divineguitar

A Turkish ship runs and Israeli blockade, and there’s nothing the United States can do about it…..Interesting implications here, an event that merits rewriting 85% of America’s foreign policy in the middle east.

I can’t articulate as well as Stratfor, but I can attempt to understand.  Most folks would look at this through a political lens to seek the answers, few would look at it through a historical perspective, few from the eyes of dramatist, and very few that can understand it systemically, without bias or prejudice.

I’m very proud to have a pocket of people who are futurists, or transcendentalists, people who relentlessly seek the truth from all avenues and understand the truth depends on where you sit, and can converse to find common knowledge.

Any business discipline is a piece of cake when you compare it to the likes of truly grasping Plato’s Symposium, a text I had on the nightstand for years.  I can relentless crunch the numbers that ‘never lie,’ keep up with the headlines, read the blogs, talk to ‘subject matter experts,’ but none match what I can learn by listening to things like The Divine Comedy’s The Complete Banker or taking a vacation to the beach.

Events are what make the world go round, but there’s a pocket of people that think ‘whats next?,’ and factor in the age old banter of politics, market ideologies, and religion.  There are actually people that factor in the ‘point / counterpoint’ nature of of our institutions.  Small minds blame people, capable minds see a strain on our government, market, judicial and social systems, and the extraordinary look at the world with a razor sharp lens of objectivity and utility all the while factoring in human variance on various wedge issues.

My German teacher is one of these folks.  A PHD student in philosophy, on our language sessions we talk about the days events, friends and family in German and what time is left over we hit civics, spirituality and transcendentalism in English.  Wie ist deine Mutter (how is your mom) in Deutsch, …..something much more deep in English.

Life has been very constructive and whimsical, the way it should be.

The Banker

Cashing in on the pop goodness of Bon Jovi….you see, he’s a man that’s grown old with ‘coolness’ and dignity.  While the likes of many 80′s rockers are in heroin rehab, he’s still selling out arenas all over the world.

It’s the stuff role models are made of….no no no…he didn’t resort to slammin’ cheetos and sitting on the couch feeling sorry for himself when Kurt Cobain shattered what was the ‘good’ music of the time, he reinvented himself, he hit the resistance, surpassed it, and came out clean on the other side.

Something sorta like what we all face on a daily basis, do we go that extra step?  Do we do our best to fight the resistance, re-invent ourselves, find new purposes, and try new things….All questions I’ve been asking my exhausted soul as of late.

Living in Texas for 31 years I’ve become used to things, big macs, big wal marts, big highways, big cars, big egos, big budget deficits, a big second helping of apple pie.  Living as an expat I try to avoid these things like the plague.

It’s amazing how the lion’s share of American expats are tourist on the weekend, yet during the week they don’t even try to integrate with the local culture.  They don’t learn the language, or shop at the local markets, or break the fear and let curiosity run free in conversation.  They shop the local big American style Wal-Mart and american style Safeway, and often poke fun at local traditions and customs…..

my my my, how small your parking spaces are…..wow the language sounds so rough!  i’d never eat that…..that’s just how it is over here (in blanket accusation format), always, and forever will be….

the misconception and fallacy go on and on —-

where does that leave me?  I’d say in a pickle….for a 34 year old in his 4th country in 3 years, reality finally sinks in and makes me realize this crazy little thing called language might come easy in your tender young years, but a good Slovak, Arabic, Romance or Germanic language turns me into a bumbling fool.  I HATE when I’m out with my German friends and the crowd has to appease me, the ‘English speaker.’  If ANYTHING is a motivation to learn the language, its that.  I want so much to talk about important stuff (gardening and family) with my German counterparts that I’m viciously intent on becoming fluent until it kills me.

