The above video is reasonably impressive to me.  Using audio from Stephen Hawking, imagery of things getting fucked up, and shot at 1800 frames a second, it holds together conceptually, even if VSL couldn’t decipher what it was about.  (Hat tip to VSL on this one.  Even though I just insulted them.)

I’ve thought about it since, and it comes down to something very simple.  When I look at most people’s furniture/clothes/apartment, I can see their tribe but I can’t see their personality.

Our tribes — the already-existing lifestyles that we adopt from outside because we stumble upon them and love them — are truly important.  Tribe membership is an integral part of the modern self.  If you like the Yankees or Rolex or mid-century modern furniture or you have a whole bookshelf of Kawabata, I get it.  I know your tribe.  But I don’t know your personality and too often we confuse a mish-mash of bought objects with our uniqueness, when in actuality there’s nothing unique of us in that mish-mash at all.  There are only parts of the external world you have bought and called your own.

For example, if I walk into your home and you have an abstract expressionist painting in a highly modern living room, I understand your tribe.  But if you have an Edward Piatt wood-stain print based on a personal photograph of you playing guitar in ecstasy on stage at Piano’s, I know a little something about who you are.  There’s a difference.

Not everything in your life needs to be a beacon of your uniqueness.  I’ve learned (the hard way) that an excessive focus on expressing one’s unique self is, um, not healthy.  It comes from being so emphatic about one’s own coherence that one can’t let go or be seen as complex or flawed.  I do understand that.

But we now live in an age where these personalized objects — that actually suit us much better and embody who we really are — are as affordable and easy to obtain as the mass-produced “I’m in this tribe” goods.  These personalized objects come from a place of creation rather than consumption, and they are rooted in the person you are, not simply the semiotics of membership or consumption.

Displacement is a defense mechanism that shifts sexual impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target.  It separates emotion from its real object and redirects the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less threatening, so as to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening.

As I sometimes bemoan to my friends, this pretty much describes all of conventional American male sexuality.  It’s so rare that a heterosexual man’s romantic/sexual impulses end up being expressed to the woman who inspires them.  The conventional American man sees a multitude of women in his everyday life who attract him — who captivate him walking down the street, waiting in line, or sitting in the cafe — and he engages practically none of them to communicate his interest.

Instead, the conventional American male inserts a distance between himself and any woman who could reject him.  He spends the majority of his everyday sexual life staring at women he’ll never talk to from afar, stealing glances on the street or subway car, or swimming in magazine stands of glossy covers, movie stars, and a thousand-forty other distractions from the absolutely terrifying act of walking up a beautiful stranger and expressing interest.  Unfortunately, the handful of men who are capable of this act are often closed off in other ways, displacing their passion and replacing it with strategy:  the pickup artists, the douchebags, the serial hunters.

As a result, male sexuality in our culture may seem to be ubiquitous, but what you see is rarely real male sexuality.  It’s only the leering powerlessness that’s left in the absence of real masculinity.  Real masculinity is relegated to the shadows, and we are a nation of half-men.

If you are not strong enough to make yourself vulnerable and express your interest directly, you are not strong enough to date the woman you want.

In Faulkner’s speech, he decries how the younger generation has lost its focus on what really matters: human emotion, the heart.  His idea was that, in the immediate wake of World War II, the threat of nuclear annihilation made everyone forget what’s important:  love and pity and sacrifice and compassion and humanity.

I feel like our current generation of 20somethings and 30somethings has also lost that focus — not because of a physical threat, but because cleverness has replaced being earnest.  Irony and slickness and posting witty facebook status updates have become more important than saying or feeling something you actually mean — something you feel deeply — even if it’s risky or cliche’.

The palliatives of the past (drink, drugs, television, the internet, unhealthy relationships) have all been subsumed by an enemy far more cunning and recalcitrant:  cleverness.  In our age, we self-medicate with irony and referentiality.  Our days are churns through vast amounts of information and signifiers, all of which point to other things, which point to other things, which point to other things.  Everything today is a sign of something else, such that our selves have become merely signs of something else.

