By the time…

By the time we add in the complications and machinations of media it is damn impossible to know what is going on. Some call it Marketing 3.0….

A Gathering

“The more you walk this road, the farther you are from the ordinary ways of society. You may see the truth, but you will find that people would rather listen to politicians, performers, and charlatans.” -Deng Ming-Dao * I’m struck by the difficulty we have sticking to the basics. Continually struck by our insistence on

The Quietest Voices

Ideas pull on us. They work to turn our perception in particular directions. We are compelled to make-sense in only a few ways. Ideas, call them voices, are insistent, demanding. They drown out any other response. Instead, let us listen to the quietest voices. –

Intelligence

Tossing the Die One thing coming into view is that intelligence is not…. I began to write in earnest when I discovered – not that what I had to say was hard to say – but that I needed to work at…. For me, language is a freedom. As soon as you have found the

Ideological Justification

In recent decades, American politics has been dominated, at least rhetorically, by a battle over the size of government. But that is not what the next few decades of our politics will be about. With the frontiers of the state roughly fixed, the issues that will define our major debates will concern the complexity of

A Space for Community

Art, even more so than craft, cannot be contained by technique. If you think, “I know what I’m doing!” You’re either mistaken or you are killing whatever art you might have been capable of creating. Hampered your capacity to enter an involvement in an act of creation. An artist’s materials can be a useful medium

Rational

We believe we are rational. We use logic to confirm it. We ignore the circularity of our arguments. How do we drop defensiveness? We live in a tumult of fear and anxiety. There is a gap between our beliefs and what we know we are hiding from behind those defenses. We are at least in

Deep Denial

I’ve been waiting for something worth writing down to come to me after reading Ishmael. Perhaps I should still be waiting…. In the meantime, this came to me this morning. Deep denial is not the denial of bad outcomes, like “global warming” or “injustice.” It’s the denial that we get what we are after. That

Retreat & Resilience

I was asked to look at these two terms as a simple request without any elaboration. This is an interesting way to enter into a form of dialogue. For the one asking it does not limit the answer to any preconceptions they might otherwise bring. For the one answering there is the wide open space

On Intention, Stumbling towards a Loose Rigor

Here’s a series of statements, let’s see where they lead. My intention is to be effective. To be effective is to avoid futility. Intentional striving is futile. To be effective requires letting go of intention. * Is this squaring the circle? Or describing a paradox?

Reflection/Projection

I’m not sure what to call this post, even of what to say. It’s time for introspection and time to reflect on media. People whose thoughtfulness matter to me are struggling with the form their expression should take. “We” – an amorphous “group” that might only exits as a projection in my head! – are

Cross-post from Antonio Dias Art

I’ve created a new site for my painting. I’ve cross-posted a series of essays from this site to introduce to readers/viewers there. Now this post goes in the opposite direction. ‘There’s a dimension that we don’t understand.” In Stephens’ & Swan’s biography, deKooning, (Milton) Resnick said, “There’s a dimension that we don’t understand. In other