intellectual properties

fantasy life 2012

it seems a local team did something and sports fever is taking over again. cool, i guess? < shrug> . i was thinking about this, how some people are really into being BIG FANS and things like fantasy sports or phantasy phish where you create (and try to manifest?) the best possible team/game/event EVAR.  i’m more into Fantasy Life, and this morning i feel so grateful that i have so many other people not only playing along with me, but into making it FANTASY REALITY, from #occupy to fashion to fitness to art to music to education to policy to travel to procreation.  dreaming ain’t good if you don’t try to make it real, and if we play it right it looks like RealLife 2012 is going to be an epic win. GO TEAM! you know who you are.

music rec: superhuman happiness

as seen in NYC: this may or may not be your thing:

Superhuman Happiness

Superhuman Happiness was founded in 2008 to seek joy and love through shared rhythm and melody, composed and improvised. To pursue a happiness greater than that of an individual. They have one CD, Stuart Bogie’s Superhuman Happiness – Fall Down Seven Time Stand Up Eight, and two 45 records entitled GMYL/Hounds and Human Happiness (Electric Cowbell). Members are known for their work with Antibalas…, the Sway Machinery, TV on the Radio, Battle Apples, The Phenomonal Handclap Band, Caural, The Roots, Nicole Atkins, King Expressors, Minerva Lions, Passion Pit, Celebration, Holly Miranda, Iron and Wine, Foals and the inimitable MC Chris. The band regularly rehearses, composes, and records together, engaging in various improvisatory musical games currently being compiled for implementation in widespread applications.

today

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so this happened

photo by zoë hong

10/31/11

Dear Friends:

some relationships naturally fade, some hold steady, some flourish with time. some require “work”, and some don’t.  sometimes it doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen someone in two years. Sometimes it does. i say this because i have had reconnection/clarification conversations with a couple of friends recently and wonder if i should reach out to more people.

someone i care dearly for recently told me that despite the fact i told her i think about her all the time (and told her so), she feels like i don’t actually take the time to see her or make direct contact (not social networking) and don’t invite her to all the things i’m doing, so she didn’t quite know where our friendship stood.

all i can say is that i think of people i love often. i do, and i try to be mindful and i do little things like send notes and gifts at random times. some of the people i feel psychologically and spiritually closest to i don’t see for 2 or 3 months. or years. but i think of them all the time. but our lives are scattered, busy, full of odd schedules, and i keep a personal schedule that sometimes conflicts with social schedules. i will skip a dinner party if it means i won’t get to go to yoga that week. maybe sometimes my priorities are not what others think they should be. and yes, some of the things i do are not open to everyone, and so it’s true that maybe you were not invited to that one thing.

but i will also say that phones and email work two ways. it’s actually kind of amazing to me sometimes that with all my hundreds of friends (not “friends”, but Friends), my phone will go 2 days, 3 days without a single beep to annouce a call or text message if i don’t instigate contact first. i email people and they don’t write back (i’m very big into personal, private email. the art of letter writing! ). it happens. but i almost never ignore a friend when they contact me. if i do, it’s a rare mistake.

so i guess what i’m saying is that if you think we used to be friends but you feel that somehow we’ve fallen out, or maybe i did do something specific that turned you off, if you want to, please call, text or email me. i’m sure we can reconnect.

love~

::SMILEY MAN::

Brendan & Amy #1, originally uploaded by wtbzl

movement studies

last night we went to see our (awesome!!!) friend Mary Franck’s conceptual-performance piece, Permutae.

i had so many millions of things to say while sitting in that dark theatre,  and now i barely recall all of the places my mind went.

i don’t know why i resist loving conceptual art so much.  i think it’s because i can’t actually articulate why, and so when, afterward, i say “i absolutely loved it” and someone asks “why?” i feel suddenly unprepared, embarrassed to explain.  why do bodies moving absurdly through abstract scapes to nonmelodic sounds cause my self to dissolve?  the body as vocabulary, skin as an instrument: this speaks to me.

all i know is that not long after the performance started i realized that almost my entire body was moving also, while most of the rest of the audience sat still, the man next to me fully asleep.  not only do i enjoy watching, i uncontrollably want to be doing what they are doing.

i have an artist ticket to burning man this year, from doing butoh with BadUnklSista for BRAF and such.  it makes me feel odd as i still do not describe or consider myself an artist. but i think that i might do a solo butoh piece somewhere on the playa.  i will not tell anyone when or where.

tapestry

DSC_8989.jpg, originally uploaded by broxtronix

Ephemerisle: Worth Your Investment?

Ephemeralization, a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller, is the ability of technological advancement to do “more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing”.

Some futurists think only theoretically and wax philosophically about the possibilities for humanity from the comfort of their libraries and leather chairs, rarely, if ever, testing their assumptions.  Others only read the directions on the box, if that, and head out into unknown territories with little more than power tools and some rope to answer such questions as “Is ephemeralization possible?”and “If climate change causes global flooding, could me and 10 of my friends live on a boat?”

