Creative Thinking Book

This was the headline my partner, Rich, wrote for an advertising account which put on county fairs. It was written years ago when we were in the ad game.  I woke up this morning with this mantra reverberating in my mind. I realized how important it was, and like a dream that you can remember while coming out of the reverie state, the details of the dream will be gone in a flash if you don’t consciously catch them. I lay there trying to imagine all of the things that used to go through my mind at various ages.  But most importantly I tried to remember what I thought about when I was free to imagine and to  just check it out.  Let me stop here because it is at the interface of being a responsible member of the culture, setting family and grownup responsibilities aside, and just being free that I want to re-visit.

It is to this interface or portal  to which I want to return, because it is at this juncture that we are herded away and  into the dictates of our world. We stop  investigating that other portal. Once we start down the path of adult learning and  responsibilities our minds become absorbed with just how to do this. We are eager to learn what the new rules are, because not learning them seems to deliver pain. We want to belong and have fun, and we don’t know where the limits of our freedom ends and adult behavior begins.  We learn manners, how to dress, what to say; in short we learn what our parents, teachers, and other grown ups tell us we must do. Then of course we observe that some of us have more or less than others. We observe kindness, strictness, and meanness. There is more. read more »

After little over three weeks, I find myself leaving on a jet plane. It has been a mixture of feelings. I reflect. On the one hand the communities are clean, crisp and orderly. There is a sense of pride and knowledge of what makes a city desirable.  Then there are the townships, which I just glimpsed. Perhaps I did not want to know more.

My driver from the airport was young and cheerful. He had been quick to point out all the breathtaking sites  as we approached this thoroughly modern city with one of the grandest natural back drops on the planet. Mountains practically dropping out of the sky into the ocean and of course the natural wonder, Table Mountain with a cap of billowing clouds are just magestic.  Cape Town feels like a city with everything yet on an extremely manageable scale, easy to navigate, inviting and fun to walk.  The crispness of the architecture, touches of Dutch colonial interspersed with modern fusions surprise you at every intersection. The colors are bright yet tasteful. The range is phenomenal. I guess it’s in the DNA.  Long Street offers hints of New Orleans with laced iron work on many of the buildings. Cafes, coffee house, art galleries, clothing boutiques, interior design shops, curio and souvenir shops, you name it.  You will wander down side streets to the open markets of masks, beads, wood and metal work and be mesmerized. Museums and parks are just around a corner.

The city feels rich because it is city where tourists come to visit and those with means, and there are many, have second, third or perhaps more homes around the world and this is one of them. New Mercedes, BMW’s, and Audi’s are common. The pace is casual.

Virtually around a hill you find Camp’s bay with a dazzling white beaches meeting natures sculpted rock outcroppings. Elegant homes, Apartment and condominiums, dot the mountain to sea landscape. It is breathtaking. But there is more… read more »

My New Friend

I am in Cape Town now, an exquisitely beautiful city at the tip of Africa. Yesterday we ventured out to a wildlife reserve. Aside from riding around in a partially open vehicle through areas with lions, elephants, Cape Town buffalo and rhino you could for an extra fee go spend time with the cheetahs.

I learned that cheetahs are capable of being domesticated and they were the cats of royalty. Yet, they are wild animals, with killing for survival built into their DNA.  So on the one hand I was attracted to this experience and on the other hand, I realized that this animal in a nano second could do a great deal of harm. I calculated the risk and decided it was worth it. Why? My mind had decided that they just couldn’t be offering this experience if there were casualties strewn about, yet there would always be that chance of  startling or touching in the wrong way, and paying a severe price.

I found it exhilarating to find my arm being licked by this incredible creature, a powerful cat capable of accelerating from zero to sixty miles and hour in three seconds. As the tongue,  courser than any sand paper I have ever touched, worked its’ way up and down my arm and leg, I realized how vulnerable  I was; but also how exciting it felt. It was the thrill of a new frontier, of extending my own personal boundary.

