Bobby McFerrin is my Homeboy

No, really.
What a man.

You might know this man as I did...

in fact, the first time I heard his name, I heard the awful rumor he had ironically killed himself. I briefly shared this tale! And I am oh-so-happy it is false.

AS THIS GUY

And yet, I did not know his tale.

At all, in fact...(Except that he was alive)

until I found this lil' nugget o' delight

 

And my roomie, and pure delight, Ben Caplan saw that I had posted this on yee ol' Facebook.

And asked if I had ever seen this goosebump-giving video of the man facilitating song

Then I realized something...

I love him so.

He addresses much of my recent obsessions:

Chaordic Design

 
And

And



Collaborative Leadership



And

The bringing the private voice to the public sphere




And


("Walking the fine line between control & surrender")

all of my conundrums of mind about music, Leadership & my own whackyness.




I am not certain I have seen someone who so encapsulated my own ideal style.
 

Postive Leadership

and 

Spontaneous Invention

 

Look at 'em!


Keep looking

HE ROCKED SESAME STREET

TWICE

You may infact be one of the only living models
I can aspire to.

That is a beautiful thing to find.
As a musician. As an educator.
As a facilitator.
As a collaborator.
As someone shoeless.
As a joyful being.

Thanks for being you, Bobby.
And giving others the permission to be themselves.

An Expression of our Shared Knowledge

" But I don`t believe in hope without endeavour.``

**this is not an entry which necessarily makes sense**

.` 

 I realized I want to be an Expression of Shared Knowledge.

Is that possible?

No.

But I am pumped to try.

"The process of seeking equilibrium is what makes our life and society possible."

John Raulston Saul

"Why do we have trouble embracing our own genius? Our own Humanism? ...We would rather the illusion of certainty."

I am so optimistic.

And I am wary that people often think me happy because I am ignorant.

Or because I do not care to think of the unpleasantries.

but often, what others find unpleasant I do not

and what I know is hard or uncomfortable is a learning experience

because nothing is non momentous about life

nothing that does not move.
To me, nothing is meaningless.

My happiness would ebb less, were that the case.
And in being happy, I am not inert. I am in want of betterment.

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor. " ~Dr. Alexis Carrel

Grow some moss

Were I a statue of contentedness.

I want to cultivate gardens before I grow moss.
I do not want to be inert. I don't believe in meaninglessness. Not moving. Not influencing.

I think one of the most meaningful decisions you can make is to try to not move. Not influence. Not claim your ability to respond. yOur responsibilities.

But, if everything is meaningfilled... And I don't believe it possible to fathom the complexities of life...

Should I be paralyzed because I do not understand? Even if I am in want of doing what my gut seems to know I need to do?

Should I get lost in the 'wilderness of opinion' (Wapola Sri Rahula "What the Buddha taught")

for fear of moving

and the perpetual consequences

What is the role of an actor in the world?

In society?
To ourselves?

``What passes for common sense becomes a panicked, determined obsessiveness. Anyone who looks up or around is marketed as irresponsible or a romantic... There is no need to treat common sense as a parody of itself. Better to embrace its natural complexity"

Saul speaks of not thinking of knowing in the same way we think of understanding.

 

(Plan: Bee was a great example of life as a social being. Collaborative. Messy. Not understanding what would happen but knowing that I trusted in it and the process itself. So complex, so many contributions and opinions so hard to manage so easy to appreciate and so joyous in its execution. The most natural acting of my life in many ways)

The role of an actor:

Someone who acts in the world.

As an actor, cares about the opinions and lives and accumulated actions of others.

Who plays with those on stage to create a plot

And knows what they care about themselves first?

If I think I see the scaffold, should I measure it out and hire some builders?
Boss people around?

Goodness, that is not me.
I fear being manipulated or mislead so much, that I would hate to ever mislead someone away from what they might truly want for themselves
And I work the least when I am told what to do precisely
and feel my agency is encroached upon wholly
and best with a messy scaffold wherein I can create.
I am not a boss.
Good gracious.
Whenever I have been called a leader? It is only because I often can recognize how and where other people are leading


often subtly and beautifully
and believing them to be better at a task than I might be
I do not trust myself as a grand director,
I take my direction from all directions
but I do trust myself as an appreciator
and am a great appreciator of novelty, and the unique and am perpetually amazed by how unmundane all things are. And by the glory of every single person and thing.
If anything, I want people to reframe people as actors. Redefine definitions.

