Iterations of grief and intentional gratitude

Grief is a profound iteration of gratitude that entails latent recognition of unidentified or yet to be realized loss which leads to mourning within oneself and/or a community.

Guilt can be a kind of grief where the wrongdoing in the absence of action or trespass of one's values entails a profound sense of loss to oneself and those the guilty individual may have (or may not have but perceived to have) harmed. Guilt is a form of grief over an action that the individual or community perceives as "wrong"...

Shame is a kind of guilt that happens as a kind of loss of connection to one's sense of self. It's often characterized by the sense that there's something deeply (harsh personal narratives might even say irreparably) wrong with who the individual is as a person by essence of their existence. Maybe shame is also a sign of blind self-grief. That blindness is what perpetuates a toxic negative feedback loop -- ergo my expression that "shame is the leukemia of mental health." when left in isolation without supportive signals that help ashamed individuals see qualities of their truest selves more completely in healthy light.


Yet what is "wrong" and what would be good in contrast to it?

Adopting a significant part of Aldo Leopold's maxim in his Land Ethic essay, I characterize as follows:

A thing tends to be good when it tends to preserve and advance the beauty and integrity of the biotic and abiotic community.
[biotic = living organisms, abiotic = non-organisms like rivers, mountains, rocks, etc.]

So "wrongs" are only useful insofar as they are used to guide us toward what typically will preserve and advance the beauty and integrity of the communities we live with--and since we are integral to those communities, it means "wrongs" must also preserve and advance our own beauty and integrity with respect to the communities we live with as well.

Beauty was a tricky thing for me to grasp, but thanks to a Kyudo demonstration and talk from two Japanese exchange students studying in Hawaii, they've illustrated a fundamental trio of Eastern concepts used in the martial art and even in my mother's line of family members:

Zen, Bi, Shin
Truth, Virtue, Beauty
In that sequence. Begin with truth. It can be a challenging and messy process, but committing to finding the "correct" or "good" form and developing a consistent relationship with goodness brings us into virtuous practice. Beauty emerges from recognizing the complete relationship between truth and what makes finding truth consistently a process. As a relationship, we then create the possibility for ethical consideration to exist--how we might improve our relationship with a truth using systemic processes for discerning and replicating "goodness" as guidance--in other words, we apply an iteration of science to our existential endeavors.

Recognizing the complete arc of truth, virtue, and beauty is the process for realizing grace. How elegance can manifest from the mundane.

Wisdom comes from our reliable truths. It's an incarnation of beauty that comes from a place of intelligence be it cognitive, kinesthetic, intergenerational, or otherwise.

Gratitude as I practice it comes from choosing to acknowledge something from an experience and/or relationship as an endowment--a gift, considering what that quality says about the situation/individual from a place of appreciation, how it brings out something genuinely worthy of appreciation in me, and expressing it in a way that's meaningful, hopefully relevant and visceral to all parties concerned.


I'll link back to older posts, but I'm glad to know and share that there's an arc toward healing and I've been able to document much of it over the past few years.

If you've the time and interest, go ahead and search this blog for the following keywords:
[good grief]
[shame: the leukemia of mental health]
[an emotional list + etc.]
[coping with tragedy -- gratitude exercise embedded]
[zin bi shin, kyudo]
[grace]

Be well or on the path to better, onward.

Existential Markets

Updates on transforming conservation-oriented investments into experiential investments; i.e. carpool for 20% mobility transit energy reduction into karaoke carpool experience; sharing native plant seeds to plant at property boundaries for habitat corridor creation; inviting rotation of friends for special vegetarian meals 3x per week (equals 1 day of meals) or more. ; \\ to how modeling and acting celebrities are sort of the ultimate existential/experiential industry expression [and professional dancers sometimes get to a point where the work is about their body and life culminate in expression], or how apple's store and brand was about the experience rather than the tech, or starbucks being about a gathering place rather than just its coffee, or McDonald's about its convenience, "non-judgment" and "happiness"/loving it happy meals and play place for kids. Very similar to how CK Raju would state corruption and religion being the two primary vehicles for colonialism; good experiences are the essence of what often fuels religion. Instead of corruption, systemically positive alchemic/allegoric transformation can be the appropriate and compelling alternative to outmode.
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Screening Your Resolution for Effective Outcomes

​Screening for Persuasive Resolutions

The most important thing for resolutions
to manifest is committed self-persuasion. [1]
But that doesn't mean a resolution must be achieved by yourself alone.

