My Thoughts
Self Quotes of the Day
8) Love is a verb.
9) Faced am i with the difficult task of reconciling my artistic identity as a painter with my professional identity as a primary school art teacher. Clearly, the two identities are not in opposition to each other or mutually exclusive. However, the school teacher dimension is a highly public sphere where exposure to public scrutiny is essential. It is just that a school teacher should be publicly accountable just as any person in a political position should be. However, the artist must be able to break free from this public opinion and judgement in order to create something which is truly unique and truly inovative. The artist must sacrifice his/her own feelings in the service of the art by using those feelings as a means to creation and not just for the sake of feeling something. Should the artist be too susceptible to the suggestions or values of those around him/her, then he/she will fall prey to those and take the path led by countless artists who depend upon the approval and favourable disposition of the public. Mass media hip hop has unmistakenly taken this path. In the case of mainstream hip hop, not only does the "art form" cater to it's public's demands, it actively seeks out it's public's desires and targets them in the same way a commercial targets a market. Decidely, this path can not lead to any positive change, for growth may only come from struggle and mainstream hip hop is too easy to swallow.
10) art has been slumbering. For so long now, we've looked at art as a function of consumption. For too long, art has been an object of desire, and as with masturbation, we've all taken part often with predictable results. However, our present times call for the purpose of art to shift from that of an aesthetic object to one of a prophetic object. For art does bring news from places we've been to but also from a place to which we are headed. Most, if not all of the technological devices we presently know of were first born as creations of the imagination and were first given life in Fiction. Fiction predicted what we can see today in technology from cell phones to space travel. We must learn again to listen to the music as our mothers and fathers could for in the music there is a message about where we are going individually and collectively. In the painting, especially the painting from the wellspring of the imagination, there is a tendency towards something which is universal and unspeakable. As mentioned in the small movie at http://www.tomartist.com/pages/gallery/artshow.php, painting is the art of saying without words. As such, it is pre-verbal and therefore prehistoric in it's ability to communicate an essence of being, the humaneness of humanity the universalness of the universe.
11) Just watched the PBS documentary series entitled: "The Secret Life of the Brain" and what impressed me most was how top academics in the field of neurology, biologogy, geneticists use biblical words like "Odysee, creation, pilgrimage, miracle" etc. to describe the process of how the brain takes its form and various functions.
12) Painting is for me a lifelong process of discovering all of the time and space which can exist within a walnut shaped cell mass called the brain.
16) What if friendship is in fact just an agreement to not anihilate each other?
17) Depression is the disease, not a symptom of a disease.
18) Everyone has a counsellor.
19) Paint is my God.
20) I'd like to create software that could tell any person which chronological order they were born in, in relation to every other human being so we could each have our own number. One person might be 4000 to the power of 5 or something like that, the next person could use the software to determine that they were the 10 millionth person born etc. Just a number, that's what we really need, is our own personal, intimate number.
21) martial arts have added a perceptual framework through which to perceive. There is now a new dimension to a modern Art Therapy. Kung Fu will probably lead the way interms of its universally accepted martial art theory and practice. Qi Gong will also lead.
23/11/2007
If there were only one problem with pure science it would be that it presumes a physical cause for whatever process it is investigating. It does not recognize that non-physical existence is possible. It assumes that a process can be investigated through experimental designs. A dog which chases its tale is running in circles. Science in this sense seeks the orgin of itself ultimately since science is always concerned with the "reason" for phenomenon. Yet it is possible that a phenomenon has no discernable "reason"
4/01/2008
The relationship between the one and the many is reciprocal and accounts for all of the variation of in perspective. This means that if you could own your own perspective and add everyone elses, you would have the sum total of all perspectives and therefore understand all disagreement.
5/01/2008
There are things known to consciousness which can not be spoken. Tears and Laughter are a couple of examples of these things.
10/01/2008
Don't tell me you think it's all chance. There is no way chance put you there, in that chair at this exact time and place simply to have you say: "it's all chance".
All corporations emerge out of basic human need to supply that need. corporations want to be good citizens by making jobs and financial contributions to good causes. We must help them to be good citizens by showing them what we need and want more evidently and helping them to make the right choices. corporations are to serve the people, for the people, by the people and of the people.
05/02/2008
if i seem strange to you it's only because i choose to spend up to 8 hours per day staring in silence at a blank canvas trying to figure out what the best way to put colour and form on it would be.
05/02/2008
here is at least one other reality which i know of. It runs in parallel to the one which most of us share but it is completely different in terms of how space and time are experienced. I go to this place often when i paint, and i am convinced it is a completely seperate psychological and spiritual reality which is no less real and no less rich than the regular reality which most of us share. I can not take you there, but i can bring something back and show it to you.
06/02/2008
In painting, I need to keep several physical locations in perspective simultaneously never resting focus on just one.
06/02/2008
When painting, i'm often thinking of ways to destroy the house that ego built.
06/02/2008
When painting I am often flooded with words and memories of conversations. without fail, every time i pick up the brush, those things come back to me.
06/02/2008
Painting is an emptying of my subjective container.
06/02/2008
The only problem with cognitive behavioural therapists is that they have no feelings.
10/03/2008
Our commercial system, that is the system through which we buy and sell goods and services, is an adversarial system. It is a system in which the seller attempts to get the most from the consumer while providing the least and also a system in which the consumer attempts to get the most from the seller while providing the least in exchange as well. Make no mistake, anytime you buy something, a war is being fought through smiles, politeness and courteous falsities. In fact, if a salseperson is being polite with you, you are assured the experience of an inauthentic interaction. The only correct disposition to have in such an interaction is one which presents openely the true disdain and loathing which both the consumer and the seller have for eachother.
