Random Historical Remembrance: Secret Admirers

So Doorknobs just walked over to me and handed me a note that he has been holding onto, which I received four years ago in April 2004 from some female friends who thought it would be fun to bust my balls on a night we were having a party at the house, by planting thongs (yes, thongs) and raunchy love letters throughout my apartment. It would have been a funny prank at the time too, were I not a) a little too serious & sensitive for my own good, b) a little too absentminded for my own good, and c) had my estranged, hot-and-bothered (angry, not horny) ex-girlfriend not just shown up at the apartment a few minutes before one of the thongs was pulled from between the couch cushions and announced to the party. Oh yeah, and I was a little too inebriated for my own good. So yeah. That was a good time.

Anyway, here's the "letter" in all it's glory. I'm glad it's legible cause i'd rather not have to retype it and then start showing up in a Google search when someone enters the words "Jeffrey Beaumont" "wet" and "horny". Oh. Oops.


Believe it or not, those stains are from Doorknobs tossing the note onto a plate of bacon today. Not anything else.

Week 1, Day 7: Strangeness, en masse

Sorry for the delay but there's a lot here and I've been busy. This post covers Saturday, Day 7 and concludes Week 1.

----

For the final day of this first full week of Hyperliving, for a task that was embarassingly difficult for me (given its non-difficulty for so many others), I decided to, in the parlance of our times, "blow this shit up." And what better way to go all stranger hunting maximalist than to participate in the seventh annual No Pants 2k8 NYC event.


No, that's not me.

The No Pants NYC event is a group participation event put on each year by the organization "Improv Everywhere," where groups of strangers meet in a specified location and descend on the MTA in pantsless-glee.


My welcome to you



Charlie Todd, No Pants 2k8 convener

Like all of these sorts of projects, the No Pants event began as just a handful of dudes freaking people out by riding the 6 train in only underwear. Over the seven annual events, however, the gig has grown to the point where over 900 people participated. There were so many people, in fact, that the group was forced to split into 3 different subway line groups (6, R, and another one). The basic premise is that all the participants gather in one place (Foley Square) and then are assigned to separate train cars on the line they're travelling on (I was on car 6 of the R line). Each car group then heads to their car, dressed, and board the train. Then, one by one, members of the group get off at each successive stop, taking their pants off immediately before exiting. Each member than waits at the platform in that exact spot to board the next R train that comes (meaning, letting the N and W trains pass). The effect is that by the time the route reaches its turnaround destination, 59th & Lexington, all now pants-less participants have rejoined each other on that second R train. After reaching 59th & Lex, everyone gets off and then walks across the train to the downtown platform and head back for Union Square where all reconvene to rejoice in their success.

Beyond the obvious fact that there would be TONS of strangers at this event, one reason why I decided to join in is because normally this is the last kind of thing I would ever think of doing. I know that I'm both melodramatic and anal expulsive, but I'm not really an exhibitionist, and I also tend to avoid participating in activities with large crowds of strangers. A big point of hyperliving is for me to try and do things that I'm uncomfortable with and/or afraid of, as well as to try and reconsider ideas that I've previously dismissed and reconsider whether or not I may have missed some value in my previous appraisals. It also seemed important that I do it on my own so that I could really be sure I'd be putting myself out there. And what I found out is that a)meeting strangers is easy in situations like this and b) it was really fun and I had a great time and would definitely consider participating in group activities like this again.


Crowd listens intently to Charlie Dodd intro (except redhead girl looking straight at me)

So all fun and games aside, I'm happy to report that, for the sake of Week 1's task, meeting strangers at No Pants Day 2k8 was easy, even for me. When I first arrived at Foley Square, I did again feel the pangs of nervousness as I surveyed the huge crowd of people, and for a minute I stood there, thinking, "Am I really gonna talk to these people?" I even saw two people I knew (both of whom acted like they'd never seen me before). But then I just took a breath and said Hello.

