Howz abouts another crazed entry? Sure, why not? I hear this first paragraph is very important.. you gotz to makez it keyword rich.. but is that how you wantz to start off your blog entry? With some keyword rich action? What is this, a newspaper; where we gotta give you an overview of whatever it is I’m going to post about in the first paragraph.. and then kinda go into it a little here, a little there.. circling around.. till I’m finally allowed to deep dive? Is that how we are to do it? How it’s supposed to work? Well I mean.. whatz ifz I’z wants to do something else.. I mean.. half the time I start a post and I don’t know what the hell it is I’m going to write about it.. till I getz to it. So who knows whatz the hellz this one’s going to be about? More social media bitching perhaps?

I don’t know.. I’m in a weird mood thinking about everything… See I’ve been sick in bed for a freaking week.. and it sucks.. cause I walk around wondering what the hell happened to my momentum.. plus my life is at this weird point where we kinda don’t know what’s up.. with various things.. and.. its like the cliff hanger sustains.. so we can’t quite acclimate to to whatever the actuality turns out to be.. and we got a lot of this kinda thing to start working out.

But then I fell into this odd way of thinking… that basically.. its kinda all in my mind anyway.. or I mean.. a certain amount of it is. Or.. see it’s like.. what’s there to be anxious about, really? I’m not saying there’s not a lot.. or that there’s not a lot on my plate, and life isn’t overwhelming in reality.. and that I’m still feeling like I’m failing to live up to it all.. I’m not debating that part of it.. more the big picture anxiety over living through this and getting to some better reality.. All the feeling of..  like that will never happen… and the wondering how much of my life’s efforts might be in vane, or any of that. 

So here’s a little tip from you’re uncle Matt.. when you’re in that there valley of darkness.. this is not the time to assess such things! In the dark.. so much is in shadow.. and.. what you see in the shadow.. in all the question marks… tends to be just a projection of your mood.. and if your mood is dark.. well.. there you go. And with this comes the question of.. just what is momentum..

A couple latter:

Seems like I’m circling around a thought worthy of examination..  which is like.. about the baggage we cary with us through our life.. its effects on pathology, and the unfolding of our lives.. This feeling like.. if we could just break through it.. but somehow breaking through seems.. beyond what we are capable of.. and you wonder if you’re like some elephant that was taught he was caged.. by a giant chain around his leg.. and now it’s just a string.. but we still feel the cage.

I have found.. I absolutely can walk outside my own cage. I have.. in various ways.. and yet it is still there.. and yet, is it?

One of the things I was thinking about.. oh a month or back or so.. was the importance of interacting with lots of people.. for the sake of my sanity.. And in social media.. I discovered this by going to a bunch of tweet ups.. I have lots of social media friends.. friends I enjoy hanging out with.. having a beer with.. etc.. But now it’s looking like I might not be able to make so many tweet ups.. meet ups.. or whatever. 

The thing about hanging out with lots of different groups of people.. having lots of different types of friends is.. the way we kind of define our selves socially.. that is how our identity in part comes from this social interaction.. and Well this might sound like crazy talk.. it’s part of a theory I developed under the influence of psychedelics.. that as a part of social cohesion.. there is a kind of center point that happens when you interact with one or more person.. that.. in a certain way.. could be thought of as a kind of modified version of Freud’s super ego.. whatever it is that brings us together.. or whatever it is that we have in the way of shared values.. because like our value system.. and the basis of social hierarchy.. sorta.. 

For men, of course, pecking order is very important.. and the vibe you have about your place in the universe.. and all this.. Now.. the deal about the value of lots of people.. means you have lots of little places where different things are valued.. different parts of your being..  So.. your view of your self.. if not super good.. could have something to do with the folks you are hanging out with.. the world  you’re in…

This is not to cast aspersions to the folks I regularly hang with.. but that my regular experience is not… ideal in terms of my whole self.. that its unbalanced.. 

