Synchronicity

I used to really stand up and take notice when there was some synchronicity or serendipity in my life. I once had a journal where I would write it down every time it happened. I started to notice it more and more in my life as well as the lives of the people around me. It seemed as though once I started paying attention to these occurances, they happened with greater frequency. It was as though the universe was speaking to me and once I started listening, it spoke more. It became such a frequent occurance that I stopped paying so much mind. It became an ordinary and commonplace thing, like just part of the game. To me life is like a great symphony and as with any great symphony, there will be some bits which echo other bits. Thats how you get a melody right?
If you are not familiar with this let me give you some examples. I was walking about my apartment with a wandering mind and stepped on my cat Winds' tail.."meow!" he said. Well I usually am very careful to avoid walking on my cats, but just a few seconds later Im walking into the bathroom and step on his sister, Clouds' tail..."meow!" Last week I almost got into an accident because of somebody in my left side blindspot and for whatever reason I didnt check there. That happened twice in one day! Another one from last week was that I was talking to somebody about bald gay guys and mentioned the singer/artist Moby. Well it wasn't more than an hour before one of his songs came on the radio. Once I was in the office looking for a sharpie and couldnt find any. I said to my friend at work "Hey remember that old song 'Where have all the cowboys gone?'? Well somebody aught to write one called ' where have all the sharpies gone?'" We had a little chuckle but then about 20 minutes later that cowboy song came on the radio. We both thought it was quite an amazing thing. That very same night during a conversation with another co-worker the song Closer by NIN came up and sure enough within an hour it came on the radio.
Once I was driving down the road in Pasadena (thats where I live) and a commercial came on the radio for Jiffy Lube . They were talking about all the stresses and strains a car has to endure and they mentioned "potholes the size of Pasadena", and just then I hit an enormous pothole.
I was sitting at work once wondering when the movie Naqoyqatsi would arrive on DVD. I looked it up online and found that it was set to be released 6 months ago, but was tied up in some legal dispute. Just a few hours later the movie landed on my desk as a job ( I work on movie posters and DVD packaging for a living). A few months later when I got the DVD I had it playing while I was getting ready to go out. I was emptying my wallet of excess change and had a pile of coins in my hand. I just happened to look up and saw on the movie, a flury of coins flying through the air.
These sort of things happen all the time and most people just dont notice. At least it happens to me quite a lot. I could go on and on with examples but I wont. Its never anything significant. It’s never anything big or earth shattering in my life. But to the discerning eye, it is pattern in the chaos. If youve ever worked a cash register or observed one being worked you’ll see it. It will be slow all day, and then for no apparent reason, at 3:27 there will be a mob of 20 or 30 people all at once. If you’ve ever read or heard Terrence Mc Kenna speaking his mind, he’ll be quick to point out that time has a quality that comes and goes, one that ebbs and flows. These qualities are completely dismissed by modern science and acknowledged only by astrology, numerology, and the I Ching. McKenna calls this novelty and you can see it in human history. As he puts it, we’re all brought up to believe that every moment in time is the same as every other moment. But if you study history you’ll find that this isn’t the case at all. Not every year, decade, or century is the same as every other. There will be centuries of nothing, and then all of a sudden the great Rennaisance, or the Golden Age of ancient Greece. Ask anybody who survived the 60's in America if they've seen crazy unexpected moments in history. Quite often lots of bad things happen all at once. I'm sure we've all had days, weeks, or even years of our own life that were like that, where all the bad crap you could imagine all came bearing down on you all at once.
So last week was just filled with serendipity and synchronicities. They were happening every day. The near car accident for one. I lost track of all the times I saw strange groupings and patterns in my life. It was like groupings of groupings. Ive heard people call this moments of timefullness and opportunity. Its like a doorway into potentiality which allows us to manifest change. Well I've seen this happening before but I've never quite been able to surf that wave. Maybe its just a practice for me before the real one hits. I once had a dream about surfing a mile high tidal wave with Jesus. Though I know that the giant tidal wave is a common archetype in the collective unconscious. Carl Jung would say that I'm not the first person to have that dream. I guess I should accept it as metaphor and pay more attention to the waves of life.

