Program Notes
Guest speakers: Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, Martina Hoffmann, and Roberto Venosa
This program is part two of the Art Panel presentation for the Palenque Norte lectures at the 2006 Burning Man festival. In this program Alex Grey talks about the purpose of visionary art, Allyson Grey explains her vision of personal sacred spaces,Martina Hoffmann advises us to not underestimate our own creativity, and Roberto Venosa describes the process of channeling energy from higher dimensions into visionary art.
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051 - The Future of Visionary Art Part 1
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053 - Ask the Shulgins (Burning Man 2006)
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Transcript
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Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic
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Salon.
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Today we’ll be picking up where we left off with the previous podcast of the Art Panels
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discussion from the Palenque Norte lectures at the 2006 Burning Man Festival. If you listened
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to Part 1, you’ll remember that Alex and Allison Gray were joined by Martina Hoffman and Roberto Venosa in the big tent in Theon Village on Friday afternoon where they discussed the future of visionary art.
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When we left them, Roberto Venosa had just finished answering a question from the audience.
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And the question that followed came from somewhere at the far back of the tent.
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And the question that followed came from somewhere at the far back of the tent. And since I didn’t have a microphone that reached back that far, it’s now impossible to hear exactly what was being asked.
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But as best as I can make it out, the question had to do with Allison’s idea of creating a temple or a sacred space in your own home or community.
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And so we’ll pick up with the panel’s response and then continue on from there.
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But before I begin playing this talk, I want to let you know that I’m going to do something a
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little different when it ends. Before I add my closing remarks, I’m going to play a short
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selection of the talk that immediately followed the art panel. And in it, Eric Davis gives what
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I think is a beautiful description
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of the importance of visionary art and the continuing evolution of our culture. And even
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though I played Eric’s entire talk a couple of podcasts ago, I believe it’ll be worth your time
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to listen to his rap about visionary art again, but this time it’ll be in the same context as it was when the people first heard it
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on the playa. So,
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let’s finish with the Q&A that
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the art panel did with the
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audience, and then we’ll hear some
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of Eric Davis’ thinking about visionary
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art.
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Okay.
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You’re 21 years old.
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You’re just starting out, you know.
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And the temple you want to build is you.
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You know, that’s where it all starts.
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And the more you expand your spirit, your consciousness,
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you know, the more that temple inspires other people.
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And you start attracting to you
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the people necessary for you to build
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the physical temple on the outside of you.
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But you’re where it starts.
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So just make that full of, you know,
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shit and vinegar, man.
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Full of love.
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Keep expanding your consciousness.
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Go towards the light.
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And watch what happens.
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Well, I’m sure Alex and Allison
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could use a lot of volunteers
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and people, you know, on their staff,
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and, you know, we might need you at some point,
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so just, you know, let’s stay connected in that way.
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I mean, I recommend, you know,
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if you want to have a spiritual life,
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there are a lot of ways of doing that,
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but I recommend
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creating sacred space. I mean, you know, what, what, I know, that’s what you’re talking about, and that’s,
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I’m totally there. It’s just, you know, it’s just, if you, if you want to have a spiritual life,
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you know, make it your goal to create, I mean, yeah, make it, make it your spiritual life to make sacred space.
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And I invite you to, you know, work with us.
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I mean, people who want to can make the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.
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And I wish more and more people would.
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I mean, because that’s, you know, what I want to be.
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That’s what I’m going to be doing.
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And that’s where the original paintings of Alex’s are going to be.
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And see, Alex’s work will be relics.
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There are a lot of relics in this community.
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And, like, we’ve got some pretty interesting ones.
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But Alex’s work will be that.
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And maybe some other artists around here, too.
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And so where that original work is going to be,
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I want it to be a chapel.
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I don’t want it to be somebody’s living room
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or, you know, somebody’s, you know, vault where they bought it and they put it away in a freezer somewhere so maybe one day it will be valuable.
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I don’t want that.
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I want it to be somewhere where our community can share it.
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I would really like it if that could happen in a permanent kind of way, like making me feel like this is its home, its final home, designed by Alex.
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I would really love it if that could happen in my lifetime because I would enjoy it so
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much.
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And that’s why I keep appealing to people because we don’t, you know, we depend on people
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to honor the work in order to do that.
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So I would love to see that happen in my lifetime, but I really do feel that if it doesn’t, well,
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who knows what will happen to the work. Maybe it will go spread out all over into different people’s
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living rooms and vaults. It’ll be reproduced in books, and everyone can still see it. But,
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you know, it would be nice to have the original somewhere available to the public, and in
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order to do that, you know, a place has to be made. And I’d like that place to be a sacred
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place. I think it will be a sacred place
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I
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thank you
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Alison and I agree
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with Roberto
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that you know
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you develop your special
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skills at this point
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the things that are really
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what you discover in yourself
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that you really love to do and maybe by the time that are really what you discover in yourself that you really love to do.
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And maybe by the time that those skills are developing and things,
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that we’ll need a lot of hands to actually physically build things.
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So, thanks.
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Next.
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Yes.
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Yes, and I think that that’s a truly visionary idea.
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It’s kind of what the people of Dom and Her did when they gathered together.
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There’s hundreds of people who live in this village near Turin in Italy and they build a temple in a mountain and they also create a sustainable relationship
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and try to create themselves as a model.
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They’re integrating the alternative energy resources
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and everything like that.
