Explode into Space #63 - Why Write, Right?

Dear Readers,

I want to be short. This is my deadline for the week and I'm exhausted without even putting my fingers to the keys. Writing something this personal should not be left just to my Wednesday afternoon in front of the screen. You deserve more if you decide to get into my head. 

With that being said, a LitReactor column by British writer Karina Wilson caught my attention today. Wilson took an interesting stab at the big question, "Why Write?" Not meant as an answer but with a powerful sentence in her introduction, I think she hit the nail on the head when she said, "Writing is the worst kind of addiction, a terrible, eviscerating experience — but not writing can be even worse."

I'd talk myself blue in the face to explore my own reasons for writing and the challenge will still remain. It is me trying to figure out myself in front of everyone else. And I think that's a bit of what writing is all about for everyone. We express ourselves to make sure we exist. 

Wilson goes even deeper to crack the practice open, quoting Joan Didion (on the heels of George Orwell's ideas):

"...but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space."

The real quandary is if it matters more to get a response than to simply be heard. Is knowing a text message or e-mail is read enough? Can we tell a story at a party and hope one person is paying enough attention? Invading another person's mind is only thrilling if there is a spark. Ideas are colliding, as we speak (and as we type). We're meant to infect. We're meant to morph one another. Everything colors your path.

Branching out from a digital debate about the power of a rape joke, I volunteered to learn more about the female perspective by reading the recommended Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape. Fair enough, I went into reading it with my mind set, ready to carve out flimsy arguments I could use to guard my thoughts and theories. And, truth be told, I'm still secure in what my side of the debate was about. The difference is I'm learning. The collection of essays that Yes Means Yes highlights is a brutally honest and sometimes painful window to the other sides of sexuality the normal person might not explore. "How Do You Fuck a Fat Woman?" by Kate Harding was a particularly intriguing look inside the self-esteem and social shaming of fat people. If that title made you cringe a bit, you might be just as interested as I was to read it. 

You can't be in your own head all the time. You're not that right, you can't be. It might be the best reason we have for why we need one another. With all the experiences we gather, communicating them is paramount. If we're all writers, we're all invading the others' spaces. There is progress in collision. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go furrow my brow as I read this book, beat myself up equally in jiu-jitsu class and for not writing enough, and remind myself that there is beauty in everything.

Until next time...

I explode into space.

-dan

Explode into Space #62 - Infect the World with your Words

Dear Readers,

Sitting at the keyboard, I found it ironic that I'm waiting for inspiration to hit me with how to start this piece about the infectious nature of ideas. We're all infected. No one idea is original, though, we're all just putting our little twists and marks on each and rocketing them off into the world of open ears and minds to find a new host. It is the dangerous, spine-tingling ones that take root in action and become more than just an idea. It becomes reality. Consider everything humans have created and invented. It was all a dream, as Biggie said. Nothing man-made was not first man-thought. 

On the heels of watching Tiffany Shlain's documentary Connected, I'm rapidly adopting her framework of life as a universe of moving parts and all the connections between the them. It is the Yin and Yang that makes us all One.  Inspired by her father's work in writing books to bridge the disciplines and find patterns between philosophy, art, physics  sex and more, Shlain transformed her father's theories to observe the world's problem with technology. The idea was that the left side of the brain, responsible for order is primarily associated with the male gender while the right side of the brain, responsible for pattern recognition was predominantly a female association. With the invention of a written language and literacy, a patriarchal society developed out of the order of written language. Shlain wonders out loud if we need to start recognizing the patterns of the world to see that our interdependence of communication and survival is real. 

As my mind fires throughout the week, I find myself sitting in front of the screen ready to make sense of what's burning the top of my mind. Currently, I'm riding the coattails of a Facebook discussion (yes, of all places) where someone was calling for a boycott of a comedy show that markets itself as cruel and offensive, making fun of the darkest parts of humanity. The Someone on Facebook vilified it and suggested to her friends that it should disappear. Fair enough, but it immediately got under my skin. Talk about infectious ideas.

And I wrestled with it for days, as I tried to hold down what I believe in the discussion. Why did it bother me so much for someone to suggest the show go away? I'm not even a fan of the show. Why did I ever open my mouth? I barely know this girl. Why do I keep talking about it? I have other things to do!

