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Capacitor: Okeanos, A Dance of the Sea That Floats My Heart

It’s been a long, long time since I felt this way. A really long time. I’ve not looked upon dance and been stimulated to remember not only what it means to me, but what the possibility art has on society.

I don’t say that lightly – mainly because it sounds really schmaltzy, but in this case Jodi Lomask’s company, Capacitor (so aptly described by Ariel Schwartz in her article for Fast Company, as the “The Cirque Du Soleil Of Environmental Science“) has me floating. What touches me so deeply about this mash-up of dancers, acrobats, musicians and scientists is that they have been what I have been waiting for! While I have spent years working with installation artists (with great joy) my training as a dancer has been yearning for science and movement to coalesce. In this case it has. Jodi, and her team, have created a piece that is a living ocean. Using only a few devices to support the weightless of ocean, the group has found a way to explore what we cannot see – and it is exactly this daring, to bring to us the depth of life below the sea that I find so promising for the arts.

Staring April 12-15, Okeanos, a dance two years in the making, will premier at Fort Mason in San Francisco. I am going to quote Ariel of Fast Company here, because she nailed it:

“Dr. Sylvia Earle, famed oceanographer and TED Prize winner, is known for her ocean advocacy work. Advocacy takes many forms, but even Earle probably never predicted that her explanations of the intricacies of ocean life would be used as part of a multimedia dance performance, complete with acrobats, giant video screens, and on-stage interpretations of overfishing.

It’s safe to say that Capacitor is unique in the dance world. Founded in 1997 by choreographer Jodi Lomask, the dance company does its best to interpret scientific phenomena without sacrificing artistic integrity. Every show explores a different aspect of the natural world. “The truth is, I begin with a vague feeling of where I want to go. This isn’t a physical destination, but a metaphysical one. In the past I have wanted to go into outer space or the deep Earth, to the top of the trees and, in this case, the bottom of the ocean,” says Lomask, who doesn’t have a formal science background but grew up around scientists (her father was a physicist).

Each dance performance is workshopped beforehand in Capacitor Labs–a think tank-style collaboration that brings together scientists, engineers, and dancers. The Capacitor Lab for Okeanos was held over a six month period at the California Academy of Sciences (CAS).

“In these monthly meetings, the creative team would be given a 20 minute lecture by one or two marine biologists or oceanographers and then present for 20 minutes on their craft and how he or she was approaching this particular project. We also show the dance as we develop it there, receiving feedback from the rest of the creative team and the scientists,” explains Lomask.”

- Ariel Schwartz, Fast Company

When Jodi asked me two do two things, 1. sit on her board 2. put together a BLUEMiND event, I seriously swooned. I am, by all accounts, a huge romantic – but mix dance and oceans and I become really gushy, inspired and then a compulsive megaphone. I’ve become undone by the power of the company’s desire to share the two years of study, ocean swimming, surfing, sitting under water looking at plankton, and then find a way to make this all into movement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Critically speaking, this dance could not come at a more important time. We have been inundated with mainly horrific images and news about the ocean. Okeanos offers us a respite from the tragic, and a view into the sublime.

Yet, for those who are not ocean people (and that is the case for many – they are drawn to mountains and trees, lakes or cities) why should a dance replicating the ocean in all of it’s mystery, sass, darkness, and predatory moments, be relevant? Perhaps it is because our ancestors come from the ocean. That alone is pretty cool. Additionally, no matter how you shake it, some of our most critical memories are shaped at the ocean/seaside – and our global need to have a nostalgic relationship to the ocean is undeniable.

In the past two years our community within BLUEMiND (shaped of cognitive neuroscientists, futurists, media artists, marine biologists, and passionate graduate students compelled by the BLUEMiND idea/movement of NeuroConservation) has been exploring our brain’s critical interrelationship with the ocean. This in not just your brain on chocolate (though I can’t get my mind off that ever!) – it is an exploration of the brain’s (and mind’s) need for the ocean not only relaxation (so put down by western culture), but the possible public health, conservation, and treatments for everything from PTSD to addiction. From Stanford, Duke to MIT, this exploration is being taken very seriously, and we are devoted to this very fluid, yet very serious study (and emerging cultural Meme).

So, BLUEMiND is thrilled to share a small segment of the stage on closing night at the Okeanos premier, April 15th and 6:30pm.

The theme is “Our Mind on Ocean, our Brain on Memory” and the following remarkable people will be speaking (and I will be a very happy M.C.). It’s delightful that our panel is coming from up and down California (leaving surgery early, lectures, training to surf, and producing) to support the work of Capacitor.

