Intrapersonal Cartography 


This is the freestyle poetry full length album of spoken word I (Bobby Fishkin), created with Rashaud Hannah when he and I stayed up all night after my plane had an emergency landing on November Twenty Seventh of 2011. I was on my way back from Thanksgiving via JFK to San Francisco when early in the flight, our plane filled with fumes and the engine felt like it  was starting to give out, seeming to turn off and on. A motor started giving out and and all of the the electricity inside cut out and the pilot said "we don't know what is wrong with the plane so we need to land in 8 minutes". The passenger next to me whom I had not spoken to the whole flight said something to the effect of he thought the odds of our survival were not better than fifty-fifty in his estimation. 

So once we had landed and I realized I was there overnight Rashaud drove to Buffalo from Rochester, and adrenalized up, I recorded this with him all night. The album is also recorded in loving memory of Ilya Zhitomirskiy (1989 – 2011) who had died less than two weeks earlier. The experience got me partially focused on a quote of his, "begin with love, and proceed analytically from there". 

We  recorded roughly half in the car back from the airport to Rochester (1-12), and roughly half at his apartment (13). The part at his apartment has a much cleaner sound quality as we recorded it on his laptop rather than in the moving car during the rain storm. 

In a sense, this represents a systematic philosophic spoken word thesis about the organization, governance, and potential alternative history of the self. It covers topics like how do we handle illegal immigration into the civilization within ourself without becoming an apartheid state within. It works through some of the challenges we grapple with when we appreciate the world from multiple distinct perspectives. It identifies a path to seeing the world and our narrative within the world with a depth perception that might be called parallax. It addresses some of the challenges created by overly-unitary models of the self. I consider it a functioning and self-loving operating system of knowledge.

 This has been released via soundcloud.com with a Creative Commons Attribution (i.e. let us know you use it and label it as such, but that folks (including any of yall) can remix the materials as they like). 


Let me know what you think.
Warm regards,
-Bobby

Twitter: @bobbyfishkin
I also started a Facebook Page for Intrapersonal Cartography: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Intrapersonal-Cartography/183656701740390?skip_nax_wizard=true

The Un-abridged Intrapersonal Cartography Recordings and Transcriptions

Bobby- On behalf of all worlds that I have ever known with Rashaud, who has called forth a basis of empathy before, prior to, such analytical capacity, as would call into necessity the convocation of re-clarity, I say re-clarity because there are too many circumstances in which our worlds escape us, our confirm-mentions are denied us in except when we convene such vantage points asnwhich might as two eyes looking at the world triangulate, that is a parallax of comprehension that is the relax of indoctrination based on intuition, based on sensicality, based on humanization, based on the opposite of every kind of paradigm that we otherwise got snapped-to-gridded, that we did not mean to be so rigid, but rather that we would allow ourselves to drag and drop ourselves to a new sensicality based on the aboriginality based on this  here, now, my Rashaud-analogy.

Rashaud- Stop, I like it, I like it, I like it.

Track Two-

Rashaud- It goes back to one of the points that we were making earlier in our conversation, is that, why steadily try to inform the conscious mind, right, the thing which is most likely, right,  to put the breaks on any further action, right,  why not instead try to educate, right, what is sub-conscious, right, what is instinctual, right, which is more like a gut instinct, you know, because informing that, right, will lead you to quicker action, you know what I mean, it quickens you, I think it quickens your decision-making, it quickens your ability to be able to respond and connect and relate,  I think you used the word earlier today, you used “sincerity”, you know, I think that educating our sub-conscious, educating you know, educating that thing, that part of us which responds, which responds in the quickest, which responds, the you know, just, just the most freely, without you know, the hinderances , without the obstacles that our mind tends to you know,  to slow us down with, I mean agitating that sub-consciously, (to toll booth: thank you, thank you),  I think that is one of the true keys to unlocking friendship, you know what I mean? because real friends, you know what I mean, they’re not so headstrong that they don’t, that they don’t dismiss things….

Bobby- Real friends when they get together is like the convening of the United Nations between one another, when you speak of speed you varnish  my concept of “alacrity”, my reception of that word was brought into myself by my granddad who said to the waiters and waitresses, “bring the coffee with alacrity”, and they asked, “do you mean more milk”?, and he said “no “with such speed” --“alacrity” means that we would discover new words for speed between one another when speed is called for because better worlds must be brought hence more quickly for our enjoyment.

Rashaud- (laughter) I could only imagine waiters and waitresses being like “what”, like…

Bobby- I just wanted to say, I’m trying to route around already, I’m just trying to start by ranting and start by digressing because

Leslie- Oh Ok,

Bobby- then I had to wish with Rashuad,  because that is like the beginning of like innumerable conversationalability, but

Leslie- Oh OK

Bobby- I just wanted to wanted to pronounce profound respect in your direction and welcome you into this conversation in thorough respectfulness, and the massive appreciation which is deserved of someone whom Rashaud has described as an epic spirit, which is yourself—and a humanizing spirit, which he has described himself as more human being whom I have appreciated because of yourself, and therefore the thoroughness of your existence has had as its implication a good degree of my persistence of elegance that has been Rashaud’s convening power of good senses within myself that he has brought to bear upon my challenges and my devils in this world such that the humanization can persist. So thank you for your gracious gift of Rashaud-ification within myself.

Rashaud—Hah-hah! Rashaud-ification! Yo! I tell you what, man. I think about the society talks that we would have, you know, about the society within each of us, you know, and now you’re talking about United Nations on it, throwing that on it, you know, and just how when we reconvene it’s not just two people reconvening, it’s entire societies, you know,  reconvening. I tell you what, man, I think that at the time that we were first having this conversation, I think that’s all I was really ready for was to have those conversations—and for them to be left simply as that—conversations. Whereas now I want those conversations to be able to give rise to something more lasting, something more meaningful, something more contagious, you know, so that it’s not just remaining within the constructs of our friendship, you know, but that it’s also able to house others that would like this—you know what I mean?

