All posts by Greg I. Hamilton

A New Ambivalence, Faves

After the Summit … Heading Back Down

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If you’ve ever reached some sort of pinnacle of achievement— something you dreamed about and suddenly it becomes real— there is always the aftermath.

My continued agonizing to sort out what’s next after the release of our film (no small time ago) is actually pretty absurd. Though there’s plenty of room in my day for big new projects, I do have enough work to do, there are dreams in the hopper, and I have a business plan of sorts. But I’m guilty of what filmmaking story consultant Fernanda Rossi called “retro-engineering.”

We achieve something and we look back and we decide what of the acts we did were leading to success. But we don’t know, really, what led to success. We do a ton of things, there are a lot of variables in the universe, and then we nitpick, we choose the ones that we think led to success. – Fernanda Rossi

In the following interview, Fernanda, “The Documentary Doctor” who has consulted on at least two Academy Award® Nominee films, discusses success. First of all, she doesn’t believe in it.

Click below to view this 3-minute video:

Fernanda Rossi, Author, on secrets to success. by maxwellflower
In the video, she says: “I believe in meaningful acts every day. And if they lead to success, whatever success is, great.” What’s your definition of success? And what do you do after you’ve achieved it?

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Greg

Photo by yours truly atop “Yahoo Point”

A New Ambivalence

My Mind as a Dog

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Funny, give my mind free rein, like Harry the dog with too much leash, and it’s gone. Mornings like this, it’s the mental equivalent of my old dog Harry stopping to sniff every square of sidewalk. While it’s nice to stop and smell the roses, there is something to be said for just picking one or two and then continuing to walk.

I bet it’s a case of the-other-man’s-mind-is-greener. Were I to corral my thoughts back up and put them strictly to task, which I will do soon enough this morning, I bet they’d adjust to the new circumstances. They would gain some control and direction, but they would lose something that was in abundance while roaming free.

How important is that freedom? It’s easy to wax philosophical— political, really— about the value of freedom, but how many people really just turn their minds loose?

It might feel like closing your eyes while riding a horse bareback, just listening to the animal beneath you, trusting in some other consciousness, and giving it all time to unfold wherever it might take you. This is something everyone should do sometime in their lives, possibly regularly. (See Tara’s Tea & Cookies blog, “The Way the Light Filters Through the Leaves” from just two days ago for a perfect example of how and why to do this.) Choose your own metaphor— leaves to ogle, flowers to sniff, dogs to unleash, horses to turn loose, whatever— but then put that metaphor into real experience. Do it soon.

But what about those “lucky few” who get to do this all the time? Who seem to only know this freeroaming mental state? I suspect there are, for instance, some pure artists, novelists, and screenwriters— since that’s where I’ve been corralling my mind for these past several months— for whom this Zen-like mental freedom is a daily occurrence. For that matter I bet there are ‘pure’ (perhaps this is my euphemism for obsessive and driven) followers of any path out there: scientists, social workers, athletes, lovers, families …

You’ll notice I didn’t include bureaucrats and the like, but that’s a rant for another morning. Let’s just say if you’re going to pursue nirvana on some sort of path, I just hope it’s one that somehow betters the world. I’m certain I’m not being fair here, so world-saving bureaucrats, please speak up and you and I will watch Brazil together to discuss how paper-shuffling can save the world:

Mr. Warrenn: “What is this mess? An empty desk is an efficient desk.”
– Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985)

But I digress, which you all must be used to by now. What was I saying about letting my mind off leash?

I expect it will take a different sort of mindset to ponder whether there is such a thing as too much freedom of the mind. As the saying goes: “Keep your mind open, but not so open that your brains fall out.” Perhaps all you thinkers out there can help me ponder this? Comment below if you have the answer. Or a question. Or an even-further digression. In this state of mind, I’m fond of all those things.

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Greg

Photo of Harry by Boo-Creative several years ago.

Authentic Experience

Inflated Confidence

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There’s a cool article in this month’s Wired on the guy who invented inflatable mascot-suits. In typical Wired fashion, the article geeks out on how these things are made and delves into the inventor’s story, but then hits that all important question: “What good are these things, ultimately?” Lots of good, apparently.

I covered a previous Wired blurb about these cheerleader-eating, air-puffed characters long ago and had probably dismissed them as a silly novelty. But like all my favorite silly novelties, this one appears to still have life— especially for folks on the autism spectrum.

The article by Ben Paynter— with some great pics by Andrew Hetherington— shows how donning these suits can allow people with Asperger’s, autism, and presumably other conditions, to come out of their shells, socially. Paynter consulted a psychologist, who argued that the suits provided a “safer environment” thanks to the physical buffer zone of the suit’s air pocket and its anonymity.

There’s plenty in the full article to chew on: so click here to read it. It is careful to point out some flaws and failures in attempting to put the suits to “therapeutic use.” The article doesn’t prescribe, merely explores a cool idea.

Thinking of dressing up to hide your own peculiar variety of social awkwardness? As a cautionary tale, I’d advise reading the short piece “My Life as a Dog” by Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club). Find it in his non-fiction compilation, Stranger than Fiction. Palahniuk and a friend, dressed as a Dalmation and a dancing bear, took off across downtown Seattle to see what would happen. Admittedly it was a very different experiment. Palahniuk is a very different sort of scientist. The results?

They were thrown out of the art museum, chased by police, groped, kidney-punched, karate kicked, and there was verbal abuse—lots of verbal abuse. The types of foul language hurled at them (along with rocks) could only be rivaled by Palahniuk’s own fiction writing. It definitely makes you think twice about dressing in an animal suit— unless for some reason you’re seeking that sort of contact. To his journalistic credit, Palahniuk does indeed give an example of just such an individual: something about his friend getting laid repeatedly because of his wolf suit at Burning Man.

On that note, I’ll leave you with the thoughts of another Pacific Northwest writer on the subject of costumes:

But, then, who could guess the identity of any of the costumed or masked? And wasn’t that— and not the lust and the gluttony— the true beauty of Mardi Gras? A mask has but one expression, frozen and eternal, yet it is always and ever the essential expression, and to hide one’s telltale flesh behind the external skeleton of the mask is to display the universal identity of the inner being in place of the outer identity that is transitory and corrupt.

The freedom of the masked is not the vulgar political freedom of the successful revolutionary, but the magical freedom of the divine, beyond politics and beyond success. A mask, any mask, whether horned like a beast or feathered like an angel, is the face of immortality. Meet me in Cognito, baby. In Cognito, we’ll have nothing to hide.

– Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Greg

Photo by Andrew Hetherington