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Training Wheels & Neuroscience-based Meditation Tools

As a kid, I had a hard time learning to ride a bike.  Try as I might, I simply couldn’t make it work.  Eventually, after I had become resigned to never getting the knack, a neighbor named Elsa pressed me to try one more time.  After watching me try, she said “I know what’s wrong.” and removed the training wheels from the bike.  “Now try”, she said.  Skeptical but willing, I climbed onto the bike and rode — up the block, down the block, no problem.  We both hooted with delight as I took a victory lap.  All along, the training wheels had been the obstacle.  Thinking that the wheels were supposed to function like a tricycle, I had tried to keep at least one wheel on the ground at all times, which obviously prevented me from ever finding my balance.  The training tool had fundamentally distorted my understanding of what I was supposed to be learning.

I worry that the same thing will happen when people try to learn meditation using neuroscience-based tools — biofeedback devices, brainwave training tools, and especially pharmaceuticals.  In the case of bicycles and training wheels, I was the anomaly; most kids don’t encounter the confusion that I had.  By contrast, with meditation I think theres a much higher risk of misunderstanding.  First of all, the basic science of neruophysiology & meditation remains alarmingly incomplete and fraught with serious confusion, meaning that any of these tools that crop up are building on fuzzy science.  Second, mind-training skills are more complicated to acquire than riding a bike, meaning that oversimplification of the learning process is a serious risk.  Third, as a culture, we are much more adept at understanding & manipulating external, physical things like bicycles than we are at understanding or even scrutinizing our own minds.  

Next time you see me shrug my shoulders at the topic of these new neuroscience-based meditation “tools”, think of a little freckled redheaded kid frustratedly trying and failing to ride a bike with one training wheel firmly planted on the ground.

Meditation isn’t just a skill that you can acquire and keep in your pocket, nor is it a state that you can cook up and then repeatedly return to.  Meditation is an ongoing process or a way of relating with your mind, and all of the value of meditation comes from repeatedly working with your own mind through sustained effort & observation.  This doesn’t mean that we will be unable to use neuroscience to craft tools that do truly help people to learn meditation, but it does mean that we should be very skeptical of each attempt and patient along the way.

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Uncategorized

An exploration of Social Media draws the Next Generation of Arts Patrons

[Originally published in An Die Musik and on the Knight Foundation Arts Blog]

As The Schubert Club waltzes into its 130th anniversary, it could be content to function as a stuffy, conservative grand-marm to the cities’ performing arts world. I find it delightful and instructive to see the organization pass that option over. A wise friend pointed out that “An organization doesn’t last 130 years by chasing fads, but it also can’t survive by ignoring change.” In order to survive, it must remain responsive. The Schubert Club seems to live by that ethos.

The staff of The Schubert Club are bright, skillful and enthusiastic people. They have fresh perspectives and they’re led by a new Executive Director who has no shortage of insightful ideas. This organization is vivacious. It’s in this environment that The Schubert Club has launched the Theoroi project, a novel initiative aimed at harnessing social media to cultivate a community of young arts patrons.

On the evening of Susan Graham’s performance at the Ordway this January, twenty five young professionals and artists stood in the foyer speculating about where their seats would be, discussing the previous show they’d seen together a month earlier, and generally catching up. They dominated the space in front of the bar with an air of eminent confidence and comfort. Who were they? They were too confident in the space to be a random outing of friends, and too cohesive to be a spontaneous gathering of ticket holders. Some of my fellow board members stopped by saying “These must be the Theoroi.”

The Schubert Club’s Theoroi project invites twenty five people each year, all in their twenties and thirties, to serve as “ambassadors of the arts” who attend a ten-month series of performances around the Twin Cities and post online about their experiences. Susan Graham’s International Artist Series performance was the participants’ third show at the Ordway in four months. Their previous Ordway experiences were the Minnesota Opera’s Così fan Tutte in October and the Ordway’s presentation of Vox Lumiere in November. Other performances in the season include shows presented by the Guthrie, Dakota Jazz Club, St Paul Chamber Orchestra and Jungle Theater. The full season is posted on the project’s website.

The Theoroi group chats with Uri Sands and Toni Pierce Sands of TU Dance following the May 19, 2012 performance at the Cowles Center in Minneapolis.

Though we initially conceived Theoroi as a playful exploration of social media and community engagement, the project has quickly taken on a broader, richer tone. I now tell people that we’re training the next generation of arts patrons, which invariably draws the query “What do you mean by a patron?”