Bobby—May we unleash the radically positive implications of truth-telling. May we discover that---there’s one phrase I’m going to repeat from past circumstances, which is that access to information was the challenge of the prior hundred years, and managing the ramifications, consequences and implications of information will be the challenge of the next thousand years. And to the degree to which you operate based on a system not merely of knowledge, but of that which you trust as knowledge, based on that which you have known to be true in your world of experience such that you have integrated that understanding through sequential, cumulative, sedimentary process of understanding, such that you become more than rock, more than merely the accumulation of all the tinsel strengths, of all the materials you have ever known, but rather the experiential hybrids that allow you to have, like spider silk the capacity to extend your implications of your sensicality far beyond the moment of the present tense, the predicted agency of humanization, when integrated into a contextualization of sense-making, a humanization of self-making, a resonance creation engine of humanization, where all that resonate with your past, present, and future collide into a present-tense supernova, a present-tense self-making, I believe that that is a presence that is yourself, known intimately to yourself, known by one another as yourself, known through all that may become of yourself, as we discover ourselves.

Rashaud—We’ve got to become living theses  of the knowledge that we have taken in and processed, digested, we’ve got to be living documents of that;  because only then does it become present, other than that, it’s just sitting on a website somewhere—or, you know, books— I don’t know what’s going to become of books. You mean, just that knowledge in and of itself is no good.

Bobby—The books are going to become the libraries within of our prior experiences and of our future lives; may be predicated on the best of anything we have ever understood.

Rashaud—Absolutely. You know what? It’s interesting that you say that—I’ve been doing some different reading, but most recently, this book called Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. And one of the things that he does, he really looks to people that he either classifies as experts in a given area, or that society itself has classified as experts—you know?—and he touches base with these experts, he’s really got to delve into their lives, right? And like by doing these case studies attempts to sort of like piece together their stories as a way of, like, coming to his thesis. You mean, some of the things he’s   noticing, these patterns that he’s noticing. And what’s interesting enough is that a lot of critics say, “You’re not basing your evidence on hard, you know, on hard articles or books or journal entries; you’re not basing it on this, you’re basing it on these interviews, right, of experts, and we don’t agree with that, right? But the truth of the matter is that people don’t have time to go through all the journal entries and all the books, and all that. They do—they can do that—but they would much rather go through somebody who has lived it, that’s lived those journal entries, that’s lived those books--

Bobby: You are so profoundly right.

Rashaud: You know, they need a touchstone. Somebody that they can be able to reach out and feel, you know---they’ve got warm blood running through their veins, and doing so, you know,  being able to connect to everything that they need to connect to. You know, it’s like the search engines. We become search engines of--

Bobby: Exactly. To the degree to which the book by Dominique Foray which says the new world will experience the exponential increase in what he calls the liquidity premium of tacit information, which is a fancy way of saying what you just said, which is to say, that when access to information is easy, the tacit information of trusted experience becomes scarce--and just like a public company is one where you can buy and sell your stock on demand, when extremely special expertise becomes accessible on demand, based on either processes or relationships that allow it to be easily accessed,  then action that is wise can be always on demand. And that is a fundamental baseline that is newly resonant in this economic circumstance and technological exponential capacity to access.

Rashaud: I have a question now, because  I know that you mentioned something about tacit knowledge, and I know that tacit knowledge is  that knowledge that is implicit, right?  It’s kind of like hidden within people, you know, are in the business, kind of know it, don’t even bother really writing about it heavily—right?--because it’s just understood. So are you saying that that tacit knowledge is now being pushed to be written plainly?  Or are you saying that that tacit knowledge is the only knowledge which has to be sought since   all other knowledge  can be easily found just through, you know--

Bobby: It’s saying that the tacit knowledge matters when you haven’t yet asked the question of the expert—right?—because, you, know, it’s like Gerson Leherman, the Yale grads, 700 million dollars in revenue from having 300,000 experts charging $1000 an hour for consulting to hedge funds, invest banks, and countries because they have access to special knowledge for moments when you need that knowledge. The degree to which you have the right knowledge at the right moment, and can ask  the right person the right question in order to act the right way – that’s become scarcer.

Rashaud: I agree. I see what you’re saying. So the people that are—Wowwwww—that’s become scarcer than just knowledge itself -- knowledge itself is there, but in terms of finding the right knowledge and the right time--

Bobby: That reflects—that’s the macro, that’s the global—what about the intrapersonal equivalent? Right? What is the source of expertise

within the soul? How do you know when you have twenty-five counselors, friends, people who you would seek the wisdom of, the guidance of, the mentors’ sensicality of---how do you which ones to reach out to on which topicality within your life? What is the civilization within yourself that reflects the intrapersonal democratic forces that make yourself both a living, breathing thing but also authentically reflective of where those parts of yourself came from—if the provenance of our truth-telling is everywhere we’ve been with all those with whom we share truth, then what is the degree to which those truths integrate such that we can reach back through the looking glass into those humanities who saw the other sides of those truths when we experienced them first. How do we go up river? How do we go upstream? How do we go back to the natural spring water where there has not been a pollution of later experience that has prevented us from understanding the clarity and the crystallization of the experience when we first learned that truth? How do we go up to the point where the sensicality is fresh, and just as relevant as it was when we first learned it, and yet when that truth is available to us on demand, either because we remember or we know whom we can remember with?

