To answer your questions about the strange tango that informs the primary relationship/love story in the work:
Artist and Muse. I feel that people who are creative, receptive, are open to inspiration from various dimensions and influences. The artist is a channel, a conduit, a seer/mystic/psychic, if you will…who sees the future, reads souls, intuits the heart of a situation through her dreams and daydreams. Her points of reference are unusually eclectic, yet cohesive. Her portal to a meaningful life is through her muse.
Any time you deal with the notion of soul mates and polar opposites, you leave open the door to duality. The artist seems torn between the fierce expressiveness of her transfigurative art and a strong spiritual aspect that causes her to take to heart the imitation of Christ. She’s always trying to do the right thing, at great cost to her emotional psyche…she’s thoughtful and vulnerable, she already knows the ending to the story but understands that—for her personal and artistic growth—this complicated, strange tango is a crucible she must undergo…she tolerates abuse from female relatives because she refuses to turn her back on her marriage…in the end, she releases her muse, but leaves him with a sustaining dream (was the artist, in fact, a muse to her own muse?).
In the end, it's questionable that the artist needs the muse more than the muse needs the artist. He's too pedestrian...he can’t deal with the gift of faith and inspiration conferred by the irrational…he isn’t a creative problem-solver. She lets him down gently, but maybe it is, in fact, a curse…she’ll always have her imagination, but to the end of his days, she will be an ephemeral dream that he will remember with love and longing in his heart.
(Can you almost see an Obama-Clinton representational, generational, clash in this?)
Monday, September 29, 2008
Manifesto
I had sent out a Quick Poll asking for feedback about the characteristics of my audience and writing style, and after many vibrant exchanges I can definitively articulate these qualities:
Audience: people who are intuitive (direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension), instinctive (visceral, spontaneous, unpremeditated), and/or aspirational (yearning; ambitious, desirous of success)
Writing Style: (note that these adjectives describe the writing, and not necessarily my personality...)
intelligent (a capacity and taste for the higher forms of knowledge; astute, clever, alert, bright, apt, discerning, shrewd, smart), illuminating (informative, insightful, enlightening), articulate (using language easily and fluently; expressed, formulated, or presented with clarity and effectiveness), holistic (emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts), charming (pleasing, delightful, winning), intriguing (arousing the curiosity or interest of by unusual, new, or otherwise fascinating or compelling qualities), eclectic (not following any one system, but selecting and using what are considered the best elements of all systems)
What started four years ago as musings from a private blog, distributed via email in-box to serendipitously counteract the humorlessness found in the workplace, is going global. Here is just a small but representative sampling of people who read and share my posts:
- an African-American VP in corporate philanthropy who leads a major political action women's group supporting Barack Obama, co-chair of the host committee that brought the 2004 Democratic national convention to Boston
- a Korean-American arts and culture television producer and former White House intern in Al Gore's office
- a Native American model-actress-dramatist from Montana who is a director of education and outreach at Harvard
- a former software executive turned entrepreneur
- a high tech guru and former architecture student who repairs his own cars and renovates his own real estate properties
- an international transportation consultant in San Diego and former business professor in El Salvador
- a physician and former military officer in Hawaii
- an up-and-coming author and Ph.D. candidate in history who does field research in the Netherlands and Curacao
- an influential talent agent in NYC
- an information officer at the World Bank in Hong Kong who covers the entire Asia region and is an extreme sports enthusiast
- a high school senior who is a "triple threat": top scholar-multicultural student leader-varsity athlete who trains with a former Olympian in crew
- a cryptologist/engineer in Texas with more than 5 U.S. patents
- an intellectual property attorney who has lived on a sailboat in a Boston marina for more than 16 years and leaves a very small footprint
Addendum, August 2009:
- highly engaged print, broadcast, and online journalists across the country
(photo: room with a view from the Miyako Hotel, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto)
Friday, September 12, 2008
Political Predictions from America’s Heartland
I always had my eyes on the end game. Political events have borne me out.
Just before the flush of Super Tuesday elections, I e-mailed that the race for the Democratic nomination would be extremely close and that there was no guarantee of a Democratic victory in the general election, regardless of President Bush's negative ratings. I wrote: "...a significant percentage of voters will not vote on the issues but will vote according to emotional comfort level." Allowing for the strength of incumbency, my only error was in picking Hillary Clinton to eke out the nomination; however, I also declared that she would not become president.
