WHEN I SPOKE WITH SIR BEN KINGSLEY

Last year I interviewed Sir Ben Kingsley for the latest Corduroy magazine just as he’d finished work on The Invention of Hugo Cabret with Martin Scorsese. I saw Hugo on Boxing Day and enjoyed seeing Kingsley’s character in action. He plays Georges Méliès, a legendary filmmaker and visionary who created worlds from the fiber of the muscle of his being. Méliès was an inspiring man who created a lasting history, and having channeled him for months, Kingsley was an inspiring actor to make contact with. I am very privileged to have had such an opportunity, and I thank the staff of Corduroy for granting me that indomitable task. May I have many more chances to hold such inspiring conversations with trailblazers like Kingsley and Corduroy. See below for an exclusive transcript of our phone conversation (I’ve emboldened my favourite parts, parts I think you will enjoy too.) For the full interview, pick up a copy of Corduroy magazine. We told a great story together. Yours, Sophie

Sophie Ward speaks with Sir Ben Kingsley, March 18th, 2011.

B: Hello.

S: Hi Ben, how are you?

B: Oh fine! Hello, is that Sophie?

S: Yes it is.

B: Okay. Where are you calling from then.

S: I’m calling from New York.

B: Oh great.

S: Yeah. So it’s the middle of the morning. It’s very very warm, strangely.

B: Lovely.

S: So I know you have a number of projects on right now, so thanks for making the time to speak with me.

B: That’s fine.

S: What’s the favourite of your projects right now, either at work or not at work? What are you getting stuck into that you’re really enjoying?

B: Well, I don’t know whether it’s torture or enjoyment. [My wife Daniela Lavender and I] have our own film company called Lavender Pictures. We’re developing five films, so whatever I’m doing, even if I’m shooting I go back to my trailer – which is no longer a place where I can rest and relax. It’s turned into an office. It’s a work space, and we try to keep all these projects alive by meeting producers and directors and writers, pushing it along. It’s a slow process but it’s very exciting to bring the components of the project together ourselves. We’re bringing personalities that we know and trust, and have found thrilling to work with, together on the same projects, and it’s like cooking really, bringing the right ingredients together. It’s an ongoing exercise that I find really exciting.

S: It’s like alchemy.

B: It is absolutely, yes. And it’s a process that not many producers understand if you work by committee. Often alchemy is understood by one individual – it’s not something that’s collectively understood. So often I find that production companies now are run by committee with no real guiding imagination behind the decisions: Now it’s “I have to take it to the committee and talk it through with everyone else,” which sort of weakens it really. It starts to lose authenticity and courage.

S: It’s wonderful that you [and Daniela] can do that. Do you think it’s a function of having two actors having created the production company, such that you know the process that you want?

B: I think so. I think that between us, having been in the business for quite a lot of years, you learn a lot along the way – and one doesn’t tend to lose that as an actor. The knowledge you acquire is quite phenomenal: about scripts, crew, casting, directors, designers, composers, even the technical side. I’m fascinated by lenses, and choice of lenses, and camera angles: how they can make such a colossal difference to a scene. I think by osmosis we’ve learnt a lot and to apply that to projects we love is amazing, and highly personal, and very exciting.

S: That’s awesome. I read once that you “Don’t need to go off and research, it’s all inside of you waiting to come out.” You referred to yourself like a walking research library. I love that, and I can hear that in what you’re saying, that you’ve just absorbed everything around you in the environment of the film industry. It’s great that it has an opportunity to come out.

B: And also Sophie, I sense that actors are hunters. Even if it’s not in our direct vision, our peripheral vision is always active, hunting for character, for stories, for detail, for nuance. I recently had the privilege of addressing the Oxford University Union Society, and I used an image with the students there; that my experience and my collective experience is like a tightly wound spring, slowly uncoiling. [There exists within me] all kinds of information, which maybe I ingested as a child, and can’t consciously recollect to you, but, it’s going to be in one of my performances. Rather like how a painter almost subconsciously dips the paintbrush into the palette, and if you ask the painter, “Why is that yellow going next to that blue?” The painter will say, “I don’t know. It just has to.”

