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Published: February 16th 2007
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We have a friend here named Steve, who is a Rastafarian acrobat with a home-made gym in his backyard. Steve has been friends with Chelly for years and for a while they were both working at zoos in Thailand. I only met the guy a couple weeks ago, but we really have a lot of similar passions and beliefs, so I'm sure he'll be a friend for life. After working-out at his gym last night, I started thinking quite a bit about some other friends-for-life, about two of my best friends back home: Ole Johnson and Neil Devlin.
I was riding home to Mshomoroni on the back of a little imitation-Vespa scooter being driven by Chelly's brother Stringer. He was wrapped up in the craziness of the road and I was wrapped up in the craziness of my own mind. Basically the thought train looked something like a letter to Ole and Neil, and it stopped at these ideas/stations:
- What good is knowledge if you're not using it?
- I just want to be brilliant.
- I think that means being prolific and excelling at everything you attempt.
- Right now I'd like to attempt some graphic zines,
documentary art-films, and insightful, easy non-fiction writing.
- I really want to do an art zine with Neil Devlin and maybe Ole too.
- We should get together and publish a free-form collaborative zine: a space for all our ideas.
- One thing I want to do is "cover songs" in a graphic form.
- I remember the way in which me and Ole used to strive for brilliance.
- Me and Neil did that too, and I'd like to bring those days back.
So here's the full text of what I wrote when I got home:
Thoughts, 2/15/07 If you know something--if you have real, active, experienced knowledge of something--you are a fool not to use that knowledge. You have heard the word, you have seen and felt and done, you have reflected and taken away knowledge. Why, then, are you not living it? This is a fact that has struck me, and this is why I will again be straight-edge, why I will uphold excellent fitness and nutrition, why I will always work to be a good husband to Chelly, why I will write every day of my life, why I will strive to
help people through business and non-profit ventures, why I want to make more zines and films, and why I'll probably be some kind of preacher some day. I am actively working towards a better understanding of knowledge: how it is attained, how it is thought of, and how it is used.
This, I think, would define a state of brilliance. When I was young, I came to believe there was one proper, superior way for a man to express brilliance. I searched and decided that this was through independent-minded films. I worked for years to become such a filmmaker, but along the way I learned that there are many other ways to be brilliant: as a fighter, as a writer, a teacher, a businessman, a fitness coach, a historian, or a spiritualist--doing and being that thing which grabs you. What I'm beginning to believe is that really being brilliangt comes from doing as many of these things which catch your passion as you possibly can, and being excellent at each of them.
So this is what I aim to do: attempt many things which interest me greatly, and excel at each of them. I want to be fit and healthy and intelligent and have a lead on people in systems thinking, ethical business, self-sustaining not-for-profits, Seattle independent filmmaking, reggae music expertise, art zines, and personal-experience writing, plus I'd like to travel a lot and be a good cook.
But, you don't do all this at once. There are ways to keep your activities in balance and there are stepping stones to getting yourself where you want to be. Right now, I'd like to balance three stepping stones:
1. Producing independent comic-art zines.
2. Working on documentary/art films.
3. Writing insightful, easy-to-read non-fiction articles and books.
What would be truly brilliant would be finding ways to combine all these passions into one. Having a zine with Neil would be the perfect way to go (and it would be great for Ole to be along too, if he could contribute AND fit in with our madness). We could co-edit, co-write, co-illustrate, co-design, and co-publish, balancing our activities to favor our own personal strengths. This would be a free-form medium for us to talk about and try-out our ideas--be they artistic, literary, journalistic, or otherwise. Whenever one of us seriously proposed an idea, we would help each other to do it. If the idea worked, and we liked it, we would do it again. Only, everytime we did it, we would improve on it: bettering the concept, technique, and overall effectiveness of the piece.
On a tangent now: one of the things we could do would be to write out the words to songs in a graphic form. Think 3-5 words per page. Each word would be heavily embellished and pictorialized, like the 1st letter in those medieval illuminated Bibles or the words in some comic-book titles. The words we would do would be our favorite lines and verses from famous songs. We could do, "In the darkest heart of Mordor" with each of, "darkest," "heart," and, "Mordor," illustrated in a vibrantly evocative way. With poor technology, we would illustrate only with simple media: copy paper, heavy ink, simple collage, and maybe a computer program. As our printing methods advance, our work could improve with more complex shading, color, computer-enhancement, even use of photographs. We would also expand our range to passages of literature, famous speeches, and our own writing. In this way, we would be like a band who starts out playing cover songs, moves into adapting stuff from books, then quoting or re-phrasing the thoughts of others, then really telling our own stories and even freely "jamming" through all the forms and styles and songs we know. In just this way, Neil and Ole and I could create some small brilliance.
And this is a pattern for how we all could achieve brilliance: by developing certain skills, finding our own voice and creativity, and finally learning to create "medleys", "jam sessions" and true "crossovers"--in action as well as in thought. So if I can find a way to make a self-sustaining not-for-profit venture that helps and enriches people around the world, while keeping me fit and healthy, and generating art and media that is trail-blazing and intelligent, then I will have achieved some real happiness and a great kind of brilliance.
This is a lot like the way me and Ole used to strive for brilliance. We would always be discovering new interests and small passions, then working to have a better understanding of them. What didn't work for us was dropped. This is how we together developed a discriminating taste for British comedy, learned to take better photographs, published one-and-a-half issues of Skagit Valley's best punk-rock zine, became experts on the world of Warhammer 40k, attempted bands in a range of genres, learned to tell great tales and to have great adventures, even mastered some manly cooking and explored politics. We did all these things and many more together--and we fed off one another's successes, failures, and new ideas.
Neil and I also went through this process when we were living together. In spite of a revolving variety of idiot roommates, we managed to advance our own peculiar humor and charm, make an awesome punk rock/hardcore/ninja turtles-oriented zine, become scholars of hardcore history and Italian horror films, and dig eclectic taste together when no one else was really down with Lionel Richie or Paul Hogan.
I truly think everything can be better done if done socially. There are certain kinds of brilliance that the three of us could best achieve as a team. So, let's get to work.
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Kate
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Its truly inspirational to hear your thoughts and plans. I think you're on to something in striving for renaissance ideals. That's HUGE! haha remember when we were talking before you left san fran about just pausing and taking a step back in your life to check on the status of things...it seems you've expanded on that idea here.