Rashaud: Hmmmm. Well it’s interesting to me—when you first started out with that, when we talked about that society we have either within us or that society we have within close-knit friends and colleagues and things of that nature, it’s interesting to me that we still seek out that sort of knowledge, the right knowledge at the right time, right? Say for instance within ourselves, right? Think about those poets—you just need that next line that fits, and it’s like they’re searching so deeply within themselves for that one line, right? And they have to touch upon every experience they have ever had, sometimes, turn over every leaf, over every rock, within themselves, and when they find that line it’s like discovering buried treasure outside of themselves except that’s it’s on the inside: that’s the line I wanted! And it’s interesting that we have to perform that same kind of deep search even when we’re just dealing within ourselves, in the society within ourselves, and when you start to look at getting other people involved, then it really becomes –now you have not only to remember the person themself   but you have to remember the truths that have been exchanged with that person—because sometimes the answer resides not so much in the person themselves but it resides in this period of interconnectivity where you were both building something and it formed there---kind of like within our conversations, how there have been certain buildings constructed, and it’s kind of like, how do we access those when we really need them? And I think that’s why you’ve always been a big advocate of ‘getting this down on the tape’--

Bobby: Well, that’s the thing. I remember six years ago when you and I spoke about intrapersonal geography and a vantage point from within ourself in which our line of sight is not obfuscated, from which we can see towards better worlds without the path being blockaded. And you described to me how that cartography implies that we need different modes of intrapersonal transportation, whether vehicular, or pedestrian, or airborne in order to go to different sides of our mind that are formed in different parts of our lives. And I think that what you just described takes that metaphor deeper because it ain’t just about transportation to New York, it ain’t just about transportation to San Francisco. It is partially about what’s buried under those rocks, it is partially about inside of ourself there is as much complexity as the world has complexity within it. Now, people might think it’s a tromp l’oeil, people might think it’s an impossibility, but we don’t know all that happens on a quantum level, such that thought persists, exists, and is true—so we cannot say fundamentally that the level of analysis we exist in between people is any more complicated or less complicated than that which happens within us. You know, because if you do take your vantage point the idea of looking under rocks, looking under experiences, looking for meaning in where they’ve been, then you are seeking to mine that which has been latent, you are seeking to refine that which was raw material, you are seeking to take that which was hypothetical, that which was conceived of but not lived through, and take that and process this..

Rashaud: Wow. “conceived of but not lived through”  That’s where I’m at right now, Bobby, that’s where I’m at. “conceived of but not lived through”  there are so many thngs wthat have been conceived up here, or here, but to really make that thing so that it can be revisted, with that type of urgency that takes living through it, that takes living through it, and man oh man, its amazing how, right there, it almost leaves me speechless because it changes the entire....

Bobby: “Alternative history is conceived of but not lived through, I mean right now it is midnight, but I’ve got to say, that it was not that many hours ago today, I’d say approximately four and a half hours ago that our plane had to make an emergency landing. The plane was either catching on fire, or fumes were hyper toxic or the engine started stuttering, or some combination of all of the above, and during that time the pilot said, “we have to land in nine minutes at an emergency pace, and we don’t know what’s wrong, and that was about all he said. And the person next to me started talking to me and we hadn’t talked the entire flight, because we did not know if we were going to survive. And even if that was a probability, the authenticity of self-analysis insists upon the imperative of self-awareness in that kind of context. And so what is then our peripheral vision with regards to alternative history. What is the method by which we overcome the madness of myopia, of a single-point of sense-making following through the universe, but rather, what is our ability to see beyond that narrow casting, of understanding,  and see that breadth that allows us to find a way forward in the night. I think that alternative histories happen. I feel tragic that there was an alternative history the way it was this past week. 

TRACK 3

Rashaud: I remember we were talking about transportation within ourselves—whether it was by boat or by plane or foot, you know, and I think that depending on what mode of transportation that you choose to take, you know, it’s going to give you a different survey of the land. Obviously when you’ve been traveling by boat, you’re seeing things that are mainly from that aquatic perspective, right? You’re seeing, you know, the oceans, right, that are within you—you’re seeing the nature of those oceans and they’re being pulled by the moons, by the moon’s force, by the moon’s gravity, right, and you also have, then, this experience on foot—and this also happens when – in our leisure time, right? – we’re able to really experience ourselves, right, in the ground level, on foot, not moving with any type of haste, any type of urgency, right? I think only then can you explore underneath the rocks, you know, underneath the leaves, right? Only then can you really begin to understand yourself in a more intimate manner, right? Such that you’re not so demanding of getting from point A to point B within yourself, right? I think that’s oftentimes what the world around us might demand, right?

Bobby: Well, I think it’s – I think that when bureaucracy, when practicality, when the systems that we are living within but do not seek out—when they insist on us talking, thinking, acting in such a way as we are compatible with them—that’s not a journey within the self, that’s a journey within the world, and part of the pain in that, I would say, is the stillness within ourself – the restlessness that we feel within ourself when the world bores our inner self, while seeking movements that can be expressed or visible to others. Rather, I would say that the journeys within ourself are when we are seeking to ensure that the diaspora of our different parts of ourself becomes a cultural cohesiveness. I mean, why does France have multiple societies that don’t talk to one another inside of France? And they try to define France as to the exclusion of those people and the inclusion of these people. But that’s not reflective of the diversity that France is. Similarly, what is it about us when we have immigrants to our core self, immigrants to the continent we live on most frequently from the other parts of ourself that we live on less frequently, when we have had enough love in other parts of our live external to the continent we call home day to day most frequently, in which we invite them in, and some people don’t even treat those parts of themselves as citizens of themselves.

Rashaud: Wowwwww.

Bobby: They don’t even treat those immigrants to themselves as even guest workers to themself.  Some people treat those new parts of themself that were brought into being within themselves out of love like illegal immigrants inside their soul.

Rashaud: Wow.

