The Genius of Love

Okay, I got my ya-yas out for a few days. But if the creating your own reality part of this equation is right, then my frustration would be creating as much of a barrier as it would be solving.

Still, I do think there's something to complete, unmitigated honesty every once in a while.

And it gives you, the reader, the possible investor, the book publishing magnate, a beautiful glimpse at what the world might be with a three-dimensional corporation slicing sh**te right down the middle.

What if a corporation could tell the truth? What if they had to to be more valuable?

What if there was a spiritual end run? --A way to gain the authority of power and money without sluffing off pieces of yourself in the process. What if by truly being yourself you inevitably pulled off something along the lines of a Ghandi (but with better shoes--or maybe your "traditional dress" is a suit). Or a Charlie Christian--but you didn't have to die to become...

This is sounding like ground covered. Do I actually have anything to say?

I guess not--except this:

I'm back to thinking that we/I can do it my/ourselves.

At one point I had $50,000 in venture capital promised to get White G going. The investor backed out, and I don't hold it against him, but I take it as proof that the idea is sound.

If nothing else, there are too many millionaires, too many billionaires who are too creative and too hungry to be at the ground zero of something REALLY--something real--happening.

There are too many cultural and business factors pointing at the White Gold model. And White Gold has occupied the territory too well to go unnoticed. Any blip by someone else (and I don't see anyone else doing anything even remotely similar) will just point back to The Love Artist.

I even talked to a friend who I asked for $7 million. He couldn't get past the word "white", but I know he's smart enough to get past it eventually. He likes Public Enemy too much not to eventually translate how they got their spiritual authority--by being their temporal selves--and transfer it to himself.

And he loves Italian local and neighborhood culture too much to not to eventually make it FOR himself. Because he also grew up a punk rocker.

And he's a little envious of some friends who started a clothing company that went huge, NYC-hip-hop style. Even though he'd never wear the stuff himself. He can feel--even if he doesn't let himself revel in it--what it means to allow yourself the visual, the textural, the tactile, the silent communion of color and cut.

And part of him--that Italian part--knows that that's sacred too. That a sustainable culture has modern versions of the cobbler, the tailor.

And that in modern urban America that ain't gonna be cheap. Especially if we want it slow--and to last.

And another part--the part that got him his $7 millie--knows that sustainability isn't fucking around. It's not the Green Party and non-profit gallery openings. (May god bless them). That the capital C Church is sustainable (cause they weren't f#*&ing around). --That making money is sustainable and that raising money to run non-profits is not--that it feels like death because it is eventually not as life giving--as efficient--as desire.

That it takes too much emotional energy to transfer enough money that way to make it a primary force in "saving" the world.

(I just looked up the world's oldest corporations: construction, winemakers, innkeepers, goldsmiths!, banking, shoes--and I'll bet very few of those families produce relaxation and happiness--joy--like they could. Why don't we invest our profits at least in happiness and love instead of insisting on more work?)

And another part of him--and I only say this because I know he is me in a certain sense--knows that he wants to operate on inspiration. That it's love and beauty and fun that get him out of bed in the morning--not policy, tariffs, restraint and the quality of life of his neighbor.

And I'm not saying by any means that those aren't important attributes in securing a spiritual, loving, and beauteous future--they may be--just that they won't be enough to be the primary movers--a la An Inconvenient Truth. They won't be first.

They won't be reasons because they don't inspire. They prod and motivate, yes, but it's really hard to lead that way--especially these days when everyone knows who's full of it. And it's easy to lead by example. --As it takes no additional energy at all.

Meaning that the moment someone proves the profitability of a spiritual, honest, free, warm, mature, responsible corporation with impeccable scruples, then all the refuseniks--who are now unhappily earning less at Whole Foods, or more grinning and bearing it as lawyers and managers--will cut themselves loose and clamor, if not stammer, to do the exact same thing.

And we will create an enormous market for ourselves. While half the rest of the world--still happily involved in the old market, will get promotions the likes of which has never been seen in India, Kenya, the Middle East, the Check Republic and a whole lot of other places where folks'd currently rather fight than switch (and why not--it makes more sense and begets a lot more cents).

Love is expensive. Peace a luxury. They both take a whole lot of faith.

Did we really think we were going to increasingly suffer and toil ourselves (or our kids) into a better future?

Whoops--I almost started pushing buttons. Please excuse me. You see I'm not above stooping to "the end justifies the means" methods myself. So maybe I want to adjust my tack.

Now where was I?

