Pointilism of Phil Hansen has many points indeed! One of them, surely dominant among the first impressions that locks our attention to his work, is his doubtlessly great artistic gift easily recognized at the early age of all true talents, born genius of artistic expression who always seems like playing with it, jiggling on the rope and exploring borders with their art, but what else that play may involve? From the comments of many reviewer of his art through video sharing and his website comment pages, we may see that it is refreshing, inspiring, amusing, reminding people to some favorite artist from the past, and it is also very much focused to the issues of the current political circumstances and social environment, as well as for the most personal matters of collaboration, like for instance the wheel into which the most striking moments of life of many people all over the world were recorded by artist’s hand, making his own rotating portrait.

Who is Phil Hansen? It is hard to explain and fathom, as in the wide field of the art anything and anyone can go as the art and artist today, but here we see a man with the vision that is grasping far and wide into the world of human explorations and see how is he becoming (from one episode of creation to the other) a “vision accomplished” hero: a man with the artist’s eye and hand ready to follow and deliver the rules of any newly created games, however bizarre or touching, hard or intelligent, hilarious or even silly they may appear. Someone commented how seeing him playing with the Rubik’s cube would be interesting to imagine. Surely, this artist is the one who knows how to turn visions from his rich imagination into artistic reality using system of creating and performing his creative games and filling into his own rules of each of them the tissue of the nature, thoughts, feelings, imagination, objects and technologies that are at hand or somewhere around the corner. Each game has its story, and the story is visually recorded, and shared accompanied with the music so good that it hardly can be neglected. This is also a tribute to all who are being happy to play this way and leave a record or a note to the global audience of inquiring minds so to speak.

One of the most important things for me was his ability for fruitful and totally unpretentious collaboration inside and outside the “institutional frames” of what are is and isn't and where its place can be, making the most out of what is given at present in this confusingly abundant world of all rules made to keep us inside strict borders. This artist is crossing these borders and going through the walls of convention (and institutional art) with an ease of a good ghost Casper or imagination of a child that is not making any notice of any borders, dissolving them all in his play except the frame of his own game, but also with mastery of the experienced wizard of pointillism, where we always stay amazed both by the process and artistic vision embodied in the final outcome.

Phil Hansen, we may say is born to be a great painter and he is that all over his body, spirit and mind and he dares to display it by painting with his arms and hands and elbows and feet and also demonstrating to us his thought process and shows us by recording steps of his work how we may feel friendly with our (mostly alienated, trivial, boring or scary) environment playing with the fragments of it, be that pinecones, sand, x-rays and machines that devour all artistic effort into the pieces of grinded trash or be that our own prejudices or images of famous celebrities and political figures and what impact they can have on our mind.

His artistic endeavor and message of his art may seem so touchingly caring, so universally deep and personally moving, but also, for some it can be unbelievably light and playful, spontaneous and easy, cool and seemingly superficial like the finest wrap of invisible irony, as you like it. So take it as you like, if you purchase his paintings you will surely contribute by that gesture to the humanitarian cause, if you observe that idea of being attributed to some cause having a big picture on your mind, you are facing the area of your own freedom and facing the fact how mind liberation is each moment of human life, or life of civilization triggered with the great works of art that are simply born around us.

Some ideas for the exploration of that kind could be: deserts and oceans, words and verses, streets and cities, human and animal’s eyes, and many more that come to mind thanks to this artist whose work we'd spontaneously like to follow sometimes like a child going after the circus leaving the town and sometimes like a serious art connoisseur who wonders about the future of the art and the role of the artist in the world today, putting everything under the magnifying glass.

In the end, without wishing to put his work into any categories and so much refreshed by the overwhelming experience of meeting his art recorded the way (I must compliment too) I wish to give to Phil Hansen, the artist of the boundless imagination, restless spirit, inspiring vision and hardworking limbs a truly big hand!

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See his art at http://www.philinthecircle.com
More about his art at POTW article http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/23115/strokes-of-genius
Type Phil Hansen in Youtube.com to see his videos

Covent Garden Revives Thomas Adès's The Tempest

When the Royal Opera House in London presented Thomas Adès's The Tempest in 2004, it was one of the most successful world premieres of an opera in years. The entire run sold out; the reviews ranged from respectful and encouraging (at their worst) to downright thrilled; audience reaction was ecstatic. Now the Royal Opera is presenting a revival of The Tempest.

