What do we want?
Archive for May 2009
The 26′ Westerly Centaur sloop ‘Desire’ is awaits our arrival atop a lava flow on the big island. Here are some details and specs.
http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/zeiss/boat/WesterlyOwner.html
http://www.yachtsnet.co.uk/archives/westerly-centaur/westerly-centaur.htm
http://westerly-owners.co.uk/boat_centaur_26.htm
8:55 – 9:55 blog preparation
Preparing to launch the blog.
May 28, 2009… Train as in practice, not what hobos ride. How do we prepare ourselves for anything. Just because I am drinking a beer right now doesn’t mean that I couldn’t whoop a battalion of fascists with one arm tied behind my back or run 10 miles in under an hour. Ok, so maybe I am almost in shape, but that’s a temporary state of affairs. Here’s the training routine starting tomorrow, after I sober up.
Pre-production training May 28 – June 5
Daily
blog planning and update, (30 minutes maximum) x 2
top 3 objectives visualization and feeling into being x 2, (10 minutes)
yoga or tai chi (1 hour)
production (2 hour)
Pre-production and preparation (6 hours)
Sunday
blog revisions and organization (4 hours)
After several blogging experiments – Mistakes I have made, Awesomesheet and Desire – I begin to have some clarity on what the objective is.
This I knew…
• Keep the network humming with the latest news.
• Distribution improves the quality of one on one communication. The backstory doesn’t have to be repeated over and over with each individual, wearing out the enthusiasm of the teller. Conversations can thus be tuned to the specific shared reality of the participants and go deeper.
This is new…
• A knowledge archive is established. The searchable journal is distilled into a concise reference and resource for creation and self education.
Can I adapt WordPress for knowledge archiving? One strategy is to post with abandon and then extract salient information into pages. The posting tools are adequate but there’s no automation for extraction and organizing.
For instance, how hard would it be to scan the entire blog for links and assemble them on the links page? Wouldn’t it be great if categories could be tagged in the body of a post and then an index built automatically? Perhaps the index could also have a little context, like you get with a google search. This might be a different than just the standard listing of categories.
I want to be able to use what I’ve posted so far to project and revise a plan. The manual approach involves searching the posts for relevant references, compiling the references on a page and editing them into something coherent. Aside from a rigorous maintenance of categories, I don’t have any inspiration for how this extraction and editing could be automated. I don’t think there is any hidden functionality in the basic WordPress feature set – though there may be tools to extend functionality.
Train as in practice, not what hobos ride. How do I get ready for anything? What abilities and awareness are needed to pull off On Desire?
Pre-production training May 28 – June 5
Daily
Sunday
Vision is an articulation of the elemental ideas that motivate and inspire a project.
Why would two guys wander around the Hawaiian islands on a sailboat? Certainly this is a silly question – given the chance, who wouldn’t wander around the Hawaiian islands on a sailboat?
That’s enough right? Bliss is what it’s all about, so what other reasons are needed?
In my life I’ve learned that bliss must be complemented with awareness. That’s the only way to know whether it’s true bliss. Consumption might feel good, but it cannot coexist with awareness. Bliss enlivens all, it’s not about my happiness over yours or a greedy scrabble for limited resources. It is IMHO, the principle that will save our asses from centuries of koyaanisqatsi.
I know there’s something excellent about the Desire Project but I cannot tell you precisely what that is. I’ve got to infuse Desire with awareness and viola – vision!
That’s the only item on this list. To follow this process, check posts in the visioning category.
Here a silver gray and green morning with rain lightly tapping on spring leaves, copper roof and stone. Location – Artist house, Beulah, Michigan, USA, Earth. It’s exceptional and a little hard to believe. I drove 18 hours in a Penske box truck loaded with Brooklyn life, crashed, unpacked and returned the rig and then spent a day with the Bear Lake family. Now quiet and comfortable in a rocking chair, looking out at the lake – a perfect moment. In a week or so I’ll be on the road, lugging a light production kit across continents and oceans. Come along, we are to adventure together.