Hundreds of years of literature (Lord of the Flies, Robinson Crusoe ), movies and television (Survivor, Cast Away, The Book of Eli and obviously Waterworld) have traditionally concluded that, with limited resources, human nature eventually retrogresses into an Orwellian unfun form of protective tribalistic survivalism, not any kind of Utopia.  But most futurist works do not take in to account the emergence and determination of modern survivalism-IS-fun types who take such conditions as a meta and physical challenge to investigate the possibility of non-violent ephemeralism (one exception being Huxley’s Island, a specifically written utopian counterweight to Brave New World, the pair of which I encourage every Burner and Ephemerialist and Futurist to read).

The term “futurist” is also misleading, as many current prognostications about the future involve a complete lack of computers and robots and are not unlike the happy, healthy, self-sufficient cultures of indigenous tribes and vikings of yore (only a light sprinkling of which still exist today). As many dystopian novelists and revolutionary, countercultural and experimental communities of the 1960s have asked: could we ever get back to a balanced, natural state if necessary, or have we gone too far?

Anchored just outside of Stockton, CA in the expansive and windy network of natural and unnatural waterways of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the most important question the floating festival Ephemerisle, now in its third year, wants to investigate — besides whether you would live or die — is this: Can being trapped on an island be FUN?

On June 9, 2011, False Profit sent a recon team to this local real world test of such theories and questions regarding emphemeralism in the particular context of seasteading. About 20 boats were tethered together to form an island, thereby forming a community of approximately 200 residents of various ilk. Community and connective platforms were built, and collective energies and resources were pooled.  The result was 4 days of sunning, swimming, dancing, diving, teaching, sharing, and learning within an enthusiastic, ambitious and industrious community bent on creating their own world.  As a contribution, we brought a boat full of speakers and DJs.

Learnings:

1. “Missing the boat” isn’t an expression for no reason. However, if you do happen to miss the boat, do not give up. There are other ways to reach your destination. Having a stash of cash or other highly valuable tradeable goods helps. A lot. River people can be very helpful if properly persuaded.
2. Driving a boat isn’t hard, but you do have to pay attention.
3. Dropping anchor sounds easy — you just throw it overboard and your boat stops moving, right?  WRONG.  Due to collective ADD and inability to commit, we moved our boat approximately 7x, so we are experts on how hard it is to drop anchor.
4. If you want freedom, do not tie yourself to anyone. Literally or figuratively. Otherwise you may end up listening to lectures when really you’d rather be having a danceparty in your underwear on the roof.
5. High speed watercraft are highly enviable and worth procuring.
6. Pirates are easy to distract. See item 1.
7. Blasting other boats with a wall of sound is an effective method of takeover, so if you don’t have cannons, have subwoofers.
8. Aquatic wildlife is way easier to catch and avoid than mainland predators (e.g. the prismatic leopard of the temperate rainforests of northwestern america). The only non-avian fauna spotted were river otters, and they’re just cute.
9. Put sunscreen on your ass if you’re going to lie around naked.
10. I’m On a Boat is not that hyperbolic. It really is like that. If you’re on a boat with us, anyway.  Champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

Conclusions:  Ephemeralization seems possible, but we will still need GPS to figure out where the hell we are unless we all learn how to read starmaps.

Recommendations: Invest. More boats + more people = more fun at Ephemerisle 2012.

dylan (non-resident), jess, nicole, whit, me, lydia (visiting), jay, larisa (newest recruit), ben (1st mate), eric, jordan, alex

Sidenotes:  Growing up in the Great Lakes State on the shores of Lake Michigan surrounded by inland lakes, you would think I’d have spent a lot of time on boats as a child.  But alas, no one I knew had a boat, or, at least, invited me to come on it.  I recall being on boats only once or twice as a child. So I know nothing about boating.  Particularly, I did not know that I would still feel the world rocking gently back and forth two days after disembarking, but perhaps that is specific to the workings of my inner ears and not a global experience. Secondly, I realize that this is not so much a summary of the experience as a literature review.  But honestly: you don’t do a lot while on a boat.  That’s the point. So other than the above there’s not a lot to report that would make any sense at all if you weren’t there.  So if you really want to know what happened, join us next year on a motherfucking boat.

nice things that people have said lately

from friends:

“what i like about you is that i feel like when i talk to you i get the truth.”

“i like you because you can dish it, but you can take it too.”

(thx to Adam and Justin for appreciating my personality, which i think others sometimes find off-putting)

re: the scene at yesterday’s Spring Training party-in-the-park

“i think people in San Francisco are better looking than people in LA.  and nicer too!  they actually respond to you when you say hello.” – recent transplant

“wow! everyone here is so happy!  and friendly! people like, wanted to know my name!” -friend dressed in tiger suit after wandering the crowd for a few minutes