For the last four years, I have selected one word on January 1st to unconsciously trigger all of my action-oriented performances throughout the new year.
In 2006, the word was
improvisation.
In 2007, the word was
intuition.
In 2008, the word was
illumination.
For 2009, I was feeling the heat and knew I had to go with
intensification. As an eerily uncertain 2009 stood before me, I thought that this might be the final year that I employ this one-word triggering device. I wrote:
Knowing what lies ahead all throughout 2009 and knowing that there are a lot of unexpected things that will invite me to unknow the known, there is only one word for me turn to now.
In 2009, the word is intensification.
It ends up that I was right on target: 2009 was, in fact, the most intense year I have had in over a decade. And yet it's good to know that intensity, and its aftermath, can create greater clarity and distinctness and may even lead to a further
increase in the "good" or productive kind of intensity that one needs in order to unconsciously trigger their creative potential.
Looking into my crystal ball, I anticipate things remaining as
intense as ever in 2010, but there is also a noticeable pattern shift occurring in the world today, one that is unquestionably having an effect on all of my new project development, a shift that will ideally enable me to transmute the intensity of daily remix practice into multiple and hybridized forms of actualization. As I envision what lies ahead in my daily remix practice, I can see where I will still employ an eclectic mix of customized, hyperimprovisational performance methods while intuiting scenes of illumination that are taking my personal narrative in directions I could have never imagined even five years ago.
Given the ongoing intensity of the "writing scenes" I find myself directing, as well as the small team of assistants that I am collaborating with to build these new projects over the next two to three years, I have decided that I still need to locate a single word as
trigger-inference, but that this word can no longer start with the letter
i since the universal pattern shifts taking place worldwide are too all-encompassing to ignore and my trigger-word must shift in emphasis as well. Therefore, the word-triggers will now start with the letter
a instead of
i and it's clear to me that the first
a word I am triggering this year to help participate as a co-respondent in this universal pattern shift is
actualization.
One way to acknowledge my embrace of this universal pattern shift is to change the way I visualize my practice. This will require my continued adherence to a daily remix practice in conjunction with what Whitehead calls
the higher phases of experience. This will, in part, require that I further expend time, energy, and money into the successful blurring of art and life just as Allen Kaprow once imagined. This intentional investment strategy wherein I unconsciously expend energy in the simultaneous and continuous remixing of art and life will enable me to co-respond to the emerging
blur culture that I see manifesting itself as part of the universal pattern shift. So there's some irony in all of this, as usual. It ends up that the way toward more focused actualization is by initiating a more aesthetically pronounced method of prehending all that is
blurring my creative vision.
As I intensify my desire to locate alternative zones of potential discovery, one where
"an intense experience" always becomes "an aesthetic fact" (or so says Whitehead), I can see that my conscious effort over the last ten years to actively engage myself in the dreamworld of international culture has finally paid off and I am now feeling pleasantly immersed in the multitudes. Once you are able to hit this key, the first thing that pops into your mind when schmoozing with others in the distributed social network is: "What can I do for you?" This may be something I have been feeling and acting upon for a long time now, but for some reason it feels more
intense.
By creating more flexible life patterns we may be able to renew our energy (source material) in ways that trigger yet more intense experiences not just for ourselves but for others. Doing this at the level of daily remix practice as part of an intentional strategy to take the creative process deep into ones shape-shifting underground network via a process of mediumistic actualization feels like just the right thing to do.
As Whitehead wrote in
Process and Reality, the primordial nature "combines the actuality of what is temporal with the timelessness of what is potential."
How do we network this potential so that it feeds into more intersubjective,
remixological practice?
What does it take to enter the primordial source of creativity?
How does one
become an artist-medium that positions their daily practice in relation to the greater creative potential of what lies ahead while acting as an accomplice to an ingression performed by timeless entities whose concrescent formation manifests itself as an actual achievement in time?
Is actualization always already
just-in-time?
Or is it always on the cusp of "becoming" -- the idealized condition of "being avant-garde"?
As I oscillate between process and achievement I find myself playing with the idea of self-actualization, first by destroying the self per se, but also by
filling some other body.
This brings up an important question that I must not avoid and that is, "Just what exactly
are my intentions when positioning my avatar so that it creatively processes the art-life blur toward greater achievement?"
Tao Te Ching muses:
Oftentimes without intentions I see the wonder of Tao.
Oftentimes with intention I see its manifestations.
Both of these are the same in origin;
They are distinguished by names after their emergence.
Their identification is called mystery.
From mystery to further mystery there is an entrance to all wonders.
Metadata:
actualization,
intensification,
illumination,
intuition,
improvisation