So in this sense.. the cage within.. and is it really a cage at all.. how much of this feeling is a part of a sense of identity.. based on the world I’m experiencing myself through? Is what I’m asking…

We are a complex web of interrelated wills..  a will echo system if you will.. that has some sorta interrelationship with our needs as human beings.. and how well or poorly these things are being met. To attack the problem in a kinda Maslow hierarchy sorta way.. it can be hard to reach higher stages of spiritual enlightenment when there’s some question of if you’ll even be able to eat tonight.. But I think there’s lots of hierarchy’s in us.. not just Maslow’s.. surrounding all sorts of things.. so that there are certain things we can’t achieve until this other set of things is taken care of.. and this is the sorta thing that can create creative blocks.. or just whatever.. and sometimes you just have to kinda put you’re ear to the unconscious to find your way to the next place you need to be at.

So in this way it’s all quite hard to tell what’s really up inwardly.. what’s creating the cage phenomenon of the mind sorta feeling.. 

A couple latter:

I think I mentioned somewhere.. this association I’m having between sickness and and neurosis.. neurosis being a substitution.. substituting illegitimate suffering for legitimate suffering.. not that being sick isn’t a legitimate thing.. but.. it’s at least neurosis like in that you aren’t doing anything about whatever the thing is.. that you should be doing something about.. and the like between excuse and reason can be fuzzy.. 

Speaking of which.. I’d finish this thought.. but I have things to attend to.  

I guess I’ve been posting some crazy ass posts while sick, ha? It’s good to post! I encountered this bit of inspiration over at Pluperfecter.. this interview of Steven aka Vaspers the Grate from some 5 years ago.. On the subject of what a blog is.. Steven quoted Doc Searls… a blog post being like an email to the world.. and this thought just sorta inspired me.. should I blog like that? Should I blog as if this were a personal email to the world? Me to you? And you over there as well? 

You know.. I can dig that kinda idea.. like.. I don’t know.. so often there’s all this “how to blog” crap.. smart crap though it can be.. it’s the game of it.. everything from your SEO / SEM / Copywriting, key working, whatever ing..  top 10 lists.. and God knows what else. I mean sure.. it can all be good.. but um.. I don’t know.. I never feel totally comfortable with it.. just as I’ve never felt totally comfortable with best practices.. I’m not trying to refute there utility.. and it’s not that I want to sabotage my own plight.. It’s just that sometimes it feels like just a lot of rubbish to get in the way… You know?

I don’t know.. I feel as if.. on some level.. if I blog there should be some sorta strategery about it.. or some purpose.. some excuse to poor energy into it.. I wonder if I’m adding any value to the world or to anything.. Why am I doing this again? If strategical.. shit, my spell checker didn’t underline that word.. is that a real wold?.. err.. strategical tactical al-tick-al whatever..  el.. Salvador of dolly.. parton.. pardons.. I don’t fucking know.. but just the.. 

Ok.. so there’s an ecosystem that works a certain way.. which causes somethings to rise, somethings to fall.. blah blah blah.. and the el strategic-o tacktic-o is in part born out of a close observation of how all this works and “How you to can be a social media rock star” or at least.. well.. whatever.. and I think all this is important.. and if you have a goal.. and that goal is your success metric.. well.. you ought to adopt all that…

But then I think.. and I think real deeply.. so deeply.. it-id scare your mofo ass.. you know.. like “what’s this life for” deep? Well screw that line of questioning as that make you walk around like a head without a body.. lol, which is to say not walk all that well at all. . No what I’m thinking more is like.. look inward.. Who is you, what is you about? Like really on the super deep levels. Deep enough that you eventually get to darkness and must confess incomplete knowledge on the subject.. and here, if nothing else.. aren’t you supposed to be the supreme grand-poo-bah expert on the subject of who and what you is? And you don’t fucking know? If  you hit rock star big.. good luck to you’re F’n biographers right? 

Yeah, I’d bitch at those vicarious-ism addicts to… which would bring me to this crazy existential question I’ve been pondering lately.. but.. we’ll skip that for now..

I’m thinking about mind mapping the subject.. kinda mandala esk action for yeah.. like what’s all the crap on your mind.. not just consciously.. what are the things you are after.. what’s up with these obsessions of yours.. looking at all the aims you gotz in your life.. map that shit out.. see the cross relationships.. 