Logistically I’m in Swabian heaven situated in Stuttgart West in a nicely furnished (between Grandma’s style and Stanley Kubrick via Eyes Wide Shut), 10 minutes from downtown, pubs and restaurants abound, 10 minute commute to work, 4 seasons, back to having purpose at work, health, legs, heart, ambition…..basically all the things you need to craft up some good stories as the years go by.  Roger Waters in Moscow is something I want to shoot for this April, lets see if I can hold myself accountable for it by writing it down, or will the Gods of overhead of life and responsibility steal it away from my clutches…?

The whole dang thing amazes me really….while so much of our country goes belly up, the payroll on the frontier is astounding.  Can the center hold the sides?…, that’s the philosophical question I ponder in empty brain waves.

Meanwhile as everyone (including myself) has a hypothesis about what is going wrong.  These range from all sorts of political brain damage scenarios, to geopolitical strife, to the decline of morals, and failures in both government and market ideologies.  Certainly there is a Mule roaming around, as with Asimov’s Foundation and Empire…..something that just sneaks up on you, something that puts you in a trance, something that is welcome with open arms….something that is seen as the answer…..something that you are addicted to…..something that strangles you……something that you will chase but never catch, and that’s a combination of technology and statistics….  Which provide ‘answers’ to irrelevant questions. No iphone app has fundamentally changed the human condition,  but certainly make the jobs of the leaders of the free world more challenging to the point of a full fledged command and control center is worthless and people have forgotten how to use the compass and their intuition.  I hear people talk shop about the mechanics of tools all the time, but avoid framing the challenges philosophically and intuitively.

The folks Kabel BW have blessed me with a 100/mb pipe for 44 Euro a month, roughly 10 times faster than the ‘Turbo’ package at Time Warner.

The Mule, Playing the Flute, Foundation and Empire

Shaking some hands this week and marking this chapter on Italy and 2010 complete and thinking about lessons learned, I feel the biggest lessons learned are ones that are hard to explain, they go more along the lines of how I felt, more spiritual and less scientific.

I know what it feels like to live in Northern Italy and open the window in the middle of the night, take a deep breath, exhale and watch part of your soul escape you in the cold.  I know what an amazing seafood antipasti followed by a meat ‘dim sum’ with a bottle of 10 year old red wine is about at a 100 year old Trattoria.  In addition, the sites, sounds and intangibles of just ‘being’ are extraordinary.

But that was the easy and fun part.  The rest you could say was experienced with a distant and diverted lens.  Trying to reconcile ambiguity into purpose is almost impossible unless you’re motivated by the end state or self-serving purposes, of which, I feel equal motivation.  However when you struggle to see where the rubber hits the road, as David Gray says, ‘the bridge burns beneath the wheel,’ and you’re left wonder on many different levels, and a quest to find someone who understands these things a little bit better than you…to depart wisdom, to join ranks, to high five, to say, ‘I understand……’

You get a jaded sentiment that suggests people care, but are preoccupied with the news of the day, and refuse to believe they are owned by it, the same news you don’t want to be a part of.

You’re out on a limb sorting through harder stuff.  As they say, where you stand is where you sit, and in the last six month I’ve seen what a bright green movement could do for a society, but then again with the influx of technology and social innovation you always have to be careful what you ask for, for as counterbalance suggests, all that comes with innovations leads you to understand the boys who make the missiles are just as innovative.