The Tempest's encore run opened on Monday night (March 12); there are further performances tomorrow evening and on March 17, 20, 23 and 26. Details are available at www.royaloperahouse.org.
www.playbillarts.com/news/article/6160.html

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No reading of The Tempest can do it justice: Shakespeare's tale of Prospero's Island is inherently theatrical, unfolding in a series of spectacles that involve exotic, supra-human, and sometimes invisible characters that the audience can see but other characters cannot. The play was composed by Shakespeare as a multi-sensory theater experience, with sound, and especially music, used to complement the sights of the play, and all of it interwoven by the author with lyrical textual passages that overflow with exotic images, trifling sounds, and a palpable lushness.

The richness of The Tempest as theater is matched by the extraordinary thematic complexity of its text. Recognizing that all of the themes and accompanying figurative strands of the play cannot be discussed here, the play's topical highlights can still be approached by first noting the salience of two themes that arise from the very theatricality of the play: the opposition between reality and illusion and the tandem subject of the theater itself. The play challenges our senses and is self-consciously a performance orchestrated by Shakespeare's effigy in the master illusionist Prospero. There are, in addition, numerous interpenetrating polarities in the play, most notably between nature and civilization or Art. These thematic strands come together at multiple points of intersection.

Nevertheless, from one angle on the text, The Tempest asks a single question, one that Shakespeare had posed in many and divers of his other plays: What is a human being? (or, in Elizabethan terms: What is man?)

http://www.enotes.com/tempest/

Following nomination and voting for the finalists in second annual Best Entrepreneurs Under 25 U.S. report organized by Business Week I was thinking about things that make a difference in this world adding a new value and inspiring the others to do so.

In a nutshell everyone can say that it is about having a vision and finding the best way of its accomplishment. But the process doesn't stop there. Even more important part is sharing it with the others and enjoying benefits of exchange, becoming through it a true leader, moving the others to the course of becoming aware of their own value and potentials and following their path to self-actualization and success.

If you wish to see young entrepreneurs that might inspire your work take a look at:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/10/bestunder25/source/27.htm

Sheena Lindahl and Michael Simmons from Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corporation are my pick for no other reason of many said about them than this: I believe that the main issue of "How to Create a Life of Passion, Purpose, and Prosperity" is the eternal search of humankind. And that is exactly the titleline of their Student's Success Manifesto.

http://successmanifesto.com

There is a question, many questions that can be linked with commitment in general...

What is it that holds the relationships between people, friends, partners, men and women, thousands of them? Why is there often a feeling that someone is "using" the other, or at the best that they are "equally using each other" for their interests? Something similar can happen with friendships. The connection becomes the line of exchange and then it broaden, but in most cases it becomes the highway or a railway with so huge traffic on it that the noise is making you leave, loosing the point of what was it for at the first place, and search for the "greener pastures" as we say But the question is why and have we wasted all grass like that already?

Harmony with nature, what is more natural for any being than to achieve that? But at the same time what is more missing in our culture than that? Harmony with true human nature is subject of cultural diversity of the ways how life should be lived. And sometimes some values or false values seem to stand in opposition. Why so, when all the values of each culture are there to support one value, core value, that is human Life? Survival and growth.

Doesn't that value imply the pact of nonviolence with the cause, not because we fear something might happen to us too, but for the good cause? To support Life. To make foundation for the future that is to come. Why do we mostly fear of future when it is the best thing we have, and maybe the only thing we might have - the future ahead? Why do we tend to contaminate everything with our doubts and fears of the past? Why in the end we come to the point of doubt in the primary value - human life?

Imagine a field where two people or many people meet, and stroll together and after some time they build a path and then they can still rest by it, or cultivate their garden together, spreading it, making new paths... having some sense in caring and following what's going on, but then one day you open your eyes and see that there's just too much of wasted ground under your feet. What has happened to the garden?