Bobby: And to the degree to which we do not accept, admit our complicity with regards to every piece of ourself, then I want to say perspicacity—is undercut. Our sensicality that would otherwise be holistic becomes white bread, becomes – we lose so much of the value out of whole grain when we make it into white bread that we lose a great part of the self in the process. I mean, we used to talk about what part of the self governs the self. But governance is about decisions, and I’m speaking about being and ways of being, and I’m speaking about whether your civilization is expressing itself with the totality of you, or whether you are leaving behind such pieces of yourself that by the time you arrive, your whole self would not recognize yourself in the mirror.

Rashaud: So it’s beyond what system of governance is yourself  in, right? It’s beyond, like, ‘oh, you’re running a dictatorship within yourself. You’ve only got a few pieces of yourself, you know, calling the shots vs. something that’s a little more holistic, where everyone’s opinion is heard, where everyone is included, you know. So I think it’s interesting, you know, because, you look at any governance and you’re right, it has to be about decision-making, whereas what you’re talking about its just being and self. It’s about being, it’s about community, you know, and it’s about some participatory action, you know—how much of your community is engaged? How much of the community is sitting at the table. Not so much just to make decisions but also to break bread, you know?

Bobby: Breaking bread within your soul – That is a beautiful thought. Where is the culinary masterpiece of convergence within the self? Where is the sensicality of hedonism writ, wrought, and riches that can be manifestly discovered within the self when we discover that we ourselves are conversing potential of infinite kind, but yet, we do not acknowledge those parts of ourself, that when we do not acknowledge them, we do not allow them to speak, and when they do not speak, we have no means to listen. And when we have no means to listen, we have then been made deaf by our negligence. Rather, what is our newfound elegance of comprehensibility baked into our reality at a baseline that is never, never below.

Rashaud: Living above and not beneath. 

TRACK 4

Bobby: You know, I think that the fundamental point is that the world must be sufficiently accepting of irreverent souls, not to welcome them, not to insist on their acceptance in all contexts, because there are many contexts in which they are not accepted and that is part of what defines their irreverence, for if irreverence was easy it would be ubiquitous and it would be not so precious as to be worth fighting to preserve. Rather, I want a world in which every individual is irreverent—who wants to start from a place of love. Ilya Zhirtomirsky said “Begin with love, and then proceed analytically from there”. He said “do not anything get between you and those you love”. And he said, “Gather epoch people and make unreasonable demands”. All three resonate, but what if all three could be applied within. What are the epoch people within ourself that we would need to convene in order to have our own kitchen cabinet of excellence. What is the position of starting with a vantage point of love when there are all kinds of things to love. You know its funny, it was cathartic, but it was silly and it was laughter inducing when at Ilya’s Shiva they played a youtube video from eharmony, someone’s eharmony video, in which the woman was saying that, she started breaking down crying when she said “there are so many more cats than I’ll every be able to hug, and I won’t ever be able to hug all of the cats”. And its like aimless love is not as destructive as aimless hate, but it is as useless as anything else that is aimless, because the world is too big and we are too small to lose it that way. Perhaps similarly aimless love towards all parts of ourself is not honest to those parts of ourself which should be prioritized. Maybe its true that all cats deserve hugs, but maybe that’s the wrong narrative for that person if all that is cute must be hugged. If all that is lovable must be loved by you. If all that is deserving of your attention gets it then there will not be enough of you to go around. So what is a spread-too-thin manner of existence. A ubiquitious appreciation for the truth and yet a persistent focus on the present tense and your specificity of position within the world and within yourself, your intrapersonal cartography allows you to achieve a relevant algorithm of what is the resonant form of love, what is the relevant form of affection, what deserves that, because you make it part of your world, you make it part of your narrative. Why can we not have a narrative training process that is as core to our educational baseline as it is to learn arithmetic, as it is to tell a future story of the self that we can believe about ourself, such that we can never be so far from our narrative that we would not be able to create a new narrative based on whatever was our narrative and whatever might become our narrative, based on all hypotheticals that ever were not incidental but reflected our complicity in self-creation, our inadvertent identification of those dimensions of the self that we need to have come from within. A very dear friend of mine described the difference between the cold-blooded and the warm blooded as those who are dependent on external validation are cold-blooded because they are ultimately not setting their work from within, they are endothermic vs exothermic, the terminology which I failed, I barely passed biology enough never to learn the terms.

Rashaud: And you know what we can always ask Leslie when she comes to tomorrow.

TRACK 5

Requote and paraphrase: begin with love, and then apply your analytical frame of reference to achieve the implications of that love within the world. Facilitate the emergence of that hack to the systems you are in, that hack to all of your defaults that would allow you to proceed from a place of love. See, that is an interesting question. The other quote of Ilya was that you must never let others set your defaults, you must absolutely optimize and adjust and have autonomy in the expression of all of your defaults. But what does that mean with regards to intrapersonal civilization? It means that when people emigrate to us, to our civilization within ourself, they bring with them rituals, they bring with them practices, they bring with them norms, they bring with them habits, they bring with them memes. And we, ourselves, develop habits.

TRACK 6

See, in ‘My Dinner with André’ the movie  there was this cult in Scotland, that they tried to do everything they had ever done differently every  time they ever tried to do it: they opened the door with the right hand one time, they’d open the door with the left hand next time. The cult went insane in the movie. The question is, when Ilya wanted hack all of the defaults, who can one do so? Now, I did have the notion of a request for commons, commons around hacking one’s default, but that’s something of a statement that it would be too complicated for me to figure out on my own. What is the expression of autonomy over ourself when so many of the norms of our civilization are imported from others? In other words, let me put it another way: when Eastern European countries in the 90s were considering whether to join the Eurozone, the European Union, and the Schengen treaty and all the rest, it was not just the economics that drove them: they wanted to import the rule of law, they wanted to import the way of governance, they wanted to import those methods in order to benefit from them. We, too, import many methods from other individuals, from other countries that have – if every individual is a country unto himself, then we import to ourselves norms from other countries in our habits and rituals, but the question is,  when we do so can we have an autonomous cultural elective process in which those habits and norms get better over time? Can we have certain practices that we might get from those who arrive at our shores? Can we discard some and select others? Can we create a permeable membrane of civilizing sensicality? Can we choose what rituals to accept within ourselves and which to reject. 