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So this community is,
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they also are into the sort of game playing in a visionary way that
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would allow them to you know envision this future that we’re hoping for I
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think that that’s a great it’s a great adjunct to this vision of look if we’re
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able to build physical arenas,
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that we have to think in these terms,
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that there’s an educational and a core think tank facility involved in it.
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It’s brilliant.
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Yeah.
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I just wanted to say that, yes, I love that model,
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and in addition to say that, yes, I love that model.
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And in addition to that model, imagine.
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We’re imagining here.
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We’re just imagining.
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It’s like we’re making it up.
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I think the chapel happened.
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We made it up.
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Anyway, I was just thinking about, like, all the bright livelihood businesses around here that we would love to inter-support.
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You know what I mean? Like if you had something like that,
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businesses could support, I mean, I know that if I had a business in my building, I would want to give it to one of you guys.
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You know, I mean, like it’s interrelated.
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It’s like we’re interrelated. So we have to be interrelated economically
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to support something like a city
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or a building or whatever,
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a community center.
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We have to be interrelated.
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And we all are.
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We’re doing that.
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And I think to be proud.
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I think at this point in time,
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the university you’re thinking about is here.
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It’s a movable feast and it’s coming to these events which are happening in multitudes now
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all over the world and the workshops that are given.
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You get someplace like this where Sheldon speak, Stan Goff, Alex and people like that.
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That’s our university today and I know it’s a little
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difficult to travel around to all of them but come to one of these gives you
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enough food for thought to last you quite a while. Yes? How do you guys do, like is there a way perhaps to leverage some of the things you have to help bring to life all the magnificent artists?
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Probably in this room, like perhaps there are some artists showing here too, or some other ways to bring to life all these.
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The question is that there’s a lot of visionary artists in this room that are not known but they have incredible expression and they’re just, and so he wants to equalize the, yeah.
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And how do we get the young people out there with their great art?
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Well, is there anybody who would like to come up and sit with us
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and be more prominent at this moment?
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Because, I mean, I think we’re all on the same level,
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and I appreciate your comment,
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and I think, yes, we should have more.
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I think what I’d like to see is when we have these congregations of visionary art and consciousness,
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I’d like to see bigger spaces for exhibitions so everybody can just come in.
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More people can come in and show their work.
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Very much so.
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I think that that’s a great idea and you should do it.
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That’s what I think.
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I mean, we’re doing it.
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And, you know, we have our Entheo art issue.
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We included a lot of great artists.
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Some of them are in this room and some of them are very far away.
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And I think that what you’re saying is you’re sort of thinking
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that more people should be included and you should do that.
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Curate it, you know.
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Who are the artists that you feel are being left out
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and then make a
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journal about it or make a publication
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about it. Make it your business to do that
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if that’s where you’re at.
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I think Carrie was just saying.
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Okay, that’s, yeah.
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Linda Burnham told me
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the reason she did High Performance
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was somebody said High Performance
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Magazine, which is a
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great magazine about performance art.
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If you want to put yourself on your
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map, print the map.
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You know?
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So that’s an
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empowering statement
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and one that we’re working on too
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with Cosm Press and stuff.
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But the…
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I think that
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all you need to do is have more relationships
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send emails, JPEGs and connect on the internet
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there’s a lot of interconnectedness
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that can and continue to happen on the internet
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and young artists
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I’m introduced to people who blow my mind every day
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and so I think that there is a world,
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and we are in the process of self-organizing
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and finding out how we can interrelate
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and contribute to each other.
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Yeah, Karen.
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Thanks.
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Yeah, I just wanted to ask you guys
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if you’ve thought about sort of creating
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a template for proto-chapels,
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basically, to go across the world in some form of a network
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and create a grid of domes like this with
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canvas prints and things that are basically what you’re trying to achieve with
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the ultimate chapel,
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but as a means to sort of get there, you know,
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and showing your art and your art and creating this network of, you know,
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proto-chapels and temples that can basically be made pretty easily,
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but get the work out quicker, spread the means,
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as well as generate more energy to get to the ultimate chapel for your originals.
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It just seems like an idea that could facilitate.
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I think you’re exactly right, Kerry.
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And it was predicted by a few people that that would be a way to go.
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And it’s been happening with these festivals.
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Like you just took your Dimethyl temple, right, to boom.
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And so the meme can spread via these, well, in your case, an astonishing temple structure.
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But portable enough so that it could visit many lands.
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I agree with you.
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Before there was a mother church in Christian
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science in Boston, there were a lot of little churches that led
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up to that. Christian science reading rooms that led to
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the great mother church.
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So like the whole, we are, you know,
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we are making that possible for people.
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If you would like to have a little chapel in your home,
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you can buy frames.
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Every cent goes to the chapel.
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You can buy the little frames that we make,
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and we have a box set of cards that you can put.
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I mean, you can do this.
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If this is the way you want your altar to look, use the source.
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You know what I mean?
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Like, get the stuff from the source.
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Because that’s called honoring the source.
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And so get it from us.
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It supports the chapel.
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And, you know, do your own altar if you want to with all your stuff on it.
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But if you want to use our stuff get on the source
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it just supports
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the whole honoring of originality
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be original
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and who is original
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and going inside, we’re all going inside
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and seeing that uniqueness, that unique
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creativity that we have
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and in your community
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it’s completely possible to do a replica
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and work with us.
