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Moses the Maestro

A journey through Agave Liquors
or
The Currency of Attention #1

Every once in a while, we get to experience spontaneous fun. One of these moments was the other day when I wondered into a wanderful experience, driven by curiosity and an open mind. It was an experience that taught me a lot about artisanal Tequila and Mescal, got me pretty buzzed, and created some new friends out of strangers. It all started with a question.

For the record, I don’t drink. I might have a glass of wine with a fine meal, once a month or so. But I don’t keep any alcohol in my home, and I don’t go out to bars or clubs. Not as a rule, but just in practice. Partly because of COVID but mostly because I’ve gotten whatever I wanted out of those kinds of experiences already, and they hold no mystery for me anymore.

But I do appreciate fine things. In fact, this whole blog was conceived as a vehicle to muse on my adventures with the Aristotelian principal of the loving contemplation of worthy things. Aristotle believed that a happy life is one devoted to contemplation, obviously he practiced what he preached…. In this spirit, I consider all things done with care, deep knowledge, practice and fine technique to be worth learning about.

With this in mind as I came back from the beach at sunset, I walked in to the liquor store on the main street that runs through this tiny town on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It sits on the main street through town with all the surf shops, restaurants and bars, real estate offices, and parks with kids skateboarding. The street ends at the Pacific Ocean, just waiting there like a massive sleeping fun beast.

The store is small, but inviting, and packed with twisted bottles on shelves, the most ornate right at eye level. Many types of Tequila, Mezcal, Raicilla, Pox, Sotol, Charanda, and all kinds of mysteries. The store was empty and I have been thinking about trying to visit a Tequila distillery to learn more about how it’s made. Agaves are strange alien plants, beautiful and dangerous, that seem more wise tree for their 80 year lifespan. I have come to know some green Agaves during my time in Sedona. I’ve long known that Tequila comes from Agave. It says so on the bottles I drank as a teenager. I have seen the agave farms in the countryside in this part of Mexico, and it just seems like a natural thing to do here.

Moses, the shopkeeper

“Hola, buenas.” I said as I entered. I say this everywhere in Mexico.

“Hola. Que te puedo ayudar?” asked the man behind the counter. It’s not a full question, but serves nonetheless. He had a creased, tanned face, with lines deep from his smile, and many smiles before that.

I studied the shelves. There were hundreds of bottles, filled with different color liquid from clear to dark brown, in various shapes and looking various levels of expensive. I thought I might buy a small bottle to try it, and to keep at home to serve to guests. Being a good host is important to me. I knew nothing about artisanal brands of tequila, but chose a few small bottles based mostly on price and the unique shape, and walked up to the counter.

Rather than just buy and walk out, it occurred to me that this man might be able to shed some light on what makes for a good tequila. I’ve been a bartender at fine restaurants, and spent some time with a sommelier who was studying to take the Master Sommelier exam, which is brutal: a blindfold taste of 5 random bottles of any kind of wine from anywhere, of any year. Passing grade, to be named a ‘Master Sommelier’ means to be able to name the make, year, varietal, and region of at least 3 of them, based just on blind taste. There is a method to it and it can be learned. Still, it’s a daunting task.

So there must be a reason some tequilas cost a few dollars, and others a few hundred.

Smiling, with undivided attention, and in Spanish that I hope sounds smooth, I politely asked the teller what was the difference in the three bottles I chose. He smiled, and his answer was 2 hours long and tons of fun.

His name was Moses. He seemed to have been bored, but when I asked him to explain, his eyes lit up, he leaned forward, and smiled.  I got the impression this was not his first time doing everything that came next.

Artisanal vs. Commercial

First, he took out a little Artisanal Tequila book from under the counter, and laid it open for me. In Spanish he described the process of harvesting Agave for Tequila.