Let me go back a little further. Cause if what I believe is true, then I shouldn't even have to ask for that $7 mil again. In fact, if what I believe is true, then it should be already looking for me. My job being relaxing enough to believe it and handle it when it comes. Not letting such excitement bust my flow.

Or excite my scruples. :)

In college I had numerous and frequent lengthy debates in friend's dorm rooms about all kind of matters.

In one, I took on a friend who adapted a sort of conservatism out of apathy. I was pretty liberal at the time and although I wasn't listening to my own line of reasoning as closely as I could have, I'm sure my argument displayed that I was a little hungry to have him "with" me.

(A study about the political ramifications of loneliness would be pretty comprehensive I'd bet.)

To bring him over to my "side"--and this is something that the left can fall prey to--wanting to be "with" so much that you end up needy and "without"--I embarked on a diagram plotting the trajectory of Western Civilization.

It, of course, showed that we were inexorably moving toward greater personal freedom and away from hierarchy and centralized authority--moving left. I think I even convinced him a good deal. I'm not sure he ever went bleeding heart but I think he at least got in on some Hunter S. Thompson style good times hedonism leftness. (The last I heard he was working with young people, so that probably went the way of the dodo as well.)

But what I failed to realize myself, and may be just getting to, is that this is true. True in the sense that it's already happening. And is happening regardless. That it wasn't Hitler that caused a resurgence in fascism in the middle of last century (that's called the "great man" approach to history)--but the fear that the US showed after WWI, the response to the Tsars in Russia that caused them to decry any and all selfishness and personal interest.

If consciousness is an ocean, then no wave can grow on its own. And no wave can exist without eventually hitting a shore somewhere. And no movement can appear without a groundswell of support--even if much of that support, of the admitted desire it takes to support something swells primarily while unconscious.

Put it this way: who, in 1959 would have thought that in ten years would be 1969?

From uptight and hyper to Charles Manson and things getting creepy and Vietnam and starting to lose people: Jimi and Janice and Jim in one decade.

But the unadmitted--the unconscious--desire for that ten years had been growing for centuries.

Once you understand this, I suppose it's all tipping points and desire repression capacity ratios.

Which is the wonderful thing about desire: you can only repress it for so long.

And then it comes true.

All along, I've done the "math" on what I've wanted to do and my own personal style of living. I am disciplined but have zero tolerance (literally) for busywork. And even less for promotion, hucksterism, "work".

So what if my methods really were comprehensive. The trick then, would be more akin to surfing that wave--being properly positioned by reading the horizon and not being afraid to drop in when it was ready to crest--than trying to manufacture or create it.

What if that's what we've been doing the whole time? Only we thought we were creating it--doing it unaided, by ourselves, unappreciated and alone--because in our fear and trepidation we insisted on being just in front of the leading edge? In really trying?

And what if we could have--and still could--lean back (thank god for rap songs to noodle our unconscious)? And still have EVERYTHING happen?!

And enjoy it--maybe even go faster because we'd be in the right place in the wave--in the slot. Deep in the groove? In the tube.

And all the same things would happen.

And maybe more and more completely because everyone knows that when you loose it--your warm--you make mistakes and say stupid shit that makes people think twice about you--and then you have to do even more to make up for it?

What if we could relax? What if new experience was doled out on the basis of who was prepared spiritually--and that preparation was nothing but a byproduct of the "work" we thought was getting the job done?

What if magnetism really ruled the world--and not entropy? What if entropy was just a manifestation of our limited understanding--of our failure to take into account parallel universes, the measurements that don't agree with what we knew yesterday?

(An interesting note: physicists have found that a cubic centimeter of "empty space" contains more energy than all the matter in the universe--a result that has been proven through multiple experiments but is usually ignored or disbelieved because it tears apart so much of what we already know.)

What if we were the empty space--the slow moving energy (which we are--matter being just slowed down energy)--and the entire surrounding universe--that which we resist and demand to be separate from--both our reservoir and an unlimited opportunity?

I'm not saying that corn is going to get to my house without a truck coming from the field. What I am saying, is that I believe, that if we let it be true, it could find a much more direct route--happily!!, spiritually and environmentally--if we let our own desire guide us instead of the fear we've installed at each step of the process.

Hell, we used to have a fruit and vegetable guy who came to our house when I was young--Pandy, I believe his name was. I don't know where he got his produce from, but I'll bet it wasn't a distributor. These days even a large proportion of the sellers at Seattle's famed "Farmer's" Market get their produce from the same distributors. Which makes them basically a lifestyle choice--a shopping preference.

But the answer is neither back or forward. It is neither being nostalgic for Pandy nor insisting on more highly regimented Peapods (the modern, mechanized delivery system).