The topic of discussion is not the point for me today, it is the discussion itself. There is no question in my mind that we need each other to thrive. Zombie movies make this glaringly apparent. What brings us together, moving onward, is  our communication. Until there is some way for you to peek into my mind, I have to express what's going on in my cabeza to you with my words, glances, reactions, or touch. And when we communicate and infect one another, I believe we move that much closer to understanding that we are all connected. 

There will be sparks. There will be explosions. Hell, as I type, the world is at war. The trouble with infectious ideas is that they can inspire action, for better or worse. Our biggest problem and greatest achievement as human beings is using the ideas of others to create. 

Where I believe people go wrong is when they blame the source of the idea for how others interpret it. No one gives you permission to do anything you don't want to do. It was the broken argument some Americans clung to when the media found out Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris of the Columbine school schooling liked Marilyn Manson's music. It was the "revelation" when the media discovered homophobic fans of Eminem, praising his music like some kind of anthem. 

The crux of my thought here is that there will be suffering. Conflict is inevitable in our lifetimes. As long as we're different, we're not the same, and clashes will happen. And there is beauty in that pain. It makes everything real. There is no pleasure without pain, there is no beauty without ugliness. There is no connection without parts to connect. Through the sparks between our minds, we move mountains, and as long as we can understand, we need this interaction. There is no sense in silence or ignorance or running away. 

Dangerous ideas are my religion. My dangerous thought now is you can't control the world, you can only start to build yours. Invent, teach, and breathe. Know that even though there are good and bad people in this world, we are all One. You don't have to agree with any or all of my words, I just strive for people to appreciate my mind, my questions, my twist on ideas. And then as soon as I write them down, they live in your head, hopefully starting sparks we can talk about. Thanks for letting me infect you. 

Until next time...

I explode into space.

-dan

Explode into Space #61 - Connect or Die!

Dear Readers,

If I told Daniel Pink that I'm not selling anything with Explode into Space he would probably disagree. Everyone is a salesman to Daniel Pink and, no, not the back-stabbing, uptight car dealer kind you might think. Pink is the author of the new book To Sell is Human and, as he is wont to do, flips the world on it's axis with his radical views on what people do to be people.

We live in a universe where it takes other people to exist and there is a good amount of time and effort spent trying to "sell" our little stake. We make ourselves valuable for tons of reasons - job interviews, romantic adventures, book deals, newsletter subscriptions, social network followers, you name it. We're selling our personal brand. We selling ourselves. Forget what you think of the word "sell", this is not slime. If you could suspend your belief to notice we're all selling something, you'd realize we're just a flowing mass of give and take. Some do one of more than others, and that's the place where it gets fuzzy. The Internet, though, has transformed the marketplace into the human salesman culture. 

Once we expand our definitions of the sales marketplace, we can start to see all business is connection. Whereas a newborn will cry itself to death without someone to care for him or her, business is nothing without a buyer and a seller. There is connection in transaction. Tiffany Shlain cracks open the concept of interdependence in her documentary Connected. Weaving a mosaic of personal anecdotes of trauma and celebration with stylized animation and archived footage, Shlain presents the revolutionary notion that what the world needs now is to embrace our endless web of connections. We're no longer a world of independent salespeople, we're connected in interdependence by every sale possible. In a buzzing world of information and motion, our actions make ripples and waves beyond our perceived possibilities. 

We should be grateful to grow up and connect through the click of a mouse. Never has it been so easy for ideas to spread and land overnight. And whereas some rotten critics may downplay the significance of growing discourse, like TED talks or YouTube sensations, for the flimsy presentation of untested ideas, I'd argue that everything begins with an idea. Ideas are not garbage without action because in a world where you can project you can influence. Ideas start movement. Look at MLK. Look at Steve Jobs. Look at Hitler. Ideas are dangerous.

If I've ever sounded like and sold you on the idea that I'm interesting or smart by proxy of my writing, it is because, as the Internet tells me, Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants." If two minds are better than one, the Internet is the best. While we may never agree on everything, the Internet has provided our minds with the capacity to see all conversations while we participate within them. Simple connection through wires is not enough. We need to connect on a deeper level, says Shlain, not just more broadly. We need conversation that matters, that exists, that thrives past the digital sales-floor.