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We’ve got, we’re working on proposals for that.
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We’ve had several people just, you know, kind of asking about it.
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People have mentioned that.
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So, you know, we have things like that.
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So if you want to work with us on something like that, you know, you can.
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I would like to say one more thing about this.
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I think it’s really important to, I mean, anybody here, sitting right here,
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I think has gotten here because we have really focused our lives.
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We’ve bled our soul blood into our work.
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We’re standing behind it 100%, and that’s all we do.
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And so, yeah, putting yourself on the map by really
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step by really stepping up for what you have to offer to the world is is what we
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need to do for what you need to do so you know cutting through apathy you know
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don’t look up look inside you know look what you have don’t look out there and
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create another church or another idol that’s not what we’re trying to do here.
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And it shouldn’t be done. I think we should
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all work on our highest potential
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and bring out this work
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and make it visible. So yes, you
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start your own chapels.
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Please go and do it.
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Yeah, and I think that’s really the future of visionary art to me, is to really incorporate all these different elements, these different forms, dance, movement, sound, words, light,
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whatever, what have you.
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I mean, to create this beautiful thing
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that goes beyond, you know, the two-dimensional space
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or the surface, the flat,
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and making it a real human experience,
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I think to create art that lives,
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that is built from our energy is really the goal here
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because, you know, even at this point,
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I mean, whatever we do it these representations are just such bad images of what what we’ve all
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seen you know they’re just such poor renditions of what’s really out there
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and what and the beauty of that space how can you ever sketch it painted it’s
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impossible at least at this point.
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You know, we’re trying really hard.
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And I think the digital medium has helped us
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along quite a bit, you know, to digitizing
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and using the fractal forms and something
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that would take a lifetime to create a painting
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that would really create.
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I mean, I love Renegade for that reason,
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because it’s such a great attempt
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to really show the visionary experience. And yeah, but I love doing this and I want to
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do it all the time. I got addicted to it, I think. Every chance I get, I jump for it
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because it’s such an incredible field to be in just to be fed
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by so many people and to be creating something that is so spontaneous and
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very different from what I do at home and just to be in the moment is really
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important to me and that’s that’s been a really enriching experience so yeah I
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love that
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experience so yeah I love that let’s see I wanted to just underscore what Martina mentioned about the sort of computer graphics computer animation of the
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altered states because I think that that’s one of the other ways that we
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mainstream the visionary reality by bringing in more
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accessibility to the media and that is happening now through the beauty and
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complexity of the computer animation and so these worlds are built completely out
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of the imagination and the tools that are all virtual. And so I’m still working with Tool,
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and we’re working on mapping the net of being,
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which is the sort of painting that I struggled with,
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but is at the pavilion under the man on one of the ends.
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And this net of being is now something
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that we can journey through.
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And so in all kinds of ways, probably even computer games
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and things like this, certainly all things online
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and the new kind of cinema and video kind of worlds.
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This is the entheogenic visionary state
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is going to be more easily depicted.
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And so I think that this bodes well
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for the future visionary.
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I think that the
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Shambhala though is
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not only a week long experience
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but the
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question was about
00:19:36 ►
the association between
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the burning man and the
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Tibetan concept of Shambhala
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and the enlightened society
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I think doing away with the economics aspect of it
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was a huge step for Americans.
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I mean, there are costs, obvious huge costs,
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involved in coming to Burning Man,
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but the day-to-day activity is not necessarily about commerce.
00:20:01 ►
And so there is a your thoughts are freed up to embrace
00:20:11 ►
alternative ways of thinking about everything and in that way it is a
00:20:16 ►
modern Mecca for freaks like us we have to be make the hajj at least once in your lifetime and i think that this is the world’s
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largest and freest assembly of celebratory creative you know masterminds and visionaries and this is creating a kind of energy that we’re all enveloped
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by and we each get downloaded with this new I think of art giving off a kind of
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nectar and we are like little bees going around and collecting these experiences
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these aesthetic nurturing experiences and we are heavily laden with this honey,
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with which we build temples, I guess.
00:21:16 ►
I think since it is my first experience,
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maybe I’m really fresh to this,
00:21:26 ►
and I’ve noticed certain things about Burning Man,
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and I think it would be wrong to collapse ourselves into this sort of idea
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that this is all such a perfect, brilliant thing,
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because I’ve noticed the energy shifting, for example, yesterday.
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And so I’m so deeply grateful for this village here because it makes
00:21:47 ►
such a huge difference for the whole playa I think because when you go out there there’s a lot of
00:21:52 ►
people who party hardy and they are very over the top right now they’re maxed out physically
00:21:59 ►
emotionally they’re very tired there’s a little aggression in the air and I was surprised at that
00:22:04 ►
you know the first few days was also oh oh, you know, everybody was saying hello, good morning, how are you? You know, it’s like smiling. And all of a sudden it’s changed. So this, to create an environment like this is more important than just that visionary free fall out there. While I love it, I think to have these spaces
00:22:26 ►
that place more importance
00:22:27 ►
on the sacred in our lives
00:22:29 ►
is really, really important.
00:22:32 ►
So, yeah.
00:22:38 ►
Well, I agree with you.