Ultimately, we’ll explore the science of memory and the unique experiences that create nostalgia. Can ocean nostalgia be a driving force for better protection, restoration and more empathy. BLUEMiND is also embarking this year on a more expanded commercial version of it’s work for organizations, while not loosing it’s roots in open source sharing. The 2nd BLUMiND summit will be held June 5, 2012, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

 

Connecting to Human Blue Mind To The Ocean’s Blue Mind

Our brains have an amazing ability to do something: hide a world of truth from us. We’re able to tune out the blinking lights and honking horns, the stress of work, the underwater mortgage, and those inappropriate clothes and music our kids prefer. Meanwhile, people around the world survive war, abuse, hunger, chronic disease and floods. Our brains excel at rationalization and self-deception helping us handle the grit of living.

Billions of feelings, tactile senses, memories, sounds, smells and a barrage of voices are all around us. Most of the time our brain insulates and protects us from the rest of the abundant information in the universe that isn’t in our direct focus. But that thick padding comes with a cost. It means we really have no idea — most of the time — why and how we do what we do.

This concept might deeply challenge the idea of our lives happening because things are “meant to be”, or that we have a “higher calling” or we can “will things happen”. We certainly have brilliant insights, accurate intuitions and strokes of genius. It’s seems that our subconscious leads us to make decisions that feel like they come from someplace else, yet really happening inside us.

It’s tough because we’ve been working hard for a long time to understand why we do what we do. We have therapy, religion, hallucinagens and many other practices that we use to try to understand who we are. Yet new information about the brain need not rule out all the tools we’ve been using. Instead it could be a “power tool”. The way the brain processes (and hides) information is one of the great scientific insights of our era. And though seemingly heretical when looked at through more traditional lenses, it’s an amazing, mysterious and transcendent ecosystem of new ideas.

These ideas have led the cognitive scientist David Eagleman to coin the term “Possibillian” to describe the confident state of unknowningness. A Possibilian takes into account that we may have a deep connection both to the unknown, what some may call mysticism, as well as the great scientific discoveries of neuroscience and astrophysics. A Possibilian encourages us to stay open to all the far out possibilities unfolding with regard to our mind and the universe.

But, let’s back up. Way, way, way up.

Who are we?

We are people who live on a very small, apparently unique, blue planet. Our planet came about within the context of an unfathomably ancient universe in constant change filled mostly with invisible dark matter. Our planet is apparently surrounded by an infinitely shifting cosmos, gasses and suns in every direction, which we know something about, but really almost nothing. Our lives are a minuscule, temporary flash by comparison to the vastness of the universe. Yet we often feel invincible. We see ourselves as masters of the whole shooting match.

Our small planet is blue because of water. From a million-or even a billion-miles away, Earth appears blue.

Our ancestors came out of the water, evolved from swimming to crawling to walking. They developed remarkably complex brains, as well, necessary to move successfully through nature encountering constant unexpected challenges.

We started small on this blue planet-and we are descendants from, relatives of and subsidiary to the ocean.

This is not a biology or an astronomy lesson, rather it might be an amazing clue to how we can alter how we treat the planet. We literally have “blue minds”.

And we’re literally seated here now, virtually connected, pondering our evolutionary state with our future on the line.

Over the past year an open source community called BLUEMiND has taken up the task of exploring the human mind-ocean connection. Some of the finest thinkers in cognitive neuroscience, ocean exploration, media and art have gathered at the California Academy of Sciences, the Bioneers conference, and with leaders at the Environmental Defense Fund. Now the idea of exploring the intersection of conservation with how our brains process empathy, gratitude, fear and protection is starting to travel the world. It’s the beginning of a new field, and it all points to our brains’ critical need for the ocean: our planet’s largest, most-dominant system.

After a screening of his film “Transcendent Man”, famed futurist and author Ray Kurzweil was asked why he loves the ocean. The most poignant scene in the movie depicts Kurzweil quietly contemplating the sea and himself. He replied that: “It’s a metaphor for the way the brain is organized.”

The grand duchess of the environmental movement, Frances Moore Lappé (author of “Diet for a Small Planet” and the new book “EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want”) stated,”The first step is getting people to realize that the current metaphors aren’t working … we have to think about these issues differently.” She continues, “There’s nothing inexorable” about the environmental problems at hand. “It’s a matter of how we perceive them …” (Santa Cruz Weekly, 9/11/11)

It’s said that those who control the frame, control the contest. We must reclaim the framework with which we see the world: we must engage with our minds to help us achieve this goal.