Back in the 60's, media theorist Marshall McCluhan made the radical declaration that "the medium is the message" In other word, the way we package ideas affects the way the content is received. No duh, right? I found myself easily falling into the trap, though. Is it not enough to just talk at people and hope and adore the someone that is listening?  

To be honest, MailChimp, the new service I use to style and send out my newsletter, has opened a world of information to me. For the beautiful people who have signed up, I am able to see how many of you opened the email. Reading and comprehended and taking action are whole other stories. And yet to know this information is to know that sending my messages out Thursday mornings as opposed to Wednesday nights, like I did last week, gets less opens. But that's not what I care to do. Numbers won't tell me anything about the connection I'm making unless I ask you, "Hey, what was so compelling about that email title or time that you opened it?" I would love more eyes or clicks on my work, but with the air of connection it's no fun unless people want to talk about this stuff. 

And, above all, as much as we crave connection, the Internet has a funny way of providing it. With all the channels and audiences we're bound to tap into there is potential for connection. Before falling in love with Connected, I found Tiffany Shlain after Thnkr, one of my favorite YouTube channels, tweeted her words: "Oxytocin is considered the love hormone. When you text and tweet, you get this little hit of oxytocin." 

And it goes back further. I found Thnkr searching YouTube for Jason Silva videos and he was interviewed on the Epiphany series. Silva was a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience. Joe Rogan popped up when I was searching videos to make me laugh when I hated my cubicle job and George Carlin and Bill Hicks justified my anger. The connections go on, the point is our minds love it. There is no end to our searching, it's what makes life a adventure. We want shotgun blasts of oxytocin if we can get it, and I think Tiffany Shlain and Daniel Pink have the right idea in two different pieces: We're all selling because we're all connected because we all need to be.

I need to connect to you all and I'm going to find a better way to have my words reach out. Shlain ended Connected with a quote from John Muir and I'd like to end here with one too:

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

Suggestions are welcome. Send me some oxytocin.

Until next time...

I explode into space.

-dan

Explode into Space #60 - How to Work on Not Working So Hard

Dear Readers,

Every week is a challenge to write something definite and crystal-clear. I need to tie up my loose ends and make a message out of my words. And some weeks it just doesn't come and I have to admit I submit to the clock and send something out anyway. No doubt it shows to some of you. The problem here is the endless battle I want to talk about this week. Where are we supposed to live, in the present or working for tomorrow?

There is nothing wrong with this moment. Think about it. At first, it is a freeing mantra. A weight is lifted. You can breathe, you can be grateful and you can move right along. Repeat it a few more times and it's bound to get creepy. You second-guess your words, your mood, your beliefs. There is nothing wrong with this moment? C'mon. The truth is we often feel like there is something wrong. The division between our identity as it is and who we think we should be rattles the cages constantly. 

I'm the first to admit I do it. (Big surprise there, right?) I bully myself like no one ever will. There are demons that possess me enough to make me feel weak, stupid, and boring. I don't hate myself but I say some awful things to get my ass off the couch. Hell, staring at my computer in the pitch-black of Wednesday night without the mental clarity to nail down my words, I was cursing myself for not being on-schedule with this. The problem is this is the problem. There is always work to be done. Now, reading Stephen Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, I'm finding the struggle to ask myself, Where is the love? Where is the acceptance? Is there really nothing wrong with this moment? 

What comes with the achievement of transforming yourself is that there is no end. Sometimes, though, the clock builds the illusion that life is a race. We're pushing ourselves as hard as we can to get to that ideal life with little acceptance of the reality that blankets us. And it infects everything you do when life seems to make us a punching bag. And the clock keeps on ticking.

Of course, I'm not the first to make this stuff up. Philosophers and thinkers for centuries have argued that our one and only similarity as humans is that death will define us. Futurist Jason Silva breaks down the ideas of Ernest Becker from his award-winning book The Denial of Death when he says there are three solutions Man has made for living our lives in the face of death: the Religious Solution, the Romantic Solution, and the Creative Solution. We've been beaten over the head with the first enough, and the second, the deifying of our lovers, seems slippery considering the rate of divorce and how hard it is for us to love ourselves, much less others. The Creative Solution is (surprise again) where this newsletter falls. The idea that you can go beyond death with your contributions, the products of your neurons and hands, fuels my life enough to just keep on doing, even though sometimes I have no idea how to answer that age-old human question of Why?

