Crossroads Dispatches

$650,000 grant drops in your lap, and you'd...

I received this totally spam email. Yet it contains a good question.

They want me to put to "good use" a sum of $650,000.

Great, let's play along with that. Could I put it to good use? What would I do? (The original headline/subject line was "About the Donation.")

What would you do?

And, being my birthday (not today--that day), I thought I'd check out the random daily Abraham quote for a year-long emphasis to embody:

"What anyone else has or does not have has nothing to do with you. The only thing that affects your experience is the way you utilize the Non-Physical Energy with your thought. Your abundance or lack of it in your experience has nothing to do with what anybody else is doing or having. It has only to do with your perspective. It has only to do with your offering of thought. If you want your fortunes to shift, you have to begin telling a different story."-- Abraham excerpted from the book "Money and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Health, Wealth & Happiness"

The "About the Donation" offering of $650,000 email read (deleted the phone number in the signature):

Hi,

Sorry I haven't gotten back with you, daily activities has kept me busy with work as a private  air charter service consultant.  I contacted you on the internet while looking to support a non profit charity, rescue group or a  social worker and I am proud with the good work you do and happy to know that my sponsorship money goes directly to a good use.

 I am making these donations because the economic downturn has created seemingly insurmountable challenges for nonprofits - organizations that rely on the generosity of others for their financial viability.  I know that is is a critical time for nonprofit organizations.

I am making a cash donation of Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars which I inherited from my late grandfather who was an industrialist and international businessman. My late grandfather's heart was as big as all outdoors. It was from him that I learned the greatest joy in life comes from giving, not from receiving.  I trust that you are reliable, trustworthy , compassionate in order to handle these donations for a good cause.

Let me know how you can make use of the funds.

Regards,

John Hamilton

Now my response to the correspondence, which I wrote off the top of my head without thinking and analyzing and agonizing about it too much--heck this window of opportunity may not be around forever, so I responded promptly (in the new myth blog, not to the spammed email):

Dear Mr. Hamilton,

Thank you so much for your offer. I am sorry to hear about your grandfather's passing, and my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family at this time.

I obviously am not familiar with your intentions nor your late grandfathers. But I will tell you want I have in mind.

I will locate a fiscal agent in order to filter the donation through, and it can be a tax deductible contribution for you. This is one idea for the best use of funds. As you already indicated that your grandfather loved to give, this bodes well for the idea I'm about to present to you.

We can place the $650,000 into a microloan program for culture-makers that are focused on the imprint of giving.

We can give copies of Geshe Michael Roach's book, The Diamond Cutter, to those that do not have the resources to purchase it themselves. I checked, and online, it is available at Google eBooks (may be useful as we can have a 'group' reading and see what others are highlighting) for $11.99.

In addition, there will be a "lending library" of books such as by Florence Scovel Shinn, Joseph Campbell, Lewis Hyde, Rilke, James Carse, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Alchemist, etc. available.

There will be pop-up unconferences free and open to all (funded by sponsorships) available in different U.S. cities as well.

However, the bulk of the funds are used for microloans to artists pushing the edges of innovation in areas that are difficult to secure private or public funding precisely because they do not fit a known, established medium, genre or category. Emphasis will be given to arts and creative projects that push the edges iin terms of possibilities, i.e. telling new stories. (Using the word 'story' generically--in other words, showcasing brand-new options rather than portraying or fighting the status quo.)

Loans will range from $1000 to $75,000, in general although there could be situations where more is given, especially in a peer-to-peer arrangement. For instance, for larger loans, we may tap into a network of potential private individual loaners (they may use something simple like Loanback).

To emphasize, these are no-interest microloans and are payable back to the fund in order to keep it sustainable and circulating to new artists and organizations. This is not private equity, and no one takes a stake or stock in the ventures that are given loans. Neither are these donations. Part of the intent of making these "loans" rather than donations is that the artist/collective/company is committed to making a longer-term viable venture, rather than a one-off project (ala Kickstarter), and are in need of a modest amount of startup capital.

Of course, this model is really rather flexible and not set in stone as we are in the conception phases, and would welcome your feedback as we move forward with your grant of $650,000.

Thank you so much for your generosity,

Evelyn Rodriguez

p.s. This is not copyrighted. No rights reserved--please take this idea, and spread it like wildflowers. You are welcome to implement this idea. The more the merrier. Never can have too many microloan programs for cultural innovation, and renaissances and such.

ART CREDITS: Photo "Humble Gift" by marielliott; emerging fern unfurling (a.k.a. koru symbol) by ericinsf

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. - Willa Cather

"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy, only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is." - Willa Cather

This week marks the seventh year of the Crossroads Dispatches blog. Specifically the big b-day will be this Sunday, February 6th. Beginning yesterday I've been doing a retrospective of the last seven year's worth of themes in my head (it's significantly been reinvented over and over the last seven years).

Then, I was thinking forward to the vision onward, and why you might care to spend your precious life--be it even five minutes of it--immersing yourself here on any given day.

I don't write to write as many authors do (if I did, I'd have written a book by now). I write for the potential of creative interaction, for feedback loops building off each other, for the mutual sounding board, for collaboration. It's a bit easier to do this online because of the inherent design and nature of the Internet than, say, a poetry chapbook.

This vision thing is going to evolve and develop over the course of the week. Currently, I think I'd like to delve into the theme of abundance. Abundance in the broadest conception of that word--even to the point of being about wholeness, and inclusivity.

