On Desire

I got back from NYC on Tuesday. The round trip from Beulah to Brooklyn is 1800 miles. Each 900 mile leg is about 14 hours of driving. In contrast, 900 miles of leisurely sailing might take 2 months or 1440 hours, 100 times slower than driving. It’s an apples to oranges comparison – the car trip is about nullifying geography and the boat trip is about about connecting to it. If I sailed vigorously, Hello World might manage 100 miles a day. A 900 mile trip would then take 9 days or 216 hours – still 15 times slower than driving.

Both methods of travel are good for thinking. The hazy blur of rushing road and the sparkling wind river of Hello World convert to a steady flow of insight. The following are my notes from last Friday’s drive between Michigan and New York.

Can Tiller and Roeder both be terrorists?

On April 2nd the BBC reported about the sentencing of Scott Roeder for the shooting of Dr George Tiller. The lawyer for the Tiller family, Lee Thompson called the murder an act of domestic terrorism. According to the BBC, Roeder also invoked terrorism to describe Tiller. “We do not need to be hunting terrorists in the mountains of Afghanistan. We have them in Kansas. Wichita is a far safer place for unborn babies without George Tiller.”

Can Tiller and Roeder both be terrorists? How do the terms terrorist or terrorism improve our understanding of a situation or the issues? Via an upgrade to ultimate epithet, terror variants have lost their meaning. The iconic 911 event was itself a cipher that triggered bizarre military operations and political obfuscation. Without a distinct definition, terror-isms will eventually loose their emotional charge. If so, then Terrorist Training Films may already be a bust. I sense that the BBC’s story contains some clue, a .jpg of the zeitgeist.

Unsustainable

Another example of empty language was provided by NPR sponsor Monsanto, “sustainable agriculture”. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Around Lake Michigan is going to find Monsanto in the Search for Sustainable Civilizations. Patented seeds, Round Up and RICO ready operations aren’t artifacts of anything but the cult of suicide. Either I’ve got to make that word untenable for Monsanto or else change the movie’s working title. Are there any words which are inherently resistant to corporate acquisition? What about integrated, accordant, balanced or survivable civilizations? We understand what a civilization is, but perhaps modification isn’t effective. A custom concept might be a better approach, define a plausible sound.

Lake Michigan inspired sound

Speaking of sound, what about the soundtrack angle? Steve Elrick, Melonie Steffes, Jonathan, Luke and I talked about this weeks back, recruiting folks to contribute music to the project. I could find a place for the parlor guitar maybe. I (or someone) needs to reach out to the players and pitch the idea. Here’s the shortlist… Jamie and Kirk, Susan and Vince. Melonie and Shaun, Lucas, Gretchen, Jeff, the other Jeff, Todd and Laurie, Yvonne and on and on. After the calling card.

Add the wilds in

Colin Fletchers Walking the Green World reminds me to add the wilds in. It’s so obvious that like science fiction, I’ve tended to forget that it’s central. The Global Life Support System is functional wherever the wilds are intact. That’s why my personal mission is to expand global awareness to steward and expand the wilds. Terraforming is science fiction because we don’t yet understand terra, we don’t understand how this planet wide mechanism works, much less how to replicate it. All we know is that the wilds are part of it and industrial human presence not so much. So where we find wilds, we’ve got an opportunity to learn.

The most amazing thing is that the wilds are automatic. We don’t have to pay for or repair the wilds, we just have to leave them be. That’s why it’s called the global automatic control system. It’s big and it doesn’t need to be controlled or tinkered with. It just works. We get excited about new technology, yearning after gizmos and whatsits when we are surrounded by uber advanced technology, wilderness. Our own wondrous bodies run pretty well on leaves. The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth and man does not see it. Well, let’s see it already.

Asthma, diabetes and cancer are the result of environmental degradation. The cure for modern epidemics is to stop killing ourselves, eh? Burning books is symptomatic of ignorance. Wiping out wilderness is akin to dragging our families into the flames.

The On Desire Facebook page now has an easy link http://facebook.com/ondesire. If you’re on Facebook, go ahead and fan On Desire for an RSS feed from this blog and contributions from other Facebook folks.

From Monday eve… Waiting at Newark airport for the arrival of nephew Lucas who’ll be riding shotgun on the return to Michigan. The intention is to drive through the night. If we can get out of here by 9:00 pm tonight we can pull into his Bear Lake house by 11:00 am on the morrow.. Fortunately I am well supplied with sencha green tea from the Park Slope Food Coop…

We made Bear Lake just after 11:00 am. The other three Kelly men gave us a hearty greeting and we all proceeded to chill, nosh and netflix the day away. By 10:30 pm I was homing in on the lake house, bed and a light coma.

Now nearly motionless in the spindly rocker, dreaming of a ginger banana smoothie and socks for my bare feet.

About 30 days left before launch.

After class, the inner circle enjoys congi and greens at Great NY Noodletown.

View from the Manhattan bridge of Chinatown and beyond.

Riding over the East River to Brooklyn on the trusty Zilliax Miata

Double shift at the Park Slope Food Coop doing checkout.

Next!

I’m in line myself, buying mangos and seltzer to supplement the upcoming Mexican takeout.

Back at the casa, Brent and Cyn.

Brent models Aveda’s upcoming super fresh “Thuggie” TM. You saw it here first.

I went to Tai Chi at the South Street Seaport seaport this morning. The usual cast of characters were present but here are two especially excellent ones.

Melinda keeping the fully mobile Aura from escaping.

Aura is Tommy and Eva’s and she has started walking since I last saw her in February. The last time I laid eyes on Melinda was about 3 years ago, maybe longer. She and her husband Robert moved into a sweet space just a few blocks away, and now she is coming to class regularly. That’s where Travis, Charles, Melinda and I went with Ru for treatments.

Travis finishing up his treatment.

Melinda and Robert’s amazing home with a view of the East River and South Street Seaport.

Check out the tallships just past the FDR.

Tea while waiting for my camera ready hair cut by Brent at the Soho Aveda.

Here’s the before shot.

In the recently acquired 2003 Odyssey with the antique cat, heading east and listening to Stevie Wonder. BK’s just 9 hours away.

I watched one of the worst movies last night, one that I had seen long ago – Dino De Laurentiis and David Lynch’s Dune. There were so many awful things, but especially bad were the voice overs of characters thinking.

I’m working on a voice over for Around Lake Michigan, a way to get the search started. It might be fun to do an homage to De Laurentiis / Lynch. Imagine the ALM guide, gazing heroically over a rocking horizon or shaving in his rain pounded tent. We hear his thoughts…

•••

Where you see rocks, watch out! They’re going to come alive… Alan Watts.

Earth is a giant ball of rock and metal skinned with life. Where does the rock end and the life start? People are alive, and trees and animals, that’s for sure. There’s even tiny things alive in the soil. Life is everywhere. Supposedly though, these things are not alive – water, rocks, air. Folks argue about how life came from non life – god or darwin. I am more interested in how life stays here. Whether by accident or design, the earth is a nice place to live. Everything is just so – the precise amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, consistent temperature, the right kind of light… but how does it stay that way? Somehow, life friendly conditions are maintained. That’s the global life support system, (analogies from NASA and science fiction abound).

Can humans damage or break the global life support system? Have we already? Maybe. Probably. Shit.

A more useful question is, can humans live in accord with it? Can we actually become an integral part of the global life support system? What would that look like?

A sustainable civilization would be in perfect accord with the global life support system. Concepts like garbage and pollution would be obsolete, archaic. There would be no consumption or waste, only cycles of transformation and renewal. Energy is free and abundant.

Hard to imagine, right?

The amazing thing is this…

•••

This could be a preface for the premise.

Good times under the catamaran last night. A core cadre libated and kibitzed until the wee hours. Pictures to follow. Patrick stayed over and helped clean up. Now the lake temple is once again presentable. Can a party have a point, an objective? For me, gathering merry souls under the twin hulls of the fabulous Hello World is the beginning of a blessing.

In a scalding tub, burning away the muscle ache from yesterday’s kooky backward run. I skip showers for several days running just so I can dip neck deep in steamy agua caliente.

Today I bought a minivan from my fam and pondered how to introduce the concept of future artifacts into the project. I’ve got some major elements present in the current extended trailer. What’s missing is character development including DK’s science fiction influenced premise for Around Lake Michigan which points to artifacts of future sustainable civilizations. Take a breathe!

What does an artifact of FSC look like? Tricky, that. An artifact is anything that gets us past the hospice culture and on into living. Sure there will always be uncertainty, but can’t we take the pistol out of our maw for a decade or two, just give it a rest? Yes we can! Yes we did – in the post present.

Artifacts are telegrams from the future – we solved it and here’s how. Jet cars or sail boats? Soylent green or CSAs? Artifacts can be RL processes and perhaps cybernetic extensions. When Mozilla builds an open source Facebook into Firefox – that sort of thing. If Monsanto were run by Geshe Michael.

I know, it’s Dan Kelly’s perplexing internal world. Not since Tolkien has any artist fabricated a fantasy so arcane and detailed. Forget about comprehensible, this is the future talking. Buckle your seatbelts.

We’ll clarify all soon enough. The really big waves are preceeded by a sucking sound.

44 days until the scheduled launch. In 3 weeks I’ll look back wistfully and think, “I remember back when there was plenty of time.”

The logistics of sailing and camping for three months are significant. There’s the boat itself which includes spare parts and repair supplies. For those who haven’t sailed, know that it takes lots of rope, pulleys and metal doodads.

Navigation is handled mostly on the iPhone with compass and chart applications, but I’ll carry actual compasses for backup. There’s also safety equipment required by the Coast Guard like flares and lights.

Food and shelter is handled with a wilderness camping kit – backpacking tent, sleeping bags, tiny stove, pots etc. Don’t forget the CNA or Composting Nitrogen Accumulator, aka Poopomatic TM.

On top of getting around and maintaining life, remember we’re making a movie here. That means at least one camera, cables, tripod, microphones, hard drive, laptop, batteries and solar panels for charging it all.

All this stuff has to weigh less than 250 lbs and be sealed in dry bags. There’s no cabin on Hello World.

Boats, islands, spaceships and planets are related – they have finite carrying capacity, specific conditions (gear) are required for life and long term survival requires attention and careful planning. Around Lake Michigan explores this idea, it is the project’s inherent artifact.

How do we realize sustainable civilizations? We find artifacts and figure out what they imply.

I’ve been so focused on social phenomenon that my first thought when I wake up is to get online. With only a month left before launch, it’s time to kick the habit.

I’m replacing my morning urge to compute with yoga and tai chi practice. I’ve joked about being eye candy for the camera but the truth is that Around Lake Michigan is physically demanding. I might spend hours hanging in harness if there’s big wind. I’ve got to pack and haul 70 lb drybags twice daily and push 300 lbs of sailboat on and off the beach… for three months.

My friends know I’ve been into yoga for about 20 years and studied tai chi since 2004. As a pragmatic guy, I judge the value of these disciplines by what they have enabled me to do, both physically and emotionally. I can call upon deep resources when things get intense.

Being fit and capable is as essential as packing flares and first aid. I’m confident I can get up to fighting trim within the month.

How is physicality an artifact of a future sustainable civilization? Yoga and Tai Chi are ancient practices with an expanding reach, even discounting the trite and goofy mutations. Bodies must move for optimal health, we are not designed to be sedentary. To be fit is to be alive and present. Julie had this great insight about the metaphor of planet as island, island as boat, boat as planet. With her usual directness she added – body as earth. Our body is a metaphor for earth. If we wish to be adept stewards of the earth, we must begin with our personal cosmos and portable ocean – our own body. Learning to steward and celebrate ourselves, what a concept.

8:30 am on Crystal Lake and it’s quite brisk and still. Strangely though, it feels different than the deep silence of a couple days back. This morning i don’t hear so many creatures speaking and their timing isn’t concerted, they just tweet and caw whenever.