Stranger #1: Becca


Becca was an easy first approach because of the hilarious/ridiculous hat on her head. She was also standing alone. After "Hey, nice hat," I introduced myself and explained to her what I'm doing and we struck up a conversation. A student in Manhattan studying art and psychology, she comes from Canada and bought her hat there (she declined to get the matching mittens, which would be “a little too much”), though she said it’s also sold at the street shops in Union Square during Christmas. She heard about No Pants Day from a friend and immediately emailed the rest of her friends to come out, but only two—both males—said they'd join in. I asked her if she was surprised and she said, "Yeah, actually. I had thought, 'Who wouldn't want to take their pants off on the subway?'" Hmm…to me, this seems a little less obvious. Hilariously enough, I found out later that Becca is actually a close friend of my upstairs neighbor, who was one of the women Becca solicited to participate in the event and declined. Hyperliving has been teaching me that the world is fucking wild at heart and weird on top.

When surveying the hundreds of people in the crowd, I wondered how we'd all fit on one train--it hadn't been announced yet that they were moving to three lines—but Becca insisted that there wouldn't be a problem as it had worked for ZombieCon just fine. [though i've linked now I had no idea then what that was.]

We talked for a while longer about crowds and weird people and then went our separate ways after being sent to the R train group (as we were divided into separate cars by the last digit of our phone number, me 6 and her 3).


Soft-spoken R Train Leader instructs; no one hears.

We had been standing around waiting at this point for about 40 minutes already, so I was glad to start moving forward. We formed into smaller groups of about 10-15 representing our individual cars and then strained to hear a short redheaded man gave instructions which were almost completely inaudible, even after I told off a gaggle of loud women like I was a 4th Grade Hall Monitor. After repeating himself about five times, we finally heard what he had to say--each group was to walk to their respective car, clothed, and board the next R train. Then, one by one we would each get off and wait at the platform for the next R; however, before exiting the train we were to take our pants off so as to hit the triple whammo of 1) taking your pants off on a subway car, 2) standing on a platform waiting for a train in only underpants, and 3) boarding a train in that same fashion.

After the red-headed man finished his instruction, I introduced myself to the Car 6 group and immediately began saying hello to people to find out their situations. Oddly enough, the first three people I said hello to were all named Brian.


Brian, Brian, and yes, Brian

Two of the Brians (the two on the ends) knew each other vaguely from past group participation events, though they realized they'd never formally met before. The Brian on the far left had most recently taken part in the Improv Everywhere Abercrombie "No Shirt" event, which seemed to make sense to me.

As I chatted with them, a girl walked over to us and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to her and she said opened her mouth and then paused. "Oh," she said plaintively, "I thought you were a guy I went to high school with named Brian."

I swear that I am not joking. And she wasn't even standing anywhere near us when each Brian introduced themself to me!

I introduced myself to her and then to the man standing next to her. Her name was Kate and his was Aaron. We then began walking toward the City Hall subway stop together and began chatting about whatever kind of silliness we thought was going to ensue over the next few hours.



Aaron said that he was a student from RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), down for the day to have a good time and take a photo for his Photo 365 Flickr project. Like many of the others, he hadn’t been able to get any of his friends to join him, but he came down by himself to have a good time and see what the fun was all about. He reminded me of someone I’d known in a past life but I couldn’t really place my finger on where, when or who.

When we got underground we found a place on the platform where it seemed our assigned car would be stop. Everyone got in a position and we waited for the signal to get onboard. After one N train went by, we hopped on and the games began.

The train we all boarded was about half-full. Everyone sat down, many of us either looking somewhat nervous or else suppressing silly smiles that might give us away. I was to disembark at the third stop, 8th Street, and I fidgeted nervously with my bag and my magazine as I sat there waiting for the moment I would "drop trou'."

Finally, it was nearly my stop and time to drop. I hadn't been able to see first two participants from where I had been sitting so as far as I know, the sight of me then standing up non-chalantly and unbuckling my belt and pulling my pants off my legs must have been weird and ridiculous to those sitting around me not planning to do the same. Swiftly I moved and by the time I'd folded my pants neatly and placed them in my shoulder bag, the train had stopped and I got off, about to become a lone man standing on a platform in his boxer briefs.


My, Grandmother! And what white legs you have!

