2012: Feather Surfing A Tidal Wave

01Jan12


One fine day, two people simultaneously searched in Google:

“angry sex with my running partner in a café restroom.”

“Hey Persephone, how can I find the holy grail?”  

both queries which led to this very blog you are reading now.

What people surf for in search of transcendance as we enter 2012 is not much changed, in 10 years, in 1000 years, since the Greek myths began or the dawn of “Time.” Like grafitti on the wall of an ancient city, human desires don’t change, we just transform everything in the wake of relentlessy pursuing them. Birth. Sex. Death. Repeat. or End?

With our wide-awake awareness of our botanical ball now teetering on the edge of unwinding, from tsunamis to 99 problems and 99 percent occupying the streets, each of our decisions can feel like feather surfing tidal waves.  2012 is year of the water dragon in Chinese astrology, fire-breathing energy into Everything, so we can either be consumed by the flames/water or Renew, kid. If we have to tighten Hermes belts, use cute-sloganed totes to lug our organic foods, consider our carbon footprint and Seven Generations in every action, that’s a tall order for the humans …unless,of course, we make it hot and sexy. (music! up!)

More fun+less mess is called for “The End of Time.”

For those on the 2012 Train to Nowhere Apocolypse, Chief Seattle said, “There is no death, only a change of worlds.” So, lighten up, let’s enjoy it by renaming it:

“Our Energy/Sex Crisis.”

Forty years after the famous crying Indian in the 1970’s commercial watching the polluting of America, most of our culture still teeters on our teenage mentality. We act like “Most Famous 2011 Teen” Rebecca Black, reluctantly fake-shrugging, mugging for the cameras, “OK, Mom,” having at the clean-up of our room only because we realize the equation impacts our Friday night joy rides with the gang. Nature’s publicity campaign, positioning “green” as new eco-luxury, bohemian chic and eco-techno, might have adjusted things a tad, but to really surf this change of worlds, let’s call it what it is, Our Energy/Sex Crisis. This way the drama and passion-driven can argue with their running partners and quest holy grail-like about Eco-Crisis+Predicaments from an Energetic/Sexual Urgency Scale and maybe Balance this Ball. Oui?  Time, Birth, Sex, Desires and Death. C’mon, even Einstein said “It’s All Energy.” Think of it “All” as Desirable as Sex. Before we kill All and ourselves, for godsakes.

Alejandro Chaskielberg, Winner Sony World Photography Award 2011

For clues, predictions to energy/sex infuse the world’s predicaments, we spin the Time-machine in a mash-up including Native American quotes, to street art and re-visiting the top stories in an unearthed copy of one of my favorite Berkeley neo-hippie culture mags, cyberpunk bible, Grandmother to Wired mag, Mondo 2000, circa 1990’s. The Time-Machine also stopped at two icons of timeless, energetic/sexy, poetic dragon-energy people, to serve as hosts for our foray, pop-culture’s famed “wild childs,” Bridget Bardot and Jimi Hendrix. Bridget was chosen for her beachy, rebel reclusive wildness,

and Jimi for his trans-gender, other-worldy music and his prophetic “castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually” themed connection to this post.

How we might sexily, mightily and handily turn our little sandy spaceship towards more fun, less mess energy/sex, for the dawn of a new day, 2012, we look at some of Life’s precious basics and how the new consciousness might actually be the new energy/sexy:

art, gender, cars, transport, clothing, caves, food, nature, animals, body and music.

All New Energy/Sexy. All New, All the Time. Enter here.

my path to the beach during a recent trip to Miami Beach, where the genesis of this post began…

“A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.”    Crazy Horse

(My Pre-Beach Dream/Vision: Even before I put a footprint upon my path to the beach I dreampt of it leading to an exact replica of Jessica Lichtenstein’s recent piece at Gallery Nine5, where happy groups played among Dr. Seuss-like pools and slides of pleasure.  So come, dig a little place in the sand, welcome the waves, play in some pools and get some sexy-eco-techno love.)