The difference could be that two days ago was vernal equinox. Why wouldn’t the birds behave differently on this day? Tuned into the rhythms, it might be the day when they take inventory – who has survived the winter? Who is present and ready to begin our great dance again? Perhaps the silence in between the strange cadence of thier calls is a listening.

Whether or not Michigan’s last wild wolverine has died, we don’t know. Our culture is not very wild aware. The wolverine’s passing makes me wonder how animals assess their surround, the available cast of characters. It would seem likely that they might. It’s a gaian viewpoint to expect this degree of inherent organization in wild things, but then I am an earthman, what other viewpoint is there for me? Why deny my own experience?

Species interact, depend on each other even if they’re in competition. It’s a little theory on the second* day of spring, Enjoy.

* Spring equinox was March 20  at ~12:30pm EST (UTC-5), so today is the second day (< 24 hours). If we go by dates then it’s the third day.

Either by…

http://twitter.com/OnDesire

or

http://twitter.com/FutureArtifacts

Thanks for taking the time to check us out.

My name is Dan Kelly and I am working on the documentary movie. From May – August of 2010, I’ll be sailing a 16 ft catamaran all the way around Lake Michigan – solo. That’s about 1000 miles.  Along the way I’ll visit people and places related to sustainability. With a high quality mobile production kit,  I’ll record my discoveries and post them here.

I want to establish local connections before I go, that’s why I followed you. You might have great ideas about where to stop or who to visit. Perhaps you’d like to meet me yourself and talk about the future over tea or a beer.

Feel free to wander around this site and learn more. If you are intrigued with the project, email me directly wild@artisthouse.com or  follow me for updates on Twitter – http://twitter.com/OnDesire.

Thanks for your time!

Dan
Hello World
and the On Desire team

Awareness is my way. Science and religion both miss the point when they ask us to deny our awareness, what we just know. Not know from common sense or by faith, by analysis of data or by memorizing some scripture, but know from being alive. What’s worth cultivating and the basis for any worthy protocol is to trust our own experience, to attend to our own experience and be open to our moment. Thus are we able to navigate and enjoy the quirky world in all it’s marvelous contradiction.

Hello World on this exquisite Saturday!

Open water on Crystal Lake, the ice is off.

Woke to the murmer of a gray lake and an empty wind in a deep silence. The kwhoo of a morning dove, caw of a crow, and the trill and warble of song birds never overlapping. Each event takes it turn, opening and closing the lovely quiet as if to make it more.
The sudden rich echo of a seagull’s cackle reminds me what’s ahead. A maybe March in Northern Michigan, maybe waking up, maybe winter is over – just maybe. Around these parts that’s enough.
Without my morning sojourn in the icy outhouse, I’d be a just another human without a clue. So thanks Dan Kelly for having the good sense to accumulate nitrogen outside and open to awakening.

Is the social phenomena getting out of hand? I trust that I’ve peaked on the Facebook learning curve with the establishment of the On Desire fan page – complete with RSS feed.

I’d like to shift gears and get back to actually making my movie. I’ve already complained to Julie about all this, she was like “Suck it up dude, outreach is essential.” Where’s my hot intern, my bushy tailed bright eyed assistant director? Where’s my staff? I’ve got an awesome team of advisors and collaborators no doubt, gratitude for that! Before I go blind from staring at arcane interfaces designed to completely fry the fatty tissues of the human brain, I’ve got to attract some administrative talent. We’re hiring!

You can catch the wave of the future... Join Trickster Pictures LLC today!

On Desire

• our collective destiny – Desire

• philosophy (coming soon)

• open process (coming soon)

• history

• guestbook

• definitions (coming soon)

• open process projects and events

• Around Lake Michigan, Search for Sustainable Civilizations

•  premise

• character development for the guide

• objectives

• 2009 expedition

• movies

• map

• inventory details

• 2010 expedition

• proposed itinerary

• map

• inventory details

• collaborators

I needed a break from social phenomena this morning so I went outside and cut down some trees. How does that jive with the project ethic?

About 20 years ago I allowed the lawn around the Artist house to grow wild. The non native grass sprouted long and tufty and then native flora started to reappear, tiny conifers and the prehistoric looking dinosaur grass. The massive poplar, a landmark of the yard, surrounded itself with new saplings and then toppled into the lake. This event coincided with the first visit to Michigan of my yet to be exwife. I ignored the implications and married her anyway – but that’s another story.

Poplar trees grow fast, they probably are filling an important niche in reforesting of open land. Around the house they are vulnerable to infections that twist thier trunks and rot them out. That’s how it was with the two monsters I knocked down today. They were over 30 feet and maybe 15 years old, loosing thier core near ground level. A big storm could snap them off and then what? Maybe my or my neighbor’s house, or even me – crushed.

I dusted off the electric chainsaw and dropped them carefully, directing the thick trunks to a safe landing. Next step will be to chop them up, clear the braches and create a staging area for Hello World.

If you are landing here from Facebook, relax – you’re safe now.

OK everyone, this is going to be our first old fart singalong. Instructions:

click this…
lyrics

then this…
music

If you don’t read music don’t panic – right after the “doo, doo, doo” (16 beats in) start SINGING… really belt it out!

Special thanks for Andrew Gold of being such a future civilization trooper.

Thaw is coming and Crystal Lake is preparing to move. From crispy white to frosty green and deep blue, the solid ice is thinning. Soon enough – great sheets of quartz splinters blown ashore by big wind and singing a shattered song, a chorus of clinks.

I ran roads today, 3 miles in 27:11 or 9+ minute miles, with a starter mile backward in 10:00. Better than the 11:00 minute miles I ran at the end of February. Progress! I’m weighing in at 184, lean on the shoulders and buttery round the abs. I’m going to give birth to a beautiful energy baby soon.

I am a real person but for the ALM movie it’s useful to think of myself as a character, to take a director’s eye view and reveal unexamined assumptions that might be important to the story.  I don’t mind the audience thinking that the Dan Kelly character is mildly delusional, a Walter Mitty type. If we establish that he is a functional kook, then the premise (doom) doesn’t need to be supported with empirical evidence, it’s just his world view. Folks will be happy to ride with him on his emotional roller coaster.

When it’s too late to turn back, we’ll reveal what’s really going on }:)

•••

This is the nearly true story of a mostly unknown middle age artist. A man who’s trysted with various modes of expression but never quite established a viable career. He’s coasted along on family money supplemented with spotty freelance work and the rare grant. He’s divorced with neither kids nor much savings to speak of.

He’s a geek but enjoys pushing his physicality, handsome but socially inept, a cult leader sans cult. In spite of not amounting to much of anything, he imagines himself an key figure in a grand unfolding, a mystic hero stashed away and awaiting deployment. He senses invisible forces arrayed against him and intuits that he must be someone of great importance to be so targeted.

His shelves are stacked with science fiction and the Wizard of Oz makes him teary. He loves being in the wilds and feels that the entire earth is alive and probably self aware. This sacred epiphany stands in stark contrast to the seemingly suicidal bent of his fellow humans who undermine the global life support system with habitual mediocrity.  Endowed with an epic perspective, he deduces a secret enemy at work – trans dimensional conquistadors yanking the puppet strings of power.

He decides it’s time to act, to take personal responsibility as an agent of earth. He buys a decrepit sailboat, spruces it up and schemes a dream.

Sailing a 30 year old catamaran 1000 miles Around Lake Michigan, Searching for Sustainable Civilizations – our guide, Dan Kelly.

My Dinner with Andrea meets The Sea Hawk

We know sustainable civilizations will show up within the next 10-15 years because if they don’t, we are doomed. Since we expect to survive, sustainable civilizations are a given. Obviously civilizations don’t just pop into existence overnight, they take time to emerge. Therefor, we should expect to find fragments and partially assembled components of sustainable civilizations scattered everywhere around the planet – right now. These artifacts of the future can be discovered and shared. We can extrapolate from them and understand what they imply. They can show us how to align ourselves with the emergence.

What kind of a character would dream this up?

Bounce rate has dropped from 40% to 10%, whoo! Congratulations team, landing page analysis and revisions are a success.

We’re generating a trickle of new visitors by selective follows on Twitter every day. From analytics it was pretty clear that the landing page didn’t engage, almost half of new visitors saw it and left. During the meeting we discussed how the landing page could be simplified and focused.

Note to self – remember to snap screen shots before making changes to key pages!? Since I didn’t make http://ondesire.com available to search engines until recently (doh!)  Waybackmachine doesn’t have an archive, so there’s no before shot. If I’m lucky I’ll find an archival screenshot on our local drives. For now, the best I can do is show the after and describe the before, bah.  Anyway, here’s the landing page circa 10-03-12 at 11:12.

http://ondesire.com landing page 10-03-12 11:12

Header

The title was been changed from “On Desire” to “Desire”.

The subtitle was changed from “Big World Small Footprint” to “The crux of human experience, our collective destiny” – Melonie, Dan

Page

The page title was changed from “You are Here” to “Our Collective Destiny, Desire” – Melonie, Dan

The body text was simplified to explain the On Desire concept and emphasize the only active project, Around Lake Michigan – Steve, Dan

Two active movie links were added, tho the picture is not obviously a video link yet – Patrick

Sidebar

Archive was changed to BLOG – Julie

A twitter icon was added

Launch date was added – Julie

PAGES was removed. Around Lake Michigan pages were brought to the top of the list and On Desire to the bottom.

Added An Around Lake Michigan premise page which will become a 15 second “watch this first” video link. The page starts with character development and then presents the character’s premise, addressing Jonathan’s doom feedback – Melonie, Jonathan, Dan

Other

I’m fleshing out the links on the collaborators page and making a point of linking to resources like WBAI and SOMA (great music). Not only do I want to share the resources that inspire the project, these links increase the interconnectivity of ondesire to the rest of the www.

I am a fan of WBAI FM in NYC. Fortunately, I don’t have to be in Brooklyn to enjoy the broadcast.  Not only is WBAI streaming on the web, but archives are available for 90 days. WBAI is totally listener supported. There are so many great programs, here are some of my favs…

WBAI Evening News

Wakeup Call

TalkBack! – Hugh Hamilton

Taking Aim – Ralph Schoenman, Mya Shone

Positive Mind – Armand DiMele

Personal Computer Show

Off the Hook – Emmanuel Goldstein

Liquid Sound Lounge – Jeannie Hopper

Hour of the Wolf – Jim Freund

Golden Age of Radio – Max Schmid

Free Speech Radio News

First Voices Indigenous Radio – Tiokasin Ghosthorse

Equal Time for Freethought

Eco-Logic – Ken Gale, David Occhiuto

Earthwatch with Robert Knight

Explorations – Michio Kaku

Democracy Now!

Counterspin

Behind the News – Doug Henwood

As I Please – Simon Loekle

All Mixed Up – Peter Bochan

Jonathan has been questioning the veracity of the doom assertion in the ALM / artifact premise. A premise or pitch is a shorthand introduction to a project – typically delivered in less than 15 seconds (and often in an elevator). A great pitch should distill a project and summarize it rather than simplify. Here’s the current version of the ALM pitch.

We know that a sustainable civilization is coming because if it doesn’t show up, we (human beings) are doomed. Since we all expect to survive, survivable civilization(s) must emerge within the next 10 – 15 years. That means they must be already coming together, they must be in the process of emerging right now.  We can can expect to find fragments and partially assembled components everywhere. These artifacts of future survivable civilizations can be discovered and shared, growing awareness globally. That is the objective of Around Lake Michigan.

Is this premise inherently misleading and broken? Jonathan offered some interesting insights.

Jonathan – What’s the proof that we are doomed? That reminds me of mainstream media’s fear mongering and exaggeration which makes intelligent folks allergic.

The more I think about it, the more of a core issue it seems this might be, as far as making this site truly communicate with folks.

It isn’t clear who is the source of the information, when you say that there’s dark things up ahead. Where is this prophecy coming from, you (dan kelly), the scientific community, the mainstream media, etc.? If the prophecy is coming from one of these sources, then you need to explain why the audience should be looking to themselves to answer what the solutions are, rather than this source. And that isn’t usually easy.

