Out of Darkness

Howdy dear friends,

Welcome to the reversing of the earth’s magnetic fields. No wait. Not that. The solstice is nigh. That’s it. This is the end of the dying of the light, when the darkness turns to light(ness) and the world is made brighter every day. Ready ready, indubitably. We all are.

As many of you know, I am writing a book based on my Elements Project. I'm nearly done with the exposition of the 118 characters we call the known elements of the universe. The following is an excerpt, pertinent to these times. It's just a slice from essay #64 for the element, Gadolinium.

"This Element's strange magnetic properties could be classified as its superpower. No other on the chart behaves the way this one does and to expand this into the realm of art is actually a small step. When viewing great art there is a change in the perceiver, an elevation that ranges from a small smile, a tug on the heart, to a sense of transcendence -- a witness to the sublime. Great art, whether visual, musical, theatrical, dancers on a stage, improvisational or composed, lines in a book, momentarily perceived or through a lifetime of study and reflection, can vibrate some essence of our humanity. We recognize our miraculous birth or our tragic mortality or our capacity to simply witness the whirling mechanism of the cosmos right here, right now. In that moment, just as Gadolinium, a soft, silvery metal, when exposed to a magnetic field, increases its temperature, real ART touches the soul, individually and collectively, and raises its temperature. This is a personal book so if I am ever to share -- years ago I saw a concert with the Paul Winter Consort in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan on the winter solstice. The night was grim, cold, snow changing to sleet. The show was a magnificent mix of light and sonics, elaborate compositions, delicate, dynamic, flights of soloing musicians, aboriginal driving percussion, with Tuvaan throat singers, recorded whale songs and a full choir. For the encore, as the soaring reached a crescendo, the air reverberating, the space within the stone walls of the world's largest Gothic cathedral throbbing, saturated with frequencies colliding, someone in the seeming bowels of the earth fired up the pipe organ with thunderous chords, bass pedals held to the floor. The mothership landing, the tsunami crashing overhead, the landslide, the collapse of the sky itself, the final tectonic shift... tears flowed.

And that my friends is what this is all about. Haikus and lightning, indoor storms, subtlety and the obvious resolution just there at arm's length. One small glimmer that defies explanation over and over and over... lines on a surface gesturing at eternity..."

Beyond the obvious, why now? Why share these words? Because the sky is falling, sleet bitterly frigid, in darkness, just as then. And yet, there is redemption waiting. The world as we know ends every day. And another day begins. Jane Goodall is 87 years young and I know of no other voice that speaks so powerfully of hope. Look her up. Listen to her words in these moments of darkness all around. Humans are astounding and our capacity to grow, heal, repair, envision and expand are limitless. Whales sing despite the noise. Musicians rattle the rafters. Artists make magic that sits there glimmering, smiling back at us. The sunrise over Stonehenge on the solstice returns, as always. My oldest brother's daughter just had a baby boy. My youngest brother had a son five months ago. These little humans may have answers we need. In the meantime, celebrate with loud music and bright art. Cheers to another year. We have lost much and many, but here we be. Lucky us.

Love is the answer.

Listen to Jane.

She's an earth mother if there ever was one.

And she is filled with confidence and hope and vision.

Happy holidays my friends. So glad we have met.

Peace, and

we got this...

hugs all around,

B Mac

The Grasshopper and the Lightning Bug, True Story

Once we were swimming in a quarry in Salisbury, Vermont and I was putting my clothes back on right by the water's edge and a grasshopper from the meadow landed on the sock that I had just slid over my foot. YAAAHH! Giant bug!!. Without thinking, I snatched him by the wings and flicked him into the water not two feet from where I was sitting and SNAP, a fish, like lightning, appeared from the depths, swallowed him whole and was gone. In half a second, a nice, fat grasshopper was flitting along in the summer sun and BAM, swallowed whole, down the gullet and into the depths of an abandoned quarry. La la la, life and then...

We finished changing and wandered back to the car. My buddy John had a VeeDub beetle, which it turns out, had been bumped kind of hard off the little gravel patch where we left it. But, this being Vermont, there was a note on the windshield with an apology and a contact number. Damn, but, ok. Dent's not too bad. John reached out to put the key in the lock and SNAP! He jerked backward and yelped. Electricity! The bug had been banged hard enough to be contacting an electric fence and the key made an audible BZAP on contact. John's arm was tingling and buzzing. What the hell?! Now what?! Can't even touch the car.

We were/are smart idiots, so we started pushing the closest fence post back and forth to create enough slack to free the car. In the process, we were sort of trashing 100 yards of high tension fence line. After a minute or two of yanking, the wire was off the fender and as we started to exit the scene, a large and old pick-up truck pulled up and out climbed a very tanned and scowling farmer and two farm hands, both of them twice the size of us. Great.

We started apologizing and they started laughing and told us not to worry about the stupid fence. No big deal, ferris wheel. Shit happens. All the time. Crazy shit.

What does this have to do with art? Everything. You, and I, are grasshoppers. La La La, summer day. Anything can happen, anytime. So go big. Don't hold back. Be that quick trout. Snatch that snack. And when lightning strikes, laugh about it. Fences need messing up sometimes. Strangers are friends you haven't met yet, especially the big burly dudes. They are often the merriest. Carpe diem team! Come visit the art show. Buzz me back with your stories about the snap crackle and the big fish.

See ya soon,

and love,

it is the answer.

B Mac

Getting There

How do we get from here to there? If it's a commute, a car, usually, maybe a bike, if you are lucky. If it's across the ocean, a plane, or a boat if you have the time. If you want to get to the first exo-planet that seems like a likely spot to have Earth 2.0, you would have to cross around 24.5 trillion miles of space. Proxima Centauri b is orbiting a red dwarf star in a "habitable zone" around 4.2 light years away from your house. Disregarding the solar flares it experiences -- 100 times the UV radiation necessary to kill all life -- and the solar winds 2000 times stronger than the winds we experience on our home planet, just getting there is the challenge. If we could fly 20% the speed of light, the voyage would take 20 years, and so far, our fastest spacecraft is the Parker Solar Probe. It is travelling .05% the speed of light or fast enough to get to the moon in 40 minutes from my favorite coffee shop. Sent to have a look at Pluto, the New Horizons Probe, second speediest out of our fast NASA garage, took nine and a half years to get there. At that rate, it would take 78,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri b.

The piece in these photos is my proposal. It's called "Transverse Projector". It is capable of traveling 70 times the speed of light and is large enough to bring Australia and New Zealand, (Yes, they have to travel in a large bubble but I'm sure they won't mind. Also, the surf will be unusually high. Again, probably not a real issue and potentially a selling feature for crew recruitment). We will have some challenges regarding what to put in their place in the South Pacific, but it's likely doable with bamboo and such. "Transverse Projector" operates using basic warp drive technology that should be ready in a couple years or centuries, give or take. Construction will involve mining the moon, most of it in fact, but no one lives there, so hey, what's the big deal? As captain, Chris Pratt seems to have lots of experience, or maybe Chris Evans, or Chris Prine. I'm sure any of them will be thrilled as this is a big vehicle for star power. In fact, the propulsion is star power. Regarding funding, I'm making some calls.

At that speed we should arrive in a few months, assuming the Romulans or Draconians don't catch wind of our plans. In the meantime, (here we are back talking about time), this maquette for "Transverse Projector" is for sale. Please give it a good home, although it needs to be available for engineers regarding dimensions, materials, solar wind tunnel testing, vacuum analytics, hull impermeability, synthetic atmospherics modeling, quantum phase locking asymptotic projections, temporal improbability fractionation, the usual...

Peace and love and hugs and all the best stuff that matters day to day.

Make this place a better home with your efforts, however modest. Make music. Teach kids. Write positivity.

Tell Brisbane it's just a joke. We need koalas and kookaburras and Aussies very much.

Stay in touch. In fact, send me a quick note about the art you need for your space.

I have lots of different sizes made and in process. Space constraints are real and imagined.

B Mac,

Official assistant trainee in-betweener third class

P.S. FYI, that is the closest exoplanet. Stars are very, very, very, very far apart.

Your Actual Age is Today

Greetings and salutations continually new friends,

Are you feeling not yourself lately? There might be a good reason for that. Let's start with the "Ship of Theseus," a thought experiment that dates to 500 BC and was discussed by Plato and Heraclitus and plenty of arguing philosophers since. The Athenians preserved the ship that Theseus sailed home from Crete after winning a great battle and, over the course of a century, replaced all the rotting wood with new planks. Eventually, someone pointed out that most of the wood was new, in fact, pretty much ALL the wood was new. So, is the ship still the ship of Theseus? Or is it no longer his ship since all the original wood is gone? Furthermore, imagine someone saved all the rotten wood, figured out how to refortify the fibers of the decaying boards and then reassembled the pieces. Which is the ship of Theseus?