So the lessons learned for 2010,

• Wu Wei, something perhaps Thomas Jefferson practiced back in the day when it said something like ‘its better to do nothing than to do something wrong.’  If I don’t know the ‘why’ of a course of action, I’ll wait for a fully articulated big picture and execute (as a good executive would), or fetch coffee in a day to day operational world, as the boss dictate. Till benevolent dictation or understanding of the big picture comes to focus, I’ll be standing, ready, willing and able, but not too keen on rework.  No galloping on the first shout of ‘charge’ -
• Relevant and important symbols in society have been marginalized, which is worse than being made mockery of….I’m just now coming to understand the true implications of this, and the pail green tint it gives to society….weather its “All American Auto Insurance,” Jesus turning water into Merlot, or just ‘freedom of speech’ in the news and word dropping.    Perhaps one of the scariest things going on these days that gets very little notice.
• While my great grand kids will be paying this generation of my countries bills, there is excess capital in the world, and it will fall where it is most needed in the long run, which brings economic bargaining power to places that used to only have aesthetic, or a good story.  These places are fascinating, and although the world will be turbulent, as it stands today, I can’t think of a better time to live as a global citizen, something which I’m heavily writing about.
• Coming to the understanding that hopping off the grid for extended periods of time is beyond healthy, so close, but yet so far out of reach.  TCP/IP is the great equalizer, something is telling me I don’t want to be equal.
• Saying goodbye and hello to people is very difficult, making new friend and then setting sail…..painful, but never meeting isn’t as enriching.  keeping up with close friendships is extremely challenging.

2010 emotionally was something like this picture of Florence, there’s a window of beauty and two sides left uncovered, I’ll work on expanding the left side for 2011.

Florence Duomo

2010 was one of those years of complexity and clarity under a sheath of design and system thinking.  A year that has proven these disciplines will help you mentally break free of the news and events of the day.  However you want to frame reality or the hierarchies that contain it, it’s something above and beyond and aside of tactics, operations, plans, controls, strategy, policy, governance, guidelines, principles or whatever hoopla buzzword you can think of.

2010 was a year of exploration, getting back to Feng Shui and away from Technopoly.  In fact, the new years resolution is to ditch the ‘smart phone’ for a year and see how much clearer life can become.  Bleeding edge adopters have come to see tools controlling society instead of vice versa, hence, when you see 7 out of ten people staring into their phones while crossing the street, which side of the equation will you choose to be on?

2011 has two facets for resolution, first in following the worlds fashions I intend to snag another degree so the linear types see more bullet points on the resume.  Why go to Prague and spend 4 times as much than your online degree a choice a friend asks?  Well, I’d say its all about the contacts you make, the people you meet, and the strong bonds that occur over awesome pub talk prove to be worth everything in a world where the price is cheap and the demand becomes infinite.  In the days where google hit number one gets you the answer to everything, and many pass it off as knowledge…I like to think that true knowledge or wisdom takes on a personal flair, where tight coupling pays off holistically and ‘information’ becomes the commodity it deserves to be, hence relegated in relevance.

Facet 2 is more interesting, and instead of getting the 46 inch LED flat panel to hang on the wall, you’ll find me in a cafe in Stuttgart or Prague with a thinkpad working on intrinsic rewards.  Bootstrapping out of America, the tenative title of the book I’m working on, contratry to the title, I’d say it’s extremely patriotic, it’s a defense of what could be considered the true virtues of our country, and taking them to some logical conclusions.  And second, geocoupling.com, a website to create tightly coupled relationships and knowledge management principles.  Hell, all I want to do is hop off the train in Zagreb and find a subject matter expert to have a coffee with.  Scores of individuals, scores of tools, yet there’s no easy way to make this seemingly easy coupling come to fruition amongst the noise.

All this makes me excited for the snowy days and nights with cabin fever in Stuttgart, and the news years resolution as usual is to grow, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally, integrating the past with the present and looking forward to the future.

Feng Shui

2010 was a heck of a year filled with train rides, plane rides and lots of echo in a excessively big apartment.  There’s a quote that says some look for similarity in things, others admire the nuance — although top 10 lists are filled with repetition, there is much to explore when you grab the right artists.

Eastern philosophies have earth, wind, fire and water as core elements.  Thanks to Musashi and A book of 5 Rings, ‘void’ enters the picture.  Just as Roy Orbison is earth, Tom Petty is wind, Bob Dylan is fire, and George Harrison is water, this is the year I’ve finally discovered the void, Jeff Lynn, in the Travelling Wilbury’s, and in life, hence, the breaking out of another shell, and things again take on a brand new way.