Example, if the scientific community is saying global warming is the problem to focus on, and people respect them and this opinion of theirs, then they’ll naturally look to the scientific community to tell them exactly what they should do about it. They won’t look to themselves for the answers, because they weren’t even capable of noticing the problem until science pointed it out to them.

Another example is 9/11. From observations and common sense people could see that it was not an accident, but not who was to blame for it. Later that same day the government/media started putting up a picture of Osama Bin Laden, explained who he was supposed to be and that he was supposed to be responsible. And so it was the government/media that folks followed to war, not their own individual pieces of knowledge or independent viewpoints.

If you want to break out of this system, of people following “leaders” or “experts”, and instead trusting in and finding solutions to problems themselves, then they have to become aware of the problem within their own experiences and minds. Otherwise it is just more blind faith. You need to show people the symptoms of a problem they can become aware of within their own life experience, independently. Ask them to confirm what you are saying within the things they have already seen.

Certainly if the artifacts of the solution are already around us, there must also be the artifacts of the problem for people to confirm what is going on for themselves.

Within the context of ALM and this website, you as the stand-in character for the everyman, the joe average, could talk about your personal experiences that made you become an environmentalist. Maybe recount how you saw certain things change over your lifetime that made you aware the present course was heading in a very dark direction.

Then recount some of the artifacts of a possible future way of life, that you experienced over your lifetime, that lead you to start this search for a sustainable way of life.

This reminder about individual experience is indeed powerful and worthy. Mass disconnection from direct experience is what makes the toxic consumption juggernaut possible. On Desire is a DIY effort, it’s about taking personal responsibility for the situation. “What situation?” Jonathan asks. What exactly is our ALM guide, Dan Kelly talking about? Let’s tease out some story from this.

A character effectively developed is believable. The audience travels with the ALM guide because they can relate to him, his struggles and aspirations have been offered and accepted by the audience. They don’t need to agree with him or even like him to go along on his journey, they just have to get him. Search the posts for “guide” for more background on this.

Andrea made the point that Dan Kelly can’t be a detached observer. Who would believe that a detached observer would fix buy a 16 foot cat and sail 1000 miles searching for artifacts of a survivable future? That sounds slightly passionate if not a obviously nuts. This character is motivated by something more compelling than reports on CNN, he is acting from his gut. He may be delusional, but his direct experience has galvanized action.

Of course the audience should look to their own experience, absolutely. That’s what makes character development possible. It’s tricky to ask for that in the premise though, there’s just not enough time. All we need to do is communicate that this is Dan Kelly’s premise, and illustrate how he acquired it.

Now the pitch starts like this… There’s this guy who believes (insert premise). Well – that’s interesting, how did he come to believe that? Cue character development.

The character development will illustrate how this guy’s direct experience – a heady brew of ecstatic physicality, presence with wilderness, speculative storytelling, an affinity for science and intuitive mysticism intoxicated him with the premise.

If the character makes a robust commit to act on his direct experience, that will be an example for others to attend to and act on theirs… and we’ve made a training film.

In conclusion, deconstructing the premise is a useful exercise. The character Dan Kelly has an epic bent. He has a strong feeling that earth and her human inhabitants are facing a crucial moment. Does he conjure the threat of annihilation to spice an otherwise dreary RL existence? Is he tilting at windmills? There’s no story without conflict, right?

Frodo lives!

Sheila Stafford says that many drowned men are found with their flies open, suggesting that boats and urination can be a dangerous combo. This was one of many topics we covered during an arts luncheon today with Flora Ricca Hoffman and Melanie Steffes at Poppycocks.

We’ve had two dream team meetings, in Brooklyn (Faisal, Erica and Dan) and last Saturday in Beulah (Steve Elrick, Melonie, Jonathan, Lucas Kelly and Dan).

Inviting collaboration and contribution was the focus of Saturday’s meeting. Components of the ask package for fundraising were presented and discussed. Our collective web presence, including project blogs like http://ondesire.com and contractor blogs (http://meloniesteffes.com and http://jonathankellyarts.com) are key. We reviewed the design of the landing page for http://ondesire.com and discussed what our expectations are for it.

•

Melonie – The silhouette image of Dan on Hello World looks “girly”. It’s the first thing I think about when I see this page.

Dan – This is because the camera pack on his left side  gives an impression of wide hips which combined with the long hair  makes the image a little confusing.

Actions

Is it disturbing or discordant to visitors? Some testing is needed. It’s possible to either switch out this picture or try to ps the camera pack out. Might not be a bad idea to broaden my shoulders and add an ornate cod piece while were at it.

•

Jonathan – I’d like to see a link to the latest news, so that folks can jump to immediately to the last 5-6 posts.

Action

The simplest solution is a link to all posts. The most recent will show up first.

•

Melonie – “Desire – the crux of human experience.” That’s important, it should be a headline or bigger.

Dan – “You are here” was intended to give a sense of place, suggesting maps and geography. We can repurpose this for the maps area.

Action

Replace “You are Here” with the crux of human experience” to give it more prominence and simplify the page. Move you are here to the maps page.

•

Dan – On Desire was conceived as a container for many projects, Around Lake Michigan being one of them. Currently, ALM is the only project in there, so it needs to be more prominent.

Action

On the sidebar, move Events up to the top and all the ondesire.com background down to the bottom. Perhaps move the background out of the sidebar totally.

•

Jonathan – The archives take a lot of real estate, be good to move them farther down the sidebar so it’s less cluttered up top.

Dan – Not sure that’s possible. If we had a little WP magic we could link to a separate page where the archives could live. Look into it.  A benefit of the archives being on the sidebar is it demonstrates project longevity.

Action

Investigate whether archives become a landing page link?

•

Dan – Perhaps Dan and Hello World are the vanguard for a wave of expeditions worldwide, perhaps one objective is to inspire other expeditions. ALM could be a demonstration on how to look for artifacts of a survivable future. How could the site be an aggregator for artifacts? Searchers could report discoveries by…

writing a letter / email

leaving a phone message

sending audio or video recordings – youtube, vimeo etc.

Steve – what about incorporating song writing? Steve relates a recent effort to rewrite the lyrics of Route 66 to fit the sights along M22. Could this be worked into ALM? Would song writers and performers be inspired with images of trip geography?

Dan – I really wanted to bring my guitar with me last September, the idea of a giant song writing quilt is awesome. Lucas and Melonie are both making music too, Steve sings so maybe we already have a strong base.

What other ideas can we deploy for hooking the general public into the project?

Action

Who could organize  and manage the music project? How would it work? What’s our protocol for integrating new artifacts, a resource for contributing must be developed.

•

Melonie – Right now the project is the Dan show. We need more artifacts up ASAP.

Dan – absolutely. We have some great material.

Action

Priority – put up other interviews.

•

Dan – The premise, the pitch. We know that a sustainable civilization is coming because if it doesn’t show up, we (human beings) are doomed. Since we all expect to survive, a survivable civilization must emerge within the next 10 – 15 years. That means it must be already coming together, it must be in the process of emerging.  We can can expect to find fragments and partially assembled components everywhere, right now. These artifacts of a future survivable civilization can be discovered and shared, growing awareness globally. That is the objective of Around Lake Michigan.

Jonathan – What’s the proof that we are doomed? That reminds me of mainstream media’s fear mongering and exaggeration which makes intelligent folks are allergic.

Dan – maybe “doom” switched to “things getting really unpleasant,” (wink, nod). Kind of under-promising approach.

Jonathan – Showing change from past to present, activate personal observation.

Melonie – focus on the good stuff, spreading the solutions

Action

A 15 second premise video could be the first thing that visitors encounter.

Jonathan – we need definitions on the site, like xroll, civilizations and artifacts.

Action

Build a project dictionary or a wikitionary

Dan – How do you guys feel about the process of blogging?

Melonie – an old friend found me through my website, I was embarrassed. the first thing I thought was I hope he didn’t read my blog.

Jonathan – I am posting technical stuff because I don’t feel very creative right now. When writing about technical issues, there’s a lot of overhead involved in explaining something simple. Saying exactly what I want, a process of taking stuff away.

Melonie – What about exploring your feelings about the project?

Dan – We will continue to blog, because it’s very powerful to look into ourselves and express what we are becoming. It’s very helpful for our development as artists and for our ability to communicate clearly – to each other and to the world at large. It’s an investment in ourselves.  Melonie’s reaction is very telling, why should we be embarrassed about our own thoughts and feelings? What’s the matter with developing a public presence? Is that ego or just sharing? An open project means we share our lessons and discoveries.

Action

Steve and Lucas can be encouraged to launch showcase sites with Jonathan and Melonie’s help. Jonathan and Melonie write a 1 or 2 paragraph premise – why writing and sharing my journey makes sense for me, or if it did make sense for me, why would it?

Hello World floats above the kitchen facilitating daily communion.

A sustainable civilization is a diverse proposition that includes all our future activity and experience. An artifact of a sustainable civilization is any object, process or behavior that points to the fundamental operating principles of a sustainable civilization. These principles in turn reveal individual perspectives that are in sync, viewpoints worth adopting. By adopting these viewpoints myself, I can travel into the future.

What’s the difference between changing the actual date and experiencing a Future Resonant Life? A significant date change means gray hair and wrinkles for my nephews and nieces while a FRL lets them grow slow. Why bother tasting a happy collective destiny if I’ve got to loose my peeps? Obviously whack, that.

So here’s the FRL groove so far and Prime Directives of Around Lake Michigan. Can you say “primordial soup”?

• reuse, renovate, re-purpose, multipurpose, rebuild, maker aesthetic, DIY

• low impact, small footprint, efficient, resource sipping, frugal, improvise, make do

• in accord with the global life support system. recognize and integrate into evolved cycles, inter-connection and inter-reliance

• RL networks, community, social capital, reputation economy, whuffie

• open source, open process, building knowledge, creative commons, transparency, global archives

• science fiction – extrapolation of social and technological developments to find the future and influence it, applied imagination, exploring alternate scenarios yields better choices.

• art, supercharged communication, cognitive hacks, surprise, direct experience transfer /  translation, experience of being fully alive, mysticism, shamanism, storytelling

• other…

Writing under Hello World

Sign a petition and help Michigan’s Attorney General Mike Cox to protect Lake Michigan by closing the locks in Chicago.

http://StopAsianCarp.com

Great Lakes Restoration has posted video from a February 12, 2010 meeting on Asian carp. With luck, I’ll approaching carp entry points by the end of May. My brother in Arizona can’t stand my singing, and he’s about the same size as one of these fish. Maybe I can sing the carp away.

Today I am thinking about the indivisibility of story and audience. Which comes first? In May 2010, Hello World and I return to the Big Lake. I’d like to start with a more robust social presence than the project had in 2009. WordPress and Twitter apps on the iPhone were swell, but there hadn’t been much outreach before the launch.

Could we start this May with a robust and attentive audience of say 5000? If so, who would they be? Who should we invite? How should time be balanced between building a following and building the story?

That last question is a doozie, it scares me. Scan back through the posts from July – August 2009 and you’ll see how much preparation was going on. That’s where I am now, just two months from launch. Do I have time to build an audience? Do I want an audience if I am ill prepared for performance?  What’s the point of having an incredible performance that nobody sees? What does an auspicious balance between audience building and story building look like?

Let’s back up and look at who the audience might be.  Content attracts an audience that can relate to it. Context diversifies the audience. Both content and context flow from my story, so what’s my story? Story -> content + context -> audience. This might all seem abstract, so here’s an example.

A guy is going to sail a small catamaran around Lake Michigan. If that’s the story, then the content would be sailboats, water, beaches, maybe some interesting weather. This content appeals to folks familiar with Lake Michigan, sailors and some outdoor enthusiasts.

