Inspiring Newsletter

A Sense of What it was Really Like For You

2009-06-16T18:13:00.002-04:00

Inspiring Newsletter

re-inspiration for clients and friends of www.InspiringWebCopy.com

an “aperiodical”—to speak when I am moved to speak

issue 43-49, June 2009

Note--the photographs by my father in this issue may not display in your email client. To see them you can go to www.inspiringnewsletter.blogspot.com. Thanks.

Issue 43, Tuesday June 9th

Mozart Makes You Happier

The benefits have often been touted for increasing intelligence*. But can it make you happier too?

After a few minutes of research, I was firmly convinced it can--my memory is not clear now but I think one of the things about it, the Divertimento in E flat, is the almost ludicrous upbeats to the continuing phrases. As I replay it in my head I'm not finding the spot, but I remember being struck by that. It's just not right to be that happy! Maybe it's the viola accompaniment, the repeating pattern. Nope, it is the three up beats in the second theme, and the whole sense of this very silly thing being taken absolutely seriously that seems to reset priorities to a healthy and appropriate lightheartedness.

(Update--later the same week I, normally very self-conscious in public, found myself singing the first movement in the subway station. I never do that with Mahler, occasionally with Brahms, hoping my voice will sound reasonably operatic, but with Mozart it's just not possible to stay self-conscious about one's performance because I'm having too much damn fun.)

--
*I've also read somewhere that research on "the Mozart effect"--in raising intelligence-- was actually inconclusive but had gotten hyped by the popular media. While the Mozart Happiness Effect remains to be validated by further scientific research, it's also pretty obvious if you do a controlled study on yourself for two minutes.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 44, Wednesday, June 17

A Sense of What It was Really Like for You:
inspiring Interview with Eric Myrvaagnes, photographer

I've grown up with my father's photographs and took it for granted that every father must take such beautiful pictures and see so much in nature. It was a bit surreal to be interviewing him, and it allowed me to see his work again with new eyes. It's also been an honor and privilege to work with him as an un-coaching client, and not only has he learned something new in each conversation we've had, but I've learned something fascinating that has fed my soul. This interview captures a little of what he says when he's made comfortable to speak.

IN: What inspires you to photograph?

Eric Myrvaagnes: Hm. One of the things that interetsed me abut it first was that you cudl point this device at something that you saw that was interesting and be able to remember it later.

Also, my first experience wiht a camera was seeing my older brother, he'd gotten one and was interested in the process, so he was developing his own photos. We didn't have a darkroom, so he got contact sheets and chemicals and trays and worked in the closet, and I remember he would work so long that at the end his leg would have cramped up so much he had to be helped out of there. And I was very intrigued that anything could be so interesting to someone that they would be willing to undergo physical discomfort.

I go to Plum Island and feel a very moving spiritual presence in the patterns of sand and water and light, and these move me really deeply. . .

Then when I was at Greenwood [Music Camp], I borrowed his camera and took snapshots of people. I remember that at first they were self-conscious and put on a face when they saw me with the camera, but soon they got used to seeing it and ignored it, so I was able to get natural expressions.

Untitled (Vermillion Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, July, 2004)

The clash of the clutter of rocks with the unreal-ly smooth water in this feels so sad and right to me.
--JDM.

Then at Harvard someone suggested I get on the Crimson photo board. I learned more from that than from my classes. But it began to look like the assignments from that would take 40 hours a week and maybe I should start going to at least some of my classes.

A classmate of mine saw my photographs and thought they were pretty good. I was able to sneak into the Kirkland House darkroom after hours, thanks to his expertise at making master keys, so I worked in there. He also encouraged me to work on my landscapes, and introduced me to the photographs of Ansel Adams, Minor White, and Edward Weston. I saw an exhibit of Minor White's at MIT and was so amazed I wrote him a letter. He invited me to take his workshop, so I did. Taking the workshop with Minor White was life-changing. And he validated things I'd already felt to be true but hadn't been able to articulate, and got me to really see, in closer detail. The lessons from Minor White and Paul Capinigro keep coming back, and I begin to understand things now, fifty years later, that sort of went over my head at the time.

IN: What inspires you now?

EM: It's strange, since I started with portraits and have done very little with people since then. Most people do tend to get self-conscious; it's such an effort to get them to look natural. I guess that's what attracted me to rocks, sea, sand, trees, and wilderness, nature never seems to be putting on a face for the camera.

Translating an uplifting experience in words, unless you're very good with words (and most of us are not), the person you're talking to gets that you had a sublime experience, but has no sense of what it was really like for you. This is what painters try to do and photographers try to do.

Things that interest me now--I used to think that content was more important, but I no longer think that, now what's most interesting and compelling to me is how an image is a metaphor--for a feeling or idea not directly to do with the thing itself. This is in my tar drip photographs and Plum Island sand pictures--their not about sand or water, but the interaction of shadow and light in sand and water produce forms that can be very expressive. . .the way tonalities can come together in the moment to produce very expressive images. One thing I learned during the first Minor White workshop was that when forms and shapes and sense of lighting all comes together the scene comes alive--or is living but at the moment everything comes together I'm privileged to be able to experience the life of the scene (trees, water), and this sense of the scene coming alive is a very important thing for me.

Untitled (Newton, late 1990s)

My father knows more about the life-cycle of tar drips than anyone else I've met, and can recognize the "signature" styles of the different road repair crews in Newton.
--JDM

In the context of our lives as a whole, how can photography most nourish people?

One thing that drives the impulse in both serious and amateur photographers is that you experience something that gives you great joy and you want to share it with people. For example sunsets and rainbows, even though millions of pictures of them have been taken, when you're experiencing it it still feels sublime: this one moment is happening. Translating an uplifting experience in words, unless you're very good with words (and most of us are not), the person gets that you had a sublime experience, but has no sense of what it was really like for you. This is what painters try to do and photographers try to do. I go to Plum Island and feel a very moving spiritual presence in the patters of sand and water and light, and these move me really deeply--one of the challenges in photography is to determine what aspects of an image will convey it to someone else? recently I have been getting there. It's taken responses from viewers giving me feedback to know.That kind of sharing can happen, but it doesn't happen automatically by taking a picture at a time when you're out there, that's where skill and experience are necessary. When I'm looking at something mundane or ugly, if I can see beauty and can present it in a way others will see--one way is my tar drips--a number of people have said they have started looking at pavement in an entirely new way, after seeing those photographs. Also graffiti on an abandoned railroad car in Kingston: "I never knew rust could be so beautiful."

Untitled (Plum Island, January, 2006)

Most people are in a rush these days--anything that can encourage people to take some time out to experience something beautiful can be nourishing.

If you could hang an exhibit anywhere, if you had a magic wand, where would you want to hang it?

At a good museum like the MoMA, but partly because people who go to museums are looking for that kind of experience. But on a more mundane level, I like the idea of more exhibitions are the Newton Library, because people who go there are a trained audience and are used to having a comment book and a regular invitation to respond to what you see, and people give feedback.

Is there any last thing you would want to add?

Your style of interviewing encourages the interviewee to come up with a pretty good "artist statement"--it's a good way of getting people to think about what makes people tick. I'm delighted, and I hope this has helped you in your quest.

