mtl3p

from a friend with good taste. In case you’re jonesing for some theatre.

Dear all,

I believe in the power of “word of mouth” and I believe in encouraging an artistic project that moves me to the bone.

I just saw Blood Claat playing at the MAI (3680 Jeanne Mance) and produced by Black Theatre Workshop (www.blacktheatreworkshop.ca) until the 13th of April.

It’s a one women show, and seriously one of the most magnificent performances I have ever seen. It is naive, brutal, sexy, tender, funny, harsh, historical, passionate and mesmerizing. It captured my soul….and I thought I should share with you that it’s a “must see” and it deserves a full house. It rocked my world to see how a performer can so skillfully craft amazing characters and make them exist in such a masterful and lovable way.

I hope you get a chance to see it…

I’m loving lykke li.

video

next two concerts are definitely going to be her (in a couple weeks?) and MIA in June. Hope that tickets are available. I’ve gotten confusing info from their websites as compared to venue websites.

two stories - both make me think the world is much stranger than I ever give it credit for.

“The risks are real. Assume the worst.”

and

emo-banging in Mexico. I’m going to email my friend and make sure that she’s okay.

I’ve been doing some great reading recently (last month or two).

Finished:
-Reading Lolita in Tehran
-Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study - talks about history of education in early american history. très academic - partially because it also looks critically at the history of the history of education in early american …
-Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy’s Guide - by Epstein. Between reading this (actually I’m only 3/4 of the way through it) and that book about Michael Servetus, I’m feeling pretty educated.
-Sidney Poitier - The Measure of a Man: a spiritual autobiography The oral-ness of the book was interesting. I’ve read quite a bit of woman black-american authors - especially when I was young. To find similarities here surprised me. Not necessarily a book that I would recommend.
-The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire. 3/4 of the way through but I don’t think I’m going to finish this one. I like the queer take on it, but the observations would either have to be better supported or more insightful. Not enough of either.

And then the “The end of the modern age” by some guy Allen Wheelis that I just finished. It was amazing.

Just picked up (second hand store):
-In Search of the New Left
-Freddy and Fredericka - by one of my absolute favorite authors - Mark Helprin. I’m linking to someone’s blog because the I’m semi-loathe to pimp for amazon and this metacritic site that comes up doesn’t actually seem to link to any of the reviews :-p I started this one first.
-The User Illusion - Cutting Consciousness Down to Size
by Tor Norretranders. I picked it up because it seems to takes shots / questions the focus on conscious thinking compared to unconscious thinking (lots of reading on that recently as well as switching some of my focus on reading to dance/movement).

Re-reading The Gift of Therapy - An open letter to a new generation of therapists and their clients because it makes me feel all warm to hear this guy speak.

I just finished The End of the Modern Age by Allen Wheelis. It was wonderful to read. It articulated beautifully, succintly and often poetically many of the issues I’m trying to figure out. Too bad for me that it’s written in 1971 ;-\ . Most of the stuff that I was trying to get to last monday at my discussion was said much better here. It resonates deeply with the reading of John Raulston Saul and Darin Barney that I’ve been engaged with.

Also I was inspired by Obama’s speech on race. I put aside 40 minutes today to watch/listen to it. Heady, and eye-opening that a politician can speak this way, especially on the form of television.

I’ve looked through a few of these o’reilly posts on women in tech. I appreciated this (short) one.

So What? by Shelley Powers

so the public speaking I’ve done recently has been - or at least has felt - very different from my earlier work. The presentations include the Gilberto Gill panel, the interview with Jon Udell, speaking to my friend Gerardo’s corporate social responsability class at HEC and last night’s University of the Streets discussion.

I’ve given a variety of talks over the last 4 years. Besides the usual ISF dog and pony show I’ve had various versions of an information infrastructure talk, a municipal involvement in ICT talk, a community / geek innovation talk and probably a couple of others.

None of my recent speaking has felt easy or comfortable and the reception has been very different from my earlier presentations. I’ve felt frustrated feeling like I wasn’t communicating properly what has been in my mind, that I was very distant from my audience (which in two of the presentations has been a very non-tech audience). I normally get good receptions from my talks, people from the audience are excited to come talk to me, encouraged, energized. In the last while I’ve just felt awkward at the end. Unsure of what just happened.