Starting the year working at Camp Slayer, ending the year working in Italy at Caserma Ederle, and lots of travelling in between have made the mind seek out true storytellers…true craftsman of the art,  examples and role models as I craft stories, experience and perspective of my own.

From Iraq to Italy, Tokyo to Istanbul, Budapest to Sarajevo, a few artists helped in the explanation of the tapestry the eyes were seeing.  It’s been a hell of a ride, honorable mentions this year, Lissie, and Spoon and Belle and Sebastian.

The sound scores that linger –

10 – Weezer – Death To False Metal - With every album you take the total picture with you — Watching the band evolve from high school days when they’re jammin’ ‘Say it Ain’t So’ on Letterman to the days of Rivers sportin’ a mustache and cowboy hat, you get a sense that the band is just havin’ fun these days and givin’ the stink eye to critiques.  Cover of the century goes to Unbreak My Heart, as the paradox of a wailing guitar solo intro over Toni Braxton’s sultry hit from the good ol’ days.  I think Rivers would be an awesome guy to have a beer with, and an awesome American President.

9 – MGMT – Congratulations - I think the correct word for this band would be a ‘mutt‘, but if you keep it in the cd deck long enough, influences like a hybrid between the Babyshambles and The Specials emerge, and you begin to realize these lads are very thoughtful and ironic, “I’ve got someone to make great reports and tell me how my money’s spent, and all I need is a great big Congratulations’ – If Neil Hannon gives them the NOD in a brilliant cover, they also have my blessing.  Live fast and die young, don’t know if I agree, but I like the ring to it.

8 – Gaslight Anthem – American Slang - New Jersey is a hot bed for modern classics like Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, we can only hope the Gaslight Anthem takes to torch and runs with it for decades.  Jammin’ the album you hear a tribute to the Boss, and you hear soul…I lost count of the mountains, literally and figuratively, while listening to The Diamond Street Choir. 

7 – Broken Bells – Broken Bells - You can’t be objective and not list this album in a top 10 list for the year.  Mercer has become a ‘base ingredient’ for a damn good recipe.  The Ghost Inside is the song that has yet best to capture the feeling I had when I was 10 years old staying up all night watching videos on TBS Night Tracks waiting for my favorite Weird Al video.  25 years later, I’m glad they didn’t play what I wanted…the journey was the destination…the love of music was caramelized at a young age, Mercer and Danger Mouse is a natural progression of this.

6 – Nada Surf - If I Had a Hi-Fi - Months out in the Iraq desert to a nightclub in Zurich Switzerland is a perfect incubator for a beautiful and natural endorphin rush.  Skeptic at first you always are when you hear of a ‘cover album’, but you won’t hear Sweet Home Alabama or Freebird on this one, but you’ll hear great indie classics covered in Nada Surf sentimental glaze.  It’s terrific, it’s beautiful, it’ll knock your socks off.

5 – Josh Ritter – So Runs the World Away - I’d throw this man from Moscow Idaho up there with the best songwriters of all time.  A lofty claim certainly, but I’ve yet to find someone who strikes the proper balance of explaining the human condition yet leaving a lot open to the imagination.  Yet another perfect storm for the emotions, spending some time in Texas in June and getting to see his show at Antones and snagging a wonderful recording of Lantern that sends chills up and down my spine.  Change of Time and The Curse are the standouts, these songs I’ve listened to at least a few times — The Curse, an amazing ride down a topsy turvy road.

4 – Mason Jennings – Live at First Avenue - 18 tracks of pure good heart and splendor.  First Avenue danceteria sits right across from the Target Center downtown Minneapolis, the memories of sitting down there and people watching are wonderful — I can imagine Mason coming out of an Electric Fetus in-store performance, heading to the gig in the snow, and rockin’ the local crowd like only he can., playing it loud, smooth and clean, at times even just on one string.  You listen to Mason Jennings music long enough you pick up on things, you jog the mind and heart and you find out where they meet.