If too many people come to that place it is more likely that they will not contribute but on the contrary, the whole field will look like a stadium after the football match, the grass wasted after the concert in the open air. What has happened? Too much emotions? Or too much of neglecting the true sense or the meaning of that gathering. If it was just to pass some time, the time will pass after and the ground will heal, it will be ready for the new gardeners.

The same way people are building and destroying their culture and civilizations that have collapsed were overstepped by the feet of those who are numerous, uncaring, ignorant or just too impatient to wait and see, those who want everything and want that now, those who haven't felt that responsibility for building something that is in their hands, along the timeline, during their life time and to be continued afterwards.

The repression from one hand is making the release of uncontrolled energy from the other side. Who is setting up and who is following the rules? Can we say that we can commit and from that from there we feel we are getting the power, not the power of the other one nor even the power of God, which is omnipresent, but feel the power of that commitment made to each other and to our selves, for if we, humans are not being of commitment we still may be any of the animals that struggle to survive. Commitment vs. survival? No, but the commitment as a form of survival of humanity.

Who can commit to something that he or she will do like that no matter what? If the faith is backboned with commitment and the commitment backed up with faith, there is no stronger bond. At the same time it is not enough to have a will, nor passion only, nor talent nor desire only, the plan or thought, The commitment is the action of a whole being, and it should be learned. Maybe the highest wisdom and the highest art is knowing how to commit to something and in doing so realizing yourself as a human being? Whatever it may happen to be.

Sometimes our best commitment is made to the unknown, to the future and unpredictability, to life as we may grasp its meaning and value, and produce a new quality of truth out of it. Thus we sometimes might not know or fully articulate our true commitment because it is not just what we said by words. Nor even deeds. It spans over whole lifetime, just in the end we will know, and maybe not even then, but that doesn’t minimize the truth and quality of our commitment.

Being committed and knowing it, working on it and not necesserily even naming it, is making the center of our being whole, holy and respected, respectful for the others, patient to wait for the time to show its forms and grateful for each revelation on that way.

- Minimum 100 millions of neural cells are engaged in this system located in our stomach

- The system of visceral brain in our stomach uses the same neurotransmitters as our brain

- Our visceral brain has its own memory, often not pertaining to conscious self

- It’s in constant touch with our central neural system using thousands neuron links to brain

- It sends 4 times more signals/messages to our head than it receives from the brain


So what are these messages? What is the function of this intelligent creation in our inner organ that regulate extremely complex processes of digestion, extracting nutritive ingredients and nourishing our body by integrating it in our cells, absorbing and rejecting?

It is often said “I need some time to digest that” for the things that we are not ready to consciously face, accept or refuse – the events and impressions that touch us and move us, the contacts with people who arise certain emotions in us, the intensity of our emotions, all that is measured and judged by stomach, being processed and incorporated or ignored by our head.

It is getting like this – by means of sensations, feelings and foresight our visceral brain in stomach informs central neural system about its activity of spiritual and physical “digestion” and about all learning that happens connected to that.

Disgust and repulsion are messages that stomach send in case of both huge and small danger perceived. When there is a message of content and satisfaction, feelings of trust and confidence then we are moved and motivated to activities of some kind. Sometimes it sends to us just the message “Something is wrong here”.

Feelings from your stomach participate in the most rational decision making processes. “Feelings drive our complete existence and they do it in a form of complete but condensed life experience” – says Damasio. It is like that in playing football, composing music, giving the interview for a new job, buying a new house or even – purchasing detergent at the store. Feelings everywhere move us, no matter if that is on the level of new world order design of our state leaders and key business players or our individual choice between two jobs, two places, two restaurants to dine. There is always the stomach which has already made its decisions while head is still thinking.

Only milliseconds are enough for visceral brain to communicate to our head its opinion about the alternative it has already chosen and it does it in a very simple way. No abstract thoughts, no complex explanations. For instance, how modern physicists recognize in the myriads of calculations when their formula is true? “By its elegance” - Einstein said. By the intense feeling of satisfaction and happiness.
There are other intelligent reactive spots in our organism as Indian philosophy of Ayurveda is teaching us. It is about chakras located vertically on 7 body points and not only in our head and stomach. Newest research in a multidisciplinary field of pseudo-neuro-cardio-imunology show that neural cells are present in the tissue of the heart that is also soaked in neurotransmitters similar to those that make our brain function. So we may say that we feel at home everywhere inside our body.