11/03/2008
Gommery has not even begun to shine within his destiny as hero to the people. His cards remain heavy and secret. But they will be laid.
23/03/2008
An opaque reality is one through which you see nothing.
28/03/2008
When a surrealist laughs, it's a compliment.
06/04/2008
I keep my rational mind locked up like a slave kept around only to do the bidding of a fundamentally irrational self. You do the same but are less likely to admit it.
22/04/2008
I know that a humbling is good for me, even though it tastes bitter.
22/04/2008
I need to leave a record of my life on this earth because my life must be worth something passing on rather than passing away.
05/05/2008
I've looked at the thing a thousand different times from all sorts of angles, never actually seeing it. I've tried every way of talking about it. I've tried to define it as verbs, adjectives but still it evades my every attempt to ascertain it. Before you tell me you don't know what i'm talking about, let me tell you that i think you know perfectly well what I mean because i'm talking about that which is beyond my understanding. I am talking about that which has no reason but is nonetheless.
21/06/2008
A prison guard in a sercure max prison in the U.S is like a god as far as the inmates are concerned. he operates the light, food, sound, temperature and everything which an inmate sees and feels. this scenario is exactly analoguous to the situation in which God provides all of the stimuli that man experiences. The difference is that in prison, man has the experience of a world which is ex-machina while man on earth has no direct experience of an environment outside of the one he is confined to.
21/06/2008
The unconscious is taken to be true because it can be shown that a mechanism or process defined as the unconscious systematically produces predictable results. However, the unconsious has never directly been observed because it does not exist within any definable space. This means we can infer it is there, make predictions based on our theory of it, but we can never actually see it with our own eyes. The unconsious is therefore a phenomenon akin to the shadows in Plato's cave.
22/06/2008
20/09/2008
no problem can be solved until it is owned.
20/09/2008 in painting, a shadow is like a liquid in that, if you can find the pressure points associated with its movement, you can estimate where it will fall.
20/09/2008
what many of us call god, all of us call love. That is love and God as not only the feeling or sensation of wellbeing and oneness but the conviction of wellbeing and oneness. When the feeling and the conviction are one, there is no defensive position on earth which can protect you if you are wrong.
20/09/2008
The question is not whether you are neurotic or not, it is what do you do now that you are neurotic.
20/09/2008
Just as with the college of scientists there are other colleges which have codes, intersubjectively verified data upon which their assumptions reside. theory in both colleges is proven true many times but through different means, and with different results. The college of like minded individuals of which i'm speaking is the college of people whom believe that ojective knowledge can be understood and grasped internally through intersubjective processes base in the senses. Science has shown that the senses are not reliable sources of objective data. Intersubjective data however is another matter entirely. it is anther matter because intersubjective experience is evidence of an objective effect on a subjective being. Therefore, intersubjective validity holds that simply because a group of people believe they are affected by objective causes, they are. In short, I belong to a college of like minded individuals who belive that things can be true, just because you believe them to be true and not necessarily because they are objectively true.
20/09/2008
be the god you wish to believe in.
02/10/2008
I have never voted in a federal election. Though many have a problem with this choice of mine, i've justified it to myself by saying that by not voting, I choose the side of those who can not or do not vote. Children, the mentally ill, the deceased, the elderly, the oppressed are all people who can not or do not vote. My abstinence is in solidarity with theirs.
19/10/2008
many groups of people have insight into how groups of people behave. Managers of corporations, ceo's of marketing companies, psychologists, the government, banks, owners of the internet all have tremendous insight into what groups of people do and what they are interested in. We have to ask ourselves: What do they use this knowlege for? I suppose they use it for different reasons.. But each is definitely using that information to do something with it. In some cases it seems to be more manipulation of us than anything else. In other instances it seems to benefit us greatly. Whatever the case, knowing what groups of people do is powerful knowledge for someone who wishes to have power. In fact, education workers are a major group of people who know what people do and what they are interested in. Who knows more about how we learn and how we are likely to respond to that learning than teachers. Teachers may have more pull or clout than any other group among those mentioned above. Yes, teachers can affect the machine, and because they are like minded individuals they should normally be easy to assemble into a movement of thought and action.
23/10/2008
The names sir and madam originated when people discovered there were haves and have-nots. At that time it was learned that some distance between us would be helpful in protecting us from each other. So the terms Sir and Madam originated and helped people of higher class to maintain distance from those who wish them ill and want their possessions. However, the titles Sir and Madam also serve the function of helping ordinary people gain some knowledge of whom they are speaking to. If you are approached with sir or madam as a designation, you are probably more likely to be engaged because you feel the engaging party has respect for you.
23/10/2008
I once called a black man Sir and he was deeply offended. He said to me: 'my name is Joe, not sir, you need to call me by my name'. For him, I suppose, being called Sir seemed condescending because black people have spent so long calling white people Sir. In any event, there I was in a politically tense moment because I had offended someone's sense of history and culture by attempting to show them respect. It was an odd situation which did make me think about the meaning of the denominations of Sir and Madam.
23/10/2008
We must have an open discussion to get some closure. We must try so we can fail, give to take, be to cease being, have not to have, not see to see,
31/10/2008
what i have now is inevitably what my ancestors stole from others.
31/10/2008
Each word, each thought must be crafted as if a work of art because to do otherwise is to open oneself up to the possibility of speaking and thinking garbage.
15/11/2008
Cognitive behavioural psychology is in the process of demonstrating how there is 'nothing to fear but fear itself'. It is soon to be shown that what you believe to be true is actually true for you in an absolute fashion, even though you may be completely wrong about it.