NEW ART ENERGY/SEX

Follow That Artist! In ye cave times, artists were the harbingers or shamans amped up on hallicinagens charting the path for providers to find food or at the highest, cave dwellers appealing to the heavens to find inner peace. Today art is made by similar open, altruistic and passionate people which then is snatched up by smart and savvy investors and developers as investments worth as gold. It makes for one sexy scene. In Miami Beach’s Art Basel art fair this month to plant the seeds for a 2012 urban intervention, we play prophesy muse with some art trends as harbingers that might change the world:

We Get More Crafty, Knitta Please! A bike tour through the Wynwood art area (a mini Portland, btw) knitted together the trend of yarn bombing, appearing everywhere these days, even Gap commercials. Our favorite collective by one of the originators, Magda Sayeg, is named “Knitta Please,” embodying the warm and trendy “We Are The World” Grandma Earth blanket and cozy urge of this trend. Expect Macrame at the lowest and knitted community at the height.

We Scale+Transcend Culture!  Peter Sarkisian‘s video piece crawling on a dictionary at Bernice Steinbaum gallery at once brings the playful body-oriented touch and feel of books and bodies with doodling, a kind of drooling desire and love my cold computer and I never share. Could a play on scale like this help the Earth? What if we re-defined ourselves as Baby Mamas and Baby Daddies to the Earth?

We Occupy Appropriation! A phone interview with Books IIII Bishof, curator of Primary Flight, primarily responsible for the advent of Miami Beach’s Wynwood becoming an internationally recognized home to the world’s finest graffiti art, was a manifesto on Questing. Books sees the timeless equation of art moving life forward through first the common man’s predicaments and resulting art which then becomes an obsessive quest for the upper class who pay for the missing street-level passion and drama in their lives of comfort. No money, but love, equals Make Art. No love, but money, equals Buy Art. With more experiential, audience-inclusive and performance oriented art, we see a harbinger of shared experience that is less something to appropriate, but more classless rituals which emphasize commonality, and dare we envision occupied territory like “tribal” and “ritual”and “sexy”?

We Contain History, Heraldry and Irony! The mascot of Art Basel’s birthplace, Basel, Switzerland, is the ancient beast, the basilisk, from the Greek meaning “little king,” a mythical winged snake/dragon. As Basel is the birthplace of important global markets in art and Time, aka the watch and jewelry industry, not to mention Swiss bank accounts, the city is a good indicator of the state of wealth in the world and how appropriate, like a lair, it is watched over by a dragon. Thanks 1% for hailing the transformative and creative powers of the dragon, the little king of paganism, wild child of Nature! (insert gratuitous, regal-costumed Hendrix image here!)

Given the preponderance of bling and courtly graphics over the past 5 years in art and consumer goods, I especially loved these holy, funny grails I saw at Art Basel, from Galerie VIVID, Studio Job and the famous Belgian hand-blown crystal-makers, Val Saint Lambert…in service to the Realm. Tell the google “holy grail” searcher, I may have found his vessel.

Two other Art Basel turn-ons mixing Mastery and Mass appeal while extolling the bio-geometric, included Moss‘s Morphing Fruit Platters 1D Series 300, a collaboration with Dr. Haresh Lalvani, architect, sculptor, inventor, morphologist and Professor of Architecture at Pratt Institute. The Doctor fed computationals to produce endless generations of laser cut steel disc fruit platters, each unique like snowflakes you can purchase. Something mass-sexy and fractal-feely there.

Alvaro Montagna

Tag! We’re it! We Embody Nature! And above, commissioned by Sushi Samba’s owner, Shimon Bokovza, for his venture, Grafitti Gone Global, Marc Forne‘s community-created, walk-in cozy coral keeps getting bigger each time a new version is built. For more on this and adventures at Art Basel see the article I wrote for Metropolis magazine’s POV on art and community, a growing trend with millions of prophetic permutations from coral-like cathedral building, art spawned by participants and other such populist interactive energy/sex and equation changes.

GENDER ENERGY/SEX

We Gender Bend! Pretty in Perennials, yes? Many men are. Gender transcendance pollenated everywhere this year, from Chaz Bono, legalized same-sex marriages and 3rd world abominations.

