Syncronicity, bane of my fame?

I have adopted a strategy of looking back on my experience, finding a trend or pattern, and describing that as a strategy. As though the pattern were something which could have been planned or designed.

One trend i have noticed leads me to postulate that I, personally, am unable to think of, or at least describe, anything which has not been thought before. It goes something like this:

I think something. Make a connection between concepts which were previously unconnected. And think nothing of it. Gradually i begin to realize that i have this connection, and that those in my surroundings seem not to. I attempt to share this but do not have the necessary terms to articulate it. So i search for useful terms. In the search i find many fascinating things around the connection i made, and forget the significance of the connection itself. At some point later i come to realize again, that i have a connection and those in my surrounding seem not to. Because of my searching, my surroundings now include people on either side of the connection, so it becomes even more valuable for me to share it. And i have learned from those people the terms necessary to articulate it. I begin to articulate it, and find that it just became public knowledge. Somebody else has just proved it scientifically, or divined it astrally, or composed it musically, or what have you.

Being human, i have feelings about this:

I feel relieved that i am not the only person who has this connection. The burden of articulation no longer rests on my shoulders alone. I feel frustrated that the work did i put into the articulation no longer seems necessary. My attempts appear to be retroactively nullified.

Then i feel curious to discover if that person who just presented new proof began research at the same instant i "initially" thought of it. If so, is there a way to show whether one party or another had the idea "first"? Or more importantly, could they have thought of it if i had not? If not, how many people does it actually take to think something? Is there a new connection here?

...i expect someone to post the new conclusive evidence announced last tuesday that researchers in 4 different labs around the globe simultaneously discovered. Or that it was in the special features of What the Bleep do We Know and i missed it...

I watch other people getting their degrees, and research grants, and prizes, and patents, and TV shows, for stuff i came up with when i was a little kid. And i love them, for sharing in the work that i found interesting. I feel pangs, and wonder if i should do something different in the future to "get credit" for the stuff i came up with last year. I consign myself to never getting fame for changing the world, but getting the privilege to be an ordinary citizen in a world which seems to shift itself to fit my fondest dreams. I decide to look at it, for a time, as though my goals and projects become reality without me having to bankroll them, or do the legwork.

But then again, i am publicizing this.

~rry

the dead air disclaimer

to anyone who reads this page.

First off thank you for your interest, and my apologies if you had any expectations of this page regularly updating. We are producing in many different realms and this website is often lost beneath the pile of other blogs, journals, art, and human interaction, that also require energy and time. There is also an issue of the formation of a steady identity to write from, or consistent topic to write around, for this blog, and for changist.net as well. While the primary writer/founder thinks he has found an identity clear enough to work from, the question of topic eludes him. Recently more people have joined the fray of "changist" discussion, and so now there is an added challenge of incorporating. Finding a group vision, finding a format which can hold space for multiple newscasters and variously public levels of cross-talk, to name a few technical challenges.

For the meantime, I would like to show you a little more of the thoughts which rest behind the label changist, so I will be reposting select entries from our founders journal which seem to hold the general (generative) vision close to the surface. These entries can be found within the archives of this blog, or with the label "journal"

"maybe it's the rapture?!"

the jokes i'm making recently have had a biblical flavor, and the plans i'm making epic, stuff of legend. in moving to balance history i take references from the past and buoy them in the soup of daily chatter. it sounds like a joke, making fun of how ancients saw the world, and yet. i'm placing them almost purposefully, as though a piece of the old story still applies. and more, as though it applies specifically to this situation. this conversation. this opportunity for mirth allows me to resurface thoughts that reach way back through history. my hope is that there is something timeless to be found, in this moment. and my dream is that i am bringing that timelessness closer to the light.

i think it's just about time

i've been throwing out every assumption i can find, replacing them with assumptions that are identified, as clearly as possible, and based as much as possible on things which are indisputable. Then i even try to dispute those. the primary foundation of my reality is currently that change is, thus i have taken the label changist.

i've been collecting my memories, following my dreams, watching my mind interpret world. Finding recurring personalities amongst and seeing no way to combine them or synthesize down to one dominant persona or writing style. i diversify.

this right here is a band of thinkers, doers, lovers, beers, questions and answers, going under whatever name seems to fit at the time. a collective, a multiperson. We've established this before, and played with pronouns to fit, but somehow i thought i would grow out of it. As though it were a coping mechanism for an issue that would eventually heal. Perhaps it will heal, but that point is not perceivable in the future, so i might as well, awarely, for the time being, behave as though coping mechanisms are as natural as the air i think we're breathing.

but lets call them "strategies[ for success]" instead of coping mechanisms, it sounds more positive. thus i am a strategist.