So how does it relate to the opening quote and to truthfulness? It's a half-baked hunch. There'll be a point to this rambling surely by the blog birthday. It's just not fleshed out yet.

Yesterday, I thought to myself: "It's brave to admit to global audience you have $2.99 in your bank account." Admittedly, it's not that uncommon especially for bootstrapping entrepreneurs, or anyone taking risks. Yet, somehow instinctually I know it is a taboo to mention your bank account balance aloud, in public, in North America unless it's in upper strastopheres. It's even taboo in private one-on-one to anyone besides a close confidant.

Is this an act of bravery?

Or is it simply honest, truthful, transparent?

Is it sharing?

"Scarcity is the default mode for most of us. It's a hard habit to break, but almost always worth it. Scarcity involves hoarding, and abundance involves sharing." - Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Non-Comformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World

Scarcity involves hoarding. Abundance involves sharing. Hmmmm.....

I sense I've been hoarding. I've been holding back the gems of my life from this blog. I've been holding back the coarse black coal as well. It's appears safer to stick to middle ground stuff. Mind my P's and Q's. You know, don't rock the boat.

 

My dream was once--and maybe it still is yet I'm also putting everything on the table for re-inspection--to be in a moai.

What's a moai? Without looking it up online, off the top of my head, to me it's having a clan that mutually supports each other emotionally, mentally, financially--in every realm, yet we don't reside together in a commune nor an ashram. In the financial sense, we'd pool money together to invest in each other's dreams to see them come into fruition. Sometimes it feels like a pretty naïve concept--especially in the West where everyone appears to prefer to be an island (nod to John Donne). (It's funny that moais developed on an island, and in the East.)

Interrelated, I was intrigued by this passage quoted below--specifically, the PLANTING SEEDS sentence. The vision of this blog I have going forward may have to do with planting seeds, letting life live and thrive. Not in the sense that I am planting seeds into your head (I've an aversion to persuasive writing as it feels controlling). Without further ado, here's the passage:

"If You Eat the Rich, You Will Soon Starve
Let's assume we take $1 billion away from the wealthy and redistribute it to the working poor, the below-middle class families struggling to make ends meet. This will result in each family getting, let's say, a hundred bucks. What will each family do with this windfall...

Will they rush to Wall Street to invest it in ways that create venture capital to launch new businesses and support new product invention, thus creating new jobs and exportable goods that help to balance trade?...

Will they run out and use it to buy investment real estate? Will they fund medical research or universities? They will not. [The author says it'll mostly goes to "necessity" purchases and to lowering debt.] It will not be planted as seeds to grow in ways that enhance the economy and its ability to provide jobs, better jobs, health care, or community development, nor will it be invested in ways that make a difference in the individual's family life. That is the cold, harsh reality."

[Here the author does an aside, although relevant to me as I've spend a good chunk of time living in post-Katrina New Orleans, and riffs on the corruption and waste of government funds allocated to the Gulf Coast for rebuilding. . .] "However, private investors from Donald Trump to countless individual entrepreneurs, and private individuals like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, have been getting things done and are having positive impact--with private money.

Taking money away from the rich accomplishes nothing positive for anybody. Leave those same billion dollars in the hands of the wealthy, and most will get invested, some will be put at risk, in ways that do create or expand businesses, fund medical research, hospitals, and universities, create jobs, create better jobs, and in countless ways, benefit everybody. Because the affluent already have their needs met, additional money placed in their hands tends to be, in large part, invested, in other part, spent on goods and services. Money passing through affluent hands is jet fuel for the economy." - No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent, by Dan Kennedy

I'm sure all of us have a point of view on the above passage and have our own list of pros and cons as well as truths and fallacies of these statements. For me, the intriguing part are the questions that arose, including these 3 questions:

1. What have I done with my money the last two years when I was living below poverty level. Did I plant seeds and "spread the wealth"? Did I primarily subsist, stay afloat in self-preservation survival mode as the author assumes?

2. What would I do with $100 now after having considered this? Anything different?

3. What if I gave away $100 to someone--perhaps someone reading this blog this minute? What if I gave YOU precisely $100? Would you use it to plant seeds? How?

Serendipitiously, yesterday I was skimming Chris Guillebeau's book, The Art of Non-Comformity at the bookstore, and he specifically talks about starting a business for $100 and cites a few solid examples.

When I got home, I went to Chris Gullebeau's website, and there's a new forum called, The $100 Business Forum (so actually it'll cost $200 to launch your project, as it's $100 to register).

So I'm curious in the interest of an experiment, let's call it (to be a little facetious) The Eat The Rich Experiment, how you'd use an extra $100? Recall, the above passage also includes "invested in ways that make a difference in the individual's family life," so don't feel constrained to start a business; there's many types of seeds. Share your answers below.

p.s. SoHo (New York City) is a pretty good example that sometimes broke, yet visionary and edgy artists do plant seeds that yield fruit; see The Warhol Economy by Elizabeth Currid. (Not that I'm necessarily advocating being a penniless bohemian. And not that I'm not. It's your life.)

p.p.s. I have $2.29 in my bank account, in the interest of radical financial transparency.

ART CREDITS: All 100% Annie Lapin's works from Light Puppet to Private Outdoor Facial Coronation to Bi-cyclic and Tri-cyclic Romantics.

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

---

"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.