Here’s what we’ve learned about our blue minds:

- Our brains sit in saline and craves a connection to the planet’s ocean on a deeply primal level tied to our evolution.

- Doing “one small thing” for the planet does not mean you will stick to doing good -our brains heal and change with our complex relationships to people and nature experienced outdoors.

- The ocean isn’t just pretty, it stimulates our health-both psychologically and physically. We might be staring at a new approach to public health based on the ocean, one now being taken seriously by doctors and scientists.

So, this huge body of water, our one world ocean, impacts our remarkably powerful brains in ways we’ve always felt but are only beginning to know. Together, we occupy this planet, and together our minds and the sea have an interdependency beyond the fish, whales and sea turtles, ecosystems and biodiversity, or economic benefits. The water and our neurons need each other to live.

How can your blue mind help change the world?

To get healthy, get near, in, on or under the ocean more often. The ocean can literally suck the stress from you.
Demand that polluters don’t destroy the very thing our brains need to evolve.

Learn all you can about your brain, and teach it to the kids. Especially as it intersects with nature.

Or, as we like to say, LIVEBLUE and swim in the possibilities of your blue mind.

By Wallace J. Nichols and Sarah Kornfeld

Brian Eno’s Paris Interview at the La Gaite Lyrique Conference

I typed in “New Forms” + “World Music” and suddenly Google provided me Jon Hassel on a plate. Turns out he’s a great trumpet player who’s defined: “Fourth Wall“.  Plus, he likes to talk about masturbation.  I dug the guy immediately.

Then, the lovely machine of the Internet provided the most curious thing: an interview from Paris between he and Brian Eno at a conference called La Gaîté Lyrique, called (well, “their names here) – an illustrated talk”. Thinking it was going to be about their music collaboration that began in the 1980′s, I was transfixed that the conversation was really about, “North and South” as Hassel and Eno are defining it: The North and the South of us – the brain and the body of us all (the dominance of hemispheres, and need to feel the south of us — inside of us). And, out of six installments – I’ve decided to post this one below:

 

Brian Eno & Jon Hassel @ La Gaîté Lyrique - 4th part from en reportage permanent on Vimeo.

 

I’d suggest you check out the entire talk because it’s a wonderful discussion about pleasure, time and connection. And, it has small, funny moments including M. Eno expressing his hatred for couches (his reason turned me around, and I now distrust them — seriously), and Hassel’s deeply insightful, and wonderfully loopy tangent about spirituality (Hassel’s laid back explanations are like Jazz riffs themselves – I suggest you just sit back into them). Yup, they are full of lovely and quirky moments that can only happen when you are made to sit in two “comfortable” chairs on a stage that is a faux living room, conducting an “informal” talk in front of a large number of strangers. And, actually, it’s the stilted environment they sit in that makes the conversation ironic, and more interesting: they are talking about the need for a new (non freudian) pleasure principle – a space in our lives where we spend time in personal pleasure, not just in work (where we reward ourselves, much much later, and for a few days, with just a bit of pleasure).

(On a side note, I had the pleasure of hearing Greg Sarris, writer and Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, speak in Sonoma this weekend. He told a story how an medicine woman had described to him that for hundreds of years their indian work hours had been 45 minutes – a day. When he asked her what they did with the rest of their day, he said she took a drag from her cigarette and responded, “Make baskets and talk about god” – as Greg sagely said, “Art and Philosophy – sounds like a good use of time to me…”)

But, back to the video – here these two guys are – kind of forced as it were to look and seem relaxed, in France, speaking english, about a book they’ve been working on for ten years. Ten years. It’s remarkable to think of how that collaboration has unfolded – not “heads down” in cubes, but over years of exploration and probably wine. Collaboration, time, pleasure and connection to our body (not just our minds) are on people’s tongue’s these days – yet seems so elusive. How can we truly LIVE in a world that is so rigidly defined by a time density (of short, meaningless spurts of tweets), when we do not provide ourselves time AS pleasure? More critically, how is this impacting our global culture?

This clip speaks to what artists bring to the equation of finding pleasure, and making it an example, or framework, for our life. It’s also a wonderful portrait of what creative collaboration looks like: even though it’s Brian Eno and Jon Hassel, it’s simply two people talking, someone taking notes and asking for more thoughts, and then a final conclusion – one that is almost always still in process. Eno keeps notes (finds the key moment, grabs it and finds a way to place the idea into our own experience). Hassel is dreamy as he describes our need to “let go” – or how he has divided his work into “pre-orgasmic” and “post-Orgasmic” sections for years.