There is a company in California named Singer Vehicle Design that will accept your Porsche 911, made between 1989 and 1994, into their facility to customize and remanufacture the car. They can, and do, remake nearly every nut, bolt, stitch, glass, fender, switch, computer chip, paint finish, light, plastic bit, door pull, and every tiny, niggly bit of motor metal in the name of "restoration". These cars are resto-mods, modified to be better than the original factory version in every way. They are faster, lighter, grippier, sleeker, lower, shinier, sound better, cost more, are more personal, and are as sexy as bespoke machinery can possibly be. They even smell nicer, with only the finest matched leather hides slathering every interior surface, as well as quilted into the back wall of the engine compartment. Can't have your engine feeling left out. Their motto is "Everything matters," and truly, they will customize to the depth of the client's pocketbook. Want carbon fiber body panels with nickel plated mirrors? Done. Bring a photo of your dog and they will paint the car to match. These are engineers married to artists and their love of the craft and the machine are unparalleled. But is it a Porsche? The badge on the rump says Singer. But crack open their website and right on page one is the statement, "This is a Porsche 911, not a 'Singer 911'". Ship of Theseus, old German sports car, testimonial to the god/devil is in the details?

Speaking of specifics, the founder of the Singer firm, Rob Dickinson, was formerly a rock musician. Come to think of it, some bands such as Yes, Ratt, Thin Lizzy, Blood, Sweat and Tears are all bands containing none of the founding members of the original band. Is Yes still Yes, or No, or Pretty Much, or Maybe, Sort of? But one can see how in the modern litigious universe, the rights of ownership, of identity, can suddenly pivot on an ancient metaphysical conundrum.

Now, back to the original question. All the cells in your body replace themselves continuously. An article I read suggested 7 years as the average age of cells in our bodies and a bit of homework reveals heart cells can live 40 years, skeletal muscle cells live 15 years, liver cells about a year and red blood cells around 100 days. Your body merrily makes a teaspoon of fresh cerebrospinal fluid every 12 minutes to bathe your brain so you can read this. Divide your age by 7 and this is roughly how many times the planks of your ship have been replaced. So, who exactly is you? It's a subtly different question than "Who are you?" Let's assume all your cells have been replaced at least once, are you the person who was you before? Are you the man your wife married? Or vice versa? Nope, not anymore.

Based on this physical reality, one smacks into the concept of "self". If all your brain cells, the stuff you think is you thinking about stuff, are refreshed, then the continuity of your sense of self is physically a total illusion. Ok, fine. Then the self is a construct, literally, of memories (which, it's worth pointing out, are not actually "things") which are continually being recreated on a cellular matrix continually being recreated. Let that sink in for a moment.

How are you feeling now? An unavoidable conclusion, it seems, should be the recognition that who we are is subject to change. ALL THE TIME. We are living chemistry sets. We exist because a supernova blew up billions of years ago releasing the elemental componentry -- carbon, hydrogen, iron, calcium, oxygen, etc. -- that swirled about and magically made bodies with a self-aware noggin on top. What we perpetuate as ME is nowhere written in stone in any conceivable sense. Your past is ancient history, with only the life and meaning you select. Resto-mod, my friends. No reason not to. Get lighter, faster, sleeker... at least in your minds. Rehearse the stories you choose. Pick the greatest hits and make that you. By the way, it's free.

So, not feeling yourself? Of course not. Identity is by its fundamental nature ephemeral, and a counterpoint to the flesh of our arms and the seeming permanence of those freckles...

Where does art enter this discussion? Art is an anchor, nailing down headlong experience into repeatable moments of perception. See this sparkle on the wall? Yeah, that one right THERE. Come back tomorrow and it's still there. Play that funky music again and you feel that funk all over again. Magic. AND, endlessly textured. My light sculpture is different all the time based on the light sailing through the room at 186,000 miles a second. The metal is the constant. The light is the funky dance and your eyes and brains the filter, the lips of the kiss, the neural firings reminding you of the best parts of living. I make and sell anchors made of light waves. Best job ever.

And I am I, and you are you, at least for the moment. Eventually, we go back to the supernova debris... So, we are we together, again.

Rock steady.

Stay in touch.

Buy big art.

B Mac

Normalize

Return to normal. Here in Vermont, we are 81% vaccinated and, in public, one can hardly tell that the last year and a half was a catastrophic piece of history AND still is for a large percentage of the globe. June and 80 degrees with a 18 knot south wind blowing down the lake. Sunshine...

The sense of stepping back from a cliff is almost palpable. The heightened receptor state, hiding out, masks nonstop, constant alcohol scent, flight mode, is gone. Replaced by a comforting flatness...

But normal? What exactly does that mean? Keep your eyes open for the phrase "the new normal". Oxymoron? Climate change manifesting as a heat wave last week brought over 100 degrees to 40 million Americans with temperatures between 15 and 30 degrees above normal. Oregon, 116?! Palm Springs hit 120. Maybe they need a new name for the town. Hell's Parking Lot? Furnace No Creek? Skillet? How can normal be new? It wouldn't be normal if it's new. New is new. 

Closer to home, is it normal for me to hand rub a piece of titanium sheet for an hour, once or twice a week? Is that normal behavior? The finish I'm trying to get can't come from a whirling or vibrating machine. This is the path. It's my "normal," however absurd it may appear to "normal" people. Certainly has an effect on my arms that isn't exactly normal. But the lack of drama, even in the subtle sheen of a metal slab... its literal flatness... feels nice. 

Farther from home, an astrophysicist, a woman, definitely not historically "normal" in that profession, has discovered an anomaly in the structure of the universe. The Giant Arc is a group of galaxies so massive that our standard conceptual framework of the universe, based on a relatively consistent distribution of matter and energy in all directions, is shattered. The Giant Arc is 3.3 billion light years across or one fifteenth the radius of the entire visible universe. It is three times bigger than anything should be out there. The accepted cosmological principle created by decades of observation and calculations requires even distribution and consistent expansion based on precise mathematical models. Lumps or structures of this scale suggest... Spin? Directionality? Organization? Grain? This doesn't seem normal at all. But isn't stuff in deep space sort of the definition of normal? (Wait. What?! Dark matter, quasars, black holes, lightning on Saturn...) It has zero to do with human value judgments...

And now, from within, normal, apparently, is flexible and personal and therefore can't be considered an absolute, like unique, every, the best, perfection, etc. Is it normal to go out on a lake with three to four foot waves and surf downwind for an hour and a half? Yep. That's a normal I am heading out to do right now. I strongly recommend making such behaviors normal. Making art, for instance, is far from a normal job. But it is mine. Then again, I am far from being normal. Cursed and blessed. But, I will say, some evenness, lack of an imposed, external system of edges, feels, mellow. Dancing with gravity on my board is personal and perilous, but I'm very unlikely to die... Controlled peril, losing a point, losing a set, is so very different from losing the whole match. Normal feels nice, like we know its parameters and are comfortable with them. Welcome back.

Cheers to high summer and long days. Obviously, we don't know all the bits in the universe, cell sized or galactic. Best savor these warm breezes. The Tour is on. Walk the dog. Hug your everyones. Kick back on the deck after the sweating and weigh the universal questions with your peeps. These are blessings taken a smidge less for granted, I do believe. 

Normal people buy art, but my favorites are the extraordinary people who buy extraordinary art. Let's normalize that. 

Peace out, 

And in, 

B Mac

P.S. Check out Sam Harris, Julie Mehretu, and consider the Tralfamadorians' perspective. Pry open new neural pathways, today. Can't hurt. Normalize extraordinary, even though you can't. 

Finite Bandwidth

Do you remember the time you needed your phone and remembered it was in the kitchen and when you went there you forgot what you were doing in that room? So, you went back to where you started and remembered, "Phone." You remember that. But not the phone while you were in the kitchen. What is the nature of the mind that makes it work this way? Why would evolution bring us to this place? Why are some file folders not accessible at a particular time and other times, no problemo? What was the name of Monica's older boyfriend in "Friends"? Um, he was in a show about Hawaii, and had that car... What is that guy's name? You know who he is...

On average, a thousand containers a year fall off ships and sink into the ocean. 1,382 were lost in 2020. These are forty feet long, weigh almost 30 tons when loaded. Steel. Large. Is this how the brain works? Chunks sunk randomly? Big items. Like your wife's birthday, your keys, your husband's middle name or where he went to college... Later, you can remember them. Just not right this second. They sank.

