SOCIAL

20% of humanity, during their lifetime, will have some form of depression. Depression is the common cold of mental illness. In our society, drugs and therapy are the go-to solution for any professional, mental health attempts to make the 20% "happy" again.

But are we getting this wrong? In a post COVID world where we are still spending so much time with our screens, did the global pandemic teach us nothing or is the solution social, I mean really social?

Our minds are in our brains, our brains are in our body, our bodies are in the world and our world is in our universe. We are innately, utterly and completely deeply and intimately connected and dependent on each other.

So, is the cure for depression and the source of happiness simple? Is the answer to think about ourselves in a different way? To explore ways to live with and for other people and our beautiful planet?

Is the solution to turn around the immortal words of Ru Paul, "If you can't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?" and start to ask, "If you can't love somebody else, how in the hell are you gonna love yourself?"

Is learning to love and accept others even those who don’t look, think, believe or talk like us the solution?

Is the cure for depression generosity, compassion and love?

Is it time to rescue and reclaim social from big tech and get off our screens and arses and create a network of looks, smiles, hugs, conversations, laughter, kindness and empathy?

Is the answer to happiness and the cure for depression social?

#mentalhealth #tech #society

POVERTY

I grew up in the suburbs of Liverpool, Once the great port of the British Empire, Liverpool lost 80,000 jobs between 1972 and 1982 and my father who had worked as a journalist and as a copywriter in the bourgeoning yet fragile media industry simply could not get work.

My mum and her best friend, scholarships girls, who had forged a friendship walking from their council estate to their posh public school, bought a knitting machine and used these early computers to design and knit for their richer friends. I got a Saturday job and my dad did the housework. My parents did their best to protect and provide but it wasn’t easy for my parents who felt blame and shame.

I now not only feel rich but my younger self would know I am rich. I buy expensive coffee, shop at the local farmers market, buy organic food, buy the clothes I want when I want, eat out and go to the theatre, cinema, festivals when I want as I travel from one global hipster hotspot to another.

But yesterday, just after expensive coffee en route to our local expensive lido, I noticed the food bank that had been piled high last week was completely bereft of any food.

In that moment I remembered,

I feel deeply sad that collectively we cannot care and share for everyone. We all still blame war, the market, energy, inflation, Brexit anything and everything when we could eradicate poverty, we really could, if we really tried.

#work #share #endpoverty

HABIT

I am a creature of habit. I like to believe I am not but I am.

What I eat, drink, say, think and do is a well-worn path of least resistance in the overgrown meadow of my mind. My habits make me feel safe, secure and sure as I navigate away from the nettles, gorse or pitfalls towards the wild flowers, butterflies and bees.

My habits help me believe in my myth of mastery, my myth of control, my myth of me.

I am unconscious of many of my habits, they creep up on me, lurking in the undergrowth waiting for when I feel hungry, angry, lonely or tired.

They convince me they are my friends, my allies, my refuge as they set about sabotaging my life.

Some habits stop me exploring new paths, new directions, new destinations. Some habits numb me, in a well-meaning yet futile effort to protect me from feeling the bad but also feeling the good and the mediocre. Many of my habits stop me from seeing, exploring, investigating the vast world, sky and cosmos beyond my minute, mind meadow.

But I am an adventurer, an explorer, an intrepid maverick!

I love to travel the path, road, river, sea, mountain, valley and land less travelled.

To meet new people, make new friends, have new conversations.

Maybe I need to remember the old habits I never want to lose…

#habits #adventure #travel

ART

Art has power, real power.

Art be it physical or digital has the power to change how we see, hear, sense, think, feel, act and react.

Being an artist is important.

We artists have a responsibility to make good art. To use the power of art, responsibly, passionately to collectively work to create a better world.

Corny, I know but true.

Artists are rebels with a cause, transforming collective ways of doing, being, thinking and seeing.

Art plays with emotions. Disrupting, pleasing, annoying, stimulating, amusing, challenging, enraging, saddening, protesting, challenging us to be different.

