Happy Thanksgiving!

I haven’t done a blog entry in a long while.  I thought maybe I was done with them altogether and that I might move on and in a way just let go of the art for art’s sake making practice however as of tonight I am feeling like chiming in in my own life for this work that has come through me to honor the small “s” self that is me doing this work in conjunction with the big “S” self of me.  Or rather me of it.  This is all to say that tonight, if my computer allows, I am going to add the tagline “Exploring the intersection of art, spirituality and science” under the name The Life Art Institute on my website and social network that I host.  I feel like talking from my heart.  I am not all stressed out and feeling completely abandoned and alone.  I feel completely in my power.  I have questioned whether or not to keep the art world context of what I have been doing going.  I think out of fellowship the work wants that to take place.  In that case, I have much more to document here so that this process can be documented within institutions of art.  God knows that as a viewer, museums are super awesome but that as an artist trying to get his ideas into the world, the museum platform seems almost completely inaccessible and thus these world changing ideas that the Universe is giving to me are not getting out into the world as fast as I certainly would like but it all must be in divine time. 

I am just randomly spacing these pseudo paragraphs out for pauses for the reader.  I do hope that all of this makes it into the annals of art history while also transcending the art world altogether.  On my phone tonight I have an interview paused with Refik Anadol who just made a piece with the archives of MoMA.  The only thing I don’t quite understand is why they have to be hallucinations.  I don’t think anyone actually wants to hallucinate.  Dreams perhaps, imaginations and so forth but hallucinations?  I think not.  Nevertheless, the imagery seems to be stunning from this work with AI.  Could be semantical. But I digress.  To digress again I listened to a performance by John Cage last night on a YouTube video that was titled John Cage at the San Francisco Art Institute (1991).  I have not been delving into much art stuff lately other than a visit to FRONT in Northeast Ohio here and the local program on TV called Applause that highlights regional arts activities and shows.  I have requested that they do a program on life art, but I have no idea if that will ever come to pass. 

My learning about people out there in the world doing things similar to what I have been talking about continues to grow.  A woman named Whitney Freya has a masterclass online called the Life Artist Masterclass and it is interesting.  Also, currently I am enrolled in Flora Bowley’s online community called FreeFlo.  I am getting to talk with some artists, and I am grateful.  I really feel compelled to write more here and start to get more involved in the world as a representative of life art.  The book I wrote by that title is kind of dark but as a memory and in a way that I hope speaks to folks who are in a lower vibratory state to appeal to their better nature and promote a rising into their highest self or rather Self.  Not everyone is going to do this nor believes in this I am sure; however I do feel it is in our truest nature to transform.  I will just leave it at that for now. 

Since having first started out writing about all of this I have found people from throughout history working with these themes and also people of my day and age working in these themes.  I see now that my blog is a record of all of this in conjunction with being a log of the work that I am doing.  It has been good to take a break.  I just know still that life art or as Flora Bowley calls it the art of aliveness or how Elizabeth Gilbert talks about it as creative living or how Fluxus used to cut people’s hair as art and how that blurred the line enough to go completely into lived reality itself.  That is what is important here.  This is all a record of not only my own transformation into a life artist but also all of this other history and how it is being coalesced in my life mind and day and time.  I feel like doing more documentation with this work now.  I have sort of broken through with my library work.  I have got to the end of my degree just about and it feels like there is an opening coming up for me to really begin to just write from the heart as a document of art itself.  I continue to write in a manner similar to the letters that I am reading by Van Gogh still as of now.  Very laborious but you get something sublime out of the length and depth and vastness and girth that is truly otherwise being lost in our sound byte culture of social media and so forth.  This is a deep dive into the current state of art I feel.  Refik is doing AI work and that I still believe is something that we can all call conventional art.  It is a way of understanding how that art differs from art as it arises in the flow of non-institutionalized or non-formalized or non-concerted art.  Meaning in other words lived experience.  That is what life art is all about.  I say to you all who have joined me in this reading and writing that though the concept of living life as art has come up here and there in my reading, I have not seen it codified as with this effort that I am doing currently.  It could be out there certainly, and I just have not seen it.  But truly it feels Iike I would have seen it by now.  When I learn about Whitney Freya or Flora Bowley it seems like there are these pockets of art makers who are not exactly connected to the art world and who are making art for different purposes than for exhibition.  It feels like those subcommunities are what is a big part of this rise of life art in the world.  I have named many people before.  I just do it again here to make sure it gets through.  The people that I have been following recently are not people who use the word artist to describe themselves and certainly not the term life artist, but these are the people doing work that I am interested in and am learning from.  Also, I want to mention a book I am reading called What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill.  This goes into the idea that I am making a conscious effort to be a seed sewer for millennia to come as we all I feel are already by the nature of being alive.  Derek Rydall has said how he is coaching people who want to make a difference for millennia.  I truly do not feel that this is hubris, quite the opposite.  It is being humble and seeing how you are ancients to vastly futuristic people and how what you do now will affect their lives and environment.  This also goes into life art I feel.  Also, I want to say that I know there will be people who ascribe to the life art idea that do not take on the ethics that I have espoused.  That is unfortunate and is something that comes along with free choice.  To be frank we should not ban books and thus ideas.  However, it is my interest to espouse and promote a kind of ethical living that takes into consideration the hearts and minds of people past present and future, cares about them all and really find a welcome home in the eternal infinite now that actually is the core of being whether lived or otherwise.

In my time here I have learned about the Alternative Art School run by Nato Thompson who is describing it as the new Black Mountain College.  I haven’t seen anything by Marina for a while.  I don’t really know any of these people.  I have exchanged a couple of messages with Nato.  I had in the past wanted to connect with more people, faster but since then I have had to just go forward in the work itself and not worry about it being understood in my day and age for now.  There is so much technology especially with AI and data and drones and things of this nature.  I have removed myself from that way of thinking in a way to see into the nature of being itself as a human being.  Personhood has been a focus of life art.  Particularly from Sean Carroll’s book The BIg Picture where he talks about humanity as being like Wile E. Coyote who is hovering mid-air above a giant ravine because he has not looked down yet and broken the cartoon spell of safety.  Carroll talks about us being like that with all of our science dispelling creation myths and needing news ways of thinking to go forward.  Life art is the response that has come through me.  Also, life art is a response that has come through me in regards Yuval Noah Harari talking about the future of work with AI in play and big challenges like climate change and nuclear weapons.  Life art is a way of thinking.  It is a technology.  A spiritual technology that transmutes what we sometimes understand as the muse or inspiration or creative thinking into lived experience that benefits in an objective way a human being or humanity in general.  Don’t get me wrong there is still subjective delight, but the main focus is on becoming a happier, healthier, more fulfilled human being.  It is about wellness and changing the victim mentality into a victor mentality. 

My going further into library work in the city of Akron Ohio has continued to bring me context, financial wellness, and fulfillment as a productive member of society.  In the meantime, though I have been going very deep with spiritual understanding studying through folks like Rebecca Campbell and Suzanne Adams, older favorites like Eckhart Tolle and Jon Kabat Zinn.  Here is a list of the people that I have been learning from: Eckhart Tolle, Jon Kabat Zinn, Suzanne Adams, Gary Zukav, Gabby Bernstein, Danielle LaPorte, Andy Puddicombe, Derek Rydall, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Carrie Marie Bush, Rebecca Campbell, Sean Carroll, Rob Reid, Chris Anderson, Yongey Mingur Rinpoche, Eric Booth, David Deutsch, Deepok Chopra, Michio Kaku, and many many more.