Tracing Behavior Patterns

From the Jackson 5 era to the Thriller era to today, Michael Jackson has undergone a dramatic and public physical transformation. He clearly is not comfortable in his own skin. For all his creative brilliance, he seems to continue to question his worth as a human.

This new comment on my post of a couple days ago brought up my own deep fears, in a good way. From the same artist who'd made me think previously about why I continue to paint solely on vinyl at the moment, this comment led me to ponder the root of my issues regarding my worth as a human, as an artist. I responded in a comment on that same post.

Then, I read Godin's post about public and personal perception of creativity. Please go read it. Don Miguel Ruiz discusses at length, well it's really the main idea, in his books about the way our and others' perception of the world and ourselves is basically a lie. The only truth is the fact of our actions. That's why I think the Tao Te Ching is so focussed on action. What we think, what our brain does, how we filter the personal and environmental effects of our actions is not truth in fact.

But it sure does seem to be, doesn't it? We can get so wrapped up in our own shit, that we block and distort and then react to our thoughts and our interpretation of the actions of others in seemingly bizarre ways. Bizarre, that is, to someone outside of the bubble.

We can look at young Michael and think about how cute he was, how talented. All he thought about, though, was his father's comments about his appearance. He hated what he saw in the mirror of his father's eyes.

Deep down, I still think about those schoolmates' accusations that I was cheating with my art. I still question my value as an artist, feeling like anybody could do what I do. I still worry about the reaction of the photographers who took the original images I use to paint from, which I guess could be a twisted backwards way of being egotistical about my work, but is really bourne out of my fear I'm doing something wrong.

This is one reason why I was so conflicted about the idea of reproducing my work. I don't think I realize how much I appreciate the comments I've gotten in response to my news about the Hard Rock Hotel. I know looking for outside validation is really just more lies, but to know how what I do is filtered through the perception of others gives me new perspective from outside the bubble.

So, from the depths, thank you.

Peace.

Real Gone (External Input)

Yesterday I wrote about reconnecting with the good in people.

In relating online, sometimes the people get even more lost behind all the noise and manufactured reality. It can feel like nobody's there. So it can feel easy, inconsequential to simply ignore the nobodies (if you check out that link, read the whole thing, you'll see).

Seth, ever the one to look for good, pointed to this (I wish I could comment there to say thanks, but at least I can spread it).

Peace.

Marketing Connections (Or How To Make The World A Better Place)

My friend Robert Benson just invited me to join a new site for vinyl lovers. Here's my profile. It looks kinda like a specialized Facebook. I hadn't looked at ning.com before, but it looks versatile and easy. The welcome email for this ning site said I was #59, so it's not big yet, but could grow if you guys join.

Growing the online network of people passionate about music, art, and creativity in general is perhaps my main lofty goal of this blog. Along those lines, I figured I'd give a list of blogs I've been keeping tabs on one way or another. These are people standing up for culture in their way:

Layla's Classic Rock
Imagine Echoes
Music Obsessive
Seth's Blog
davistudio
Think Simple Now
dig this / dig that
Zero influence
Magical Mystery Blog

This is an odd collection, but then I'm odd. I've commented on all of them, except Seth's which he has set up only to accept trackbacks and for some reason blogger won't do trackbacks right. So I email him. He emails back. He really does.

I got to thinking about marketers like Seth this morning. I like'em because they're job is to think of ways to make you make your life better. Or at least think it is. In any event, marketers push positive messages generally. Yes they do play to fears a lot, but that's what we respond to. If you haven't seen it, watch "The Day The Earth Stood Still" to understand that. Imagine if the Internet just stopped? Yikes. It's hard to remember what it was like before, say 1995 or so when the Internet took off commercially.

Anyway, marketers usually don't bash other products. They know they've got your attention for a limited time, so why waste it talking about the competition? I was thinking what it'd be like if political campaigns did that, promoting their candidate in and of themselves, not as opposed to the other one.

I don't like comparisons. My sculpture teacher liked to say that there'll always be somebody better than you and somebody worse, so worry about yourself. So much energy is spent by humans comparing themselves to others. Yes, society has to operate on norms to hold together, but participants in society don't have to judge themselves that way.

Be you, for cripes sake.

Be positive, too. Why spend so much time complaining about what you don't like? Like Zappa and so many others creative people say, if you don't like it turn it off, don't buy it.

Go one better and promote what you DO like, pay for music, contribute to society to make it what you want.

I know this post rambles, I know. My mind is a mess right now.

But it's me.

Peace.

SOLD - Jim Morrison 09/24/08

Am I Just Forwards? (Or Why Blogs Are Causing The Collapse Of Society)

This is just still bugging the heck out of me. (Bear with me as it's about blogging, but before I go paint I wanted to get this out.)

I've been reading blogs all morning, most I found by following breadcrumbs in Seth Godin's or Mark Hurst's archives of brilliance. From Fred Wilson to Nick Carr, from Infothought to WorldChanging, I perused some heady, intellectual posts written by well-respected bloggers. Then I found Creating Passionate Users by Kathy Sierra. I got really excited because she had clearly been very influenced by Godin in her intent, packaging and enthusiasm. The one thing that was very different was that her and Dan's posts were long. (I'm not linking to any of these as the actual examples aren't important. Again, bear with me.)

