new delhi, india

improvisation is the essence of life in india, people live it each moment to survive; you cannot walk the streets without having to improvise, negotiate your way among other pedestrians, among the bicyclists, rickshaw drivers, roaming animals, buses, cars... you're in constant communication and contact with life at almost every moment in this ever-unfolding, co-creative dialogue and story of civilization evolving...
...this is why i come, some part of me craves this full on experience of public life that's been so systematically removed from the western experience (and which more and more so here, especially as tourist, you can also remove yourself from)
i don't want to seem too idealistic, it is hard sustaining oneself here in this chaos, yet in the end how else can it really be? who we are is chaos, the state of ever changing possibility, why resist it?
i think of india using such words as 'essence' and 'life'... there is some sort of living at the edge here, of life up front, with knowing, having to stay awake, having to communicate, negotiate one's way yet balanced with a sense of lila (play) or flow so that it all never quite, crashes or self destructs...yes, in india you learn to dance....
anyhow, i'm in india once again, touching back in again to this ancient way of being who we will always be as humans...

improvisations on the road

have been out here this past month (europe at the moment) on an extended road trip, losing myself to the moment and creating opportunity to connect and relate with the world in a much more 'on the street' way, improvising with various people mostly through this hospitality network here http://www.couchsurfing.org/people/mishek/ you can scroll down to references on this profile of mine for recent people i've spent a little time with
this really is about democracy for me if both parties come away from the exchange of some time together feeling more connected, empowered and enriched in their sense of what is possible among strangers, this is not always easy, truths need to be told, something offered, somehow given up, especially the longer you stay in one place, which is what i'm building up to...

a discussion with myself about democracy

mmm, what is democracy?

ordinary people (the demos) doing ordinary everyday things that in the end somehow bring a little extraordinary change and benefit to the greater whole,
....people doing things that bring out an awareness of (or create a new sense of) the greater whole
....people taking everyday, creative acts that stimulate a vision for the larger sense (the ocracy?) of who we are within a particular social collective
...people doing things that bring out and capture a more authentic sense of their own identity and hence [strengthen] the identity of the group, and the nation....

it's madness...it's complex and as simple as the action of a couple of words

...this is what i need to come back to again and again, the thing that will always pull, keep some fascination and interest for me, the thing i need to acknowledge...the madness, the chaos, the meaninglessness and hell that is my life...
i don't think there's any need to change any of this because it's also the nature of this universe, why bother working against such forces?
the only way to make sense of any of this daily non-sense of mine is to somehow simply observe and then also know (this can be hard) when to act...
...just like the action of these words being placed here in this particular pattern on this page (looks ok eh?)
this is more than i've accomplished in a while, somehow these bit's of bits coming together out of the mystery and chaos of a life attempting to be lived, attempting to create, from this mind of mine...cohering, self organizing themselves into some new life (potential) here on this page.
well that's it again for now, just setting a bit more background context of what it is that i'm working with and creating from,
my particular 'complex'...while i try and keep it simple

“Improvisation is too good to leave to chance.”

this a quote from Paul Simon (the singer) and is a good summing up of my interest in the topic, it takes work and it's a constant practice as i go about my day...

to speak (or write), to create, it's hell...

"Do not fear mistakes. There are none." ~ Miles Davis

I need to regain some courage to write here.
Taking these words of Miles Davis to heart will be a good start.
Blogging can't be that hard, can it? Yeah, well up until now it has been something more like pulling teeth. Funny eh? Mistakes are at the core of improvisation and what it's about. Sounds like a good theory but it is hard to just go and make them....

web 2.0 technological improvisations leading us back to...

Ok, so more about the internet, web 2.0 thingy. It's completely changed the way I (and many of us) now relate and think about our world. Tim O'Reilly describes it here...

"Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices...delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an 'architecture of participation,' ... to deliver rich user experiences."

This to me is about a whole new way of participating and re-creating our worlds... participating and designing in improvisational and potentially very engaging and empowering ways...i say 'potential' because for real change it must also translate in the communications of our daily lives, into interactions that do not solely remain computer based experiences or interfaces.
The challenge is the creation of these new physical interfaces to match the virtual ones. Making new ways to connect, ways to organize, to share ideas/information in real, day to day ways that don't always involve having access to web technology. And so I've been following an emergent field of neighborhood based learning spaces such as these examples.... The School of Life (http://www.theschooloflife.co.uk) and the Hub (http://the-hub.net). Places where people can come to network, share, learn, create and unorganize themselves...remix and improvise their worlds a little, maybe gaining some little inspiration and power to change their worlds....

first blog update for the year 2009

Looking back over the past year it seems my main platform and focus for exploring/improvising democracy has been within the web 2.0 world ... facebook, twitter, linkedin, plaxo, delicious, biznik.com, couchsurfing.com ... some good slow learning and insight about the kinds of people who show up on these forums, what they post about, what inspires them to take action (if they do at all) and maybe thus develop a voice,

I've watched my own levels of interest and engagement wax and wane (especially on twitter) as 1: my 'community' changes and grows and 2: i get more confident in my writing and learning to capture the essence of an idea that somehow inspires me.

In the end i do think it's how our online interactions end up translating into real world actions that most inspires us to engage and continue to connect,
For example, couchsurfing.com to me ends up being one of the best examples of online connections opening, often quite spontaneously, to real benefit and result for all involved...
And so i think a lot about ways to better facilitate all the great web 2.0 connections we end up with into actually useful face 2 face time.

It's often surreal for me to walk into a coffee shop with so many people focusing on their laptop screens, chatting, im-ing, facebooking, twittering, etc. almost completely unable to make the same leap of connection to the people sitting all around them,

What makes us so literate online and yet still so ignorant of one another in person? what makes us somehow more curious and compelling to one another online than in actual life?
Well, i suppose we have devised ourselves a lot of interesting and quite useful online networks, groups, forums, tools and links to learn and interact from, the web has become an endless world of learning...

Ok, so now it's time to translate some of this learning, bring some of it back into the real world, maybe to the coffee shop, to the street somewhere, to your neighborhood...

It's time we learned to apply some of these online experiences and tools to our more immediate worlds, making some real and necessary connections with one another to change what's right in our faces, to change some of what we've been ignoring or simply just given up on....

More on maybe creating some of this social space/place ontime (as much as we have it online) in my next posting...

room to improvise

anyone checking this blog out (myself included) might think it pretty dead, not much going on at all...
and yet in it's way it's just doing what any improvisation needs to do...make mistakes, fall flat, fail...
indeed, it's current state (of failure) has got me curious enough to put some words down here, maybe just enough scraps of a frame to build more from...a new level up, or another one down?
doesn't matter...it's an improv, just stay with it as i've apparently done so far,

giving myself room to try something out here...