RASHAUD: Yeah, man.

BOBBY: How would you describe that process? How do we hack our infinite defaults? 

RASHAUD: I think that the first way we hack our infinite defaults is by realizing that what we seek to defend most is oftentimes the very thing that we need to surrender. The image, the reputation, that we seek to uphold oftentimes can be the biggest obstacle for us becoming the very thing that we were formerly only attempting to project. 

BOBBY: say that again/ I’m hearing that you said –the very thing you are seeking

RASHAUD: The very thing you’re seeking to project, the reputation or the image oftentimes is the very obstacle in the way of you actually becoming the thing that you’re only formally seeking to project as this outward guise, as this appearance, but to actually reach that point I think we have to first submit or--- that outer – cover, that covering—so I can’t hide behind a reputation and ever become what that reputation seeks to project.

BOBBY: to restate what I heard from  what you were saying, was something that chimed   with a conversation I had when I was sixteen years old and I was talking about these kids who looked very punk rock and yet their underlying actions in life  did not reflect their ostensible communication via their clothing, what their attitudes were. To the degree to which our identity is a tiny percentage of what we mean by it, that we project a tiny thing in order to hide from the fact that we have not expressed the whole thing, to the extent that the affectations of our identity becomes a tromp l’oeil that tricks US. 

R: Wow. That’s I think the key right there. We get tricked into believing. Wow. Wow. 

B: Then hacking the self is about understanding the degrees to which we hide from ourselves, the degrees to which we hide from our highest spirits, our highest purposes, our highest callings and our most noble aspirations, and the degree to which we by hiding from them through expressing tiny fractions of them to others, we miss what we are, 

R: Wow. We miss the opportunity to become what other people think we already are.

B: We talked about once long ago about how something could go missing in multiple ways, and I think we’ve just resolved that. Something goes missing in multiple ways if you are missing from your self-understanding in multiple ways. You lose something in multiple ways if you are lost on multiple cartographies of understanding, such that you cannot find that truth in any of the worlds you’re living in, in any of the spheres that exist in your understanding, that is how—to the degree to which a doppelganger exists in a hundred worlds if you’ve lost them in all such  worlds, then you have lost that doppelganger in multiple ways, I think that a doppelganger is only just a refraction of    the idea of some folks being kindred to other folks—but what about the doppelgangers within ourself, those hypothetical alternative histories of the self that could be unleashed were certain affectations no longer perturbations that would cause  us to slink away from that sensicality that is the rediscovery of that aboriginality, the origination of a occupation of sense-making that recreates the manifestation of all.

TRACK 8

Bobby: And that ultimately involves self-hacking, learning from which parts of which other civilizations—See, if you have a stupid immigration policy, where you invite only the crooks, the convicts, those who would manipulate and take advantage of your citizens and your country immigrate, then you have a stupid immigration policy.  But what if you took the approach of having the best and brightest from all other civilizations emigrate to the civilization within your soul in which you encourage certain memes from others expressed in the form of the human beings within yourself that can arrive at the civilization within your soul from these other civilizations, what if you bring in those entrepreneurial spirits to create that within yourself that needs to be creative, that is a permeable layer, an immigration policy for the self, a sensical immigration policy for the self. Now, yes, there is the issue of what do you do with the illegal immigrants into your soul? How do you ensure that they are either treated with respect or deported, that is, that – but respected as part of your experience of life, because we don’t have full control over them. I can describe some illegal immigrants into my soul for you. As we proceed here, because there are some things that we do not have—but there is the ultimate autonomy is the expression of   self-hacking that can come from the assuring that we accept and integrate elements of our society into ourselves, that we have been inviting in over time, when we pick the cumulative heritage of those who have arrived within us as that which needs to become of us, together, such that we can crystallize a  myth and future that is more potent than the silly nationalist myths or the American dream  a generic sense, rather, we can make a perfectly relevant, absolutely specific, cumulatively-created hacked dream of our alternative  future selves, dream of who we are, a story to tell ourselves, a story that we arrive sufficiently ourselves since we are not scarce from ourselves when we are present. We are fully so present that all the implications of that sensicality are lived within ourselves, are lived within ourself, are lived within ourself.

TRACK 9

Rashaud: You know, immigration….We’re talking about some of those imports that also come into – not just other members of you know, our society, but we’re also looking at imported goods into our society. I’m looking forward to exploring what then becomes our exports, what then becomes our exports that we send out into other nations, into other individuals, to represent our nation, to represent us in a way that is hospitable, welcoming, decent, orderly – there’s so much there, man, so much richness there—there’s so much to be lying there. 