S: Yes! I’m reading a book right now called The Holographic Universe, I’m sure you know of it.

B: Oh golly.

S: Oh golly! Yes, it’s quite crazy. But one of the concepts is that our memory isn’t located at any specific place in the brain and that it is like a hologram where there are different mirrors: the memory lives inside of you and can come out in many different facets, almost like parallel universes.

B: Absolutely. And I’m sure, Sophie, that some people who, perhaps unfortunately, are diagnosed with some terrible cramp in a muscle or some weird cyst growing somewhere, [might be told] by the more enlightened physicians, that “That’s a stored memory,” and “as soon as you unlock that, the sooner your tissue will heal, because you’re holding something in your stomach, in your chest, in your arms.” These can be trauma, entering the body and lodging itself there. For life! I’m a huge believer for example, that sadness is something one has to live with, but, I’m a huge believer in the necessity of tragedy in drama. Because it allows us to grieve. So what I do find irritating are people (and I must be forgiving, I must be forgiving) who, for example say, ‘Oh, I couldn’t watch Schindler’s list, it’s too upsetting.’ I want to smack them!!! I can’t see it any other way, I want to say “For god’s sake, watch it! It’s part of your collective information! Deal! It’s not someone else’s story, it’s YOUR story.”

S: Yes, it’s our story. All of it is our story.

B: Yep, all of it is us.

S: Yeah. That’s amazing. I also remember you saying that your soul was fully articulate in the work you were doing at that moment. I loved that. Do you still feel that way?

B: Well I may not put it in exactly the same way, because honestly I don’t ever recollect interviews, they’re just like great conversations. I’m not a historian, I’m not listening to what I’m saying.

S: Oh exactly. I knew you wouldn’t remember.

B: I just express. And what I find is that (I love cinema, as you know) between action and cut is the most private and the most profoundly connected I am in my entire life. The camera is seeing something extraordinarily private. I’m making something out of nothing. Alchemy. And yet, between action and cut it can be caught on camera forever. It’s that process that I find fascinating. And I think by necessity, I am and have to be completely vulnerable – technically in control of what I’m doing – but my soul has to become fluid, and flow into the mould that eventually might be a beautiful bronze statue. But it has to be liquid, it has to flow. It’s an act of letting go, between action and cut, and along very disciplined technical lines. I don’t start improvising or stand in the wrong place, or turning with my back to the camera. It’s all very disciplined. But the essential thing is that marvelous melting and flowing, essentially of the soul, yes.

S: Yes, that’s really interesting when you say that there’s the discipline and then the letting go as well. It’s interesting that one can have that. I’m not saying it’s a very difficult place to reach, but I think it must take some training to really stay with the script or with what you’re being asked to do, but let go at the same time. That’s amazing freedom.

B: I think it does take application and repetition – and trying, and trying, and trying – and then you build up a relationship between your soul and your technique such that they fit together easily: Your technique expresses whatever alchemy you can offer. It’s the technique that communicates that; it’s the mechanical communication of something very extraordinary. It just has to be communicated through words and gestures which everybody can comprehend.

S: I heard that you’re playing [groundbreaking French filmmaker and ‘First cinemagician’] George Méliès.

B: I finished George, about 6 weeks ago. That was with Martin Scorsese directing [The Invention of Hugo Cabret]. As you know, Martin is passionate about film and it’s history and evolution. I was basically inhabiting one of Martin’s greatest heroes. And it was quite wonderful to be in the same work space as Martin – both of us feeling such enthusiasm and affection for what we were doing. Wonderful man Marty. I miss him. Wonderful man.