Thank you for giving the interview, it was a pleasure.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 45, Thursday, June 18th

They Don't Need to Be Persuaded

My mastermind partner again twisted my head around. I thought I'd already covered the entire idea of the need for my purpose (my gift, what I'm best designed to do) to be operating only in a circumstance when the client wants me to succeed, without opposition). But hearing the same idea come out of his mouth, again, pulled me into a state of feeling how appealing that would be, to be working with someone who didn't need to be persuaded that what you have to offer is of value. It would be so much more pleasurable to be able to put one's energy into doing the work rather than into asking oneself the "what's wrong?" questions of "why is this person not persuaded that what I have to offer is of value?" To be putting one's full attention into being curious and asking questions.

In that way John Dempsey inspired me again.

It's also interesting to note that, in so doing, he persuaded me of something--a return to the belief that this kind of situation could be, that it was possible. If another person wants this, I felt there must be lots of people who want it, and if lots of people want it, then we ought to be able to find those people and work with them. Anyone who appreciates not having to persuade someone of their usefulness will be able to value the idea of not requiring others to do this. But I'm pretty sure this was persuading without an effort to persuade, since we were actually talking about his practice this week, not mine.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 46: Friday, June 12th

I said my purpose aloud in a room full of people

I told my artists group about my project of interviewing 100 people in 100 days, and it felt great to say this, and to say something about my purpose: I am pure capacity-to-be-inspired, and there is no way I can guarantee that I will be inspired since I don't inspire myself. I depend on you--whoever or whatever else is present--to inspire me, I don't do the inspiring. I may appear really serious and grim even, and yet when something comes along and inspires me I am ready to perceive it, notice what makes it inspiring, what makes it work, and describe this with clarity, specificity, and appreciation of its pleasurability and usefulness.

One of the other artist's had said something that inspired me to talk about this project--what we say in the group is confidential, so I can't talk about her project here unless/until I have her permission, but I want to note that what I say above had just happened, in fact.

The temptation to lie, however, to be polite and please people, is quite strong--"Sure, that was inspiring," I want to say, though not really feeling it. Technically, everything is inspiring--the fact that I have lungs and can breathe is such a miracle, of magic or chance, however you look at it, that I could theoretically appreciate every breath as inspiring. (That's what the word means, even.) But the kinds of things that inspire me in other people seem, to me anyway, far more interesting to talk about than breathing. I see an image of invisible streams of energy moving around in their bodies, in their abdomens, in particular, as somehow connected with inspiration.

I asked all the artists if I could interview them--that should be showing up here soon.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 47, Saturday, June 13th

What are the Elves' Treasures?

I was rereading The Elves of Lily Hill Farm, about a woman who is contacted by some elves and, with their help, grows many times more grapes in her vineyard with far less pesticide.

I'd remembered the events in this book with a lot of clarity, and the facts, and thought there'd be fairly little that would be new in a rereading. Yet I was totally transformed.

The passage that especially inspired me--the elves are complaining to her about how humans tear up everything in the fields and leave them with no place to store their treasures! It gave me this wonderful feeling of the happy, giddy joy that elves must take in their treasures, and curiosity about what would be a treasure to an elf, a being of nature, how that would differ from what we humans think of as a treasure (gold and money). What can they be burying in their special spots in the earth that could be allowed to grow and multiply if we did less tearing up of that earth? I was smiling as I read.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 48, Saturday June 13th

My character tells me he's got a story to tell

I recorded myself reading a chapter of my novel, so I'd be able to listen to it and it turned out my character, who is leading a ritual with some people who are not used to ritual, has a story. He, and I, both thought he didn't really have one, that his was less important than another character's. But in listening to my own voice speaking I had the space to feel what was going on as well as think it, and thereby to realize that something is happening in the novel in this chapter more than any other: he is allowing the other characters to expand their reality.

in this chapter, the protagonist leads a ritual and in the course of it he insists that he is a great poet and also that what the heart feels to be true is true. It is precisely by doing something that annoys them, something that is taboo in our culture--to claim that one is a genius--that he gives them permission to admit that they're geniuses also. My analytical brain had said, Nothing happens in this novel, nothing happens in this chapter, I need to fix it. But my intuitive brain saw a larger picture.

Since we all have an intuitive brain, we all have genius--1,000 to 10,000 times the processing speed of the usual brain we see used in our society.

Issue 49: Monday, June 15th

My Client Reminds Me Reality is Real

My client and colleague called and we chatted for a while. She talked about how it was difficult to see reality at times, when we're not in the right "mood" we can project so many things onto what's actually there that we may as well not be looking. She mentioned that the plants on her walk are actually explosions.

She's been re-reading a book I read recently, Summer with Leprechauns, about elementals, and at one point the leprechaun tells a human that one of the things they want from humans most is for humans to believe in their existence--that human disbelief is actually powerful enough to damage them.

The truth is often like a leprechaun, I find, and Kurt and Patricia Wright describe intuitive brain's voice (which always knows the truth) as being like a prairie dog: the minute it sees you coming, it's gone, popped down its hole. That means we need to make it very safe for the truth to show itself before it will show itself; if we're waiting for the truth to prove itself to our analytical brain, we can wait forever and never be satisfied.

My business has taken me in unexpected directions, and one particular project has seemed like it was failing miserably, running into obstacles at every turn. My client pointed out the similarities with the story we'd been reading--how the initial goal of harvesting 100 tons of grapes and becoming famous in the process eventually came to seem small compared to the larger goal of creating healing, and balance with nature. Was my story really as significant as that one? I felt it was--in a way, comparing them is not the point, but the felt sense of their measure is important.

---------------------------------------

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Call me for a free 30” consultation (917.648.3993). It’s a chance for me to get a sense of whether I can help your case, and for you to know if I’m a match for your needs. After this initial consultation, I insist you take time before you decide to work with me and think it over before scheduling a first appointment. I will NOT pressure you to retain my services: I will not sell you more than you need (and I will not tell you you need less than you need either—but it’s up to you from what source you get it, and I can refer you to some good people).

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A Sense of What It was Really Like for You: Eric Myrvaagnes, Photographer; and The Meaningless Journey Revisited--Inspiring Newsletters 43-49

2009-06-16T18:01:00.002-04:00

Version Without Pictures--Inspiring Newsletters 43-49

2009-06-16T18:01:00.001-04:00

Inspiring Newsletter

re-inspiration for clients and friends of www.InspiringWebCopy.com

an "aperiodical"—to speak when I am moved to speak

issue 43-49, June 2009

Note--the photographs by my father in this issue may not display in
your email client. To see them you can go to
www.inspiringnewsletter.blogspot.com. Thanks.

Issue 43, Tuesday June 9th

Mozart Makes You Happier

The benefits have often been touted for increasing intelligence*. But
can it make you happier too?

After a few minutes of research, I was firmly convinced it can--my
memory is not clear now but I think one of the things about it, the
Divertimento in E flat, is the almost ludicrous upbeats to the
continuing phrases. As I replay it in my head I'm not finding the
spot, but I remember being struck by that. It's just not right to be
that happy! Maybe it's the viola accompaniment, the repeating pattern.
Nope, it is the three up beats in the second theme, and the whole
sense of this very silly thing being taken absolutely seriously that
seems to reset priorities to a healthy and appropriate lightheartedness.