I am an Ivy League intellectual and internationalist, and Barack Obama is my kind of candidate. Never before have I had the opportunity to vote for a candidate who so closely mirrors me and my beliefs. But Obama is also a generation ahead of his time—according to the U.S. census, twenty years from now, the minority population will achieve majority status in American society. At present, I fear the coalition of liberals / intellectuals / independents / Millennials / minorities /netizens is not large enough to overcome the silent majority represented by middle America without the addition of crossover voters.
My affiliations are frankly elitist (Cornell, Harvard—Office of the Assistant to the President / Harvard Law School / Harvard Business School / Graduate School of Design / Faculty of Arts and Sciences—Boston; U.S. Department of State, U.S. Census Bureau; ABC News, CNN International, Hearst-Argyle) and I have traveled independently all over the world. However, I grew up in America's heartland, and I understand the strength of the heartland's ingrained values.
The election was Barack Obama's to lose until the evangelical base became energized by the presence of Sarah Palin. Evangelicals are not just religious fundamentalists. They are also people like my neighbors and family friends who believe in God, country, and patriotism. They are pro-life, even though they may believe in a woman's reproductive rights. Many of them are multi-millionaires, even if they attended state universities. Others are first-generation immigrants who came to America as physicians and military officers.
Given my environment, I may be an anomaly as a supporter of Barack Obama. I applauded the inclusive society and sense of innovation that his candidacy represents. But Obama's greatest misstep is that he and his advisers assumed that American is a meritocracy, that the people want a well-educated, literary, and eloquent change agent who will bring us into the future and provide equal opportunity for all. They groomed and presented us with one of the best America has to offer: the zenith of what America can represent around the world is, indeed, embodied in a bi-racial man raised in our most diverse state of Hawaii who lived in and imbibed the cultures of Southeast Asia and a classic African-American stronghold in Chicago.
Regardless of what the Republicans threw at them, the Democrats would win hands-down if Hillary Clinton were Obama's running mate. Obama demonstrated his conservatism by selecting Joseph Biden as his running mate. Biden, although an elder statesman, brought nothing of demographic importance to the party. With Clinton, there was a chance to create the irresistible double whammy of a minority-female ticket, but Hillary and Bill played nice too late. Obama and his people did not trust them. The nominating convention was not the time and place for the Clintons to redeem themselves, though they have done so admirably.
If Obama loses in November, he will not have a second chance. The seismic shift of his candidacy was predicated in part on its insurgency. For what is change but insurgency? Hillary Clinton will likely then be the Democratic nominee in 2012; however, if her positioning strategy was to let Obama be the standard bearer with the expectation that he would lose the White House in 2008, her strategy will backfire. Americans are predisposed to give an incumbent president two terms in office, and there is nothing Clinton can do to unseat a sitting president.
Here is my great fear: Sarah Palin will become America's first female president.
John McCain is 72 years old and could conceivably be in office until he is 80. He has already suffered a cancer scare. The probability is very high, given the stress of the job, that McCain could become incapacitated while in office. My family and friends in southwest Oklahoma have a strong tradition of public service, so we like and respect John McCain for his years of service as a Navy officer, a prisoner of war, and a senator: we understand his drive to be of service to his country. However, at some point, this sense of service was supplanted by an ambition to be elected president at all costs. McCain must have been rankled by the idea of an upstart taking precedence over someone who waited his turn. So he made a deal with the devil and master manipulator Karl Rove.
Rove knows the right buttons to push to elicit a visceral reaction, and I see his fingerprints all over the elevation of Sarah Palin. Hers is a Cinderella story come to life because Rove went trolling for someone who could steal Obama's thunder. As such, Palin had not been fully vetted.
Palin is the ying to Obama's yang.
A woman, a working professional and soccer mom: a member of the religious right and of the NRA. She is a natural in front of the camera, and her persona is approachable and salt-of-the-earth. To me, the Republican ticket is a manufactured creation, designed by Karl Rove in the same way that Sean "Diddy" Combs auditions the members of the boy bands and girl groups he matches up.