S: One thing I’ve found very interesting is when you said that at some point people are going to lose track, and any preconceptions of you will be meaningless because you’ll be moving too fast. You’ll be in the white car, on the yellow horse, with the black jaguar, the clown on the tightrope. And then I read in a different interview, recently, where you are now gearing up to play George, and you were saying “It’s great, I’ll be playing a magician, an acrobat, a dancer, a producer, choreographer, director, writer, he was everything,” and I thought Wow! You really.. [Kingsley laughs] That’s the power of your word! The power of your word and your voice, or your communication, really creating your world. I fully believe in the power of our words creating our world, and how powerful words are, so I loved reading that.

B: Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And Sophie, we mustn’t let our language collapse. Either the language is literary, or movement and dance, operatic songs, but we mustn’t let our vocabulary shrink into sound bites. We as humans have evolved a staggering vocabulary over the years, especially in our language, and to have that whittled down and discarded, thrown away and squandered, is very dangerous, I think. We must always use and love language, because if we lose our language we will be manipulable and defenceless when the crunch comes. We’ve got to be able to articulate and voice our passions – and not to always let other people do it for us.

S: Yes. I wholeheartedly second that. There’s been so much development, not only in language, and I’ve been thinking about this, whether it’s a natural growth, or whether it’s a manipulated or distorted growth, and I mean, I’m not really sure about that.

B: I’m not sure, I’m not sure… I had the pleasure of sitting next to a geneticist, a really high powered professor, and I asked her, “Where is evolution taking place? If I gave you two examples, where would you say it was generally taking place: Is it taking place inside the child in Soweto, who is collecting Coca Cola cans and hammering them flat and putting them in a bag and sending them out to pay for his or her education, surviving in Soweto under extraordinary odds? Or, is it evolving with the Apple and the young child who is gazing at a computer game, fiddling with buttons. Where is evolution taking place?” She said “God, I don’t know. I hope both. But I honestly don’t know.” It’s exactly what you’re saying. Is this false evolution? Is technology a completely false evolution? The machines are evolving, but are we shrinking? The child in Soweto is not shrinking, because there are no distractions. It’s all about human survival, human dignity, and progressing through something as a valiant soul, not with your head buried in a computer game. And yet I must be careful, because I participate in computer games as a performer. I voice them. And I think as a living art form they’re extraordinary. But not at the expense of everything else. That’s all I’m saying. There’s gotta be a balance.

S: I think that message is becoming more and more important these days, as time progresses. Do you think the film industry has grown in a good way, or do you think that there are certain things about the industry which are perhaps based in, or motivated by, things they weren’t motivated by before?

B: Well, you will get groundbreaking geniuses in the film industry. It attracts great talent from across the artistic board. It’s a matter of fact that within the beautifully expressive form, one’s idea’s become something out of nothing. [In the film industry] one’s ideas can be seen on the screen, within a reasonably measurable amount of time. You can see it. The groundbreaking geniuses were always dragging their weight: the exploiters, the hangers on, the shortcuts, but I think it is an art form that’s evolving. When you see The Invention of Hugo Cabret for example, in which I play George [Méliès], Martin Scorsese’s use of 3D and HD will be staggering. Because what [the audience] is expected to experience is how you first saw things as a child. Your body will tingle. All the molecules, and all the little memory banks in your body will go off like lovely warm alarm bells, because you will see something you hadn’t seen since you were two. That is, how you first saw something. And [Scorsese] managed to get there, miraculously, on the screen, in the way that Monet did, or Renoir, the way the amazing Impressionist painters did it years ago. And now Marty’s doing it. It’s impressionist, it’s how you first saw something. I think that’s extraordinary. I’m also thinking of Marty, because while I loved his work in Shutter Island, but I did think that Inception was a work of art. I really did. Extraordinary use of cinema, highly intelligent use of cinema: keeping the audience on their toes, being outrun by the film, running to catch up, coming out stimulated, WOW, going back and seeing it again. Wonderful! There are wonderful, trusting strands of the cinema that are always evolving, and it’s very exciting.