15/11/2008
Evolutionists are not against religion but instead worship animals.
15/11/2008
When I look at a budgie or a puppy, I often feel that i too could worship animal. When i see such vulnerability, i wonder if I'm not in the presence of a god who has something to teach me.
23/11/2008
In my painting, I seek to induce a cognitive behavioural phenomenon known as dissonance.
23/11/2008
Post rationalization will define anything anyway we want.
23/11/2008
The consciousness required to fly a fighter plane is doubled in power because it consists of two pilots, sitting one in front of the other, looking in the same direction at times and different directions at others, while being intimately linked through technology. This phenomenon is an actual exemplification of the scientific concept of the 'The Borg' featured in the science fiction series known as 'Star Trek'.
23/11/2008
A scientific graph in which the hills and valleys change hues or color tonal values, would be able to represent a measurement of both quantitative and qualitative data. Current black and white graphing matrix does not allow this qualitative and quantitative, subjective and objective data to be measured simultaneously.
23/11/2008
It can be unwise to rely on objective measurement to tell us about experience because when we ascribe quantitative value to qualitative data, we are loosing our ability to accurately represent the data and convey its meaning.
23/11/2008
In a painting, I wish to show both a picture and the window which looks on to the picture. I do this with a big frame indicating the passage on to the picture, through the frame. The Frame represents the process involved in getting to the picture.
28/11/2008
Good rock music is like having wind in my hair. Led Zeppelin, whether one likes rock or not, is generally considered to be avant-garde and close to perfection in rock and roll style. Listening to Zeppelin is like having wind in my hair. Not unrelated is the observation that many people who listenned to the group had long hair and the group members themselves all had long hair. Maybe all were feeling sensations related to the music and affecting them through their long hair.
04/12/2008
An upcoming painting will be entitled "Of Reticence and Resistance".
03/01/2009
My perceptions and judgements are kept in a sort of third party container. I view my perceptions as sometimes happening through a third party. This is not dissociation in the pathological sense, but dissociation in a more adaptive capacity because it earns me the power of increased objectivity. Once i have relatively objectively seized or understood the matter being considered, i can then view it from a container which is closer to the 'real me' because i can then apply an emotion focused attention to the same matter and see how my judgement changes the perception. I can therefore be aware of how my emotions colour and shape what i perceive.
03/01/2008
We ought not say that Love conquers all. It is in fact just we who are the conquerers of all evil and obstacles though we use Love to do it. The love is in us, we must cultivate it, nourish it and allow it to grow so we can use it to achieve our goals. Freud's notion of libido, is what we may come to feel as the sensation of loving.
03/01/2009
In film making and screen writing for historicaly representative films, screen writers use freudian concepts to tell the story. For example, a mechanism of freudian symbolisation is called 'condensation' and in screen writing, a writer uses combination of characters called 'combination' in which the attributes of one charater are fused with the attributes of another to create a hybrid character. embodying both essential characters.
03/01/2009
Today is an important day for me as a painter because I leaned a lesson which i have long been wainting to learn. The lesson involves the technique of painting and how i can change my technique to represent something which is closer to my heart. This is why i teach technique to children. A matery of the method contributes to a freedom of expression. The method must be mastered to allow the slave freedom.
03/01/2009
With regards to the lesson mentioned above: I have long known that my technique was in need of evolution. However, i did not know the exact form that evolution would take. I only knew that there were painters whom i admired and that these painters were different from me, separated by me through a common denominator. Technique was at issue. Myself and these other painters were saying the same things. I knew this because symbolic language comes easy to me. I can see the reflection in the glass. I'm not being arrogant or conceited but trust me, i have been with people who have not inclination for symbolic levels and I have been able to compare what i perceive which how they are seeing things and I can assure you that I have an additional sense in comparison with them. Many people have it. Painters who are serious, have this sense. That is how I know that I share common ideas with other painters even though vast leaps in technique separate us on a visual level. Heidi Taillefer and I share the same symbolic dialogue even though her technique is far more advanced than my own.
08/01/2008
Techique of course, being determined solely by experience.
10/01/2009
In times of recession, a good job to have is the job of: Witness to one's own experience. Actually, I have just appointed myself to the position of: High Comissioner of Internal Investigations Of the Purpose of my Own Existence. If nobody else wants the jobe, I'll take it. Better I fill that position than give it up to someone else anyway. I would never for instance vote to elect someone who purported to fulfill that position.
10/01/2009
Everything that god has made, I can imagine making as a painter. It occured to me one day that the sky is perceptually made up of brushstrokes to the point where it is possible to confuse a naked eye into thinking that a painting of a sky is actually a photograph of a sky. A skilled painter can do this.
13/01/2008
Cognitive science developed along side computer science and technology and artificial intelligence. Cognitive science used the computer model as a model for the brain and the functioning of human beings. This solidified the era of man as machine where the rules which govern us became the same rules which govern machines. These era is evident in the advent of nanotechnology which mimics behaviours, previously only possible of living organisms.
18/01/2009
Un jour, notre espèce humaine sera peut-être reconnue non pour ses accomplissements mais pour toutes les choses qu'elle aurait pu accomplir.
22/01/2009
Art in culture went a long way towards curbing racism and other forms of rejection of the other self. While it is easily possible to hate another culture or group it is much less easy to reject a musical trend or an artistic expression when we have have no information about who is producing it. As with a blind taste test, we may find ourselves enjoying and being touched by the art form of a despised people. A Nazi might have enjoyed music made by a Jew before knowing the origin of the music. White people in the southern U.S might have enjoyed music originating in Black communities before realizing that black artists made the music. In fact, this is exactly what happened. Soul and Funk and Blues music went a long way to showing racist people that whatever one may feel about the image of blacks, the soul of a black person is rich, deep, profound and interesting.