It is irrelevant, in a larger sense, to speak of someone as not having the experience to become president. Nothing in life really prepares one to be the leader of the free world. In America, anyone can win the presidential lottery. All we voters ask is that we have enough time and opportunity to get to know our candidates—their assets and liabilities—and an abbreviated general election season does not allow a thorough vetting of a relative unknown for a hand-picked spot on a presidential ticket.
Make no mistake:
1) the election will be a litmus test of the culture wars
2) the election will be won through coverage and momentum in the media news cycle
3) the election results will be closer than expected
4) Obama is very much in danger of losing the election
5) if the Republicans win as a result of unethical ploys or controversy, as in 2000, race riots will break out
I have accurately called every election since Ronald Reagan was elected (I knew Al Gore would not win...he seemed to have lost his sense of self during the campaign, which cost him votes, and George W. Bush's identifiable persona was someone you could have a beer with), but this is the first time I am calling the election a toss up.
Political psychology has always fascinated me. I was a dual government major at Cornell University before I switched to English and comparative literature and creative writing. In college, I spent my summers working at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. in competitive, paid internships with the Foreign Service and the Office of Public Affairs. I have run for and won elective office all the way from junior high school through college, and I was chosen for Oklahoma Girls State and 1st alternate to Girls Nation in Washington, D.C. I learned more about the art of leadership and politics at the elbow of Charles Ogletree, Barack Obama's Harvard law professor and trusted adviser, who appeared in the campaign video shown at the Democratic convention.
What can Obama do in the time remaining to win the election? And if he loses, what will it take to elect a minority person to the Presidency? Hopefully, I will have time to mull over these questions before I head to Boston. This is for certain: in twenty years, any minority candidate will have to reach out and make substantial inroads into African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American communities.
Just before the flush of Super Tuesday elections, I e-mailed that the race for the Democratic nomination would be extremely close and that there was no guarantee of a Democratic victory in the general election, regardless of President Bush's negative ratings. I wrote: "...a significant percentage of voters will not vote on the issues but will vote according to emotional comfort level." Allowing for the strength of incumbency, my only error was in picking Hillary Clinton to eke out the nomination; however, I also declared that she would not become president.
I am an Ivy League intellectual and internationalist, and Barack Obama is my kind of candidate. Never before have I had the opportunity to vote for a candidate who so closely mirrors me and my beliefs. But Obama is also a generation ahead of his time—according to the U.S. census, twenty years from now, the minority population will achieve majority status in American society. At present, I fear the coalition of liberals / intellectuals / independents / Millennials / minorities /netizens is not large enough to overcome the silent majority represented by middle America without the addition of crossover voters.
My affiliations are frankly elitist (Cornell, Harvard—Office of the Assistant to the President / Harvard Law School / Harvard Business School / Graduate School of Design / Faculty of Arts and Sciences—Boston; U.S. Department of State, U.S. Census Bureau; ABC News, CNN International, Hearst-Argyle) and I have traveled independently all over the world. However, I grew up in America's heartland, and I understand the strength of the heartland's ingrained values.
The election was Barack Obama's to lose until the evangelical base became energized by the presence of Sarah Palin. Evangelicals are not just religious fundamentalists. They are also people like my neighbors and family friends who believe in God, country, and patriotism. They are pro-life, even though they may believe in a woman's reproductive rights. Many of them are multi-millionaires, even if they attended state universities. Others are first-generation immigrants who came to America as physicians and military officers.
Given my environment, I may be an anomaly as a supporter of Barack Obama. I applauded the inclusive society and sense of innovation that his candidacy represents. But Obama's greatest misstep is that he and his advisers assumed that American is a meritocracy, that the people want a well-educated, literary, and eloquent change agent who will bring us into the future and provide equal opportunity for all. They groomed and presented us with one of the best America has to offer: the zenith of what America can represent around the world is, indeed, embodied in a bi-racial man raised in our most diverse state of Hawaii who lived in and imbibed the cultures of Southeast Asia and a classic African-American stronghold in Chicago.
Regardless of what the Republicans threw at them, the Democrats would win hands-down if Hillary Clinton were Obama's running mate. Obama demonstrated his conservatism by selecting Joseph Biden as his running mate. Biden, although an elder statesman, brought nothing of demographic importance to the party. With Clinton, there was a chance to create the irresistible double whammy of a minority-female ticket, but Hillary and Bill played nice too late. Obama and his people did not trust them. The nominating convention was not the time and place for the Clintons to redeem themselves, though they have done so admirably.
