Weekly Catch#2.4: Not For Sale(notes) 🎣
how i got unstuck in 2024, Jenny Holzer, Equilibrium, For Love of Ivy, polyrhythms, Collective Intelligence & new morning Prayer
“Our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared.”
- Barack Obama (2008 Acceptance Speech)
📣 Announcements/Updates;
I am so so so tired, but I’m doing the very best that I can.
If you couldn’t make it through epistle-i, there is a surprise coming out this month…If my argument was unclear in first meditation, you can get the chance to listen in a new form.1
📸 BTS Scoop:
I enjoy finding complexity in the simplest ideas. But James is holding me accountable to stripping them down and now we are almost ✅
designed by MJ2—we’re killing it #POE4L
dear PeopleOfEarth,
Reading too much at once:
Final Cut by Charles Burns (finished this)
The Score by C. Thi Nguyen
Dilla Time by Dan Charnas
One Billion Americans by Matthew Yglesias
from episode 6 of Beneath the Surface
Just started the Maintenance of Everything by Stewart Brand:
“Maintenance is absolutely necessary and maintenance is optional. It is easy to put off, yet it has to be done. Defer now, regret later. Neglect kills.” (Maintenance, Brand, pg.7)
I’m super excited about this book in particular because I found out that he is the founder of Whole Earth Catalog!!
Give one a read right now. It inspired my project from it’s core and gave me the idea of geodesic domes!
🛸🌎 We Live.
&& finding this made my Tuesday really awesome, pace layering has been on my chrysalis wall ever since reading HARDWARE by Reggie James, so Brand was in my mind in a way I never knew. Hoping Maintenance will help me simulate his mind.
Sentimental mood: how i got unstuck in 2024
it has been a long journey
I used I feel so alone in my work and in the world. I thought I was an IRL alien3, nothing was connecting, nothing felt like it mattered, surprised me, or had any depth worth sharing. Everything was a chase or a drain.
Even with faux passion, I was forced ‘to be on’ all day; so inevitably I went looking for causes and answers, and discovered that I was trapped ‘in a ghetto’4 of my own architecture. And as soon I started breaking every rule, I realized true value was assigned by me. That I could create my own life.
I knew this when I was younger, and now this wisdom is finally returning to me. Thanks to play, thanks to infinite play, and love, forgiveness, and more love. I was able to practice Freedom through reinforcing this deep awareness. Thank you James Eugene Ambroise IV for your rigorous role in this rebirth of my humanity.
But I also created that light for myself by choosing to wake up each day. I started breaking every rule, listening to myself, following randomness, risk and getting every bit of fulfillment in return for giving in to life. All of a sudden, I wasn’t alone anymore—I never was... I also realized I wasn’t fighting any one enemy, and I wasn’t competing against anyone either—I couldn’t!!
I was in love. With myself, with life, people, ideas, inspired by all, with colleagues of the spirit whø saw me, with dialectical interlocutors I could access through technology and art; dead and alive, I had People across space and time who loved and related to the real me.5
Now I see signs everywhere. Always listening. Always colliding with ideas.
Spirally, what lit my fire as a 5 year old proclaiming to be a future President of the Unites States, comes in with a flame thrower today to make sure I can experience the world I love before I go, and see the people I love do what they’re here on Earth to do.
We will be Free.
Jenny Holzer
skip this section if you already love her as much as I do
Jenny says, the medium comes first. Sometimes that can be true, I would modify this for more precision and say that you should reason with the medium first, but not let it conform you. A medium has the message yes, but so do you, thus the environment like yourself, must be examined, as it does not live on the surface.
Our environment is broken because we’re stuck in an in-between... Remember, concepts come first so it is now our burden to adapt our own forms to transport our message. Jenny has taught me a whole new way of perceiving of language as a technology itself. Very Kevin Kelley-esk.
Jenny shows how making art for people who live in the world is all about the connection between language and agency, you don’t have to “talk” to communicate something true. You have to make them see you and say something true when they’re looking.
“Art resides in the concepts it sets out to communicate and not the form of the artistic object.”- (MACBA)
What I didn’t know was that she inspired Virgil6 with the quotes for Nike…
I also didn’t know this was Jenny too at the time, but I really really loved her inflammatory essays at SF MoMa. They played a major role in me confronting truth’s I just didn’t have the courage to admit to myself.
Imagine ALL the Peøpleeee 🌎
random fun fact, this is one of Michael Jackson’s two favorites songs, the other is Man In The Mirror ;)
“Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion tooImagine all the people
Living life in peace, you”- this is what songs used to say, the coherence!!7
Equilibrium(2008)
I could only dream to fight as well as Christian Bale, what a bad-ass…
this is what our society looks like inevitability8 —I guess…
When death comes for me, I hope it finds me in love like Cleric Partridge with W.B. Yates:
“But I, being poor have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
though the ultimate lesson:
“The first thing you learn about emotion is that it has its price. A complete paradox. But without restraint, without control...emotion is chaos.”