"A definition is intended to clarify things, to free us for action... a definition can just as easily become a means of control, a profoundly reactionary force, a crutch for certainty and ideology."

People have painted themselves into little boxes, and denied themselves to their neighbours and vice versa. With fears of skeletons in their closets, they are too ashamed to call the exterminators.
I wish people understood themselves as social capitol. As meaningful actors on the grand stages of life.
armed specifically and beautifully to execute their delicious paths of action

But (now that I have digressed, again) :

Do I mind my flighty mind?

Could I wholly mind my flighty mind?
Only when it keeps me from acting. Or thwarts my attempts to be responsible and conscientious.
Or hurts those around me with my negligence
But the struggle itself keeps me on my toes

My creative and curious parts?

I cannot anymore, because they are my greatest gift

Do I mind my happiness?
Sometimes, I fear it makes me insensitive--to others and to my own self.
I worry I am unfeeling because I feel so content
but it is a blessing always
(in fact, I feel quite like an arse when I complain about my happiness)


 So why mute myself?


The messiness and my blurring of lines?

My optimism?
My romanticism?
This is how I see.

This is my arsenal of knowledge.
My acting style
My personal Reality
I combine me with what I think everyone might want
for the world
and what might be best for all
Who and what is on the stage

and then act.
I gave up my life to become who I am today. Was it worth it?

Certainly.

How could I mourn my own existence if I know it a blessing?
Because there have been times when I have mourned life
And thought better of it.
 

"“I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with”

Do I enjoy being distracted by things in the same manner as Plato?

Should I paint a blurry canvas and let the lovely things come out? In the same colours as my grandest dreams?

Borrow from the knowledge which surrounds me? Be distracted by that which draws me in to learn from it?

Goodness yes.

``The Curious thing is that no one can name a single manager or administrator of the Renaissance. Yet there were lots of them... Yet we can all name Picasso. And  not because the artists are celebrities. In general they are far less in the public eye than a well-paid CEO.
...It seems that memory does work. It retains what is central and filters our what is tertiary or marginal. Leonardo (da Vinci) remains because he is an expression of our shared knowledge. The manager does not. He has a role but remains marginal to society`s sense of itself, even to the manager`s own sense of himself...``

you cannot deny your calling

if you know, you know

I never want to feel like a manager.

I often think of this Henry Ford quote, when I think of all things leaderly:
"The question, 'Who ought to be boss?' is like asking, 'Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?' Obviously, the man who can sing tenor."
I have been okay with lending direction, with 'leading' or bossing
because I don't erase myself or other people in doing it
I suppose, that means I am okay it it
even if I am uncomfortable with it as a prospect.
But, as I said earlier: Discomfort is the best sign of learning.

And I am terrified of Ideology

and fear feeling as though I know, as though I am done looking.
As though I am grown up.

“Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.”-Kahil Gibran

I want to be an expression of shared identity, shared knowledge

I don`t mean that I want to be remembered, or da Vinci for that matter

I want to help be

that blur which makes us us

I want to help popularize common sense.
``If understanding is impossible, than knowing is imperative``(Primo Levi)

and be cozy in not understanding

But in want of knowing

and allowing myself to know the things I do know.

Bring my private voice to the public sphere.

`What I am suggesting is the essentially non-linear nature of common sense. You might say that it is the witness of society`s existence.`

To know I am not hiding. At let others know they need not hide

or fear being seen

“Be content to seem what you really are”
Marcus Aurelius

I think the greatest sin of them all, is to try to hide.
For in hiding what you think is your worst you will often hide your best
and if your worst remains in hiding
then you cannot make the best of it
and if you only think you hide it
and it is obvious to all those around you
you are a fool.
who will never feel comforted in knowing they are truly known.

An amorous hedonist

wary of formalizing and yet always craving structure and sense

cheezy often

user of semiotics

analogy

legend

fable

therefore a mutt of pasts and presents and all neighbours of her existence

furiously borrowing from everyone around her and everything around her

trying to cite her sources

wary of her own untruths

and curious about yours
all collects as many blurred lines as possible
to try to reassemble The Grand Mosaic

who outsources to be sure
"Is this what it looks like?"

but will never hide her opinion

and cannot tell you where the voice inside her comes from except to say 

"me"

and you and you and you

 and you and you and you

A person who seeks personal serenity

By helping people be better people

by being themselves

by making this a better place.