The answer is what we want. Is Pandy with an Internet connection. And maybe a fleet of trucks. Is a brand so confident and relaxed that it allows the idiosyncrasy that made us all stand at the window waiting for Pandy.

And we didn't realize we were paying for personality, for Pandy to be alive and happy, but we were. And this time we've got to do it SPECIFICALLY! Overtly.

Or else it's not coming back.

Another great example is cafes. There's no reason that Starbucks HAS to be tight--some would say uptight--about their signage, their employee conduct, their witty banter, their love. They could look and feel--even be named--however they want.

And there's no reason for them to be loose about their cleanliness, their maintenance, their customer service.

And in two minutes this will be nothing but the naturally-observed order of things. And in ten years no one will imagine why anyone ever named, decorated and ran every store they had the exact same--when everyone already knew who owned what, what they preferred and why.

In a sense it's too simple to accept. The funnest places I've ever hung out have been cafes with lax rules, marginal hygiene and low prices. I put most of them in The Love Artist. You could feel them. Sometimes too much.

And without exception, they failed or completely drained their owners (or both). Because they were giving away love--they were non-profit spiritually. And that is incredibly hard to maintain. Just ask any business owner who puts his or her heart and soul into their work.

So how again are we going to get a loving, sustainable future on the cheap?

And the places that stick around are usually a bit tight. And I'm sure there's a "taker" somewhere in each of those. Maybe a whole boardroom of them. And sooner or later you figure out it's just business with them and then it's just business.

The food tastes a little more shallow. The smile on the greeter a little seems a little more forced.

But we know this. And this means it is changing. This means that we are already asking for businesses to be real. Not more nice, not more chipper, not even more positive or more tasty or faster. But more real.

And sooner or later we'll realize that all the places we love we've paid for. And that we are extremely reluctant leaders in the economic sphere. Especially when it's our money.

But that everything we love gets built.

And that not even the future is something we're going to have to work at.

But that if we lean back, the present will come to us.

And at that time--to stay with it, to stay up in it, to keep it rolling, to hold on to that tube--we'll do what we want.

I, for one, am enthusiastic about what we'll come up with.

And I'm positive it's right on (and in) time.

How can I be so certain? It's the natural order of things. Living matter is ordered and orchestrated to such a degree that not even three thousand years of significant, full-time investigation has yielded anything but a few glimpses at the brains behind the universe.

Human bodies naturally tend toward health. Cancerous cells are routinely--daily--eliminated without a so much as a broken stride from the host. Where they do take over it is found that relaxation and taking it easy--and doing what you really want--seems to be the most effacatious cure.

Fear and "hard work" they don't prescribe.

Neither do they prescribe them to heart attack candidates. Take some time. Get a little exercise--this is what they say. They don't recommend cramming everything in.

So why would we be any different? Why would we be built to be half sick? To manage our neuroses? To work a job that we didn't love. And to have to?

While every fish in the sea and every bird in the sky gets raised, fed and housed every day just because. By living out their exact nature. By being exactly who they are. Even if who they are is eating other animals. Or digging holes. Or going south to vacation in the winter.

Why would this apply to everything but us? Why would we be more valuable when we go against our nature? And be more valuable the more we went against it?

If I was more crass, I would say that I could even get people to pay me just to say this. Just to titillate their busy and time poor, wealthy selves.

And this could work. I don't give a fuck who buys my book. And I guarantee that they will be doing the world a service by putting it back into alignment with itself. And creating possibilities for their kids that they never even imagined.

They might do it to have a $120 book on their shelves to pull out at cocktail parties. They might be so spiritually starved that they hope it's the artistic equivalent of a Tony Robbins seminar, which they've grown bored of--having already made it "big" and still not found "it".

And that's the beauty and true genius of the universe--it doesn't matter WHY you do it. It just cares WHAT you do and HOW. If it leads to more love and life, it's success. If it doesn't, it goes away.

That's why love is so great--and the perfect model on which to run an economy.

And it doesn't matter if you believe me or not. Because it's happening independent of our belief. And would continue happening even if I died today. Because it's what we want more than anything in the world. And we're honest about that in the deepest places of ourselves.

And it's been happening for all of history. Or history has been happening for all of it. So we can't miss our mark. And it--love--always happens at exactly the right time. Despite our plans, intentions, proofs, lesser desires, fears--despite everything.

It's all opportunities. And we decide what's most important. And it keeps getting better. Because we keep growing and learning.

Now let's see if I can release this into the universe with enough acceptance and relaxation--with enough of a feeling of honest plenty--that I can get my $7 mil. :)