The crushing reality of believing in the Creative Solution, or anything at all, in the eyes of death is, again, it can sometimes feel like a race. With all the emphasis we place on getting a good education and doing the work that will make you rich or happy or both, there is kick-back in those trying to live the YOLO philosophy. The furious pace of the idea that you only live once is exactly what is dangerous about living for tomorrow and anxiously doing it all today. The juice here is that you are doing it wrong if you're not doing it all the time. There is something wrong with this moment if you're not currently rolling in piles of money or sky-diving naked. Sounds exhausting and painful to me.

Just as there is always work to be done, there is always fun to be had. The Sun doesn't care what we do, it rises and falls either way. All we have to decide is how to handle it. George Carlin once brilliantly said, "Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that..." When we're so occupied with work or trying to manufacture fun, we forget to ask the questions that make us uniquely human. It is not just our job, it is not just our family, it is not just our health. They are pieces of the puzzle that go on and on.

In meditating on the idea that there is nothing wrong with this particular moment, I'm stuck at a crossroads. Whereas I believe in morphing this life into something great enough to change the world for the better, relatively speaking, I'm also no stranger to the furious pressure of reaching that impossible ego-ideal. Is it best to breathe in the seconds as they try to escape, or is it worth pushing past our comfort zone to make ourselves and the world even better when we leave it? 

In Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, Cope remembers a great metaphorical story by the Buddhist meditation master Chogyam Trungpa that I think is a good place to end on this week. Trungpa explained that in the guise of chasing our dreams of some ideal, we develop a sense of false self equivalent to a fortress. We hammer and nail and shore up the walls of this structure for days, months, years. We sweat and ache, consumed with the project, until we realize the joke is on us: the fortress is best seen from the ground and when we step down to stand there in awe, we realize the fortress only stands a foot high. It's not to say our dreams and accomplishments are minuscule and useless in the sands of time. It's a reminder that the false self we develop is far less important than the solid ground we can stand on. Our contribution to the world is not how we lie to ourselves but how we deal with the acceptance of reality that we will, one day, close our eyes for good and leave behind everything. Find what is important and real to you about this moment and the next. Hold onto them and know that your mind makes it all real. 

Until next time...

I explode into space.

-dan

Explode into Space #59 - How to be Like Water

Dear Readers,

Whether you're a fighting fan or not, you'll be blown out of the water by the highlight reel of the brothers Kade and Tye Ruotolo at the BJJ Abu Dhabi trials in San Diego. They're not even teenagers and they are incredible on the mats, so fast, so dangerous. It is amazing to see someone so young be so dedicated and advanced in a sport I consider to require an enormous amount of strength and skill. You can learn jiu-jitsu but to practice it to the standards of these twins, much less fighters my age, you need to put in some serious time and effort.

And therein lies the rub. It had me thinking about my own game. Slowly I've been putting the time and the reps in to map my own plan of attack and what I've lacked was speed. What so inspired me about the Ruotolo was their quickness, like little vipers. In the back of my mind, I always knew jiu-jitsu was not necessarily meant to be a smash-and-grab method like most meatheads might have you believe MMA is all about. In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, there is an enormous amount of calculated explosion, though. Sure, there are chokes and throws and special moves, but the victory is in the details. Bruce Lee said it best and I adopt the idea more and more every time I cross it: "Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

Off the mats, it's easy for people to focus on the power of the crashing wave. What we forget is how water can be powerful and fluid. We're a culture of push, though. We're a culture of Go, and Mine. We recklessly attack screaming, rarely pulling back to calculate and defend. It is Entrepreneurial Selfishness when we're too distracted and concerned with furiously building our own story, we forget to write some other characters and plot points down. More than achieving goals, life is about embodying a philosophy that warrants more than crossing off bullet points and racking up medals. Your mind makes up everything around you and when you push too hard against the Universe, mindlessly carving a singular path for yourself, you're bound to get swept on your ass. It's like trying to hurt the ocean. Dropkick it all you want, the saltwater can't shed a tear.

Stephen Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self has a story about The Buddha that goes along with this idea. The Buddha said, "The boat is not the opposite shore-it is just the vehicle we use to get there." Cope followed, "When we're in midstream, we must cling to it as if our lives depended upon it. When we get to the other shore, however, it can be completely relinquished." It's similar to the idea of a child's security blanket. We attach ourselves to things that define our identity, time and space. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, it's natural. False identity comes when we cling to the wrong vehicle and strangle it for too long. Like the Ruotolo twins, crash when it matters, flow when you can.