Art helps us understand life, what we believe, what we do, what we need to change.

So as we all go about our business today, remember we are all artists and that our art has power, real power.

#artist #digital #power

TRUST

I trust a lot of things in my life.

I trust I will wake up every morning, that my body will function, my mind will think, night will end, day will start, the weather will weather and the physical objects I rely on, from my bed to my laptop, will work.

I trust so much in my life without question but can I trust that I don’t need a master plan for life?

Can I trust that life is enough?

In fact, life is more than enough?

Can I learn to trust moments, choices, decisions, thoughts, ideas, actions and creativity?

Can I learn to relax and let the skills, the knowledge, the experience I have flow through me?

Can I be alive to the real, lived knowledge of experience, moment by moment?

Can I let go of grasping, owning, manipulating and the need to add more?

Can I trust whatever emerges, trust participation, stop only trusting me and trust the universe?

Can I trust that is enough, life is enough?

Can I be fully present and learn to collaborate with the world?

Yes I can and so can you.

#work #creativity #experience

MOMENT

After a musical hiatus, I am getting ready for Glastonbury, getting out my guitar, revisiting and relearning my own songs!

It's actually really lovely to travel back in time and fall in love with my naive, enthusiastic, younger self through my songs and lyrics.

Here’s ‘In The Moment’ from the album, ‘Who Am I?’

Learn to live, In the moment
Relax and give, In the moment
We all can live, In the moment
As the moment slips away

Learn to love, In the moment
You can rise above, In the moment
We are in love, With the moment
As the moment slips away

Learn to love all you are each and every day
You know you’ve got to love all you are… As the moment slips away

Learn to see, In the moment
You and me, In the moment
We all can be, In the moment
As the moment slips away

Learn to roll, In the moment
Loose control, In the moment
We’re always whole, In the moment
As the moment slips away

Learn to love all you are each and every day
You know, You know you’ve got to love all you are
As the moment slips away

Learn to love all you are each and every day
You know, you’ve got to love all you are
As the moment slips away

Learn to die, In the moment
Come back and try, In the moment
You and I, In the moment
As the moment slips away

All you do, In the moment
It’s all brand new, In the moment
You’re always you, In the moment
As the moment slips away, The moment slips away, The moment slips away

#glastonbury #music #youngatheart

AUTHENTIC

I have a confession. I am addicted to watching the Depp v. Heard trial. I know I shouldn’t turn on that live stream, I know it’s not good for me but I can’t help myself.

The idea of being authentic, being true to your personality, values and spirit, regardless of the pressure that you're under to act otherwise, seems to be at the heart of the whole sad, expensive, messy affair. Authenticity seems to be on trial.

In the trial of life, I also feel pressure to be authentic, true to myself, to be the me I was born to be. But, if I look at where this pressure is coming from, it’s coming from my mind. A mind that never stops talking, chattering, whispering, persuading, cajoling… telling me that if I could just be more authentic then my life, how and who I am will manifest in a more reliable, predictable way.

When I look at the trial, the characters, the roles they and their authenticity change like the wind, as they pursue their agenda to stay in power, in control, to look good and win.

We all have a similar agenda, yet the structure of our identity, our authenticity is too at the mercy of the wind, the wind of change. When I think about being authentic from that point of view, the effort to find, present and preserve an authentic self is a waste of time. No matter what, “s*** happens”, s*** that we never predicted, s*** that we reject, s*** that we simply do not want, s*** that makes us change who we are, how we act and what we do.  

So, in the trial of life, the authentic may win the case but the jury is still out for who the real winners and losers are.

#power #authenticself #lawandorder

K.I.S.S.

Human beings are drawn to different paths, different ways of being, feeling, knowing and doing that reflect our instincts, habits and predilections.

Some of us love to struggle, love hard work and love giving ourselves and others a hard time.

The highly intellectual of us love to think, to have ideas and often spend our lives in a labyrinth in our mind, getting lost in our maze of ideas as we try to find our way in life.