00:22:40 ►
And I wanted to just add that
00:22:42 ►
one of the reasons why
00:22:45 ►
Burning Man is such a profound experience
00:22:47 ►
is because of its endurance
00:22:49 ►
no matter, you know, you have to be here
00:22:51 ►
for a few days, I mean most of us have been
00:22:54 ►
here for more than a few, so
00:22:55 ►
you know, and you’re
00:22:57 ►
and it becomes intense and all of your stuff
00:22:59 ►
comes up, the aggression
00:23:01 ►
and you know, the like boredom
00:23:04 ►
and hostility and loneliness,
00:23:06 ►
homesickness. I’ve seen a lot
00:23:07 ►
and you all have too. So
00:23:09 ►
everything gets to come up because
00:23:11 ►
and if it weren’t like that it would be just so
00:23:13 ►
airy-fairy and it would be just so awful.
00:23:15 ►
I mean, it would just, you know, we would
00:23:16 ►
hate it. I mean, God, you know,
00:23:19 ►
it’s like we create dramas
00:23:21 ►
and, you know, little ones hopefully, very
00:23:23 ►
small, but whatever it is
00:23:25 ►
we can expect to see each other at our best and worst probably you’ve seen me at my worst
00:23:33 ►
but uh but no but and and it makes us it bonds us it’s not just like we dressed up and we looked
00:23:40 ►
real nice we went out one night together we really get to see each other at our worst and our best
00:23:45 ►
because we dress up real good, go to parties
00:23:48 ►
whatever. But anyway, that’s
00:23:50 ►
what bonds us. That’s why
00:23:52 ►
like, you know, months later if I
00:23:54 ►
see you somewhere, you’ll like remember.
00:23:56 ►
We remember seeing each other.
00:23:58 ►
We were at Burning Man. You’re a burner?
00:23:59 ►
It’s like a, you know, it’s a big, big
00:24:01 ►
club. It’s the
00:24:04 ►
tribe, exactly.
00:24:05 ►
We all know that.
00:24:07 ►
So anyway, I don’t want anyone to…
00:24:11 ►
I just think that we are going to see
00:24:14 ►
a lot of emotion of all kinds all the time.
00:24:17 ►
Thank God for that.
00:24:20 ►
I don’t know.
00:24:22 ►
We give these courses.
00:24:24 ►
You know, Bob and Martina and Allison and I, Visionary Art Intensives,
00:24:29 ►
produced an audio tape called The Visionary Artist, and you can explore your visions with vision practices, even in that kind of thing.
00:24:37 ►
So there’s all kinds of ways of accessing the visionary state.
00:24:41 ►
And so, yeah. of accessing the visionary state and so yeah so we so we recommend having a
00:24:53 ►
spiritual it’s like a creative life that’s one of the things that we propose
00:24:57 ►
all four of us to everyone have a creative life and I think everyone here
00:25:02 ►
has one we just go around saying that you know to people like you know have a creative life and I think everyone here has one we just go around saying that you know
00:25:05 ►
to people like you know have a creative life if you’ve left something out dance music voice
00:25:11 ►
whatever it is you feel like it was your creative life that you are not practicing bring it back in
00:25:16 ►
it doesn’t have to you don’t have to become you know world famous just put it into your life
00:25:20 ►
because it’s a spiritual practice it’s art as as a spiritual practice. It’s like if you do
00:25:25 ►
art every day or say five days a week, you know, make it a practice, it will be spiritual. It’ll
00:25:32 ►
nurture you and nourish you and you will grow from it and you will have an inner life that comes out
00:25:39 ►
of it that you’ll discover things about yourself and it’ll transform you okay and that’s all it is that’s all spiritual
00:25:46 ►
life is intended to do and art can be a spiritual life and i don’t mean just painting i mean any
00:25:51 ►
kind of creativity make sure you all have creativity in your life
00:25:55 ►
well i think it’s a component of health i think that that creativity is a component of health
00:26:04 ►
like you wouldn’t think,
00:26:05 ►
oh, I really, I’m going to give up that exercise thing. I really, it’s an aspect of life that I
00:26:11 ►
really don’t want to deal with. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Or if you do that,
00:26:14 ►
you know that you shouldn’t be doing that. So, but anyway, I think creativity is like that.
00:26:19 ►
It’s an aspect of health. You either have it or you’re blocking it. What, Susan?
00:26:27 ►
Second chakra, Susan says.
00:26:29 ►
You know, you either have it,
00:26:30 ►
you either have a creative life,
00:26:32 ►
and this is my unscientific opinion,
00:26:34 ►
you either have a creative life or you’re blocking a creative life,
00:26:36 ►
and blocking is not good for your health.
00:26:41 ►
In response to her question
00:26:43 ►
about how to get into visionary art and so on, there are a
00:26:48 ►
few workshops, not many of us who are out there really teaching.
00:26:51 ►
We give about four or five a year.
00:26:54 ►
I think Alex and Allison do the same.
00:26:58 ►
It’s available, but it’s difficult, I know that.
00:27:00 ►
But what I want to say is that what we get, we get this question many times from people who feel that they don’t have the talent within them to even start to attempt to do any kind
00:27:11 ►
of art.
00:27:12 ►
And I just want to say that you’d be amazed that we have people, and they all say the
00:27:17 ►
same thing, I can’t draw a straight line.
00:27:19 ►
And they come, they get courageous and they come to our workshop and after a week or two weeks
00:27:26 ►
they’ve exposed their, we’ve helped them expose their creative abilities and it’s amazing
00:27:33 ►
what comes out of them.