Brain scientists are utilizing fMRI scanning to see how the wiring in the head operates in real time and drawing a compelling new atlas of pathways AND confounding lots of accepted science regarding the architecture of thinking. For all the strides recently made in apportioning classes of brain function to areas within the skull, the latest research shows many of these are myths. Left brain and right brain, rational thought vs. creative thought, speech centers, visual processing... I'm not a doctor, and the latest neuroscience can't be summarized in this paragraph... And the mind is 100 billion neurons, give or take, with trillions of  connections. That we can ever find our phones is statistically unlikely. But we do, usually... 

But, I lost my train of thought... Remember the Lost Boys? Have you lost your mind? Sorry, I lost my cool... Have you lost a family member or good friend this past year? Hello, hello, I'm losing you. This notion of "unknown location" is pervasive in our language and, I believe, tied to the way our brains function. Scientists are quick to affirm the normalcy of forgetting, primarily blaming it on attention. Yet the anxiety associated with trying to remember is real. We "try to remember" as though we are lifting a dumbell. This isn't muscular. Nor is it location based. Youngsters don't obsess over "spacing" information. They calmly whip out a phone and find out. Too many of us stress over the ongoing forgetfulness that is a normal part of reality, petrified of losing our minds or our sharpness, of aging and the host of neurological maladies that may occur. But worrying will take your attention away, and attention is the key to smoothing the natural processing of being present and focused. It's normal, my friends, to forget. Remembering anything is miraculous. Make peace with uncertainty. 

The latest theories regard memory as not a host of file folders but an ongoing assemblage of sparks, a constant activity of reassembling. This redefines perception as well. The thing you "see" is 20% visual input and 80% mental processing, but we will have to chat about that next time. Today is the time to accept the containers overboard in our heads. We have these computers in our skulls of staggering complexity and plasticity. Try to stay out of their way with our anxious, fearful selves. Let go. Being lost is normal. Fits and starts are somewhat factory settings. Syncopation is the proper rhythm of our funky selves. Maybe janky brain function is the locus of innovation. Imperfect memory is the space for creativity. 

But that evolutionary issue is curious. Maybe as we age, we, as elders of the village, need conceptualization more than specifics, context more than data. Maybe we are just living too long. Maybe I actually know the answer and have forgotten the words to communicate it. I'll just make metaphors till you get it or I disappear.

I often think of working creatively as remembering stuff that was put in and processed by forces we don't control, forgotten until the fermentation is complete and then dredged from past time and inexorable daily tides of perception. Buried treasure. Brought to light. Now. Pretty sure. 

Buy art. It's fixed to the wall. It leverages that 20% to control your brain. In a good way... Thank me later. 

Rock steady,  B Mac  

Star Destroyers and Invisible Cats

Hang on, this is a dense one. Fair warning.

Big news right now is the marketing of NFTs, nonfungible tokens. We all know that fungible means, in lawyer speak, "the ability to replace or be replaced by an identical item; mutual interchangeability." Therefore, nonfungible means unique, one-of-a-kind, like you, or that tree by my door, or the snowflake on my glove. The "token" part means that it's a thing, an actual object, like a ticket that gets you into the ball game. There's only one for that one seat, (but just to be clear, it's not the seat itself). People are investing in NFTs, purchasing online for actual money, a slice of a program, a bit of code that exists in the blockchain universe, which we cannot see or touch or taste or smell. In fact, most of the purchases are paid for with cryptocurrency. I don't see too many problems with this. Do you? Maybe. Wanna buy a bridge in North Korea? I can hook you up.

Nihonium is element #113 on the Periodic Chart. It is accepted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry as a member of the known universe of atoms, the actual stuff that makes up everything there is. After seven years of pursuit, scientists in a lab in Japan created one atom that instantly disappeared because it is super unstable, radioactive to the point of immediate self annihilation. Three more atoms have been made in total, just to confirm the experiment's results. Estimates suggest it is the most expensive thing on earth; a single atom is at least 7.5 million dollars. A gram of the stuff would run about 45 octillion dollars or more than the value of the entire earth at current market prices. I know a guy who knows a guy... just saying.

Speaking of elemental coolness, or hotness, Neodymium and Yttrium and Aluminum in a garnet crystalline matrix is the finest laser producing stuff we have found. Well, not me personally, but the royal "we". I'm trapped in Vermont in my studio because of a global pandemic, but in Magurele, Romania, a project called ELI, the Extreme Light Infrastructure, is hard at work. In October of last year, they created a laser beam convergence with ten petawatts of power. Ten petawatts is the equivalent of one tenth of all the sunlight currently hitting the earth, easily more juice than the entire power grid in this country. The duration of the event was 23 femtoseconds. A femtosecond, as I'm sure you all know, is one millionth of a billionth of a second, or, more familiarly, one quadrillionth of a second. Woo hoo, high fives all around. Awesome!

Yesterday, I found myself in the gallery with a friend discussing what I do. The gist of the conversation was me describing my work as a duality. The art itself is the experience of the way light moves when you, the perceiver, move around in front of the slab of metal in the present light conditions. That is what I make. That is what I sell. The piece of stainless steel on the wall is necessary, as are some photons wandering about the room (at the speed of light) and your eyeballs and brain having the experience of those photons. The piece of metal is not the art, although it is required, as are you, as is light. So, my artwork is about making a tangible thing to create an intangible moment in your life's experience. It's ephemeral, like the ELI event. But it can be replicated, continuously, if you like, unlike Nihonium. By duality, I mean that I make an object, a thing that you can touch, but the essence of the art is that it is not a thing. It's more like an NFT, or a wonderful memory, or the way certain songs make you feel. Unlike an NFT, it's always a little different. Wear a different shirt, light the candles, open the shades, dim the lights... And unlike an NFT, no hacking will ever occur. I promise. There is only one possible iteration of every piece that I have ever made, and there it is, hanging on the wall, reflecting and refracting light. Unless you believe in parallel universe theories. We will take that up another time.

So then, what is the theme here? Magic? Science? Absurdity? Art? All of the above? You can buy a screenshot of a flying cat with a pop tart body trailing rainbows for some amount of money, or something like money, that somebody somewhere decided was the correct value. Making the assumption, naturally, that only you have the only one, and that assigned value is not arbitrary. Seems like a great deal of assuming to me, AND you are buying something with all the soul of a QR code. Personally, I would recommend an actual thing -- real art that you hang in a real room in your home, that dynamically feeds you freshness moment to moment until you pass it along to your kids. Good art becomes a good friend. As an investment? Maybe the pop tart cat. As life experiences? I recommend museums and concerts and trips outside and really, really strong art to share with your family and friends...

Well, you get the drift, I think. Conceptually, the whole NFT thing is crazy. Yet cool in a virtual reality, what-will-they-think-of-next sort of a way. Giant laser beams, wicked cool. Blasting atoms into matter at speeds approaching warp? Super cool. Pushing light around to mess with your experience of right now? Best thing ever.

Hope is radiating down from that bright ball in the sky, dear friends.

More hugs every day. Real hugs, not "air" gestures masquerading as human warmth.

Springtime is renewal. This one in particular.

Peace out. And inner peace too.

B Mac

The Sun Cut Flat

To quote the soulful Greg Allman, "...two, three, fo..."

"We are our choices," said the actor Ethan Hawke in a recent article, and that short phrase has been swimming around with me for a month or so. Choices. Like deciding in the moment to go on that side of the tree on my snowboard - not really able to see where I was heading exactly - and pop out at the top of a small, tilted meadow of untouched snow, soft as down, bottomless... Swoop, flick, swoop and then repeat... swoop... Or stay late at the studio working on a piece that looks like nothing I have ever made before… having really no clue what was happening with this pattern thing of triangles. And it sold in one day to a friend I just happened to text it to. Less than 24 hours from mystery to sold. Choices. Like the guys on Reddit banding together to drive up a stock price 1,700%. I hope they chose to sell already. Or Tom Moore in England deciding to walk 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday and then proceeding to raise 32 million pounds sterling for national healthcare during the pandemic. The Queen chose to knight him. He says he didn't choose to be a hero. He just wanted to help out.

Well, Ethan Hawke's words resonated until I realized they took me back to a philosophy class a thousand years ago. Those words are Jean-Paul Sartre's basis for the whole school of existentialism. You are what you do, not what you say you are. Your existence is based on your actions, not on your notion of your personal "essence." "I am a product of my decisions, not my conditions," said Jeff Bezos at a commencement address a few years ago. "Freedom is what you do with what has been done to you," Monsieur Sartre again. 

However, a friend told me long ago, "What you believe is true, either is true or will become true, within certain physical limitations." I always took the last phrase to mean I probably won't grow wings from my shoulders if I thought I should fly. But, thanks Laurie Hare, my dear friend who has known me since birth, for giving me a precept for living that I have held for years as Truth. And yet, how do these fit together? What I believe? The choices I make? Three things:

"Perhaps it's the color of the sun cut flat

And covering the crossroads I'm standing at,

Or maybe it's like the weather or something like that,

But, mama, you been on my mind."  