With a quiet turn of the New Year, and now being able to say with some degree of confidence that I survived three full decades on earth, I'm starting to realize celebrations (many of which I barely partook in) also exist as a form of persuasion. And celebrations can be significant even away from other people, though never far or completely independent from others.

Just as important, the way we form our resolutions--setting intentions can be done in a way to remind us why we're committed to taking action toward something we want rather than discourage us from not reaching our goals.

Effective resolutions come from one's capacity for effective self-persuasion. What if, instead of mandating a specific future and living under the tyranny that comes with limiting one future for yourself, that people entertained the opportunities of their lifetime with questions to keep them moving forward? Like how scientists might create a hypothesis before diving into experimentation.

I often champion the worth of thoughtful questions because they allow you (or organizations [2]) to find and create new answers in multiple situations, time and time again. From a scientific point of view, the value of a hypothesis is that it lets us move closer to the truth by discerning whether a specific influence will have an effect on an anticipated outcome--and just as important, we can potentially let others replicate the results too. And my friend Onyx is often quick to warn people that "committing to only *a* future can be a dangerous false choice."

Life is a creative endeavor, why must our aspirations terminate into a specific sentence or outcome like "losing weight" when you can commit to experimenting with specific and intentionally chosen actions that will always contribute to manifesting multiple goals?

"How might I consistently improve my health?" or better yet, "How might *we* improve our health?"

"How might I enjoy more activities that contributes to my physical fitness?"

"What does eating well look like?"

"What does taking care of myself, or loving myself look like?"

When we engage in long-term efforts to create systemic change that require more than what an individual or group can explicitly control, and it's the same kind of thinking that's probably necessary for people to make meaningful change as individuals who live in a world filled with plenty of people and experiences that go well beyond their own selves.

Does it change the fact that we still need goals and milestones? No, what matters is the *resolution* our goals are framed with--and yes, that's a play on words. Think about resolution in terms of digital screen definition -- how granular is your goal?
If it's too specific, it warps your reality in unfavorable ways--watching a youtube video in high definition on a clunky old computer sometimes brings the entire computer to a halt. Watching it at a 180pixel resolution might not overburden your graphics card, but it might not do service to the viewer in showing the details of an event or a picture of a map that might be important to remember in the near future. How can you take more effective steps toward making a good resolution? Look to the trajectory of your past experiences and the ingredients playing into their circumstances. If none of it has changed and you're setting sights on lofty goals for your New Year's (or any other time of year) resolution, you might need to create more persuasive ways to reach that goal.

If eating healthily isn't easy because healthy food is rarely if ever available, maybe it's to find ways to increase your chances with being in places that offer healthy food--deepen your friendship with a local gardener, work toward a new job or promotion that provides better mobility for taking care of your basic needs. These are roundabout but important steps to your bigger priorities, and it's important that you honor the challenges even when it didn't seem like part of the bigger picture you envisioned when looking from the cusp of a new year.

        .       .       .

One of the many gifts genuine interpersonal connection brings us is that a friend, a sincere coworker, or even kind strangers can help "screen" out unnecessary information and put part of the reality you live with in check -- though it goes without saying to engage wisely as some don't know where you want to go, and bad relationships can have powerful negative repercussions. So another person's agency and ability to check in on you can count as a system, just like making commitments to yourself for exercising with goals or milestones with your rest, eating, and emotional health habits too.

In other words, friends can boost your ability to achieve what you set out to do that becomes a form of persuasion that better futures are possible--and you can do the same for them too!

