From whiskey river today:
The Artist’s Duty
So it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame
To extend all boundaries
To fog them in right over the plate
To kill only what is ridiculous
To establish problem
To ignore solutions
To listen to no one
To omit nothing
To contradict everything
To generate the free brain
To bear no cross
To take part in no crucifixion
To tinkle a warning when mankind strays
To explode upon all parties
To wound deeper than the soldier
To heal this poor obstinate monkey once and for all
To verify the irrational
To exaggerate all things
To inhibit everyone
To lubricate each proportion
To experience only experienceTo set a flame in the high air
To exclaim at the commonplace alone
To cause the unseen eyes to openTo admire only the absurd
To be concerned with every profession save his own
To raise a fortuitous stink on the boulevards of truth and beauty
To desire an electrifiable intercourse with a female alligator
To lift the flesh above the suffering
To forgive the beautiful its disconsolate deceitTo flash his vengeful badge at every abyss
To HAPPEN
It is the artist’s duty to be alive
To drag people into glittering occupationsTo blush perpetually in gaping innocence
To drift happily through the ruined race-intelligence
To burrow beneath the subconscious
To defend the unreal at the cost of his reason
To obey each outrageous impulse
To commit his company to all enchantments.
— Kenneth Patchen
The best facilitators, the best consultants and the best and truest helpers are like that too.
[tags]kenneth patchen[/tags]
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I have just finished posting a collection of 21 stories of Open Space events I have facilitated over the past 6 years. Most of these stories are about community-based events in Aboriginal communities here in Canada, but I believe they have lessons about the practice of Open Space that are more widely applicable in different settings and for unconferences too.
I hope you may find the collection useful.
[tags]unconference[/tags]
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I was trolling through some old emails tonight and I discovered a note I had written to the OSLIST on the birth of my son five and a half years ago. I thought I’d share it here:
It’s funny thing. The smallest spaces need the most attention.
Sometimes, the smallest are the largest.On Tuesday (and for all of Monday and most of Sunday) I was opening
space for my second child, a boy named Finn Sinclair Corrigan-Frost, who
entered the world singing before he was fully born — the Elders call it
“bringing greetings from the spirt world” — on Novemer 7.He was born at home in the company of two midwives, a doula, my
partner’s mother and our 3 year old daughter, Aine, who cut the cord and
officially brought him into our world.It was a good birth and a long, but good labour. He is healthy and my
partner Caitlin is doing really well. As we were walking around down by
the ocean on Monday, with Caitlin in labour and a long day and night
ahead of us, she turned to me and said “it’s a funny thing being in
labour. The old world has passed away and the new one has yet to
begin. I feel like a spirit, invisible to everyone, dwelling in the
boundary between the two worlds, holding space for what is about to
come.”
Those words have had a profound impact on me, and I recently wrote a song in which I used Caitlin’s line without remembering it at all.
And the boy? Just a beautiful young man, with whom I am currently enjoying hours and hours of playing Pokemon and Dungeons and Dragons.
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Apart from the wedding of Michael and Jill last weekend in Chicago, I had a great time hanging out with old friends, new friends and Open Space colleagues from around the States. But of all the things that happened on the weekend around the wedding the best had to be meeting Al Camp.
The wedding took place at Pleasant Home, in Oak Park. The house is situated in a lovely little park and in true Buddhist fashion, Michael had strung up strings of Tibetan prayer flags around the place with the Guru Rinpoche mantra on them. In this little park, during the afternoon I lounged on the grass with Daniel O’Conner, Karen Sella and Ted Ernst in the warm sunshine. Thinking I should practice a little before the wedding, I pulled out my flute and started playing some Irish tunes. After a few minutes, a man rolled up in an electric stroller and expressed astonishment that here was live Irish music, right here in his own park!
He stopped to listen and then engaged us in conversation saying that he had been a pilot of bombers and cargo planes and that many times he had stopped over in the Shannon airport. I asked him when that was and he said it was during the Berlin airlift, after the wall was erected in 1948-49. He flew B-29s and C-47s full of coal from England to West Berlin and crashed twice doing so. Daniel, the economist, immediately set to work calculating the massive efficiency waste of this exercise.
Al later flew B-29s in Korea.
Al continued to tell us the story of his life, interspersed with enthusiastic demands for more sets of tunes, which I happily obliged. He told of skipping school to go to Al Capone’s wake, and the way his taste for bourbon ruined his life and caused his divorce from a woman he still loved. He had tears in his eyes telling us about the love he still held for his former wife.
He told us stories of crashing weddings in all the top hotels for almost three years, during which he was only caught twice and fined $50 each time. He heard the famous L-train derailment of 1977 in which 11 people died, and rounded the corner of Lake Street to witness first hand the damage. It happened after work on February 4, 1977 and Al was on his way to the Merchandise Mart to drink. At that time, the Chicago Transit Authority was in that building, right on the river, and Al ran into a friend of his at the bar who was a high-up executive in the CTA. Al asked him what he was doing at the bar when an L-train had derailed. His friend hadn’t heard about it. He rushed upstairs to confirm the news and then came back down to the bar 15 minutes later. “Say, you’re right Al,” he said before Al encouraged him to catch a cab and maybe go see the wreck for himself.
After Al took his leave from us, we debated the truth of these stories and I think the consensus was that any man who still cried in public over his long lost love had to have more than a little truth in his story telling. And ultimately, what really mattered was the stories themselves. Whether the man was telling the truth or not, I had a marvellous experience of hearing history told as a wonderful personal narrative set against one man’s struggle with his own life. We all left knowing more about these events than we had ever known, and for that, here’s a big thanks for Al Camp.
And in honour of Al, and all my American friends on your Independence Day, here is an mp3 of the Chicago Reel.
mp3: Finnvarra’s Wren – Chicago Reel
[tags]Berlin airlift, al capone, chicago, L-train, Ted Ernst, Karen Sella, Daniel O’Conner. Al Camp[/tags]
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Finn Voldtofte and friends are convening an interesting looking gathering in Denmark at the end of October called “Moving the Edge.”
This gathering is intended to support the emergence of a field of collective intelligence, where the practices, insights, principles, etc., of collective intelligence can be evolved.
In addition we intend to create space for engaging the field of collective intelligence for deepening inquiries into core questions within specific areas. We envision that the following areas will attract the interest of many participants:
– The possible roles of business as seen from an evolutionary perspective
– Our planetary home
– Practices for integrated lifeWhat themes will actually be engaged depends on the experiences and insights brought present by the participants.
If you feel called by this invitation, then you are invited.
The gathering will start Sunday, Oct. 22 with an informal reception at 20.00 and ends Thursday, Oct. 26 after lunch. The venue is Fuglsøcentret near Aarhus, Denmark.
In support of this intriguing gathering, Finn has posted some articles about process that are lovely, including one on “inquiring from the middle,” a practice he is especially passionate about.
[tags]moving the edge, finn voldtofte[/tags]