TRACK 10

I guess that part of what I am seeking is some authorship of narrative that has sometimes felt like events impact my narrative as much as I am able to inscribe my narrative into this world. And I think that what do we mean by authorship of our narrative? Do we mean it like a playwright where then living is just acting, or do we mean it like the playwright that is subconscious when we do improv theatre, when the words are being written as fast as we can think them, or do we mean it like a director, in which we’re not controlling even the dialogue—the words come up on their own accord-but we’re causing them to arrive at a coherence for us, ourself as audience, overlooking over our own shoulder. As my old advisor, Harold Bloom, used to say, when you overhear yourself think, you have become human—and that’s to paraphrase a parable of self-understanding as self authorship awareness, self-awareness of sense-making. I think that I want my narrative to be claimable by me, I want my authorship to not be the question of do I have the words at any given moment. Because there are so many lousy books in this world, that that is not enough. The thing that would be enough is for the right book to be written by me while I live as I live so that I am always placed in this world, I never want to feel like irreverence is something that is not cherished in this world, which is why the wonderful people in my life make me believe in the capacity of this world to accept irreverence, but I also want to believe in what can happen when we are not authoring our lives out of fear, but out of love and self-acknowledgment. In other words, if there are, it is said, healthy writers and unhealthy writers, and the unhealthy writers write at their worst when they’re in the most off-their-heads state and the healthy writers write in their healthiest of moments, what is it for self- authorship when we have a life that includes both highs and lows? When do we write our narrative? I was told that whenever one is experiencing incredible challenges or  traumas or difficulties in this world, you should never make commitments that would bind your future self, But what is authorship over time when there is truthtelling at each time, that we should not be scarce so far from that we should not align that divine that is the sublime sensicality 

TRACK 11

Rashaud: I’ve been accustomed, either reading or just in trying myself, with such --Sometimes I felt that  it was at those times that I was the least transparent, not only with others, but with myself as well.

Once I took the pen, took the paper, once I began to type, it seemed as though now there was something for me to prove, either to others who might potentially read it afterwards, or even myself, which turned out to be the worst critic of all, the worst critic of all, the worst potential reader of all, going back over my own things. I think that self-authorship must first be a way of life before it could ever become a way of writing, or the practice of writing. It must first be lived out before it can be described out

Bobby: Well I think by writing part of what we are saying, is, writing is acting when we think of living. It must be thought alongside the process of living. 

TRACK 12

Rashaud: If you ever think about those Willy Wonka movie scenes where the young people are chewing gum, you know, and as they start to chew it, first of all it tastes something like an appetizer, then it may move on to a Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes, and then, before that, and after that, all of a sudden they have on their minds dessert as they are chewing that piece of gum. And so sometimes when information is freshly received, you know, before we can make sense of it, we need to enjoy the full force of what it will become.

TRACK 13

So there’s an old saying that if you wanted to go THERE, you wouldn’t start from here, but that’s within the external geography. What about when you want to go there, if  you wouldn’t start from here, but that’s where you are from within yourself, within your civilization, within your geography, within yourself. If you want to go there, how do you route there, when there is the unknown within yourself, there is that which you don’t understand within  yourself. Well, I think  that is not purely a geography---why is geography interesting within the self or within this world? – because of the civilizations that are within it. How do we route through the Panama Canal within our soul? How do we pass through Suez? How do we create the global economy within ourself? How do we ensure  that where memes need to flow, where ideas need to grow, where foreign direct investment in ourself from others’ mimetic content can ensure that we recrystallize our intent such that we have not merely an affectation of a specific path, but rather the denouement is on its way to a conclusion for our route, that we have a fulfillment that is catharsis-deserving without, a  sense of that which we cannot do overcoming that which we can become. We must become that which we have already latently absorbed into our civilization, the cathartic cultural transformation of the convergent interoperability of societies that have become one within ourself.

R: Absolutely, Absolutely. And so as we think about how do we begin to search within ourselves, let us remember that wherever we choose to begin is the right place to begin so long as we are willing to tread  forward    over all obstacle--