Bob Dylan is owning, in his perfectly Dylanesque way, the concept of not really understanding the nature of the moment or which path is the right path but knowing that the power is the gist of the thing, the feeling right then, being present, being mindful. Is it the light or the color or the weather or "something like that...?" Choices. Crossroads.

And then there was Bryan Cranston's moment of going from a bit player doing random commercials in Hollywood to cult hero and actor of peerless reputation. He changed from focusing on outcome to focusing on the process of acting. He devoted himself to being the best possible version of the character he was presenting. He left Bryan behind. Luck is the residue of passion and steady work. Being on the field at the right moment... Being ready, for luck to occur...

And thirdly, Andy Warhol said, "If there's ever a problem, I film it and it's no longer a problem. It's a film." Reframe. Choose the other door. Problems don't have to be problems. They could be art. Choices.

Sartre was awarded the Nobel prize and he refused to accept it. He thought it might affect how people addressed his writings. Dylan also did not accept his Nobel prize saying he had other engagements, although he sent his lifelong friend Patti Smith as a stand in. He defined his sense of freedom. Choices. This side of the tree or that. That tool on the surface or this. Buy. Sell. Walk to and fro. Luck. Knighthood. Or a Nobel. Or an Oscar. Or a lovely four syllables... "The sun cut flat..."

"We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us." This is a quote from Andrew Ryan, who, I discovered, is a fictional dictator in the video game BioShock.  Probably not going to get a Nobel. But, he is right. You are what you believe you are, and you are the actions that make that the truth.

I believe that you, my friends, need visionary art. I believe this is the moment you have waited for. I believe that you have not lost my email. (It's right down there).

And I believe in how lucky we both are to be surrounded by all this, all this sun cut flat...

As always, love each other as much as you can possibly stand.

Stay in touch,

B Mac

P.S. The following is light cut flat and still poking out. It's my job after all. Take some home.

P.P.S. The stuff up there about love, I really mean that.

Time Pirouette Time

Howdy howdy,

Thoughts for this moment:

Just like the solstice, we pivot from darkness to light. We sleep, perchance dream and then...

In Vermont, there is a rare plant called the Fen Grass of Parnassus that is around ten inches tall and makes small white flowers that bloom for about a month from mid-August until mid-September. A tiny bee the size of my pinky fingernail feeds on this flower exclusively. All bees are vegetarians and most, like this one, live in the ground. It's considered a "mining bee" and is so rare that it doesn't have a common name. Those in the know call it Andrena parnassiae. They emerge in August when the flowers bloom; mate; the males die. The mother bee deposits an egg and a packet of pollen in small chambers underground. She dies within a week or so. The egg and then grub grow and emerge as an adult bee ten months later. That's it. Life story. Long night and then daytime...

Do they dream? Warm, late summer dreams of nectar and sunshine... Ten months underground in Vermont's fierce winter. Time to muse...

"Methuselah" is the name given to a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine whose location in Eastern California is a secret for her protection. This small, gnarled tree is 4,852 years young, perched on the same rock outcrop for millennia, witness to the entire written history of humankind. Does she smile? Laugh at our foolishness, or curse our degradation of her air supply? In 66 years, we managed to invent a plane and then walk on the moon. She lived 1.3602% of her life during that span. When she dreams is it slower than a bee's? Or a longer dream? Seasons pass. Time as meditation...

The oldest star that we know about is labelled HD 140283 and the science community discusses it as the Methuselah Star. The namesake, according to Genesis, was a man who lived 969 years. Not a whole lot of science there, but the smarties who run the Hubble telescope will confirm this star to be a "metals poor, blue-shifted, high-velocity, Population II, sub-giant." It's only 200 light years away. Data analysis confirms that this star is 14.46 billion years old, plus or minus .8 billion years. (Now, that's a margin of error.) Since the universe is 13.799 billion years old, plus or minus .021 billion years, we have a very, very old and close neighbor. This ball of nuclear fire was around within a few million years of the Big Bang and over nine billion years old before our sun ignited. A year, five millennia, unfathomable eons...

Time. It's relative, and if you consider our friend Einstein's rules, tricky. Time in 2020, I can personally affirm, was whack. "Hey, it's Monday again. Boom. Friday. Hey, it's ..." From the Chinese year of the Rat - last year - to this year's Ox. OX. A hug and a kiss. The Ox symbolizes hard work, positivity and honesty. One year to the next...

But, we are in the midst. Just as the bee sleeps, the tree endures and the star seethes, we sleep, dream, persevere. Hyperbolics all. Us and them. How can we pack life into these days we are blessed? One by one. Reflect. Re-emerge. Persist. Time flies, but we are the pilots. Compared to the bee, we have limitless time. Compared to the pine, we are a blink.

And so we pirouette from history to the future each morning. Our personal time is unknowable. Get busy or wander. It's your time after all. This last year has been proof of the flexibility of its apprehension. So, consider the ancient fireball, but spend some time with the nectar and reverie, maybe go visit those pines, maybe stop looking at your watch...

All best,

B Mac

Don't Panic

Dearest friends,

Hang on. Here we go.

Pandora, as told by the poet Hesiod in Greece around 700 B.C.E., was the first woman. Zeus had Hephaestus make her after Prometheus had stolen fire and given it to Man, who, interestingly, were all men, reverent and gods-fearing and, at the time, immortal. Her name is from "pan", Greek for "all" and "doron" meaning "gifted." So, our "all gifted" first woman became famous for opening the box, which was actually a jar (until some 16th century transcriber messed up that detail), unleashing "countless plagues" on humankind. Sounds strangely like the Eve and the apple story. Keeping in mind that all this was written down by men.  Apparently, Man needed punishment and women were the ones to bring it.

Pandamonium was the name scientists gave, jokingly, to the element #99 discovered in 1952 during Project Panda, the secret code name for the first hydrogen bomb detonation. In the coral from the decimated Enewetak Atoll in the South Pacific and in the air above, this synthetic, highly radioactive element was detected. Today it lives on the Periodic Chart as Einsteinium, but it has no use, no value, just something to study in nuclear labs. It glows and decays rapidly.

We just had the warmest November in recorded history. Carbon dioxide is at its greatest atmospheric concentration in 800,000 years. Greenhouse gases trap heat today at a rate equivalent to four Hiroshima bomb explosions per second. An iceberg dubbed A68a, the size of Delaware, broke off the Larson C ice shelf of Antarctica in 2017 and is approaching South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic. It could run aground this month.

Pandemic comes from the Greek "pan", "all" and "demos" meaning "people". Us, basically. All people. ALL PEOPLE.

Pando is the name given to a forest in Utah of quaking aspen trees that are all genetically identical. These trees, all 47,000 of them, share a 13-million-pound root system. It's the heaviest living thing. It's cooperating, organically, naturally and researchers suggest it may be up to 80,000 years old. Maybe.

Pantheism is the belief that reality is divinity, that all things are a manifestation of God or that God is immanent. There is no separation from the divine and me and this snowflake or that iceberg or this bug or that meteor or.... The word was invented to discuss the 17th Century philosopher Baruch Spinoza's notions of a rational approach to the common glory of our existence. (Check him out. Great stuff there). But this concept of totality of mind/body/spirit/natural world can be traced through ancient pagan religions to modern East Asian theology. One can't read Thoreau or Wordsworth without feeling this resonance. Einstein himself stated in 1929, "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists."

So, it's the holidays. AND we are on the cusp of a remaking of the human adventure. We have a woman as a vice president and just a step from the top job of filling in for the oldest elected commander in chief. There are more women in Congress than ever. There are more top jobs in the new administration filled by women, and the culture of strong, brilliant women guiding us forward is a pivot for humanity. Look at New Zealand and the way its leader has managed the pandemic and having a baby.  It's time the millennia of misogyny ends. Moms should rule the planet. Men have done a fabulous job of mucking things up -- nuclear weapons, climate change, children in cages, global disease...

In the Pandora story, there was one thing left stuck on the rim of the jar -- "elpis", the Greek word for "hope." It remained in the jar and now it's time. Hope is the plan. Greta Thunberg can be our avatar moving forward. With women activists, with moms on the team, everything is possible. This holiday season hug everyone you love but, mostly, hug your mom. She sang to us. She read to us. She tied our shoes and made our food. It's time to recognize her divinity and our own and do what the aspens do. Work together. Save the planet y'all. We can do this. I know, I know, enough with the preaching. But, it's the time of year to reflect, to take stock and begin anew. Optimism is the only option. 2020 will recede in the history books as a bitter, brutal time. 2021 is what we make it.