But I wasn't the only one. About five others from my car got off at my stop and there were others milling about further up the platform. Still, it didn't really make much difference that I wasn't the only one standing there in my underwear because, well, I was standing there in my underwear. I shifted about on the platform, waiting for the next R train to arrive. I let an N train pass and got ready to get on the next train. It pulled up a few minutes later and I got on.


Blurry camera phone shot of others waiting on 8th St platform

I boarded the mostly-filled train and sat down next to an older woman, pulling out my Moleskine to jot some notes down. I looked around to see if I could glean some reactions and was immediately reminded that New York is the brassiest place on earth: people really know how to look like they don't give a SHIT here. There were one or two faces of surprise or interest, but by and large the other 25 people in car didn't even stir. And not like they should--I guess a point that could be emphasized from this exercise is that it's cool to just let people do their thing and not worry about them, but seriously!! No pants, people!! I posit, perhaps wrongly, that it would have been different if I'd been in Dallas or Minneapolis, but what the fuck do i know.

After hastily scribbling down my thoughts on the matter a realization dawned on me: there were no other pantless riders on my train. And when we pulled away from the 14th St stop, none of the pantless riders on the platform got on the train. Which meant that... I was not on the R at all... I was on the... N?

For a second I freaked out thinking that I was suddenly Bronx bound and destined to be bare-legged and alone for the rest of the day, but then i realized that my N was in front of the correct R and all I had to do was get off at the next stop and wait til it came.


More legs

The rest of the ride was fun but uneventful--despite the excitement generated by such a playful exercise, the fact we were strongly discouraged to take photos, talk to each other, or even smile meant that anyone committed to "following the rules" was practicing an exercise in stoically-driven inward meditation. The one moment for me to cut the air was when a Caribbean woman got on at 28th St, sat down next to me and then asked me how she could get to Queensboro Plaza from there--she didn't even bat an eye that I wasn't wearing pants before speaking to me, while the look of curiosity and awkwardness on the face of another woman next to us was precious and priceless; I tried my best to speak calmly, clearly, and politely to maximize the weirdness effect.

When we finally arrived at Union Square it seemed hard to believe the trip was over already--weren't we going to transfer to Metro North to make our way to Westport or something? Everyone got off the train and milled about the platform for about 13 seconds before heading up the stairs to the sublevel above.


Taken from "Chad"--click photo for link to his Flickr


This dude had definitely been looking forward to this day.

The scene was basically a participant/tourist photo session as a reward to all the riders who'd refrained from taking pictures all night and a meat market for the tourists and bystanders who were just there for a good time. Aaron, Kate and I hung there for a few before heading up above ground to see how long we could stand being outside in the night air with bare legs.



It was mayhem--hundred of satisfied people in skivvies shouting and chanting to delight of each other and the many onlookers already in Union Square. People handed out "Pro-pants" and "No-pants" flyers and stickers, photographers and cameramen snapped photos and shot video, and a man there protesting on behalf of Dennis Kucinich submitted to the pleas of the coterie to show he believed in the notion of "No Pants for Kucinich" by dropping his own and dancing in a circle.

I asked Andrew and Kate if they wanted to get a drink to celebrate at a bar nearby, which Kate ratified but Andrew could not as he had to leave to catch a bus home. We gave him instructions to get to Port Authority and then we walked off into the sunset, pants-less and pleased, toward the Old Town Bar and Restaurant for pants-on drink to finish a great and silly day and week of strangers and strangeness.

--Jeffrey

--------------------------------------

And I'll close with some more No Pants ephemera--another video and some more photos I took (including some crappy camera phoners):

Week 1, Day 5/6: "The Internet is broke."

Ok, so I have a lot to catch you up with.

Day 5 was pretty weak. I talked to a stranger briefly but not at liberty to say yet who it was. I will share in the eventual BOOK THAT I PUBLISH THROUGH RANDOM HOUSE IN JUNE 2009 (THEY HAVE ALREADY GIVEN ME A $754,000 ADVANCE).

So moving on.

Day 6 - The New Museum of Paper Radical

Friday was a pretty overall awesome day for me. Nearly one million excellent things happened to me, and, as Trey said at Clifford Ball on August 16, 1996, "They're not all happening on one stage!" Some of the details I will again share at a later time, but they involve me talking to strangers who seem to actively want to help me improve me life.