Last year international life coach Bere and I put together an event called "Party Like it's 2019!!!" [3], where the value of the activity comes from being able to experiment with iterations of who you are, and set up systems that help keep you on track with what you aspire to do along the way. One of Bere's biggest points of emphasis in her coaching came from being able to break down big endeavors with specific and achievable goals.

In the world of organizational and systemic change (complex systems) I studied and worked with during and after University, the same concept's about recognizing how the things you have direct control over plus tangible reminders can create structure to influence your paradigms about the world [4].

It's how gratitude exercises often succeed by letting people realize visceral past experiences and outcomes can present them with reasons to be happy (or satisfied, or hopeful) because they show us a different trajectory of choices available that we didn't see before.

That's the magic of empowerment too--that you can suddenly generate 300% more with 100% of the ingredients you already had with a simple shift in perspective.

Confidence at its essence is about trust--trust in oneself, trust in others, or trust in an endeavor--including the promises or resolutions we make. Often when we're overwhelmed, we lose track of what we've done before and what we remain capable of doing.

My friend Marnese Jackson and I would also check in with each other on a weekly basis as we worked through unstable housing, irregular transportation, living with kids, family challenges, and professional priorities that also extend into community and civic impacts. Sometimes the best thing that came from it was the ability to unpack our overwhelm and remember what we've done or sought out to do.

And as strategists, futurists, and science fiction writers might all agree: good strategy is the practice of good science fiction. When we create believable futures, they're often rooted with discernable, plausible, and replicable truths that allow us to leap beyond the ingredients we know into new places.

Since the future becomes the present with every moment, you'll have plenty of opportunities to find a persuasive resolution. Hopefully you're finding something for moving together forward now.

[1] https://lighttelecommunication.blogspot.com/2019/01/persuasive-resolutions.html

[2] http://ismotion.co/2013/12/purpose-in-questions/

[3] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/refreshing-your-vision-party-like-its-2019-tickets-43259414072# 

[4] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZWASyBqmHHcGFyVkxWNTEyYTA/view

https://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/how-turning-your-goals-into-systems-can-change-your-life.html

Possibly related and useful--for setting more feasible systemic goals; one of my biggest challenges was the feasibility side of goal setting, a lot of visioning processes and goal setting processes are admittedly very time and effort intensive to the point of feeling overwhelming--I have some ways for dealing with it but I'm certain there are better and curious to see how the following turns out:
https://www.inc.com/heather-wilde/3-simple-steps-for-setting-your-next-business-goals.html

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash
I don't know who this woman is but she's definitely looking at a screen and reaching
with what could be described as resolve. By the way, staring at
blue light from screens can degrade your eyes
so try to look out to the real world instead.

Dreams*(?) and Development

​A three part dream that happened this morning before I woke up to take out the trash and recycling with post-slumber commentary:
1. I'm in a new [or maybe rather more appropriately capitalized, New] Detroit neighborhood restaurant/cafe watching a s​kit​/presentation akin to Goldilocks and the three bears between the owners and employees during its preliminary grand opening.

Goldilocks, a young ​caucasian girl, pours and presents a big bowl of hot chocolate as she narrates the origins of the cafe and what it values ​in balancing its business aspirations ​as part of the community. She sweetly closes her story punctuating it with a casual "that'll be $40 bucks, hun." For the bowl of hot chocolate as the punchline to the community and up-and coming city entrepreneurship story.

The customer (not identifiable to the audience/nor heard) implicitly complies and requests for something additional to which the matron of the cafe quickly gathers the other local employees, gets on the phone and discusses in Zulu or some other language heard in South Africa with all the staff huddled around, before she confidently hangs up the phone to declare to the imaginary customer: "I have good news, you're eligible for an additional $0.30 per hour sitting fee too!"

We (the audience) laugh and ​as I turn away ​I ​​start figuring out how to make a sliding scale menu cost structure for non-locals and locals that can accommodate more people with less outrageous prices while still accounting for the higher I come demographic who wouldn't hesitate to buy a $40 bowl of hot cocoa (or in real life, pay more than $40 for a hair cut).