Content vs. Form

Well I've had many a debate (usually with fine artists) about the importance of content over form. Coming from a background in illustration my interest is usually toward form. By that I mean that I have an interest in aesthetic value, or simply put, stuff that looks cool. But many folks prefer the value of content or, the meaning behind the form. Many folks value only art that has some deeper idea, thought or message behind the image. They would say that form is useless and meaningless without some content or deeper meaning. Ive no problem with people who hold this view. I dont feel that way but I think the world is a better place when there is a variety of opinion on these issues of taste. Some people feel the need to convince the world that their opinion is the true and correct view. They see their way of thinking as being of a higher order and more elevated. Well I don't think that any opinion can really be better than another. I see this issue with most major Hollywood blockbusters, in that they are all form and visual flare with very little content other than rehashed old cliches. Im sure my brother who is a writer would agree with that one. I on the other hand can enjoy a movie purely for its aesthetic value. I still enjoy a well crafted story and find movies that have both content and form to be the most fun. I would say the same of art. But given the choice between aesthetic value, and ideas, I'll take the aesthetics. Im sure there are a lot of fine ideas coming from the minds of artists out there, but I'll just take the cool imagery for myself and leave it at that. This is the same as my attitude towards music. I love music and songs, but rock n' roll singers would be the last people I'd turn to for good ideas or advice. I think its a pretty funny that people value the thoughts and ideas expressed by people like Kurt Cobain and Marilyn Manson. I expect I'd enjoy having a beer and friendly chat with either of those dudes, but I wouldn't turn to them for a paradigm shift. When I want to think, I usually prefer to go to scholars, writers, and philosophers. I respect ideas from scientists like Michio Kaku, movers and shakers like Ghandi, philosophers like Lao Tzu and Ram Dass, and teachers like Allan Watts. While people like Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, and even Salvador Dali, may have had a lot to say, none of it really interested me at all ( though I still dig Dalis' work on both the visual and gut level).
I think a lot of artists, especially students in school will lie to people and themselves about what they like. There is a pressure in a lot of facets of the art world to hold substance as more valuable than form. There is a type of group mindset in many places that many people fall into without realizing it. I have seen this in art school and I've seen it in the world of galleries. Artists will go into one of these fields with a love of aesthetics and form and it will get squeezed out of them by critics and art teachers. They will try to interject content into works that don't need it like comic book art or sci fi/ fantasy illustrations etc. . With a collective group mindset leaning towards the content, they will move away from what they really like to get recognition, appreciation, and the approval. This to me is a loss of individuality and always frightening when it happens in our culture.
Admittedly, its impossible to create an image without any idea or feeling behind it. The imagery has to come from somewhere even if it is subconscious. Carl Jung described the unconscious mind as a vast dark ocean surrounding the tiny island of conscious thought. I tend to agree with this and I think without some semblance of thought or emotion behind an image, you'd end up with a bland neutral grey canvas. If for example I was to paint a landscape or a simple still life, there isn't much of an idea behind it, but the way I paint it, the subject I pick, the strokes I use all say something, but thats just getting into the realm of psychoanalysis I think.
Simply stated, I like stuff that looks cool. I have no shame in admitting this and if you dont feel that way Im cool with that. If you feel as I do that most artists are overly emotional, naive, and lacking in anything interesting to say, then I offer my thanks and congratulations on reading all the way through my silly naive little rant.

Rainy Day!!

I just looove the rain.
Its raining now and that makes me smile.
I should move to a rainier place.
Theres snow up in the mountains.
maybe I'll go build a snowman this weekend

2007 Review

2007 is finally gone and not a moment too soon. The story was lame and the special effects were overworked. The characters were bizarre and I felt no connection with any of them. The acting was good, but hampered by poor direction. Maybe if we can resolve this writers strike, things will get back into the groove. Though the last part of the year where Chris and Oziris went to Europe was cool. The subplot with the receptionist in Paris was too funny. And all the stuff with Alvin and the chipmunks was good fun too.

Something

December is almost here and Im trying to get my fill of Christmas spirit before I scuttle off to Europe. Im lucky enough to be spending a couple weeks in Italy and Im pretty excited about that.
Finally things are getting settled in my apartment. Ive moved back into my place and its really nice. I got a new paintjob and a new carpet. With any luck I can keep clutter and junk down to a minimum. Right now Japanese teahouse is the motiff Im going for. Though I think the cats liked it better with all the clutter, but for now, theyre getting more comfy since the furniture is going back to where it was (at least some of it is). Ive managed to pair it down to the bare essentials. There was quite a lot of junk just taking up space. Now its become a wonderful place to live instead of just a storehouse for my stuff.