I’ve got a hefty to do list yet to process, make no mistake. Yet I feel the pace changing with the start of Desire. I am at the way station between what I was and what I am about to be, shifting into travel time. Cultivating presence. Everything is adequate, enough.
Babalu, the Deduytsches and Kai have reached Atuana, Hiva Oa. Land ho! He should be online in about 3 weeks.
Register on this blog and contribute, we’d love that!
What I was doing can no longer be neatly contained by the descriptions previously posted.
Just as Desire has to be pulled from the lava flow, fitted and rigged (insert sloopish jargon here) so too On Desire must be made ready. I’ve been ingesting ideas and history to situate On Desire. “Century of the Self” and “Power of Nightmares” by Adam Curtis have given flesh to my ghosts. Things ARE whacked and there’s a reason for it, there’s a history that can be discerned. His most recent “What Happened to our Dreams of Freedom” is next on the list.
Other influences are “Zeitgiest” and more recently “Addendum”.
It’s about 2:30 pm on Sunday the 23 of April 2009 by the mad reckoning of the Gregorian calendar. I am gorging on tofu and onions with a dash of tumeric, just a few vacuum swipes away from departure. Leaving the Brooklyn crib for the summer… or however long it takes to do whatever it is I am about to do.
After two months of not finding a sublet for my apartment I was resigned to an absolute exodus. I had rented a box truck and was even getting excited. 5 years of New York City is enough, whoo hoo – I am outta here! I can release the assorted juicy collaborations, the martial arts training, the bike surfing, the slightly secret romance – don’t you just love secrets?
Then just days ago Anastasia intervened divinely and offered to take the place for the summer, she needing a respite from her reconnaissance of Austria. It donna get much clearer than that. When Anastasia acts as agent of the cosmos, that’s a serious hint. An easy return to Brooklyn has manifested, so be it.
From: Thorsten Andresen
Subject: use of image
Date: May 18, 2009 2:14:15 AM EDT
To: Dan Kelly
Cc: Nils Sparwasser
Dear Dan Kelly,
Thank your for your interest in our images. I am happy to give you the permission to use our 3D image of the Hawaii island in your documentary. Just for your information we created also an award winning informational graphic using this image. This info-graphic won the first prize in visualization challenge 2006 of the Science Magzine and the National Science Foundation (for further information please look here http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/313/5794/1730.pdf). The scientists involved were:
Nils Sparwasser, Thorsten Andresen, Stephan Reiniger, and Robert Meisner
You can download the high resolution image from our ftp-Server at ftp:deleted
One-time use of this copyrighted image is granted for the purpose as part of your planned documentary around the Hawaiian islands.
Any other use requires new permission from DLR. This image may not be given to other parties and is to be deleted after use or supplied with a lock flag.
Please state the source as follows:
German Remote Sensing Data Center (DLR), National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC); University of Maryland – Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF); United States Geological Survey (USGS)
If you have any further questions don’t hesitate to contact me.
Best regards,
Thorsten Andresen
–
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Member of the Helmholtz-Association
German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD)
Dr. Thorsten Andresen
GeoVisualizationCenter
Münchener Str. 20
D-82234 Weßling
Germany
E-mail mailto:deleted
Internet http://geovis.dlr.de
I’ve been listening to Zietgeist addendum today while rotoscoping Almonds and had a flash on self education.
My brother Steve and I have been talking about how students emerge from college with significant debt. His kids (my nephews) are not very interested in college at present. They are expanding their artistic chops and making movies. It’s the family business.
Just as independent film has broken out of the Hollywood formula, perhaps Zeitgiest is a proof of concept for independent education. An exploration of an education strategy that might lead to a resource based society.
Certainly the documentation of life is commonplace, absolutely ubiquitous. Cheap cameras could be the enabling technology for independent education. What makes an event documentation worthy? Vacation, family… what about education? Epic adventures and insight, fantastic pratfalls and utter disasters, fortunate accidents… Document it and share it, add it to the archive of knowledge. It’s already happening all over the net but I’ve got something slightly more deliberate in mind.