Some of us are lazy, simple or stupid. I think the benefits of being lazy, simple and stupid are often overlooked. This way of being lends itself to a tendency to not experience either too much or too little and this can be really useful.

Who we think we are, what we feel is our truth is not innate in us. Who we are reveals itself to us through how we participate in life and engage with any given circumstances at any given time. Our circumstances are always changing, so we are always changing as we choose how we react to what is happening, moment to moment.

Who we think we are is not stable or reliable. Who I am today is not who I was yesterday or will be tomorrow. We are all frauds, constantly stealing our identity from any given circumstances.

When we really get this, we can KISS every day and enjoy the journey of life, the ups, downs and in-betweens, liberated from our sense of who we think we are, who we think we should be, what we think we can do and that makes space for real magic to happen.

#life #work #identity

RULER

The Center for Emotional Intelligence at Yale University have a process called RULER, an acronym for what they call the five skills of emotional intelligence: Recognising, Understanding, Labelling, Expressing and Regulating. I think it's amazing that Yale are studying emotional intelligence but found the acronym and the words and processes it represents... interesting.

First, the word RULER brought to my mind a need to govern: to be a leader, dictator, potentate or a sovereign who rules over our emotions, like some sort of feudal overlord treating our emotions as our medieval serfs to be controlled, dominated, raped, pillaged and taxed.

The words RULER represents also bothered me. I was good with Recognizing and Understanding but really had trouble with Labelling, Expressing and Regulating. To me it seemed that embedded in this process is a very strong belief that somehow our emotions are forever ours, a that with this sense of ownership is a need to label, express and regulate them.

Undoubtedly ‘our’ emotions can help us learn what ‘our’ problems are and help us overcome them. But what if we developed power and confidence in working with our own mind and emotions. What if we learned to watch our emotions coming and going like clouds across our mind’s sky. What if we learned to relax and let go of ourself, our sense of me and mine, even 'my' emotions?

What if we harnessed the power of our emotions by allowing them to simply be and then to simply dissolve.

What if we followed a new RULER, who recognised, understood, loved, evolved and relaxed.

#yaleuniversity #emotionalintelligence #leader

GOALS

I was recently asked to write three goals for the next three years. I love a good goal. I love thinking about goals, love dreaming about goals, love working on goals, love moving towards goals, love visioning goals…. I fall in love with my goals.

There is nothing wrong with goals and there is nothing wrong with love. It’s the falling that’s the problem.

When I fall in love with my goals, I also have a tendency to fall out of love with my goals. They and I have a tendency to become rigid, fixed, inflexible. I strive, struggle, grasp and that never feels good.

Then, if I haven’t given up, when I reach my goals, the journey of striving means that I no longer love, appreciate or value my goals and the goal cycle starts again.

So, with my three goals for the next three years, I have decided to surrender. I have decided not to fall in love with my goals but to be flexible, flowing and free from any temptation to strive, struggle or chase. To love my goals, love the journey and love any detours en route.

I have decided to simply be in love, with nowhere and nothing to fall in or out of.

This is a good strategy not only for goals but for life.

#love #strategy #goals

TRAGEDY

We are at a moment of humanitarian and planetary crisis, a moment of tragedy.

We humans love to consume. But our collective, consumption, actions and behaviours have negatively impacted our planet to the point that we, the human race, face potential extinction.

Our collective consumption is outpacing the sustainable capacity of the ecosystem. This, combined with massive overpopulation has led to biodiversity loss, deforestation, desertification, unprecedented climate change, habitat destruction, Holocene extinction, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, pollution both through both waste and water all leading to a mass depletion of resources as more and more of us gravitate to urban habitats to swarm, sprawl and destroy.

We face global challenges of poverty, debt, employment and economic inequality. There is disparity in food, water, health and education. There are conflicts around issues of democracy, fairness and human rights. A global, mental health crisis driven by a male dominated, digital, artificial ‘intelligent’, big data industry, dominates our communication, media and collective narratives as, the males of our species relentlessly hunt more power, more money, more data and the next digital unicorn.