I found this conversation as charming as the song that inspired it. I’ve passed the talk on to some good friends, and they all seem to enjoy it. I hope you do as well.

(And, and here’s Miles Davis for some sound afterwards – “All of you” by Cole Porter, who’s lines Inspired the conversation and book to come, from above:
I love the look of you, the lure of you
The sweet of you, the pure of you
The eyes, the arms, the mouth of you
The east, west, north and the south of you
- Cole Porter)

BLUEMiND and the Earth of Sarah Sze

What I learned from BLUEMiND: our brains/hearts are in the details, and the artist, Sarah Sze had already proved it to me years ago. Her work below fires with sensors, light, and the making of the bluemind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, let’s start with this past June.

BLUEMiND (http://mindandocean.org) was a summit that we produced, spearheaded by J Nichols, myself and a ton of passionate people, at the California Academy of Science. Neuroscientists, oceans people, writers and surfers, dancers and neurosurgeons spent the day uncovering:

- the relationship between the brains necessary connection to saline
- our brains prossessing of compassion to danger
- how our brains are our hearts – and this electromagnetic function is born of salt water: and that further study into this relationship will yield a new form of neuroconservation. It was thrilling.

So, in a nutshell, what I learned:

- A surfers’ brain function can tell us how much we need the excitement of the ocean to help us experience risk – something, when safe, supports our species ability to trust and be brave.
- Our addiction (neural, not theoretical) to food in general (yes, the big fast food, but also our own compulsive “foodiness”) is not only born of corporate marketing, but a growing, dangerous need to temper our free floating obsessive anxiety: this is driving the demand of deep sea “trolling” huge nets that catch fish and all things alive on the sea bottom.
- Children, when given something as simple and clear as a marble can imagine and create art and programs that are innovative and change patterns of interaction with the planet. It’s called brain plasticity, they are better at it than adults, and we should take them very seriously if we want innovative ideas: they should be partners, and quick.
- That our brain and heart connection is critical to public health – and from Vice-Mayors to futurists, we learned that if we don’t move away from scaring people into “awareness” and provide alternative futures that tap into love, we will not be creating a solution based culture – but an extended culture of fear.
- And, in the end, saying we love the complexity, the dance of the biosphere, the layers of it all, is GOOD for us … and the ocean gives both a simple blue vista, and a vast complex, and vibrant collaborator.

Or, all that, all those bullet points above, kind of looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah Sze is an American artist whom I met in the early 1990’s who impacted me deeply as a person. She had just been “discovered” though she showed grace and a sense of awareness that she would be an artist for her whole life, yet her notoriety may be fleeting (and irrelevant to her vision for her work). She accepted that acclaim with elegance, said thanks, and just kept working (her career has been astounding, and her accomplishments are provided here) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Sze

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah’s work is filled with the story of us: pieces of the stuff we make to help us through the day — miniatures of the products we create to get around, the candy we love to eat, the symbols we cleave to that help make meaning of our place in culture, and she fills it all with bits and pieces of found things. Mainly, plastic. Actually, I’m surprised that people are not talking more about her work as a pioneer working with plastic as a medium for art. Yet, it sort of makes sense, her art transcends her medium – she takes us into a biosphere of her own, and we are elevated above to see the world anew: not just at a “message”, but of something deeper: our fragility as well as our clogged-ness: a clogged-ness now exposing itself as a polluted planet.

Her work makes me feel like looking at ourselves from a million miles above. We are elevated and see the world anew. And, generally, when our brains see the world a new way, the neural pathways make room for these new visions. They actually change, reshape, and become a new brain. Well, that’s what the doctors confirmed at BLUEMiND and what every artist I’ve ever known has done to my head: moved my heart by changing my brain. And, again, that’s what the doctors confirmed.

So often, Sarah’s pieces are ascending. They feel filled with what seem like firing neurons – and those neurons are the things of our time, ladders and little do-dads, and the ever sweeping climb for awareness – for awakeness.

And, that’s what the Dr’s also told us at BLUEMiND: that our brains are always searching for a new way to process the billions of pieces of us, our feelings, our place on the planet: that we are hanging sculptures ourselves in search of vistas that make us feel safe, we are filled with the need for the color blue to harness a critical sense of calm, that we are a limbic system in search of meaning – and we have just barely begun to understand our brain, and it’s needs: for our care of it, and our care of the planet for the brain’s sake.