2. My dream transitions to sitting at the counter of another cafe/diner that bears a less monied air to it: imagine a classic 1950s hamburger joint  converted into a general diner/cafe that hadn't been updated since the 50's that's in a Downriver (low-income labor town) community like River Rouge or Wyandotte. It's now under the ownership and operation of an immigrant Indian woman and she's working to serve us friends as her guests before it officially opens.

I ask if there's any local favorite juice available as she opens and closes a basic household refrigerator that's nestled on the wall facing the counter and register. "All I have for drinks is in that fridge." And I note that A box of wine was the only fruit beverage available. A classmate from second grade, Vijay [Vijay!? What are you doung here in my subconscious bro? Still got that cool San Jose Sharks winter coat too], smiles and sarcastically proclaims "Ecorse' s finest!" And gestures with a culinary kiss to the air. I laugh [his sense of himor is still on point].

I'm now outside the restaurant with my friend Onyx, pouring two glasses from that boxed wine as we "celebrate" "Ecorse's finest" -- and the fact that we both witnessed French hosts serve us boxed wine [yes, in real waking life during our time as guests in southern France while performing on tour]. Onyx smiles agreeing with that tone of voice you get at the end of sharing a memory in the way a fire burns down to smoldering coals, and mentions that "having some music from the 90s playing would be great right now." I mention if WiFi is available we might be able to pull something up and quietly ponder what kind of music could constitute the best of the 90s.

3. My dream transitions again and I'm inside a neighborhood salon+barbershop where one of my former employers, Mrs. Michele Loveberry --who in real life owned a salon while briefly leading a non-profit-- is working with a customer already after promptly arriving at 6:00am on one side while a barber works with someone else toward the front on the other side of the room. My friend Jemeer and another guy tells me how important barbershops are for the community (true, and we've had a conversation like this in waking life before) as well.

Post-Slumber Commentary

So here's what I think we can learn (or at least be reminded of) from the dream above among other things: 

1) there's a point when a well-grounded and intentional price policy becomes outrageous to the average person and yet entirely acceptable for a new target audience--I.e. the $40 haircut yuppie or in the case of my dream, the gentrified who pays $40 for a ridiculously large bowl of hot chocolate.

Speaking with my friend Ulysses, this is exactly how countries like Finland operate--

2) The $0.30 per hour sitting fee sounds like something (a terrible something) that a crowded New York or San Francisco kind of city actually would do, except they'd charge you even more for just being there. For [dystopic neoliberal urbanization/gentrification​/colonialism​] comedic purposes, $0.30 is ​"​reasonable​"​--just small enough to be petty, but the real offense comes from its mere existence​ ​​and audacity to charge people for their mere existence​.

3) I still work even in my dreams to figure out things like equitable cost strategies and price points.

4) Zulu (though I don't know the language well) and South Africa are a very interesting parallel--in waking life I met a journalist who focused on apartheid and how similar patterns manifest in Detroit last year. For those unfamiliar with the city, Detroit is approximately 83% black, ~89% "minority", and highly segregated as a city still. The economic development patterns also tend to reflect this too with most investment underway in majority white downtown core financial and cultural districts. Meanwhile, most of the neighborhoods remain overlooked unless they're ripe for ["market"] exploitation [or straight-up exploitation in itself] according to the downtown administration and deep pocket developers.

5) There's an interesting contradiction to connecting boxed wine with the expression "Ecorse's finest" --the river that makes "downriver" communities was called the Rouge River by the French settlers (and still called that today by residents) because of all the grapes that would grow in the region. It's hard to say what the soil and air quality would be for growing grapes for wine there today as it's somewhat an industrial labor town now, but if we of the region were to begin making wine there again, I wouldn't be surprised if boxed wine would the way to start as the expertise, "market audience", and taste palate for most people in southeast Michigan would probably take time to develop before we skip ahead to fine wines. Alcoholism in Michigan is a major problem, and it happens to be, at least during some point within the past 5 years, among one of the most common Google searches in our state.