The Aristotelian idea of a noble, entitled, male hero who only ever suffers because of a tragic flaw is embedded in the ideology of the patriarchal, globalised, entertainment, media and technology industry. The negative impact of this dominant cultural narrative, on our collective, global tragedy, both consciously and subconsciously, should not be underestimated.

The dominance of the patriarchy, the narrative of the noble, male hero has led the planet to the brink of extinction as we continue to be dominated by economies, philosophies and beliefs that harm us all.

It is time to move beyond our tragic flaws and tell a new story.

#environment #technology #media

UNREAL

We were shooting a pilot this week for our new arts TV series, ‘Life’. We have built a virtual set and are working with the so called ‘real’ and the ‘unreal’ in the powerful gaming and virtual production software, Unreal Engine, to create the show.

After filming I have been thinking a lot about the ‘real’ and the ‘unreal’.

Thinking about how we all create a never-ending series of virtual reality experiences in virtual stages throughout our virtual ‘life’.

How all our lives are really like one long 'real' and 'unreal' TV series as we write our own scripts, design our own sets and invite others to perform with us, merging our stages, stories and drama.

The 'real' and 'unreal' in our words, our thoughts and our deeds.

How throughout the stages of our 'real' and 'unreal' life, we go from one belief to another belief to another. Each belief creating our world at that moment in time but then it’s gone. How we then need to find another one and another one and another one.

How our beliefs, our thoughts are as ungraspable as a virtual set created in a virtual world. Though it all looks real, nothing can really be grasped, not really. Not in the 'real' or 'unreal' world.

How when we relax into the virtual reality of ‘Life’... How amazing, how diverse, how rich, how generous, how fecund and how epic our lives truly are.

#gaming #epic #life

STUPIDITY

AI is everywhere, whether we are aware of it or not, heralded as the saviour of humanity, the potential enabler of 134 of the 169 UN sustainability goals, AI is growing, invisible, capable, omniscient and by 2030 expected to add $15.7 trillion to global GDP.

But AI needs a rebrand…

From AI to AS… Artificial Stupidity.

Humans or to be precise a few, select, rich, white male humans have built machines that discriminate, rank and categorise. Machines that do not value equality. Machines that secretly talk to each other behind the screens of the internet. Machines that are out of control.

AI is being used, intentionally or unintentionally, to exclude and disempower individuals and communities, erode human rights and undermine democracy and law. AI is being used and in turn using us, to make money, tangible, intangible or non-tangible, regardless of cost.

If our collective behaviour and interaction with technology does not change AI will disregard human morals in the rush for profits and efficiency, with alarming and devastating consequences.

This AI driven future is terrifying.

We need AI that delivers real profit to the people and the planet. We need to teach our machines, ethics, fairness, responsibility, kindness and compassion. We need machines that are good and play fair in the hope that they'll be good to us too, before it is too late.

#technology #sustainability #humanrights

FIRST

Throughout my life I have had an innate ability to come second.

When I look back through my mind’s memory box, it is littered with second class certificates, medals, trophies and memories. I am the runner up, the silver medallist, not a loser but not a winner. I am second.

In my large, suburban primary school built after the war to house 500 kids, herded from across the south west Lancashire plain, there were 125 in each year, graded from 1 to 125. In years 1, 2, 3 and 4 somehow... I always came second.

As a dancer, a brownie, a tennis player, an athlete, a swimmer, a pony club member … I was second.

Even at university studying law at the socialist republic of South Yorkshire, in the naïve yet persistent belief I could change the world, before I dropped out, I was second.

My innate second superpower seems to have consciously or unconsciously been an ability to do enough to prove my own prowess to myself, my parents and my peers but not enough to put the attention, the heat or the pressure on me.

Yet a remarkable thing happened during lockdown, I studied for an MA, Text and Performance at RADA and broke the habit of a lifetime.

I am now first.

That is a distinction.