(Update--later the same week I, normally very self-conscious in public,
found myself singing the first movement in the subway station. I never
do that with Mahler, occasionally with Brahms, hoping my voice will
sound reasonably operatic, but with Mozart it's just not possible to
stay self-conscious about one's performance because I'm having too much
damn fun.)

--
*I've also read somewhere that research on "the Mozart effect"--in
raising intelligence-- was actually inconclusive but had gotten hyped
by the popular media. While the Mozart Happiness Effect remains to be
validated by further scientific research, it's also pretty obvious if
you do a controlled study on yourself for two minutes.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 44, Wednesday, June 17

A Sense of What It was Really Like for You:
inspiring Interview with Eric Myrvaagnes, photographer

I've grown up with my father's photographs and took it for granted that
every father must take such beautiful pictures and see so much in
nature. It was a bit surreal to be interviewing him, and it allowed me
to see his work again with new eyes. It's also been an honor and
privilege to work with him as an un-coaching client, and not only has
he learned something new in each conversation we've had, but I've
learned something fascinating that has fed my soul. This interview
captures a little of what he says when he's made comfortable to speak.

IN: What inspires you to photograph?

Eric Myrvaagnes: Hm. One of the things that interetsed me abut it
first was that you cudl point this device at something that you saw
that was interesting and be able to remember it later.

Also, my first experience wiht a camera was seeing my older brother,
he'd gotten one and was interested in the process, so he was developing
his own photos. We didn't have a darkroom, so he got contact sheets
and chemicals and trays and worked in the closet, and I remember he
would work so long that at the end his leg would have cramped up so
much he had to be helped out of there. And I was very intrigued that
anything could be so interesting to someone that they would be willing
to undergo physical discomfort.

I go to Plum Island and feel a very moving spiritual presence in the
patterns of sand and water and light, and these move me really deeply.
. .

Then when I was at Greenwood [Music Camp], I borrowed his camera and
took snapshots of people. I remember that at first they were
self-conscious and put on a face when they saw me with the camera, but
soon they got used to seeing it and ignored it, so I was able to get
natural expressions.

[go to www.inspiringnewsletter.blogspot.com to see picture]

Untitled (Vermillion Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, July, 2004)

The clash of the clutter of rocks with the unreal-ly smooth water in
this feels so sad and right to me.
--JDM.

Then at Harvard someone suggested I get on the Crimson photo board. I
learned more from that than from my classes. But it began to look like
the assignments from that would take 40 hours a week and maybe I should
start going to at least some of my classes.

A classmate of mine saw my photographs and thought they were pretty
good. I was able to sneak into the Kirkland House darkroom after
hours, thanks to his expertise at making master keys, so I worked in
there. He also encouraged me to work on my landscapes, and introduced
me to the photographs of Ansel Adams, Minor White, and Edward Weston.
I saw an exhibit of Minor White's at MIT and was so amazed I wrote him
a letter. He invited me to take his workshop, so I did. Taking the
workshop with Minor White was life-changing. And he validated things
I'd already felt to be true but hadn't been able to articulate, and got
me to really see, in closer detail. The lessons from Minor White and
Paul Capinigro keep coming back, and I begin to understand things now,
fifty years later, that sort of went over my head at the time.

IN: What inspires you now?

EM: It's strange, since I started with portraits and have done very
little with people since then. Most people do tend to get
self-conscious; it's such an effort to get them to look natural. I
guess that's what attracted me to rocks, sea, sand, trees, and
wilderness, nature never seems to be putting on a face for the camera.

Translating an uplifting experience in words, unless you're very good
with words (and most of us are not), the person you're talking to gets
that you had a sublime experience, but has no sense of what it was
really like for you. This is what painters try to do and photographers
try to do.

Things that interest me now--I used to think that content was more
important, but I no longer think that, now what's most interesting and
compelling to me is how an image is a metaphor--for a feeling or idea
not directly to do with the thing itself. This is in my tar drip
photographs and Plum Island sand pictures--their not about sand or
water, but the interaction of shadow and light in sand and water
produce forms that can be very expressive. . .the way tonalities can
come together in the moment to produce very expressive images. One
thing I learned during the first Minor White workshop was that when
forms and shapes and sense of lighting all comes together the scene
comes alive--or is living but at the moment everything comes together
I'm privileged to be able to experience the life of the scene (trees,
water), and this sense of the scene coming alive is a very important
thing for me.
[go to www.inspiringnewsletter.blogspot.com to see picture]

Untitled (Newton, late 1990s)

My father knows more about the life-cycle of tar drips than anyone else
I've met, and can recognize the "signature" styles of the different
road repair crews in Newton.
--JDM

In the context of our lives as a whole, how can photography most
nourish people?

One thing that drives the impulse in both serious and amateur
photographers is that you experience something that gives you great joy
and you want to share it with people. For example sunsets and
rainbows, even though millions of pictures of them have been taken,
when you're experiencing it it still feels sublime: this one moment is
happening. Translating an uplifting experience in words, unless you're
very good with words (and most of us are not), the person gets that you
had a sublime experience, but has no sense of what it was really like
for you. This is what painters try to do and photographers try to do.
I go to Plum Island and feel a very moving spiritual presence in the
patters of sand and water and light, and these move me really
deeply--one of the challenges in photography is to determine what
aspects of an image will convey it to someone else? recently I have
been getting there. It's taken responses from viewers giving me
feedback to know.That kind of sharing can happen, but it doesn't happen
automatically by taking a picture at a time when you're out there,
that's where skill and experience are necessary. When I'm looking at
something mundane or ugly, if I can see beauty and can present it in a
way others will see--one way is my tar drips--a number of people have
said they have started looking at pavement in an entirely new way,
after seeing those photographs. Also graffiti on an abandoned railroad
car in Kingston: "I never knew rust could be so beautiful."

[go to www.inspiringnewsletter.blogspot.com to see picture]

Untitled (Plum Island, January, 2006)

Most people are in a rush these days--anything that can encourage
people to take some time out to experience something beautiful can be
nourishing.

If you could hang an exhibit anywhere, if you had a magic wand, where
would you want to hang it?

At a good museum like the MoMA, but partly because people who go to
museums are looking for that kind of experience. But on a more mundane
level, I like the idea of more exhibitions are the Newton Library,
because people who go there are a trained audience and are used to
having a comment book and a regular invitation to respond to what you
see, and people give feedback.

Is there any last thing you would want to add?

Your style of interviewing encourages the interviewee to come up with a
pretty good "artist statement"--it's a good way of getting people to
think about what makes people tick. I'm delighted, and I hope this has
helped you in your quest.