The antique issue of Mondo 2000 featured Kate Bornstein, aka the Gender Outlaw, whose definition of a 3rd gender is beyond social construct and definition and now, circa 2011, she helps teens combat bullying. I like the transition. Along with other needlessly dueling dualities, Bullying and Emotional Blackmail are absolutely two overfed, beastial, vestigial gender organs we need to lose as a species. For 2012, I predict more melting of such.

The more both macho and wimmen-folk cultures soften and toughen in balance (aka without fear) the excitement of contrast, free expression and non-repression will prevail, everywhere. Genders may like each other more. We have to have faith in this boys and girls. If 6 was 9, said Jimi.

Alvaro Montagna

CAR ENERGY SEX

We Re-invent the Wheel. Cars r us. I grew up in suburbia and my father was a car salesman, I placed him here, so he could be happy to be this close to Bridget. At the Art Basel launch of BMW’s sexy new i8 and i3, we saw that even luxury car makers are realizing the desire for energy efficiencies. Real change will mean giving up the fossilized fuel and fracked gas ghosts and playing more in the billion watt bulb of the original Wheel, the sun. Whisper until it is a scream…Solar Power.

The Sun rules as its design is the function, the purpose and packaging is the material object itself. In a nature-design perfection, all things should be valued for what they don’t utilize energy and materials wise and then what they give back. Like science meeting religion we’ll expect our goods and services to satisfy on multiple levels to prove their efficiency. This could be fun as a value system. Imagine the clapper, which grows food like a chia pet which doubles as a popeil knife.

Now our cycle of action is activities which leave re-generating stains upon imaginary, imperious sleek countertops to be wiped away with more paper, more refuse. Infinity-energy thinking can orient to spiraling DNA, bike wheels, eyeglasses or the crossing point of our 3rd eye, dissolving duality of all things for a greater vision and yes, maybe even a more “sexy” experience.

Horse-power and Sun-power gives new meaning to the Convertible, already a sexy idea.

The convertible parking lot reclamation icon, 1111 Lincoln Road, by architects Herzog & de Meuron in Miami, was a spot-on venue for BMW’s launch, sponsored by Dwell Media. Car indeed seemed all sexy but the unsexy question in the room was where the electricity comes from and that answer is still…oil. That heartburning image of the gulf burning while the sun shone overhead, giving out tons of energy is an emblematic cosmic joke. Five-hundred trees donated to the city in exchange for the event by architect and one of the presenters at the event, Chad Oppenheim, is the right thinking. Step by step. Breathing is an energetic exchange.

TRANSPORT ENERGY/SEX

Bike Likes. I like bikes. I love bikes. I love the freedom, free exercise, low-cost and zero polluting. I happily joined the locals loving the liberation via Miami’s Decobike, a pioneering urban rental/share program from tons of steel, high gas prices and parking nightmares.  Although more bike lanes are still a gentrifying proposition, given Miami’s condo-car-centric culture, in the meantime, exfoliation by hedges, oldster diving right or left and potential collisions with parking meters are the lesser price to pay. Bridget certainly knew how to work a bike, see above.

BTW, several BMW positives are their support of arts, such as the above, Peter Jansen’s movement explorations and their partnership with Guggenheim Foundation for the Lab, conversations in 9 cities in 6 years.

CLOTHING ENERGY/SEX

The Fibers of Alchemy. Popping out of the BMW party we ran into our friend, architect Rene Gonzalez, designer of the Alchemist shop, which artfully showed only two stories in the whole store, Rick Owens and a Native American influence story highlighted by a teepee with video inside by Chrome Hearts. Reviewer, Candy Pratts Price on Vogue.com did not blink at $5000. moccasins to pad about the teepee, although I did. Why for half that price I could purchase the Rick Owens jacket I LOVE (in 3 colors too.) Not to mention it could perhaps feed a village for a few months. Doing the math and contemplating a luxury purchase is not sexy, but the real cost to the environment of our clothing is staggering.Transparency will thankfully increasingly help transcend the inequalities of clothing production, with stories such as the recently revealed real secrets behind Victoria Secret’s organic bras and panties, sourced from African child labor.