I felt like this experience is the metaphor constantly in front of us for reaching out of our comfort zones and trying something new. It doesn’t matter what it is. It is the idea that we just find that comfort edge and consciously go a little further.

There is the resistance in our minds,  that voice that finds all of the rational reasons not to take a chance. Then there is the countervailing voice that says, “What if you do? How good will you feel for having tried something new.” Better yet, after such an experience, how did you feel?  I must admit that as  I rode home, I thought of how unusual this experience was, it was a first,  and how empowering it made me feel. And perhaps that is why we are drawn to a little danger. If we face it and get through it, we feel stronger and more alive. I am not talking about recklessness  such as riding in a speeding car with a drunk driver: I am talking about a reasonable return on one’s apprehension.  It is related to the fear of embarrassment. The idea that we will look foolish if we fail. But as a friend of mine once said, “Be embarrassed once a week, for you will know you are truly alive.”

Is there  something you’ve been wanting to do, but have  felt resistance.   Ask yourself how good you’ll feel if you do it , and you succeed. Maybe it is time to pet the Cheetah.

How Art Transcends Politics

I have been writing about serendipity, and lately have gotten a bit lazy in my writing regimen. However, last night I serendipitously was watching “Under African Skies” the story of how Paul Simon enabled art to do what it can magically do under the right circumstances.

This was a PBS special which told of how Simon in an effort to reach for a breakthrough idea fused the magic of South African music and the music of the West.  It culminated in the production of “Graceland,” an album which was transcendent in its nature. While accomplishing this musical miracle the law of unintended consequences reared its’ ugly head. He had failed to obtain the blessing of the ANC in their battle against apartheid. His comment was that he had not paid any attention to politics and he and his South African musicians were only interested in the magic of the artistry: in other words he was producing art for the sake of art not subjected to the control of politics and those who control politics. What happened? read more »

a longing student

I attended the Miami Book Fair a few weeks ago  and took a workshop in fiction writing.  I chose this topic because our teacher, Colin Channer,  was the great teacher I am referring to above.

So what in my opinion makes a great teacher? read more »

The many faces of Miami

I hadn’t been here in years. It is truly a blend of cultures. You feel like you’re in Latin America. You speak in English. The response is in Spanish.

I am attending the Miami Book Fair and writing workshops. Not  sure why I really came, but on paper I can give you plenty of rational answers. Curiosity is probably at the core. I have never been to one, and my friend,  Billy Gwynn,  has just finished a manuscript.  I am hopeful.  I have a book that needs a bit of a jump start . Maybe I can get re-energized.

Each night there is a prominent author  speaker. They  are all at the top of their game. Here’s the line up. read more »

I wrote a book over a year ago and of course had to begin the equally as daunting task of marketing it. I really didn‘t want to work that hard, so of course the book has languished a bit.  In a way I think I became self-conscious about offering so much advice and secondly I found that the more I learned the less I knew.

More importantly I, like so many people, have lived the kind of life where value seemed to accrue to what I had accomplished. Or I had been so thoroughly indoctrinated (infected) by  “The Protestant Work Ethic” that I had forgotten that it did not have to apply now.

Yet we are some how hard wired to be constant learning machines, and in the process are doing machines at the same time. Nothing wrong with this, mind you, except that it is possible to zoom right past the simple pleasures of life store without realizing that that is where it is time to be shopping.

For example as a business person I might have ordered flowers, but I never took the time to appreciate them. I used to learn what I thought I needed to know in order to  further my economic footing in the world. Now I take Spanish because I am living in Mexico a good bit of the time and it helps to learn the language.  However, I’m not in any crash course.  A little bit seeps in every day and that is good enough.  I took up tennis and they have clay courts in this lovely community of San Miguel de Allende.  I find that it is fun to improve, but it is more fun to enjoy the people in the game and to laugh when the ball goes out rather than to swear.  The biggest challenge has been to hang in the learning Argentine Tango process. I saw these older people really enjoying themselves and looking sensational. I thought, “ Well, that could be me in time.” Having said that I have been at it for almost two years. The lessons are ok, but the practice seems more like work. So needless to say this is progressing at an extremely slow pace.  While I would like to be an instant whizz, I have to be accepting that the lazy man’s way to Tango enlightenment is a slow journey: and that’s ok too.