So, There is a lot of new information on how our brains change on time, art, sex, chocolate, lust, kissing, law, time, and logos. Yet, what do these findings imply for our brain on planet? And, why is it that when I look at the intricacy of Sarah’s work – which is playful, and luminous and generally lifting up up up so that you can look down down down into life – do I feel, well, calm? And, why do I search for calm? And, why does the ocean (and nature and art) give me this: and why do I need it to keep going.

From the cognitive neurosurgeons to our visiting brain surgeon, we had it confirmed: our brains constantly search for where we are, and when they find these images, smells, colors, tastes, sounds our brains not only heal, but they improve their ability to make choices and then they want to SURVIVE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, if our goal of BLUEMiND was to test the theory that our brain on ocean meant our brains crave the ocean in order to evolve as a species, we had some compelling ideas that came out of it.

If our aim for BLUEMiND was to see if bringing writers and musicians and dancers into the conversations (through performance, readings and presentations) to see if the daring, risk and power of various forms of storytelling could support our brains – I think we had that confirmed as well.

And, finally, BLUEMiND was a happening. It was a gathering of brave people who were willing to talk about the brain and feelings – their interconnection, and the need to bring these two generally desperate discussions together.

We need to bring them together because we need a new neural pathway into ecological empathy and bravery.

We need to change the way we look at the world, not just that we are being “encroached by ourselves”, but that we have the power to fence in our mind’s mistakes: we must do what Sarah has pictured below – we must use our hearts and minds to claim the earth back: creatively, fiercely and with love:

Rapture with Prince in Oakland

I’ve been doing a ton of writing about Blue. This time, it’s purple. ‘Cause, I’m just itching to write about the Prince show.

A few weeks ago, Prince decided to call upon Oakland and we all had a chance to pray before the Great One. I mean it, he told us to pray because here was the best there is, was or ever will be.

It also happened to be a few days before Judgement Day. May 21st was coming, and the world was captivated by a radio  preacher predicting the Rapture, that were going to die. So, best to see Prince before that happens.

Also, he seemed to agree. The entire show was some kind of metaphorical recap, in rapid motion, of all of his his greatest (half way through a back-to-back set of songs, he pushed back his chair from the piano and stated, “I have too many fucking hits”). Ya, he was going to play each and every one of them before we died, and to say the experience was surreal doesn’t hit it.

But, who cares, because he’s simply one of the best live performers ever, stole his name back from a record label and lived as an arcane hieroglyph, wrote some of the most longingly sexy and achy songs ever – and in his own words, simply kicks some rock and funk ass.

But, here’s the odd part – Purple Rain. In the past when I’ve had the honor to see him, his ripping up of “Purple Rain” has been an explosion of vocals, and insane instrumental abilities, and a crowd that usually goes wild when we cries out in the end that the rain is love. Not this time. This time, a few days before Judgement Day, he was reframing the song and told us that the rain was God, and that we were all going to meet there.

Really?

I can accept that as a passing metaphor, that’s cool, he’s Prince, he has passing fancies, he woke up one night and asked for a camel and they actually brought him one – it’s cool. But, really? The purple rain, all these years has been God?

For me, personally I thought the lyrics had always been about love:

I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted to one time see you laughing
I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain

Purple rain Purple rain

I only wanted to see you bathing in the purple rain

Perhaps I had not been listening with clear ears, or heard only what I remembered as a kid (agog with the idea of having such deep feelings) to Prince. Much has happened since that song. When Purple Rain came out he was the androgynous outsider, who sang about love in the side corners of club culture, and seemed to be reaching for greater meaning (beyond our big hair, and Bush-era politics, and the uneven economic times) in search of his own poetry of sorts. And, we loved him. And, the song Purple Rain became a cult hit – and people would cry because it meant connection, and friendship and some faith that being different can make you have a rockin’ life.

Now, I’ve recently learned that the B-side was called “God”. I never heard that side, and didn’t know it when I saw the show(s) that he had always been talking about Genesis. For me, Purple Rain was simply an idea, or hope, that speaks of my generation:

Honey I know, I know, I know times are changing
It’s time we all reach out for something new
That means you too
You say you want a leader
But you can’t seem to make up your mind
I think you better close it
And let me guide you to the purple rain

I have been enjoying my interpretation that he meant stand up and be different. And, I guess I was clueless even then, when he lifted his finger to the sky, pointed at the heavens and winked and nodded that being a leader, making up your mind, waking up and getting to the purple rain meant redemption. I thought it meant it’s cool to be being different, and full of feeling and lust, and have just a huge lump of angst and wisdom on your side.