There are over 200 varieties of Agave that we know of, all growing around the arid, hot ecological region in the SW US and all over Mexico.  Tequila is made out of only one of them, the Blue Agave, and it has a specific humidity range that covers Mexico from the Pacific to the Caribbean, running right through Mexico City. Tequila is only made in 5 states in Mexico, Jalisco being the #1, and including Nayarit, where I am living. Mezcal, on the other hand, can be made from green Agave, and is made out of around 30 of them. Mezcal is being produced almost everywhere in Mexico. 

To harvest the Agave, they cut all the arms off, leaving a large ball. This is called La Pina, which literally means Pineapple. It looks just like one, though giant and round.
Inside the Pina is the Aguadulce, or sweetwater, the raw material they need to make liquor.  It is not drinkable at this point, there are too many bitter and toxic compounds.

So they cook them.  For Tequila, they cook the Pinas in a brick room, above ground.  This room is fumigated and has good ventilation, so the Pinas come out without any flavor added. For Mezcal, they bake them in an underground oven, like a sweat lodge, and the smoke stays in the room. The Pinas all take on the smokey flavor, which can be quite complex and varied.

After cooking, they leave them in barrels to ferment.  Most are fresh wood, but this Is where the fun stuff comes in.

So far, I’ve learned a lot I didn’t know. But It has also been fun chatting with this friendly guy, and I like him. Right about here is where he starts talking about the differences in pricing, and quality. As he does, he reaches back behind him, where I see about 20 bottles, all of which have varying degrees of liquid in them. They have all been opened.

He pulls out 5 different bottles, clearly considering what to choose based on what I’ve said about my preferences. If you are going to do something, do it the best way, so that’s what I asked for. He pours a small tasting shot out of the first bottle, and I sip. This is a fancy twisty bottle with liquid in the stopper top. It is extra volume of the same liquor, and is real. This bottle is covered in Black of some material, a label that covers the whole bottle.

The Tasting

I sip it like I was taught from the Sommelier.

First, appreciate with the eyes. The liquid is dark, Amber to the point of being purple-brown. I have a paper shot glass, but it looks transparent, not just translucent. Clear, though dark. 

Next, the smell.  The heat of alcohol is nicely wrapped in sweet caramel, cherry, molasses-y and spice-flavored olfactory notes. Well balanced.

Finally the sip, done properly with a lot of air. The oxygen enhances the flavor and aroma. I sense a sweet explosion, though very rounded out. Rich and deep flavor, nothing astringent, both sweet and savory. It changes in my mouth, from spice to candy, over 10 seconds.

I like it.

Artisanal tequilas are produced while putting quality over quantity. This means a few things, practically.

First, they let the Agaves grow until they are 30. That means for 30 years, they do not harvest a field. Wine grapes can be harvested every year. Most tequilas you have heard of, including Don Julio, Patron, Hornitos, etc. harvest after only 4 years… babies in the Agave world. Agaves live up to 80 years, and flower once. This patience for harvest means more complex, more mature, and far less volume to begin with.

Next, they re-use barrels from other kinds of liquor. Whiskey barrels, Red Wine barrels, Scotch barrels, you name it. This makes up most of the difference between the different Brands of Artisanal tequila.

Another difference lies in how long they ferment it. Anejo means about 2 years. 2-4 years is Extra-anejo. More than that is Super-Anejo.  The best tequilas (of this type) are 4-8 years, and the longest is 10. That’s because the barrels lose a huge amount of liquid every year, absorbed by the wood and evaporated through osmosis. This first Tequila I tasted was 8 years old, aged in a Whiskey barrel.

Another difference is the technology behind the actual mashing process. Truly Artisanal manufacturers use technology that was around before industrial machines. That means using a giant circular stone, pulled around by a horse harnessed to a long pole, that mashes the agave pinas as it rolls around on top of them. All processes done by hand. Impressive.

We continued down the line. I tasted a Tequila from a regular barrel, aged 6 years. A Red Wine barrel, a Scotch barrel. And my favorite (and it turns out Moses’ too) was aged 4 years in a whiskey barrel, and 4 years after that in a Red Wine barrel, It was not as sweet as the first, and still incredibly balanced, with enough personality and acid backbone to carry it’s flavors. It was more complex, but lighter than the first one.