Legendary fashion pioneer heros and heroines, rose and fell this year, from the falling Gaultier’s insulting racial gaffe to the highest high of Alexander McQueen’s triumphant exhibit to Martin Margiela‘s house history in his Miami shop during Art Basel MB. Less visible is Queen Vivienne Westwood’s Ethical Fashion Programme, helping women in Kenya. Yes, it’s sloganed bags, but of the best kind. And I guess if you can’t be the rainbow like Jimi, you can tote it.

Spirits rose end of year with one of the Earth’s most forward clothing Master, Jochen Zeitz, CEO Sport and Lifestyle Group, CSO of PPR and Chairman of the Board of PUMA, with his speech on sustainability for the Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. His talk is a kind of milestone on “the economic invisibility of nature” and how the value of the planet’s natural resources, ecosystems and biodiversity can be fully and consistently considered in economic, accounting and decision-making systems.

CAVE ENERGY/SEX

Energy Efficient Edifaces. My 1994 issue of Mondo 2000 featured evolutionary architect, Eugene Tsui’s in-depth study of living organisms and natural processes, not just building inspired by forms. For instance, how can termites build towers 20 feet high, in climatic temperature swings of 40 to 120 degrees while maintaining a consistant interior temperature of 2 degrees?  With dirt? And some of them date back 4000 years?

The architecture world thankfully leads the world with LEEDS certifications, a wish for the coming years is that food, clothing and health industries endeavor to the same. Although I am told most people do sex with their eyes closed, one can imagine that copulating eyes-wide open in a hive-like room only increases the buzz of birds and bees.

“No machine can compare with the ability of the human hand and 10,000 computers will never comprehend the design intelligence of a single blade of grass.”

Eugene Tsui

Keichi Ohta, Mondo 2000 cover

FOOD NATURE ENERGY/SEX
Flower Food. Back in 2001, the same year I moved back to NYC from country living, solar house and organic farming, the book, Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan, archangel of new frontiers where “nature and culture interact,” came out. Beyond loving him for thinking sexy like plants and insects, I also love what he said about Jonny Appleseed, our mythical fertilizing folk hero, who promoted wild, un-grafted apples, aka hard cider apples. “Really, what Johnny Appleseed was doing and the reason he was welcome in every cabin in Ohio and Indiana was he was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier. He was our American Dionysus.” Oh yes, agriculture can be damn sexy. Of course when that same alchohol was used to tempt Indians away from their land and life, well, that is another story indeed.

Slower Food. Ten years ago, it took a forward thinking Japanese film crew to introduce me to Slow Food, exhibiting at the Natural Expo in LA, our client at the forefront of natural food and lifestyles. Fast forward to Miami 2011 and slow food translates to two days online to locate a non-Whole Foods nearby supermarket in Miami Beach’s northern parts. The dismal 3rd world bodega offerings reminded me of Michael Pollan’s letter to Whole Food on local produce.

Back in NYC, one tasty example of innovative Slower Food, my friend, Quinn Fitzgerald’s Feast Upon, takes the hunting and gathering time element out by selecting the best chefs and best local ingredients delivered to your home so you can cook, invite guests and thus create community. Now just in Brooklyn, a good idea fast coming to a city near you.

No Mo GMO’er Foods. The adjustment to organics is still debated, ongoing. And, then, like natural gas fracking, GMO (genetically-modified organisims) via Monsanto’s push to re-invent the wheel, keeps getting approvals, Obama, he of the organic garden on White House lawn, actually signed several just this week. Click here on Food Democracy Now to stop its presence on your plate. For me in 2012, a resolution to begin an indoor organic herb garden begins here.

ANIMAL ENERGY/SEX

“If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys.”   Chief Dan George

I gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.
Bridget Bardot

Kids, Gurus and Animals say the Darnest things, yet let’s be real, they are often the Smartest things. This year, Miru Kim‘s 104 nude hours with two pigs saved from the slaughterhouse in a gallery was a primal hit at Art Basel. Our host, Bridget has been an animal rights activist for years.