S: And lots of new niches and genres and cross genres. It’s wonderful.

B: Yes, it is!

S: Do you have any advice for younger actors?

B: I do! I do! Always! I’m always conscious when I’m talking to you, and your colleagues, of the young actor reading what I’m saying. It’s very, very important to me: To talk about hunting, to talk about constantly collecting through one’s peripheral vision, to talk about technique as well as the soul; because a young actor doesn’t want to hear about my soul, but he can benefit from the use of the word technique, in a good way. I’m aware of that – [the fact] that I’m in a position to be interviewed, which is a wonderful position to be in, but, there’s a reader, and that’s very important. [It’s very important] that we give interviews to young actors and say it’s a tremendously rewarding job, it’s crushingly difficult, the disappointments are horrendous and yet the sublime moments are beyond description. You must, must, must, have technique to back up everything you do, and you must appreciate that your job is extraordinarily simple. You’re a storyteller: no matter what anyone else tries to tell you, or what magazines you might be seduced onto the cover of, or celebrity exercises you might be kidnapped into. Your job, in your tribe, is to be a storyteller. Because a lot of young actors are getting very confused about what they’re supposed to be, and the distance between what we safely and humbly are, and what they think the world expects them to be, can mean they end up stuck in a hotel room. Which shocks me. Because very often there’s expectation of some compensation, which there doesn’t need to be. [Actors] have this beautiful life, but you must take the rough with the smooth. It’s part of being an actor, it’s part of maturing into an adult performer. Into an artist eventually, hopefully.

S: What have you learnt from the industry, personally?

B: It’s very very hard to answer that, because it’s very plastic and very much in a state of flux. I don’t know yet. I think I’ve learnt to trust my intuition. I think the industry has been kind enough and supportive enough to me to give me the space in which to trust my intuition. If you’re not given a place to stand, you’ll never be able to trust your intuition. I have been. And I am trusting my intuition more. And that, for better or for worse, is where I am now. But, the business teaches me to trust my intuition. The business teaches me to get back to who I originally am.

S: Mm! That’s a wonderful job to have.

B: It’s self healing and self-stimulating. You don’t need drugs. It’s that healing and self regenerating, that you don’t need any other substances other than “IT”. You must struggle to get IT – you don’t need to struggle to get your next fix or to be a diva – you must struggle to get your next job. Might be a bit harder, but it’s worth it. It’s beautiful.

S: I remember reading a story of Ram Dass going up a mountain in India and meeting an old guru. Ram Dass was at the time doing his experiments with LSD, and this guru asked Ram Dass if he could have some of what he was taking, because he’d seen into his mind and said, “You were thinking about your mother on the mountain last night, weren’t you,” and Ram Dass was blown away that he could see that in his mind, because he hadn’t told anyone. So the guru said, “Give me what you’ve been experimenting with.” He took I think triple the dose, and Ram Dass was very very nervous and worried. But he just sat there and sat there and sat there and nothing happened. (Kingsley bursts out laughing) And this man said to Ram Dass, “I don’t need what you’re having because I’m already there. I’m already there.”

B: Yep, I’m already there! Wonderful! That’s so great.

S: To get there is the point.

B: A very short point.

S: Yes! I’m so happy to hear you say that. It’s so important. I come from a family where my sister is an actress and my brothers are very passionate young directors and editors, and I’m a writer. So, it’s great and really very wonderful to speak with you. I feel very strongly about what you’re saying and I totally support it.

B: Great. Well, coming from your family, we speak the same language.

S: Thank you so much. I’ll let you go.

B: I may be on a project in New York soon, so I’ll have my publicist contact you so you can find me, and we’ll follow through.

S: I would love that. Definitely. Have a lovely evening.

B: Yes. Lovely. Lovely to talk to you.

B: Lovely to talk to you too.

S: Bye.

B: Bye bye.