The stranger I can talk about though is a raderiffic woman named Marisa Olson. But first I will explain how we met.



After work, I went to meet my maximum bro Hot Doorknobs at the new New Museum on the Bowery for a special bi-monthly event put on by their subgroup Rhizome. The New Museum is all about contemporary art, but Rhizome focuses specifically on new media art.

Last night's showing was the debut of some new films by the Providence/Pittsburgh art collective known as Paper Rad. Paper Rad are some crazy awesome dudes who celebrate the joyousness of growing up in America between 1984 and 1996: Lisa Frank, Trolls, Garfield and bad cartoons are all staples of their work, with midis and crunchy southern booty bass as the backdrop.

I first heard about Paper Rad a few weeks ago when Doorknobs bought their most recent DVD, Trash Talking, and I was pretty much consumed by the rad action. Here are some excerpts:



DVD "trailer"


"The Internet is broke"

The exhibition was the debut of a few new Paper Rad films and a film by related-artist Ben Coonley, followed by a performance by the duo Wizzards (featuring mental keyboards and Lightning Bolt bass player Brian Gibson on drums).

Problem Solvers and Wizzards:





The show was packed and the whole thing lasted about two hours. After the show I met Rhizome curator Lauren Cornell and introduced myself and explained what I am doing and that I was looking for an interesting stranger to talk to. She offered to introduce me to the Paper Radders but warned me that they were exhausted and stressed and might not be all that fun. "But I have just the person for you" she said, and asked me to wait there before she returned with my stranger.



A minute later she returned with the woman above, the blond haired and blue-eyed German-born artist, thinker and co-Rhizome curator Marisa Olson, a woman whom the New York Times has called "anything but stupid" (umm...). Olson, like the members of Paper Rad, is a proponent of explorations what she calls "the crappiness of culture," though unlike Paper Rad's joyous celebrations of junk, Olson prefers to cast a more critical lens on crap and what it signifies.


Excerpts from the Marisa Olson exhibition "Break Up Album (Demo)"

After being introduced, Marisa and I spoke at length about her work and her thoughts on junkiness, Paper Rad, American Idol, and America's binary reductionism of success and failure.

"A key point of my work," she said, "Is something I call 'the aesthetics of failure.'" Through this point Marisa introduced her idea about bringing out the junkiness or crappiness of culture in her work, and also the point that failure is a learning exercise that in our culture today can provide more knowledge and wisdom than success. I didn't realize it at the time, but her ideas are also directly correlated to those posited by Kim Cascone, as featured in his article "The Aesthetics of Failure:'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music"... which oddly enough was just emailed to me last week by a friend in Chicago who I haven't seen in over 3 years. This quote offered by Cascone best highlights the underlying concept:

"It is failure that guides evolution; perfection offers no incentive for improvement."
-- Colson Whitehead (1999)

Marisa and I talked about how we have reached a point in America where, despite all of the ways in which our world begs for nuance and ambiguity, we now search more than ever for black and white epistemologies--namely of success and failure. She mentioned that the phrase 'Mission Accomplished' has particular currency now, particularly in these 2k days of the oddest and most ambiguous (though least publicly acknowledged) war since Vietnam. And really, using a term like "failure" is almost a cute joke, because those like Marisa are trying to get away from the "0" as much as they are from the "1"; however, using it serves the point of shaking up expectations and hopefully opening up the mind to enough possibility of reconsideration (and therefore, polytruths) that it works.

Overall, it was a pretty great night and a nice notch to add to the stranger belt. Onward march.

Week 1, Day 3/4: Night Shadows

Tuesday morning, score for the week so far (were I keeping score), with a 1 point per day scale:
- Sunday: dancing Japanese man, . 61 points
- Monday: Dave Zach, internet hyperliving guru, .92 points (.08 docked for internet-only)
- Tuesday: NOBODY. .00000000000000000000 POINTS. I LOSE.

Which basically means I have some work to do.