Seth's posts generally fit on one screen. Bite-sized. Grabbing my attention, delivering, and releasing me to move on to something somewhere else, usually much less profound. Kathy and Dan's posts are mostly 4 screen lengths long. (This still isn't the important part. Almost there.)

The result of the length difference is that while Creating Passionate Users is full of, well, passion, I didn't enjoy going through the archives as much as Seth's perhaps more sedately stated quips. Neither is better, I love both. Both are brilliant. I stay jazzed enough to read all 4 screens of Kathy's and I love the quick A-HA of Seth's terseness. (We're getting close now, but not yet!)

It's the fact that blog posts are listed in reverse chronological order. It's a hassle to keep scrolling up and down, bouncing up the archives: go to the bottom of the page, scroll up to the top of the last post, read down, scroll up to the top of the penultimate post, read down, and so on. With Seth's blog, that bouncing is rarely necessary, so my brain and eyes can flow much better up through the posts.

Why the devil are the posts displayed that way? (There it is!)

I wish (if one can, please tell me!) one could provide the option for re-reversing time. Thoughts flow forward in time, not backwards. I know that most people reading blogs either subscribe and get each post in order, or they read the first couple posts and move on. I must be weird in that when I find a blog new to me and I get excited to read more, I want to go back to the beginning. I usually find the archive links and find my way to the very first post on the blog. I know posts are usually meant to stand alone, but I like to see them as they came from the author. A serialized piece of the author's life, if you will. Doesn't make sense in reverse.

I think that the fact that blogs are set up this way is either symptomatic of or an influence on the atomization of our attention, communication and relationships, at least online. People are chunking their lives into asychronously cross-linked pieces, and because it's difficult to read a blog in time-order the pieces get smaller or they get more isolated. Can anybody say "today's kids"? (don't get me started on Twitter! No, really don't get me started using it.)

I'm not judging this in general, or blaming anything or anybody. I'm just observing myself and extrapolating to a philosophical and sociological argument that makes me feel better because then it's not just me.

Is it you too?

Peace.

Human Being Good

Odd but deep phrase, isn't it? Think about it for a sec.

Is it what the grammatically challenged cannibal said?

I like words that are both verbs and nouns (no, not like "Google"), especially when they can lead to philosophical discussion. Is the human being good, or is the human being good? (Heehee, oops, I guess you can't hear the emphasis difference in my head. You get it though, right?)

Biblically, "good" is where we started. There is a reason why "good" means more than just "less than great". Good is what G'od (a contraction that my dad taught me) wants of us. If we are to truly reflect Life's purpose for us, good is what we should shoot for, consistently and genuinely.

Heck, it's what Steve Martin strives for in his work.

And it's a powerful question to figure out what you can do with passion that will benefit the world.

My question is why be anything but good? Yes, it's hard. Life is a challenge. Aren't things and experiences more precious when you use effort to get them? We are living in order that Life might experience the limitless possibilities of its creation. So live! Live with passion, taking responsibility for your life.

And then my question becomes:

if, at any given moment, what you are doing is something that you wouldn't want anybody to know about because the action carries some personal, emotional, social, environmental, economic, or legal consequence that you wouldn't readily accept,

why do it?

Peace.

SOLD - Bruce Springsteen 07/18/08

Chrono(il)logical Order

Since I started this blog, I thought it was odd that one could only easily read a blog in reverse chronological order. I even flipped the order of the archive at first until it did something weird or I just decided to go with the flow and not confuse readers.

Godin discussed this question a long time ago, so it's not like I'm the only one wondering. He even in one post I've lost in his archives discussed the difficulty in plumbing the depths of said archives (irony).

I have put a link to my first post over to the right to make it easier to start at the beginning, but I remember Godin suggesting something like an index. Tags attached to each post can be used to search using the search box up at the top, kind of like an index. However that leaves it up to the reader to find appropriate and consistently used tags and forces them to do the search, generating kind of a fragmented posting thread, if you will.

I think what I'm going to do is create my own index. Nonfiction books do this to let the reader know where to find all the references to a common subject. I know to expect readers to go through all 100 plus of my posts is a bit unrealistic. Some posts would probably loose their impact and readers would get bored, skipping and scanning, maybe missing my brilliance. So, the plan is to go back through and assign consistent tags more like categories. Some blogs call them categories even, which made it dawn on me to use them that way. Then I can automatically group posts that follow a common thread using pre-linked searches.

This will be kind of like reassembling what could be considered chapters that were just created in fragments of time. I'm thinking like what they did with the X-Files: releasing a collection of DVDs of just those episodes that follow the main series' mythology, leaving out the stand-alone episodes.

Sound good? I'll be working on this for awhile, deciding what categories and so forth, but I'll post about it when I'm done. And, of course, the new index will show up in the sidebar to the right. Let me know, please, if you have any suggestions about this idea or if you want to vent about the same thing.

Peace.