Not inert.

Not understanding

Not paralyzed

No expert

But knowing she wants better.

and that she loves it.
And those around her.
And the place she is lucky enough to call home
Her grounds for exploration and limits and boundlessness

perpetual serendipity and symmetry

That doesn't sound bad to me at all.

But, if it sounds bad to yee I would love to know.
'Cause I need you to be better and build better.
Humans are social creatures.
And beautiful ones at that.

Weekend.

The sweet sweet day o' field trips were hailed as a 'life changer'

How I love The Dal Leadership Campaign: Launch Point.

Also, I adore Fred Morley of the Greater Halifax Partnership.

He's such a champ!
And knows the Economic Landscape of Halifax so well!

I think, perhaps, that this city is about to explode with glory.

Just sayin. Just sayin.

I spent Saturday October 30th at City Hall, GHP, touring small businesses, eating fair trade coffee then drinking beer on The Harbour Queen brainstorming the future and listening to my favorite hip hop band.

Followed by glorious

HALLOWEEN.

I saw some of the best costumes of all time on Saturday.

Followed by a night of cuddling in medieval garb watching Legend.

 

 And Friday was also Halloween, didn't cha know?

I was also garbed medievally this day.

Thanks for being you, Halifax.

So Sassy!

Music is My Madness

Music as an instrument of change

I recently attended Tatmagouche Free school, and one of the questions they asked was "What are your gifts in exile?" And, surprising as it may seem to many since I am addicted to play music, I quickly answered that music is my gift in exile. I hate being called or self-identifying as a musician.


Then: What does music mean to me?

Many a person covets the position of musicians, and my dad is certainly one of those. Though I admire musicians sometimes, I do not envy them. And I don't like talking about music. I like playing it, but I hate using exclusive language and talking about it in an elite fashion. And what is there to covet or be obsessed about with music?

What a treat it is to share such a thing, perform an art. Create an intimate moment between you and countless people...but what is the cost? What does music make a musician? What does the industry do to your art?

Certainly, it can make you influential, and give you the chance to express yourself and create a shared cathartic experience, some money and see behind many closed doors... but a day of a musician is not much covetted in my eyes. What is it to play songs over and over, put yourself in an untouchable place, and sell your art almost always in addition to your face?

My Battle between Business, Music, The Greater Good and my own brainhood.

I suppose it isn't really about the music (though it can feel like prostituting your art) its about the business of personality. And I already have a flawed personality which too rarely gets called on its faults due to my relatively pleasant disposition. Ask my sisters!

"Music is spiritual. The music business is not. " -- Van Morrison

I have visions and neurosis about musicians being douchebags, and so music-centric and self important they don't attend to the most meaningful matters of the world and squander their gift of influence and visibility. I think this idea was brought to a head when I went to the ECMA's in Sydney last year.
But there I realized: Good people still find good people, even in a strange feild of frauds, fiends and friends.

"Music should never be harmless." -- Robbie Robertson

And!
It made me realize that: I am a musician.
Whew. I said it. Why do I hate that title so much? Even when people say "guitarist" or "cellist" or 'singer songwriter" it gets me perturbed. And feeling a wee bit fraudulent.

"The music business was not safe, but it was FUN. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway." -- Lionel Richie

I was so worried that I would exacerbate my worst qualities through the sphere of performing art: untruths, self-centredness, overly reverent public, living in a dreamworld, any variety of substance abuse, late nights, flightyness.... but these are things I need to work on anyway.


I think I am in a place where I don't have to worry about making myself worse, and I am quite excited to make myself much better. And conquer my self-made barriers.


And! I think, in my own mind, I have accumulated enough social merit and use of myself outside of music, I cannot help but use music and performance and spectacle to assist in helping all things that I think need to happen to make a better world
.
and its okay if I don't have time to teach people how to be good people. I can be a good person, and do the best I can. And it is okay I am not the best and never care to be... I cannot help but be addicted to expressing myself through music, and playing music and hearing it and using it to speak whatever truths need be said, even if I do dress them up to be a lil' differently digested than they might otherwise be. That is art!