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SYNESTHETES

This Christmas I worked with Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin on the special text for their exclusive perfume gift. Inez and Vinoodh are two of the most prolific photographers working today, and a dynamic duo who also created a son together. I met them at their son’s birthday party last year, and boom – my being tall got them talking. You never know where life may take you. The fragrance was inspired by one of Inez and Vinoodh’s photographs – ‘Kirsten 1996′, which Ben Gorham of Byredo took as inspiration for the woody, oriental scent. The perfume came in a cedar box and a pink paper, inscribed with the professional musings of yours truly.

Synesthesia, from the ancient Greek σύν (syn), “together,” and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), “sensation,” is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.[1][2][3][4] People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes. (via Wikipedia)

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CULTIVATING GUIDANCE

“Remove the expression ‘have to’ from your vocabulary and your thinking, because it is going to release a lot of self-imposed pressure on you. You create tremendous pressure by saying” ‘I have to get up.’ ‘I have to do this.’ ‘I have to, I have to.’ Instead, begin by saying ‘I choose to…’ It puts a whole different perspective on your life. Everything you do is a choice. It may not seem so, but it is.” – Louise L. Hay from Heart Thoughts, via the ever awesome Mystic Mama blog. We are about to go into the Yosemite forest, picking up the vibrations and sending them back. Above is a picture of my amazing husband. Love from Napa, volcanic ash and vines

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RITES OF CROWNING

The caffeine from the drip coffee that my husband brought to me is coursing through the vessels of my brain as I sit here at a glass desk in San Francisco collecting my thoughts after breakfast by a sapphire pool. I have come through a membrane, through some veil of time and space, and I have entered a vast new chapter in my life. There is a crude bamboo xylophone on the table, a paper kimono in a case, and images of black and white rock stars enshrined between curtains on stages on walls. We are on the west coast, and I am newly married. I have been married! I married the wonderful Isaac Koren from Australia and this is my honeymoon. Write on your honeymoon, one might ask? Why does the bird fly south?

While Mr Koren packs our bags before our departure onwards to Big Sur, I feel a space in which to express some of what has recently happened to me. Nothing has changed, and yet everything feels differently. I am now two, as well as one. I was one – just one – with umbilical cords attached to all the other beings and friends and family members that I love. Now I am two, and I feel the shift in my energetic being: Isaac and I are spending almost three weeks together, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s incredible to find a companion such as this. But I will spare you any honeyed talk. I am free, I am wild, I have ascended a department in the department store. However, I am still (still! It takes as long as it takes..) decompressing and acclimatizing to what in the heavens just happened to me.

There I was, climbing my mountain, walking towards what I thought was some kind of spiritual entity like God, when divine intervention occurred and both the clock and compass in my hand melted instantly. After so many attempts at inviting me to his show at the Rockwood Music Hall in New York City, Isaac succeeded in corralling my attention towards a body of work he had been producing on the Music of the Spheres, or the Cosmology of Music. I was spellbound, obviously, by the word ‘Cosmology’ – knowing me at the time, this was an easy in. Soon enough, we had spent four hours in Housing Works bookstore sharing everything we knew and everything we didn’t know. Soon enough, I lay on the grass in the summertime and told him that I loved him.

Yes, it happened quickly, and I was with another man whom many of you know from my speakings of him. We had gone far enough down the road together, and over three years, that man and I had been attempting to evacuate the structure we had built, which seemed to be beginning to shrink upon us. I likened the ruins of our crumbling relationship to a body on view in a casket, and though it had passed, we were stubborning holding on to it, and thought that perhaps if we put some makeup on this area, it won’t look so decomposed? We pretended, and hid, and forced, and pushed towards various outcomes, while quietly and depressingly living separate lives. This was not true love, and although I loved him dearly, we were not compatible; we were trapped.