B: All obstacles that are real and imagined, all obstacles that we have insisted upon in order to shy away from paths that we dear not tread upon. See, within ourselves there is cartography of our own hypothesis. There is significance to the degree to which we endow obstacles with resistance. But there is also the capacity to invent. the relevant emotional technology to  ourselve’s progression within ourself is that which would allow us to get to where we need to go such that we can see that which we need to see in order to have a route that once you have gotten to that vantage point from which the obfuscations have been pushed aside, that from within yourself you can see your route with such clarity that your path has become transformed into a narrative that can give your past, present, and future a context and a sensicality so that all the past actions that have been written when you were narrating your life become the basis of realtime improvisation  operating all wisdom that is the coalescing of all sense that is the basis upon which all of the past of your life sublimates into a present tense that is sustaining of sufficient forms of resilience as to allow for hedonistic imperatives, social imperatives, humanistic imperatives, but all of these imperatives are not ones we know—these are strangers to ourself because we have not grown to the point where they have been recognized by all civilizations within ourself. There is a translation problem because when we express our affection  for dimensions of life, we speak on behalf of a majority within ourself, but what would it mean to have a symphony within the soul?  You know, when ‘el sistema’ has a symphony-training course for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and   the leader of it  says this will allow them to practice nonviolence by achieving harmony practically with each other in real time, he is also saying that that is the nonviolence of collaborative realtime sociology, that is the kind of integration we need within ourself. We cannot throw overboard components of our society because that would be as inhumane as we would fight against within our macro world. We would fight for those human rights. So what rights do the constituents of our soul   have, what sense do they have that we need to claim from pieces of ourselves that have been called into being by moments of profound love in this world where a constituency within our soul is created when something is deserving of our love, something has caused an implication for ourself, some part of the world has mattered sufficiently that our narrative has been affected for a moment, but for all our lives, there is a piece of that narrative with us, because there is a piece of that civilization within our larger civilization of the soul. I think that our city within needs to not just be a Phoenix, Arizona,--no offense to those who did not choose there, but the suburbanizaton within the soul reeks havoc upon ourselves. We need a Jane Jacobsization within, we need an interoperability of memes, we need a spontaneous sidewalk within our soul in which memes intersect in a pattern that is unpredictable and yet joyful, that is representative of our diversity and yet resonant with our complexity and yet compatible with the housing shortage within which is known as TIME, which is the scarcity that defines intrapersonal geography, which affects the distance within, which affects the degree to which we can get from one part of ourself to the other. I once heard that one does not travel to China to see the great wall, but rather to get to the great wall within oneself. Well, why can we not have a sense of what it means to travel from one part of ourself to another? What happens when two people who we know very well but have never met each other before meet together with us? Is there not a transportation link between two positions within ourself, newly-connected, newly having a kind of trade that we may remember for the rest of our lives, what those individuals have discovered is how to connect those points within ourself. I think there are some thoughts that take as long to get across from one side of our mind to the other as the transcontinental railroad allowed for transportation across America. And I think that more resonantly we must discover when transportation is an imperative rather than an option. When do we ensure that memes go where they must flow in order for us to grow into that whom we must become, in order for all that we wish to have as the implication of our life to be something that we can witness within our life. I think that just because they do not sell maps to you, does not mean that you do not need to explore sufficiently for you to have an understanding of your geography within, I think that de-defaults, I think that de-generic-ification, I think that taking all that would otherwise be simply you creating the chainstore equivalents within your soul, I think taking those infinite diversity of defaults, as my dear friend Ilya Z used to describe the hacking your own defaults, but if we take those defaults that we get from others, if all we have within our souls are chain store-type establishments, memes that are so generic that we have encouraged the gentrification of our soul—that we have facilitated the internal emergence of not the organic culture that is our own, not the aboriginal self that is guided by what John Stuart Mill called the inward forces that make yourself a living breathing thing but rather the unwelcome guests that have been put into our lives by the one an a half years of commercials per lifetime, by the 36,000 product placements in a movie, or  all the degrees that that suddenly becomes what we think of when we think of reality. Reality is not a collage of brands that stretches on into the infinity, that we only have a finite time to consume through—Reality within ourself should be what is our originality, because if we do not apply the creativity of all that we know to ourselves then we will allow the great resources of our being to be diminished and underutilized. There is such physical infrastructure within our society that goes unutilized during parts of the year, parts of the buildings, during parts of people’s lives. There is the same underutilized infrastructure of understanding within ourselves. To the degree to which we need to get to the specific person within ourselves that would give us the sensicality of maximal relevance at a specific moment. That means we may need infrastructure within ourselves and between us and other people to insist upon who ourselves ought to become. Maybe when we speak of intrapersonal transportation, sometimes that means simply having a relationship in place that would allow us to  pick up the phone and ensure that that part of our civilization can share its perspective on where we need to see from in order to become ourselves once again. See, I think that it’s a shame that so few Americans have passports, I think that it’s  a shame that so few people travel. But this becomes not just an incidental kind of failure. When you speak of yourself it becomes of profound significance. Because what are our models of how to build anew within our souls. We have already discussed what happens when we are speaking only in generic terms of our identity, the gentrification of ourself is the reduction of our identity to a list of movies, music that we have come to appreciate but brands and things that have become packaged sufficiently that they can be consumed, and I think that we need to think about the degree to which every person within our soul has a right to travel within ourself, and correspondingly, thinking about the external world, there is such a wealth of social innovation around the world, there is so much creativity applied as social entrepreneurs around the world to solve problems, and there is so little of people emulating the best approaches or new approaches or fascinating approaches in solving problems from one place to another.  Well, I think that part of the challenge is that we want the solutions to our problems to rise from the bottom up, and yet we need to learn from the commercial world where 90% of the economic value of social innovations comes from the imitation and emulation of innovations. We need to learn from what has been done elsewhere. Within the soul we do, too. Within the self, we do, too. We need to allow sufficient amounts of travel of parts of ourself to other parts of ourself for there to be new cultural developments within  ourself, based on the convergence of cultures, just like blues and jazz and swing and capoiera would not exist without the convergence of cultures, so too, can we not become that which would export culture to other civilizations, i.e. a unique identity of ourself unless we allow sufficient convergence within in order to have something to sell. In the economics of memes, in the sensicality of truth that must move and flow in order to sustain us all. We cannot have a full-blown intrapersonal economy of truth unless our unique self has produced something that causes others to rise from a vantage point of love within themselves and apply their analytical approach to the world proportionately, accordingly, scientifically, aesthetically, sociologically, on the basis that which we need, that which we aspire to, and that which only when our parts of our soul that need to visit certain parts of their souls, have their dialogue, which they can only do when brought into a context in which dialogue is possible, brought into a convergence in which rituals and habits are hacked such that newly there is a context in which those conversations would happen with civility. See, there is too often the same challenges of interpersonal dialogue that causes our memes not to travel far enough within ourself and between parts of ourself and parts of the world. There is that real challenge, the intrapersonal distances reflective of our finite time on this earth. There is no possibility any more to be a Leibnitz. Leibnitz was the last person on earth to know everything about all disciplines, according to his contemporaries. And so there is no more a mathematics of history, a physics of sociology, a chemistry of diplomacy, -- all the disciplines that might be merged cannot all be merged within ourself. But we can choose as the aesthetic cumulative potential of our life to converge those that ought to be converged within ourself. We can also ensure that those parts of ourself that have been called into being by  moments that have been true for us—that those parts of ourself can be thoroughly claimed over time by causing them to live. See, when we shortchange a piece of ourself that we trust of time to be expressed in our life, that piece diminishes and over time can disappear. I do not believe that we should commit intrapersonal genocide by deleting portions of ourself. But there are majoritarians among us who say 51% of themselves must govern and the rest be damned. Over time they become more boring, fragile people because the 49% that was becomes a nothing, and over time, they simply become whatever the majority was and not what their civilization could have grown to become. Rather, I think that we should be intrapersonal federalists, in certain seconds of the hour, hours of the day, days of the week, weeks of the year, and years of our life, we allow the minority within our soul to govern the self. This allows us, as long as there is not an existential risk for our whole self survival to ensure that in different moments, different parts of ourself  get expressed. But it’s not enough to express different parts of ourself in isolation. That would mean intrapersonal archipeligo-ification. Rather, we must allow ourself to be the ‘yenta’ – there is a story, my grandfather was a matchmaker: he introduced 38 couples with no divorces; he was at a party once, and he said to a couple, ‘And I take credit for you, two, as well.’ And they said, ‘What do you mean? We met each other all on our own.’ And he said, ‘Ah, but who introduced your parents?’ pointing to one, and ‘who introduced your parents?’ pointing to the other. Neither would exist had he not introduced them. We need a civilization within that we could produce without being aware of how it could become possible that it would exist. We need to become something that we could not imagine in order to become all that we would like to become. Because if we can imagine it before we become it, then we have not approached it with a original intent, a not “illusion of the first time,” but living the life actually for the first times. Because that is the basis upon which we may grow. So what is the matchmaking within the soul that needs to flow? What is the degree to which we need to connect these different memes together? Well, when we say that intrapersonally we allow federalism to persist, that simply says that there is room to persist. But that is not the room to thrive. What we say is that we need to allow the different parts of ourself to collide, we need to ensure that when there is a set of memes that need to be connected, a set of ourselves that need to be intersected, we need to insist that they come together at the moment when they can flow with resonance with one another. See, that is what happens when we gather the  pieces of ourselves into that which otherwise might be implausible. So when in Paris, they have 1000 people bring out the tables and occupy the main square and have a dinner in a white table cloth that extends for as far as the eye can see, when they do that, they are occupying public space. And they are converging people that need to converge in a context of great social wealth of their commons.  What is the commons within our soul that we need to occupy and with whom, from within ourself in order to become the kind of society that could honor what kind of convergence that we would seek?