Next, he pulled out three clear bottles, of something called Cristalino. It is Extra-Anejo, but they filter out all the color. It’s fine, but missing the richness of the unfiltered liquor, in my opinion.

Susan Walks In

The first, and only, mezcal that I like

About this time a woman arrived. She was in her 50s, with short blond hair, and a petite frame.  She was there to buy some water.  Moses offered her to taste the tequilas with me.  I was surprised at first, since we had been talking for more than a half hour, but it was his liquor.

I introduced myself. She replied in an Aussie accent, apparently she was living in Colorado and came to Mexico to escape the mental atmosphere of the US. Her Spanish wasn’t great, but Moses asked me to explain everything so far to catch her up. I did so, knowing that reciting something, the act of trying to remember, is a very powerful tool to help my own memory. I threw myself into it, thought I had had a few shots’ worth of fine liquor already, and zero tolerance.

She was duly impressed by the flavors. We returned to Moses, it seemed he had more to share with us. He asked me to translate a Mezcal named ‘Devorador de Pecados. I guess because he wants to explain to other customers after me in English.

Translating ‘Devorador de Pecados’ for Moses leads to…

I began to translate from Spanish to English as Moses continued his tale. My Spanish is ok.  I don’t have to translate from English in my head, but it’s not a smooth thought process.

Even if I pause often to remember a word, or mess up gender suffixes from time to time, I can still mostly carry a conversation. I credit my biggest advances with Spanish fluency to hanging out at night with other kids in Venezuela, at 16 years old, while they drank Calimochos (rum and coke) and joked around. I had to try to keep up with 3 different conversations at the same time. While drinking.  I still speak better when I’m buzzed. It was going swimmingly now.

Moses kept walking us through liquors, and even took a few tastes himself of his favorites. We went through a total of 9 different Tequilas. Moses just kept pulling bottles from the shelves behind him. This was his show. He clearly appreciated that I was listening and that I remembered what he said.

“Usualmente no lo hago, pero… es porque tu sabes.”

‘Because I know,’ but really because I was listening.

…The secret meaning of the Scorpion in side bottles of Mezcal

I was curious about the Mescals, and told Moses I had not found one I liked yet, but was open to it. He pulled out 5 bottles from the shelves behind him. We tasted them in 2 rounds, first of 3 and second another 2.  Each round was curated by Moses, based on our tastes so far. He considers himself a bit of a maestro. That seemed a funny thought to me, buzzed as I was. Moses the Maestro. He liked the name.

Moses the Masetro, and Mezcals worth Mentioning

Mescals can be sharp, or dull. Bitter or sweet. Its hard to know what to look for. All I know is that there was one, not too strong, more balanced, that I liked, once I got over the smokiness. Knowing where it came from allowed me to accept it more. Kind of like taking a class on John Coltrane made me appreciate his genius, when I could not listen to him before that.

Chatting with Susan, I opened up about what I am doing in Mexico. It was amusing to hear her reply, multiple times, ‘I’m trying to do that too.’ There is something that is being shared, even if we are not aware of it, a reaction, a personal place we are all in separately at the same time, caused by some shared realities over the past year.  It is a good thing to remember as I spend most of my days in solitude.  A sleeping power, or a force lying dormant, for now, but shared and waiting to be discovered.

Yes, that’s the same liquid in the stopper. Bonus

I had to call this ride to an end, though, I was drunk.  It was 8 pm, we had tasted 14 different kinds of liquor, and I still wanted to do my Yoga for the day. Susan seemed disappointed the tasting had come to an end. We bid farewell, and exchanged WhatsApp numbers. I walked home, satisfied.

Moses is the kind of proprietor I willingly buy expensive things from. I chose my favorite Tequila, Adictivo Super-Anejo, and the one Mezcal that I liked, Devorador de Pescados, the one that told the myth of the origins of Mezcal, and bought them. The Tequila was still 3 times as expensive as the Mezcal… but now I have a story, and some knowledge, and a sensory experience to share with house-guests.