One of the things of which I've been most surprised by this week is the number of people that have reacted with surprise or even disappointment over my choice of challenges for this week. "Talk to strangers? I do that shit everyday!" I've heard. Today it even went as far as, "At first it seemed like you were gonna start with all sorts of crazy things, but then this??" What's surprised me most about these reactions is that, honestly, not even for a heartbeat second was I considering that other people would feel this way, because right now I'm feeling like I've chosen one of the hardest challenges I could have possibly imagined.

Ok, some hyperbole. But.

I know it should be, "How hard is it to just come up to a person and say, 'Hey, how's it going? I'm ______. What's going on?'" It seems like it shouldn't be hard at all, but every time ths week I've stood around folks I don't know, I've been reminded that for me it's absolutely deep-pit-in-stomach tough. I just do not feel comfortable walking up to random strangers and putting myself out there. To put it in context, normally if you asked me, attempting to write poetry would be one of the least comfortable things I could imagine doing. I will explain all about this on Sunday, but for now just take my word for it. However, last night I was dying for Sunday to come, when my only obligation for the week would be to try and string words together in an a slightly erudite fashion. [Another weird reminder of the power of the mind to scale everything in context.] Again, it all harkens back to weird, mythically "crippling" insecurities that are a part of me and which I have allowed to stand in my way of accomplishing goals over the years. Because the truth is that writing good poetry should be much harder than talking to (not befriending, deceiving, or beating at gambling) strangers. At worst, they act annoyed that I've spoken to them and they walk away from me, but big deal. Right?


I tried to keep this in mind last night as I left the house looking for blood, determined to overcome the feelings of humiliation and self-doubt that had swarmed me all day as I took time to reflect upon the fact that already, in week 1, I had failed to uphold the mission I'd sworn to accomplish. My failure ate me alive, but I tried to keep in mind points 2-4 of the manifesto:

• I shall do these tasks as best I can, and when I cannot succeed, I will reflect to the point of consideration and then continue moving forward to the next task.
• I shall not be tripped up by fear or uncertainty.
• I shall not be deterred by failure, because the only failure in this game is giving up.

Tuesday, failure? Shitty, yes, but just think about why I failed and how I can move forward in success and then keep going, dude.

So I held on and I was lead to Wednesday, victory.

Polish Nights

I met Wednesday night's stranger standing outside a bar near my neighborhood. I had decided I'd go out and get a drink and then wander the streets of Williamsburg until I found someone that looked worth pestering. As I was about to walk into the bar, I was approached by an Eastern European man. "Hey guy," he said, "Can I have $2? I wanna get a beer for me and my friend to split and I only have $2." It was a little odd because though I have been approached for money in New York many times, it's not usually regular seeming 20somethings asking for money, and never does the asker reveal that the purpose of the money would be for alcohol. I balked for a second and he repeated his request, this time a little more pleadingly. "I'll get you back next time, of course." I thought for another minute and then said, "Fuck it. Ok," and handed him $2 and then started to open the door to head inside.

As I stepped one foot inside the bar, I realized that I was literally walking away from my goals. I stopped, turned around and began to speak. "What's your name?" I asked. "Michael," he said, adding, "Thanks so much man, you are great." And then, turning to his friend, he said, "I'm going inside to get the beer now, see you in a minute." I felt crestfallen for a second, but his friend was still standing there, smoking a cigarette. I pulled out one of my own and reintroduced myself.

What followed was not what I'd expected: the man, another Pole named Andrew, immediately began apologizing for his friend. "You're probably looking at me now and thinking, 'Oh he's a bum, he doesn't have a job and he ain't got no money.' But that's not true, I have money. I just can't tell him I have any or else he'll never stop asking for more."


Andrew, shadow in the night

He told me about how he had only met the guy a week before and they were working on a construction job together in the neighborhood (he continued to reference this over the course of our conversation). After I reassured him that I didn't think he was a bum and that I hadn't been judging him, he opened up a bit more. He grew up 6 kilometers outside of Warsaw. He moved to America ten years ago with parents, but not his sister who lives in Russia (his mother is Polish but his father is Russian). They live in Ridgewood, which he likes but which is also far out of the way and lacking attractive women ("Man, the girls on Bedford Avenue--you must go and see the girls on Bedford Avenue! They are just standing there and it is so much!"). Though he loves Poland, he said he moved here to have a better life and it is (though “Now of course you can for example have a very good life in England or Ireland or even Czech, but I have been here ten years so that is that”). He asked me where I was from and what I was doing here. He then looked over at my friend and said, "You are Arabic, yes?" and looking at me, "After many years of seeing people, you get to know these things." (My friend is not Arabic.)