Almonds was created as a finding of the way and Desire grows this experiment. These projects are inventing an approach to independent education. Maybe a protocol, a paradigm, a perspective. There’s a subtlety here that I may not be quite able to tease out, having something to do with ubiquitous cameras, the world and learning. Anyone else get it? If so, let me know.
The universe comes through – I’ve sold my car and more production gear. Just one big hurdle left – sublet.
To keep a NYC apartment while you travel and not sink into a morass of debt, you’ve got to find someone who will live amongst your stuff and pay the rent for you - a subletter. If I don’t sublet this place then I’ll have to move out. Without this apartment returning to Brooklyn will be problematic. If I don’t come back to Brooklyn what will I do?
That’s kind of exciting to think about. 5 years in New York might be enough. The option of coming back would be nice tho. Let’s see what happens.
Irene and I went to see Alexandra Beller/Dances ‘s at the Abron Arts Center then debriefed afterwards at Great New York Noodletown – where we saw former Mayor Ed Koch eating at a quiet table in the corner. He seemed to be staring at me, which was an odd thing as I was trying hard to give him his space. Irene and I had a great talk sans Vixia. I’ve decided to carry the camera more often.
Back to Alexandra – I like her work a lot. There were moments tonight too, you can’t go to one of Alexandra’s shows and not have some significant moments. What’s the word that means excellence and expertise in performance? Insert that word here. There’s always lots of beauty and little miracles happening with AB/D. This show didn’t kick my ass like the one I saw a year or two ago however, though some elements were reprised.
I am getting a little annoyed with the NYC independent dance cliche – over the top choreography set to kitchy pop songs, cynical send ups of consumer culture and predictable parodies of fitness, motivational and self help programs. Fold in a liberal helping of angst and disconnection. What with the flurries of magic and beauty offered by Alexandra and company, the annoyance was minimal. But I’ve seen a lot of that aesthetic around town in the last year, not the least of which was Moving Theater’s spookily brilliant ‘Last Dance’ at the Park Avenue Armory.
Alexandra passed out fortune cookies. Here is what Irene’s and mine said - they probably all said that. This was the Sensuround driving home the show’s theme – belief is bullshit. In the context of the Desire show it was pure synchronicity.
9:00am PST – 166 knm off of Baja, 23 knm from Guadalupe Island
We’re sailing along at ~6 knots with a reefed main. Feeling fine to be on the open blue again with 3300 meters of water under the keel and unobstructed horizons.
Here’s a lecture William Burroughs made at Naropa. There’s interesting material here about a machine he experimented with and his critique of science’s indefensible split of consciousness and external reality.
naropa_william_s_burroughs_class
A few of the references that Burroughs mentions…
Frontiers of Science, G Harry Stine Athenenium Press – plans for the wishing machine.
Eliphas Levi rules for wishing. To wish or will without desiring, see it as already accomplished, unconditional and take responsibility (or what would be nessisary to realize the wish).
Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Foundation is trying something interesting. They are posting chapters of the documentary Rethinking Afghanistan as they are completed. This provides for a lot of interaction and audience involvement, even audience building. Here’s the URL…
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/
I heard an interview with Greenwald on the radio program Counterspin and it was beautiful, because I had been thinking along these lines for The Desire Project the last few days. I was riding around in the rain today (warm rain – euphoric) and thinking about how important it is to get some NYC context before I jaunt for Michigan and then west. It all gelled after listening to Greenwald, I need to shoot and cut several short “chapters” between now and May 15.
Here’s Counterspin for 05-01-09, Robert Greenwald’s interview is in the last third or so of the file. Don’t get him mixed up with Glenn Greenwald who discusses torture earlier on.
07:30 am PST
We are finally away from the dock and the associated land based madness headed for sea with all systems go! We play our theme song as we wave bye to friends and muppets.