So while on the earnings fast track the value of time was that it was available for work, and life was highly structured.  Now that fast track has been removed and time has expanded, there is the guilt of not feeling like I am accomplishing things fast enough.  But I am getting over that.  Peter Russell, the British philosopher, said that the old paradigm was “Time is money.” But the new paradigm is,  “ Money is time.” The more disposable time we have the richer we are.  Richer meaning that we have the luxury of time to not just do but appreciate the simple marvels around us.

I am at the Miami Book Fair and Writer’s institute now just following my intuition and meeting a friend who has finished a rough manuscript. This is a good pace. Will report on what happens.

Just awhile ago I was having lunch with a friend and her daughter,  and the challenge of what a young person might do was the topic of conversation. When I was getting out of college and graduate school, there were all kinds of employment opportunities. Today that isn’t the case. Looking back were I to be entering the market today, and looking through my present day lens now, I might think along these lines: read more »

There are jillions of articles promising some new or better way to do something usually attached to a product or service. I have survived cancer and when this came across my e-mail it said read and pass along. It is written by a doctor who has cancer for the third time. It will be worth your time.

Subject: Shocking Cancer Information…worth reading… Written by a doctor who suffers from cancer and he uses alternative rather than conventional medicine that involves chemo, etc. Good to share with family and friends. Subject: Cancer treatment is about making money… - provoking thoughts I posted this article, which may have some provoking thoughts: The below is absolutely 100% true and as a doctor I have been telling people this for 15 years now.  No one wants to listen. Folks need to wake up.  Cancer treatment is about making money.  It is a 120 billion dollar a year industry in the United States alone and estimated to be a 600 billion dollar a year industry worldwide. A successful cancer case according to the American Cancer Society and the American College of Oncology and Hematology means that the person survives for 5 years.  Both the American Cancer Society and the American College of Oncology and Hematology admit that a person is likely to survive cancer for 7 to 10 years even if they do absolutely NOTHING.  Of course, only the doctors get those magazines – not you, the cancer patient. Alternative medicine’s track record of curing cancer is 10 times higher than that of conventional medicine.  Note that I say CURE. Remember another thing.  A TUMOR is just a symptom.  It is not the cause of cancer. Science is cause and effect.  Remove the cause and the effect disappears. I am in my third battle with cancer right now.  I have not done any chemotherapy or radiation or surgery for any of my bouts with cancer.  I survived leukemia, I survived Non Hodgkins Lymphoma and now I have Glioblastoma which is supposedly an incurable form of brain cancer.  I was given two months to live 5 months ago. read more »

I have just returned from Seattle where I spent a couple of hours in the mind blowing exhibits of Dale Chihuly, the artist who has redefined what is possible in the medium of glass. The permanent exhibition of the Garden and Glass museum is stunning.  As I wandered through it I thought about how inspirational it is to see the “best.” While art, music, and the performing arts often seemed to be scrapped as the economy falters, the one unknown is what kind of impression good art makes in helping our own creativity blossom, and of course the payoffs for that.

Poking my head in the theatre complex I caught the part of the film talking about how a Chihuly exhibit in Jerusalem had attracted over a million Israelis and Palestinians. For what ever their differences the power of the art seemed seemed to set aside those differences for a higher calling.

I remember being in a seminar with Terence Mckenna once in which he was paraphrasing Plato’s observations that truth, beauty and goodness were one in the same.  From Terence’s point of view,  truth and beauty were difficult to determine, but beauty seemed to be apparent . So perhaps art at some cellular level connects with archetypal patterns that are part of  our deeper wisdom.  Sure seems like we could use that today.

I certainly felt better for having been immersed in this display.