Oh, but who cares. Really, like any great artist (messing with heads and hearts) he leaves the last lines open – and we can make the decision for ourselves.

Purple rain Purple rain
If you know what I’m singing about up here
C’mon raise your hand
Purple rain Purple rain
I only want to see you, only want to see you
In the purple rain

I’m keeping it my anthem:

- That people should not try to harm another

- That times are changing

- That we need to be a leader

- That we need to make up our minds

- That we’ve gotta to meet, again, and again, and again in our Purple Rain

My Blue Heart, My Blue Mind

 

Passion Graphs

I think we’re loosing friends. I mean, I am beginning to think that friendship as a true meeting point may be gone. No, actually, I think that I mean that “Friend Graphs” might be total crap, and should be replaced by “Passion Graphs”.

First, here’s how Wikipedia presents a “Friendship Graph”:

The friendship theorem of Paul Erdős, Alfréd Rényi, and Vera T. Sós (1966)^[3] states that the finite graphs with the property that every two vertices have exactly one neighbor in common are exactly the friendship graphs. Informally, if a group of people has the property that every pair of people has exactly a friend in common, then there must be one person who is a friend to all the others. However, for infinite graphs, there can be many different graphs with the same cardinality that have this property.^[4]

And, here’s what we (in a friendship graph) looks like:

 

(The Friendship graph F8)

I left out the vertices, edges, radius, diameter, etc because it’s clear enough: we all are connected by one person. One person in the world initiates a thread into our lives, and then out to other people we know, and do not know at all.

OK. Lines to connect each other. Very logical.

Yet, some people have called this concept God: people are to be connected by being connected to a diety. Or, in the case of some western tradition, many deities, or most often we have settled for a king.

Any way you look at it, we are a species, it seems, who likes to know where we (I) and You, fit into the picture.

And, this obsession with where we fit into the picture, has, from my sense, forced our perspective in a disjointed way: by looking for where the ego/I fits into a world of connection, we’ve lost sight that we are just small pieces of a massive, undulating, and uncontrollably powerful graph: the planet.

So, perhaps it’s a human condition to want to shrink the picture. Make sense of it, and in doing so, displace the true graph: our creative place on the planet.

Why do we do this? Try to make straight lines out of massive, intangible interconnection?

Because the brain is a really weird thing:

-       It wants to understand things logically, while unconsciously it is tracking and processing billions worth of information (so much information that it’s not always known or understood by the rational brain)

-       It wants to connect with people on a deep level, yet it’s searching for those people (and brains) that it intuits will “get them”

-       It wants friends – but does not really understand itself

-       It’s trying to find a way to put all the pieces together – and, brilliant machines as they are, have created ideas like “Friendship Graphs” and other linear, mathematical approaches to making the mess of life boil down to one personal connection.

In these brains of ours, we have over 100 billion cells (neurons) zipping and zapping around. When these neurons connect with synapses they create a storing house: a place for information and how we process connections.  That’s a hell of a lot of information, combined with a hell of a lot of brain activity. No wonder we want straight lines!

In David Brooks (whose politics I tend not to agree with, but find him very agreeable) book, “The Social Animal”, he helps to support this theory that the brain is a massive organism with not enough room to roam:

“If you want to get a sense of the number of potential connections between the cells in (* a person’s) brain, contemplate this: A mere 60 neurons are capable of making 10 possible connections with each other. (That’s 1 with 81 zeros after it.)  The number of particles in the known universe is about one-tenth of this number.  Jeff Hawkins suggests a different way to think about the brain: Imagine a football stadium filed with spaghetti. Now imagine it shrunk down to skull size and much more complicated.”

So, what’s the point? Well, our brains are already connected. Our brains are so connected that we can’t get our heads around it. AND, our driving need to make networks where there are straight lines back to a person, or connecting us to a defined graph, is perhaps a representation of how – well, overwhelmed we are.

But, graphs and friends are fun. I used to really love Facebook till I got to 900 friends and had to admit they were not friends. Not really, more like a graph of people who I connect with who help me with work, or to help me connect to another person. See, I’m human – my brain likes the security of this feeling.

So, why suggest that Friendship Graphs should go away?

Because it’s an illusion.

What binds our brains, and what binds us to each other, is not logic, but passion.

We are hardwired to love, yet we spend most of our time thinking about how to make friends. We are hardwired to try to connect, and spend much our time creating (in modern times, these of social networks and interconnected technologies) making math problems out of a problem that does not exist: we are built to interconnect. We are adding complexity, when we need simplicity of connection.