Blessings my friends,

Oh yeah, buy art. It's the best present. Seriously.

Mostly though, hugs.

Love wins every time.

B Mac

P.S. Hug your mom again.

P.P.S. And support all those fighting the good fight to recognize the untapped power of the gender I'm not. They are stronger, and wiser. It is true.

P.P.S.S. Don't blame the pangolins.

Rabbit’s Foot

Jason Giambi, one of baseball's best sluggers in the last 20 years, would wear a gold thong to try and bust out of a batting slump. Tim Lincecum always wore the same cap when he was pitching, for five years. Jockey Jake Noonan never let his helmet touch the ground before a horse race, ever. Another jockey, Emily Finnegan, swears by a certain perfume, Hugo Boss Deep Red, for race days. Chimney sweeps are thought to bring good luck; often in British weddings, a sweep is hired to come by in a top hat with his brush and give the bride a smooch. Shamrocks. Winged phalluses in ancient Rome. Wind chimes. Horseshoes.

A few years back I was pooped on by a bird. Not so happy about bird doo in my hair, I was stunned to be shat upon again in the same week. In hashing over my sense of ignominy, I decided to spin it. It must be a good sign, a sign that I was outdoors a lot, a sign that I was living a life with hours and hours of fresh air. I later read that in parts of the world, like Russia and Turkey, getting pooped on by a bird is good luck. Well, there ya go. I'm super double lucky. Luckier by far than the story my friend Chris used to tell of being out in a fishing boat off Chatham on Cape Cod. He was working with an older captain and the business of fishing involved flocks of wheeling gulls and quite a stench of old bait for much of the time. His buddy, the captain, smoked cigars constantly to manage the stink. Just as he raised the cigar to his face a wheeling gull let fly right into his open mouth. In horror, Chris stammered, "Oh god, what's THAT taste like?!" The captain spit and smiled, "Hot."

But I digress. Lucky charms. Do they work? They must or why would their use continue over the millennia? In the 16th Century, a British Parliamentarian, Reginald Scot carried a rabbit's foot around in his pocket for good luck. Rabbit's feet are used in Europe, Africa, China, and North and South America as a talisman to bring good luck, which begs the question of why rabbits? Wouldn't it make sense for each culture to have its own paw? What's wrong with weasels or foxes? Or a chicken foot? The fact that this is a global belief system could be taken as a refutation to its inefficacy. It must work. EVERYBODY knows that. My brother had one on a keychain when I was a kid. Totally grossed me out; but you know, it's my older brother's so it must be cool. Did it work? Probably. He's still around and having fun. Might even still have it somewhere in a box. Old dead animal paw with a little ball chain through it. Yuck.

So what's all this about fortuosity anyway? (If anyone can glean the referential aspect of that word, let me know). Seems like a good time in our lives to lean into a little bon chance. The title of the above piece is "Amulet." Will it bring you good luck if you hang it in your home? Yes. I guarantee it. Abso-posi-lutely. Never fail. Starting immediately. Life will get better. For sure. There's a backstory to the name of this panel and if you buy it, I'll share it.

On the other hand, where is Tim Lincecum now? Didn't Jason Giambi get busted for steroids? That jockey with the helmet thing, crashed hard twice. Max Scherzer, one of the all-time most bad-ass pitchers to ever throw a baseball is very superstitious.  He believes that to talk about luck and superstitions is bad luck. So. Nothing. Nope. No talking about that. (By the way, look up his stats. Ridiculous. That is, if you believe in baseball).

But, I believe that if you believe, luck is real. Ruby slippers will take us home. Pooped on recently? Good. Better times are on the way.

Reread the above line, especially the last part.

We got this my friends. I think you could use a little fresh art to liven up the palace after all we have been going through. "Amulet", or "Disc", which is an amulet like the one I wore around my neck for a few years. How about "Looking Out"? "On With It" is still available. As is "Bridget". Can you feel the theme here?

Looking forward to our next missive. yes indeed. 

Meantime,

Peace

Quirky Freaks and the Real Jedi

Greetings Earthlings,

And anyone else paying attention,

This week's quiz: What has two claws, no teeth and can kill a lion? They have been around for 12 million years and can live to be sixty years old.

An "outlier" is, according to the almighty Wikipedia, a data point that significantly differs from other observations. Generally, Amazon recommendations have someone saying that this is the worst product ever while every other review is five stars. Outlier. Usain Bolt. Outlier. Picasso. Elon Musk. A tsunami is an outlier. So is a meteor.  The Wiki article is itself a fabulous outlier -- generally the exposition of a thing creates understanding, and a concept is simplified. The article for "Outlier", however, immediately digs into the arcane mathematics of probability and deviation, the three Sigma rule, the Mahalanobis distance, interquartile range, and the modified Thompson Tau test... "I'll explain Japan speaking only Japanese" seems like the program.

Back to the quiz: These critters have over a pound of sand and pebbles in their bellies to help grind up food. Usain Bolt can run 27 mph. These guys can run 43. For a while. Only cheetahs can catch them. Hint: They have lush eyelashes and the largest eyes of any land animal.

As I type this, a very, very dark brown squirrel just went up a huge maple behind the studio. There it is. Why isn't she grey like all the others? In college, there were black squirrels on campus and the story circulated that they were mutants or from The Black Forest in Germany. The former is accurate. They are genetic anomalies, although the dumpster behind the dining center might have been a contributing factor. Reasonable assumption...

What animal is nine feet tall? Has skin that makes durable boots? Is pretty tasty, (so they say)? Can weigh 300 pounds? Grows nine inches per month their first year? Has two toes on each foot but only one toe has a claw? Eats shrubbery?

The outliers are the ones who redefine reality; they spin civilization in a different direction.  Jackie Robinson changed all sports forever. George Lucas gave us "American Graffiti," meh. Decent flick. Then Yoda. James Cameron warmed up with "Titanic", so to speak, and then "Avatar" changed visual reality forever. Shakespeare remains a mystery, his genius from seemingly nowhere. Jimi Hendrix. Bach. Steve Jobs. Michelangelo. Wim Hof. Edwin Hubble. Gandhi. The Beatles. Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Outliers," covers this turf well, but...

Consider the ostrich. Weirdest creature ever. (Excepting the octopus, but we covered that here: Dark then Light, Rhythm in Hues. Wings. Can't fly. Lives on parched barrens. Rarely drinks water. You can ride on one, but they can disembowel a human with one kick. Three-pound eggs. Great vision. Wicked ugly -- total jumble of gnarled skin, giant feathers, balding head and protruding bones. Their namesake trait of "head in the sand" is unreal, just a trope. Perfect outliers. Even their name is bizarre. They persist as a freak of nature, strange as fiction.

This week's challenge is to look around at all the chaos and focus on the outliers. Focus on the things that confound. These are the pivot points. Who is changing our notions of reality? Who sees different wavelengths? What ideas suggest radical realignment? Confront that which creates animus in your spirit. Beware the fakers. I have said for years that on a ship full of pirates, it's highly unlikely that the captain isn't one. But we are surrounded by otherness -- the dark squirrel, Crispr, quantum computing, graphene, Banksy, trolls... In the movie "Arrival" is the notion that time is not linear, if one knows the correct language to describe it. Maybe Native Americans know how to manage wildfires. Maybe tides can power the planet. Maybe craft beer prevents Covid. That explains Vermont. Maybe not. But please, my friends, think outside the box that is on fire. Anomalies may be the answer. Or the question. Or the fulcrum.

And as always, value this day that you are gifted.

Be kind to each other. Love will find a way...

And

Vote, damnit.

Your humble servant,

Bruce Mac

P.S. Buy art today. I mean this. Otherwise, well, let's not go into the utter decline of all humanity, the pit of woe, the despairing wails of unfed progeny... yeah, all that...  

P.P.S. And have faith in our humanity to overcome inhumanity. We persist. We are strange as fiction too. Ostrich. Go figure. Super weird. Lots of that going around.

P.P.S.S. Vote Outliers. Vote Out Liars.

Hash n' Eggs and the Invisible Jetpack

Howdy partners,

Yesterday, a guy was spotted in airspace at 3,000 feet over LA flying with a jetpack. Pilots in commercial airliners radioed the tower to report the flying man; one pilot said he was barely 300 yards away from his Airbus A321. Yikes. Now we can worry about this? LA traffic WTF!

As kids, we always knew that flying was normal stuff: Superman, duh. Ironman with his suit. Hawkman had wings. Mighty Mouse, way way back. Hovercrafts were going to be available by the time we got our driver's license. Pretty sure. The Air Force had the SR-71 Blackbird, which could fly over three times the speed of sound -- 2,193 mph -- so clearly getting places would get quicker all the time. And if James Bond had a jetpack, most secret agents had to have them.