Thank you for giving the interview, it was a pleasure.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 45, Thursday, June 18th

They Don't Need to Be Persuaded

My mastermind partner again twisted my head around. I thought I'd
already covered the entire idea of the need for my purpose (my gift,
what I'm best designed to do) to be operating only in a circumstance
when the client wants me to succeed, without opposition). But hearing
the same idea come out of his mouth, again, pulled me into a state of
feeling how appealing that would be, to be working with someone who
didn't need to be persuaded that what you have to offer is of value.
It would be so much more pleasurable to be able to put one's energy
into doing the work rather than into asking oneself the "what's wrong?"
questions of "why is this person not persuaded that what I have to
offer is of value?" To be putting one's full attention into being
curious and asking questions.

In that way John Dempsey inspired me again.

It's also interesting to note that, in so doing, he persuaded me of
something--a return to the belief that this kind of situation could be,
that it was possible. If another person wants this, I felt there must
be lots of people who want it, and if lots of people want it, then we
ought to be able to find those people and work with them. Anyone who
appreciates not having to persuade someone of their usefulness will be
able to value the idea of not requiring others to do this. But I'm
pretty sure this was persuading without an effort to persuade, since we
were actually talking about his practice this week, not mine.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 46: Friday, June 12th

I said my purpose aloud in a room full of people

I told my artists group about my project of interviewing 100 people in
100 days, and it felt great to say this, and to say something about my
purpose: I am pure capacity-to-be-inspired, and there is no way I can
guarantee that I will be inspired since I don't inspire myself. I
depend on you--whoever or whatever else is present--to inspire me, I
don't do the inspiring. I may appear really serious and grim even, and
yet when something comes along and inspires me I am ready to perceive
it, notice what makes it inspiring, what makes it work, and describe
this with clarity, specificity, and appreciation of its pleasurability
and usefulness.

One of the other artist's had said something that inspired me to talk
about this project--what we say in the group is confidential, so I
can't talk about her project here unless/until I have her permission,
but I want to note that what I say above had just happened, in fact.

The temptation to lie, however, to be polite and please people, is
quite strong--"Sure, that was inspiring," I want to say, though not
really feeling it. Technically, everything is inspiring--the fact that
I have lungs and can breathe is such a miracle, of magic or chance,
however you look at it, that I could theoretically appreciate every
breath as inspiring. (That's what the word means, even.) But the
kinds of things that inspire me in other people seem, to me anyway, far
more interesting to talk about than breathing. I see an image of
invisible streams of energy moving around in their bodies, in their
abdomens, in particular, as somehow connected with inspiration.

I asked all the artists if I could interview them--that should be
showing up here soon.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 47, Saturday, June 13th

What are the Elves' Treasures?

I was rereading The Elves of Lily Hill Farm, about a woman who is
contacted by some elves and, with their help, grows many times more
grapes in her vineyard with far less pesticide.

I'd remembered the events in this book with a lot of clarity, and the
facts, and thought there'd be fairly little that would be new in a
rereading. Yet I was totally transformed.

The passage that especially inspired me--the elves are complaining to
her about how humans tear up everything in the fields and leave them
with no place to store their treasures! It gave me this wonderful
feeling of the happy, giddy joy that elves must take in their
treasures, and curiosity about what would be a treasure to an elf, a
being of nature, how that would differ from what we humans think of as
a treasure (gold and money). What can they be burying in their special
spots in the earth that could be allowed to grow and multiply if we did
less tearing up of that earth? I was smiling as I read.

-----------------------------------------

Issue 48, Saturday June 13th

My character tells me he's got a story to tell

I recorded myself reading a chapter of my novel, so I'd be able to
listen to it and it turned out my character, who is leading a ritual
with some people who are not used to ritual, has a story. He, and I,
both thought he didn't really have one, that his was less important
than another character's. But in listening to my own voice speaking I
had the space to feel what was going on as well as think it, and
thereby to realize that something is happening in the novel in this
chapter more than any other: he is allowing the other characters to
expand their reality.

in this chapter, the protagonist leads a ritual and in the course of it
he insists that he is a great poet and also that what the heart feels
to be true is true. It is precisely by doing something that annoys
them, something that is taboo in our culture--to claim that one is a
genius--that he gives them permission to admit that they're geniuses
also. My analytical brain had said, Nothing happens in this novel,
nothing happens in this chapter, I need to fix it. But my intuitive
brain saw a larger picture.

Since we all have an intuitive brain, we all have genius--1,000 to
10,000 times the processing speed of the usual brain we see used in our
society.

Issue 49: Monday, June 15th

My Client Reminds Me Reality is Real

My client and colleague called and we chatted for a while. She talked
about how it was difficult to see reality at times, when we're not in
the right "mood" we can project so many things onto what's actually
there that we may as well not be looking. She mentioned that the
plants on her walk are actually explosions.

She's been re-reading a book I read recently, Summer with Leprechauns,
about elementals, and at one point the leprechaun tells a human that
one of the things they want from humans most is for humans to believe
in their existence--that human disbelief is actually powerful enough to
damage them.

The truth is often like a leprechaun, I find, and Kurt and Patricia
Wright describe intuitive brain's voice (which always knows the truth)
as being like a prairie dog: the minute it sees you coming, it's gone,
popped down its hole. That means we need to make it very safe for the
truth to show itself before it will show itself; if we're waiting for
the truth to prove itself to our analytical brain, we can wait forever
and never be satisfied.

My business has taken me in unexpected directions, and one particular
project has seemed like it was failing miserably, running into
obstacles at every turn. My client pointed out the similarities with
the story we'd been reading--how the initial goal of harvesting 100
tons of grapes and becoming famous in the process eventually came to
seem small compared to the larger goal of creating healing, and balance
with nature. Was my story really as significant as that one? I felt
it was--in a way, comparing them is not the point, but the felt sense
of their measure is important.

---------------------------------------

Www.InspiringWebCopy.com provides strategic marketing consulting.
coaching, and copywriting, and it is here to help your real dream
survive and flourish.
Call me for a free 30" consultation (917.648.3993). It's a chance for
me to get a sense of whether I can help your case, and for you to know
if I'm a match for your needs. After this initial consultation, I
insist you take time before you decide to work with me and think it
over before scheduling a first appointment. I will NOT pressure you to
retain my services: I will not sell you more than you need (and I will
not tell you you need less than you need either—but it's up to you from
what source you get it, and I can refer you to some good people).

Everyone who receives this newsletter should have been asked beforehand
whether she/he wanted to receive it. If you have received it without
being asked, please email me at Joshua@inspiringwebcopy.com.

A Sense of What It was Really Like for You: Eric Myrvaagnes, Photographer; and The Meaningless Journey Revisited--Inspiring Newsletters 43-49

2009-06-16T18:01:00.000-04:00

Inspiring Newsletter

re-inspiration for clients and friends of www.InspiringWebCopy.com

an "aperiodical"—to speak when I am moved to speak

issue 43-49, June 2009

Note--the photographs by my father in this issue may not display in
your email client. To see them you can go to
www.inspiringnewsletter.blogspot.com. Thanks.

Issue 43, Tuesday June 9th

Mozart Makes You Happier

The benefits have often been touted for increasing intelligence*. But
can it make you happier too?

-----------------------------------------

Issue 44, Wednesday, June 17

A Sense of What It was Really Like for You:
inspiring Interview with Eric Myrvaagnes, photographer

IN: What inspires you to photograph?