“THE FRIENDSHIP GRAPH F8″

I simply can’t buy into the image of The Friendship Graph F8 (above, again) because I simply can’t tell you who I love in that image.

I can’t tell you who I’d take a bullet for in The Friendship Graph F8.

I can’t explain to you WHY we are bound together, heart to heart, when I look at The Friendship Graph F8.

I think I traverse back and forth within Passion Graphs. I think my graph looks more like this:

A passion graph is, for me:

-       A group of people who may, or may NOT know each other but have connected through something NOT necessarily technical

-       A group of people who may or may NOT know each other, who love the same idea or smell or person or countries

-       A group of people who might not yet don’t know each other, yet share a sense of being alert and aware of being together on the planet. (Or, a Gertrude Stein said, “We have met, but we have not met, yet”)

Passion Graphs are people (not just one person, with lines drawn to others). People are connected to groups. And, not all groups are passionate, but all groups of people define their passions as they see fit.

And, based on my definition, if you ask me what passion graphs I live in, well, they are as loopy as they come:

-       People who are only children and like time alone

-       People who have worked in a theater, or built a set with their own hands

-       People who laugh really hard

-       People have an affinity with bagels made only in Brooklyn (these guys below – I don’t know them, but they are part of my passion graph, and if I met them we would connect passionately around bagels…)

The list goes on. It’s loopy. I trust people who worked in theaters more than a person who has a PhD in theater history. In a heartbeat. Why? Because my brain thinks that a person who has worked in a theater shares the same smell with me – a smell of a theater with dust in it, with wet paint, that brings me back to childhood – that creates emotional shorthand between us.

I value these passion graphs on a profound level, and these people could, or could not remain my friends – but I will trust my connection to them, and I will feel happy.

And, that’s what we want, our brains want: we want to be happy – we don’t crave a graph.

So, a passion graph is a group whom you acknowledge is part of your unconscious being. Your billions of neurons that connect within synapses and make them part of your life. Your passion graph INCLUDES the big picture, not just one “Influencer”.

A Passion Graph is more powerful than a Friendship Graph, because passion (emotion) is the fire, fuel and energy of our brain.

So, the next time you are asked to share your friendship graph with friends, colleagues or work – ask them what they are looking for:

-       One person you know

-       A bunch of people huddled around a person who seems important

-       Or, a deep, unruly but pleasing passion that moves, Meme to Meme, member to member within the human race.

Yup, I think I have enough “friends” – it’s time to gather around some passion, and in this way connect to our sense of wonder that we’re alive interconnected, and ultimately more complex, and fabulous, than a graph.

Remembering Elizabeth…And Her Breasts (go with me here…)

I’d like to take a moment to remember Elizabeth Taylor’s breasts. Come now, though she had been gone a “while: (in media time) let’s take this time to remember something so politically un-correct as her supernatural, goddess, womanly breasts.

Why are they so important?

It’s because Liz was all woman. She was dripping with smart, elegant sex. And, since sex is so often not smart, and woefully not elegant – she was a promise (no, not just to men) that a body – a woman’s body – could be one’s own great, personal frontier.

We also are living in a time of terrifying, global repression of women. Though it’s easier to point fingers at fundamentalism in countries outside of the United States – it is more accurate to say that we are living in a global phenomenon of increased aggression towards women. So, though it’s been some weeks since she died, I remember her still: that goddess body without perimeters, or fear.

So, let’s be brave, come on! They were lush! In fact, if we look at the whole picture, her body and voice oozed through her clothing.  And, she used this when she acted and she used it to breathe trouble on screen. It’s simply true: her breasts were these remarkable story tellers: her body was the body men wanted, but for women, her body was a dreamed of (often secret) desire for freedom.

Now, much has been written in the past days of her being the end of a line of Hollywood elegance. The end of compassion as a profession – in that she was the first to make a very public distinction that love is love, therefore being Gay was a part of love – and that AIDS was nothing to be ashamed of: just cured. Yes, all of this is so very true. She was indestructible. She was a powerhouse. She was great.

And, where I come from (the theater), she was simply called a diva. Now, that’s not an insult. In the tradition of the theater, a great diva is a dynasty (no, no, I’m not making a campy 1980′s aside) – I mean a real dynasty: a tradition handed down from one generation of women to another. And, to be a great diva you absolutely need a few things:

- You really do have to be able to act.

- You have to make a great entrance.

- You have to have eyes that seem to look way past the audience, through them is preferable, and almost seem to become a part of the theater itself.