Add more story and the content expands… This guy believes he can fathom the future of the human race, he thinks he can figure out how we will radically reinvent our planetary presence and avoid environmental apoocalypse. Now the content includes encounters with all manner of kooky folks with clues about the future – rocking chair philosophers, garage scientists, mad prophets, sincere visionaries, hard working fanatics, angels in brown paper bags, irascible recluses and so on. The audience now includes folks who enjoy debate, new ideas, all the friends and family of the kooky folks, folks who are themselves somewhat kooky and anyone who thinks the human race is in big trouble.

Now comes the lovely magic of context. This guy who is going to sail around Lake Michigan likes science fiction. Not the watered down low octane Hollwood fluff, but the hard core, straight to the vein hard core. Science fiction from books. His shelves are sagging with ragged paperbacks from the masters – Bradbury, Wilhelm, Le Guin, Clarke, Dick, Lethem, Swanwick, Stephanson. He’s steeped deep. We explain this to the audience and suddenly we get this guy a little more. Poor dear, his brain’s been fried from too much reading! He’s projecting his imagination into the real world, he probably thinks his catamaran is the space shuttle. What will happen to this sap, will he end up drowned after being knocked off his boat by alien Asian carp? Now the content includes the guy’s history, scenes depicting his heartbreaking literary obsession – moments that make a connection to him. The audience may not agree with who he is or what he believes, but they can relate! He is every man, every woman. He becomes a placeholder for all of us. A 21st century Don Quixote on an impossible quest. If context is pulled off properly, the audience includes all, whether or not they like boats, philosophy or give a rats ass about the earth.

So I guess the question of balance didn’t get resolved here. Hmm. I’ll be back.

Two words – asian carp.

Wanted: Folks publishing with integrity and insight about the connections between environment, sustainability, social justice and spiritual fulfillment. Comment with your recommendations.

Getting fit for my return to the water in May, just 66 days away. Not only do I need to be eye candy, but I’ve gotta muscle 300 lbs of sailboat ashore over sand or stone.

Anastasia opined that I’m loosing tone – no wonder with all this screen staring. I’ve slacked on my body worship, maybe moving 2-3 times a week, if that.

I hit Prospect Park in my Five Fingers this morning, slogging through 2.5 miles of snow and drizzle in 28 minutes. Nothing to brag about, but it’s a start.

I’m also using my WordPress iPhone app to post, gotta get back into practice with that too.

Countdown begins!

Since the Around Lake Michigan movies are presented in a resizable window outside of the blog proper, folks couldn’t comment – doh! Just created a stack of posts to fix this slight oversight… and away we go!

Watch the movies and let us know what happens to you!

Erica and Faisal came over for pancakes on Friday, 10/02/19. Faisal’s version of the DOG edit, ostensibly the reason for our reunion, remained untouched. Instead we talked… about advancing our craft, social presence, Around Lake Michigan, redefining projects, new collaborations and Earth. An energizing evening of scintillating conceptual improvisation.

We looked at two sections of the ALM rough cut, what is emerging as the project calling card. I asked them what artifacts of a future civilization the Ritch Branstrom interview might point to…

Everything has life, what appears to be junk or trash is just the beginning of another cycle.

This could be analogous to the Law of Conservation, which states that matter can neither be created or destroyed, just changed in form. One might postulate an analogous Law of Utility – the value of an object is contextual, usefulness can neither be created or destroyed, just reimagined. Utility promises worthy application as a remediation principle, eg mining landfills, fractionating soil to harvest nuclear contaminents, etc. In the hospice civilization of yore, Utility would have been co-opted for greenscam propaganda, eg “We’re not generating toxic waste, we’re building the future!” Thank you Monsanto. But, but, but… what if ubiquitous PCBs could be reimagined and repurposed? That’s the sort of big medicine this artifact hints at.

That last paragraph was an exploratory digression – jumping immediately to interpretation and application is not always desirable, implications take time to sink in. Here’s a couple more of their insights, sans my comments. For a deeper draught, I’d suggest imbibing at the source, cue the movie which should be posted soonish.

Bliss based big systems are worth integrating into.

Ritch’s experience of flow indicates that a sustainable civilization features redesigned time.

After a focused exchange about the ALM calling card, we discussed how Erica and Faisal might fit into version 2.0 of ALM. Erica had earlier recounted a frustrating episode as the manager of major manufacturer’s social presence feed, specifically how the company’s lack of transparency and integrity killed the conversation. I raved about Julie and her offer to take on ALM’s social presence, an unprecedented opportunity to learn at the foot of a master as we spread the ALM love. I admit to dangling Julie bait-like to draw them even further into my nefarious schemes. We’ll wait and see if they bite…

09-11-28 Gretchen Eichberger debuts Glorious Dawn at the Evening of Exploration variable / full screen
09-11-28 Gretchen Eichberger debuts Glorious Dawn at the Evening of Exploration fixed size

09-10-02 North Manitou last day variable / full screen
09-10-02 North Manitou last day fixed size

09-09-28 Ritch Branstrom variable / full screen
09-09-28 Ritch Branstrom fixed size

09-09-21 Dick Burris diving variable / full screen
09-09-21 Dick Burris diving fixed size

09-09-13 Chris and Tanya Winkelman Homegrown variable / full screen
09-09-13 Chris and Tanya Winkelman Homegrown fixed size

09-09-13 Ray Minervini variable / full screen
09-09-13 Ray Minervini fixed size

09-09-13 School Ship Inland Seas variable / full screen
09-09-13 School Ship Inland Seas fixed size

09-09-11 Surfing in Grand Traverse Bay variable / full screen
09-09-11 Surfing in Grand Traverse Bay fixed size

09-09-11 Notime on Wind River variable / full screen
09-09-11 Notime on Wind River fixed size

09-09-10 Northport Dinner variable / full screen
09-09-10 Northport Dinner fixed size

09-09-10 The Manitowoc variable / full screen
09-09-10 The Manitowoc fixed size

09-09-10 Becalmed variable / full screen
09-09-10 Becalmed fixed size

09-09-09 Under Hello World variable / full screen
09-09-09 Under Hello World fixed size

09-09-09 Breakfast at Crescent City on North Manitou Island variable / full screen
09-09-09 Breakfast at Crescent City on North Manitou Island fixed size

09-09-08 Sleeping Bear Point to North Manitou Island variable / full screen
09-09-08 Sleeping Bear Point to North Manitou Island fixed size

09-09-07 Dan, Warren, Tomomi and Kathleen South of Otter Creek Conversation variable / full screen
09-09-07 Dan, Warren, Tomomi and Kathleen South of Otter Creek Conversation fixed size

09-09-07 Dan Kelly South of Otter Creek Pumping Water variable / full screen
09-09-07 Dan Kelly South of Otter Creek Pumping Water fixed size

09-09-06 Lawrence Kinney on Elberta Beach variable / full screen
09-09-06 Lawrence Kinney on Elberta Beach fixed size

09-09-05 Hello World Evolution variable / full screen
09-09-05 Hello World Evolution fixed size

On December 13, 2008 I attended an Awakening the Dreamer symposium at Boricua College with Melanie Ida Chopko, aka Melonie Amazing. On Valentines Day weekend 2010, I trained with 34 others to be a symposium facilitator.

Fuzzy pix of the Valentine Watershed facilitators and trainers. February 12 -14, 2010

The symposium is a fascinating blend of modalities designed to activate waves of sleepy and disillusioned humans and deploy them to save our collective butts. Imagine bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling human presence on the planet. Here’s the recipe…

2-30 new participants (the audience)
1-3  facilitators / presenters
AV equipment, DVDs
the script

The script is the key ingredient. It’s authored by various manifestations of local consciousness collectively known as Earth – aka Mother Earth, Gaia and Pachamama. Because of it’s unique origins the script acts like an energy pipe, connecting the audience directly to our fabulous starship’s forgotten super computer. This is not immediately obvious to the audience (and even some of the facilitators) as the script appears to be an ordinary stack of papers in a 3 ring binder.

If this sounds nutty then you are definitely reading the wrong blog.

In a largish room combine all ingredients for about 2-5 hours. This is called the symposium. Include non gmo snacks and drinks.

The facilitators offer the script to the audience, either by reciting it verbatim, rephrasing it into their own words or reading it directly from the binder. The results are the same regardless of how the script is offered – most of the audience enjoys a restored connection to planetary consciousness, enabling the conversion of their frustration and angst into great reservoirs of survival savvy.  Powerful shifts towards a sustainable, just and fulfilling human presence, perfectly adapted to local conditions, manifests within months. A sense of community pervades.

Some members of the audience will demonstrate a strong desire for the script. A couple of days of additional exposure will make them facilitators.  As new facilitators emerge, symposiums become more numerous and the process accelerates. A note about facilitators… angels in sackcloth, misfits and mad poets all make excellent facilitators, but there’s really no ideal type. Advertising executives and soccer moms/dads, elementary students, retirees, stock brokers – basically any articulate human has the capacity to facilitate.

•••

Last night my nephew texted me about my weekend of environmental training – what was it all about? I passed him the ATD trailer link but he was still baffled. I didn’t know what to tell him, how to give the gestalt. Hence the above post, my first independent assimilation exercise. ‘Script’ is my shorthand by the way, ATD folks call it the symposium materials.

Here’s one highlight. 34 of us spent the weekend working through the material and on the last day we broke into groups to practice presenting.  Nancy, Majandra, Keith, Darelyn and myself worked with Geri. As we took turns presenting, our unique talents and gifts were suddenly activated. We stumbled over the text and gaffed a bit, but underneath it all there was resonance. We had an enhanced quality of presence, we were upgraded.

Keith and I talked it over afterwards – it was the Earth. I have been actively practicing flowing Earth energy, feeling alive, being an Earth agent – but this was a new experience. The pages and pages of symposium material are the Mother’s point of presence. It’s not mere human gabble, science this and opinion that. It’s a direct connection, something I thought only existed in wilderness. My fellow presenters and I were amplified by offering it. Earth can speak to us directly, using actual symbolic language. Earth can make it’s own memes. Damn!

Burning forests is NOT environmentally friendly. That’s why Jeff Gibbs and M’Lynn Hartwell are organizing opposition to the boondoggle “biomass” electric generators being planned for Northern Michigan. You too can stand with the trees at the Traverse City Library, at 6:30 on February 22.

Here’s an image reprint from NMEAC, the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council. Links are not active.

The primary lesson I learned making Daughter of God or DOG is this – finishing a movie by yourself takes forever. To complete DOG and support ALM this year, I’ve assembled a team of two knob spinning freelancers and five adhoc experts. Here’s some quick introductions.

Art Department
x

Dan Kelly. Me.

Jonathan Kelly is a emerging artist working primarily in the digital domain. He’s been doing 3D modeling and game development for the past 4-5 years and has been expanding into editing and motion graphics with Premiere and After Effects respectively. He also has plans to pick up some programming to be able to extend and customize his toolkit. Jonathan has contributed significantly to the apocalyptic ambience of DOG with futuristic cars and a derelict cruise ship.
http://jonathankellyarts.com

Melonie Steffes is a painter and musician. She is also an awesome mom and no slouch with a power saw. Melonie went on location for DOG in the spring of 2006 as assistant director, fabrication specialist and set stylist. Though Melonie favors real world materials, she has been computer savvy for at least a decade and is the proud owner of a zippy new OSX platform. Melonie is going to be mixing and matching traditional and digital expression to expand the visual horizons of both DOG and ALM.
http://meloniesteffes.com

Business and Outreach
x

Julie Constantin is a financier and business magus. Her venture capital career boasts a bevy of brave new start-ups and she’s raised multi-millions for nonprofit organizations. She’s seriously connected, an iconoclast and very hard to kill. She too is an amazing mom. Julie will be turbo charging our projects with her expertise on management and social marketing and blowing our minds with her visions of the post future.
http://www.constantinpartners.com/

Editorial and Story Advisors
x

Faisal Azam is an editor, filmmaker and writer. Faisal has plenty of corporate clients you’ve actually heard of and though he could have sold his soul to the beast a thousand times, he remains a force of integrity and goodness in the universe. He also has bitchin’ cool long hair. He and his squeeze Erica live in some god forsaken corner of Queens, but if you show up he’ll juice you some carrots. Faisal has generously offered to recut DOG to bring out the tasty bits. He doesn’t realize it yet, but he’s going to get even more deeply entangled in our crazy schemes. With any luck, we’ll drag Erica along too.
http://www.faisalazam.com/

Jeff Gibbs is a filmmaker and composer. His hutzpah has powered such documentary blockbusters as Bowling for Columbine and Capitalism, A Love Story. In every camp he visits, his integrity and passion causes fur to bristle and minds to open. Jeff has had a profound influence on the development and philosophy of On Desire and Around Lake Michigan. His recent incarnation as a media savvy Lorax is galvanizing forest stewardship throughout Northern Michigan. He’s also rumored to be working on his own monumental cinematic expose of the human condition.