So like each thing you do is like a piece of puzzle of a bigger you… a Nietzschean super man quest.. err.. well maybe you’re not that bad ass but.. to one extent or another we are always in a process of waking up to our selves.. and we have.. lets say it is a part of the soul.. a kind of destiny.. that we are always driving towards.. with all our pathology stuff.. conscious or not.. this is what all our impulses are doing.. even if we are tangled in knots and.. our lives a mess.. and whatever else..

So if  you view a blog inside of these terms.. if it, in the biggest of all pictures, is about your becoming.. then it’s success has to do with your becoming’s success.. and that is an utterly different thing from all SEO / SEM, top 10 lists of whatever strategical tactical al-ical of the smart sort… or that is just a part of this larger thing..

A few latter:

Well I gotta work out what I’m going to do with this whole blogging thing.. or it’s on the to do list of stuff to work out.. but I like this idea of the personal email to the world.. and I like the idea of being an anarchist in the writing..  

I am sick.. have been sick for a bit now.. 7, 8 days? Sick in bed?

There’s a strange surreal dream world.. that happens as waking life withers.. away to very little… See the unconscious, who speaks in dreams… is to balance the attitudes of consciousness… and when there is so little consciousness.. what is it to balance? Unless being sick its self is an effort to balance.

Everything feels just a little bit bent.. that odd taste in your mouth..

Outside life slips away.. you say “well I’m sick, what can I do about it?” But these words feel like neurosis…  In your heart you feel like you need to fight.. to fight your way into the light.

And what are the inputs.. laying hear in this bed in the basement.. surrounded by a mess.. this laptop playing movies.. we’ve gone through Lord Of The Rings, Basic Instinct, Bourn Identities… many commentaries..  online documentaries of Carl Jung.. a few pages of his seminars on Thus Spoke Zarathustra.. swings at working on the DMI class homework.. that should have been emailed days ago. There’s a couple recent, and one current, sound on sound magazines just to the side..

In sickened states I have made my way to grocery stores to try and stock up on OJ, NyQuil, fruit… something or another to eat.. and still.. even now, fast food takes up too much of my diet..

Where my life is now.. it’s not a good place.. and the sickness keeps me from being able to do much to improve it.

As I write these words I feel tired… should I just layback down, roll back over, and reenter the dreams?

I’ve had some odd dreams lately.. I can’t remember most of the sick ones.. but before the sickness got me.. I met my son.. whom I had had with some women I had never physically met but only talked to online.. and how happy I was to meet him.. and to take up the fatherly roll.. in the dream he was my son, no question about it… but you and I, us waking life people.. we know that for children to be made, it helps to have a conception..

I’m not even sure I want to talk about it.. or just what I want to say publicly about my situation.. but.. well, I’m in a VERY dark mood.. A fucked up scary dark mood. I feel like.. Jesus, when I think about it.. let my mind stray back through the days of my life.. It seems like there was always just too much fucking darkness, you know? Like here I am, still struggling.. hope dawned in a way, for a brief moment.. like no one’s business.. and now it’s being rudely yanked from my hands as I’m thrown into the abyss.

In a mood like this you think of two possible options.. giving up, or fighting harder. The fighting harder option is like the silver lining in a dark cloud.. It suggest that the fight it’s self might be your salvation.. but.. the mood is so dark that you feel like.. well you can’t really fight in this kind of a mood… cause in this kind of a mood every little setback can seem so monumental…

But what the fuck, what if I give everything I fucking have?

That, of course, is a deep fucking thought. Sure, on the surface it might sound trite.. but.. well maybe it’s just me.. when I say give everything I fucking have.. in means every fucking inch of every muscle.. every everything.. every iota of anything you got… just fucking throw it at the bastard! I mean what the fuck! I mean if you were going to give up anyway? Why not give it a shot at least?

And what exactly is giving up? That is perhaps the interesting thing…  giving up.. well, from that vantage point where we find me today.. giving up is like rolling over… and letting the current take me to sea or some shit like that.. and the thing of it is… is that I just can’t take that, you know what I mean? I mean I have a breaking point.. at which point.. I don’t know..

That’s another problem, which way I break. See there’s a darkness in me.. and if shit gets too bad.. I get pushed the wrong way too much… well it could be bad. If things go the other way.. I don’t know.. maybe things become ok? I don’t know.

