in my january newsletter, i spoke of 2011 as the year of creative collaboration… heck, i just didn’t know collaboration was going to happen so fast and furious…

for the past two months, i have been actively involved with stephanie mufson’strickster events… her monthly art salon is a creative venue for seekers, creators, artists, and the freaky to connect the dots between artistic & spirtual disciplines…

when you trick, you dwell on the boundary between your domesticated and wilder self, embracing life’s possibilty… at this ‘existential edge,’ there is more synergism, creative activity, and range in identity, which produces immense dividends in aliveness… when you trick, you tickle the toes of ‘standardization junkies,’ so everybody can laugh at the unrelenting obssesion to transform spirit into system…

stephanie’s experimentation in creative integration cuts against the grain of how art, creativity, and expression is experienced… for instance, most gallaries are culturally stuffy, tightly controlled, and basically, very boring… heck, at the trickster, you not only witness art exhibits, you participate in them… you might find yourself dressed in your wilder personas or engaged in a revolutionary magic show, just to name a few…

at the february trickster event, i was priviledged to perform the keynote workshop–’connecting to your wild self’… using tribal drums to establish a beat, we experimented with making wild sounds… we started simply by saying vowels, then saying our names in funky ways, and finally moved into hearing and expressing the animal within us… the vibration in the room got seriously juicy… so sweet!… by the end, participants spoke of how their range of expression expanded and how they felt more alive by engaging their wilder self…

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discovering wild sounds brings up another collaborative project i am involved in called ‘yip and yelp’… working in collaboration with jennnifer maria harris (creator of fear not project), yip & yelp invites people to discover the sounds that come from their inner, wild, animalistic selves and then share these sounds with others on the yip & yelp website (under construction), where the sounds are stored on an interactive map of the united states, with no identifying information other than the origin of participants’ sounds…

by participating in the yip & yelp project, and then sharing sounds with friends and family through social media, it is our belief that as individual sounds come in and are placed on the map of the united states, that sound trends will emerge… we will be able to discover and understand community, towns, cities, and regions by their collective wild sounds… no names… no ages… no occupations… no salary ranges… no class distinctions… just all of us with the collective desire to  be heard–wildly heard, that is!

at the last trickster–’secrets of the shadow’–stephanie mufson asked me to emcee the event (image below is me & my ‘ralph furly’ shadow)… using stories about scholars and artists who work with the concept of ‘shadow,’ there, in front of fellow tricksters, i connected the conceptual dots between each performer and the event’s theme…

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afterwards, stephanie asked me to become the official emcee of trickster… i accepted… i welcome the opportunity to bring wild self principles into the trickster forum, and to participate in revolutionizing how we see and act as creators… get your trick on and visit me at the next trickster event on march 24th…

stephanie and i are also working on bringing a wild self/trickster art salon to marin county… more details to come… if you would like to participate in the planning process of this creative collaboration, let us know…

as we stand in the awe of emerging spring, i see lots of people clinging to old, mechanistic ways of being in the world, yet the landscape for living is in flux, is changing… and we at the wild self, look forward in this changing season to collaborating with souls who are on the cusp of that creative, shall we say ‘imaginative’ curve…

let us know if you are in a collaborative mindset and how your creative enterprise meshes with the wild self… we are always open to talking about life enhancing projects… to create life-enhancing community…

may the wild be with you,

gino