Steve Elrick is a painter, theatrical director and performer. He’s directed countless plays during his multi-decade career as the President of the Benzie County Players. Affable and gregarious, Steve is universally loved by the local arts community and anyone with half a brain would agree that he is the region’s premier arts advocate and ambassador. His acutely inquisitive nature and noble carriage merely hint at the full extent of his stellar character, a character only mildly tarnished by his crazed obsession with punning.

Andrea Maio is a filmmaker with an affinity for the experimental. She is a recent transplant to Benzie County, squatting her family’s cabin in Elberta when she’s not negotiating big deals in LA. Currently she’s pitching a food series centered around the Great Lakes region, featuring intimate portraits of cuisine artisans like the vintners of the Leelanau Pennisula. Andrea is also a gifted teacher, giving her a storytelling turbo charge. Her insightful guidance continues to inform the development of Around Lake Michigan.

But wait… Faisal is in New York, Julie’s in California, Jonathan and Melonie are in Michigan… Short of scorching the upper atmosphere with combusted kerosene, how can they effectively collaborate? Geographic and atmospheric impact are minimized by the Trickster Pictures Collaboratory.

Last year my documentary about sailing around the Hawaiian Islands morphed into a documentary about sailing around Lake Michigan. In September of 2009 I soloed 300 miles on the 16 foor catamaran Hello World, searching for sustainable civilizations.  The plan for 2010 is to sail the entire perimeter of Lake Michigan, over 1000 miles!

The name of the documentary is (appropriately) Around Lake Michigan, Search for Sustainable Civilizations. Here’s the pitch.

x

If we can’t figure out how to live in accord with the global life support system, human beings are doomed. Becoming sustainable is bigger than recycling or buying low flush toilets, it’s a reimagining of our presence on the planet.

As the operations of governments and corporations are often at odds with human survival, we can’t rely on their guidance. The adventure of survival belongs to each of us.

The fragments of a sustainable civilization already exist, we have but to gather and assemble them. All over the world folks are figuring out what it looks like, inventing and rehearsing the survivable future.

In the spring of 2010 Dan Kelly resumes his expedition aboard the 16 foot catamaran Hello World, sailing Around Lake Michigan to Search for Sustainable Civilizations. Dan picked the big lake because it’s close to home, but it doesn’t matter where we start. The answers are all around us – wherever we are.

x

Visit the Around Lake Michigan blog at http://ondesire.com and toss in your two cents. We’re looking for ideas – people to interview and places to check out along the shores of Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois.  Share your clues and rumors about sustainable civilizations. Offer feedback on the video vignettes,  comment on the posts or create your own posts about relevant issues. Blogging is fun!

Lots of visitors and activity at http://ondesire will translate into contributions of equipment, expertise and funding for Around Lake Michigan this spring.

Folks always wonder what they can do beyond insulating their homes and installing compact florescent light bulbs. Flooding On Desire with your awareness sprouts the seeds of our native weeds.

Choose one…

I can toss my two cents but I’ve never visited On Desire before. Register at http://ondesire.com

I’ve already registered and ready to contribute, let’s go! Log in at http://ondesire.com

I only want to visit On Desire for now. Visit http://ondesire.com

There was another way of doing things once, a way that has become marginalized and almost forgotten but perhaps not quite totally annihilated. A way that isn’t self destructive.

We all know the legend… the native people of several continents knew the way, lived it. Then the bad old European colonizers showed up with their plagues, organized ignorance and naked greed. The native people were nearly rubbed out and their ways was lost, almost.

If the people who practiced the old way couldn’t prevail in combat, then that’s the way it goes. One culture is stronger than another. Survival of the fittest, that’s natures way, right?  One might just as well believe that dumb Poles charged their horses directly at Nazi tanks in the battle of Krojanty.

You can turn a zillion dollars into 10 zillion by making a movie about it – big blue people, lots of explosions and a happy ending this time.

Meanwhile back on earth, we’re still fehgked. Our current behavior is killing us, we need to rediscover what’s been forgotten. Is there anyone left who remembers how it worked?

I am mostly invader stock, descended from European peasants and workers.  My mom’s parents had been farmers in Austria/Hungary. My dad’s parents were a mish mash of ingredients from the British Isles – Ireland, Scotland and England, and had been in America for several generations. However, there’s a rumor that my dad’s mom had some cherokee blood. Maybe I can claim lineage.

The bottom line is that this knowledge of the way is inherent in the earth’s systems, the wilds. If we just pay attention we can get back in alignment. Lineage is good – knowledge passed down and life ways maintained, but it’s built into the planet, we need look no further than the great big beautiful planet.

Inspired by http://www.suppressedhistories.net/

I thought I had a plan for making the mothership blog, but not quite. Now I am confused. Here’s a little map to illustrate the flow.

FORUM collaboratory

|| feeding

BLOG Mothership (holyboners.com)

BLOG Daughter of God (dogthemovie.com)

BLOG Around Lake Michigan (ondesire.com)

BLOG Awesomeshit (artisthouse.com/fellowship)

Now this may seem silly, but I am hung up in an aesthetic snag. Holyboners is about fortunate mistakes but does this premise apply to Ondesire as well? Holyboners was a fine premise for Daughter of God, but I don’t think it flies for ALM. Not that I am giving up this wonderful principle but I think I am moving beyond fortunate mistakes as my primary strategy. What then would be the guiding force for the mothership?

TT seems a likely candidate, but there’s two problems. Though the mothership blog is not exactly public, it will be feeding the satellite blogs, and that in theory drives traffic back to the mothership unless I password protect it. I can use TT when crossposting to ondesire certainly, but it still invites exploration.

TT requires finesse. It’s not something to implement overnight.

The second problem is the guy in California owns TT.com and wants $2500 for it. It would be lovely to own the entire set and I don’t mind paying him something, but get real – he’s had the sucker since 2002. 8 years of paying for it or $80 let’s guess and then whatever other overhead he’s got. $100 if he’s savvy. I’ve offered him $200. I doubt he’ll bite, camping is his business.

The point is I’d like to launch TT eventually, but to mastermind a huge media effort just to have the traffic stolen later? The name will become a traffic magnet once I get going, increasing the value of that domain.

I probably should have not said, “I’ll check back in a few months” – it’s a contradiction to my premise of preparing to launch a media campaign for a film. If he counters my $200, perhaps I’ve got a chance.

Let’s come back to earth. I’ve configured blogs that will work as they are. I can play a bit of a waiting game with Don from California though he knows via whois I own every TT but his .com and that I am trying to create a matched set. I am motivated to assemble it. He knows he can wait me out, but he’s not even bargaining. I can always visualize his help, hee hee. That’s my kind of leverage. $400. I can play the straw man who is bidding against me, though I would need another account. It’s oh so fun to strategize, but much easier just to visualize.

So the plan is… holyboners remains the name of the mothership for now. If we want to rename the mothership later, that’s fine. In the meantime let’s just assemble the infrastructure and move forward. Let’s test for awhile – the whole mothership concept might be not be feasible.

Before we go – distill into a domain name the guiding principles of my journey, of my practice. Another time, perhaps.

Afterwards… The beauty of visualization. After an interesting exchange of emails with Don I got TT.com for $380. How about that? $20 under the visualized price! Could it be any clearer?

crosspost: holyboners.com to ondesire.com

•••

You’re sure that’s Switzerland?

Positive.

It all looks the same.

You can’t see borders, they’re human creations. Nature couldn’t care less.

•••

Don’t shoot, their in Switzerland.

Good for them.

Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir

____________________

•••

Milord: Where are you from?

Kirk: An island.

Milord: What is this island?

Kirk: It’s called Earth.

Star Trek Season 3 Episode 23 “All Our Yesterdays”

____________________

We’ve been writing and writing. What has all this writing accomplished? Here’s what we know so far.

• Objectives for the project are identified
• The story centers around the guide character – his motivations, experience, starting point and transformation
• Several character development schemes have been proposed
• An insane/ingenious approach to generate cutaway material – xroll – is on the table
• Scene construction supporting non linear presentation has been outlined

to be continued

Holographic scenes are trembling moments of pure gestalt. Put them in a sequence and call that a movie.  Perhaps an alternate sequence reveals more. If you play it backward you hear, “I buried Paul.”

I’m imagining a burst of experience that also has a whole story inside it, everything is there.

Won’t a series of holographic scenes feel repetitive, like we are saying the same things over and over again? What if the things we are saying in each scene are slightly different. One thing about people is their layered motivation. I don’t shoot you because I hate you, that’s like so totally impoverished. I shoot you because I burnt my toast this morning AND you’re a brutal serial rapist AND you remind me of my older brother who I loved but was killed in the war then my parents kept his room like a shrine AND my girlfriend want’s to get married though I don’t really love her AND I dreamt of red roses last night AND…

It’s the layers of motivation that give the story depth. They can be completely separate tracks, none alone sufficient to prompt action, but together – viola!

What the hell is xroll? What if it’s not a gimmick, but a central organizing principle? It’s thoughts and experience, something like the memories of Spotless Mind and the dream sequences of Brazil. There’s symbolism and layers of meaning, but xroll doesn’t have to resolve in the sense that everything is sewed up nice and neat, it just has to evoke. Resolution is an evocation, everything comes together and wham, there’s an emotion there. The typical Hollywood resolution is “Yippee, we won!” Think about Casablanca, that resolution was bitter sweet comradely cynicism between Rick and the french cop. Dude, layers of emotion, complexity.

A turbocharged vignette that serves up an emotional cocktail to nuance the next moment, flows from xroll. After Effects verite, magical realism in motion.

A plot is the structure that sequences events, yes/no? No – a plot exists however the events are sequenced. Humans have a strong temporal sensibility, even if the events are out of order, we’ll put them back in sequence. On second thought, yes – maybe a plot is a structure that sequences events, maybe what we call plots are just applications of temporal sensibility. This scene leads to this scene which leads to this scene… we’ll find a plot given enough chunks.

If we think of xroll as the spine of the narrative, then perhaps the actual traveling and scenes of same are extensions of it. Xroll contrasts to b-roll in that it’s central as opposed to peripheral. It’s what we keep returning to, the continuity. In ALM, are the sailing moments Xroll? The best part of the trip certainly, the core of the adventure. Why not?

Looks like a script is about to happen, the old index card shtick.

Holographic scenes… moments which taste of eternity, fragments that contain the whole. Xroll… the threads between the scenes, revelations of the underlying fabric of reality.

I’m skating the edge of confusion and rapture here. If the above sounds like blather, there’s a 50% chance it is.

One additional element you might want to address/consider in the objectives piece is the inclusion (or not) of open social.  IMHO your content is so ripe for interaction in some manner.   Only you know to what extent that should happen but perhaps your daring and decisive edits could include elements of crowdsourcing or social applications to submit ideas/reactions.    It will be an acute balance as you are no doubt the virtual captain and it is your story.   But you have the strength and the risk profile to be a proxy and protector of your girl, earth.

