we are working this very minute too easily in the search for something that is higher, better, loftier. Later. Bring your best to every task every minute. I don’t advocate stressing about knowing if you have a higher purpose or not. Or worrying if you are doing ‘it’ right or not.

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

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

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

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

A convivial spa of conversation catalyzing fertile verges.

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

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

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

(exit stage left)

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

(exit stage right)

Now, what does your fantasy fancy?...

"All the world's a stage,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Are You Earnest About?

What are you passionate, zealous, vigorously resolute (resolute = resolutions) about?

What are you earnest about? (Not so much what you ought to be earnest about, what what are you earnest about now?)

"That which you are most earnest about orchestrates your whole life - inner and outer." - Adyashanti in satsang, November 14, '06

I committed myself - hmmm, that begins awkwardly like the way one is committed to a mental asylum...

I committed myself to run the 100th Boston Marathon in 1996. That doesn't seem like such a big deal, but one doesn't just waltz up and send an application in for Boston.

You must qualify to participate in the Boston Marathon. Qualification for my age bracket at the time meant I needed to run a 3:40 marathon the previous year. That means run 26.2 miles in an official marathon in under three hours and forty minutes. Still no biggie, right?

Perhaps I neglected to mention when I said that I was Ugly Betty, that hanging out at the library (or my room) reading Austen and Salinger correlated precisely with being the last (perhaps second to last, Jimmy Knickerbocker was usually last) person to be chosen for the softball team. P.E. was decidely not for me. At age 14, I thought that bermuda grass edging the asphalt could have been my last dying vision when I had to run manage to go the three laps around the track (yeah, that's less than one mile).

To make a very long story short, I did finish the St. George Marathon in 1994 with a qualifying time of 3:28 (and was euphoric crossing the finish line...this is when you picture Rocky heading up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps and you start humming the theme song). I went on to run the 99th and 100th Boston, plus many other marathons and quite a few rugged trail ultra-marathons (including a few 50-milers in Texas and California and a gorgeous 41-miler on the wild and scenic Kepler Track in New Zealand).

My running group, the Locomotion Running Club, witnessed the transformation of a mediocre jogger into a Boston qualifier then an ultramarathoner in the space of roughly a little over two years. So they'd ask me once to speak to an audience of newbies before a marathon as if I knew anything really.

You see, I figured if I (aka the-person-least-likely-to-be-or-care-about-being-athletic) could do it, anyone could do it.

The only 'secret' I had was that I knew I wanted it, and I really wanted it. And then I followed the thread until I did it.

"Regardless of the name of this Great Power, or the conscious admission of a God, the Power is capable and willing to carry out to a complete and perfect conclusion every earnest desire of your objective mind, but you must be really in earnest about what you want." - R.H. Jarrett, It Works

My issue is I don't always have that same conviction, that same earnestedness, the same dogged clarity, as I did back when I first said Yes to running the Boston Marathon. I have definitely had that steady earnestness come up in a few scenarios from snagging a CTO spot at a venture-funded startup to what is classically termed 'awakening' (which is contrary to popular opinion only the beginning, not the end of the path). At other times, I drift in not being sure what it is I want or second-guessing that which I clearly do.

"Your objective mind and will are so vacillating that you usually only WISH for things and the wonderful, capable power within you does not function." - R.H. Jarrett, It Works

This year I'm committed to following my heart - wherever it leads me.

I'll say Yes to that which I  feel wholeheartedly committed to, No to everything else, and eliminate Maybe from my vocabulary. (To me, Maybe is vacillating.)

Last night I wrote out four pages in my journal totalling ten conditions or things that I do want in earnest written in vivid detail. 

My list ranges from the fruition of the teahouse to having a personal chef to a new place to live (moving north, either to Palo Alto or the city) to "living completely spontaneously" to the establishment of a social finance REIT that invests in community spaces to collaborating with filmmakers and musicians to being in relationship with a muse-collaborator-playmate-lover partner.

What's your earnest list?

p.s. The etymology of the word earnest:

O.E. eornoste (adj.) from a noun eornost "passion, zeal" (surviving only in the phrase in earnest), from P.Gmc. *ern "vigor, briskness" (cf. O.H.G. arnustarniba "struggle," Goth.  "safely," O.N. jarna "fight, combat") The proper name Ernest (lit. "resolute") is from the same root.

images wild horse running in Desert Run by Robert Dawson; Rangers by Wendy Caro

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