Writing and Music

Sweet Toof Williamsburg Brooklyn NYC Street Art

Music often has a fractal structure like writing and nature. Rudy Rucker compares a novel to a score composed by an orchestra of characters. I think of a looper laying down all his tracks before he begins his song. Rucker also mentions the soloist whether it is the sax or the guitar. I think of the freestyle emcee. In a rock and roll badass kind of way Rucker speaks of the power chords as god chords, and advises us of the themes of his beloved sic fi genre. The writer builds up the concepts, juggling the action, pressing it forward, the ideas moving. The musician uses time, rhythm, repetition, patterns, and alternation. The musician becomes a radio antenna accepting the energy as fuel to help create their song.

Fractals start small and keep building in complexity infinitely. New ideas keep breaking off and expanding, all the while echoing back to the source of it's original trajectory. They say the eyes are the window of the soul, so then the doors of the mind hold hidden worlds, and the world is likened to a building. On the roof we see the infinite realm of possibility and in the basement we respect the underbelly. All the while we are advised to remember the hierarchy, the outside, the inside, and the secret.

Sweet Toof & Mighty Mo from Burning Candy Crew Greenpoint

Fear, Writing, and Presence

When things are on track we churn through life smoothly not even thinking about circumstances too closely. Not until the rug gets pulled out from under us do we find ourselves face to face with fear. This is when the pedal hits the metal and we need to start looking at our lives more closely. We can either deal with fear or run away into distractions, bad habits, mindless TV shows, you name it. We can see the trap and instead work directly with the situation, puncturing holes in the veil of confusion with the sword of insight. We must stay focused, keeping our grip on the big picture, our goals and aspirations.


Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story where a man came to interview him about all of his good works. Nhat Hanh advised him not to waste his effort writing a book about him, and instead to write a book about himself, and how he is learning to work with his own mind. This is the invitation for all of us to tell our personal journey firsthand.


Some more thoughts:

• Sensory Overload versus Media Deprivation
• Finding your spot in the world, taking your place.
• Keep Sight of your Definite Chief Aim
• Nature is made of fractals
• Starting with a Framework and Building Outward from there.
• Become a community manager  

Building up your Archive

Here are ways and reasons to build up your blog archive:

• Keep having public internet opinions
• Tag all your photos and posts for SEO nuggets
• Freewrite onto a notes document on your hard drive or in the cloud
• Be consistent
• Develop your unique voice
• Have an objective
• Ask yourself lots of questions, especially the ones you have determined are the right ones
• Trust your intuition to open up new doors and alert you to new horizons
• Gotta have Faith
• Trust the power of the Word
• Understand the strength of denials and affirmations
• Name your Good
• Get clear by unplugging from TV wherever possible
• Look for new ways to improve
• Use bulletpoints and lists to organize your thoughts
• Share what you find with others
• Approach all of your writing, even fiction with a realist attitude.
• Don't buy into critics, but that doesn't mean not read them when you are looking for other points of view
• Obey the all powerful Reality Tunnels
• Keep practicing every day
• Stay productive, and know when to step off the Hamster Wheel
• Smile as much as possible

Creative Marriage Never Ends

I woke up this morning relaxed and aware of the churnings of my mind, and I decided to visit an earlier entry I wrote about getting married a couple of years ago. The piece is called Creative Marriage. I begin by talking about letting my thoughts that build up in my head flow first in the example of a hodge podge rap piece, and second in the release of thoughts in the blog entry.

I move on to the fact that I have been married 2 years now, and quite a lot has shifted. Both my wife and I lost our jobs within a few months of each other. Now as we figure out our next steps our relationship recognizes the shift. We enjoy the time together but not working causes a strain on things naturally. We are bounded by our commitments to each other and we can take comfort that we are here working side by side, this is a true blessing.

We said we wanted to break away from the corporate life but didn't know we would be ejected more by their rules than with us writing our own tickets, and those bruises hurt as they drift into scars. Moving on in life teaches some powerful lessons and I think we are still learning a lot about those things, just look at the Tea Party, and OWS, and all the other indicators of the angry voices as the Bankers get the bailout.