But the point is that the giving up option.. is really the refusal to choose an option.. it’s a refusal to accept legitimate suffering.. and it causes a whole other class of suffering. So.. I mean.. what the hell difference does it make anyway?

Hope.. that’s an elusive motherfucker…  I tasted that mother.. I could fucking taste it..

So, here’s the deal, as I see it.. It’s no holds bared going for it. It’s work your ass off going for it.. It’s burn your self out going for it.. It’s give everything going for it.

Of course I can’t do that right now.. I’m sick, still..  still under the weather. I’ve been sick since… well I first felt it coming on lest Friday night and its now like.. late Tuesday night.. I am not a fully functioning motherfucker.. I’m like.. in a position where I better not push it too far I’ll tell you.

Tomorrow morn, no doubt, brother Evan shall show up.. and we’ll strategize this or that and I’ll speak of my woes and have some sense of.. well at least being able to talk about it and.. whatever.

Hmm.. it’s a weird fucking life man…

I was just thinking about before my Mom died.. the kind of fears I had of what life would likely look like after that. What’s sorta weird is that.. I feel stronger today.. I think in large measure cause I at least have the right tools, finally.. and that gives me something.

Now the deal is to try and take that to the max.

Ok, how about I end this post with a little mood music

 Odd how well this song matches my mood

I’ve been sitting on this name for a good.. I don’t know, maybe 7 years? And so haven’t really mentioned it to anyone.. or not much anyway… and finally I’ve bought the URL, and posted a trailer to the site.. or the site is now a trailer for the future of the site.. or better yet, its a work in progress version of the trailer of the site..  and by work in progress what I really mean is that it’s like.. I’m sitting on my computer in the studio.. working on it, and you come over, peer over my shoulder, and see what’s going on.. and now I’m asking you for feed back.. and I really want it!

So, the site is… drum roll please Bad Sphincter Oedipus. It may take you a moment to decode.. so I’ll help you out.. Bad Sphincter Oedipus, of course, translates to Bad Ass Mother Fucker.. It is somewhat of an homage to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.. The mother’s used to be called just mothers.. for mother fucker, but the label made them change it.. It’s an old term you’ll find in blues meaning someone who can really play “like a mother fucker”.. 

The basic idea of the trailer is that the real site I want to put together will be a lot of work, and its not clear to me exactly when I’ll get through it.. particular as my attention is often on other things.. I wanted to post some content around the Bad Sphincter Oedipus project.. and I felt like I needed to put up the site before I could start posting content.. and then the content would link back to the site.

Ok, lets talk about Matt’s Self Criticism / where I think it needs to go.

1. The Flash movie just loops.. and um.. plays sound, and the user doesn’t really have control over the sound.. this is bad.. though less bad for a band / music site then a conventional site.. but still not good. I’m not quite sure what to do about this.. should I give you youtube like controls where it plays  through once, pauses, and you can replay if you like? Should you have to press a button to make it start?
2. The design really isn’t thought out well. If you don’t watch the Flash movie, you wouldn’t know what the site was, or anything. To this I should add that I think the only way you’d come to this site is from a profile link on ether twitter or Youtube, or from a facebook fan page.. (once they let me set up such a thing, seems like they don’t like the name Sphincter) or whatever it is I set up.. you could see it in other ways, but that’s really what its  there for.
3. It is REALLY just thrown together, not really well designed at all.. as I say, its just a place holder for a site.. but depending on how long I keep it up there, before I get onto replacing it with an actual site… it might not be a bad idea to design it well.

And so, I’m looking for your feed back

What do you think? Do you think it’s bad to throw up a site like this as an interim solution? If I were to make an effort to not just finish this work in progress, but bother to design it right, what do you think I should be thinking about as I design it? Any other thoughts or feedback? Would love and appreciate any feedback anyone might have. 

It all started when my friend David Tames decided he was going to go into the Dynamic Media Institute’s grad program.. and started the Media Tech Tonic group.. which was sorta an off shoot of the Boston Media Makers.. Media Tech Tonics some how became a part of the Dynamic Media Institute program.. and via becoming active in the Media Tech Tonic thing, I started to feel sorta a part of the DMI community, to one degree or another.. 