Now, since I never saw Liz Taylor on stage, all I can say is that when I watch any movie of her’s (from the repressed bad girl flicks of the 1950′s, and into the 60′s and 70′s where she began to loosen up just like the times) she was inherently dramatic – and you didn’t care. You didn’t care because, ok, the eyes, ok the voice, ok the chutzpah. But, it was her breasts.

Let’s get specific:

Liz’s body never was anyone’s but her own. She broke every rule to keep her body her “property”.  After an abusive childhood as a star, one pumped with pills and inappropriate requests (and demands) by producers, once Taylor became a woman she decided to make her body her own. Yes, we hear about her wildness (and narcissism) as it related to marrying her best friends husband (no, not cool) or her producer husband whom she loved (and sadly died in a crash) and later La Liz and Le Richard – the trouble couple of all time. We’ve unfortunately come to link her body with these men. We look at pictures of her kissing them, of her in bikini’s on boats, of massive amounts of jewelry hanging from her neckline. That’s the body, the breasts and the image we’ve been sold.

Yet, for me, it was the softness of her lines. It was how she refused early on to wear no bra under those bathing suits and plunging dresses. Ok, a couple of times when she had to wear a slip … but not in the photos that were snatched by paparazzi … in those pictures she was a women … well, to be specific, a woman in love.

Liz Taylor always seemed to be in love. She was in love with men. She was in love with her roles. She was in love with jewelry and smells and friends and dogs. She was in love with people who were on the sidelines of culture. She was always, madly (and perhaps sometimes driven madly) in love.

This is why I want to remember her breasts (and don’t care if it seems sexist) for me her breasts became her own personal representation of the outbound, lush and glorious comfort she had with love. And, it wrecked her. And, she needed rehab. And, she just kept trying. And, we rooted for her. And, her body was always the thing she was willing to share, over and over again.

Can you imagine saying the same thing about Cate Blanchett? Or, the great Tilda Swinton? Or, even a Jennifer Lopez or even Meryl Steep (oh hell, why not!) No, you can’t image them just in LOVE and in LOVE and in LOVE to such a degree that their bodies literally shape shift, and move like all the fleshiest parts of us that crave to be unabashed: untamed.

She was a woman who had a body who had a life who made us want to love.

And, though we obsess on her eyes, for me, it’s her soft, crease-less affair with feeling deeply that is so moving. She was not tits and ass. She was never a second player. She was a great partner to men larger than life. She was damaged and knew it. She was a diva, and a great one.

Each night since I heard she died, I’ve laid down to bed and thought of her. She’s always in that slip she wore in “Cat on a hot tin roof” – and she’s lying sideways, and she’s looking at me. The sound of the rain on the tin roof is clanging. The helicopters are flying overhead wanting a view of her. Richard is somewhere getting drunk and delaying a shoot. People are waiting for her next move, out of the shadows and back into the spotlight. But, with me, she’s that best friend, the one who tells you all her shit, and how she has no idea what will happen next, and why she seems to fuck it all up, and how she’s worried she’s not spending time with her kids, and how her back aches from the strain of a life too fast: Liz has been chatting me up with a clever storm about the travails of being a woman on the edge.

And, I hope I’ve listened with compassion. She’s so very charming and sweet. And, as she lays talking, her body has no plastic surgery applied to it – she’s what a woman looks like, well, sideways … not pointing forward, but delving into gravity.

Finally, when her long talk is done, she finds this remarkable repose, and then she’s been staring at me – really intent, and with a smile.

Not just at me, really, but at our generation – all the generations after hers – just looking hard and wondering what we are all about.

In this dream of Liz, I’ve been thinking about how she moved her heart forwards (yes, the thing that makes her breasts truly interesting, and truly sublime, behind them was that ceaseless pump of a heart) … how silly we must look to her all boxed up with fear, and careful about the little tweets we make in 1oo-and-something-characters-or-less, and the appropriateness we’ve all adapted to, and the tending to our social graphs … and the violence we are engaged in … because in my head, Liz Taylor is always a love rebel. In my minds eye, she shows off her cleavage with defiance, knows it’s not worth it just being “on course” – it’s more important being passionate – and protecting it, like mad.

And, then, she turns towards me. She gives that smile with knowing. That look of wisdom cultivated over years of pain. And, she says to me, and to us, all of us, in a quiet lilt, “Oh, come on love. Just. Love.”

Then, she sighs, a relaxed and happy sigh – her breasts heaving as she pulls herself up for the next scene: more love.

 

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