Look what I got into today, a day well spent, just because I listened and paid attention. I made friends with Moses the Maestro, and the Aussie woman named Susan. And I learned I like this Mescal, Devorador de Pecados, the eater of sins.  


PS I still did the yoga. That was fun…

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Dreams and Quiet Voices #3

I woke up yesterday haunted by a sweet, sorrowful song that is relatively unfamiliar to me.

Sleep studies have shown a few interesting things in (relatively) recent years, one of which is the idea that while humans naturally sleep for 8 hours, a pattern emerges when distractions of artificial lights and alarm clocks are removed, where the sleep occurs in two four-hour stages, and that it’s a modern invention to think we should sleep through the whole night. This pattern is referred to as Biphasic Sleep.

Album Cover, This Mortal Coil

The theory goes that artificial light, a recent addition to the world, keeps us up long past the sunset, when our natural circadian rhythms start winding us down for bed. A hundred years ago, so this thinking says, it would be quite natural to wake up in the middle of the night, lie awake (relatively) for an hour or two, then slip back into sleep (NIH article).

That hour or two is an interesting time, cognitively. It is a creative time, half-conscious, where ideas come, or we solve problems. Or we spend it making love. I am more curious about what is happening in our minds and consciousness as we bridge the two deep sleep cycles. The powerful dreams come just at the beginning of this waking period. So too do these times when I run, over and over, a song track in my mind. It comes unbidden, and has a life of its own, and I am simply here to understand why.

Which makes this song, ‘Song To The Siren’ by This Mortal Coil, interesting. It’s one I recently added to my rotation, but that’s not unordinary.

Song to the Siren, by This Mortal Coil. Press play to listen

Why this one?

First, it makes the hair on my neck stand up listening to it. I am overcome with a powerful feeling of loss and nostalgia. The halcyon days of youth become a faded dream I just woke up from. Half-memories, half promises; of heartbreak and hardship. I don’t even know the words, but the feeling is always there, as soon as the song starts playing, and long after it ends. A timeless state. Just like the minutes and hours at the end of a sleep period.

The first thing I do usually when this happens is listen to it in the morning, right after meditating. I listened to this one on single-song repeat for hours. Its mystery slowly unfolds though I am still at a loss for why my subconscious singled it out. It begs the question: what is happening in my life that this is a message for me now, from my deeper self? I am on my own in a foreign country, dealing with the vagaries of noise pollution and a community that cares deeply about some good things, but not at all about things like health standards, building codes, or peace and quiet.

Sometimes it is just a feeling, a mood. Nothing more.

This song came to me through a MasterClass I was watching by David Lynch, talking about the creative process and filmmaking. He wanted to use it for ‘Wild At Heart’ but it was out of his budget… but he loves this song, so I listened to it. And it is very Lynchian… moody, mystical, dark but soft.  I am in pursuit of my own creative forces, particularly in writing fiction, and I have been practicing thinking about mood in new ways. During my photography career I was very focused on concept and technical skill, but not so much on mood. I am trying it on as a worthy pillar for good fiction and good storytelling. So I have set myself up to try to feel it, like David Lynch does. He talks about ‘falling in love’ with an idea. I guess this song is the memory of that love. It resonates with me as I emerge from a yearlong period of mourning for the end of my own marriage.

What is it we lose, when we forego this period of trance-like deep creative half-dream? I believe this is the time we integrate our conscious thoughts with the deep well of subconscious information processing we do all day, every day. We clear out the garbage, tidy the house, connect our will to circumstance, and ask ourselves for help. This series about dreams and quiet voices is an exploration of my own trance state, and what I can learn, and how I can benefit from paying attention to it.  For now, I will simply feel the ethereal, moody dream that I seem to gravitate towards at this time in my life. I will give it time and space to be. So it is!