I am hesitant to interpret my frustration or awkward feelings as signs that the presentations aren’t good or that I’m not on the right track. I don’t think that the best talk is a rally or a clear exhortation, and I don’t think that the best sign of a good presentation is that you immediately fall for the person presenting.

I’m reading José Saramago right now. It’s hard to read. And wonderful. I wish that I knew that my presentations were worthwhile, even if they are getting harder (let’s forget that I’m using a nobel prize winner as a point of comparison).

[more here about the language and settings of these places adding difficulty to what I’m trying to get to - as well, of course, this place].

I guess the clearest example I can point to that I’m happy with of my change in thought has been taking a request from U of teh Streets to speak about the the great and powerful/vulnerable/unstoppable/* online commons and how we need to feed + protect it and turn it back towards:

“With the world wide web, we now have access to the world’s biggest library: more facts, opinions, history, critique anyone could ever want, but no one could ever thoroughly explore. Almost any question can get a variety of answers. Yet what are the questions that cannot be answered solely by facts, that cannot be explored through technology? And what use is knowledge if it doesn’t helping us come up with better solutions? How do we learn to ask the questions that will create the answers that will help us create the world we want? And what does all of this have to do with protecting, enhancing and preserving the commons?”

anyways - I’m going to keep going and see what I/we get to. I don’t think anyone really needs me to help out as a cheerleader for the online commons. It’s got enough brilliant people (and bucks) pushing away.

Howard Rheingold en Eric Kluitenberg
Mindful Disconnection : Counterpowering the Panopticon from the Inside PDF

In this article, media experts Howard Rheingold and Eric Kluitenberg ask us to consider if unquestioned connectivity – the drive to connect everything to everything, and everyone to everyone by means of electronic media – is necessarily a good thing. To stimulate ideas, the authors propose a possible alternative: a practice of ‘mindful disconnection’, or rather the ‘art of selective disconnectivity’.

Although I have devoted decades to observing and using participatory media – from tools for thought to virtual communities to smart mobs – I want to propose that disconnecting might well be an important right, philosophy, decision, technology, and political act in the future. - Howard Rheingold

not much content to the article. But super interesting that Rheingold is working on this.

“Thanks David! Am I to take it that you are scheduling Lunch 2.0 at Microsoft as the next Lunch 2.0? Awesome. I just love your initiative. Go them tiger! :)”

link

I love it. Having unconferences and creating “online” projects where the goal is to create the next unconference. brilliant. hopefully we’re reaching our logical absurd limit where the simple goal is to produce the next “new”. Remember, as long as it’s innovation….
:-\

at some point, I hope the emphasis switches from awareness-raising and “networking” to “doing”. I’ve been trying to throw that switch in regards to my own practice. Time will tell. (update- that’s kinda overly critical to my own work. I think I have always been oriented towards doing - what I’m frustrated about is my own prior naivete about participating in celebrating the new and using (and continuing to use?) the empty hype).

to compare the practice of creating change through repackaging lunch versus on the ground doing - The pink vigilantes: The Indian women fighting for women’s rights. via Mir.

“On my own I have no rights but together, as the Gulabi Gang, we have power.”

It would be an unfair comparaison if *2.0 as a whole didn’t get more press than local organizing for justice for women as a whole.

And Darin Barney’s lecture on friday was freakin great.

(or just pass by if you live in the ‘hood)

The latest from my fav University of the Streets. I’m definitely going to enjoy this.

Oh, and I did improv dance finally yesterday (I was scared off last week). Creepy *and* fun.

Lundi le 17 mars, 19h à 21h
Centre Saint-Ambroise, 5080 St-Ambroise (coin St-Rémi)

The Commons: So Many Answers, So Few Questions. What do we do with all this knowledge?*

*Veuillez noter que cette conversation publique aura lieu en anglais, mais les interventions en français son toujours les bienvenues.

With the world wide web, we now have access to the world’s biggest library: more facts, opinions, history, critique anyone could ever want, but no one could ever thoroughly explore. Almost any question can get a variety of answers. Yet what are the questions that cannot be answered solely by facts, that cannot be explored through technology? And what use is knowledge if it doesn’t helping us come up with better solutions? How do we learn to ask the questions that will create the answers that will help us create the world we want? And what does all of this have to do with protecting, enhancing and preserving the commons?

Invité: Michael Lenczner
Modératrice: Kim Klein