Greetings!
I hope this finds you well as the new time zone sinks in (or not, if you’re in Queensland Australia, or Saskatchewan, Canada, or anywhere in Brazil, for instance).
I haven’t piled into your inbox since August when I sent my little memo about listening, but there’s a lot going on. I’ll offer a few breadcrumbs on what I’ve been reading, writing and speaking about, in case these are useful for your trail.
Reading: on discourse (including what happens when there is none)
I have been exploring the theme of public discourse, spurred by a wish to see more intelligent dialogue on just about everything, from politics and policy to art and language.
- The height of goodness on this gets at the idea of “living systems thinking” of which my friend Michelle Holiday is a master. Her book, The Age of Thrivability, helps readers to embrace regenerative ideas, which requires next-level listening. Her blog also offers bite-sized ideas that inspire and inform.
- For a journey into the challenges of discourse today, I found the essays in I’m Right And You’re An Idiot by James Hoggan to be an accessible, informative read. It plays back the polarization I hear, and helps make sense of it.
- I’m also reading about uncomfortable things like oppression and genocide playing out in plain sight, such as Listening to Grasshoppers, by Arundhati Roy and Reclaiming Power and Place, the final report of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry here in Canada. I believe it’s worth pursuing much more discourse on this.
Writing: trying to making sense (-ish) of stuff
Here’s a recap of what’s happening on the blog, where I try to sense-make using more than the half-sentences permitted in the various social media feeds.
- My friend Katja Bartholmess asked me to explain more about what I meant in my April blog post about two hopeful dreams I had. I did so in a follow up blog post in June. But the truth is, I had originally felt this piece in a more lyrical, spoken way – it just seemed to make more sense that way. So I recently put voice to that writing. You can check out the new audio of Two Dreams in Fragments here.
- There is a lot of chatter about network-weaving as we find new collaborations and connections. As a handspinner (who also knits and weaves), I felt it my duty to explain that much of what we’re doing is actually spinning, not weaving, and this is a good thing. I play with that string in the blog post The Future is Fluffy, here.
- I’ve often thought that great artists have figured things out and the rest of us are just catching up. I was reminded of this again when some Dostoevsky and Thomas Wolfe snuck up on me in the context of explaining the regenerative economy, helping me feel less like an idiot. I blogged about it in Regena-whatsky? here.
When full sentences fail me, there is Instagram where I share photos and signals that bounce in front of me as I meander.
Public Speaking: slightly more professional than talking to myself
I was invited to speak at a circular economy conference in São Paulo in late September. I took the audience on a little adventure beyond the circular economy and into the regenerative reaches of our possible future (including a bit more spinning…). There is video of my talk in Portuguese and an English transcript here.
I referenced a quote from a friend of mine, Fabrício Muriana, during that presentation in São Paulo. I’ll lift it out here since I have found it rather helpful and you might, too.
“The future may look pretty bad, but we still have plenty of present to work with.”
Yours in connectedness,
Lorraine