00:27:35 ►
They’re amazed and we’re amazed.
00:27:37 ►
So it takes courage.
00:27:40 ►
Life is a courageous act just to live with it. And art is even more, you know, a courageous confrontation.
00:27:48 ►
Because if you’ve never confronted a blank canvas
00:27:51 ►
and attempt to start to put your soul out on that canvas,
00:27:54 ►
you’ll understand it does take a lot of courage to do that.
00:27:57 ►
And so, you know, just jump into it.
00:28:00 ►
If you feel you have this visionary urge, you want to paint, come talk to us.
00:28:04 ►
We’ll do something with you. We’ll show you how to get started. That goes for everybody.
00:28:28 ►
your approach try experiment with for example try not to plan a piece you know just be open see your creative process more as a meditation you know let go of
00:28:34 ►
your of your left brain activity you know jump out of your mind and and sort
00:28:40 ►
of leave that structure for a while. Leave your mental structure behind
00:28:46 ►
and just allow these feelings you have
00:28:52 ►
and these visions that you might see.
00:28:56 ►
Allow them to come forward.
00:28:59 ►
And I think very important with any kind of creative act
00:29:03 ►
is let go of judgment. There’s a lot of judgment, I think, involved as we grow as artists at first. I mean, it’s not easy to kind of see these things emerging and you’re looking at them, you go, wow, is this, you know, what does that mean? It doesn’t fit with, you know, the general imagery that is out there.
00:29:25 ►
And so, yeah, just.
00:29:29 ►
I just want to say too that the approach to visionary art,
00:29:32 ►
if you want to have these visions manifest,
00:29:35 ►
is that you have to put ego aside.
00:29:38 ►
If you think you can plan a painting, you know,
00:29:42 ►
it doesn’t work that way with the visionary art.
00:29:44 ►
You have to become a channel, you really do,
00:29:46 ►
and just let yourself open up, attempt it,
00:29:49 ►
put everything aside, and let that flow through you,
00:29:51 ►
and see what comes out, and look into it.
00:29:54 ►
That’s your language.
00:29:55 ►
That’s when the message starts.
00:29:57 ►
When that comes out onto the canvas, you’re looking at it,
00:30:00 ►
it may be an abstraction, but then you can start
00:30:03 ►
looking into it and start building up this language
00:30:05 ►
and then all of a sudden becomes
00:30:06 ►
almost a drama in your life
00:30:09 ►
to finish that painting
00:30:10 ►
and becomes powerful
00:30:12 ►
there’s nothing more empowering I tell you
00:30:14 ►
than getting up from a full day painting
00:30:16 ►
and feeling real good about it
00:30:18 ►
feel like superman
00:30:19 ►
and it is, it’s a big energetic input to paint
00:30:23 ►
I think that that’s what we’re all working on and it is, it’s a big energetic input to paint.
00:30:29 ►
I think that that’s what we’re all working on.
00:30:32 ►
You know, that’s the problem that we’re holding in our minds.
00:30:37 ►
How do we bring to form the universal sort of spiritual archetypes and icons
00:30:44 ►
that will be a direct transmission from Godhead, if possible.
00:30:53 ►
So we’re trying to continue to thin the veil between ourselves and the transcendental realm.
00:31:10 ►
realm. Our art reinforces that experience in people and thereby allows them to have it operational somewhere in their consciousness and perhaps they’ll…
00:31:15 ►
I don’t know. You lose it if you do, you know, if it’s your intention to maintain your integrity,
00:31:26 ►
whatever that is,
00:31:27 ►
and if you happen to also be a mainstream artist,
00:31:31 ►
I think Fred Tomaselli
00:31:33 ►
has not sort of compromised his integrity.
00:31:36 ►
He’s gone all the way,
00:31:37 ►
and he’s gone through the contemporary art world.
00:31:39 ►
It can be done,
00:31:40 ►
and there’s a lot more connections.
00:31:43 ►
We’re having, having like conversations with
00:31:45 ►
top flight art critics over at
00:31:47 ►
the Chapel of Sacred Mayors
00:31:49 ►
Jeffrey
00:31:49 ►
Jeffrey
00:31:51 ►
Jeffrey Bergen
00:31:54 ►
I don’t know whether he’s here or not
00:31:57 ►
is a family
00:31:59 ►
member of one of the oldest galleries in New York
00:32:01 ►
City and he’s here at Burning Man
00:32:03 ►
and so there’s a lot of the contemporary art world, of course,
00:32:08 ►
has been brought to the attention,
00:32:10 ►
thanks to Daniel Pinchbeck and a number of other people,
00:32:13 ►
Eric Davis, and people have continued to put out Burning Man
00:32:17 ►
for what it is, which is a tremendous infusion
00:32:21 ►
of positive, creative energy
00:32:23 ►
that really acknowledges exactly where
00:32:26 ►
the human psyche is at.
00:32:28 ►
You know.
00:32:29 ►
Hey, Mark.