I have dreamt of flying my entire life. Mostly it is just a function of thinking just the right thoughts and leaning into the wind just the right way and off I go. Arms out. Catching the wind. It isn't scary. It is exhilarating. And it feels right. It feels normal.

During the day though, I make light sculpture. My palette is reflected and refracted photons. These sculptures are internal spaces manifested. I'm not making political statements or riffing on common tropes. I'm not really interested in whether this will "go" with your sofa. (Ok, maybe I am a little bit). There is no agenda. There is only Beauty with a capital "B." These pieces are meant to resonate, to feel familiar and yet fresh. I'm trying to visualize magic, to capture snow in hard sunlight blowing off the roof. Diamond dust. Moon sparkles dancing across the lake at 2 AM feel a particular way -- liquid, platinum, ephemeral... Supercolliders humming organ-pedal bass chords or shrieking in absolute zero vacuums, quartz, schist, red sprites, morning glories, and the tendrils of supernovae remnants collected with a perfect mirror orbiting our tiny and complete sphere. Harmonics. The known and understood with the sublime and ineffable. The feeling of flying without stuff to make you fly...

My pal Wily has a Cessna built the year I was born, and he takes me up now and then for transcendence and breakfast across the lake. Who knew most little airfields have excellent diners? Last week a guy showed up at this little fly-in over in New Hampshire in a sport plane built in 1935  -- no roof, tiny windshield and a quilted red leather cockpit that feels lifted from an old Jag. Both my grandfathers had their own planes. Wish I had been old enough then to go up.

Look at my work with eyes out of time. There is as much Aboriginal dream time as forest walks, Ukiyo-E, pictures of the floating world, as Hubble imagery and Middle Earth and Thor and quantum fields and waves in the sand where the waves break. I have dreamt of flying an F-16 (don't tell Wily). That's in the work too. Maybe you need something on the wall out of time, above this plane, airbourne, quotidian dispelled...

Owls

"The crow wished everything was black, the owl, wished everything was white." -- William Blake

Owls have magnificent adaptations to facilitate doing their jobs of quietly eradicating the world of tasty morsels running about at night. They have, as we all know, the ability to fly silently thanks to specialized feathers that dampen vibrations. These feathers are, however, such particular structures that the preen oils most birds possess would nullify their effects. Consequently, most owls are not waterproof. They can't hunt in the rain and have been known to drown when landing in relatively shallow water to drink or bathe. They also need extra down for warmth to combat freezing when feathers get sodden. Their ears are asymmetrical on their heads to help with the sound location of tiny feet moving around. Their facial feathers help with light collection to their eyes; eyes that are far superior to their prey. Owls have eyes that are more tubular than round. In fact, owls’ eyes are fixed in their heads, which can swivel up to 270 degrees. Less body movement is more stealth. They have to move their heads to change their view.

That last sentence is the one that really jumps out. William Blake also wrote, "The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind." How do you change your mind? How does one change someone else's view? There is, as one can imagine in today's world, a great deal of research on how to convince someone to believe something different than what they currently believe. The consensus is that facts -- logic and evidence -- don't change minds. We have 4% of the world's population in the U.S and consume two-thirds of the world's production of antidepressants. There's a fact to throw into any conversation regarding wellness, gun control, socialized medicine, education, screen time, lack of contact with the natural world, income disparity... and on and on. But documentation shows that empathy can change someone's mind. If you play to win, to confront, bash down the other position, you will not win. You can't play to win. You have to play to learn, to connect. People are tribal. They want to connect and fit in, to bond with others and be respected. We are herd animals. (Some exceptions, naturally). And insulting another herd's lack of ________ will only serve to thicken the wall between.

Owls swallow prey whole after kneading it with powerful talons and then regurgitate the indigestible stuff -- fur, bones, teeth. Kind of like the way people tend to process the news they choose. If we want to change the views of others, we can lead by example. The increase in solar energy in the U.S. is 51 times greater from 2009 to 2018. The installation of panels on homes ripples in radiating waves -- when your neighbors get panels, you get panels. Changing minds requires being open to hearing the issues from the side that is not your side. It requires being open to things that fall outside your group's belief system. Just listening engenders openness, which in turn leads to communication and the potential for your position to be heard. Listening is hard when you know you are right to start with... Right!?  But, it's a process. Dogma is what people hang on to in order to define themselves. Carl Jung said, "People don't have ideas. Ideas have people."

Fighting doesn't work. You may knock them out and win the match, but they will hate you even more after. Like the owl, you have to move your head to change your view. Moving heads is tough, but we have, as a collective, been through worse. We can work toward common ground. We can share the air with the owls. And the crows. And all the others flying through the yard. Last week, a great-crested flycatcher perched on the garden stake ten feet from the deck. It careened off in a flapping explosion a split second before our local broad-winged hawk streaked by. Talons out. Whoa. That was really, really close.

And so, "Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything," said George Bernard Shaw. Time for some radical head swiveling, my friends. Get busy. We have work to do. There are wicked creatures to confront but they may not be waterproof. We can do this. The ultimate power in William Blake's world view was the human imagination.

la la la. :)

On With It

A neutrino is one of my favorite things. It's one of those bits of nature that seems invented by poets. Atomic scientists discussed the possible existence of this little particle in the 1930s, but actual detection didn't occur until 1956 in a lab. A naturally occurring one was found in a complex detector at the bottom of a gold mine in Africa in 1965. Believed to have no mass at all and having no electrical charge, "neutrino" is Italian for "little neutral one." Birthed in the nuclear guts of all stars, this particle streams in every direction unimpeded -- they go directly through the Earth without slowing. Our bodies are being bombarded by 65,000,000,000 per square centimeter every second. Zoom. I feel fine. Do you? Fundamental particle, yes indeed.

But fundamental with nuances, as all good characters are. They apparently have "flavors" and can oscillate between these states in flight. Experiments have shown that there are anti-neutrinos, but a respected Italian physicist suggests they might just be neutrinos behaving weirdly, not other particles at all. Studies prove they, in fact, do have just the tiniest mass, nearly zero, therefore the laws of the universe say they can't go faster than light. Other research postulates that they have no mass, like light itself, and may actually travel faster than the speed of light and therefore are going backwards in time. You know, like Merlin. Wizards do that sometimes...  Ok, but how big are they? Well, "size" is not a thing for these guys. There is no minimum distance between them -- they have no width or volume. Science or ghosts, poetry or physics... Neutrinos are an invisible constant in our lives, the force of the sun pouring through us every moment. Billions of dollars are being spent globally on neutrino astronomy. Are they part of dark matter?  Can we detect some blown from a far off supernova? Or from the Big Bang? Space doesn't slow them down or gas or dust or rocks or age or viruses...

Since the pandemic started, phoebes returned to the yard, built a nest, laid eggs. Fledglings flew away. A spider as big as my eyeball appeared every night for a few days and wove a web eight feet in the air. Hunting. Next day, gone. Next night, web and fog. Etc. Bumblebees in the backyard cram their bodies down the gullets of snapdragons just to the right of my chair on the deck. My pals post Instagrams of outrageous sunsets. Paul and LIzzyliz just had a baby girl. Jameson learned to bike.

Comet Neowise is visible tonight and for the next couple weeks to the naked eye below the Big Dipper. Discovered on March 27th, it's a three-mile ball of ice and rock with a blue and golden tail. It will return in 6,800 years. It's the far and the slow tempo. You really should have a look. For the near and the speedy: Levi, the good dog, threw up for two days; he's fine now. My son Schuy and I have been working to keep the black Spyder running and playing plenty of frisbee on the sand these hot evenings. Neutrinos blaze through me. Through us. Cucumbers are ready. There is nectar still.

Saturday a moth was determined to hang out on my left knee. Using an app called "Seek," I discovered it's a skipper, the Silver Spotted Skipper, and a butterfly, not a moth. It's the most common skipper in North America and I had never noticed one before. Introductions ensued.

NEOWISE is an acronym of science stuff (it's an orbital observatory looking for planet killers heading our way -- the comet that ended the dinosaurs was only slightly larger than this comet we can see sailing by), but I'm breaking it down to "new wisdom."  "Skipper" is the perfect name to guide us forward. Civilization is evolving through the suffering. Pain is all around us. But, vegetables grow as always; skippers visit; fathers and sons hang out; the invisible winds of the cosmos are blowing through our beings every second. I can't fix the world, but I'll catch light and push it your way. I'll try to find grace and share it. The theme here is On With It. Now is a great time to find a little slice of joy and share it. Lots of little bits can be lots...

Summertime and the living is queasy.

But, here we are. Same as it ever was -- quantum mechanics, birds, spiders, cukes and kids... As reality flings apart, hold on to the perennials. Find the rhythm and try to join in just a little bit. Look for the familiar that is cycling the way it always does. We can do this.