Cloned animal farms are shutting down because less than 10 percent of animals survive and it remains a non-cost efficient, fruitless exercise. Outcry against this abuse, the past 5 years of street art, nightclubbers and fashion mags morphing animal horns, masks and sheer empathy shows encouraging direction and I personally love talking to the animals. It’s true they make us more human, can you imagine when we as a species can go back to really communing with them?

HEALTH ENERGY/SEX

Orlan

Modified bods. “Upon suffering beyond suffering: the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry kowledge and understanding of untiy among all living things and the young ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one.”  Crazy Horse

Artist Orlan‘s surgery art on her body was featured in Mondo 2000 reminding us of this year’s shocking news of botched body morphing experiments and deaths at surgery “parties.” Coupled with a recent Wired magazine article on Trials and Errors: Why Science is Failing Us on failing pharmeceuticals, perhaps the world might finally be getting a clue.

A little intuition and simple natural solutions exist without diving into the medicine cabinet.  I believe we have to know how to intuitively heal ourselves while we heal our host planet. A recent cold and flu was healed in 3 days on a “me-scription” of chicken soup, garlic, seaweed, yoga, meditation, sunshine and sleep and it was a reminder of the power we are only guessing at now, that our ancestors knew well. Is this the loop that will create the “end of Time?” I think so.

MUSIC ENERGY/SEX

Phonetically Un-modified Musicians. Late one night a friend popped out 7 discs of Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special and the lithe, positively groovin’ rock n roll and soul legends from the 1970’s made you hunger for un-lip-synced, super-fit, un-carbo-GMO bodies and innocent crooning. Even long-haired rockers looked kinda cute. Hot Chocolate’s lead singer was so pop-perfect and the colors of the stage had me groupie-taking cell pics of the telly and yearning for more live music and less props.

Perhaps the love child heir of Bridget (hair) and Jimi (air), Amy Winehouse joined Jimi in the 27 club this year along with legend, Phoebe Snow, leaving lady voices of Adele, Annie Clark, Lady Gaga and (we spotted her early-on) Florence Welch to carry the torch. And yes, Beyonce even made our list, given her swing to Mama-hood and Boho, Bardot-hood. Welcome to Bohemia, deary-one.

Yukimi Nagano is another Fem-Love of mine, she gets the “Neo-Bridget Award.” A little Morcheeba, a little Chaka Khan, Erykah Badu, I am loving the new album from Little Dragon, Ritual Union, with more songs on top of the song I already consider my theme song, Constant Surprises:

As for the menfolk and bands, this year we honored the passing of Heavy D, Nick Ashford and heavy, Gil Scott Heron, while we loved TV on the Radio, Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra, Bon Iver (we called them early on too) and traveling troupadour Gary Clark Jr. He gets the crown of Nu-Reverb, the “Neo-Jimi Award,” making live guitar blues sound like it might the first time ever breathed, ever invented. And the voice…the voice.

My all-time favorite music these days? Nature sounds on radio. crickets. bubbling brooks. birds. frogs. angels.

Angel come down from heaven yesterday
she stayed with me just long enough
for afternoon tea
and she told me a story yesterday
about the love between the moon and the deep blue sea
and when it was time for her to go
she spread her wings her wings high over me
and she said i shall return tomorrow

and i said fly on my sweet angel
fly on through the skies
fly on me sweet angel
tomorrow i will feel you by my side

and sure enough
this morning comes to me
with silver wings silhouetted
against the glow of the child sunrise
and as the blue birds and the sparrows envy me
she says i love you little boy
today you shall fly
she kissed me once
and the feeling so good
she made me cry
and now we can fly together

i said fly on my sweet angel
fly on through the skies
fly on my sweet angel
together we shall always be light

W A V E   ON.

happy new year friends.

LOVE, Jade    

                                 OX   OX    

                                      !

                                    (…..)

   go on now. 
transcend. weave. be the inspiration, beauty + invention of people, places + things beyond Time.


One Response to “2012: Feather Surfing A Tidal Wave”

  1. Great ideas and new, improved technology is coming to the renewable energy field at a fast pace. Even with the setbacks, alternative energy will soon overtake oil.