Plate XLIX: POMEGRANATE, Punica granatum

The greatest gift we gave to each other, then, was to listen to the winds and to let each other go. The man I had been with for so long had begun to speak ill of me and I of him, we were mean and callous and oftentimes didn’t understand what was happening. In time, now, I have understood that the universal forces of nature work in mysterious ways, and although my old lover didn’t want to say those cruel words to me, something was helping us rip ourselves away from each other. Wherever he is, I know that he is now on his path, for we were not made for each other. He has my blessings.

A massive storm passed through New York last year around early September, a hurricane that had the city up in arms about provisions and batteries and securing windows. Isaac and I had just met, and my heart had ballooned with affection and admiration. Isaac was an angel. He was the one, during my time away from my ex-partner, that I had called for, prayed for, asked for, in my envisioning mind. I had prayed for very specific qualities, and this young Australian man exhibited all of them and more. He anointed and protected me with sage smoke, he brought me to a Happiness Factory, and he fed me lamb and coffee. We danced, we walked the cooling streets of New York’s September, and we fell swiftly in love.

The weekend of the storm, I felt all those crumbling structures from the past brushed and blown away with the rapidly falling water that bucketed from the sky that sacred night. We have been inseparable ever since. Here I am, almost five months later, with two rings on my finger with it’s intravenous connection to the heart, on our honeymoon in the warmth of the west coast. Here I am, still me, yet surrounded by love and support and a sense of incalculably powerful manifestation skills. To meet someone as passionate as me, as interested as me, as en-theos/enthusiastic about life as me, is exhilarating.

The Pahlavi Crown: "There are 3,380 diamonds on the crown, with a total weight of 1,144 carats, the largest of which is the 60-carat yellow diamond."

I am now on the path, the higher path toward the true castle. I walked through the valley of the shadow of my dreams for a long moment – only a blip in time, in the greater scheme of things. I am now soaring, dancing, skipping through the stratosphere of my very existence in a way I didn’t realize was possible before I met Isaac. I am proof that life responds to your words, to your declarations, to your affirmations, and to your resistances and hatreds. I lived through a period of 20 weeks in which all of my wildest dreams came true. Time and space are completely malleable and elastic. Do not give up, and do not worry about faltering. I faltered for three years, wandering and wondering whether ‘this’ (this illusion of the here and now) was all that was available to me, whether it was all that I deserved. Only I knew what I deserved, and only I possessed the feet and the hands and the tenacity with which I could adhere my soul to that dream, to keep lighting the fuse at the base of the rocket of my beliefs. Sometimes the fuse was too wet, sometimes too dry, sometimes my dreams crashed and burned, sometimes I had to go and buy a whole new rocket. The entire time, I kept attempting different methods through which I might launch myself towards my bliss.

While Joseph Campbell suggested one “Follow your bliss,” I assert that one must strap your soul to whatever apparatus of launching you can find, and launch yourself towards that bliss. Go get it. In this brief bracket of time called your life, the rewards are worth the effort and your dreams are worth the risk of investing as much of your energy as you can manage. “The benefit of what you’re doing comes from that effort,” says my yoga teacher Bryan Kest – similarly, the universe knows when you’re working towards something and, from experience, I sense that the benefits we receive return through the channel created by the expenditure of your heart towards your goals. Keep tunneling through the granite, keep chipping away, even when your hands are bleeding and your knees are raw and you can’t really see what you’re doing. We are in a time of deep metaphysical creativity and positive manifestation. You will be aided, you will be guided, you will be safe in the crucible of your creating.

I’ve begun to write down the story of how Isaac and I possibly found each other, and how I transitioned from a heart space of night – cool, dark, full of treachery and suspicion – towards an arena of daytime – bright, warm, friendly and transparent. The rapidity with which my dreams raced into and through reality was utterly mind blowing, and yet I understand that when a star runs out of fuel, it implodes and becomes a black hole, towards which all matter races and transmutes. I experienced a very similar phenomenon following the passing of Heath Ledger, witnessing the way a massive star collapsed, causing a black hole towards which other surrounding stars were sucked towards, circling and circumambulating. Matter begins to clump together in this environment, and as such, my life shifted dramatically following the gravity of that natural disaster. I created Paper Castle Press at that time, I found love in many places, and I began multiple major projects, many of which have found fruition over time.