- Jurgen
Abbey Lincoln in For Love Of Ivy (1968)
Ever since listening to Freedom Day with new eyes, I’ve really fallen in love with Abbey Lincoln’s “self-war” voice. It was very sweet, and in 1968 for Tim to appear to have authentic love for Ivy is really beautiful.9
Wiser me, reinterpreted this knowing there is no wrong choice. Only the fact that she chose. Maybe it was right, but not for the reasons they might have wanted us to recognize.10
James Yancey (Dilla Time)
I found this performance while reading Dilla Time by Dan Charnas this week, and it was so grounding to feel and remember what real performance looks like. I am hopeful for the future of hiphop, it will transcend these empty times.
In Dan Charnas book, I re-learned my least favorite music theory concept… pa..pa..poly-rhythms…11 it ended up being incredibly important as a new approach to music theory.
Music conveys a story of geography and our expectations of that story. While classical music built a foundation on "perfect time," Charnas explains that these rules were European ideas. Other cultures developed their own rhythmic patterns that diverged from this “perfect time”. However, if you’ve studied the Romantic era like ya girl, you know it was actually Chopin and Brahms12 who first formally introduced polyrhythms into the Western music.
By the twentieth century, African Americans developed a technique called "ragging." Much like "dragging," to "rag" is to play with the placement of notes while maintaining a steady pulse. This technique, placing notes in seemingly random, odd places—became a way to express cultural freedom and emotional defiance.
From ragging, Jazz was born, followed by the Blues.
fun fact btw: Jazz and blues were the dominant genres on Earth for 35years… then rock and roll was born from Blues with Elvis being inspired by Rosetta Tharpe.
The ghost of the African spirit continues to energize America and the Earth overall through this music. It’s a complex realization to have without experience with it, but polyrhythmic music is more than theory to make music that sells globally; it was the salvation of my ancestors and the succession of culture and passing of knowledge, aka the birth of HipHop. Those feelings are hard to quantity, but the results speak for itself—I’m Free.
🐝 Collective Intelligence #betterTogether
What we think is perception is usually recognition13. It’s called motivated perception.14 The only way to access our full understanding of the world is by aggregating multiple independent perspectives. Activating collective intelligence within us. There are 4 steps Lorenzo Barberis Canonico outlines in this TED:
Decentralization: Make sure all your information isn’t originating from the same place.
Independence: Privacy is important to respect the right to dissent.
“The foundation to dissent from the crowd is the foundation of original thought.”
Ex. Peer pressure is so powerful that in a room of people claiming that 2 + 2 =5, most people will give into that peer pressure and start saying it as well. Even if they know deep down it is wrong.
Aggregation (Unification): If we don’t unite we cannot converge on unique insights collectively. Even if you’re a homogenous collective, you won’t be able to learn. You must be different and united. To become a community.
Our nature, systems, and infrastructure aggregate information in a way that hinders us from seeing what someone else sees. So we should use that to our advantage as a feature instead of optimizing for it like it is a bug.
Diversity (Cognitive): Not a visual diversity, a cognitive diversity is what is needed--since reason is our distinct faculty as humans.
Collective intelligence is low in the human race right now. Our reasoning faculties even amongst intellectuals in universities are lacking...We are society of ‘dividuals’ trapped in echo chambers, who have forced ourselves in polarized cycles of intense emotion and boredom.
Collective intelligence needs an idea meritocracy to steer itself. Dialectical bootstrapping is a good exercise for this bias, try to truly imagine that you are someone else and simulate their thinking to understand their why.
Become friends with someone very opposite of yourself today, and you’ll help your brain see new images. Love people truly opposite of yourself, to see an uncompromising15 reflection.
To create a Free society for all we need one grounded in collective intelligence, and like Obama eludes to it starts at the individual level.
New Morning Prayer ☀️
(if I “can’t remember” what I’m grateful for, I say one more chance 8 times and thank you)
One more chance to rise again.
One more chance to see the sun.
One more chance to breathe fresh oxygen.
One more chance to love.
One more chance to dream.
One more chance to work hand and feet.
One more chance to feel.
Once more chance to live again.
Thank you for one more chance
Thank you for these tired hands and weary soles.
I will get to work now. Have a good day!
~pf🕺
maybe i could say dialectic and artistic expression
MacKenzie James
& URLien
ghetto as used here:
“We are secluding ourselves in ideological ghettos. We don't have to debate rationally or even be exposed to ideas that contradict ours. We have our own news sources. We exchange ideas mostly or exclusively with people who agree with us, and troll those who don't.”—John McCain and Mark Salter
Real me is what you hide….it’s the beautiful smile you straighten because you “look better like this”, that piece of spinach stuck in your teeth saying hello to everyone you’re speaking to, your loud squeaky voice echoing in a serious room, the ideas you bury that makes your brain throb, that jibble you hit when you get some ice cream! Real looks ugly, real feels awkward, real smells spoiled, real to ears is infectious, and tastes like fear... yes, it sucks to be real, but that is reality. 😐
inglory Virgil seed🌎🙏🏾 (21’)
the kind of history I’ll have to intentionally teach my little seeds, if humanity fails, and continues to produce mediocre music!!
I hate using this word… so I’ll defer to McLuhan
In the context of a society where love is often portrayed surface level and uncomplicated to be understood.
Coughs in symbol*
don’t ask me to clap it…
(Europeans themselves)
Motivated perception is the psychological phenomenon where individuals perceive, interpret, and attend to the world in ways that align with their desires, goals, and needs.
harsh or relentless.
“the uncompromising ugliness of the era’s buildings”