Eric Myrvaagnes: Hm. One of the things that interetsed me abut it
first was that you cudl point this device at something that you saw
that was interesting and be able to remember it later.

I go to Plum Island and feel a very moving spiritual presence in the
patterns of sand and water and light, and these move me really deeply.
. .

A Single Question Raises a Bottom Line -- Issue 36

2009-06-02T17:44:00.001-04:00

Issue 36

Tuesday, June 2nd

A Single Question Raises a Bottom Line

On my way back from my walk along the Hudson today, I wondered, What
would I do if I really let myself do what I was guided to do in my
business, as I support others in doing?

Well, that question felt too overwhelming, and too nonspecific; I could
go into a completely formless state if I asked that, and be entirely
impractical.

But then I wondered, What would I do if I let myself do what I was
guided to do, by inspiration, for just fifteen minutes?

A very clear answer: I would scoop my chest into the sand of Plum
Island in the North Shore of Massachusetts, my home state, and I would
feel palpably the darkness and the coldness of the wide water in front
of me beyond the edge of the hot and bright sand, and I would feel
gratefully the sand rubbing against the skin of my chest.

This scooping motion felt very important, and the fact that Plum Island
is a place that's very sacred to my father--he goes there every year to
photograph--and I had a strong sense of rightness to this.

But, of course, it wasn't practical either.

However, the next best thing was fairly practical--to write about this, which felt right also, and share the steady sun on the hot sand with
this newsletter mailing list.

There was another immediate, positive result of asking myself this
question--that was that I felt more palpably than I have in a while the
presence of the salt water of the Hudson, which is right near where I
live. I walk by it all the time, yet I almost never have felt able to
enjoy it, as if by becoming everyday it were required to become bland.
What's the point in living in a very beautiful and expensive
neighborhood if I don't enjoy it? It raises my happiness bottom line to
enjoy that salt water.

This is where most newsletters will say, Take fifteen minutes to let
yourself be guided in your business today. But I'm not saying that;
maybe taking the conceptual trip of doing so is more effective (by
simply reading this), or maybe what you're guided to do is something
other than taking fifteen minutes to focus specifically on doing what
you're guided to do. All I'll say is it may be a question worth asking
yourself, and if you do so I have a sense that it will a) not be the
end of you/your business and b) probably produce a good or even
excellent result. If you feel moved to take it, I support you in
taking the risk.

In the future, you'll call the tele-marketer; In Memoriam Mr. Mitchell -- Inspiring Newsletters #30-35

2009-06-01T23:04:00.001-04:00

Inspiring Newsletter

re-inspiration for clients and friends of www.InspiringWebCopy.com

an "aperiodical"—to speak when I am moved to speak

Issue 30

Wednesday, May 27th

My Garden Recharges Me

I started a garden on the land around my community house here in
Yonkers, on soil that has been bare, but for a few straggling weeds,.
and badly erodes every time it rains, and has resisted making a lawn
multiple times.
Recently I'd been finding I was rather resentful that other people
hadn't been helping with it. I knew, intellectually, of course, that
no one owes me to work on the garden, and that other people have less
of an interest in bettering the relationship with the ecosystem than I
have. That this happens not to appeal to them as strongly as it does
to me. I had accepted this in theory, but hadn't quite felt that way.
Especially since I felt that others gave a sense of direction to the
garden that I on my own lacked--I didn't feel motivated to build the
third bed since no one wanted to plant more, and didn't want to finish
filling in between the bricks of the second bed. I was tired, and
didn't have the surplus to do any more work on it.
My friend told me that the garden felt lonely to her, and that the bed
seemed to be asking to be visited more often. So I felt justified in
my resentment, and vindicated! All the people in my house need to do
is visit the damn thing, and it'll have better energy. How hard is
that? But still, what could I do to get them to visit the garden?
Nothing, probably.
Well, today I found a solution, which is so simple it really didn't
take a genius to come up with it, yet somehow had never occurred to me:
to visit the garden. Just sit there, without doing any gardening. Let
the garden nurture me.
Well, the garden inspired me today. I had my breakfast sitting next
to it. It said to me, It's plenty to just sit here and be next to me.
It gave me a feeling of being near a lake I used to visit with my
family in childhood, Echo Lake in Maine, a wide peacefulness, a
harmony, and soon it had me smiling ear to ear.

Note--what was inspiring and replenishing was three things (among
others):
--I was not doing any gardening, just sitting there
--the bird singing in the trees, a Baltimore oriole, which I'd been
hearing all day outside the window, turned from being a stressful
distraction to a pleasurable experience, since in fact I did if I were
honest have enough time to enjoy hearing it, and my sense of time
pressure was manufactured
--the energies from nature, from the earth, are inherently beneficial,
even when the earth has been compromised and eroded, and as I looked at
a mustard plant that was growing outside the garden, and a few stray
clumps of grass in the middle of the bare soil, I began to see them as
beautiful, feel them as heroic acts of nature to restore this soil to
fertility, rather than as the chaotic "weeds" I had projected
previously.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------

Issue 31

Thursday, May 29th

Pre-verbal Beliefs that Shape Our Reality

John Dempsey, my mastermind partner, was wondering about which beliefs
were creating his perceived reality, and which ones he would want to
change. In particular, he was wondering about beliefs that were
preverbal, that had been formed before he had words and that might be
impossible to articulate in words. If these wordless beliefs could not
be articulated, then how could they be brought to light and
relinquished? I found myself completely fascinated at the question of
what belief is there that could be absoltuely impossible to put into
words. I'm always interested in what can't be put in words--poetry,
feelings--and this especially. I had the strong sense that there was
a way, and that the word would come out soon, but in a form that
neither he nor I expected, in a poetic and living language that would
surprise both of us and have us both feel awed and dumbstruck. What
beliefs do you have that were formed before you could speak? what of
them can you put in words? is there an image, a color, a shape, a
memory of a night-dream?

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------

Issue 33

Saturday, May 30th

Dark Grass Blades in the Lenoir Preserve, Waving

The dark blades of grass, dark because they were in the shadow of the
tree, waving in front of the lighter blades in the sun, were made more
visible by means of this contrast. This fact allowed me to feel
particularly inspired with awe--those grass stalks waving slightly in
the wind, not rushing, not getting anywhere, not trying to sell
themselves.

-----------------------------------------------------
Issue 34

Sunday, May 31st

In Memoriam Mr. Mitchell

Another of my high school teachers died this week.

Robert Mitchell--Mr. Mitchell to us--was more than a Latin teacher. He
knew 22 languages, he gave us a living sense of the historical context
for the texts we studied (or failed to study), and he managed to help
us understand, or begin to, just how much of our world was an illusion,
how our understanding of the ancient world was hopelessly distorted by
the influence of the surroundings of modernism.

What inspired me about him most was his passion for the brother
Gracchus. Tiberius and Gaius both attempted to reform Roman society
and put public support back into farming rather than into war and
wasteful luxury. They were both murdered for what they did. I
remember one day a classmate asked, "Why did they do that? what was in
it for them?"

Mr. Mitchell, who was no pansy--he ran 6 miles every day and swam
another 3--had this to say in reply:

"They just cared. Some people do."