6) The Salon/Barber Shop dream builds directly from a conversation I had last night realizing how continuity for employing and owning a business in Detroit remains by the person, and often ends at the entrepreneur rather than continuing with the team/a community to support the training and workers beyond the founder. I also think the gender roles (one side salon, another side barber) is something to note though I haven't got much insight for it beyond observation. Mrs. Loveberry's mother opened and owned a historic salon business, one of the first in Detroit, and the legacy of her entrepreneurship remains under celebrated except for those who may have known her directly or through the family stories like my friend Jemeer and Mrs. Loveberry. Mrs. Loveberry recently retired and left the state. 

I now realize she was part of the 93% businesses in Detroit that are black, and of them, 90% are/were run with 1-4 employees. The continuity between owner to new generations differs from places in Japan or even Vietnam where businesses survived for centuries--even surviving colonialism and world wars--with artisans and other people who continue the line and legacy.

In my waking life, I know/know of an interesting cross section of the cosmetic industry. I also connected [albeit briefly] with someone from outside Detroit focused on using barber shops as places to address mental health in the black community. They all have important elements, and the opportunity to convene and discuss how workforce development + business ownership advances in the city's neighborhoods is important and feasible to implement with someone like Chase Cantrell of Building Community Value and the folks who put on Hair Wars.


References

Toward the end of this sketch, Trevor Noah speaks in Zulu--deep in the comment section of the original clip on youtube someone gave a translation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwT-2KdK894

The Mekong Musical Connection

While I was in college, a band featuring a Khmer lead vocalist (Cambodian retro-psychadelic pop) called Dengue Fever -- and the most haunting tune on their featured album was one called "Sleepwalking on the Mekong"

As a language among Asians, Vietnamese is supposedly described as the most melodic -- and from a pure tonal linguistic point of view, I can agree as it's got numerous nuances to tone and inflection in ways that can differ even from some Chinese languages and dialects (though I'll note it's not necessarily the smoothest in flow compared to something like Shanghainese).

So starting from a musical frame of mind, Khmer is easiest to distinguish from Vietnamese (at least to me as a relatively foreign listener) by the hard constonant gracenotes at the beginning of certain words and phrases. At a glance, attempting to pronounce the Cambodian capitol, Phnom Penh, might be the most visible example-- the "P" sound runs directly into the "n" right away. So to an English speaker, it sounds a bit like like a stutter between two consonents.

Vietnamese however tends to be pretty straight forward and feels relatively simplistic in its conciseness--one starting consonant per syllable. No rhythmic complexity at the start of any words.


ANyhow, I brought all this up to highlight some interesting similarities (and my sort of sibling-like love for what little I understand about the Khmer language, culture, music, and people) because there are a few South Vietnamese songs from the 1960s-70s that shares a very similar cadence to Dengue Fever's song "Sleepwalking on the Mekong" and I wanted to put the two here side by side for us to listen and compare as they share some interesting similarities in aesthetic and maybe composition too if not by aesthetic.

[will post links here later when I'm not supposed to be sleeping]



As a far off side note:
I was curious about Baltimore's (greetings from the region) incinerator and assumed that they had the situation quietly under wraps--it turns out the state of Maryland recently came down on the operators and require it to reduce emissions by 1/5th as recently as August of 2018 haha

With the newly elected governor and other officials in Michigan's executive and legislative branch, I suspect we'll have new advocacy opportunities that might sway how we can shift the landscape of air pollution in communities afflicted by it (especially in Detroit).

Gretchen Whitmer, Garlin Glichrist, and Stephanie Chang here we come! Save us a slot in your calendars for a phone call or meeting won't you please?

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/environment/bs-md-trash-incinerator-pollution-20180820-story.html

Inspiring comment sections, language and music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-dQdASWkDU

This is so inspiring to see how many people wish to learn traditional indigenous languages in the comments.