This feels like it's an absorbtion of the "strategies are learning" segment of Self Design info i exposed myself to at Rethinking Everything. I struggle with the idea that i'm somehow borrowing an idea from the author if i read something in a book and then apply it to my life. Given the total amount of information available "out there", and the fraction which i have actually experienced, and the fraction of that which i noticed experiencing, and the fraction of that which "clicked" with me, and the fraction of that which i actually decided to use in my recent reconstitution. I own the idea. The idea which is currently part of me, not the strings of intellectual property, or copyright, but the concept.

i have, i guess, developed, a vision of the world i want, and am working on strategies to get it. Writing may be one, i've got a book of "exercises toward mastery" of poetry. Music may be one, i've got ProTools and some wicked-cool instruments in my homespace. Service may be one, i hold a position creating as oasis in the grand canyon. it's really hard for me to refrain from saying grand freaking canyon every time i mention it. still. after months of living here. it's just, still, the coolest dang place i've ever lived, and i've lived at arco'freakin'santi!
! ? ! ~

my housemates have been playing guitar and fiddle behind me for like an hour now at least. i'm going to go experience some live music and company. -[rry]

["rry" is shorthand for murray, and looks much like the signature the author adopted at the time of this entry incorporating all 6 letters of his name into three penstrokes. ]

commute pt.3 [of 3]

Sometimes a scrap of rhythm will catch me. If it is a spoken incident i instinctively begin to speak it in a loop, perpetuating the rhythm. Some other hikers were chatting about the sunlight or the water and a three word phrase jumped out at me. It resounded in my head, and once i'd turned the next switchback i began speaking it as a round, with the consonants becoming drum samples in loose tempo with my footsteps and the tshik tshik of my poletips.

By the time i reached the Colorado River i had explored through beats and instruments, weaving sound from my body around in patterns not unlike the ones made by the trail. I'd taken the connection to language, and watched every word become a pattern like a drum loop, or a switchback, or a waterfall, or the outline of a ridgeline. I felt in my mouth each letter become a movement, like a footstep, like a blink, like a pebble, like a whitecap. I watched these things progress along the strings of a musical staff, dipping through the spectrum of colored light, through vowels, through number-qualities, through depths of Jin Shin Jyutsu

continues...
[as of 02010.01.10 this story has not actually been continued, but has begun to be referred to as translanguaging. -Ed.]

commute pt. 2

The second half of the trail wove in and out of sunlight, following the creek. I had a solid stride going from the first half, doing about 3 mph, and able to stop and go seamlessly, stepping to the side to let uphill hikers pass. Overall my hiking technique has become effortless enough that i can drift my consciousness inward and find a center point, a center of gravity, in which i become the only fixed point in the universe and the planet spins beneath me flowing scenery past my ears and eyes, and terrain under my feet. Beneath my hands too, as i was using trekking poles to become a four-footed creature.

So here are the sensations: beneath my limbs the trail, moving upwards to me with variation, rocky, sandy, water, wooden spars; along my skin the shadows of higher canyon walls, undulating chill air (50F-) and hugs of sunlight; to the right or left the sound of moving water, sometimes high white noise, sometimes burbling over rocks, sometimes not even audible, and constantly being modulated by the ear-canal of water-cut mountain around me.

I hope you have seen the image of an electroencephalograph, or the track layout of digital music software, or the lines of a musical staff, or the spread of color which comes out of a prism. Because i have seen those images, and seen them in motion, and run my brain through the process of converting light and sound an brainwaves into them. I did this on the trail. To the trail. With the trail.

---
Links, in case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker_%28music_software%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography

commute pt. 1

Hiking down the canyon this morning i took the Bright Angel trail instead of the South Kaibab. I'd forgotten how much easier it is on the knees, and how crowded, but my memory was right about how long the trail was; it took me 3:30 instead of 2:30.

For those who don't know the trail runs 4.5 miles to Indian Gardens campground, and then another 5 miles to Phantom Ranch. For the upper half i took it easy, keeping warm and remembering to take in the views. I chatted with a few hikers who were day hiking to Indian Gardens and back, and discovered one of life's many imponderables: why is there an ADA compliant stall in the rest house 3 miles into the Grand Canyon?