3 – Electric Light Orchestra - Time - So its from 1981, it’s not my fault I didn’t understand what was going on back then, otherwise I would have been hangin’ with my brothers while they were jamming this concept album.  Yet another alignment of space and time occurred flying over Russia, and thinking about how it’s tough to be brave enough to do ‘concept albums’, especially when predictions are made.  What gets me thinking is which predictions made on the album have come true, and may possibly yet come true, and the disconnects in geography, and how that is slowly being reconciled in the ‘flat world.’  Much of the world suffers from lack of information yet too much of the world suffers from too much information.  Prozac, falling in love with IBM’s, and other themes occupy the album.  Curious to think as so much of the world embraces technology as savior, the rate of prozac use and litigation rise…..are they related?  I think absolutely so, Jeff sets these predictions perfectly to music.  just wish I had a smoke machine, disco ball and an insanely loud sound system to set the stage perfectly.

2 – Electric Light Orchesta – Zoom Tour 2001 - After listening to this album, you receive a revelation that goes something like ‘damn, that’s what rock’n'roll is all about.’  Grab a few people at the top of their game, give some gorgeous ladies some electric cello’s and style Jeff Lynn’s hair to perfection and you have something close to what could be considered a spiritual experience.  Hands down song of the year is ‘Telephone Line’ from the concert, I’m told the harmonies employed in the tune are difficult to pull off, the ‘tightness’ of the performance is simply incredible.  So there, I went rogue and popped two albums from the past in the top 10 of 2010.

1 – The Divine Comedy – Bang Goes the Knighthood - Storytelling is all the rage in business these days, in that case, Neil Hannon could very well be a high paid consultant.  He spans the years and miles and perspectives with grace and dignity.  Too much to summarize in a blurb, if you ‘get it’ you’re tightly coupled with a wonderful group of fans that transcend understanding.

Today I accepted a job on the other side of the Alps in Stuttgart and as the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed the day will come soon when yet a new adventure begins.

Why only six months in Italy? As the tune ‘Charmed Life‘ says, take your chances and ride your luck and never never never never never give up and those waves will see you safely to a friendly shore.  In the realm of this line of contracting its always a crap-shoot, a place where random rules, your company wins some, your company loses some, and regardless of how important anyone thinks they are, we’re all just pawns on the chessboard. To thine own self be true, a sad reality in the capitalist blood-bath of the high ante games.

Three beers deep I could give some mesmerizing tales of ‘in-sourcing,’ (taking a contracting position and converting it to civil service.)  As the famous quote says, ‘The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy“…..the sentiment couldn’t be more accurate — This isn’t a call for one type of politics vs. another simply because ideas like ‘civil service’ exist for the sake of themselves, period, and as ironies like oil companies giving the same amount of cash for lobbies on all sides of politics, politicos make the same sorts of promises to the civil service machines — all the time I really ask myself who has the bargaining chips in our democracy, something that’s too big to fail, too big to succeed, too big to make significant changes.

Playing musical companies is truly a blessing, you gain perspective, you see what works and what doesn’t.  I’m excited to work for a ‘small company,’ somewhere I feel where awknowledge that I’m a human and not a billable hour in a seat.  It’s nice to have purpose, and hopefully I will get utility from the company and vice versa.

It’s also nice to have 15 minute long interviews.  The days of proving my worth with multiple choice examinations, code samples, writing samples, answering bullshit ‘soft skills’ questions seems to be over.  A few pointed questions and accomplishments and engagements should do the trick, but nevertheless, opportunities and surprises always arise, as long as you flow with the current and let the water go around the rocks.