More from this series:
Dreams and Quiet Voices #2
Dreams and Quiet Voices #1

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The Leap Taken

So many kids grow up in fear, and never taking the leap of faith. I try to seize every chance I get to feel grateful to have been raised in the woods, 15 miles outside a town of 2000 people, at the end of a mile long dirt road. Of course as a child I just wanted to go learn about the culture of the big city… Now in my adulthood, I want to find a place just like it and stay there for a long time (ok, with internet).

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What I Have Learned from Sound

Signal from Noise.
Or the longest AirBnB review ever

This is what I see from my writing desk, in the outdoor kitchen

I have been living for the last two weeks in the noisiest, most chaotic, diverse zone of head-splitting blow-your-top auditory assault of an AirBnB I have ever spent the night.

I am new-come to a foreign land, in a pueblo not larger than a hundred cement-block buildings along a small river that empties into the Mexican Pacific Coast. A landing place for the last few months of my sabbatical; a time for development, acceleration, and growth after a challenging last two years.

I sit here now at my desk, aka the dining table in the outdoor kitchen. There is nothing more than a single white curtain between me and the ubiquitous passing vehicles: water trucks starting their deliveries at 5:30 am. The construction trucks from the multi-unit development project a hundred feet down the street to my right. Old beat-up pickup trucks with cheap megaphones hawking shrimp or fruit in shrill, nerve-grating timbre. Motorcycles with no DMV restrictions on sound or exhaust.

All of them run rumbling and screeching in protest at the torture of the washboard cobblestone carrera that lies as a major throughway into town center, a mere 25 feet from me as I write this. The trucks kick up dust that spills from the construction project just past the brewpub next door, on my side of the street.

Sounds from inside my apartment late at night

It breaks my focus. 

I can’t concentrate.

How long is this debilitating painful annoying aggravating disturbing tranquility-shattering cacophony going to last?

I came here with an itinerary and a schedule. One that was built over months of planning in silence and abundant personal space. One that assumed it would be chaotic here, but relied on the idea that spending a little extra on AirBnB would allow me to at least shut out noise while inside. Enough to meditate. Or read. Or, failing that, maybe during some hours of the day it would be relatively quiet.

This was not the case

I can’t keep myself in any rhythm.

Shrimp-mongers run circuits past my door, all day every day, calling out with tinny megaphones

I came here to write, to be creative, to practice very clean and healthy living. To fast intermittently, meditate, practice music, and take care of my body. It was more the plan of the Monk I had been back in Arizona than anything I could be here in this place. A monk has his mountain temple. I have a sound tunnel with no wall, that fronts this cobblestone street. In the back there is a square hole larger than my shower cut out of the grey concrete wall, with a screen on it and no window. The hole opens to an outdoor kitchen being used at all hours by 3 teenage girls. They play music, have boys over, drink and laugh, loud like they can’t conceive of anything put on this earth that could stop them, I might add… They practice twerking. They fix midnight snacks at 2 am after coming home from the bars or beach fires.

Nothing separates my bathroom from the patio where teenagers party, except a screen

I can’t close the window. It isn’t there.

Dogs bark, a staccato clap from any angle, any distance, any time.

And I came here to spend my time convincing myself spiritually that ‘there is no spoon’ not getting angry because physically there is no window. My meditation is literal practice to not get into patterns of aversion towards unpleasant sensations.  I’m taking a bath in unpleasant sensations. And the water is full of other people’s things. People I didn’t invite into my bathroom.

All I can think is, what can I do to stop the noise? I can’t think of anything that isn’t mean. I can’t think. I want to be mean. I get angry. I feel overwhelmed. It’s a physical feeling, like waking up inside a barrel filled with hot sand, naked, with a sunburn. And not being able to get out. Sometimes when it gets too much to bear I take a walk. Or a run. Or I go to the beach, but that just reminds me of hot sand…

Construction on the other side of the lot next door. The bottom left is a bar with live music every night

I am amazed at watching other areas of my life suffer because of sound. My diet for one. I can’t plan my way around the tasty, cheap tacos on every corner. A salsa-trap too sweet to avoid. My Keto cookbook lies unopened, covered in dust from the trucks beating the cobblestone street for 3 weeks. My desire to talk to strangers, or have patience with the building manager. Or neighbors.