We got married and are now trying to find our individual voices in this crazy confusing world. I look to see the world of Street Artchiving to be my next step. I love taking pictures of Graffiti and Street Art starting in my local neighborhood, and then expanding from there. I love the idea of working for myself and becoming an entrepreneur, this is my path, writing, and learning the ropes out here on my own generating income and surviving with the sharks without becoming one ourselves.

The thoughts get released, and the wonder comes back with the structure of the day to day play by play. Life bouncing with possibility, abundant with excitement, happy to dip back in the joy of marriage, and the movement of making sense of a turbulent journey. Happy Trails!

Stepping out of the Shadow Artist's Cocoon

As artists we must not hide in the shadows, but need to step into the light and proclaim ourselves as artists. It is foolish to wait for inspiration and expect genius to arrive at our doorstep without doing the daily work necessary to dance with our muse. Nothing happens when no effort is applied. I liken being an artist to being a king. As an artist you are at the center of a sweeping drama that is begging for you to unfold in the court of reality. As artists I insist that we all take our thrones, sit regally, and survey the world clearly, so that we can begin our dance.

Build it and they will come Julia Cameron tells us in her work centered around removing creative blocks. I accept her invitation and move into the foreground prepared to explore the universe seeking to reveal itself to me.

We are as humans an integral part of nature even if we have removed ourselves from that world in so many ways. Communing with nature doesn’t have to mean moving into the woods, we can engage with nature directly each day. This is our bridge into our souls and it is vital to our well-being. Rudy Rucker begins his Writer’s Toolkit talking about nature and fractals, how we are made up of smaller and smaller components.

Since this is a written piece let me continue to focus on writing, and bring in the elements mentioned in Rucker’s Toolkit. He begins with picking out a title. This is the rallying cry that all of your thoughts circle. This is also the tidbit that people will search for you under so you got to get a title you like and that is original so you don’t get lost in the pack.

Make Your Denials

Kenny Scharf (Opera Gallery)

Once you have got all your good out in the form of a list, freewritten, thought about, spoken aloud, and you are continually working with this idea, you can begin the 2nd step which is your denials. According to Emma Curtis Hopkins you must deny:

• Evil, 
• Matter, 
• Absence of Life Substance or Intelligence
• Hate
• Sin sickness or death

It is that easy so far, Name Your Good, and Make your Denials...

In a nutshell what Emma is asking us to do is connect directly with our ever-present and evolving sense of Good, and follow this "Good Orderly Direction" as Julia Cameron teaches, and if the word God hangs you up then switch it to a word you don't have a problem with like Love. There is nothing beneficial to be gained from sitting in a sea of doubt because your skeptical mind can't prove everything, and it feels like a constant insult.

So from the being in touch with Good, we make the denials, this is where Emma goes hardcore, not only does she deny evil, but matter all together, she see only the spiritual universe, the malleable, and the mind ether. This is the radical approach, solipsism? I can't be hung up by fancy words just yet, so let us think about what our good, and all the things Emma is asking us to deny.

As you may have guessed Emma moves from denials into affirmations in Step 3.

Blog Journal

Augustine Kofie (Opera Gallery)

Yesterday began day one of my blogging pursuit. As I look to the world I see the audience coming into focus. I see the words stringing along to create value and interest. The energy that comes from maintaining an active blog is exciting. I am steadily building my audience. I started with a basic google search, a review of wikipedia, a couple of how to's, and finally dipped into the ever powerful resource, my "personal notes."

The "personal notes" is a bloggers treasure chest if they are compiled correctly. This is where you store away all of your gems of thought to be used as blog material down the road. I like to build a web, constantly drawing out the structure more and more. My workstyle is to start to slow, and progressively build, and the choo-choo rides from there. The train analogy is good because it also reminds us to stay on track.

We have a choice in how to view our lives, either in a linear fashion with an A to B concern, or we can shift, ride the wave, get lost and no longer need to be heavily bound to time, and the weight of drudgery. We can reawaken our relationship to our world in ever moment, renewing, and shifting our consciousness to a place of presence.