I then noticed a scar running down his face, beginning immediately below his eye and continuing downward until disappearing into his jacket. "Is there an interesting story behind that scar?" I asked. He stopped inhaling his cigarette and looked me in the eye quizzically, before then smiling and saying, "Yes, there is always a story. And you would like to know?"

He then proceeded to tell me about a summer afternoon spent in a park in Ridgewood:

“There were all these people outside, drinking beer, and music was playing. And this one guy says somethings do another guy, and they aren’t so ok. But the other guy just goes and punches him and he falls down. I want to help and so I step in and say, ‘Hey, you can’t do that’—but the next thing I know, the guy pulls out a knife and cuts my face,” Andrew says, gesturing by running his hand down his face. “And then he takes the knife and stabs it at my chest from here to here,” he says, pointing a huge area on the right side of his upper body.

“Blood was pouring all over me, and I started running, but I was getting sick and dizzy. And then I feel hands on my shoulders and it’s cops—‘You’re under arrest,’ they say. What the fuck? I am innocent but they are trying to arrest me. Sometimes life is crazy.”

A minute later, Michael returns from inside the bar. “Linus!” Andrew exclaims. ??? Michael/Linus speaks: “Those fucks. No beer. They would not sell to me because I have no ID.” He then looks over at me and says, “Thanks man,” and turns to Andrew and says, “Let’s go get some beer, man.” And Andrew says goodbye, and they depart off down the street. Michael/Linus does not offer to return the $2 I gave him to buy a beer from the bar.

I thought to myself that I had no idea which, if any, of the pieces of information I had just been told were true or not. It didn’t really seem to matter though.

- Wednesday: Andrew and Michael/Linus, 1 point, winning again. Forward march.

Week 1, Day 2: Strangers When We Meet / The Manifesto, Pt. 3

"All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town."
- Leo Tolstoy



"Talking to strangers is one of the essential ingredients to the development of great stories."
- David Zach, Futurist

Someone asked me recently whether or not I would be undertaking this exercise of Hyperliving were it not today, were it sometime in the recent or less recent past. The short answer is "no."

It's not to say that I couldn't have decided to take on a project like this is in 1995, or 1985, but it's certainly true that the entire experience is intrinsically tied to the changes the world has been undergoing over the past ten years and the ways in which all of life is slowly (or rapidly) intertwining into one throbbing, overlarged fiber of beats and pulses.

The idea of "Strangers on a Train," of meeting someone being able to come into and out of your life without leaving a trace, is one of the past. In 1951, if I leave my leather bag on a train and there's no easy markings identifying that it belongs to me, it means someone somewhere has a nice new leather bag. In 2006, if I leave my computer bag on the train and there's no easy markings identifying that it belongs to me, a Japanese man with the email address "hateyoubush@XXX.co.jp" opens it up, hacks into my email and sends me a cryptic email saying, "Hey, did you lost your powerbook on subway? you must be freaking out about it right?, but its safe. you might not be able to see this e-mail, but hope you will see this one soon so i can give you your computer back." [Thank you again, Kayuza, wherever you are, for making
my life again ok.]

The very concept of "strangers" is now something else. Obviously people may still be new to you, but it is no longer necessary for them to retain an air of strangeness. In a minute, I can get your cell phone number, email address, IM screenname and any host of other information that will allow me to track you until you actively choose to hide from me. And it's not creepy, it's just how it is. The terms of invisibility and strangeness have changed.

This brings me to today's stranger

As I mentioned earlier, I first brewed my plans for hyperliving over some beers in a bar last summer. When trying to think of a word or term that would encapsulate my ideas into a neat package, the word "hyperliving" immediately came to mind. I went home later and dictionary.com'd it and confirmed it wasn't a "real word," but that only made it seem more perfect for my purposes.