Taking a page from a previous blog posting, the quote says it all

A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams.-John Barrymore

As with adventures of late, I feel as if I can only understand and admire these cultures on a very surface level.  While I was sitting in Texas dreaming about travelling the world, the general observation is, there more to this style of life than meets the eye or mind — being a stranger in a foreign land trying to make of go of things is rewarding and often difficult, I’m glad to have throw my cards out there, not only to aid with wanderlust, but also to understand things better and eliminate as many misconceptions as possible.

Finally I think about the lost art of storytelling in the workplace, and how the major place you can see them is TED, they don’t show up in power-points, in meetings, on missions, on mission statements or mantras, on situations of the heart or mind.  So many are silenced by an inner critic and fear of miscellaneous consequence, hence what’s shipped is homogenization.  I’m never asked at a job to tell stories, and I’d love that opportunity one day…I’d be very rusty, but I think I’d come up to speed quick.

I’m glad there are some great storytellers out there, I admire that skill and look for any and all chances to cultivate it.

a heck of a mantra for living and a cadence for life, just remember to adjust that capo on the change of key. milano, if i remember for only one thing, it will be this

mason jennings tells us there’s so many ways to die in his new album of b-sides.  it’s a nice little tune that says when your time comes, it can come from the most random things, shooting stars, unprotected sex, or driving while you text.  i’m thinking it can come if you’re sitting at home on the couch, or you’re out there making things happen for yourself…you’re equally at risk.

the prevailing theme in my head these days is courage.  knowing you’re always at risk makes endeavors worth fighting for more approachable.  courage manifests itself in many different ways, polar opposites i’d say are soldiers dying at war on one end, and true love on the other — both represent a great deal of risk, but love is holds true reward.  In my twitter feed today, I saw a woman’s tweet that said something like, ‘i love till it hurts, then the pain goes away’ –

amazing the inflection points in such things.  amazing how courage can turn into stupidity and vice versa.  amazing that tiny sparks can set the world on fire, and amazing what happens when you tap into the collective feeling of your choice, and watching it amplify.

excessive stimuli has made me drunk, but i feel i haven’t lost the virtues that count.  there are plenty good fights to be fought when fear doesn’t register and your life moves on.  the new horizon is always beautiful.

Grand Bazar Istanbul

Never the more surreal than a city like Sarajevo.  You hear that its the Jerusalem, you know the city was under siege, but to truly grasp the tip of understanding you have to pay a visit.  We understand for the lion’s share of history, its been a place where many different religions and ideologies exist peacefully as depicted in the picture, a Mosque in site through the window of a Jewish Temple.

Jewish Temple and Mosque

While the city was under siege I was a high school student in rural Texas, on TV we see smoke, we hear things on CNN.  In Sarajevo and Bosnia at large you seen bodies on TV, of friends and family, you see people starving when supply lines are cut, and you hear stories of people crawling through the ‘tunnel of hope,’ a 800 meter long tunnel carved under the airport to get to supplies for their families.  Below, a Sarajevo Rose, this one comes from a Mortar blast that killed 40 in a marketplace, while the city was under siege, and people were in line to receive bread.

Sarajevo Rose

I’m late to the game in shining of spotlight on these events, and I can’t even begin to understand the complex history of the Balkans.  Human life is precious, off the cuff figures say 10,000 or so killed in the siege, and other 8,000 ‘ethnically cleansed’  in Srebrenica in the matter of days.  Folklore has it Bono was shooting pool with the locals while the city was under siege, an average 300 rockets per day for years.  Fascism on one end, an international community consisting of the UN, NATO and others sat and watched on the other….a city that just 8 years earlier held the winter Olympics.  If these institutions aren’t there to preserve the sacredness of human life, what are they there for?

Last is hope, while politics yield stalemate at the cost of human life, the human spirit remains strong.  As the quote says, the brighest bolt of lightening is produced in the darkest sky.  The Multicultural Man, a gift to Sarajevo from Italy, shows birds helping man bind the world together — when we get there, cities like Sarajevo will be leading that charge.

Uomo Multiculturalis