04/02/2009
For some time now, i have been hoping, waiting, anticipating a major break in the system. Is it wrong to hope that something breaks so you can build it up again? The system we are living in is broken in so many fundamental ways that there is no hope of its continued existence. it is not sustainable. everyone knows this. This is the generation of the question: 'when will the house of cards fall down?' I hope that in the present recession we are all obliged to reconsider previous propositions and beliefs. Invariably, this is what occurs when the financial machine breaks down. People are forced to reconsider their basic values. There is nothing like being unemployed to help one contemplate the workings of one's universe. I hope we will take the time to put it all back into question. Sometimes, one's destructive wish is a wish for rebirth and creation. Too many look to depressed or angry people and brush them off with a single judgement. These angry people sometimes can and should express their rage in a calculated and direct fashion towards constructive destructivism. Unfortunately when people do express anger it is often with the consequence of pointlessness. People are killed, things are destroyed but there is not message, no lesson, nothing is learned because these people are labeled as crazy, derranged.
04/02/2009
Un espace particulier est crée dans un cardre d'art thérapie. C'est un espace dans lequel les élèves peuvent passer un moment non-verbal ensembles. Un espace ou les mots n'ont plus la même valeur parce que le comportement est privilégié. Dans une telle circonstance, nous sommes en coopération les uns avec les autres, tout en restant unique et individuel. Nous pouvons apprendre à apprendre avec nos yeux, en regardant. Nul autre espace existe tout à fait comme celui-ci.
22/02/2008
Oddly enough, when I look at psychological theories of development, whether cognitive or learning or psychodynamic, I tend to notice that there is this spiritual subtext to the concepts which seem to imply some conflict between good and evil. It is no surprise that all psychological theories of development and personality suggest that good prevails and that when evil happens it is abnormal and pathological. What i have just said is especially true of Freud's notions but seems to hold accross the board.
12/03/2009
Art theray's achievements will be felt more in terms of global effects rather than individual accomplishments.
12/03/2009
Every corporation depends on our thought and feelings about them in order to do business. We should only give our positive thoughts and feelings and actions to those corporations which most deserve it.
12/03/2009
It is an incredible irony that economic depression is sometimes the trigger for psychological depression. You have to admit that is a weird coincidence.
31/03/2009 St. Patrick's day is a good example of what happens when commerce and business are allowed to hijack culture. The celebration has become a drunken orgy where drinking to the point of oblivion is encouraged. The result is that bar owners make a killing while there is little or no sense of the original meaning of what St. Patrick's day means. I, myself do not know what it means. Commerce has ruined everything about the event and the cultural significance of the celebration. It is a return to the reptilian hedonism of alcohol and sex before after and during the corporately sponsored parade. This idea of culture being supplanted or hijacked by business is also evident in Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentines Day festivities, all apparently run and operated by Coca-Cola and Chocolate producers.
04/04/2009
I own part of everything I hate about the world but also part of everything I Love.
04/04/2009
Sometimes a sad movie like Seven Pounds can pull a string in you and make you feel sad. Sometimes music pullls that string too. At times maybe any art can strike a chord in us to remind us of what we feel we are.
04/04/2009
The art therapists remedy for solitude and isolation is visual creative process combined with fitting music. The therapeutic effects of both of these interventions is sufficient to temporarily aleviate isolation and solitude but community is the long term solution to those things.
04/04/2009
Learning to paint consists of learning possibly thousands or hundreds of thousands of micro operations which will help to convey the painting. For the painting to be rendered rules of proportion, distance, space, colour, depth etc...this list of things to consider on the painterès task list literally goes on forever). For an entire lifetime of work, the painter can learn new lessons and so the term master is invalid. No one can master painting because painting is our master.
04/04/2009
How many times per day do we block our trust? We must block it to do make money, to survive and to thrive, to compete. Letè's put an end to Darwin's implicit prediction for our species and put a limit on what he taught us. Much respect, and much love for D-man but enough is enough.
04/04/2009
I would define myself as a post rationalist. Someone who finds that so much valuable knowledge lies outside of the confines of rationality. We can sense without knowing as Jung
04/04/2009
There is only room in my heart for justice, not for vengeance and retribution.
07/04/2009
Art is not what we do, it is what we are.
01/05/2009
Science is unlike art in many ways, though the two are similar in others. Science is more directly entwined with the machinations of economic factors. Scientists do not work like artists because they are more dependant on money for research. Scientists do not work on problems for free, in their basements or labs because they can not sustain research without some form of external feeding or funding, nor do they seem to want to work for virtue and community contribution alone. Artists, however, are working for free every day, in their studios, toiling away on creative expression which is invaluable to our understanding of origins and destinations. Science follows the money, unless you think that Science leads and money follows the best science. Money determines what science pays attention to. Money determines who will learn science through university education. Virtually nobody can learn science without going through high level university education but we can teach eachother art. We learn art through experience.
11/06/2009
One can not merely think like an author whom one loves. If you love Jung, you must act out your interpretation of what he is saying. Ultimately, if you absorb a theory, and that theory moves you, you will move according to the theory. This is what we try to do with our religious beliefs. Ergo, therapeutic theory mimics what religion does for us in many ways. Psychotherapeutic theory in the forms of existentialist, narrative, psychodynamic thought must be lived out to be understood. In that sense, therapeutic theory is again like religion because you have to try it to believe it, (or at least give it a chance).