What I loved about the DMI community was many fold.. but one of the biggest things was that it started stirring in me the desire to be apart of a community of artists.. people challenging them selves, seeking in that way.. all the stuff that.. I suppose you’re somewhat forced into by being in such a graduate program…

Of course the other thing was just the sorta thing you’d find DMI folks working on. Basically this it’s what is conventionally known as DIY projects.. things like physical computing.. and DMI was so close to the Studio Of Interrelated Media program.. which was my major in my Mass Art days.. or what you do in DMI is stuff that you could have done in SIM, and even did do in SIM! There’s a difference in thrust of course.. DMI being more design orientated.. being a graduate program..  

I’ve been thinking of going back to college for years, I’m a drop out don’t cha know.. trouble is I’m somewhat of a fully formed artist at this point.. and as such I don’t really see how anything undergraduate-e would really feed me.. or be of much value. 

I don’t know what the chances of being able to get into any sorta graduate program would be for someone who didn’t bother to finish there under grad.. especially if the programs I tend to be interested in are the ones that are hard to get into.. I feel like.. if you see me for who I really am it’s sorta a no brainer.. you see where I’m at and it’s totally there..

The other issue I confront is not really being sure if college is right for me. There are certain ways that knowledge gets organized in relationship to majors and focuses and whatevers.. or at least this was my issue as an under graduate.. which mean “you study this” and that’s what you have to focus on and you don’t get to focus on whatever seems sorta right to you.. and if you are, as I say, a fully developed artist.. you have this powerful sorta inner voice.. sense of direction.. sense of what’s right for you, what you need to get where you want to go.. and you wonder if the college experience might not be more of an obstacle then a helper. 

As a sorta extension to that train of thought..  there is the whole issue that I was never exactly a good student… and I wonder if I would be a good student and.. if I were to enter into some sorta graduate type program.. I’d really want to go all out as far as getting everything out of the program I possibly could.

My Visit to DMI  

I got word of a DMI social hour… Turns out it was sorta for new people coming to the program to sorta get orientated and meet some of the other folks there.. or that seemed to be the main thing.. and folks who had been there giving advice on how to survive the program.. followed by informal meeting folks, which was where I got into conversations about what this class was all about that I was thinking of taking.

Shortly after this, those of us that didn’t have a class to head to, headed out to a bar.. which is sorta where the real stuff starts happening. Over the course of this I had the sorta amazing feeling of actually contributing to the conversations / helping folks in the DMI community think out what they where doing.

I often experience my brain as if there was this big library of stuff.. on all the ranging subjects I’ve studied.. and sometimes it feels like you can throw nearly any subject at me, and I have all this stuff on it.. so I can say “well for this subject, these are the things I would look at,” which range from youtube videos, podcasts, blogs, films, major works of different philosophers… whatever.

So suddenly it’s as if the library in my brain has all this value, that I can then use to contribute to what other people are trying to do, what they are interested in. And it’s just awesome to me to.. check out what someone’s trying to do, what they are struggling with, what they are thinking about.. and sorta jump into all that and help them think stuff out.. I don’t know.. I guess it’s just the idea of being part of a community in that way that I super love… and really really want to be a part of.

On the Subject of the Class

It’s not even, at this point, totally clear that I can become a part of the class.. or how it would work. It’s a graduate class that may not be easily open to undergraduates.. but one way or another, I can probably become a part of it.

The other issue is the expense of the class.. If  you’re taking it for graduate credit it’s $1800.. which is way more then I can really spend.. But, even if it were on the high end of what I’m willing to spend, say for undergraduate credit.. I wonder how much this could be a door into the Mass Art Community and world.. and what of the privileges that go a long with that.. well what are they, and might that be a part of where the real value is?

The truth is I can pretty much teach myself anything, I don’t need the formal structure of classes to learn stuff.. and I don’t necessarily even need an instructor. I already push myself so super hard that I don’t feel a need to have some external force to push me.. I’m just crazy self motivated, self directed, so for me the value is.. in the question of how else this can all help me… much of which I take as being a part of a community of people doing, to one degree or another, similar things.. and that with a community of folks doing that.. I could learn from people instead of just books.. which might be a good deal more efficient… and stuff like that.