If you test your intuition you may get into following groups by the level of use and trust to your inner voice in your life.

Having a super-intuition you live highly intuitive, spontaneous and creative way. You have good insight in what is happening to you and you let yourself being led by your inner voice. You easily understand human relations and handle the most complicated situation easily. You often see things before the other people, but you might have problems in persuading the others in your visions and foresights. In that case you may help yourself by developing better coordination between your stomach and your head. That will help you not just to lean on your intuition, but also to learn how to interpret your wishes and foresights into the possibilities of communication to the others.

In cases that you don’t rely so much on your inner voice you may find that your body IQ is not fully in use. You may find that you have capabilities but they often put you in situations where your brain and stomach get in clash. Your intuition can not break through the frame of rational thinking because whenever you need to make an important decision you tend to lean on facts only. If you don’t wish to feel torn apart like that do train yourself to listen to your intuition more often, starting from the small matters. Learn how to decide spontaneously from your stomach, starting from the choice of the book you are going to buy or choosing a meal in the restaurant or making any other small choices. Doing like that you will learn to trust your intuition to lean on it on more and more complex and important matters in your life.

In some cases of rigid behavior some may experience that your inner voice gets suffocated. We all have our strong points, and the strong point of some persons may be their rational thinking. If you find yourself in this group you are likely to hear your intuition’s messages, but then again you might feel very unpleasant if you allow yourself to make decisions based on spontaneous inner feeling. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed by that, but rather should listen to your hunch more often. It may start in being aware of the very first impression that some persons or situations have left upon you and then comparing it to the facts that you have later gathered about that person or situation. Counting more on your spontaneous first impressions can make your life more versatile and exciting and make you capable for developing some new qualities in life, experiencing it and accepting it new way.

Have you heard about the Stendhal syndrome? Maybe you have been hit by it? It is a mental and emotional distress that happens because of experiencing too much of artistic beauty. There is an anecdote about an excursion to Florence when two professors approached the sculpture of David at the same time. One was the art teacher and couldn't stop her tears while the other, the teacher of science asked her in disbelief - Do you cry because of this STONE?

Stendhal syndrome has diagnosed and named in 1979 by Italian psychologist Dr. Graziella Magherini upon the symptoms of hundreds of patients hospitalized in Florence because of this psychosomatic disorders hitting them as tourists over a few years. The syndrome is featured by rapid heartbeat, nausea, confusion, dizziness and even hallucinations that were noticed at some patients as the result of "overdose" of beauty in consuming the art, the beauty of sculptures, paintings and architecture in this cradle of Renaissance that drags art lovers and tourists from all over the world. But Florence hospital statistics prove that the most of them were from foreigners, mainly from West Europe, and not any of them was ever an Italian. "It is like they got used to art and beauty, they even call their own country 'bella Italia' meaning beautiful Italy"

At his time it was Stendhal who wrote about his travel to Naples and Florence in 19th century, describing his feelings as he became overcome with emotions:

"I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.''

According to the statistics of Dr Magherini this syndrome hits sensitive and creative individuals that travel alone or in pairs, never those ones who travel in tourist groups.

If you wish to read more: http://www.wordspy.com/words/Stendhalssyndrome.asp

http://thinkmovechange.blogspot.com/

Where does the empathy begin?

There may be a scientific explanation like this one found in the article from the Boston Globe.

But where the true empathy may take us further?

As a special introduction to the season of giving, courage and creativity here are two stories that became ONE story. About Ryan and about his friend and brother Jimmy!

They made me think, made me cry and made me feel grateful for living in this beautiful world, the world that good and inspiring people MAKE BEAUTIFUL.

Share these with your friends and family if you wish:

http://www.pnyv.org/index.php?id=34&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=12&tx_ttnews[backPid]=8&cHash=725ab9a834

http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2005/02/jimmy_escape_freedom.html