I’ve learned that some people think of arts patronage primarily in terms of financial support while others define patronage in terms of engagement, enthusiasm, and participation. With Theoroi, we are seeking to feed a whole culture of arts patronage, one where people of many ages attend performances, have opinions about them, and express those opinions in a public forum. I think that a thriving arts culture is one where people arrive at performances wondering what familiar faces they will see in the audience, and speculating about what the evening’s experience will bring. After the performance, they should walk out with opinions on their tongues, the confidence to express them and a curiosity about the opinions of others. If you have those things, then you have the basis for a culture of patronage–one where audiences are engaged, arts organizations are responsive, and the community feels compelled to sustain those organizations.

With each year of the project, Theoroi adds fresh voices to the mix while growing the overall network of connected, informed, vocal ambassadors. This summer we will invite twenty five new participants for the 2012-2013 season. Meanwhile the participants from 2011-2012 are enthusiastic about remaining involved. Even with fifty people, this project could have lasting positive impact. Network effects will compound those benefits with every additional year. Thirty years from now, how many Theoroi graduates will be gathering in the foyer of the Ordway? How long will they have known each other, how long will they have thought of themselves as arts patrons, and how many different ways will they be contributing to the vitality of arts in our cities?

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Food, Uncategorized

Spiced Mocha

This is a delicious dark chocolate variation on the Muddy’s Cubano at Muddy Waters in Minneapolis.

Bruise some cinnamon and cardamon, add them to your ground coffee beans along with a pinch of sugar.  Brew the coffee using your preferred method – I like using a caffettiera.  Meanwhile, combine dark chocolate, ginger and milk in a small saucepan.  Heat and stir until the chocolate melts and everything is blended.  Pour the coffee into mugs, add the milk mixture to it — 50/50 is coffee/milk is a good balance.  Add sugar to taste.

BTW, for spiced hot chocolate instead of a mocha, you could put the cinnamon, cardamon and ginger all into the saucepan with the milk & chocolate then pour it through a strainer when you’re done.

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Musings & Adventures

Modern gaybars: what they tell me about the bullshit siddhartha said goodbye to

[Flashback: I tapped this into my phone on Feb 6 2009 while out drinking & clubbing in London. I’ve fixed it for grammar before posting.]

What modern gaybars tell us me about the bullshit siddhartha said goodbye to:

• material perfection is not a remedy for dissatisfaction
• loneliness & craving run rampant in the midst of plenty
• hope & fear manifest very differently when you have no reason to really harbor fear
• all things are impermanent. this too shall pass, and it won’t be all bad

At least in the west, people tend to take for granted that siddartha was right, more accurately righteous, when he walked away from princedom. I think this is partially a defense tactic. By accepting it carte blanche we avoid internalizing the convictions he was actually acting upon.

The potency of the theravadin view lies in acknowledging that the Buddha was born a man. An extraordinary man, a blessed man, but nonetheless a man no different from yourself. Remembering this presses us challenge ourselves, our hopes, our fears, our convictions and our deepest habits.

Tonight I’m sitting in the middle of XXL, also known ad Fat Club. It’s one of London’s hottest gay bars. There have been easily over 1000 people through the doors tonight. All of them gay, all of them men, most of them looking for sex, and all of them understanding the fundamental premise of this place: take what you want, so long as you’re bold enough to do so.

In short, I sit in the midst of a (gay) hedonist paradise. Future nostalgists and those who live under more oppressive constraints will inevitably project special qualities onto scenes like this. Indeed, I did so when I was a fledgeling ‘mo in then-small Minneapolis. Allow me to proclaim, admittedly from a position of privilege, that it’s not all it’s worked up to be.

If anything, this scene feels like a study in the natural unquenchability of pure desire. Here each man stands with his body’s desires mere heartbeats away yet the underlying tone of the place is one of unrest and striving. Those who do quench their craving tonight will return soon. If not here then somewhere else, if not seeking sex then seeking some other satisfaction. Each time life rises to meet our wishes, we either turn to loftier aspirations or we lock onto the experience as an ideal that we will ever seek to regain Either way, the cycle continues.

Hope & Fear

Once upon a time; oft upon a place, a gay man had reason to fear repercussions for seeking fulfilment of his natural impulses. Here & now, that fear would be completely baseless. Nonetheless, hope & fear still dominate nearly every interaction. Why?

This too shall pass. Sometime, some place, the burdens of social conservatism will again descend upon us. I wonder, will it be all bad?

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