I retreat, into a shell of noise-cancellation headphones, that leave my ears itching and sore overnight. All else is chaos and disruption. Noises caused by other people become black and solitude white. The world divides. I check out of the noise, of the outside. Especially at night, I turn my back and walk away as the building manager tries to explain that the neighbors are new and there is nothing he can do. I feel rude by the time I get to the top of the stairs. But I do not have the energy to change it. All non-survival level concerns are excused away by lack of sleep.

I am guessing this is all typical stress response for many people. It is a privilege that I don’t have bigger stresses in my life than noise. That doesn’t make it easier.

Recorded from my bed at 1 am

And nothing gets done. I can’t focus. I contemplate giving up.

A war zone should even have some hours of quiet.

I try to tell people about this torment. Friends who listen with a polite smile frozen on their mouth. Or strangers, who clearly prefer to go back to having fun. No comprehension in anyone’s eyes.

Am I the only one who is bothered by this? Why does this racket bother only me? And why so much? Other people live here too…

There is a bar, right next to my building. It has really good live music, if that’s what I’m into. It sounds muffled but still loud if I’m not, or simply lying on my bed trying to read. They promise to stop at 9pm. It’s a rule, the locals keep promising me.  Its written on the AirBnB. I think the rule applies to the whole town. There are about a baker’s dozen bars here, one for every block. I have usually thought about complaining at least a hundred times before 11:30 pm.  Most nights. At its worst, I had to listen to binaural white noise at 3/4 full volume on my good quality headphones with active noise cancellation in order to fall asleep. I could still hear the boys howling on the patio at 1:30 am.

Cement blocks open to the outside

Should I go over there and talk to them? None of my friends suggest this option… I talk to whomever will listen. I can’t think too hard about who they might be.

My sleep gets blown up. I am half asleep all day.

Where is the joy I felt just a few weeks ago? The extra gear? The springed step?

There is another sound tunnel, right next to mine. A stranger lives there. Her music, like mine too, can be heard easily from my writing desk, which is my kitchen table.

Everything is fuzzy, like I experience it through a long tunnel, like it comes from far away.

In between, or when away, my mind clears. My thoughts, focus, perspective, slowly come back after a time. And my mind says to me:

  • Yes, this is really an anomaly. Enough independent and random sources of chaotic noise to be a perfect coincidence. But also a great lesson for you.
  • You have had a nice and privileged time in Arizona. You are welcome, it has been a difficult year for many.
  • Yes, the sanctity of silence and serenity is seriously significant. You need to prioritize it in order to live the way you like.
  • It’s ok to cry uncle.  Sometimes toughing it out is not the best way to move through it.
  • Uninterrupted concentration and its shadow, daydreaming, are good for you. they help with expression, problem solving, and staying motivated.
  • You make this noise too, practicing your saxophone.
  • Good job not escalating when you are disturbed. Especially when you are out of your mind angry with the teenagers at 2:00 am and you can’t sleep. An eye for an eye makes for terrible neighbors.
  • It takes some time to be able to read how a place works. Sometimes it’s hard to listen. You can’t be of a place unless you can hear its rhythms.
  • Be grateful you don’t have bigger sources of stress.
  • It’s a particularly first-world sense of entitlement to lose your shit over the roosters before dawn. Or even to expect building standards. Anyone who has lived in a 3rd world country for longer than a week, outside a luxury resort, knows this.
  • It also teaches you to love your home country more because of the absence of the things Americans take for granted.
  • Yes, I can become accustomed even to the chaos and unexpected interruption of anything and continue my practice. Wow.