Arthur Hacker, 'The Temptation of Sir Percival' (1894)

Today, I reflect on the astronomical phenomenon of the binary star, and how Isaac and I were magnetized towards each other out of the complementary ends of black hole implosions. Both he and I had come through the vortices of black holes, and out the other side completely transmuted, cleansed, reprogrammed, clear and intentional. The binary stars of our universe are plentiful, apparently, and I realize now that my attraction towards other ‘binary stars’ or binary beings on this planet inferred the seeding of my future. Similarly, my harmless crush on Conan O’Brien all these years bore all the signs of a kind of interstellar Global Positioning System, or magnetic resonance. The fact that Isaac Koren is tall, lanky, red-headed and utterly endearing is not surprising to me. Follow the magnets that draw you on this planet and you will not fall far nor long.

John Lennon and Yoko, Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, Michelle & Barack, Bono and Alison, Inez and Vinoodh, Chris Martin and Gwenyth Paltrow, Ahkenaten and Nefertiti, Antony and Cleopatra, Harry and Bess Houdini: multiple, multiple binary stars on this planet from before and beyond, from today onward. We have many rockets to begin collecting. But now, to Big Sur, the sea otters, and a visit to my old psychic friend and ancient mentor, Henry Miller. Follow us here for more of our love story. It is now ours to share. With love,

Signing off,

Mrs Sophie Claire Koren Ward

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A YEAR OF METAMORPHOSIS

Narnia Chronicles. Mr Tumnus. Mighty Ducks. Ice shoes. Frozen creeks. These are the few things on my mind as I lay in bed this Friday evening approaching 2012 with a diamond ring on my finger and many thoughts in my head. Winter is not the only subject filling my soul, as these last few weeks have rushed on with near bloating fullness. Late night shows I have loved, late night drives, late night brainstorms and late night longings. There have been sacred events in which the two families (of myself and my fiance) still new to each other, have come together with the chance to shine in equanimity. Christmas was one such event, full and full and full with the opening chasm of our continuing experience as one expanding family.

The expansion is incredibly exciting, and a phenomenal progression to witness. As Madeleine, Isaac’s mother, and I, remarked last night: “The joining of yourself and Isaac is wonderful. But with the coming together of our families, it is perfect.” I am so grateful for this massive blessing. I couldn’t ask for anything more. Our win is your win. Indeed, what more is there? My father and I walked the streets of New York this morning with my mother, fueled by good coffee, and found the presence of reality remarkable. What else is there? I feel it would be easy for me to think, great! Married. Let’s ‘settle down’ and get cosy. But no. I realized today during an ice-skating excursion with my family, the duration of which I was without a phone, due to having left it on the bed at home in the midst of morning-wedding-brain disorientation, that I do prefer being at work, on task, creating – than doing anything else. I am committed to creating my life as my work and my work as my play. I don’t see any point in segmenting life itself any further. There are no mutual exclusivities. Creation is the jewel of my existence. What do we dare dream of?

One curious reader sent a question a few months ago asking me what the point of my blog is. The point is to live a life of my own design, to share this life of my design with immediacy, and to demonstrate the possibilities pertaining to creating a life of one’s own design, with other human beings who might chance upon this humble work, leaving inspired and refreshed. Another reason for this Big Long Open Gash is to open the veins of my inspiration, with all their energy and misting spells, with all the emotion and human yearning, to show whomsoever is interested what it might feel like to be human, what it’s like to live over here, and to give others permission to do the same; that is, to share who they are with the world honestly, authentically, harmlessly, boldly.