If Obama loses in November, he will not have a second chance. The seismic shift of his candidacy was predicated in part on its insurgency. For what is change but insurgency? Hillary Clinton will likely then be the Democratic nominee in 2012; however, if her positioning strategy was to let Obama be the standard bearer with the expectation that he would lose the White House in 2008, her strategy will backfire. Americans are predisposed to give an incumbent president two terms in office, and there is nothing Clinton can do to unseat a sitting president.
Here is my great fear: Sarah Palin will become America's first female president.
John McCain is 72 years old and could conceivably be in office until he is 80. He has already suffered a cancer scare. The probability is very high, given the stress of the job, that McCain could become incapacitated while in office. My family and friends in southwest Oklahoma have a strong tradition of public service, so we like and respect John McCain for his years of service as a Navy officer, a prisoner of war, and a senator: we understand his drive to be of service to his country. However, at some point, this sense of service was supplanted by an ambition to be elected president at all costs. McCain must have been rankled by the idea of an upstart taking precedence over someone who waited his turn. So he made a deal with the devil and master manipulator Karl Rove.
Rove knows the right buttons to push to elicit a visceral reaction, and I see his fingerprints all over the elevation of Sarah Palin. Hers is a Cinderella story come to life because Rove went trolling for someone who could steal Obama's thunder. As such, Palin had not been fully vetted.
Palin is the ying to Obama's yang.
A woman, a working professional and soccer mom: a member of the religious right and of the NRA. She is a natural in front of the camera, and her persona is approachable and salt-of-the-earth. To me, the Republican ticket is a manufactured creation, designed by Karl Rove in the same way that Sean "Diddy" Combs auditions the members of the boy bands and girl groups he matches up.
It is irrelevant, in a larger sense, to speak of someone as not having the experience to become president. Nothing in life really prepares one to be the leader of the free world. In America, anyone can win the presidential lottery. All we voters ask is that we have enough time and opportunity to get to know our candidates—their assets and liabilities—and an abbreviated general election season does not allow a thorough vetting of a relative unknown for a hand-picked spot on a presidential ticket.
Make no mistake:
1) the election will be a litmus test of the culture wars
2) the election will be won through coverage and momentum in the media news cycle
3) the election results will be closer than expected
4) Obama is very much in danger of losing the election
5) if the Republicans win as a result of unethical ploys or controversy, as in 2000, race riots will break out
I have accurately called every election since Ronald Reagan was elected (I knew Al Gore would not win...he seemed to have lost his sense of self during the campaign, which cost him votes, and George W. Bush's identifiable persona was someone you could have a beer with), but this is the first time I am calling the election a toss up.
Political psychology has always fascinated me. I was a dual government major at Cornell University before I switched to English and comparative literature and creative writing. In college, I spent my summers working at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. in competitive, paid internships with the Foreign Service and the Office of Public Affairs. I have run for and won elective office all the way from junior high school through college, and I was chosen for Oklahoma Girls State and 1st alternate to Girls Nation in Washington, D.C. I learned more about the art of leadership and politics at the elbow of Charles Ogletree, Barack Obama's Harvard law professor and trusted adviser, who appeared in the campaign video shown at the Democratic convention.
What can Obama do in the time remaining to win the election? And if he loses, what will it take to elect a minority person to the Presidency? Hopefully, I will have time to mull over these questions before I head to Boston. This is for certain: in twenty years, any minority candidate will have to reach out and make substantial inroads into African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American communities.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Iconic Style
Simplicity—in its heightened form—is a chaste elegance, refinement, and self-knowledge. For an artist in the purest form of the word, everything that defines one is an act of creative self-expression.
To me, the components of a full life heavy with symbolism and meaning include intellectual stimulation and emotional engagement, serenity, constant exposure to beauty, scent, color, design, style, art, architecture, literature, travel, landscapes, and gardens…
Exquisite is the word that best describes my favored style—combining the serenity of the East Asian tradition with the rococo of the Mediterranean and the functionality of the European.
I opt for quality over quantity, so my possessions are rigorously minimal. What qualifies as exquisite is a streamlined culling of what is best in class or breed that innately applies to my image and lifestyle—I rigorously reject what is irrelevant, and I seldom deviate from my favorites.