11/06/2009
I've heard that some people on wall street refer to the free market economy as 'the factory'. Are we living in a factory? The commanding heights of the economy control everything from what time i get up to what I eat and where I live. They don't just influence it, they control it. This is why I understand when hip hop geniuses Dead Prez say they don't want a piece of the pie because they want control of the kitchen.
11/06/2009
L'approche envers le jeune déficient intellectuel doit être imbibée de légèreté. Tant de choses sont lourdes ailleurs.
12/07/2009 I have seen the comfort in which people of the suburbs live. I have seen the utter most tranquility and comfort with which they go about their gardening and day to day activities. I have seen how they drive their cars to the mall to get milk and take part in some sort of community. I have seen how their homes are perfectly decorated with trinkets from various stores designed just for them. I have seen for myself how living in a suburb can facilitate mental weakness and total absence of questioning about self and other. I have seen how the comfort of patio furniture has replaced all other needs and questions about bigger issues. I have seen how the illusion of prosperity masks the reality of despair and I have been horrified by these things which i have seen.
12/07/2009
One of the most spiritual experiences i have ever had occured when i quit smoking. The inner conflict, the urge to return to my dependence juxtaposed with the faith and knowledge that i was on the right path. At times like that, you hear god's voice, even if you don't believe in god.
09/08/2009
At the age of 35 i have just become aware that i live under the constant threat of male aggression. I live under this threat not because i have enemies, nor because I am political, but i live under this threat because i am an ordinary citizen. Though the male remains eternally useful, male aggression has worn out its welcome.
09/08/2009
There is a little bit of a lie in all that we do.
09/8/2009
The idea behind neuroplasticity implies that attention can shape physical form. In other words, the idea is that thought shapes matter. I'm not sure that anyone realizes this or not, but that idea is akin to suggesting mind over matter.
16/08/2009
Strange to think this way but we are all participating in a kind of concentration camp mentality. Some of us are guards, others prisoners. Those of us who are guards are complicit, without ever actually talking about it. We work together to achieve a common goal while also competing with each other for rank. The fact that we are competing with each other for rank is why we do not ever actually sit down and talk about the evil deeds we are doing together. The oppression, inflicting of war, enslavement of neighbours is just secondary work which has to be done by everyone with a job to some degree. We don't talk about that, becaus we are busy in the immediate moment with trying to get ahead of the person to our immediate right or left. When you are running a race, you don't think about your starting point or the people behind you, you think about what is in front. If you shift your attention to what is behind you, you must for a moment lose sight of what is in front. Our attention is not very good at being in two places at once. So we continue forward, getting ahead, moving to progress. We don't ever stop to compare pay cheques. That is how you know that we are complicit in this global act of self terror where the aggressor and the victim are one and the same. If we stopped to compare pay cheques we might find that the illusion of meritocracy is just that, an illusion. We would find that those who have hired us to do their bidding have done so under false pretense. United we stand, divided we fall. All in al, we're just another brick in the wall.
16/08/2009
I am sure I have already pointed to this a hundred times but the power of attention is the greatest power we possess to affect change. With it, we determine what buildings are standing and which one's fallen, who is where, what is what, when, how and why of everything. Attention is the ultimate mobilization of psychic ressources towards an action. The Buddhists are definitely on to something with meditation. Something most of us have no patience but much desire to understand.
16/08/2009
How do you tell people that suffering breeds character and that suffering is required for optimal growth when they already believe they are victims, entitled to some form of compensation.
20/08/2009
I am against both capital punishment and the punishment of capital. Nous pouvons succomber à la peine de mort ou dit autrement, être mort de peine.
20/08/2009 If we can dissect the disseminator we can see into the matrix of the messages subliminally instilled within us.
20/08/2009 The Soloist is the name of a movie which promotes the virtue of creative process over God.
20/08/2009
At the end, I think we are measured less for what we did than for how we did it. The why of what we have done remains inconsequential and we should not spend too much time thinking about it.
20/08/2009
The word Hero in the west is equivalent to the word Martyr in the East.
24/08/2009
Jung says that the artist sometimes tells of forcomming changes in the collective unconscious. If that is true, than i have become increasingly alarmed by the increased arrogance and narcissism i see around me. Though i own part of it for sure, i perceive it as originating primarily from without myself. I am vexed and insulted by it. It worries me deeply to hear there are people who not only believe in some thing greater than themselves but actually proudly claim to believe in Nothing.
03/09/2009
The more i think about depression, the more i realize that there are a lot of things that one could get depressed about. In fact, it is surprising to me that more people aren't depressed. Maybe they are and they are just not talking about it. When i see the world this way, i seem to observe a little bit of depression hiding in nearly everybody, just below the surface. Just deep enough beneath the skin for most of us to miss seeing it. I see it though. The question as a therapist is always: 'am i transferring that depression or projecting it into what I see?' There is some of this transference in all that any of us see at any given moment, but in this case, i believe it is really out there and not just in here. When you look at the suffering in the world it is truly baffling that any of us could not be depressed about it. The way that shame affects our mental health in this case is by forcing us to deny it to eachother and to ourselves. To accept depression as a natural state of being, for which there is no cure and no problem is to accept that things are the way they are in the world. In today's medicated society, the concentration camp guard who complains of depression is given a pill and sent back to work.
