Creative Relapse

Life experience lately leads to the mention of a few things. First the "Theory U" retreat to Kangaroo Valley with Catalyst 2030 working towards Sustainable Ground and Sustainable Sydney 2030, second the subsequent art opening of Aaron Fuller's photography at Tortuga Studios in Sydney, and third the burning desire after watching Waltz with Bashir to communicate my style of art effectively and strive for a lasting cultural impact.

It sounds lofty, but it's all a part of the process. Theory U is a working approach to getting from point A to point B. In what I want to accomplish, I must first leave where I am and aspire to arrive where I want to be. Let's say that process is leaving the left side of a U and traveling to the other. There is a gaping chasm in between. This is the space of individual self-knowledge and negotiation that can be explored in places like Kangaroo Valley Bush Retreat.



With a group of twenty people we approached our objectives in holding the Sustainable Grounds Cafe of Cafe's event coming up. On Tuesday August 25th the owners of Sydney's most prominent Cafes will gather in the Botanical Gardens for a World Cafe style event. As all owners create a collective ownership of their experience on the 25th, we as a core group of Catalyst 2030 formed our own ownership over the weekend retreat.

As Barack Obama mentions in The Audacity of Hope, my painful realisations in my Theory U experience are the same worthless qualities of my flawed existence that I grew tired of years ago. I am now reminded of what I was hoping to forget, which is interesting because at the start of the retreat I mentioned that I wanted to actively remember. By actively remembering what we have been taught not only within our lifetimes but within the lifetime of our existence on this planet as we know it, we might start finding answers to questions we have forgotten to ask.

Coming back into the MBA life was a shock to the system, but it's my preferred shock given the alternatives. After a week of being humbled further by Midterm results I had an interview at Stryker on Wednesday. That boosted my confidence and I hope to report further in a future post. By week's end I attended a Catalyst 2030 colleagues opening on Friday at Tortuga Studios. Aaron Fuller had photography was among the more refined work on display, and humbly priced in the open auction format. No doubt he priced to them for a quick sale as he left the next day for Melbourne to attend Al Gore's Asia Pacific Climate Project through the Australian Conservation Foundation



All that inspiration feeds directly into the courses I have registered for next session, but I'll write more on that later. I was thankful for another break on Saturday when two classmates had birthdays over the weekend and gave the AGSM MBA cohort an excuse to gather on Saturday. Later that night I was further inspired musically by Martini Club, who never disappoint. By the time I made it back to my place to assault my Strategy binder with a highlighter I had been able to watch Waltz with Bashir. That movie made me so grateful to be alive and living beyond a war zone that the fuel of my internal fire is burning brighter and needs to come out.



Put it all together and I had scribbled more strategy notes for the ETA Cafe in my moleskine while downloading The Window, a new album by my old favorite Shirlette Ammons and her Mosadi Music. That is a nice addition to my collection after sharing the work of her former collaborator Applejuice in his new partnership with Suede from Camp Lo. Their collaboration, Freebass 808 has been keeping my ears busy for weeks.



I'm feeling the wave of creation my soulbrothers and soulsisters are fueling, and completed a new track, "relapse" that I started in Kangaroo Valley, somewhere at the bottom of my "U". It's based on lyrics I wrote in 2003 as I'm pulling from sketchbooks dating back to 1999 that I scanned onto my MacBook before leaving the States. You can read the lyrics and sing along at Reverb Nation.

Or you could just click on the Reverb Nation Player widget in the right margin...