Making movies – I’ve discussed how much work is involved and how there’s not enough me to go around.  I need to amp up 1) art / production and 2) fundraising and outreach. I am in the process of contracting two artists who have worked with me in the past, Jonathan Kelly and Melonie Steffes. Jonathan built 3D models for DOG (2007-2009), while Melonie constructed sets and props on location in Canada (2006). Together, we three will form an art department and manifest the rest of these movies.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been cultivating advisors and collaborators, polymaths all. Faisal Azam has generously re-imagined the editorial for DOG last summer and fall. Andrea Maio has been a savvy advisor for ALM, both from the story and fundraising perspective. Julie Constantin and I are exploring social collaboration and outreach for the projects, and she’s a funding powerhouse. Steve Elrick is a long time ally with great insights about expression and storytelling. Then of course there’s Jeff Gibbs, keeping it real.

I am pretty lucky to have all these folks, now I want to figure out how to bring them together and really tap their power. Is it a forum or what? I imagine resumes and portfolios too.

The last several ALM posts have been about clarifying DK’s journey, why exactly did he get on the boat? Is he really searching for sustainable civilizations or was there another reason? Why is this trip shrouded in mystery? Maybe he was really sailing off to commit murder, to make a remote rendevous with extra terrestrials, to perform a sacred ritual of summoning… with only the eyes of gods and satellites upon him. Why does he take this trip and why do we care?

He has a stated mission and maybe he is sincere, or maybe he’s obfuscating his true motives. Perhaps he is sincere and he achieves his mission, but maybe the achievement pales in comparison to an unexpected boon. If he is hiding something, is the secret mission ever revealed? Does he achieve his objective and what does his machinations have to do with the world at large? Does he even know why he is really going, or is he driven by sleeper programming?

It’s intriguing to dive deeper into a treatment, to treat the significant layers.

Whatever his reason for going, the mission doesn’t necessarily determine the outcome. It’s perhaps the difference between what he sets out to do and what actually happens that’s interesting. Someone wants something badly and is having difficulty getting it, having difficulty remembering what it is, changes his mind, get’s something better – the game has many variations. Deconstructing DK’s motivation is a worthy excercise, because there may be more here than even he realizes. BTW, it creeps me out in a fun way to view myself from a meta perspective, PKD style.

‘What’ DK is going after implies ‘why’ – and that’s the basis of the story. DK is going after super powers, he is searching for sustainable civilizations, he is channeling wild wisdom. The ending comes when the going after is done – DK demonstrates enhanced power, he has retrieved artifacts from the future, he shares the wisdom… or he gave up, failed, found something better, changed his mind, etc.

I think a start and end is cool, that is we understand why DK goes and can evaluate what he gets, decide for ourselves whether he was successful.

Last night coming out of Sanshiro Sugata I and II, I overheard someone say, “the message was be nice to your enemies”. They missed the point, Sanshiro wasn’t being nice to his enemies, he de-enemized them, that was the triumph of Judo. That’s the essence of Japanese martial arts as portrayed by Kurusawa, not to vanquish your enemies but to transform them. Sanshiro’s strength is his power to transform.

It’s very the ending that we understand what Sanshiro has actually accomplished, and without being hit over the head with it. Lovely. A student becoming a martial arts master is a perfect vehicle for this sort of trip, what does he set out to do, what is the completion of his journey?  Does he get the girl? Without question – after he gets himself.

Dan Kelly is on this journey of discovery, he’s off to become miraculous, he’s searching for sustainable civilizations, he’s just an average American with an FBI record. Whatever his journey is, it’s open ended. Perhaps he has a general idea why he is out there but he doesn’t know what he will find or how it will change him. ALM is his transformation, what he thinks he’s about and what actually happens to him. The premise is open ended, but at the same time we have to know whether he succeeded in doing what he set out to. We want to know his start and end points.

Andrea’s approach is to cut the interviews short and then just have DK summarize what he learned, fitting the pieces together as he goes. His process is interpreted, translated to flow as a story. After Effects verite. Whatever’s not relevant drops to the cutting room floor, or maybe we’ll flashback out of sequence for special emphasis. Essentially I (the director) take over the narrative, it’s about getting the audience inside DK’s head, his thoughts and experience. This sort of thing would typically get tied together with voice over… but wait!

If we want to make these meta observations, long leaps of intuition and connection, why not do it experimentally – xroll? Suddenly, xroll isn’t a contrivance, it’s a way to experience DK’s thought flow directly, or at least as translated to the silver screen. Beyond mere voice over – it’s visual voice over.

The guide’s voice is like glue that holds the disparate pieces together and makes connections. Xroll goes beyond the guide’s voice to create a visual and audio style or environment that tells us we are in thought space, a bridging mode, the spine of the narrative.

What if there were a visual structure, a visual reference that anchored everything back? It could be map based – folks would be expecting a map anyway so we could make the map mental but disguised as geography. Or imagine an interface or an idea web. Since film is linear, we use a linear design rather than a spatial web that has to be scrolled across. How are elements organized in linear fashion, what’s an effective system for that?

Duh, a plot. A plot is a linear structure for organizing information. Wow, 360 degrees in one post, phenomenal. A book (comic book) seems linear in theory but it’s not strictly linear in execution. We can open a comic to any page and jump forward and backward pretty much instanteously. Except in a social setting like a theater, this is increasingly the case with movies too. Forget about physically rewinding the VCR tape past the playback heads, that’s archaic technology. Now we can pop to anywhere on the timeline with a click, or jump between chapters. Movies are designed to spool from beginning to end, they are typically not designed to work as random access.

Another circle – ALM could be designed for random access. Xroll and holographic scenes support this. Even in traditional linear spooling, xroll is the scaffold for constructing the experience, it’s the spinal cord of a flashing, sparking neural network. There’s where the script starts, the central concepts adjacent, meshing and turning together. What are they? The great galloping thoughts of DK on his journey, the fundamental ideas that infect him along the way, he stages of his transformation.

When you love a lot of people, how do you keep the connections fresh? This is a quandary for me as I’m blessed with a large extended family. Blogs help me make big chunks of my life public.

With the explosion of activity on the net, ‘public’ doesn’t mean seen by everyone. The idea that privacy is dead is misleading. I can publish my life via this blog and 99% of humans will never know I exist. Only 25% of poeple on earth have access to the internet and maybe 50% of those read English. Only a tiny fraction of the remaining 1 billion will ever know about my blog, read one word of what I write.

Public really means available to my clan. Let’s face it, most of the folks who are willing to wade through this dross already know me. They are here because I invited them. My guess is that even with all my tagging and whatnot, most of my bloggees are going to have some RL connection to me.

Blogging is really  for my extended family – that’s today’s insight – and I ought to remind the tribe of that. I fantasized that I was writing for a future world, for the crowds who will be showing up once I hit my stride as a filmmaker, world saver, visionary. Reality check – I write for myself and for the crowd of simulations that run in my head, my cast of precious and very personal characters.

What a relief!

introduction for character Dan Kelly (everyman)

Unless you’re totally evil or from another planet, you are probably concerned about the future of this one, our earth. It’s old news to talk about how much trouble we are in, so I won’t waste time doing so. Basically, we are screwed. The mutant marriage between governments and corporations is pulling the plug on the global life support system, pretty soon there won’t be enough food, water, air to breath, etc. As I said, this is old news.

Scuttling around trying not to think about it – the end of the world as we know it. I got fed up with this 21 century duck and cover. Recycling, new light bulbs and donations to the Sierra club weren’t enough somehow. I wanted to get out into the world, learn and take action. Change my own destiny and maybe the rest of the world’s too.

We’ve been are our own enemies for at least 100 years, starting back when the father of public relations Edward Bernays got his start, training women how to smoke. I am talking about consumption, our shared madness. I’ve been committing suicide for the better part of my life, me and a few billion other people. We’re consumers. Can we find a way to really live? A better question might be, do we want to live? Can we find a way to enjoy the benefits of science and art without wiping out the foundation of our lives? Is there a sustainable civilization?

I decided to answer this question for myself – what would an excellent life feel like? I am not so different from other people, a civilization is made of individuals like me. Maybe if I found my life, I would find a tiny part of our collective future. Perhaps others could learn something from my search. I could bring a whole planet along with me, as I search for sustainable civilizations.

Options

Discuss postponing DOG to do ALM

Carl and Yves as mentors

introduction for character Dan Kelly (becoming miraculous)

During intense experience I often get a clue about my full potential, what I am capable of. If I get into a situation that calls for a little something extra then lo, something extra shows up. When there’s no other option but to tap into extraordinary energy, it’s always been there. I am going to call this extraordinary energy – magic.

Miracle making.

When I realized how much trouble the planet was in and assessed the task of healing all the damage, I realized that a miracle might be needed to turn things around. If we were past the point of no return on carbon loading, then the global life support system would crash and that pretty much means we’re doomed. I have an affinity for science, great stuff – astronomy, cognition, computers… love it. However, if I’ve got to go beyond science to save the planet, I don’t have a problem with that. If I’ve got to go with divine intervention, fine.

In 1976, after watching the first Star Wars I wondered where my light saber was. The feeling has never quite left me, even as I hit my 30s then 40′s and watched George Lucas dilute his vision in sparkle and schlock.

Over the years, my powers began to manifest. It started with healing – if I found a damaged body, my hands would tingle.

One day, Richard showed up in his wetsuit. He had been windsurfing near my house and injured his knee. I think he had problems with it in the past and had seen a doctor, so he was pretty distraught, “I know I am going to need surgery this time.” I asked him to sit down and share the food I had been making with another friend, Ann. He eased into a rocking chair and I brought him a plate. I felt the tingle. Richard was a professional massage therapist and so I was a little shy asking him if I could help him, but he cautiously accepted. We all sat around for an hour or so, eating and talking while I gently worked on this knee, following my intuition. Eventually he stood up and said that it felt better. He got in his car and went home. A couple of days later we checked in with each other. His knee was totally fine.

On a remote island, hiking at night, I discovered I could sense objects in the darkness, as if some kind of proximity radar had activated. It was an experience totally new to me, like growing another sense. I wondered how many other undocumented features the human body had.

One rainy evening I slipped off my friend’s fire escape and fell 12 feet to concrete, landing flat on my back. The impact was so intense that I involuntarily pissed myself. After lying there for a few moments, I felt compelled to move. Movement is contraindicated after a bad fall as spinal cords can be severed by broken bone, leading to permanent paralysis. Knowing this rationally, I ignored the calls of my friend Jon to “stay still, don’t move!” I painfully rolled over onto my stomach, got onto my hands and knees, and promptly passed out.

I had a vision. I was in a sort of control room, doing something really engaging and important. I felt both ecstatic and purposeful. Then, an annoying noise began to intrude. It was alien and at the same time vaguely familiar. It was a person’s name (what’s a person? what’s a name?) being repeated. I then realized that the name was somehow my name, that there was this other existence where that name belonged to me. My friend was back there, calling my name. I felt compassion for my friends who were very worried about me, perhaps I better go back and make them feel better. I left the ecstatic place and came back to consciousness with the friendly flavor of loamy soil in my mouth – I had buried my face in a little swirl of dirt and leaves by the floor drain. I told Jon I was back and asked him how long I had been out, he said about 20 seconds. Seemed like a lot went down in those 20 seconds.

I told him I was going to get up and he protested, he said an ambulance was coming. I asked him why and he said that his wife Laura had called 911 as soon as I had passed out. Now I was totally determined to get up and out of there, this was not an experience I cared to end in a hospital – and me with no health care! He asked me again not to move but I told him to trust me, I was alright and ready to get up. “I’ll help you” he said and I replied “No, don’t help me,” but he was having none of it. “I am going to help you!”

I slowly stood up with his arm on me, everything intact, amazing. I tried walking and that worked too, tho there was quite a bit of pain. We went back into their house and waited for the ambulance to arrive. I convinced the paramedics that I was fine and that I wasn’t going to ride with them. They made me sign papers and I headed home to a hot bath.