The video is also very, very, very interesting--I'm quite happy to run across it online and excited to share it with some friends.

There's another video I saw earlier this week that had wonderful comments (that time, for music) which I'll post somewhere too.

Disarming, Maori heedings, what's the point if you're killing for love

the quieter kinds of courage

Had a dream the other morning-- learning how to quickly and intuitively make a firearm safe


​

Amazing to see and hear this documentary completely in Maori, so much culture rooted, alive, and preserved in it. 

 

 

I first learned about one of the Maori's victories over the British from the Battle of Gate Pa* (Sp.? will need to check in a minute) -- in which they successfully used tunnels and bunkers to withstand heavy artillery fire. The Youtuber and amateur [military] historian, Lindybeige, goes into detail with various accounts and tells a story about this battle of asymetric warfare--and credited with likely being the first to employ trench warfare.

About a year or two (maybe three) later, this story pops up into my screen--or perhaps more accurately, documentary *BY THE MAORI THEMSELVES!* -- and that starts to touch on what's most thrilling about it all. We can understand whatever English subtitles can convey, but seeing real descendents, youth, and elders reciting the history, creating for an important 150year ceremony, and continuing the legacy while hearing it in their heart's language is something that words like beautiful can hardly begin to describe:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AjiK-NYOAEU

 

Also, the trenches were inspired by observing trenches made by eels--and the people who devised the strategy are still remembered and known!

 

Later today, I returned to Jose Gonzalez's song, Killing for Love and Cycling Trivialities which I hadn' heard in many years

Reframing risky actions with rhythm

In high school, I briefly joined the our high school [U.S.] football team because, among the un-cut sports, it seemed like one of the most well-balanced for conditioning and teaching someone how to get started with intensive fitness.

While I joined too late to really grasp and take part in critical parts of it (especially camp and scrimmages) that probably would have given the best of the applied fundamentals, I enjoyed what I learned during off-season conditioning in the weight room (mostly thanks to a handful of hilarious and goofy Junior Varsity (JV) and Varsity teammates who’d blast “Coach’s 80s [Music] Favorites” between sets), defense and hitting drills on the blocking sled (basically a big padded dummy for you to run up to, block and push).

Of course there were things that come to mind when you’re very inexperienced in the middle of a sport that has an aggressive reputation — some are reasonable like how to tackle properly (I missed the chance to do a lot of that by joining late and missing the camp) and build confidence on the field, people get bigger and more lethal with their hits as they progress beyond freshman year into JV and Varsity teams.

But what spooked me most after the season was over was a dream where my actions crossed into the real world: I’m at practice doing drills with the blocking sled, hitting it, driving forward, and hearing the coach say “Good hit.” and running back into position before waking up to realize I shoved my pillow from across my bed into a wall at the side of my bed.

I’ve been reluctant to deeply train in a lot of striking combat sports because of that event:
The muscle memory and actions in my subconscious were real, and I realized if I wasn’t able to keep a simple motion like basic blocking, doing a more aggressive push or hit could potentially injure other people too.

Would that stay with me forever? What if stayed with a girlfriend and when a dream or nightmare like that comes up and I wind up attacking her without knowing what I was doing?


Recently I’ve been focused on how to cohere the sounds that come from working on practical tasks — construction for example — into something that people can approach, engage, enjoy, and celebrate from the perspective of music.

If you’ve heard or partaken in some of my participatory pieces before, Watershed (using “raindrops” from clapping, etc. like you might have heard elsewhere), or Breathing (breath and wind-aesthetic noises), there are ways to cohere random noises that

On a spectrum starting from the precise control a composer might have with a traditional instrumental or symphony vs. what happens when embracing random (the musical term is aleatory) events in music like John Cage’s 4 minutes and 33 seconds or Pauline Oliveros’s games for deep listening, there’s an in-between place where you can facilitate noise and “frame it” that’s especially interesting to me in music that can have a role in accelerating the way a community takes care of its basic needs while giving room for people to explore and build their own skills (again, construction in Detroit neighborhoods and a dream that inspired ways to merge both concerts and construction into the same event).