"No, nobody just cares, everybody is in it for some angle," said my
classmate. But she sounded uncertain.

Vale, Magister Mitchel. Now you can be with your favorite orators and
writers, with Cicero and Herodatus, and with the Gracchi.

-----------------------------------------------------
Issue 35

Monday, June 1

In the future, you'll call the tele-marketer

The thing that inspired me so much today was in my work with the
intuitive, horse-brain-like intelligence of nature itself, and the
spirit of partnership and mutual aid that exists between myself and one
of my colleagues.

We worked together today, and I was trying to come up with a definition
of marketing in the holistic paradigm, when it occurred to me that I
needed to define marketing in the old paradigm first. Then I got the
sense I should contrast the new to the old in each specific element.

I started with sales calls: And that's when it hit me--in the future,
the sales call will
--be done with primary attention on serving the customer, not on
selling any particular product
--be done with a salesperson who works not for one particular company
but for one particular purpose--e.g., to sell the best solar energy
system for the customer's needs
--honor the customer's own timing
--not sell the customer anything she/he doesn't need
--and be made at least 50% of the time by the customer--that is, the
customer calls the salesperson, and has the opportunity to choose to
learn more about the product. There is no element of transgressing on
the customer's boundaries--the sales call is not only consensual but
even sought after. What a vision for the future of commerce in our
society! I would never have come up with this alone!

www.inspiringwebcopy.com

Preverbal Beliefs That Create Our Reality -- Inspiring Newsletter #31

2009-05-29T00:16:00.001-04:00

John Dempsey, my mastermind partner, was wondering about which beliefs were creating his perceived reality, and which ones he would want to change. In particular, he was wondering about beliefs that were preverbal, that had been formed before he had words and that might be impossible to articulate in words. If these wordless beliefs could not be articulated, then how could they be brought to light and
relinquished? I found myself completely fascinated at the question of
what belief is there that could be absoltuely impossible to put into
words. I'm always interested in what can't be put in words--poetry,
feelings--and this especially. I had the strong sense that there was
a way, and that the word would come out soon, but in a form that neither he nor I expected, in a poetic and living language that would surprise both of us and have us both feel awed and dumbstruck. What beliefs do you have that were formed before you could speak? what of them can you put in words? is there an image, a color, a shape, a memory of a night-dream?

You Don't Need to Be Afraid of Marketing--Or Lose Your Inspiration, Passion, or Integrity

2006-09-18T21:29:00.001-04:00

HAVE YOU EVER WISHED YOU HAD A WAY TO BE FULLY SUPPORTED BY YOUR GREEN BUSINESS, HOLISTIC HEALING PRACTICE, OR PERFORMANCE CAREER SO YOU COULD SIMPLY FOCUS ON BRINGING LOVE TO MORE AND MORE PEOPLE EVERY DAY--WITHOUT BECOMING A SLEEZEBALL?

Do you want a web site that draws to you a steady stream of the people who really need your services?

Well I want you to have one. I want you to have the best marketing copy possible. Because I believe what you do makes a difference. With the crisis in health care in this country, the destruction of the environment, community, and our children's future, heart-centered business is needed more than ever. I can't do acupuncture; I haven't invented any super-solar-panels. But I can write--and I even went to Harvard. And I know in my gut I can give you as good marketing as the hacks on Madison Avenue are giving MalWart.

THREE COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS MOST HOLISTIC PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT MARKETING

There are many common misconceptions most holistic people have about marketing for success that tend to turn them off or scare them from the start. I myself used to think this way, and I didn't know anything about marketing. As I've learned the truth, I've realized that there are great advantages in the new, alternative marketing that most holistic healers are missing out on.

Here are three:

#1: It will cost a fortune.
#2: You have to pressure.
#3: You have to lie.

Misconception #1: It will have to cost a fortune.
And no matter how much you do it will only be a drop in the bucket and bring you a trickle of inquiries. You need to saturate the world with advertisements in order to have any effect. Your ads’ content doesn’t matter; only the quantity of ads placed, the and the amount of money spent placing them; you’d need to purchase a spamming database and do a mass mailing in order to get any visitors to your web site,

Truth: Alternative, no-pressure marketing can be inexpensive. The content of your copy is much more important than the quantity of ads placed on the internet or in the world. You don’t need to spam anyone; rather, you need to make sure that those people who do look at your copy are can see that you’re worth their time and money. Clearing the channel of communication is far better than brute force. Most of the waste occurs because the business's ads or business cards or web site are filled with platitudes instead of information.

Misconception #2: You have to pressure
Most visitors to your site won’t end up buying from you anyway. If you want to be financially successful, you’d to pressure your customer in order to get them to buy from you. You’d have to be like those slick used-car salesmen, and lie and fast-talk your prospect into making a purchase, and you’d never want to do that so you’ll be satisfied with not doing much business and not making enough money to do your work full time.

Truth: You don’t have to pressure anyone. Pressuring the prospect for a service like holistic healing is counter-productive. People who are looking for holistic healing tend to make their decisions based on their gut feeling, their heart, and convincing evidence-based information. The relationship is the most important thing. Pressuring people sets up a bad relationship from the start, so don’t do it.

Misconception #3: You have to lie.
To be really persuasive and make lots of cash, you’d have to make false claims.

Truth: Obviously, lying about your services would be counterproductive also. It will build a bad relationship. What you need to do is to tell the full impact your services are able to have if you want people to make the investment. It’s necessary to be free of the demons that say your gifts aren’t worth that much. Then it’s also necessary to spark the person’s imagination, by describing in detail the exact nature of the service so she or he has a sensory picture in her/his head. The prospect should breathe a deep breath because your description is so vivid that his body itself responds and says, “Yes, finally, someone who understands!” The words on your website can be so vivid that they act on the prospect’s energy field like an acupuncture treatment. The effect should continue to adjust his/her energy field for 72 hours after the needles have been removed. Artful words can do this.

MY PROCESS

First I interview my clients for at least an hour and a half. You tell me your passion—what it is exactly that you most want to offer to the world, and who are your ideal clients. Not just the ones who pay well—the ones who feed your spirit to work with.

Next I’ll ask some more practical questions. Your clients’ needs, their values, what evidence they need to feel they’re making the right choice in doing business with someone. These are great not only for marketing, but open up opportunities for you to reflect on your gifts and your challenges. It’s often helpful to have a second person near to help one focus on things that are up close every day and that one tends to begin to take for granted. Maybe you’re always stuck in the thought, “I don’t know where to begin,” but in reality you need a chance to remember that you already have a few web sites that inspire you that you’ve been meaning to check out. You have that information in your head; what you don’t have is a mechanism for accessing it—a mirror. I’ll be your mirror.

Then, I’ll toot your horn. If you’re like a lot of people, you undervalue your work because you’re afraid of doing this. Who can see your worth more objectively than you can? The answer is anyone else. Especially if they’re paying attention and care. You don’t like to toot your own horn—so I’ll toot it for you.

Then I’ll come back at you with a draft, and we’ll work collaboratively as you care to—and I hope you’ll be very involved throughout because this is your web site we’re trying to build. You’re free to nix anything, of course. The only thing I won’t let you do is sell yourself short. And I’ll hold you to the rule of specificity—unique, specific ads are what I’m after. Poets and marketers agree on one thing: platitudes do everyone a disservice.