As a result, we fetishize references that show our breadth.  We watch television shows whose sole purpose is to glibly critique other glib television shows.  We cram, listless, into museums and galleries with little emotional connection to the work, content to have “seen” the exhibit and cross it off the list.  We can name a million cultural landmarks, and we have experienced none of them deeply.  We are, as Adolph Reed once wrongly said of Cornel West, “a thousand miles wide and two inches deep.”

What’s missing from so many of our lives is the direct capacity for gut ache, the long-smarting heart.  Gone is the direct, in-your-throat excitement, or the despair so vivid you wear it like a helmet.  It started with our reluctance to express these simple feelings for fear of being thought simple, or antiquated, or unsophisticated.   Since then, many of us have lost the feelings themselves.

I refuse to live this way.  I am as entrenched in this failure as anyone, and possibly more so.  But if my life is to be about anything, let it be about this:  feeling what is deep and timeless until it is overwhelming.  And then carrying it, directly and earnestly, to friends.  To colleagues.  To places it’s been lost or doubted.   Carry it to strangers I meet, or those who read things I someday write.   Magnify it to the woman that I love, and love her more relentlessly because of it, even amidst the daily effacements of keep-it-cool culture.

Yes, it’s impossible to remain constantly connected to these “old verities”.   And cleverness, along with cousins irony and playtime, is as valuable as anything else in our lives.

But we have a choice to make.

Which will be the impetus of our days:  our capacity for cleverness, or our capacity for feeling?

Russell Brand, in this heartfelt interview without comedy, destroys his own SuperMe.  He also seems capable of becoming a cultural prophet.  Really incredible.

It’s been a fairly productive few weeks, both socially and with the art projects.  Here are some highlights:

• Most of my focus has been on tearing through a body of literature on cultural codes.  This has primary application to my work in advertising, but has yielded a whole new way of seeing interiority and has started to influence the GS projects.  More on this soon.
• @DestroySuperMe is up to 31 tweets with several more chambered.  I’m going to loosen the leash a bit on my “don’t make it sound pretty” restrictions.
• The Faulkner Project has taken a cool turn.  I’ve realized that the Faulkner excerpt alone won’t get the job done, so I’ve added three sections to make a true short film out of it.  There are index cards all over my apartment with shots, notes, themes, and sound ideas.  Done so far:
• The audio storyboard is done.  I know what the sound will be for the whole piece, both in music and voiceover.
• The visual style is set.  It hearkens back to the first film project I ever did.
• I’ve got a bank of ideas for visuals.
• Still to be done:  4 weeks worth of matching visuals to audio, then some shooting, then a month of editing.
• Letters I Wish I’d Have Received will pick up again soon once I edit the letters that are already written.
• The Secret Blog is on the “low” setting right now, largely due to my health restrictions.

Om mani padme hum.

What’s up, man. I’ve got this new personal art project where I use meditative telepathy to read the minds of buddhists, then write them letters in response. Pretty freaky, right!

First up, I owe you an apology. I wrote some stuff I’m not proud of on page 73 of a book on the eightfold path I published several years ago. Long story short, I basically said that homosexuality and premarital sex were improper.  You know what I’m talking about.  It threw you for a loop in high school. I can’t believe it went unnoticed! It would destroy my credibility with the liberal left! These days, I want you to know, I feel bad about it. It was just part of the Tibetan provincialism I grew up with. I just didn’t know any better. I mean, as Kanye says over and over on his last album, “What the hell was I supposed to do?” I mean, 30 years ago we Tibetans still were taught that the moon was a fucking star. Now science teaches us it’s reflecting light. Anyway, sorry for the anti-gay, anti-debaucherous-stuff-you-did-with-that-girl-in-Central-Park rhetoric. You’re good to go.

Second, let’s talk about your journal entry from years ago about Tibet’s stance on China.  As you noted, people discuss non-violence in terms of ethics or efficacy. In reality, you’re right:  it’s branding. The moment one Tibetan farmer picks up a rifle, we’re just like every other small ass country that’s getting stepped on. As long as we’re non-violent, we’re unique, and we’re championed by millions of people who project their own powerlessness or power guilt onto us. And that, someday, may prove to have been the single thing that preserved the insights of our culture and allowed them to spread into other cultures, beyond the artifacts and trappings of prayer wheels and goofy hats.