I’m, of course, already working on a major project.. could I get feed back on.. not just that part which is specific to this class, but the whole of what I’m trying to do?

The class it’s self is sorta like learning the development process for physical computing type stuff.. or I don’t know exactly the all of it.. but it’s exactly what I need for a range of projects / problems I have in front of me..   

I was just in a conversation with a friend about what sorta computer she should buy.. or more to the point.. should she get this particular computer.. and.. well she didn’t have a lot of money and.. we couldn’t actually see what the price was.. but this triggered me to thinking about net books.. which I know is pretty well trotted ground in the blogosphere.. but I figure, what the hell.

The first thing you must know about me is that “I’m a Mac.” I’ve always been a Mac.. ever since there were Macs.. sure, I’ve owned 1 PC, played with Amega’s.. etc, but.. I’m a Mac.

The Trouble with Macs 

The trouble with Macs, or Apple, as I contemplate it now, is that they don’t make a netbook.. Well they make the Mac Air.. which is there idea of an ultra portable laptop computer.. The Mac Air is great except for 3 problems.. #1 Expensive.. like starting at $1500.. #2 Weak.. I think it barely has 2 GHz.. and #3 lacks a CD / DVD drive..

See, the thing of the matter is.. if I’m going to get a netbook type computer..  besides being tiny and ultra portable.. I expect it to be a secondary computer.. a kind of computer I can  take and use anywhere without really thinking too much about it.. For it to be this tiny it must have a tiny screen which makes it totally not capable of doing most of what I do on a computer.. thus.. I’m unwilling to spend a lot of money on it.. especially when you consider that it doesn’t have much in the way of power.. Thus.. $500 might be more then I really want to spend!

Not having a CD / DVD drive is not a deal killer.. but I do want a laptop that I can at least watch movies on… but that doesn’t have to be the netbook.

So the issue is, at least right now, if I want such a computer.. it’s not going to run the Apple operating system unless I hack it to run the Apple OS.. which is maybe something I should look at because.. well.. there is the question of what I would, in practice, want to do on a netbook.

Net Book Ideals 

To me the Net Book ideal is as follows: You have this computer that’s so small you can take it anywhere without thinking about it.. has great battery life.. one way or another you’re connected to the internet..In this kind of scenario.. I might like to have the ability to take images off my camera.. or a video camera.. and perhaps even edit them.. adjust them a bit, and quickly post to the internet. I want to check emails, write blog posts, maybe edit a podcast or do simple audio things… 

So one super basic reason I’d prefer to run the Apple OS is because then I can run the software I already own that does that stuff..  I don’t have to buy, or learn how to use new stuff.See, one of the issues I’m confronting is..

I do need “a better computer” then my current Mac Book. Well.. I really need firewire so I can have a decent audio interface for live shows… and currently.. it looks like I might need the 17″ Mac Book Pro for its expansion slot.. and a 17″ Mac Book Pro is not terribly portable.. but.. I can do live shows with what I have now, so I’m in no rush.. 

Do you see a Tablet in my Future? 

All of this said, there is the Rumor of an Apple tablet… which might very well meet my netbook needs.. accept.. well.. its just a rumor.. The rumor is that it’s like to have something like a 13″ screen, if that.. will run the iPhone version of the OS.. all touch screen.. This would mean I couldn’t run my current apps.. but if you look at the iPhone App Store.. I think some of these needs would be met pretty easily.. though who knows about the video thing! 

I’ve been meaning.. gosh, for ages and ages, to share content and stuff that I’m digging.. But really, in many cases, it’s more personal then all this, cause we are talking about social media.. and so it is a social kinda thing.. it’s people whom I dig.. Probably most of my friends these days.. are social media folks.. folks who actually produce content of one form or another.. 

So how about some highlights?

My personal favorite blog has probably gotta be Catskill Cottage Seed ( ccseed on twitter ) from Richard Reeve.