On With It. 

P.S. Buy art now. It's good for the soul and the very, very local economy. Time for some big pieces. More light means more light. And, by the way, love. Make that visible. Love in a time of chaos is redemptive.

P.P.S. Come to think of it, in The Two Towers, Gandalf was talking to a moth too. That led to a fabulous outcome.

B Mac

...perennial as grass...

If you read the words below, and you should, they are a lovely affirmation of life amidst the turmoil of modern "life, or "flaming chaos," as we now call it. Spock from the tv show Star Trek recorded this on an album in 1968; and I first encountered it on posters during the hippie days of the early 70s. (I know, I know, super old). "Go placidly..." seemed wise during the Vietnam debacle and being a "child of the universe" helped overcome the alienation youngsters always feel. Peace and love was groovy. Still is. The notion that this was a benediction found in a church over 300 years ago lent it gravity and foresight. Yeah, the world has always felt like a dumpster fire, or Wednesday, as we now call it, even in the 1600s. These lines of prose are profoundly applicable today. Read them slowly, even if you used to have the poster:

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Found in Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore, 1692 A.D.

But, the truth is, this is a prose poem written in the 1920s by Max Ehrmann from Terre Haute, Indiana. It was widely shared with little notoriety in Europe during the war and ultimately published after his death by his widow in a book of collected poems. In 1956, a pastor distributed it to his congregation, without attribution, in a mimeographed booklet printed on a letterhead reading "Old St. Paul's Church, Baltimore, A.D. 1692", the year the church was founded. To this day, there is confusion in the public mind as it is so familiar and yet feels like a historical text. Wisdom, whether from the seventeenth century or from the Midwest, has no bounds. A moral code in one paragraph, yes indeed. "Keep peace in your soul."

The extraordinary concept of the proper unfolding of the universe, especially RIGHT NOW, is a comfort.

Thanks Max.

As always, please share. Comfort is needed. And buy art now since Beauty is always a comfort and a delight, and artists right now are working on the placid part with noise and haste. Imagine growing fruit and the fruit stand is closed. Or playing music and everyone is wearing earmuffs... Or...

You get the picture. So, get the picture. Peace and love, Bruce Mac

P.S. Doyle Bramhall Jr. sings, "Love is the answer. The answer is waiting."

And Be yond

"If your paddle isn't in the water, you're slowing down."  

I have been told this from numerous sources--friends, my brother, a coach, and plenty of articles that encourage stand up paddle boarding as a sport and not simply a nice little bit of fresh air out on the lake. The point is that the board really has no inertia to keep going on its own. If you don't have pressure with your paddle on the water, you are losing speed. So, cadence is the key. Quick. Chop chop chop...

As usual with this sort of observation, I tend to expand it into the greater realm of our time on the planet.  Stop efforting for even half a second and you are slowing down. Chop chop chop... or start falling behind. I have done a share of paddle races and this is the truth. The athletes who paddle snick snick snick are the ones out in front.

Competition speed climbing is coming to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The goal is to scale a 5 degree overhanging wall, 15 meters tall with standardized holds and smack a mechanical switch at the top to beat your opponent, who is climbing the exact same route at the exact same time just 12 feet to one side. The men's speed record is held by Reza Alipour Shenazandifar from Iran in 5.63 seconds. That's the equivalent of scaling a nearly 5 story building in less than 6 seconds. You are either going up very, very quickly continuously or gravity is trying to pull you to the center of the earth. We all climbed trees. 50 feet up a tree in 5 seconds?!? I'm not sure I could fall out of a tree that fast...

Wallace's Giant Bees (megachile pluto) are the largest bees in the world. They were thought to be extinct after their initial discovery in 1858 until specimens were observed in 1981. 37 years of searching and, until earlier this year, no video footage existed of the 1 ½-inch long insects. They are resin bees, black with a white band around their middle and have a wingspan up to 2 ½ inches. These monsters are on the "25 Most Wanted" list from the Global Wildlife Conservation "Search for Lost Species" initiative.

The common thread here is the "paddle in the water." Don't. Slow. Down. Don't wait. Scaling a 50- foot wall? Practice and focus and a young athlete is doing something unthinkable. Don't even mention the Alex Honnold miracle documented in "Free Solo." Want to find a lost species? Spend 37 years in Indonesian lowland forests to find a giant bee living in termite mounds.

But, and there is always a but. Socrates said, "Beware the barrenness of a busy life." When I walk in the woods, I take it slow.  I’m shooting pictures. Listening for a spider walking. Paddling? Some are sweat fests. Some are more about the liquid violet and gold light on the moving mirror or the way rays project out of your head's shadow on the water’s surface when the sun is high. 45 years of throwing a frisbee around with my brothers and sons isn't accomplishing anything. But, I'll do it every chance I get.  Feel like throwing a little 'bee? Always...

Get busy, my friends. And then don't. Making art is this tightrope everyday: Get it done. Now what is it for? Intense effort followed by relaxed analysis. Paddle hard and then stroll... Be fast. Bee patient. 'bee always.

Vertical flow. Horizontal flow. Same same.

Mostly, be passionate. And, YO Summer!! 

love love.

Out and Back

The most popular vehicle in the world is the Flying Pigeon. It's made in China and the company has sold 500 million of them. The design was established 135 years ago and even though all sorts of little parts have been improved, it is basically the same machine. You can walk outside almost anywhere and there is one rolling by. Today there are over a billion bicycles in the world. A very fast woman rode 184 mph behind a very fast car. A wickedly determined man rode across the U.S. in seven days and fifteen hours. My brother Kevin rode 272 miles with 20,000 feet of climbing in 26 hours. For his sixtieth birthday.  Athletes. One woman rode the equivalent of nearly four times around the Earth in one year. Endurance athletes.

From my bike saddle, I've seen lightning, way way too close (KA  BOOM!), snakes, (yeah, too many of those), hawks, eagles, falcons, pigeons, wooly bears, slugs (one rainy day was slug-a-palooza, super gross), redwoods, a microburst thrashed forest, a dead owl (might have been napping, but I think not), a very alive mountain lion (Go Aero, Eyes Up), fog, sunsets, deep green forests, the rain they used for Noah's flood, poppy fields, blue ridges, blood and broken bikes. (Sorry Kev). I've eaten bugs, dust and mud, been injured in my driveway by my bike, and I have been helicoptered out from the high Sierra after a stupid crash. (Sorry Kev). I have ridden with close pals, friends, lovers, a wife, brothers, strangers, lots of strangers, sweet strangers, and mean people. I met a couple at the top of Middlebury Gap just south of here who, when asked where they started, they smiled and said, "Portugal." I rode 167 miles one day around Vermont with Kev and Steve, a day I will savor forever. One day with these two, while they were fixing a flat on Whipple Hollow Road on the ride Steve calls "Castle Flow," I fell asleep on my bike. Story for another time.

But why ride? It's not like I accomplished anything while zooming across the countryside. Sisyphus pushes his rock. I ride out and back. What's the allure? Mark Twain said, "Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." (See above, Life Flight, woo hoo). Well, there's dopamine -- brain synthesis chemistry in high gear. Endorphins, yes please and thank you, I'll-have-a-bit-more-please. There's ADHD management in real time when stuff is sailing by at forty miles an hour. I'm a better animal in motion than sitting in a chair. Clarity prevails on a bike.

But mostly, the answers are all above. It's private time to understand the landscape. It's social time to understand people and my place in the fabric. It's internal time to go all-out crushing the climb in full sufferfest mode, or coast along the coast. It's being out in all weather and saying howdy to all the critters who live here. It's oxygen in and problems out. It's the visual food for the creative soul -- the time to wrestle with the art piece smoldering in the back of my brain and placidly laughing at me from the studio. It's being one with the universe with an elevated heart rate. Don't ride? Should you get a bike? In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the bike salesman says, "Sure, it'll change your whole life for the better, but that's all."

AND, finally, what's this have to do with art? Read every tenth word above (you know what I mean). Velocity of reality. Light. Clarity. The universe and my place in it. Blood. Brothers. Mist. Out and back. Endurance.

And suddenly, these paragraphs written a couple weeks ago seem so flip. Who cares? The world is on fire! Disease. Murder. Politics. HAVOC.

On the radio was a story this week of a man in India who got injured and couldn't do his job. His wife, home and kids were 700 miles away. The pandemic came and his daughter who had moved in to nurse him to health was down to their last $20. She bought a bicycle, put her father on the seat, their meagre belongings on the back and rode a single speed bicycle all the way home. In a week. Standing up the whole way. 100 miles a day. She is fifteen years old. They had no money and no food. People along the way fed them and they slept in the fields on the side of the road.