03/09/2009
My dream the other night occured in a semi-conscious state. I was lucid, clinging on to the state between conscious and un conscious. I could project light from the pupils of my eyes and bring out shapes in the darkness. As i was doing this, it occured to me that the objects which were appearing as a result of my flashlight eyes were very painterly. It was as though my imagination was painting objects, without the use of my hands. The objects were painted at will into the darkness, each one revealing itself to me in situ. I could not determine before hand what the object would be. It had to be discovered. However, i had the power to determine that an object would be discovered as i rolled my eyes in sequence along a shelf placed in nearly total darkness. I realized that the light was determined by the focus of my eyes and that my pupils, rather than being sites of darkness were wells of light, governed by the direction of my attention. In a sense, this is a nice metaphor for what actually happens in our daily consciousness. What is given attention is illuminated. It has since occured to me that though we have different skin colours and eye colours, all peoples pupils are black. Is it not fascinating that the eye contains a black hole which captures light, just like a black hole does in the cosmos?
07/09/2009
It recently occured to my neighbour to draw a connection between health care and gun laws. In his way of thinking, universal health care, like the kind we have in Canada, sends the implicit message to Canadian citizens that they have intrinsic value regardless of their socio-economic status. The message is that no matter how poor you are or how physically disabled, you will have access to people who will care for your health. What a lofty notion! But the point is that guns become necessary when people feel they must fight to obtain or maintain value. If I knew that an operation would save a loved one's life but that I could not afford it. I would consider stealing, robbing or even gun clapping to get the money. There are some things which i would resort to crime for. If there were no publicly paid treatment programs for drug addiction, what choice does an addict have but to rob, steal, murder. In fact, most gun crimes are drug related. It seems that when you make a mistake in the U.S, the whole country disowns you. You are only fit to wear the flag if you hold it upright. The point is that when people believe they have intrinsic value and are worth something as human beings they are less likely to want to take things from other people. As Malcolm X and Marx have put it, the police are only necessary once you have property to protect. Now that I think of it, it has occured to me that the US state which is most well known for politeness and good manners hospitality is also the one with some of the most lax gun laws and the strongest gun lobby, Texas.
09/09/2009
The idea is that religion is a private story while science is a story that you can verify with the facts. This is true. Religion can not be verified but science can. However, how many of us can truly put the science to the test in a wold where we have not education about the sciences. though it is true that the sciences are pushed harder in university because they are more economically viable, not all of us are amenable to the teachings of pure science. We simply do not have the skills required to assess the validity of scientific reports or studies published by specialists. Ironically, we must have faith that those responsible for studing cancer, aids mental health have our best interests at heart and that none of those specialists would be motivated by economic gains to dupe us. In closing this one paragraph essay, let me say that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer has just been sued for two billion dollars in a criminal case where they were prosecuted for soliciting doctors (scientists) to distribute drugs for reasons they had not been approved for. Essentially, Pfizer was convicted of possession of drugs with intent to distribute. So can we accept that science and technology replace religion. I agree that religion has to go, but are science and technology our new gods as they profess to be?
09/09/2009
The double blind controlled trial is the angel of art therapy. Art therapy must pray to that angel.
20/09/2009
I see the errors passed down from father to son, to son, to son, to son then I look to the sun and see that what's done is done and I ask myself: "must we do it again?"
26/09/2009
You can observe that when we give answers to open ended or closed questions we often interspesre the words:''I mean''. This is short verbal form for the words:''I mean to express'' or '' I mean to say '' or ''my meaning''. These words are often followed by a deep expression of what we are. Authentic to who we are.
01/10/2009
When i watch the television show Cops, I enjoy trying to get into the mind of the cop or the suspect to get some sense of who they are, how they are thinking, where they come from, how their adreneline goes up and down, how the drugs are affecting the suspects and cops, how the mighty law is being handed about, how the cop interrogates with a questioning mind while the suspects mind attempts to dissimulate what or she actually knows. I like to feel all of the stuff that is going on in that area of society because it makes me feel alive. It's also the same reason why action movies impress us so much. There is an exhilaration which is lived by the viewer. When we are exhilarated whe are infatuated if only temporarily.
03/10/2009
Atom and Eve.
03/10/2009
Repeat to yourself the sentence:"I am feeling turned on", 3 times. Reflect upon the possibility that that sentence is evidence of man's emulation of machines. The irony is that saying: "I am feeling turned on" is used in reference to the most un machinelike of human experiences.
03/10/2009
Defense mechanisms are the psychic equivalent of a computer's firewall. What stimulus meets certain parameters, it just doesn't get through.
04/10/2009
I can close my eyes and travel back into my body where i can access a visual playback of myself riding a bicycle, learning to drive, getting mugged, fighting with a bully after school and even my first sexual experience. There are no words to go along with these memories, in fact, few words were ever spoken while i was in the midst of them. This implicit memory exists in me and it is destinct from everything i know through verbal language.It is a separate knowing. A different compartment of my thinking. When i paint, some of that is in the painting. Oddly enough, i am flooded with words, thoughts in the form of words and dialogue and I am often even mouthing the words and conversations at a slightly audible level. I wonder if this would have been seens as a demonic possession a few hundred years ago...
04/10/2009
I am a humanist. An existentialist. A spiritualist without religion. As such, i am a fish out of water in a world which is drowning.
05/10/2009
Pharmacology and Farm Ecology are diametrically oposed ideologies which happen to be homophonic. Others include Nude Erection and New Direction
08/10/2009
The Catholic Church invests in The Christian Brothers Investment fund, which invests in Porn. I don't say that because i have a bone to pick with the catholic church or any Christian, but it is evidence that most sincere of intentions can lead into the most contradictory places.
12/10/2009
It has recently occurred to me and possibly someone else who may have written about this- that God is like a meal replacement for a conspicuously absent father. The father has in fact historically been absent from the lives of youngsters. As a result, we raise men who know not how to be fathers nor men at all. God, is the father we all need. It's not just an issue of patriarchy that God is perceived as a father, it is a genuine and deep, all important need for men in our society who can lead and protect and nurture.