For more information, visit my website at www.inspiringwebcopy.com, or call the number there to set up a free 30-minute consultation.

Thanks for your time reading this. Good luck getting people to know about what you offer.

Joshua

Ad for The Zodiac Lounge (www.zodiaclounge.info)

2006-07-12T17:06:00.000-04:00

THE ZODIAC LOUNGE
GEMINI PARTY

What happens when you get twenty Geminis together in a room, feed them cake, and sing to them? Come find out at the Gemini Birthday Party at the Zodiac Lounge.

The people from the different signs have all carried different vibrations to our events. During our Scorpio party, thirty people showed up unexpectedly in the middle of the evening. How or why is a complete mystery. One Capricorn was very moving to witness--she was overwhelmed by being sung to and fed cake. With Gemini your vibration is very inquisitive. Expect a lively and stimulating conversation all night long.

One question remains--what magic will YOU bring to the Zodiac Lounge?

People-Powered Percussion Well Drilling in Dano, Burkina Faso

2006-07-03T12:37:00.000-04:00

David, Goliath, the Research Team and the Spiritual Workshop Teacher:
People-Powered Percussion Well Drilling in Dano, Burkina Faso

January 1-24, 2004

In the bright African sun, next to the ancient mud brick House of Bakhye, stands a modern yellow drill rig fifteen feet high. Its gas motor blasts noise into the hot, sand-colored plane, while four or five Africans and one European crowd round the behemoth, fussing with its levers and shouting. Its head is buried in a wet hole in the yellow earth. You notice how the endless agitating of the engine rattles your thoughts—until you longer notice, but it continues to rattle them.

A quarter mile away, a railroad tie hangs vertically on a rope and pulley, suspended from a tripod of three tree trunks leaning together. On the bottom of the railroad tie are four metal teeth, which strike the earth as the railroad tie drops. Two young Americans hold the other end of the rope, heave-ho-ing like sailors. When they pull, the tie jumps up, and when they release it falls; rises, falls, rises, falls. The men stop to pour water into the hole, making mud, then resume pulling. This method of drilling works by simply making mud.
Soon a small crowd of village children appears from nowhere. They are laughing at the strange foreigners and their contraption, but they decide to help anyway. In no time, a dozen have joined the rope line--pulling too vigorously so they need to be asked to slow down, but helping nevertheless. Very gradually, the small pit of mud is getting larger.

This tableau captures the essence of my experience of well drilling in Dano, Burkina Faso, West Africa. (I was one of the crazy Americans in the second scenario.) The serious, grown-up, gas-powered rig got all the serious attention, while the gentle hand-powered percussion drill got was an object of merriment for the children. But who will win this race, the tortoise or the hare?

I am the least experienced person on this project. The percussion drill is my pet idea. I discovered it myself--with Google™. I like it on aesthetic grounds, it’s simple and you can put it together yourself. Any Dagara villager could find the materials--and, even easier, the labor--to dig a borehole through the laterite and rocky soil of Subsaharan West Africa. I like the idea of being able to recycle scrap metals to make something useful. Best of all, it’s tried and true: the technology comes from ancient China. Cliff Missen, who rediscovered and applies this ancient technique to modern well drilling needs in West Africa, writes that the Chinese once dug to a depth of 3,000 feet this way . Finally, the motorized drill rig just seems overly complicated and cumbersome to my eye, and, unable to be of much help with it when the project started by repairing it, I felt left out.

But more than this, I have a dream, inspired by Cliff Missen and prompted by a talk I heard at the Water Conference at The Omega Institute in 2003 about how bottled water companies threaten to privatize the water supplies, and suck up the aquifers, of Fourth World countries like Dagara Land. My dream is that if everyone knew how to make wells, if the methodology could be widely disseminated, then there would be an empowering, democratically distributed means of production of wells. As I put it to young Bepouo in my bad French, If everyone can build a well, one man can’t steal all the water.

Donated to the Water Project by an Amercican and shipped from America at considerable cost, the drill rig sat in the “Water Shed” (as it’s called) near the House of Bakhye for some years, and since our arrival has been receiving extensive repairs. First, no one could find the key to the tool box, so it had to be beaten open. Next, parts had to be ordered from Ouagadougou, the capital, to replace broken ones. Then, because the rig is American, and so built with English Standard measurements, the mechanics had to fudge the sizes on the ball bearings from Ouagadougou. It has taken a week now to get it up and running.

The percussion drill by contrast took two days--of our precious time here--thanks to the exhaustive efforts of Mark Bockley in America to get most of the parts (pulleys, ropes, easy-release hook; the four teeth welded and cut). The trees a young man happily chopped down for us from the village with someone’s machete, the railroad tie we found at the blacksmith/auto mechanic in town. It was propping up a goat shed, but he found another, bent one to take its place and sold us the straight one for a few CFA’s. (He also sold us a thick pipe which, being too long, he sawed in half—with a hand saw.) Labor is readily available—in fact, it’s harder to prevent people from helping around here. If the villagers decided to do percussion drilling, they would have little trouble getting people to do the pulling. However, the percussion drill has had a handicap, since the person giving it attention—myself—has been sick for a while, and I don’t have much experience leading projects like this in foreign countries. I’m 25.

But now it is set up and being tested at least. And even Johnathan Kemp, who’s been working tirelessly to repair the drill rig, is beginning to like the idea of it more and more. Two decades older than me, Jonathan, a serious, wiry British man with gray hair and certain fierceness, has been up at dawn every day working while I was still groaning in my sleeping bag. He’s now observing to me that the percussion drilling is “appropriate technology”—it’s cheap, it’s easy, there are no screws to replace or ball bearings, no mud pump, no gasoil. Just patience, which people here have had plenty of with the water projects that come from abroad. If the townsfolk were somehow absolutely certain they would hit water by pulling a rope for four years, they’d do it. Three weeks, the maximum required according to Cliff Missen, should be a piece of cake.

Still, on some level, I’ve never stopped assuming the drill rig will work in the end. It’s hit obstacles, but how can something that noisy fail? I am young, so when it gets stuck one evening, under the copper sky, and the momentum of our project is sunk in quickly hardening mud, it’s a real shock. I’m sad. The old rig stands there in the evening light like Goliath, grumbling, while David waits uncertainly in its empty field. In such a serious situation, it feels awful to be right.

In the end neither method wins the race. The drill rig gets remains stuck, or broken, or both, and the percussion drilling doesn’t get a full try for reasons that will be made clear now.
It turns out there are already wells all over Dano-Bagan, pumps broken, infested, covered over. Lea and Palma make contact with an organization called Water Aid, which thoroughly researches a given area before they even put in a single well. They tell us %30 of wells in Burkina Faso are broken because of this lack of research, and many more than that must be infested. Their work is to place the wells--and time their completion—so that no well is left serving too large an area for too long a time, thus preventing overuse. They also educate people about well maintenance and sanitation, so that people, who are imperfect in Burkina Faso as well as anywhere else—will not undo the efforts of the well builders. So what’s truly needed is something much subtler than a new drilling method: research. To drill another borehole, with any method, would be wasted effort.