I have neighbors who put together fifty bags of groceries a week to give away because they didn't want anyone suddenly out of a job to be hungry. I have a friend who is an ER doc and stayed away from his family, sleeping in the basement or in an empty condo after treating Covid patients all night. An artist buddy is selling art online everyday and sending the money to a food bank fifteen hundred miles away. Each of us can play a role. If you have some to give, give.

Now more than ever we need love, humanity, and patience. We need a sense of dignity and restraint, respect for each other and their challenges. Get up from the crash and say, 'I'm sorry, we can work this out." Picture that angry person at their limit and imagine them as a child on a tricycle. Just trying to make it go. Will a bike save the world? Nope, but the person making it go can. We need the fresh morning air and effort to get over this big hill. It's raining hard and the road is slippery? Go carefully. Head home. Out and back. We can do this. AND, consider that this is not about going 184 mph. It's endurance. In the Tour de France, almost any of those badass skinny athletes can win one day. It's the ones who survive every heatwave, snowfall, stomach bug, elbow, deluge, flat, shunt, cramp, crosswind, breakaway, sprint pile-up, nasty climb, fan freakout, and screaming mountain descent, that prevail. The world is inside-out right now, but, quoting my brother Kev, "The point of pain is the place of growth".

Anything I sell before July 4th, I will send 20% of the money to The National Black Child Development Institute. Do your part just a little bit extra right now when it's really needed. Somebody somewhere is sleeping alongside the road. Just trying to get home.

H.G. Wells, England's brilliant futurist, said, "Everytime I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." I wonder if he had a Raleigh. They were British, biggest bike makers on the planet at the time, based in Nottingham and started by a chap from Sherwood Forest...  Sound familiar?

The Big Now

In 1971, there was an ad on tv showing a Native American, an "Indian" at the time, with a tear in his eye after surveying the litter on the water from his canoe and the trash alongside a road. All these years later, the tear in the eye of an old man whose country we inhabit continues to resonate. I was just a kid. But I grew up canoeing, spending time in the woods, "leaving a campsite cleaner than I found it." That was nearly fifty years ago. We, white people, as a group, ruined his home.

The year before, my brothers and I went to the movies and saw "Little Big Man" with Dustin Hoffman as a 122-year-old man recounting his life's story --- he was a white pioneer boy whose parents were murdered by the natives, he was then raised by these same "Indians." Captured by the military, he renounces his tribe to save his life. Put into foster care he becomes a good Christian boy who is then seduced by his foster mother. He runs away, becomes a mule skinner, a gunslinger, marries; his wife is abducted. He then returns to Cheyenne life, becomes a father with four wives, who are then massacred by the cavalry. Thus, there follows a general unravelling of his mind... He claims to be the only surviving white man from the Battle of Little Big Horn. He was the reason, he claims, Custer and all his men were slaughtered. As the hired scout, he sent them all to their death.

Fast forward to 1993. I saw a movie and afterwards sat in the parking lot and wept. I was horrified to be a person. Being a human was too painful to bear. I had just sat through "Schindler's List" and couldn't stand being a person when people are capable of such inhumanity. The horrors depicted I could not understand. How could anyone behave in this way? How could millions of people behave in this way?

Fast forward to now. It's not a movie. It's the same horror in real life. Torture and then death. On a street corner. Why? Because some people have forgotten the truth of life. All life. Every single person in the world is a child who got bigger. Every single human being is someone's baby. Who then became three. And then four. And then grows... Into an adult and then older and finally, elderly. And fragile, like a small child.

Would you kneel on the neck of a three-year-old? What's the difference? Two hundred pounds, give or take. Would anyone defend this behavior? I repeat: Every human was once a child, and deserves the kindness shown to a child. Just because you are taller doesn't mean you lose your right to kindness. It's really very simple at its core. Treat all humans with the care and respect you would afford a small child; the heart of this is kindness to each other. Pure.

I am white. I have led a privileged life. Yet from childhood I have had a sense of guilt. This is not my country. It belongs to the native people who we Europeans have treated with atrocities. We brought Africans here to exploit by the tens of millions. I can't get on an elevator with a non-white person without wanting to say, "I'm sorry." That sounds absurd to write down on paper, but it's true. As a little kid, my grandmother in Virginia had a "yard boy," a black man in his seventies. My entire life I have seen that for its implicit disrespect. I can't blame my grandmother for her lack of vision. She was a product of a system of beliefs, another world view. But CIVILIZATION is overdue to evolve. NOW is the time to stare into the bias deep within and recognize we are either part of the solution or we are the cancer itself.

The simple crux move is kindness. NOW. Regard a person as a person, and as a child, and you will elevate them to their status as a precious member of our big family. We are different skin colors. We have different faiths, countries of origin, languages, preferences for partners...  You will see these things, but you will first see a little human on a journey through life that we all make. The Dalai Lama says, "Be kind, whenever possible. It is always possible."

Will this solve today's crises? Will racism be eradicated so simply? No. It won't. For that we need strong, determined, brilliant people of every color and gender and background working together to reshape the collective mentality of all citizens of all countries. I can't do this. I'm just one small person and far from the smartest guy in the room. I am just one voice; this will take a choir and probably a drum section and lots of horns, some marching and conductors and very loud arrangements. However, I can stand for kindness. Moment to moment, remember, every person needs it, deserves it, and I will give it to the best of my ability. Please walk with me in this direction.

Thanks, my friends. Just a small step...

It's love put in action.

Bruce

P.S. You are thinking, "huh, ok. Sounds good." But, get busy. NOW means NOW. Get political. Write to your law makers. Donate. March. Volunteer. Register new voters and, most importantly, vote for leaders who will make the changes we demand. Now is an excellent time to change the world. Inequality. Pandemic. Climate change. Ready GO.

Freckles

Recently, in the middle of a conversation, a friend said to me, "Freckles don't mean anything about anything." O.K. Roger that. Move on from a completely inane observation about reality.

But, as with so many moments in life, that little statement resonated. Yep, sometimes it's the stupid things that are actually clever. Clever, stupid, it’s a fine line. Some of you will get the Spinal Tap reference right there...

"Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right..." was scrawled on the back of a highway sign by an on-ramp heading east on I-70 back in 1979. I was hitchhiking from San Francisco to Memphis, and seeing a lyric from Scarlet Begonias in such a random spot made sense at the time. Still does...

Steph Curry once made 77 three pointers in a row in practice. Witnesses say he missed a couple but ended up sinking 94 out of a 100. Michael Jordan once scored 59 points shooting 21-27 from the field and dropping 17 out of 19 free throws. Grace and power. Transcending the game...

Snowboarding rapidly through trees is about my favorite thing in the world. NOTHING makes me more present than this dangerous velocity. My mind can't wander; I can't be thinking of anything else. In fact, I have come to realize that I can't be thinking of anything. The purity is the emptiness.

Making art is what I do. It is the thing in my life that pulls me forward, makes me want to practice, makes the exploration exciting, makes all the crazy stuff I see and do and hear and read smash into my head to lodge as raw material. For years I have spent countless hours scratching the surface of metal to make light dance. And when the process of doing this becomes automatic, it's perfect. When I'm lucky, I find a "flow state" that is nothing short of magical -- I'm no longer making the piece. It's making itself and I'm just in the room moving my hands around. Making patterns with loud tools and tight lines and matte and gleaming and mysterious stuff that sometimes later I wonder where it came from or how that stuff manages to look so... well, you know...

Sonny Rollins, one of the titans of saxophone recently wrote in the New York Times:

"The spirit of art shines through in a performance when I stop thinking — when I let the music play itself, not just the one song that I’ve memorized, but all of the songs and experiences I have in my mind. And as things come to me, unplanned, I surprise even myself."

When Pat Metheny or John Meyer is soloing, you can see the look of complete detachment on their faces. They are not thinking of notes -- the suspended 7th in the arpeggio... They are thinking music and sound comes out. The analytic brain is gone. They are dancing through trees, dropping through space in deep fluff, playing with gravity, surfing, glissando, sparkling, lost in the moment, in flow... This is where the art lives. This is knowing your instrument to the point that it disappears. Notes, tools are instinctually chosen. I don't know what this is going to be when it's done. Not even sure I'll know when it's done.

At the very end of the Pirate show that I was watching, Captain Jack Rackham says,

"It's the art that leaves the mark, But to leave it, it must transcend. It must speak for itself. It must be true." 

Freckles are the remnants of experience. Sun, bright, doing damage, signs of time passing, leaving a little mark.

Don't mean anything about anything. Unless they do.

Bruce Mac 

P.S. Thanks for the brief stint of attention. Now buy art. It's more important than you know. It's the mark I leave in the universe. These are the freckles. Give them a good home.