Let's channel the Matrix for a second. If you take into account everything you've ever been told, it makes total sense that the idea of being Better would result in a bigger home, bigger salary, trophy spouse and a big, fat, stupid grin on your face, content in your power and freedom. You think that's air you're breathing now? Why? Cause that's what you've been told. You fight tooth and nail to go further down your own personal rabbit hole, rarely slowing to check your surroundings. We're nothing without questions and perspective. We're nothing without our boats. Now, more than ever, I'm finding myself sailing to understand what Better means. What is self-improvement? Is it putting in extra hours for my shifts to run smoother? Is it drilling dive passes in jiu-jitsu until they are second-nature? Is it doing everything I can to make the people around me closer to Better? There is a world of knowing and learning right outside the circuits of that computer in your head. It's not only about you, but you are the only one that can do what you can.

The irony is in the great Bukowski quote, "The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” It seems pessimistic to pin the tail on the intelligent and doubtful although I believe the real point is that we all can honestly know nothing. It's all relative and the sentiment goes for the concept of Better. What can be done, though, is to best define your own idea of Better. Is it health? Is it a eulogy that reads like a resume or the X-Games? Is it a dozen children or a dozen cats? Is it land? Orgies? God?

Get clear on how you can be like water. Find the balance. Life demands you crash and flow.

Until next time...
I explode into space.

-dan

Explode into Space #58 - How The Future is in You

Dear Readers,

Man, wouldn't we all love to work for ourselves? Like a Boss, said Andy Samberg.

The idea of self-reliance has stitched this newsletter together and kicked me out of bed to be something more than nothing for the past year. The writer in me says to do it, much like how the author of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Lewis Stevenson found inspiration in his lucid dreams. 

And, as the landscape of our economy changes and the dim dream of it recovering to the pastel beauty of the Fifties fades, we have to start to realize that the Future is here. As freedom creeps into our daily lives more and more, security seems a less likely option. No longer can you clock your time in like some kind of lazy robot and expect anyone to just take care of your needs. We have to wake up and hunt.

My ears were perked and my eyes buzzed when I stumbled on the Harvard Business Review's recent article, The Future of You. It reinforced what I've been seeing the steps to for quite a while: the world is changing. Work is no longer a corporate set of handcuffs. You have to be flexible and calculated. That's good for some, bad for others. Essentially, the Harvard Business Review broke future economic success down to three tenets: self-branding, entrepreneurship, and hyper-connectivity.

If it sounds familiar, it is because it is exactly what Seth Godin was saying to me and I was saying to you when I was nose-first in The Icarus Deception. Without the obstacles of reaching an audience or gathering start-up money, what is slowly becoming most important is how to make a meaningful connection with people just like you. We're realizing the great potential of the tribe again.

The most difficult part is that in a world of instant change, making your dreams come true is not always done in lightspeed. You are not ready to win the lottery. You are not ready to be Justin Bieber. People crack under the pressure they didn't train to expect or earn. It would be the equivalent of Peter Parker trying out for the New York Giants. No chance.

I'm not prescribing back-breaking work; I'm suggesting thought. And sometimes, honestly, that's hard stuff. With work piling up for me lately, I found myself slowly zoning into the static of hours of television to wind down and anxiety in my half-asleep dreams to help people with their websites. What we all need is a beacon, a North Star, a dream, something that reminds us that when we have a free moment, we should and would and will work on it. Because sometimes freedom is not the most freeing thing. Henry David Thoreau probably said it better way back when: “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” What are you willing to sacrifice?

Know your route and believe in yourself. I started reading Kevin Smith's autobiography Tough Shit and early on he hawks this gem: "There's a trick to being whatever you want to be in life. It starts with a simple belief that you are what or who you say you are. It starts, like all faiths, with a belief - a belief predicated more on whimsy than reality. And you've gotta believe for everybody else, too - until you can show them proof."