We travel with Water Aid’s researcher to several different compounds around Dano. In one, a woman greets us with four kisses, an old man greets us and plays his jyil (xylophone) for us. They are keeping the old ways, though they are just a few kilometers from the House of Bakhye and the truck stop of Dano.

The women in this compound know that the waste water outside their house is noxious, but they don’t have anything to do about it. There’s so much more to this situation than drilling holes in the ground. The Water Aid researcher tells us this is what the two researchers for Water Aid will do—visit many compounds and ask many questions. Water Aid is smart about its way of working: they hire two villagers, one maole and one female, from the villages they are going to work for, to do much of the research themselves. That way the questions will be asked in a proper, culturally aware way. That way no one will try to put a well too close to someone’s burial plot, or a shrine, which would render it unusable. Only after months of research will they even begin planning where to put the wells.

I strongly believe that the project is in better shape for its “failures” in the field. In fact, they are only failures from the perspective of someone whose goal is merely to put a hole in the ground. Physically being there ourselves accomplished many things beyond what comes of simply paying someone to go in to drill a well (as we finally did after leaving). If we had not physically been there in Africa we might never have discovered the disused wells, or discovered Water Aid, an organization run by Africans, or figured out that an imported drill rig can be more of an obstacle than a help. If so many well projects have failed before and not learned from the mistakes, littering the landscape with unusable boreholes, then it is all the more important that our project has taken the care to figure this out. Our general orientation, being friends with the villagers rather than saviors, coming and spending time here rather than paying someone else to travel for us, has allowed us hope of solving the practical problems more lastingly. Even Water Aid cannot be a substitute for our physical presence there.

And I still believe in the dream of percussion drilling, and that, if Goliath had not been the focus of our project, if we had dared from the start to take a more maverick approach, if we changed our thinking, then David might have started a trend in well drilling that could have caught on, or something even better.

Postscript—two years later:

In looking again at this article after two years, I have seen some naïvete in my understanding of matters at the time--but I am not ready to dream any smaller. Instead, I dream bigger than before. I have feel anew a passion for the use of percussion drilling. But even more powerfully, I have been led—by Spirit perhaps--to an entirely new way to envision our whole project. Cliff Missen’s brilliant solution, by being so affordable and accessible, paves the way for an even greater change to be made.

There is a whole social Water Project that may be, and perhaps needs to be, embarked upon, and which our work so far has been pointing towards. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime, the saying goes. I think it is the time that we in the West who want to give back to Dano must become teachers, not givers.

In the West, Malidoma Some’s work has been so successful because he has not given us indigenous medicine, he has taught us how to make our own—however clumsy we may be in making it. He has given us room to make mistakes and learn from them, and to bring our individual genius to the work. That is why, recently, Malidoma and our “village” initiated ten elders in the Dagara tradition, a project that was the culmination of years of work, and which required that we have a functioning social and spiritual village with five living shrines and keepers of each, an ancestor house the whole community could stand on top of, and the will, motivation, and inspiration to stick it out for two weeks in the woods cooking and washing and swatting flies. Only a group of people who recognize their investment in a project will show up to get a job like this done, and people who are merely given treasures don’t have an investment. People who instead are taught how to create them know the depth of what they’ve created in a visceral way.

What if we turned that around, and led workshops in Burkina Faso in well-building the way Malidoma has led workshops in making medicine? What if we did the hard, slow work of creating a community of Dagara villagers who are really dedicated to solving physical technology problems?--to learning Western (and other) physical technologies, adapting them to an African context, and teaching them to others? What if we engaged the considerable technical expertise and inventiveness of Lucas Hien and Souleyman and other young people in the village, as well as the social and spiritual technologies of the elders?

Reciprocity has always been a hallmark of our Water Project: they gave us their medicine, we wanted to give them wells. This new idea is an extension of the same principle, and is more precise: they taught us medicine, we can reciprocate best by teaching them ours. What we’ve done so far--trying to give wells—has been only moderately successful. After leaving Dano in 2004, we paid a contractor to go and drill the well we had promised at the House of Bakhye. A few more wells have been put in since then, and Water Aid has done its work—but we have the potential for something much larger and more tailored to the actual, complex needs of Dano: we have personal relationships with the people in the village there.

Granted, well building classes are not going to attract everybody, and some will only show up for the food. There is something more needed than simply giving the instructions away. I left a copy of the basic directions with the mechanic in town—he seemed interested in telling me about how Africa is hurting, and wanted to know about the drilling methods. I made a special trip to the internet café to get the pages copied, and left them for him, but I haven’t heard that he has done anything with them since. I believe it’s harder for people to make change than would appear on the surface—there is a lot of fear. And even though the mechanic could have made himself a small amount of money, I suspect he was hoping in the immediate for another person to rescue him rather than a way to empower himself. He could probably use some support. In a community that is focused on the goal of well-drilling, people could face such fears together and feel less alone.

In the West we’ve had a real forming of a community of people who understand the need for doing the work, who are responsible and are doing it not for themselves but for the larger community. I’m sure such a thing can be found in Dano, and especially will be seen once an avenue for action is made visible to those with a desire to act. I believe it is a matter of inspiring people, the way Malidoma’s books and speaking have inspired us. I believe it is a matter of finding those few people, those who have the desire to do the work, those who feel it is their calling to make wells happen.

But isn’t community already there in Dagara culture? Yes, we know that there is a kind of vast interconnectedness in the Dagara village that Westerners can only begin to imagine. This does not mean however that all villagers are the same, all equally interested in learning well drilling. There may be some, like ten-year-old B_____ perhaps, who will have a special passion for it, others who have talents for organizing people or communicating. When these people come together to make wells, there can be a real group energy behind the effort. There needs to be a group movement for things to change from the present culture; the call must also come from the ancestors for any real change to occur in the Dagara context.

It’s very likely that there are many people working in nearby parts of Africa on similar projects, stimulating entrepreneurial efforts through micro-loans and trainings. We could connect with people who are already doing this kind of work, as well as Cliff Missen and Wellspring Africa.

And what if we had the donors on board with this teach-fishing project from the start? Wouldn’t that feel a lot better than the usual guilt-tinged request to pour tens of thousands of dollars into starving Africa?

In advocating teaching, I am inevitably conjuring an unpleasant image: the missionary who knows best, who destroys the delicate social and spiritual fabric of indigenous people’s lives. But it really depends on your attitude—a take-it-or-leave-it, humble, approach can at least prevent us from doing harm. The call for wells came from the Dagara ancestors originally, and not from a foreign agenda (). In talking about teaching and forming a community, am I talking about trying to change Dano? Yes, Dano would be changed. But I believe, and Malidoma often has said, that Dano is changing anyway. The inevitable process of modernization is visible everywhere, from the internet café in town to the absence of young folk, who’ve left for the capital. We—Americans and Dagara--have an opportunity in Dano to bring good technologies in before bad ones can take up all the space, we have an opportunity to do things that legal restrictions in the U.S. prevent and oil subsidies make unprofitable: solar panels, sustainable practices, and the like. We ought to take this opportunity before unhelpful people do.