         There is a basis [break]

    

          So when we matchmake these ideas together, there is a context in which our concepts pun, which is another way to say that those concepts are shared between constituencies within our soul that can discover that multiple parts of ourself can thrive together. See, that’s when I learned that I was playing on a dream team, when I played a basketball game with people I admire—My team may have lost every game since it was founded, but we have had a convergence of self. We have had a convergence of ideas, and we have had a convergence of different parts of ourself: the fit parts, the true parts, the emergent parts, the sensical parts, and the between moments of banter in the games have created such joy that the hypothesis is not that this is utopia, the hypothesis is simply that the provenance of utopia is here and now in all times where concepts, puns in which parts of ourself flourish. See, provenance is everything that might happened on the way to the way the thing is today. And if you take the provenance of all utopia that we have accessibility to, it is usually in the convergence of how do we use finite time to pun? How do we take our scarcity and turn it into abundance so that we become one? How do we ensure that the degree to which we have ever aspired is not constrained by the physics that has  caused others to perspire. Rather, we must insist upon that elegance of making a gathering as Ilya Z used to say, of ‘epic people’ and ‘making unreasonable demands.’ We need to do that between one another, but we also need to do that within. Because when we do that to the civilizations within our soul, we insist upon a convergence that is not just imaginable, but that is democratically feasible. It is deliberatively conceivable, it is an ability of the parts of ourself to understand one another. It is the degree to which we can sublimate all discord into another. It is the kind of sensicality that allows us to manage the longterm health of our civilization, the way a governance should be managed. But I do not think that there should be a democratic deficit within our soul. Because it has been hurtin’ like hell to the European Union and we ourselves cannot so dissolve. We do not have that option—and we also do not have the option of autocracy within ourself. Because that would then get majoritarian and diminish everybody else within ourself. Because we deserve better, we deserve the whole. When we combine the concept of a basketball team and a bunch of gurus or a hike where we converge the futurist cultures and nature and the alternative history hackers. These are hypotheses that are fundamentally about having simultaneous different parts of ourself flourishing.  We are seeking to say that we can be powered much further when multiple parts of ourself are locomotive, rather than merely being merely dragged forward. We can become a hybrid engine using not only the electricity of one part of our soul, but also the petrol of another part of our soul. We can ensure that most pieces of ourself pull in the same direction because if we insist upon the refraction of all parts of ourself that can be truly expressed at the same moment, then new rainbows can emerge from latent spectrum.

See, there is an underemployment in this economy of volunteers who can do more in the global macro  outside-the-self economy. There (are) massive degrees to which skills go unacknowledged. Now, within the self it is the same thing. Constituencies within the self that know skills, that have disciplines, that know displicines sufficiently so that they are  marinated in that set of certainties. These parts of ourself, these constituencies within our civilization—they also have the capacity to volunteer and uplift our broader self and sensicalization. Because there is a part of ourself that can tutor another part of ourself. There is a part of ourself that can engage in service learning with another part of ourself. And by service learning I mean when we discover a new convergence of disciplines, a new convergence of components of the self. I learned of service learning a very long time ago from a very dear friend who passed away this year. Mandy McRae  died of a disease, but  I was only alerted to her death, not to her illness. Because on Facebook it was prioritized—the death notice—but in the nine months prior, never a mention of her illness. When we get hacked like that, we lose control of our relationship between us and those we love. Ilya Z., in my very last combination with him, solved the Leibnitz challenge  I proposed—the Leibnitz challenge of how can we converge all disciplines globally that ought to be converged in order to bring about relevant innovation with regards to human challenges. He said if every student before they graduate creates a service learning project that converges at least two disciplines together in order to solve a human challenge, small or large—then in 20 years, he said, we would statistically have probably merged a sufficient percentage, a critical mass of disciplines that need to be converged. Now, what is the equivalent that we need to undertake within ourself? What is the latent capacity internally that we have access to in our lives based on where we are? I think that there is …