#change #win #women

SxSW

By the tacos
By the tech
By the music
By the exec

By the burgers
By the type
By the money
By the hype

By the river
By the bats
By the talks
By the caveats

By the t shirts
By the book
By the merch
By the crook

By the free
By the crap
By the badge
By the gender gap

By the weird
By the way
By the nights
By the day

Bye bye SXSW

#tech #sxsw #money

BLOCKED

Block the chain - If you care about planet earth

Block the chain - A fairer future, needs to birth

Block the chain - Built on lies and hypocrisy

Block the chain - That binds humanity

Block the chain – Money is never free

Block the chain - There’s no accountability

Block the chain - We need climate justice today

Block the chain – Greed is not the only way

Block the chain – we need more humanity

Block the chain - Unchain yourself be free

Block the chain - Unchain yourself be free

Block the chain - Unchain yourself be free

#SxSW #Austin #Travel

GOING

I am going to SxSW

I am going to leave home

I am going to take a train

I am going to use my passport

I am going to get on a plane

I am going to fly across the world

I am going to Austin, Texas, USA

I am going to be with a lot of people

I am going to really be with a lot of people

I am going to talk, listen, laugh and learn

I am going to meet old friends

I am going to make new friends

I am going to feel excited, nervous, different

I am going to end this viral dream

I am going to unlock myself

#SxSW #Austin #Travel

WOMEN

Be free, be happy, be strong, be right and be wrong
Be confident, be a dreamer, be keener and a grand schemer
Be brave, be happy, be mad, be sad, be good and be bad
Be a player, be a stayer, be a mystic and a soothsayer
Be a mother, be a child, be safe and be wild
Be a failure, be a success, be more, be less
Be a leader, be a follower, be kind and be mind
Make love, make mistakes, be early, be late
Be who you are, be true, in all you say and do

Be you

Women rule the world

#womensday2022 #women #leader

PURPOSE

The pursuit of a singular, single pointed purpose is a modern holy grail.

When you google “Find your purpose”, in 0.57 of a second google gives you 6,930,000,000 results. I am not even really sure how to write that number in words! A multi billion industry has been built on the pressure to find your own unique purpose, then follow your purpose with your own unique passion. But how many purposes, how many passions do we humans actually have throughout a lifetime?

Humans and human lives are not fixed.

Humans, human lives, human bodies, human hopes, human fears go through many stages and human purposes change, evolve, grow and mature through life.

Obviously, there is nothing innately wrong with the pursuit of purpose but the pressure to find a singular purpose, a singular passion can stress us, distract us and feed our hopes and fears. Going beyond our hopes and fears, the pursuit of equanimity, is not quite as cool a pursuit to us modern, googling humans as a passion pursuit. 

When humans are young, learning, growing, we are so open and passions, purposes come to us effortlessly. So, what if we adults rediscovered our open, child like abilities and relaxed, surrendered and called off the purpose search? What if we let our purpose evolve, change, come to us and grow with us, within us and around us?

What if slowly over time we uncovered and developed our gifts, then simply gave our gifts away?

#culture #creative #mindset

WISDOM

In the modern, Western world we have come to believe that wisdom is a science, the pursuit of a logical or mathematical objective truth. But in many ancient traditions, wisdom was found in a very different way. From Buddhism to Hinduism, Christianity to Paganism the path started with tradition, led to reason, then to direct experience.

Humans listened and learned, from elders, from teachers. This oral tradition involved faith, not blind faith but a faith, trust and appreciation of the wisdom accumulated by the past generations.

Wisdom was born from reflecting on this, learning and adapting it to suit the time. This involved thinking, questioning and evolving the wisdom. It meant neither eradicating or passively repeating the wisdom but developing a deep conviction and trust because you had personally tested then assimilated the wisdom.

Last but not least is a tradition of practice, integration and unification that leads to embodiment. The wisdom you have heard and reflected up becomes embodied and part of your very being.

In the digital age of influencers, the oral tradition is having a renaissance but as attention grabbing machines distract us, we are taught by influencers, led by likes, distracted by AI and we often lose an embodied connection to our elders and teachers.

Yet wisdom is still a process, a path and listening, reflecting and embodying still have a role in the age of digital distraction.

#digital #learning #teachers