The responsibility of being a public figure. It makes me uncomfortable, and I am not certain it is a struggle of my own ego.  When talking about music I often quote John Gardner:

"Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers."

I often catch myself saying "Leadership: sunk!" Because: What place is that for self growth? I need people to call me out on my shit. I outsource for personal growth, because I know I do not catch myself doing those things that make me an imperfect being. It is pathological. AND I already have a problem with people not calling me out enough without putting myself in a place that is more public and less personally accessible.


I have troubles still with the words "leadership" and "leader" and "artist" in a similar fashion. I have gotten the farthest in not thwarting Musician out of all of these titles.

But, if a facet of being me is being a "musician," then so be it.

And in the words of my friend Kev Corbett, "I was made for a position of service, whether monastic, military or politician... but from the juxiposition of music I can serve all of those feilds best." My dad had said this to me before, in one way or another, but I could not hear him at that time. And much of my musical neurosis clearly comes from his own obsessions with music.
I wanted to live my own dream for my own reasons.


I just have to remember that music is not the most important thing on the planet. It is a method of and instrument of change, and one of expression.

I shall conquer and be made better.
I am going on tour next summer. That is that.
I will try to avoid embodying the following by following those music notes across the country:

And thus I clothe my naked villainy, With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Do real leaders believe in themselves?

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt- Betrand Russell

I by no means hate the fellow, I simply feel he does not operate from a loving, accessible place I can identify with.I cannot wholly fathom Stephen Harper's motivations

 

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

- Albert Einstein

Atheists can easily justify their thoughts through their disbelief in those who seem all-too certain.

But I perpetually have the thought that people just resolve to care little because fundamentalists care so much. I mean, we don't have a perfect solution--and neither do they-- but they just care so dang much. "I'll give 'em a freebe, I suppose."

So I got to thinking: Is confidence and pushiness the key to Leadership?? Really?

------------------------

(to clarify, I don't think Stephen Harper is stupid. I, infact, think he is smart enough to take advantage of the apathy of a privileged nation on the edge of innovation too lazy to digest, take responsibility and take action in a complicated context. I think that we elected him twice: is stupid.)

Stephen Harper pretends to give us what never was and never will be:

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384

("Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.)

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

 Nietzsche

The more kids I work with I realize the connotation of "leaders" and why kids frown upon keeners. Power breeds hypocrisy & lack of self-reflection in conjunction with the harsh judgement of others. Kids do not like the people who are invested in telling them what to do and seem so sure of themselves and wholly unwilling to really listen or accept criticism... but at the same time they don't want to be associated with those types of people, those 'leaders' or deal with the responsibility of power. Therefore they don't want contest these people: to offer up or lobby for any alternative solutions in part because they value the opinions of others and assume someone else can do it better. Plus, what is the worst that could happen? What could be the possible consequences of this laziness? If I have been thinking this, surely someone else has too...

Is this the downfall of democracy? People silently believing the same thing and being spectators to authority?Being a leader, and having to perpetually negotiate your own image...having people who don't even know you being unloving critics and uncritical lovers.

It misplaces those community moral checks we are used to, puts us in a place most find uncomfortable.

Not many covet the position of Prime Minister or President, really. But do we think they are champions of all? Do we think they have all the answers? We act like we believe they have more agency, a more important voice than 'us': The majority, the democracy, the whole.

"At bottom, every man knows perfectly well that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time."

- Nietzsche

We are afraid of our own dreams. Of being held accountable for the world which we dreamed up--as if not following through on your dreams and passions made your influence on the planet inert.

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

- Edgar Allan Poe

I think this is all great news.... the new leaders (it seems) are the most reluctant to lead. I find that comforting: a good sign of integrity, even. And knowing this, I feel I can still believe in the visions I hold for Canada and her people.

"The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."-John Stienbeck

Dreamers and artists and teachers will soon hold their new place in a deeper democracy. Where (hopefully) leaders are role models too.

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."

- John Steinbeck

Be the change you want to see in the world. -Gandhi

you are at the beginning, not at the end of the journey.

Feeling a little unsure? Not sure you have the right answer?

You are probably on the right track.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

- Charles Darwin