14/10/2009
Listen to hip hop these days. there is no lyrical substance to speak of. There are Gems from the men of hip hop, which teach us things about ourselves. Their music shows us the ways he had forgotten. They heal us, these gems of hip hop but for the most part, it's a lot of crap. Spiritual garbage. They think we are stupid. To those prescious authentic musicians and artists i say go forth I will follow you before I take road of science. I'll take the road set out by science after...
18/10/2009
Art therapy is the most innovative and humanistic approach to psychological and spiritual health that i know of.
18/10/2009
The beauty of theatre is its capacity to morph into different meanings for different people. Through the narrative, the audience is able to grab salient piece of psychological material and emotionally resonnant imagery and use that to heal and learn. The play means different things to different people. One play, millions of different interpretations. Once again, the power of art trumps the dualist notions of this or that, actor and spectator. there is no here and there, but rather the one is the many simultaneously. Only art and life experience can claim to defeat faulty dualism.
18/10/2009
Any person who can identify and narrate the universal story of the people shall be perceived as a prophet. That prophet need only speak the truth that is seen in the hearts and minds of the people and the people shall raise them to the clouds a prophet. That prophet will be known as a prophet when he or she speaks because the people will instantly know that his-her words are those same words at rest in their hearts. When the people hear those words, they will respond as though spoken by themselves. What is inside the heart of the people will be rendered manifest in the world, and so will begin the moment of awakening.
18/10/2009
In the battle of id versus ego, ego rarely wins. (this is from battle star galactica)
18/10/2009
I have seen people of integrity and ethic flop into jello form when the prospect of money or personal gain was put before them. At times, i have been that person, willing to sell what is most dear for what is most near. Because i have had those feelings, i infer that others must have them. I am not as forgiving when i see this lack of honnour in others.
18/10/2009
The country that gave us the first PhD is also the one that gave us the holocaust and the second world war.
24/10/2009
When it comes to working with art and children, I believe that pushing the art to its maximum level of sophistication is appropriate. The higher the level of cognitive sophistication in the art, the higher the rate of rational emotive learning on the part of the children. Though we may be inclined to think that children are developmentally only ready for certain types of artistic expressions such as children's songs, nursery rhymes etc...it is more true to say that children may experience even the most sophisticated and researched art forms such as classical music, dance, and visual art and still be stimulated, encouraged and enhanced by it. Learning in art does not rely on the same principles which learning verbal languages, sciences do. Leaning in art is sensory, image based. To be sure there is cognitive dissection of artistic processes but the experience and the learning derived from it are pre-cognitive in importance.
24/10/2009
Learning through art is not represented in the same way that learning through verbal means is. Learning through art can permit the learner to take a type of quantum leap which defies developmental standards and normal rules of time and space. The learner through art is projected into the future through a fusion of cognitive, emotional, spiritual and behavioural streams of energy. When these 4 streams or elements are focused, energy emintes just as while lights splits to rainbows through a prism.
15/11/2009
I no longer see the client's story as the story. It's the strory about the story that's the real story. just like the bible. What is contained in the bible has no doubt shaped human consciousness, action and narrative, but it's the story around the bible that i am interested in. How did it come to be written and by Whom? When, where and of course why? The context tells us about the motivation and the necessity. The media of the day and the mind of the people around the origin of Jesus's story, that is what is interesting to me. The story about Jesus is kind of like the left hand keeping my attention away from what the right hand is doing.
15/11/2009
I no longer see individual problems as individual or individual stories as unique. In our uniqueness there is commonality. We share what makes us different. Every problem which a client brings is a joint problem involving themselves and the larger picture of social, familial and interpersonal dynamics. No person's consciousness lives in a vacuum though it is tempting to think it does because cognitive science teaches us that consciousness is encased in a cell mass, locked within a skull, wrapped in skin, then hidden with hair. It is more true to say that what we experience, and what we are likely to consult an art therapist for are all matters of shared experience. What we perceive as our particular ailment is infact the result of our comming into contact with someone or something outside of us. Object Relations theory attachement theory and art therapy are the closest we have come to addressing the reality that people are affected by people. Anxiety influences anxiety in others, depression does the same with depression. You can picture two mirros facing each other and you will have a good idea of how those things work. Each of us is a reflecting pool for another. One drop in that pool sends a ripple effect throughout it before it is absorbed. If a person presents a psychological problem, the first question most therapists might have is: "how did this person come to have this problem?" Most of our questions in the initial interview give away this type of thinking by asking: "how long have you had this problem? What have you done to try and address it? How is it affecting your life?" It's not that those questions aren't worthwhile but that we neglect to the context and the situation the client finds herself in is often overlooked. Though it is true that the fourth axis in the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders is reserved for psychosocial and environmental factors, I find that it is too far down the list. Why should it be down at the bottom under clinical disorders, including major mental disorders, as well as developmental and learning disorders? Even those types of axis 1 disorders environmentally influenced. Everything is psychosocially influenced. Rates of intellectual deffieciency are much higher in low socioeconomic backgrounds. Rates of depression are not identitcal in all people or population segments. They vary according to areas, situations, contexts and of course genetic predispositions. The medical or biological componnents of depression or anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder have not ever been proven to be more significant than social factors. In fact, i would argue that they are in all likelihood less significant. Then why are we considering such issues as discrete, individual expressions of illness? If the problem is in what we are doing, why are we addressing it as though it were a function of what we are biologically. Why are we administering medication to individuals when we ought to be administering therapy to communities. Money is your answer. Professionalization is the name of the game. Everyone needs a job. The sad truth is that many of our jobs are usesless. They inadvertantly or perhaps intentionally prevent the truth from shining through. Medical insurance companies come to mind here. Whether we look at the industrialized prison system, the education system, the medical system or government, you will find enclosed systems which operate on status quo principles designed to keep jails filled, people stupid, sick or dependent. This is what keeps us fed. And eating as you can see with the current obesity epidemic, is just what we like to do. So tell me, in a society this sick, how does administering pills to individuals help us? The concentration camp worker is complaining of nightmares and insomnia. Todays medical model is sending him back to work with a prescription and calling it medical progress. Don't look to a heartless system for sympathy because your pain with only swell. Empathy is our last chance. It is our only hope. Empathy is that one mysterious gift which proves our emotional existence to us. It is that reflection of the self in the mind of another. It is the proof of all that i have said. It is borrowed from the heavens. It is the reflecting pool we are wading in.