This incident was something of a demonstration. Did I slip off the deck by mistake? On a dark rainy evening, I tossed my body into the void, fell 12 feet down into darkness, missing iron handrails and push mowers by inches. I fit into a spatial keyhole with very little room for error and impacted flat backed on concrete, taking most of the impact on my coccyx. My head did not bang against the concrete, my neck didn’t break. I was up and walking within minutes and fully recovered within a month. I got xrays just to be sure and there were no fractures. Fluke, crazy luck? We make our luck.

I began to make my luck in earnest, to train my power decisively. I knew that if I told folks I was traveling around becoming magic, they might not get it. So I came up with this idea of searching for a sustainable civilization. Basically, one formula for healing the earth would be to replace the current status quo with something more humane and balanced. It might be a good idea to figure out what that looked like first and then I could cause it to be. This would be my cover story, but the main objective was to open my channels of power, to activate all my undocumented features. etc. If saving the earth was going to take a miracle, I would become miraculous.

introduction for character Dan Kelly (time traveler)

Yes, another movie about how much trouble we are in. It’s also about how we got out of the trouble. If you remember the future as I do, you’ll know that we almost didn’t make it. Did I mention that I am a time traveler? Actually time refugee is a slicker fit.

Anyway, we almost didn’t make it. Looking back from the future, it’s much easier to see just how precarious the present is, but of course it’s not so obvious if the now is all you’ve ever known.  At the risk of sounding optimistic, I think the human race learned a valuable lesson by going through this, so in the after-future we won’t likely make the same mistakes we made in the pre-present.

To simplify the tenses, I’ll just refer to the present as the past. So how did we do it? We found our survival by looking for it. Folks just got bored with killing themselves and decided to try to find a little life. Some walked, some rode bicycles, some let the wind blow them hither and yon. They were like backwards archeologists – instead of searching for past civilizations, they went searching for future ones. The theory goes like this – since we decided to survive – then we would. That implied there was a way to survive, and probably the seeds of that way were scattered all over the place, just waiting to sprout. If folks found those seeds, then they could extrapolate what the seeds might grow into. Viola, the future. That’s how time travel works, btw or at least did work back in the day… that is, right now.

Let’s relive your ‘about to be’, discover what has almost happened and reenact a search that so many have yet to make. A sailboat I think and an inland ocean. I will be your guide of how we survived, how we didn’t cook the planet nor allow ignorance and greed to prevail – as it so ominously threatens to do so AT THIS VERY MOMENT, again, even though that may not be totally obvious. I am catching you at your most receptive, cause when the shit starts to hit the fan, there won’t be time to watch documentaries, you’ll be too busy building dikes and fending off looters. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Who is this character Dan Kelly, ALM guide? Why is the audience intrigued by his journey?

Based on my discussion with Andrea, I can’t assume the audience will understand my assumptions and motivations regarding ALM. The 900 lb gorilla in the room is me, this project springs from my own crazed mind. Andrea’s golden nugget – the audience doesn’t need to agree with me, they just need to be able to get me, to find me plausible.

It’s easy to forget just how weird a cat I am. The audience might not believe I am for real, so the project provides context. It’s helpful to step back and think of myself as a fictional character that has to be introduced to the audience. Rather than flooding the screen with a DK fest, I like the idea of providing just enough character development to intrigue and maybe vex a tad. Who the hell is this guy?

There are two objectives for ALM, to establish rapport between my character and the audience, and to present a pragmatic magic primer aka Terrorist Training Films TM. The pragmatic magic can be integral to the character development, or it could happen incidentally without ever being named, just oozing across. That’s a key question – do I put the magical agenda front and center or allow it to suffuse the project, giving it to the audience by osmosis? For the character Dan Kelly magic is an underlying rhythm, a given. He brings it to the fore only occasionally, either through his musings or by getting kicked in the ass by the big boot of circumstance.

These are worthy distinctions because initially I didn’t think much about my own role in this, I had the idea that I would somehow be this ghost collaging the insights of others. I was just one of those others, a host. Now I see that the whole thing is driven by DK, his choice to go in the first place, his decision where to stop, who to see. Why? What’s he about? What makes him do this? If we don’t know, nothing makes much sense.

I am test driving different versions of the ALM guide, just to see what pops. So far they are…

ALM guide, becoming miraculous – out of the closet about the true nature of ALM, provides ‘evidence’ of magic, no shame.

ALM guide, time refugee – a science fiction enthusiast, slipping into iconic characters as a way to speak about the unspeakable, “you’ve seen it in movies, now live it – THE END OF THE WORLD”

So the guide discussion is this – how much DK is enough?

2.1 Objectives common to both projects…

2.2 Objectives of DOG

2.3 Objectives of ALM

2.3.1 convey the main character (premise / starting point) to establish rapport. He becomes a compelling guide / proxy for the audience (get inside his head)

2.3.1.1 snafu

2.3.1.1.1 life support system threatened

2.3.1.1.1.1 suicidal status quo – centuries in the making

2.3.1.1.1.1.1 -> empires/colonies -> industrial revolution -> consumer culture ->

2.3.1.1.1.2 ignorance on purpose – it’s not an accident, ok?

2.3.1.1.1.2.1 we’re supposed to stay stupid – school, culture, food, jobs, religion

2.3.1.1.1.3 toxic training makes consumers culpable

2.3.1.1.1.3.1 individual impact multiplied by billions

2.3.1.1.2 healing prevented (deliberate)

2.3.1.1.2.1 sustainable civ already exists in fragmented state (indigenous species) but

2.3.1.1.2.2 entrenched powers keep future artifacts obscure and scattered

2.3.1.1.2.3 acquisition and assembly discouraged (there are no options)

2.3.1.1.3 oh and BTW, we’ll need a miracle

2.3.1.1.3.1 carbon past point of no return

2.3.1.1.3.2 invisible opponents

2.3.1.1.3.3 trained to go insane, each of us our own enemy – soldiers attacking their own supply lines and themselves

2.3.1.2 our choice

2.3.1.2.1 decide to thrive

2.3.1.2.1.1 with rigorous persistance most anything is possible

2.3.1.2.1.2 find out what we really are

2.3.1.2.1.3 notice and question self imposed limits

2.3.1.2.1.4 live our bliss

2.3.1.2.1.5 identify (equate survival) with a robust global life support system

2.3.1.2.2 spread the love

2.3.1.2.2.1 do yourself first, then bring others along with shared techniques, knowledge, resources

2.3.1.2.2.2 vigorous practice of art / science to inspire and translate

2.3.1.2.2.3 build and celebrate community

2.3.1.2.3 find a way

2.3.1.2.3.1 pay attention

2.3.1.2.3.2 have an idea

2.3.1.2.3.3 start anywhere

2.3.1.2.3.4 have fun, have an adventure

2.3.1.2.3.5 repeat

2.3.1.3 becoming miraculous

2.3.1.3.1 simplicity rather than convenience

2.3.1.3.2 discovering the body’s undocumented features

2.3.1.4.3 presence

2.3.1.3.4 beyond what we know

2.3.1.3.5 that which does not kill me… big adventure

2.3.1.3.6 feel it into being

2.3.1.3.7 ecstatic evidence

2.3.2 illustrated guide to post consumer pragmatic magic, or becoming miraculous

2.3.2.1 objectives don’t have to be revealed to the audience, they just have to be achieved. ALM never needs to explain that the point of the project is to show the audience how to become miraculous, it just has to do it. this is just the story of one man who thinks he can become miraculous and how he goes about it. one does not have to believe it’s possible to want to watch. he’s insane, how interesting. it doesn’t have to hold itself out as a manual for magic making, even though that’s exactly what it is – a terrorist training film. it can also hold itself out as a magic manual in a sort of tongue and cheek style, hiding in plain sight.

2.3.2.2 definition of miraculous and magic

2.3.2.2.1 is the magic only in my head then? is it a shared reality or private hallucination – that’s the question the audience asks. Dan – first we imagine the subtle energy, then we feel it… what’s the difference? first we have an idea, then we work towards realizing it… what’s the difference?

2.3.2.2.2 Miracles are not uncommon, they are the norm.  Western folk are indoctrinated to ignore and even to deny them. If evidence of magic is presented, it must fit into a impoverished box which removes the very components that enable – participation. My experience of reverence is a connection to the experiment – I am this too. I am inextricably tangled in the test.

2.3.2.2.3 remember, we say demonstrate, we say illustrate. that’s doable. Rewriting the accepted definition of miracle does not cut it. What folks want to see is a suspension of physics, or the manifestation of an entity that is not easily cataloged by Darwin. What is proof to the documentary audience? Personal accounts? Recreations? Graphs and charts? An excellent question. When we say illustrate, what do we mean?

2.3.2.3 what’s miraculous about ALM? what did i do or experience that was miraculous? how did I invite magic?

2.3.2.3.1 connection to wilderness

2.3.2.3.1.1 this experience is available to those who can slip the default conditioning. it is perhaps a gift in these strange times to be able to feel the earth, be present in the wild places and ‘get it’. It’s pure feeling, a heady cocktail of emotions – elation, reverence, acute perception, open and available, power. For those who don’t know, can’t know, it’s a joke, a cliche. Thier scoffing laughter is zombie conditioning, keeps us all from knowing what we are, the sound of self loathing. Instead, allow robust joy to well up inside and perhaps laugh maniacally – like a mutant ape who has busted the lock on his cage, or chuckle gently – at the wonder of being anything at all, even just alive.

2.3.2.3.2 opening to the moment – release of temporal conditioning

2.3.2.3.3 men who ride mountains – discovering extra capability

2.3.2.3.4 my tribe is everywhere – expand and celebrate

2.3.2.3.5 beyond my self

2.3.2.3.6 risk alone

2.3.2.3.7 human and hobie and wind and water = one

2.3.2.3.8 miracles are repeatable, verifiable. reality as experienced by a flexible consciousness

2.3.2.3.9 strange things happen when communing with a planet sized entity that is your own personal starship. the very components of my body are of earth origins

2.3.3 open the process, share the process

2.3.3.1 songwriting and composition – lyrics about the journey

2.3.3.2 not only where are the artifacts but how to recognize and document them DIY. Distributing the on desire approach (crowd sourcing)

2.3.3.2.1 letters, drawings, audio, video

2.3.3.3 video remixes

2.3.3.4 ttf – having your own direct experience, trusting your own direct experience

√

2.1 Objectives common to both projects…

2.1.1 completion in 2010 OR new funding and remake

2.1.1.2 if new funding and remake,  some version of the original becomes a fund raising vehicle, proof of concept, extensive previsualization etc.

2.1.1.1 if completion, then quality (hits personal aesthetic, key collaborators thumbs up)

2.1.2 expansion of post production team with dynamic and effective work approach, tuned workflow, ideal gear mix and just enough knowledge

2.1.3 success

2.1.3.1 accepted 3 oscar qualifying festivals 2011

2.1.3.2 awards / recognition for innovation/experimental, visual impact/effects, story

2.1.3.3 vehicle for future funding, collaboration, career

2.1.3.4 500,000 views in first 6 months after release

2.1.3.5 favorable reviews and appreciation by relevant players

2.1.3.6 spanish or chinese subtitle versions

Good Earth, have you been reading the recent posts from http://ondesire.com and http://holyboners.com? I have – and they are beginning to spin out of control. Some sort of fugue state is being entered into here, so many eggs are cracking wide I expect there’s one heck of a mega omelet on the horizon. I haven’t even done my review of Cameron’s Avatar in 3D or last night’s dinner with my favorite Africans. Let’s get this sorted out right now.

The Questions

What are my objectives for the two current projects?

What’s my plan to finish them / take them to the next level?

The Answers

I’ve got a mission, so let’s start there, Activating global consciousness to steward and expand the wilds. It’s a good mission, and one would expect my current projects to be in alignment. How then do these two movie projects support my mission?

1.0 Mission

1.1 DOG

Daughter of God is my most ambitious narrative project to date. It’s a surreal exploration of how picturesque and hilarious a crippled global life support system can get. The backstory also explores colonization and exploitation on a planetary scale. With this project I model my theories, channeling the answers to the questions that Fia asked last night – who benefits from the demise of an entire planet? Follow the money, follow the extraction of wealth. Who’s targeting all the world saviors, whose running this prison?