I didn't think of researching the term any further until last week, after registering the domain name hyperliving.net (which is STILL not operational--damn you, Fortune City!!) and was surprised to come across hardly any hits at all. None of them seemed particularly germane to my pursuits except this one, by a futurist named David Zach. What I read astonished me:

"In my talks, I explain the notion of hyperliving, where we just seem to skim along the surface of life and are so busy with all the temporary things that distract us that we don't have time to stop and think about what we're doing, let alone trying to think about it while we're doing it. All we seem to have time for is finishing the one thing so we can get on to the next thing."

I hadn't been sure whether or not I had coined the term hyperliving myself, but I had been fairly sure that no one else had bothered to define it. (It's not even in the dictionary!!) Far more surprising than that though was the way in which David's definition of the term so closely approached my own. In this week of contacting strangers, who more should I reach out to than this man?

to: davidzach
subject: Hyperliving

Hi Dave,

We don't know each other (I found you on the Internet). I have an odd note I'd like to relate to you and hope you might take the time to read.

This summer I came up with the idea that I was going to embark upon a year of what I wanted to call "hyperliving"--the idea that I would take on 52 consecutive one week commitments to "living a certain way" with the idea that it might bring me somewhere new (i'm a smart 25 yr old dude who's constantly struggled with discipline and am currently searching for some answers to the world at large). If you'd like to check out what i'm talking about, I've just launched my website at hyperliving.blogspot.com

Anyway, the reason i'm writing you is because i was googling "hyperliving" to see what else the Internet had to say about the term (and to consider whether or not it might even be a real word). I didn't find much out there but I did stumble across this blog entry you wrote in July where you define hyperliving as:

"We just seem to skim along the surface of life and are so busy with all the temporary things that distract us that we don't have time to stop and think about what we're doing, let alone trying to think about it while we're doing it. All we seem to have time for is finishing the one thing so we can get on to the next thing."

I thought your definition was fascinating because a) I had naively considered that I may have invented the term hyperliving on my own, or at least that no one else had bothered to define it, and b) I am surprised at how directly your definition is related to mine, and that stands in almost direct contrast. I would be very interested if you know of any specific historical etymlogy to this term or if you to just sort of put the word together and applied your own understanding. I'd also be interested in any thoughts you have on my own ideas and how you would consider them to work with or against your own.

Ok then. Hope this email reaches you and that you have a minute or two to say hello.

cheers,
Jeffrey Beaumont

And this afternoon he wrote back:

to: jeffreybeaumont
date Jan 7, 2008 12:18 PM
subject: Re: Hyperliving

I don't quite know how I came up with this, which may in fact mean that I read it someplace, played with the idea and now I get the credit for it.

Your idea has some merit, but it sounds a bit disconnected and well, youthful to me. Meaning that you're probably in your twenties and have the energy to do what you're saying. I'm 50 and it sounds like it's too frenetic for me. Then again, the merit part of it is to delve deeply into each thing (some deep delving may take longer than a week) but what you seem to be doing is paying attention to each thing that you're doing. With my sense of hyperliving, the person can't really pay attention because there's just too many things on the agenda.

Here's the exact "mantra" or phrase that I use in my talks: Hyperliving is where you're skimming along the surface of life and the whole goal is not to enjoy what you're doing but to simply finish what you're doing so you can go and do the next thing that's on your list. Then I ask the audience, "does that sound familiar?" and when I get the yeses from the audience, then I explain that now that they have a word for it, they should start using it.

A lot of this stems from the modern notion that attention is the most valuable resource you own - because wherever your attention is, your time and money follow. The avg. American is confronted with somewhere between 3000 to 5000 advertising messages a day. All trying to take and hold your attention.

You might want to check the life hacker website and also read an article that was in the NY Times back in 10-15-05 or so - Meet the Life Hackers - all about how frenetic we are at work in terms of constant interruptions.

I'd be happy to correspond a little bit on this topic, so feel free to respond back with counter notions or questions.

Dave

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I need to learn more about David's theories to make sure I understand the nuances he's trying to convey, but it seems that here's the $20 sack pyramid question: David says that, "With my sense of hyperliving, the person can't really pay attention because there's just too many things on the agenda"--is he right?