I discovered it via a strange series of serendipitous events.. starting with a Berkman Blogger meet up where Joe Cascio shared his architectural ideas for a distributed twitter like micro blogging platform, (which has since morphed into an email program that Google Waves reminds one of) where Laura Fitton suggested that I should really follow @bikerbar… which somehow lead to following a lot of.. I guess you could call them “the mystics of twitter..” Lots of interesting crazy debates there.. and someone retweeted a quote from Carl Jung that I hadn’t heard before.. which is rather rare for me… and of course it was Richard.. so I immediately had to go and read his blog.

I left a crazy comment.. which seems to be my way.. and oddly Richard emailed me back.. seemed to really like my comment.. insisting that he doesn’t usually email commenters that way.. and, well, he’s been tolerating my crazy comments ever since.

Err, I hope I get this right.. as I listened to someone interviewing Richard many moons ago.. But… essentially he moved out to the Catskills… err, sometime ago.. in a slightly farmer-ish way.. growing food on his land that he integrates into meals as much as he can.. and looks into selling some of it at market.. in addition to other things.. and of course is studying to be a Jungian Analyst..

He’s only been on planet social media for.. I want to say a bit over a year? …And I think he’s doing an amazing job of it.. 

What you get on his blog are regular meditations on various Jungian concepts as they apply to daily life.. among other things.. and sometimes the post it’s self will strike you as a metaphor for something else.. kinda mediations on life…

Err, How about a music video to get us in the mood

How to Live.. and Jung Fun 

So in some respects.. you could see Richard’s blog as a response to Audio Slave.. which seems to be whaling the howl of our modern plight.. The spiritual challenges of our times.. and of course the analyst is a kind of substitute for a priest…

You know I dig Jungian psychology above all others cause it tends to grapple with these deeper things.. I imagine the modern psychologist ought to be a pragmatist.. taking what he or she can from all the schools of psychology.. applying where needed.. but mostly, modern psychology as I have encountered it on a personal level.. seems to suffer all too much from the sorta power relationship issues that Foucault wrestled with in, say.. Madness and Civilization..   

This point is that underlying the world of medicine is the prejudices of modernity’s value system.. how society is organized today has much to do with what defines a thing as a disorder.. The disorder has something to do with, perhaps we could say, challenges to adapting to the modern world.. never mind that it could be the modern world that is the problem.

Or at least that was the basic argument I gave the last time a therapist wanted to put me on medication! “What, and undermine my psyche’s natural attempt to heal me? Not on your life!” Those psycho wounds, after all, are wombs from which to be born again.. 

Out side of the subject of psychology, Richard is also big on social media.. which, as you no doubt know, is the latest sensation to sweep the nation. I LOVE social media, and what I think it means for the future of civilization.. but much of the conversations surrounding it are very business application centric.. and business conceptualized.. again, from the a certain modern view point which.. has those kinds of prejudices.. like unconscious metaphysical presumptions underlying all thought. In both medicine and business the problem is not the modern, but the modern subverting that which is becoming.. the tomorrow… 

And so we have a certain amount of system gaming going on.. or shall we call it Strategy? Tactics? Many of these things are filed under the heading of “best practices” for “social media practitioners.” The trouble is, from my point of view at least, that this often means a certain subversion of content.. and of becoming. We are not trying to be total people, merely successful people… and our metrics for what constitutes success… is.. not really what is really needed.

All of  this is somewhat inside social media baseball.. the point being that Richard’s take on all this.. is such  that in his values you don’t get these kinds of subversions.. That there is something greater that he’s after, and social media is a tool for that adventure.. and I think that’s great. 

Cloud City 

As a final note.. A little while ago Richard did a post on publishing in the clouds. This is one of a series of themes he revisits fairly regularly which.. I guess you could say are kind of wrestling with a number of things related to technologies evolution as it relates to social media.

Anyway, in this post he calls me out on my crazy comments.. and I thought offered interesting insight into my madness.. and clued me into where one can read my comment streams… or some of them anyway.

His post left me blushing a good deal.. and of course I wonder how could anyone possibly ever mistake me for a functional human being? I mean that’s just crazy talk! Don’t cha know!?! Meant to thank him for the generosity of it… 

The publishing in the cloud post I think also sorta centers on the issue of.. the future of this space.. I’d go off for eons on this.. but… well.. if I do I may never post this and.. it’s been far too long since I posted.. so lets post, shall we?!