Nothing

My apartment and home is fast becoming a big nothing. Theres been a crubling peeiling, water damaged wall next to my bed for longer than I can remember and its finally being fixed by the management. The entire main room is being repainted and recarpeted and I have to completely evacuate the room. There are a couple interesting points staring me in the face today. Both points are about the importance of stuff. Firstly to me, and secondly to my cats. Im piling all nonessential stuff into my moms garage. But what is essential stuff? Well Im starting with the least important things, like old magazines, toy laser guns, my collection of audio cassettes, a 3 foot tall godzilla toy etc, and moving on to medium important things like old paintings, drawings, and all the old cameras my father left me. As I pair it down more and more, I keep thinking about what I could really live without. If god forbid, my mothers house burned down, would I miss any of that stuff? Though Im sure Id have greater concerns than for my stuff if somehting like that happened. I guess when you break it down, the most important stuff of my life is not really objects so much as relationships. I could live without my stuff. But I think Id be pretty lost without any loving connections, with people or pets. And that brings me to my second point. The importance of stuff to pets. My cats, Wind and Cloud are not happy kitties right now. Their world is being slowly dismantled. As the main room empties out they have fewer places to go and fewer things to sit on. With almost no potential targets for catattack, they are getting bored. Pets are special in that they have neither the same needs of wild animals nor the needs of people. Kitties need lots of petting , food, water, and lots of little nooks and crannies to investigate. Its a kitties job to investigate those places for the sake of all the rest of us who have neither the time , inkling or ability to see whats behind the computer desk, or up on the top shelf of the closet. Its a kitties job to test out all the potential napping places in a home. Well I guess Im sorta stopping them from doing their jobs. But it cant be helped. Ive explained this to them as best as I can but that doesnt make it any easier for them. With a little luck it will all be finished and back to normal within a week. Hopefully the big nothing that is my home right now will be a nice something once again.

Fractals

Why do we love fractals so much? Well its very simple to me. Fractals are graphic representations of time and space. They appeal to us on a gut level. They seem to speak to us in a very deep and profound way. Ive definately noticed a huge increase in the popularity of fractals. Sure the technology makes it easy now for the non mathematician to create them, and Im sure its fun. But they seem to be creeping into popular culture more and more. Ten years ago I doubt most folks even knew what a fractal was. But I see them more and more on TV, in movies, magazines, and most definately in crop circles. It seems to be creeping into the collective conscious of humankind more and more. Now even Isaac Asimov said that the universe is fractal in nature. He said that when you break things down to what seems to be the simplest component , you'll find infinite complexity within that component which mirrors the complexity of the whole,...or something like that. This wisdom dates back thousands of years to the ancient hermetic traditions which spawned the idea "As above , so below". You can see this when you compare the design of solar systems to the design of atoms. Ive often wondered if the spiral of a galaxy has any bearing on the local genetic code within that galaxy. So this seems to work with both time and space. Ive heard scientists and physicists, going on about how great it is that we finally found the smallest stuff we'll ever find with the Plank scale. Well thats just a joke to me as clearly they just dont get it. We'll never find the smallest scale of size, nor the biggest. You can zoom out forever just as you can zoom in forever. Time is the same. The notion of time beginning with a Big Bang seems equally ludicrous to me. Time like space is infinite. You cant divide it down to its smallest component. Nor can you divide it into its largest component. There is neither beginning nor end. To think that we can comprehend or discern any boundry to time or space is completely arrogant. Just look at the last 2000 years of science. It was a realatively short time ago ( on the scale of human history), that we decided that the Earth is flat and the sun goes around us. Why would we assume that now all of a sudden, we understand everything. Sure I have high respect for science, and physics, and love to hear what the experts have to say. But I just think its completely silly and arrogant to assume that our knowledge is anywhere near the all encompassing all knowing thing it would take to understand the full nature, and limits of time and space. Ive no idea if most people even know why they like fractals. I guess its like fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio. They are just so deeply imbedded into the nature and structure of things, that we cant help but love them.