00:32:30 ►
Yeah, it’s a good question because I think this came up with, well, is there a level
00:32:41 ►
of compromise when you reach mainstream status and are like Richard Serra, able to afford to exhibit your work at this humongous levels and it takes so much money to do? that we have to just continue the conversation you know and those uh effete uh you know levels
00:33:09 ►
of the art world that we’re in contact with make certain you bring it up in conversation you know
00:33:15 ►
and i saw the most awesome thing at you know such and so at burning man and uh and you really ought to check it out it’s it’s really what’s happening in the
00:33:27 ►
forefront of art and so yeah I just want to say there’s enough before everybody
00:33:37 ►
starts to leave because people are going to start to filter out soon and we may
00:33:40 ►
take a more questions I just want to say there’s another conversation that I’d
00:33:43 ►
like us to continue to have in this community.
00:33:46 ►
It’s unrelated to visionary art,
00:33:48 ►
and it has to do with the family and parenting
00:33:51 ►
and the psychedelic age.
00:33:54 ►
And I think that I’m not going to go into it
00:33:56 ►
because I’m not going to give my points of view or whatever,
00:33:59 ►
but I know that if you are parents
00:34:01 ►
and you are of this community,
00:34:04 ►
that let’s keep the conversation going. You know, how do we
00:34:07 ►
deal with, on the one hand, what we fear
00:34:11 ►
about, you know, about psychedelics and our
00:34:15 ►
children, and on the other hand, what we also know,
00:34:20 ►
which is that it’s the source of our spiritual life. So,
00:34:24 ►
for many of us.
00:34:26 ►
So anyway, I just think that conversation has to continue.
00:34:29 ►
We can go back to visionary art, I’m sorry.
00:34:34 ►
Well, if I may just offer a little anecdote,
00:34:36 ►
just address Mark’s question.
00:34:39 ►
A beautiful artist by the name of Martin Clauwine,
00:34:42 ►
many of you know who he was,
00:34:46 ►
did something really fantastic.
00:34:52 ►
He actually walked into the Metropolitan Museum with one of his pieces and he hung it on the wall.
00:34:56 ►
It took a while to be discovered and maybe that’s what we need to do.
00:35:01 ►
We just need to overwhelm, storm the castle
00:35:08 ►
i just want to say that
00:35:09 ►
we’d love to have you
00:35:11 ►
join all of us in this vortex of visionary art these three years
00:35:15 ►
you can come all of you come and talk to us you know we can continue this conversation
00:35:20 ►
and it’d probably be a lot easier more comfortable
00:35:24 ►
it’s a little nerve wracking to speak in front of whatever,
00:35:27 ►
how many people are here, probably 500 people.
00:35:29 ►
So you forget a lot of what you want to say and you get a little jammed up.
00:35:32 ►
But come to the Yurt and we’ll give you a drink and be comfortable
00:35:36 ►
and we’ll answer your questions in depth.
00:35:38 ►
Please do.
00:35:40 ►
Thank you.
00:35:43 ►
And we have
00:35:46 ►
paper in the yurt
00:35:48 ►
and if you don’t have any materials
00:35:50 ►
you can come and just experiment
00:35:52 ►
if you just want to hang out
00:35:54 ►
or just explore, whatever
00:35:56 ►
we love you
00:36:00 ►
I’m sure everyone
00:36:02 ►
wants to give their last remarks
00:36:04 ►
but I just love you so I’m sure everyone wants to give their last remarks, but I just love you so
00:36:06 ►
much. Thank you for this opportunity to bond with the community of Burning Man and the
00:36:14 ►
visionary art community and the science and spirituality that allows us to see our own
00:36:22 ►
spirit within. Love to you.
00:36:37 ►
I just want to give thanks again for your presence,
00:36:40 ►
and that’s all I have to say.
00:36:43 ►
Much love. have to say much love well I’m afraid to wash my hair because they’ll probably
00:36:51 ►
turn to cement and I’ll be shooting player dust for a month and a half but
00:36:57 ►
it’s all been so well worth it I mean I just love you people so much
00:37:01 ►
what you fed me Mart, these last days,
00:37:07 ►
made that year to Taj Mahal.
00:37:09 ►
I love you all much.
00:37:10 ►
Thank you. God bless you.
00:37:26 ►
What I’m going to talk about today is something I call the post-human self. And I’ll get to it later in terms of exactly what I mean by that somewhat odd phrase.
00:37:31 ►
But I wanted to start off talking a little bit about visionary art because that’s where we are.
00:37:35 ►
It’s something that I’ve been fascinated with for many years and have written some about and done a lot of studying about.
00:37:42 ►
And what I want to reflect on a little bit, I mean, you can see part of the attraction here,
00:37:47 ►
just even this afternoon and in this Entheon Village,
00:37:51 ►
is not just to the reality of visionary art,
00:37:55 ►
but the fact that there are visionary artists.
00:37:58 ►
And inevitably, a certain kind of heroism
00:38:00 ►
comes into our feelings about the great visionary artists
00:38:04 ►
because while we all have a
00:38:06 ►
visionary artist inside of us and many of us pursue that artist in our own creative light
00:38:11 ►
it’s a much smaller group that can speak to many many many people in a very strong way
00:38:16 ►
there’s still something distinct and different about a strong artist and so what is this appeal
00:38:22 ►
why are we why are we attracted by this image of the visionary artist?
00:38:26 ►
And what I would offer to you is that the visionary artist represents a and being that lie outside of the modern world that we grew up with.
00:38:51 ►
Whether we think about it as a return of tribal reality, of a shamanic reality, of a kind of ecstatic religion of nature.
00:39:00 ►
There’s a lot of different ways we have our own stories about what this longing is.