To tell the truth we don't have to wait around, we can begin telling it right away from a deeply personal standpoint. I like to think about this blog as "old friends sharing our thoughts over a cup of coffee and a typewriter."

Social Media Campaign Toolkit

What is your objective? Very often this first answer is to get visitors, eyes, people to see what you are up to. I will explore this idea even further as we go along but lets push into how we are going to solve this objective.

We need to take positive actions toward arriving at our objective, and this means doing things that are good for us, the people that come in to contact with us, and society at large. These are the 3 secondary questions we must keep asking as we take the day to day actions to reach our overarching goals.

There are a million different strategies you can use to accomplish your goals, and by setting into motion this process you will begin to wake up to what those individual strategies that you need to employ.

The next thing you need to do is look at your assets, what do you bring to the table? And also recognize your even greater asset, people, what other people bring to the table. How do you want to treat the people that come to you? Good, sprinkle them with a lot of good, a lot of fairy dust, make them feel like they made the right choice by stopping by and giving up some of their precious time, rinse, and repeat.

Once you connect with people do what it takes to keep the conversation going, you want these talks to flow endlessly...

Name Your Good

Emma Curtis Hopkins wrote a landmark book in the New Thought world quite a long time ago by the name of Scientific Christian Mental Practice. I am lucky enough to have a copy that my Metaphysics teacher Father Max gave me. It is broken up into 12 steps that she refers to as the Doctrines of Jesus Christ. I often thought of using them in a less strictly religious light but retaining their core assertions. What follows is this exploration.

The First Doctrine is to Name Your Good. She suggests a Statement of Good of Being that you can repeat. She suggests we write down the name of the Good we are seeking, think of this Good, and Speak of this Good.

What is your Good?

How to churn out ideas through bulletpoints

• Set up Bulletpoints in your blogposts
• Then go back to your most popular blogposts
• Use individual bulletproofs to expand themselves into full blogposts also
• You will have a never-ending supply of material when you match your recycled most popular content with your new and current content
• Take one idea at a time, tweak it, and keep adding to your toolkit
• Make sure you help others along the way, that is how you build up good karma, acting selflessly
• Try things out, and only stick to what is working 

Inspired from a piece of...

3 Steps to Blogging Success

Synthesis Rules of the Road

• Build harmony among the many voices
• Start with a framework and expand from there (fractals)
• Explore systems transparently
• Be consistent over an extended period of time
• Go where the energy leads you
• Approach your work with a feeling of abundance
• Use each action to move forward your plans naturally and organically

Blogging Basics

Live Blog... May 21, 2012 11:25 AM Here are some of those links to get our feet grounded... How do I Start a Blog? As you scroll down this page you are asked to answer a few questions in order to jog out a suitable title for your blog. I already have my blog named PathRHINO but have now changed the way I capitalize the letters, who knows where I will end up before this is all said and done. what do you want your blog to be about? Number from 1 to 50 and put out your own answers, now you have a list that is like a golden key to what will become the content of your blog. You don't need to show it to anybody, it will soon give the character to your voice, the point of view you are creating... Then go over your keywords, graphics and audience as well, and we will return to this...

Basics for Starting a Blog

Live Blog: Blogging Basics May 21. 2012 10:30 AM I have been blogging for many years in an informal context. I always enjoyed the freedom it allows me to express myself. Now as I look to the future I have decided to blog more regularly and to take a more tactical approach. I began with a simple google search. "Blogging Basics" which led me to a website called "Blogging Basics 101" I dug in a little deeper and ended up on a page called "How do I start a blog" From there it is suggested that if one is starting out that they use a free blog platform until they are sure they are ready to make a commitment to blogging. I already have this account so I decided to use this as my first platform for blogging. As I said I have been blogging here on Blogger since 2006 but my past entries are a little unfocused and I wanted to make more headway with a clearer trajectory as I build up my archive. After you settle on a platform, in this case I arrive at you live and direct from Blogger, as Path Rhino, and this is exactly where the article directs us. It talks about answering questions and drawing out the name, and also to stay away from generic titles. TBC...