As for why your long-term girlfriends never ask you about your Buddhist practice, I think you know the answer to this. They’re just not that into you. Hahahahahahahah. Just kidding. They’re postmodernists who see spirituality as an archaic petitionary supernaturalism. They haven’t read Wilber!  Trust the Dalai Lama on this one, bro.

Dude, I wrote this to you from my iphone and it autocorrected “Dalai Lama” into “Sakai Lama”. Who the fuck is that guy? I need to meet him. We can tour the lecture circuit together. Hehe.

Okay, let me get serious for my last point. You’ve long been driven by an impulse that I want to say is right on. My advice to you is to keep doing what you’re doing in your practice: decouple buddhism from everything. Decouple Buddhism from mandalas and mantras. Decouple buddhism from those bracelets people sell. Decouple buddhism from eco-friendliness, from activism, from music, from other buddhists, from Tibet. Most of all, decouple buddhism from me. Continue to find it in your own experience — not just in your small day-to-day self that irons your shirts or struggles through a bad relationship, but in the part of you that intersects infinity.

Okay, man.  Gotta run.  Keep it real!   And tell Koo my favorite poem is “I Just Got Out of a Serious Relationship.”

Sincerely,

His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

There are several projects running right now.  I’ve been really careful to design them in a way that I can keep current on all of them while still, you know, getting out a few times a week.  Thank god for the books on personal organization I read last year.

As one dear friend recently opined,

“Keep this fucking thing up. Don’t be like blogging one minute and then dating some [example of the type of person I've mistakenly dated before] the next. This shit is too good to lag. You have a duty to America, bitch.”

So here’s the latest architecture of current projects:

• The Secret Blog is still on fire.  In less than a week, the ad campaign, now on hold, saw over 500,000 (half a million!)  impressions and more than 700 Facebook followers.   New material is ready for next week.  For several reasons, not the least of which is my sobriety, this project will see about one post per week.
• There have been 13 tweets for @DestroySuperMe.  I’ve already got the next two weeks’ worth written.  They should be coming about one a day.    This project is going to run its course soon, then go dormant.
• Letters I Wish I’d Received has several drafts waiting to be finalized.  The first should be up later tonight.
• The Faulkner Project came roaring back this past week with some new directions and the first storyboard.  This project is very different than the rest.  It will take months of serious, sustained concentration.  This thing has taken some good turns lately, with two unique creative challenges solved, but is still in its infancy.  I’ll have updates regularly.
• Life Can Change in a Day, originally slated for launch last week, has been put on the backburner.  It will be an easy project to run at some point, but I have to pick and choose these days.  The Letters project came out of nowhere 3 days ago and seems funnier and more interesting to write.

That’s it for now.  Thanks for tuning in and for all of your support in emails.

Sometimes I have this fantasy of receiving a letter from someone.

Not just a note or a card (those are lovely) but a real letter.  There are so many wonderful things about receiving a letter, the most wonderful being that a thoughtful person has decided to dedicate an entire evening, if not more, to ruminating about you, the world, and how you and the world are intertwined.  As Kenneth Koch once said, “There’s a pleasure in being the source of someone’s sublime thoughts.”

The problem is that, even when I’m the source of sublime thoughts, people rarely write me letters.  Or even write me back after I’ve written them a long ruminating letter on the nature of their existence and the world. Carrin, Xan, Allison, Tracy, Maura, Jessica, you were the only ones who moved me with letters!

Why do others not write?  Do they get so wrapped up in the vanity of receiving a letter that it never dawns on them to write one back?   Perhaps they don’t like the letter, but don’t they have the courage to write back and disagree?  Or are they afraid their letter won’t amount to much?  Do they worry their letter might reveal the parts of themselves they’ve hidden?  Do they prefer to leave their inner geography unmapped?

So I’m launching a new project in which I write letters I wish I’d have received.  In the past week, I’ve worked on outlines or drafts of:

Enjoy.

Thanks to everyone who made the first 48 hours so successful.  It feels good to build something again.