I can say it’s gotten easier. I’ve meditated on the distractions to meditation. And I’ve heard them speak. I’m not angry anymore, because I have had to throw out my high expectations, at least for now. And things are fixing to be better soon…

Soon, I’ll be moving on. As soon as I can. Sooner than my term ends here. Losing a little money is an acceptable price for peace of mind. My equilibrium is priceless. Solitude and silence call to my soul. Until then, it’s 18 hours of noise cancelling headphones a day, and go deeper inside.

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Dreams and Quiet Voices #2

I have learned to listen to the songs in my head. They are my subconscious telling my conscious mind some truth about how I feel, at the most fundamental level. The song running around like a wild horse in the fields of my mind all night, in my dreams, was a cover of ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’ originally by the Police, covered by Jacob Collier, aka, DJesse.

The song is such an enthusiastic and upbeat declaration of love, of the magic of feeling in love, or an expression of the muse, the experience of the muse in the life of an artist. For me, this has been the paradigm of what love is, since childhood. The poets speak of it (Rumi, Browning, Yeats, St. Cloud); musicians sing about it especially rock, in modern times. The idea of love or romantic love has been reinvented in living memory, through pop music and pop culture, fetishized, enshrined, pedestalized, and worshipped as we look for something to take our moral center in the absence of organized faith.

So love has become something of a mystic and holy state, in the minds of our poets and artists. And me, apparently. I take it as a good sign that I am moving past 2 years of heartbreak, the end of a long relationship and marriage, and the new awakening to the fact that all things are possible for me except the one I had committed to for the rest of my life. This happened against my will. But so be it, such things shape us, and, after many months of spinning in circles, eventually I got so much more out of doing the work to get here: clear on goals, strong and fit, and working on my passions and my own goals, both material and immaterial. I am loving my life right now.

So, even though this was in my head for a brief time, and it was a song that is in my rotations (meaning I listen to it semi-daily), it is still a sign that I am strong, and that possibilities are opening for me. I have come through my long dark winter of heartache. I am in touch with the joy of excitement about the world, and about amazing people I can meet. I am once again able to see the delight in getting to know another person, deeply. Like another song about this says, ‘I Will Survive‘ Halelujiah!

More from this series:
Dreams and Quiet Voices #1

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100 q’s: Think like Da Vinci

Good things from the 90’s #1

As part of an ongoing project to find good and useful information in books written before smartphones, social media, and the widespread internet, I’ve been reading an old book ‘How to think like Da Vinci‘ by Michael J. Gelb. Like the whole series, this one is a bit dated, first published in the 90’s. In other words, a different world, but perhaps one that we would do well to remember. In this other world, appropriately read from print on paper, we are reminded to be better and that we are responsible for our own experience of reality.

Da Vinci is held as a pinnacle example of enlightenment thought, the quintessential ‘Rennaisance man’ or homme de Renaissance. Interestingly enough, Da Vinci was a secular, non-partisan intellectual, and was just as happy offering his services to brutal militant leaders like the Medici’s, as to the Church, or even foreign nobles from France, considered enemies of his home cities in Italy. For this reason, perhaps, his works were less finished, and less acclaimed in his lifetime, though he was recognized in his day.

I just completed his first principal: Curiosita: the idea that we can understand and learn by asking questions, even if we do not have the answers right away. This exercise consisted of writing down 100 questions, all in one sitting. Whatever pops into your head. Of course some of them will be mundane, or even funny. “How much longer do I have to do this’ is a perfectly good question to write down. In fact, the first 20 questions tend to be obvious, and therefore not the most profound. The middle section of 21-80 yields some gems, and themes emerge. And then, 81-100 can get deep, and tend to be the most soul-searching.

After the 100 questions, the exercise tells us to pick our top 10. Pick based on themes, but the key is to get down quickly to what matters most. These then are recorded and become a resource to remind you of what you are most interested in, and keep your mind engaged.

The exercise goes on, and the practice of writing down questions turns to a large physical phenomenon, such as ‘birds in flight’ or ‘the body’ or other rennaissance themes, then you choose your own. Then you journal in a day about a theme, noticing things related to that theme, for example: my body in contact with the physical/material world.