While you may say that surely, schizophrenia or autism could not be so environmentally dependent and are then the result of purely internal biological events. I guess you'd be right, but i would add however that those are the exceptional disorders of severe psychopathology and that the people with those conditions don't generally consult on their own. They are obliged to consult because they can not function in this society. I would argue that in an ideal world, a society could be adapted for which such people would cease to be "abnormal".
03/01/2010
Anyone who can afford to give you 50% off or two for 1 is probably a thief and a liar.
11/02/2010
Whoever said that language determines thought, made it true by saying it.
10/03/2010
Good Mood = God Mode
10/03/2010
One of the main inhibiting factors to account for men's absence from the primary school teaching profession is Biologically based in my view. The higher level of testosterone in men reduces the availability of a specific and required amount of patience and concentration. There are other social factors of course, but this is the single most important biological one.
10/03/2010
I want to find 10 artists I really like and copy their style while creating an original piece. It will be a series of 10 paintings in the style of ten known artists. Each piece must appear as though created by the original artist, in order for my work to be successful. The point of this series would be to demonstrate the ability of an individual to adopt various styles.
10/04/2010
Because emotional and intellectual functions are distinct in their operation and localization, it is possible to have one sense be extremely well developped while the other remains stunted and immature. We may know personally of people who are extremely intelligent in an intellectual fashion but completely under developped in the sense of their emotional evolution. In the opposite case, we know of people who are emotionally wise or balanced yet have little intellectual command of the intellectual faculty of linear reason and logical analysis. Scientists sometimes belong to the first category, while artists may be most associated with the second. An individual enters his highest potential when both emotional and intellectual faculties are balanced.
10/04/2010
We want to get mad at sub prime lenders for the crash in the u.s economy but really that situation arose out of a perfect example of what happens when Narcissus gets too close to the water.
07/05/2010
We live in a "sucker" based economy where the flow of money and power depends on a sufficient number of people remaining completely ignorant about what is going on. The profit motive requires that we sell something for more than we paid for it. At the bottom of that food chain is the consumer, who pays the final price once every labourer, producer and seller has taken their margins. Our economy is inherently dishonnest, or we can at least say that the potential for dishonesty is very real and exists at every corner, each time something is bought or sold. When the profits made are within accepted reason, they are called profits, when they fall outside of accepted norms, they are called stealing. Accepted norms of course, depend on a sufficient number of people providing implied consent. A good producer or manufacturer always knows how to manufacture consent.
28/05/2010
Contrary to popular belief, therapists do not have the exclusivity rights on therapy. The process can not be patented because it is genuine love and affection and empathy at the root. Prostitutes sell the illusion of those thing. A hug is therapeutic. Kindness and consideration are as well. Any good therapist recognizes that his aim is cultivate those things actively.
29/05/2010
There are people who spend most of their lives living in the left side of their brains. Actually, most of us do this simply by being right handed. The right side is often considered a bit of a pest to deal with. more tricky, less absolute and intellectually ascertainable. You could say that since we learned to speak, the left side of the brain has slowly been taking over. If this trend continues, it shall completely run the show. The computer age is an indication of this trend, because we have created a machine which replicates the logical, linear functions of the brain but has absolutely no competence in terms of intuition, emotional reasoning of art. Sometimes, when I meet people living completely in the left hemispheres of their brains, i toy with them, like a cat with a mouse. I toy with them like subjects in my experiment. I provide them with emotional content, symbolic language rather than the significative language they are used to processing. I watch them squirm beneath the weight of the task before them and take pleasure in their utter bewilderment before such incomprehensible data as feeling states and colours, and forms and symbolism. I torture them quietly because it is the only revenge i can get as an artist for the brutal reality inflicted upon those of my kind. The reality that reason has a strangle hold on emotion. That the rational functions of the intellect have take over the airline while the pilot or should we say auto-pilot remains unconscious. I am contented with my petty revenge for the centuries of submission inflicted by reason, upon all other forms of experience and existence.
Those living in the left side of their minds are more likely to be governed by their unconscious. This is frightening because while the left hemisphere's language functions to describe, calculate and quantify reality, no attention is paid to the bothersome right hemisphere. The right hemisphere is largely suppressed and the unconscious vault becomes huge. Right hemisphere thought and experience continue to exert an enormous amount of influence over the course of history by influencing day to day actions and feelings. What this means is that while some, mostly of artistic temperment are able to consider, access and process their unconscious, most are not. Those who are relatively less able to do this develop into a sort of existence where the left side litterally does not know what the right side is doing. Ultimately, those who deny the unconscious, tout the virtues of reason and incidentally science, are more likely to be ruled by unconscious forces. If your brain is a house. Let that house know only one master. Let that master be wise and balanced. Let that master not dominate the quiet half.