Which brings us back to percussive hitting motions.

Returning to a classic* (at least, classic for dating back to 1997 haha) video of a shamisen and Taiko drum duo, I realized that building the stamina and coordination involved with striking a large drum might actually be very similar to the kind of practice that goes into learning how to strike and build up the basic form and endurance that’s conducive to (though definitely not a substitute) learning the basics in some combat sports/martial arts like boxing.

This isn’t as big a leap as one might think. Johnny Nguyen ( I like to imagine him as my big brother or cousin as we share LA-Vietnamese roots ) stakes much of his professional image in teaching about boxing, his website is titled Expert Boxing, and at the same time, he swears by the role dance had in transforming his ability to move and work the ring as a better fighter.

You know how after working out, you feel pretty good as the endorphins release, and then your capacity to be present with or navigate past lots of silly and otherwise petty events magically goes up? I’m pretty sure being a taiko drummer would do that on a lot of levels. Even in my brief experience with playing in the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s West African Drum Ensemble, the joy and mental clarity that came from playing on the sanban (a medium sized laundry hamper-sized drum often heard in West Gunean drum ensembles) or dunnun (the largest drum, think of an extra long barrel) was second to none.

Unlike playing a stringed instrument, where you’re suddenly met with countless variables plus the risk of carpel tunnel, there’s a kind of peace that comes from the simplicity of being very physically engaged as a drummer.

So seeing the drummer in this taiko video swinging giant drum sticks to literally (albeit rhythmically in an artful sense) and noting that he looks as fit as someone who does lots of pushups and chinups on a regular basis, it wouldn’t be too far off to look at learning an endeavor like boxing with the same attitude: there’s an art and rhythm that comes with striking the bag (or opponent, though whether one chooses to engage another person is a different case), and when sparring with an opponent, there’s an element of improvisation and pacing that comes in which is very similar if not the same as learning to improvise with another musician during a jam — albeit the outcomes and goals might differ greatly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M4K5wk9DCM

[Feel free to ignore my comments -- rarely in spaces where talking about this stuff with people who interface with symphonic/orchestral music at an analytical level so I'm taking the opportunity to ramble reflections out loud]

Listening again to Orient and Occident all the way through for the first time in probably over a decade, I'm starting to appreciate some new layers to the piece. There are the overt elements of counterpoint in the call/response which strike us right away, and then there's a subtler dimension of stylistic counterpoint too -- a lot of unison voicings (akin to what's heard in traditional Turkish/Arab orchestras) and some embedded octaves/artificial harmonics but also harmonies and chords (presumably on the occidental side) in a way that drastically go against the "oriental" traditions. A Turkish friend once scolded me for adding drone notes during an improvisation on a melody that reminded him of traditional Turkish music. I'm shuddering from the recollection now that I can listen closely with more seasoned ears than my high-school self would have ever known haha

Persuasive Resolutions

[transcribed directly from the main text in the notebook image]

1 I 2019 02:23                                         
[in small text to upper right corner: "Assess for complexity; * -> this statement lacks engagement w/ other systems of realtiy i.e. env. factors]

The most important thing for resolutions
to manifest is committed self-persuasion.

What if posing our resolutions as questions served us better? Better than at least,
the strain, tension, and repercussions
a binary imperative often creates in our lives.

Guidance:                                   Resolution:

How can I be
fully present w/
self, environs, & people?  --->   Be present.


What does being rpesent need to look like now for the situation & myself
to improve?


The most likely source of distress created by resolutions (the NYE type)
probably comes from the psychological barriers that accompany shame and guilt.
Couple it with one's inexperience or inadequate capacity to rebound from a
shortcoming, and it makes sense that so many people "fail" at what they
resolve to do--especially as they tend
to do it on their own rather than with
the support an intentional & caring community can provide.