So Daughter of God is a vehicle for piercing the veil. It’s a way of figuring some things out, of playing with the story. Ah, there’s an insight.

What if the story has fragments, alternate eddies and branches? What if the edit is actually scrambled up to suggest alternate possibilities, variant explanations, visions beyond the existing narrative where all the backstories intermingle and cross pollinate? Y’all getting this? That’s how we rebuild the edit, with intersecting time lines and outcomes. Moments that suggest, fragments.

That means that the best moments are extracted and then interwoven as flash sidewise or parallel possibility, while remaining perfectly ordinary, like brushing teeth. Little diversion this, but worthy.

In summary, DOG supports the mission by being a way to better understand what might actually be going on in RL, suggest in ways like the i ching, never the same movie twice, ya get me? Got cha.

1.2 ALM

Seeking the artifacts of a future sustainable civilization is pragmatic action. No external authority is going to assemble our optimal existence and conveniently implode. We are responsible, I am responsible. The future surrounds us, fragments of annihilation and transcendence for the taking. We choose what we gather, I choose. That’s ALM, humans taking responsibility for our collective destiny, one Dan at a time. An adventure of autonomy and connection, of becoming miraculous and capable of planet saving. A hero’s journey waiting for each of us.

It’s about me, as Andrea pointed out, and my reinvention disguised as a sailing trip. Is it universal? Does it translate beyond boats and big lakes? Only if folks share my starting point. They don’t have to agree, they just have to get me. Stepping back, I realize that I am a character in this story.

The Dan Kelly character has a premise, aspirations, a costume, a budget, skills, assumptions, experience and a history. What do we need to know about him so that we can travel with him, suspend our disbelief, make his joy and pain our own?

He is a treehugger, an artist, a science fictionary, a warrior, a lover, a mystic, a caretaker, a technologist, a dreamer, a visionary. My character needs to be introduced to the audience, my character wants something badly and is having trouble getting it, my character undergoes a transformation. Don’t we all?

In summary, ALM supports the mission because it’s about what happens when WE decide to thrive. As my glorious destiny relies on the repair and care of the global life support system, I must become capable of healing planets. I must discover and eventually implement sustainable civilizations. If these epic outcomes are beyond the scope of my present self, then I must purposefully transform and become miraculous. That is the journey worth taking, the true and vital journey of ALM, common to all.

Epilogue

Many folks will find the premise crazy, so I’ve got to make a solid case that my character actually believes that he can develop extraordinary abilities and has ‘evidence’ to support it. Then even if they think my character is crazy, they’ll go on the journey with him. This crazy character will venture out to become a super hero and the surprise ending will be – maybe he was not so crazy after all.

The audience attitude might begin with ‘the poor delusional fellow is captivating’ then gradually progress to ‘wait, maybe he’s making sense’ and finish with ‘whoa, where do I sign up?’ It’s a cognitive hack for extracting folks from the suicidal hypnosis of dominant culture. Start them off with the idea that they are watching a crazy person running amuck, then give them cause to question that premise and in so doing examine their assumptions about what it means to be rational in a culture bent on apocalypse. Wonko the Sane lived outside the asylum (and he got his movie made).

I scanned and posted the audience feedback cards within a week of the Evening of Exploration, but over a month went by before I read and sorted them into categories. Why did it take so long? This question triggered a small crisis – Am I loosing momentum on the ALM project? Do I have a plan? What have I accomplished in the 3 months since the end of the trip?

This is one of those exciting blog moments where I have to grope around for a bit. Flashback!

October – December 2009

In early October Hello World and I returned home with about 30 hours of HD video. During the next two weeks I converted the video, shot a visual inventory and edited Evolution, the repair and packing sequence. I sorted, cleaned and stored all the gear. Hitching a ride back to Brooklyn with my brother Steve on 10/20, I settled down to catalog the video and post excerpts to the ondesire blog. Was there a feature length documentary lurking in there somewhere?  In theory, a methodical review of the raw material would allow major themes to percolate.

Watching the video and seeing all the folks who supported ALM started me fantasizing about throwing a big party. I also wanted to introduce more of my Northern Michigan tribe to the project and expand it’s audience. I imagined organizing an event around a rough cut of the movie and including structured feedback both to foster interaction and create a sense of participation. I was planning to return to to Northern Michigan for Thanksgiving anyway, maybe a month was enough time to plan an event and cut a rough…

The Evening of Exploration was born!

Turns out that 1 month was not enough time to become familiar with all the footage, edit something coherent AND organize / promote a public exhibition. I dedicated a lot of energy to getting the theater filled – repeatedly emailing the scattered tribe, blogging, creating enticing imagery and composing press releases. To expand and diversify the audience, I invited Gretchen Eichberger to present choreography and the ukulele duo Saldaje (Melonie Steffes and Shawn Anchak) to play music. The price I paid for a nearly full theater was less time for editing.

Sweating bullets that the bumpy NYC to Chicago Amtrak ride would ding the stack of sata hard drives humming at my feet, I finally found a decent introduction – only four days before the Evening. My brother and sister helped me hash out a protocol for audience feedback in the rental car from Chicago to Beulah. Over the holiday, I grappled with the stark realization that my rough cut would NOT be the kernel of a coherent structure, but rather a smorgasbord of loosely connected ideas.

The Evening was fun and I reconnected with many excellent people. My original objectives were achieved to varying degrees…

Celebrate those who helped with the project

Seeing themselves onscreen often makes folks excited. Just being invited to a special event is nice too, especially if there’s food and  interesting art. I could’ve done a better job of recognizing the collaborators if the movie had credits and / or if I mentioned specific names during my introduction. Basically, that didn’t happen because I ran out of time.

Connect regional folks to the project, build community support and awareness

It’s been over a month since the evening, so if I am planning on following up and consolidating this audience, I had better do it in the next couple of days. The evening did facilitate a productive feedback session with Steve Elrick. Also, a fantastic new friend and ally has appeared as a direct result of the Evening’s intense promotion. Andrea Maio is a film maker who missed the Evening but tracked me down after. We had a blast hanging out and she has since decided to relocate to Benzie County. I’ll be linking to her blog as soon as it’s up. Finally, Susan Koenig wrote an article about the Evening that may or may not have appeared in the Benzie Record Patriot, I’m still waiting to hear.

Get some structured feedback

I threw a variety of material at the audience, curious only to know what stood out, what made an impression. My feedback protocol wasn’t all that rigorous because the editing had barely begun. The responses were useful, the same five moments were mentioned by 52% of the audience. Several folks disregarded my instructions and offered detailed advice about editing and some even felt compelled to trot out their personal angst… awesome! I am so grateful for the responses, the only people I have a beef with are those that didn’t bother to fill out cards – like my brother and father. Geez, relatives can be a real pain.

Deadline motivates

Setting an intense deadline was both good and bad.

Rather than taking that the time to move methodically through the video, I was forced to slam together disparate fragments just to have something to show. This deferred the real edit process by a month. As the Evening got closer, I felt very scattered and struggled to let go of my expectations. I fretted that telling a disjointed story would actually deter the audience from following ALM’s progress. Key elements of the event were scaled down or abandoned because time was tight.

I am only now recovering from the trauma of promising a little too much.  Deadlines are productive only when matched to specific outcomes well within the range of the possible. Deadlines can have an element of risk, they can stretch our identity and push our personal envelope – a little. Finessing the balance between what we are and what we want to be is the art of the setting deadlines. It’s wise to take an inventory of variables first – how many new things will have happen at once? Even for a turbo charged polymath, attempting more than 2 new things is asking for trouble.

The Evening would have been a better if I had conceptualized the event as presenting ‘selected excerpts’, rather than promising a ‘rough cut’. The problem was in my own mind, most folks don’t know the difference between selected excerpts and a rough cut anyway. Crazy expectations caused me to wig out.

December 2009 – January 2o1o

I whiled away another 2 weeks in Beulah before renting a Hyundai and returning to Brooklyn. Once back, I bit the bullet and dropped $2000 on 20 x 1 TB hard drives for cloning my archive. I need about 6 drives more to finish, but at least now I can travel with ALM. I finally tallied the feedback results and posted some comments. Andrea suggested a new tack for the project that I like. I’ve been reorganizing the blogs in preparation for the next push and feel the power flowing back. So maybe I am not groping anymore.

I’ve finally gone through the response cards from the Evening of Exploration and tallied the results. Admittedly, asking for ‘the most memorable moment’ was not a very rigorous approach to feedback but then the Evening of Exploration was about more than feedback. The primary objective was to gather the Northern Michigan arts community together and introduce them to the project. Also, setting an intense deadline was intended to amp up my post-production process.

I’ll do a more rigorous evaluation of the Evening and it’s objectives later, but for now let’s look at the responses. Of the 86 cards, there were about 131 different moments mentioned, including advice about editing and other random critique. Let’s keep it simple and concentrate on the top 5 moments, which are mentioned in 52% of the total responses. The top five break down as follows…

• 32% (positive) Tanya and Homegrown
• 20% (mostly positive, several strong objections) Cherry pit spitting monolog
• 18% (positive) Hello World repair and packing sequence
• 15% (positive) Rich Branstrom – builds things from trash, influences others
• 15% (positive) Ray Minervini – cities for cars, not for people

Homegrown

I haven’t spoken with Chris and Tanya Winkelmann of Homegrown since November and I’m excited to let Tanya know that she stole the show. Some might think that organic food is old news, but the Winkelmanns’ story illustrates that it’s not, that education about the integrity of our food supply is vital. Tanya and Chris’s story is not only about edible education, but also “action instead of just thought or talk”. Indeed. Of the top five moments, Tanya’s interview grabbed 1/3 of attention.

Cherry Pit Spitting Monolog

The cherry pit spitting monolog came in second with mixed reviews. Several folks objected (strongly) to me talking with my mouth full! Love it. My intention was to break up the heavy ponderings with a little visual comedy and emphasize rather than minimize the cherry pit spitting. For the record, I don’t think I actually thought this through on location – I was just having breakfast and doing my usual on camera update. I had happened to put some wild cherries into my porridge.

The critical feedback helped me realize that I am not communicating how much work the Search for Sustainable Civilizations was. I ate while filming because there were only so many hours in the day and finding a way to combine two activities was a boon. I have to give more context – during the cherry pit spitting breakfast I was totally worn out and sore from sailing the day before. It’s not that I want sympathy from the audience but based on the almost angry comments about proper manners folks don’t get that my choices were constrained, that I was wiped out. Most of the positive comments focused on the content of the monolog, which is encouraging.

Hello World Evolution

My new filmmaker friend Andrea described the Hello World evolution sequence as my sparkling personality showing through. I am pleased that it worked for the audience because I put some solid time into the edit – I think it reflects my pleasure as an editor. It’s got several elements that I like – maker ethic, comedy, excitement and an epic feeling thanks to Gustav Holst. I actually see it as something of a placeholder for a more polished sequence, so it’s really encouraging to know that it’s getting high marks already. As a side note, the rest of Andrea’s comment goes like this, (paraphrase)… “in contrast to the Hello World sequence, your actual on camera monologs don’t really reflect how charming and funny you are in real life.” Gotta love that gal.

Ritch Branstrom, Adhoc workshop

Ritch was actually mentioned for more than trash art, so I broke the comments referring to him into categories. He made it to the top five for all the mentions of junk artist. Some folks also wrote about his energy or how well comes across as a character. Frankly as cinematographer and editor, I’ve got to take credit for his on screen vibe… through the magic of cinema, I made him seem like an amazing guy – another triumph of art over reality. Kidding! Ritch really IS amazing, honest.

Ray Minervini

Ray Minervini made an impression on folks with his “cities are designed for cars and not for people” line. That really seemed to resonate. Ray was really able to paint a picture with words and folks got it.