00:39:04 ►
There’s a lot of different ways we have our own stories about what this longing is. And in many ways, the visionary artist is a great example of a shaman in the sense that not only do they participate in and experience these worlds of vision that have been produced by holy men and seers and shamans throughout human history,
00:39:22 ►
but they bring it back to us in a very obvious, formal way.
00:39:29 ►
It’s right there to see. You can see it. It’s an object in the community. It becomes an object of
00:39:34 ►
communication, a way that we understand one another, because that’s the thing, you know,
00:39:38 ►
sometimes people forget the shaman doesn’t just go into the worlds just because you arrive there
00:39:43 ►
and speak to entities and get messages and see the way the deeper levels of the mind work.
00:39:48 ►
That’s not shamanism.
00:39:49 ►
Shamanism is what happens when you come back into the community.
00:39:52 ►
But we don’t have a coherent, homogenous, tribal community.
00:39:57 ►
We have a modern or arguably postmodern community.
00:40:01 ►
You can say, yes, we’re a tribe.
00:40:03 ►
We here at Burning Man, but not really.
00:40:06 ►
I mean, not if we’re really going to honor what a tribe is, because a tribe is a very, very
00:40:11 ►
homogenous unit. And what we have here is a, you know, a chaotic symphony of subcultures.
00:40:18 ►
And while there’s a shared resonance, and it makes sense to describe that as a tribe in some ways,
00:40:25 ►
in other ways, we lose something.
00:40:27 ►
And part of what I’m kind of talking about here
00:40:29 ►
is that the other side of the equation,
00:40:31 ►
not so much the shamanism, the religion of nature,
00:40:34 ►
the return to tribalism,
00:40:36 ►
the return to some idea of a purely integrated self
00:40:39 ►
or purely integrated society,
00:40:41 ►
but instead the way in which we are still part of the modern world and still
00:40:46 ►
part of or the postmodern world of the technological western hyper-developed uh juggernaut
00:40:54 ►
juggernaut that’s flowing towards the future and so one of the things that’s great about
00:41:00 ►
visionary art is you see this too because we don’t think of the visionary artist as a religious
00:41:06 ►
figure. They don’t paint icons. You know, like you go into Byzantine churches and there’s all
00:41:12 ►
these icons. I mean, remarkable works of art. But all the artists there don’t think of themselves
00:41:17 ►
as artists. They are following, in some ways, very, very prescribed rules about what image
00:41:23 ►
making is. And these are images that are
00:41:25 ►
designed not simply to represent or symbolize spiritual reality, but to actually generate it,
00:41:31 ►
to channel it, so that by going and communing with an icon, you actually, it works as a portal,
00:41:39 ►
the way that many of these paintings work as portals into other dimensions into other levels of the self so in
00:41:46 ►
some ways the the traditional byzantine icon is a work of visionary art but those artists are not
00:41:53 ►
thinking of themselves too much always of course there’s a little bit of ego involved but they’re
00:41:58 ►
not thinking themselves as being primarily individual pursuers of their own individual
00:42:03 ►
vision but of course that’s what we see with visionary art.
00:42:07 ►
There’s commonalities, there’s similar languages,
00:42:10 ►
but if it all looked the same, it would just be cliché.
00:42:12 ►
In fact, we know cliché visionary art.
00:42:14 ►
Okay, the mandala, the fractal, got the fractal.
00:42:17 ►
You can do interesting stuff with it occasionally,
00:42:19 ►
but mostly it’s a dead language. Why?
00:42:22 ►
Because like modern art in general and like modern culture,
00:42:26 ►
we’re involved in a constant process of novelty generation, of innovation,
00:42:31 ►
and there’s a tremendous emphasis on the individual artist.
00:42:35 ►
So while we may recognize that the visionary artist in some ways reboots up the shamanic archetype,
00:42:43 ►
it also very much comes out of the strain of Western art.
00:42:47 ►
There’s a 150-year-old tradition of bohemian, avant-garde,
00:42:52 ►
drug-taking, wife-swapping maniacs
00:42:56 ►
who are trying with a kind of passion
00:42:59 ►
that in many ways is lost in the contemporary art world,
00:43:03 ►
but that we see in visionary art
00:43:05 ►
to just intensely manifest some specific vision,
00:43:09 ►
often with tremendous religious and mystical implications.
00:43:15 ►
We think of abstract modern art
00:43:17 ►
as maybe being a kind of alienating and cold
00:43:20 ►
and sort of away from the rich, juicy world
00:43:23 ►
that so much visionary art talks about.
00:43:25 ►
But almost all of the early abstractionists, the first ones who moved away from realistic
00:43:30 ►
imagery, following Impressionism, started just drawing lines and dots and squiggles
00:43:35 ►
and explosions of color, were meditators.
00:43:38 ►
They were mystics.
00:43:38 ►
They were theosophists.
00:43:40 ►
So there’s a long-standing strain of a kind of modern spirituality that’s open-ended and probing and changing that goes into visionary art.
00:43:51 ►
And so a lot of what we see now is as much about our modern culture, our modern Western culture, as it is about the return of some kind of shamanic reality.
00:44:07 ►
kind of shamanic reality. One thing you need to know, by the way, is that I don’t know how much of Eric’s thinking
00:44:11 ►
about visionary art is shared by the four artists whose panel immediately preceded his
00:44:16 ►
talk.