I do not believe that there is an App for everything. I think certain things are antithetical to the experience of working with your smartphone. Meditation is one (and yes, there are good meditation apps but I question if the user actually gets the same benefit through an app as through a retreat), and these longer-view intellectual exercises are another. So, in the spirit of transparency and authentic discovery, here are 10 best questions taken from my 100:

‘What will happen if I allow my mind to fully come into it’s own (not just turn it off)?’

‘How much joy is it possible to fit into the life that remains for me?’

‘What can I get rid of in my life to be more successful, full of joy, and fulfilled?’

‘How can I write a book as good as “The Overstory” by Richard Powers?’

‘Will Humanity survive the next 100 years? The next 1000?’

‘What are the things on my death bed, that I look back on to say I have lived a full and good life, and touched greatness?’

‘How do I experience the nature of all reality, that it is all impermanent?’

‘How can I stay connected to the highest truth, even in a chaotic life?’

‘What does everyone else know for certain that I know isn’t true?’

‘What cause outside of myself can I willingly give my efforts to, without resentment or reservation?’

‘What are the mythologies for older men that remain open for me?”What does it mean to age?’

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Dreams and Quiet Voices #1

Spending a lot of time alone with oneself does strange things to one’s mind. Not bad, don’t get me wrong, but things that you might not want to talk about in public. So of course I run to my blog to talk about it, because it’s so private…

I am convinced my subconscious, my intuition, my quiet voice speaks to me through the songs that get stuck in my head. Not all for the same reasons, and not all in the same way. But for example, if a song is in my head while I am asleep, and I dream the lyrics over and over and over, as happened yesterday, it is significant.

One song that stuck on repeat in my unconscious mind – that vast, fathomless multitude of self that processes 80% of the information I absorb daily, and tries to make sense of it nightly – was ‘Apple Tree’ by Erika Badu. It’s significant that this is a song on a playlist that I listen to, so it did not come from deep within me, as some songs do that I haven’t heard in years… but it wanted, and got, a moment of its own, to make its point.

The lyrics ‘I work on pleasing me ’cause I can’t please you…/ and that’s why I do what I do’ and ‘I don’t waste my time trying to get what you got,/ and I don’t mess around tryin’ to be what I’m not’ are exactly why this song hijacked the feedback mechanism between my conscious and unconscious mind, for a few hours in the early morning.

I’ve been working on myself, developing my creative expression, and asking myself what I want to be and do, and who I want to be daily for the last 5 weeks. The questions are part of a project, a program, if you will, that I built around my day, to give my free time structure and myself some direction and discipline. It’s difficult to structure time and spend it well, when there is nothing external to peg to. No schedule, no commitments to other co-workers. My priorities, my goals, my time is entirely my own. That has been a problem this year as we all deal with social isolation and the pandemic. It has been a fruitful time of introspection at long last.

My subconscious was having a party. The party had a one-song soundtrack. And Erika was the guest of honor, because she wrote a song that is just TRUE for me right now. I am just being me, not anyone else, and I can’t be bothered to care what anyone thinks about it because I am LOVING it! My life is full of the things I love, all day long. Not just in a short term satisfaction way, but the long term, important not urgent things that help me progress towards my life long goals – Creative Writing, brainstorming for business, talking to friends, and good, comprehensive physical health goals. Exercise, diet, and clean living.

When my unconscious sings to me, I listen. My muse, my guide, my self is talking to the tiny part of the multitude I am that is called my conscious mind. All of my daily meditation, all of my journaling, and my exercises to face the tough questions in myself; all of it together helps my conscious mind shut up and listen, and choose to be quiet. This is the way to pursue that elusive Jungian goal of total integration of self. My practices are my chariot, diverse forces harnessed to pull me towards the goal of self-knowledge. It is a bonus that I know myself enough to recognize the message in the music. Party on!