What have I been doing all this time, between blog posts? During the last six weeks I have produced and organized my own wedding, the experience of which has been incredibly invigorating. I am thrilled that all I need do now is show up and enjoy the show. 2011 has been a powerfully transformative year. I’m not sure I recognize myself yet. My friend Stephen Blaise, Creative Director of FLY16x9.com, remembers a meeting we had earlier this year when I declared that 2011 would be the year of METAMORPHOSIS. Indeed it was. I am a butterfly and I was cocooned. I gorged myself on inspiration, and now I have flight to free myself with. Last week, I did my first nude photo shoot; another empowering experience for which I am so grateful. Life is so much a playground, and I’m still exploring what else I can do here. What else indeed? The imagination starts to liquefy.

Who knows what the future will bring. In many ways, I have a sense of it, but then again, it’s always more than I could imagine. Writing. Filming. Dreamweaving. And somewhere in there, our children. I’m interested in simplifying my life this New Year. I’m interested in focusing on fun, family, fervency and fortune. I am letting go of my human fears about ‘not being good enough’, about anything being ‘too hard’, about falling, and any fear about fear itself. What are you taking on and what are you letting go of? Leave it here on the walls of the Castle. (It will make great mortar!) The sun shone on New York today, and the snow hasn’t yet fallen on our cooling ground. Wherever you are, I sense there is such bounty for us during 2012. Let yourself be you. “Everyone else is taken,” said Oscar Wilde, for: 

“Your life is your life.
Don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
Be on the watch.
There are ways out.
There is a light somewhere.
It may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
Be on the watch.
The gods will offer you chances.
Know them.
Take them.
You can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
And the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
Your life is your life.
Know it while you have it.
You are marvelous
The gods wait to delight
in you.”

(‘The Laughing Heart’ by Charles Bukowski)

I’ll be on the West Coast for most of January, before heading back to New York and then to Australia during April. Follow me via Tumblr or Twitter to take the journey too. Also, if you’re in New York this Spring, check back in with Paper Castle Press to find out about a special salon series Isaac and I will be hosting, open to all, which will include poetry readings, book readings, songs and stories in cosy locations, replete with dinner and alcoholic accoutrements. The Paper Castle grows. Love, and a Happy New Year. 2012 is magic.

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LOVE STORY

Going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married… This appeared in newspapers all over Australia. I thought I’d share it with you, in case you hadn’t heard the news. It’s extraordinarily exciting and I can’t quite process it all yet with words, so we’ll have to wait until the dust settles to read more from me regarding this rare revelation. Back to wedding planning!

Appearing in The Sunday Times, Australia

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BEAUTEOUS MAXIMUS

We’re exploring. We’re trying to find out as much as we can about the world.” Richard Feynman

I share this in memory of a joyfully curious man who accepted the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, despite being famously resistant to honours. I salute his spirit, and intend that through my own humble work I will continue to provide this sense of curiosity and joy which Richard Feynman so readily offered to his students, readers, audience, to Earth. I myself am caught with wonder about the floodgate of life on this planet, the prolificacy of conciousness which dwells here in all manner of shapes, forms, states, sizes, and otherwise. I myself have this ‘dis-ease’ of fascination. What is it that the Japanese woman on the train is listening to alone? What are each of those minds in a row pondering? How far we have come in our evolution already, that we have transportation, tools, technology, time and space, a quantum consciousness.

Thank you to all the scientists, poets, astrophysicists, shopkeepers, mothers, students, writers, thinkers, photo-imagists, curious children, pensive thieves and impassioned creators spurring us on to ever more advancement. I am gladly alive during this period of time. You might like to know that I am working on a new book on ‘the art of invocation.’ Stay tuned for insights into its development. You may be invoked. May we invoke each other. Can you believe I will be married in less than a month? I am so honoured to be entering this new year with such sanctity. What a ceremonial time. 2012, here we come.

Nature is there, and she’s going to come out the way she is.” Richard Feynman

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