To be anything in this world, you have to be yourself first. When connections become more important than anything, you'll have to rely on yourself first. No one finds buried treasure without digging. Writing for me is about the sources it is born from. In this newsletter you can see that clearly. It is a regular reminder to kick myself in the ass and dig up some stuff. And then I stumble on a quote like this and I'm forced to rub my chin and scratch my head and pat my tummy and keep moving on:

“To be perfectly original one should think much and read little, and this is impossible, for one must have read before one has learnt to think.” - Lord Bryon

Until next time...

I explode into space.

-dan

Explode into Space #57 - Don't Dive Alone

Dear Readers,

I did a bad thing. I went to Starbucks to write nothing specific. And I went too deep. 

Usually there is meditation in writing for me (says the fella who writes you every week). There was finally time to breathe when I sat down with my coffee. Work had been so chaotic the last week I'd been handling customer complaints in my dreams. Counter that with training the majority of the week, earning my keep as a freshly-awarded Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. To sit and breathe and think was a treasure. So, naturally, I took it too far.

Somehow the aroma of coffee beans and banana walnut bread turned my therapeutic writing into a case study in futility. What I wanted to nail down, and always want to nail down, was an overarching theme to the activities of my life. Before this, I'd found Truth in The Butterfly Effect, or the fact that our actions cause ripples around us. You can kill a fruit fly and have an effect on the world, albeit a very small, inconceivable one. Better yet would be to make a difference in the lives of people, build better relationships, encourage progress, and be happy. What could be bad about that? 

It just didn't feel true and complete. It could be my youth. Without responsibility to children or a spouse, it's easy to fall deeply. You wonder what's the point and the point becomes multi-dimensional. You see all the angles and none make sense to choose. 

The next day I visited my therapist, Mr. T. No, not the A-Team, pity the fool Mr. T., but Peter Tuccino, the Mr. T who built Dragon Spirit Martial Arts from the ground up. We talked, as we do, for hours and he returned all of my serves with equal force. More than those my age, Mr. T can put me at ease to say everything is fine thinking the way I do because I'm young. I'm doing this with my whole life in front of me. Take a breathe and slow down because worrying about finding meaning will never lead to discovery.

Slowly but surely, I exhaled and found Truth bleeding from our talk. Bouncing my attempts at meaning-making off him, Mr. T. helped me fly closer to it all with the following ideas:

There is no Life without Death. Considering the Day of Your Funeral can be a great exercise. Morbidity aside, we can't see death coming but we can live knowing it. We like to think that within the grasp of Death, we'd be reckless and live without abandon. I doubt we'd really enjoy that. Sorry to say it, life goes on when you don't. Whatever you do with that life, legacy becomes the stuff of meaning without you. 

Giving starts the receiving process. Jim Rohn said it and Darren Hardy, publisher of Success magazine, echoes the sentiment. (See his breakdown here.) The wording is important. Giving only starts the receiving process, it is not the only part. I had this thought, examining my current goals the other day. If I want to be a better grappler, my goal should be to help others become better grapplers and in so I'd learn. If I want to be a better writer, I better be a better reader. And find a new word to replace "better". 

If you want the Meaning of Life don't be so shallow to think it is only going to come from within you. It is one of the most biting of Joe Rogan's comedy bits in Shiny Happy Jihad when he says, "If I leave you in the woods with a hatchet, how long before you can send me an email?" We can't figure things out on our own. It is not genius, it is remix. 

And as if Fate was the mailman, Kirby Ferguson was delivered to my life. Following the Rabbit Hole from PBS's digital series Idea Channel to Everything is a Remix, Ferguson made it crystal-clear for me that it is other people that make life worth living, doing whatever you're doing. In the four-part video series, Ferguson presents Everything is a Remix as a way to understand the fertile progress of working together to create and influence works of art and works of invention. We are One and it's sometimes hard to work like that. Ferguson summed it up saying, "We have a strong predisposition towards protecting what we feel is ours; we have no such aversion towards copying what other people have.”

Even better, like Henry Ford said, "I invented nothing new." Explode into Space is full of sources and reference material, the juice that fuels my days, on purpose. I have no qualms admitting this is only an original work for the tweak I put on the words outside the quotation marks. It's even more essential to remember this when the world tells us to drop-kick our goals and be exactly the person we are meant to be that we remember we'd be no one without everyone else. 

Without Death, there is no life. Without giving, there is no receiving. Without others, there is no us. 

Until next time...
I explode into space.

-dan