I do not, at all, have the answer right now; however, I do I know that I am on this journey to find out. My quest did not, for once in my lifelong stretch of knowledge seeking, begin with a hypothesis, or at least not one that says, "Hyperliving will bring me to the Golden Lifestyle". It is entirely possible that David has hit the nail on the head, that focused but fragmented, short-spurt living will have "frightful consequences", but perhaps it's not the case and a new generation of minds will be able to understand how hyperliving is instead a way to compartmentalize the wondrous amount of stimuli that bombard our senses daily. Maybe we really can take it all in, holding on to what we've moved beyond after we're on to the next thing.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

To be continued.

[Tolstoy quote provided by David Zach. Check him out at http://davidzach.typepad.com/]

Week 1, Jan 6-Jan 12: Have a Conversation with a Stranger Each Day

That's pretty much my take on things this week.

One of the exciting and scary things for me about Hyperliving is the way that many of the activities highlight the weird contradictions in the way we exist. This week's challenge is a great example. Most people who know me probably think of me as someone who has trouble keeping his mouth shut. I yap, therefore I am. Among friends and colleagues, I debate, dialogue, and pontificate to no end, my machine-like brain rapidly processing one thought after another in an attempt to turn an entire evening into one lilting, ceaseless thread of discussion. But with strangers, folks I don't know, it's all different. It's not just that I clam up when I'm around them, but I do so before I even get any further than seeing them from across the room--Yeah, I'll just stand here nursing this drink. I know that probably at all times half the people in any room would feel exactly the same, but for me, someone who in certain situations feels very comfortable and confident unzipping my metaphorical pants, I feel disappointed with myself that I have trouble translating that confidence to approaching and speaking to strangers.

And it's pretty much all about insecurity. I know, I know, "Hey, What's the worst thing that can happen? They don't wanna talk to you"--but really, it feels so much worse than that, like there are much worse things that can happen. The experience of approaching a stranger and not feeling confident that they will have any interest in acknowledging my existence, let alone ratifying that I might present any value to them, gives me terrifying sensation of negative self-realization that I do not actually feel confident in myself enough to not give a shit where I stand in the mind's of others.

The moral of the story is that I have chosen one of the most personally difficult challenges for my first full week of hyperliving. Making mixes or not listening to music, or even attempting to write complicated poems I have no business writing all seems so easy compared to the fear I get in walking up to strangers to talk to them. But Hyperliving I am and Hyperliving I must, and so out I go.

Sunday Night, Jan. 6 -- Nearby bar, random Japanese man

Tonight my stranger was named Hirashi (??? no idea what his actual name is, something that I think begins with an "H"), and I met him at a nearby bar and knew right away that he was the dude I needed to talk to. I found him in the back as the only standing spectator taking in a jazzy jamband (read: dudes who hold their drummers up at knifepoint insisting that they must continue playing the same downbeat forever so that every band member, including Horace the Bass Player, can take a mean "facemelting 6 minute solo"). At first he was just swaying and rocking back and forth, but then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he began to bust out serious dance moves like the one above. Headspinning, knuckle dragging, the tipsy sway--all were part of his repertoire of groove. I've seen dudes get down before, but never before during a clarinet solo on a jazzfunk version of "Well You Needn't".


Sight unseen: There were two men playing "Big Buck Hunter" only two feet to the right.

When he finally slowed down to catch his breath, I approached him. I asked him what the band was called and, with a look of confusion, he said he only knew the bass player (which seemed confusing to me because it appeared that the trumpet player had been gesturing for him to come up on stage). We spoke for another five minutes or so, or rather, I asked him questions of himself and jambands and, of course, his dancing. Our conversation was somewhat held back by his limited comfort with English and his inability (or disinterest) in looking me in the eye while he spoke.

"I really dig your dance moves, dude. How do you know what moves to do when the music starts playing?" I asked.

"Oh yes. I just hear rhythms and then my heart tells me to move [gesturing]. It is like music in my rhythm soul."

Yes, this challenge is going to be difficult. Tomorrow I am going to have a work a little harder if I am going to have any kind of conversation that lasts more than five words. I am already beginning to think about what words I am going to use in my sestina next week.