00:44:17 ►
As I remember the scene, the artists were kind of swept up by a mob of people who moved
00:44:23 ►
out the back of the tent in order to
00:44:25 ►
let another swarm of people who had been waiting outside to hear Eric’s talk get in the front end.
00:44:31 ►
So my guess is that the artists didn’t get to hear much of what Eric had to say that day, and so I
00:44:37 ►
hope that when they hear this, that I haven’t misrepresented their opinions in any way.
00:44:43 ►
There is one thing that I’m sure of, however,
00:44:46 ►
and I know that Eric would most likely want me to point this out to you as well.
00:44:52 ►
In Eric’s rap that you just heard,
00:44:54 ►
there was a point where he described the archetypal bohemian artist,
00:44:58 ►
and he pointed out a few stereotypical traits of these artists.
00:45:03 ►
Now, I want to make it very clear that Alex, Allison,
00:45:07 ►
Martina, and Roberto definitely do not have, I was going to say any, but maybe be on the safe side,
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maybe I better say they don’t have all of the colorful traits that Eric enumerated.
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Not that I think there’s anything wrong with being a, and I quote, bohemian, avant-garde, drug-taking, wife-swapping maniac, end quote.
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In fact, many of my closest friends have a few of those traits.
00:45:34 ►
But I don’t think that Eric meant to imply that to be a visionary artist,
00:45:39 ►
you had to have all of those traits.
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Of course, who knows? Maybe it would help.
00:45:47 ►
Now, since this isn’t a video podcast, I guess I’d better explain for the more serious of you among us that it’s really hard for
00:45:53 ►
me to get through an entire podcast without having a little fun here and there. And after all, the
00:45:58 ►
main reason I’m doing these podcasts is to leave a few stories behind that my grandchildren can And now back to our regular programming.
00:46:19 ►
Now after listening to these recordings, one of the recurring themes that I hear from these artists of vision is that perhaps it’s time to put some legs under one of those creative ideas that we’ve all been having.
00:46:33 ►
One of the things I remember most about the panel is when Allison answered a question by saying, that’s a great idea.
00:46:41 ►
Why don’t you do it?
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Now, I know that the immediate answer to that question, at least
00:46:46 ►
from me, goes something like this. Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of really good ideas, but I’m broke and I
00:46:52 ►
don’t have the resources to pull it off. However, now I have to admit that the old saying about
00:46:59 ►
doing what you can with what you’ve got where you’re at can go a long way to moving you in the direction of your dreams.
00:47:06 ►
For example, one of my dreams quite a few years ago was to produce a lecture series that people could attend in cyberspace, or cyberdelic space as I like to call it now.
00:47:18 ►
And to be honest, when I put together the first edition of the Palenque Norte lectures in 2003,
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I really had no idea how to pull it off.
00:47:28 ►
In fact, nonetheless, my wife and I and some of our friends
00:47:32 ►
put a small stake in the ground at Burning Man that year,
00:47:35 ►
and somehow, magically I think,
00:47:39 ►
it’s just grown into something that has actually surpassed my original dreams.
00:47:44 ►
So this year, collectively, we probably had a couple thousand people hear the Blanque Norte lectures on the playa,
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and already many thousands more have heard the ones that I’ve podcast so far.
00:47:56 ►
Now back in 2003, podcasts hadn’t been invented yet,
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but the lack of a medium to carry my dream didn’t hold up our little group back then.
00:48:05 ►
And now that I’ve built up a little momentum, it’s prompting me to dream even bigger.
00:48:12 ►
And you can grow your dreams that way too, I’m sure of it.
00:48:16 ►
Just get started as best you can with the resources you have.
00:48:19 ►
And even if they’re almost negligible as they were in my case.
00:48:23 ►
It’s really amazing what can happen once you take that first big step
00:48:27 ►
and risk having people laugh at you and give you a hard time about having another one of your crazy ideas.
00:48:33 ►
I think Alex said it best when he said,
00:48:36 ►
if you want to put yourself on the map, print the map.
00:48:39 ►
So why don’t you go ahead and take a chance and march in the parade.
00:48:43 ►
So why don’t you go ahead, take a chance, and march in the parade.
00:48:50 ►
You know, what you might lose if your idea flops seems to me kind of insignificant compared to what the world would gain if you succeed.
00:48:54 ►
You know, this community, this visionary community of psychedelic thinkers
00:48:58 ►
is, in my opinion, the leading edge of the cultural creatives.
00:49:02 ►
You know, we’ve been to the edge. We’ve seen the wiring
00:49:05 ►
under the board. And now it seems to me like it’s time to begin realizing the fruits of those
00:49:11 ►
visions as we each do our own little part to help create a more sustainable and guy-and-aware human
00:49:17 ►
culture. And of course, don’t forget to have a little fun along the way and do some dancing too.
00:49:23 ►
Don’t forget to have a little fun along the way and do some dancing, too.
00:49:27 ►
It’s a journey, remember, not a destination.
00:49:29 ►
I better get out of here now.
00:49:34 ►
So, again, my thanks go out to Darren, Mark, Michael, Brian,
00:49:38 ►
and all the rest of the Entheon Village crew and the supporters.
00:49:44 ►
Also, thanks to Jacques Cordell and Wells, also known as Chateau Hayouk,
00:49:47 ►
for the use of your music here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:49:52 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
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Be well, my friends. Thank you. you