My vow is Harmony. Within and without. Brokenness coming into wholeness, within my own heart and mind and in the spheres of life I take action within.
This pulse towards harmony extends back to at least the start of our conceivable universe, and is a cosmic story in which I play an infinitesimally small — but intimate, and important — role.
I’ve surmised, after a life of applying all my faculties to the task, that I can best fill that role via writing. To uncompromisingly live my art and offer its outpourings to the world in the form of words.
This is not fluff, or colorful accoutrement to the real work of politics and technology and logic. Artists have long been through-lines of clarity when the world-sea turns turbulent. Stories revive the imagination and birth civilizations. As Maria Popova, author of The Marginalian, reminds us:
Often, the epochs of change that feel most unsurvivable are those which artists must most urgently interpret in order for us to indeed survive.
Never have I been more ready for this task of interpretation. Yet, one obstacle remains. It’s the perennial test-of-determination for any artist, and this letter is my best attempt to surmount it. Money.
Make no mistake, the cause for my empty bank account is me. Top priority has long been to ‘do the most good,’ earning just enough to stay fed while supporting non-profits, humanitarian causes, and creative projects. This has left me uplifted spiritually, creatively, socially, but it has also left me teetering on the edge of poverty. I regret nothing.
Recently I was awarded a three month writing fellowship, during which two things became clear: only when the specter of poverty isn’t nipping acutely at my heels can the true deep work happen, and, while three months was a lot, it wasn’t enough to launch a career.
I need a year.
So, dear reader, here it is: my brazen, all-in-on-a-dream, Rocky Balboa effort to raise the funds needed to write, day in and day out, for a whole year. Success would be generating enough money by the end of it that I can securely write for decades to come.
If you want to see this scrappy David take on a Goliath, if you want to see this reservoir of latent creative energy erupt into a sparkly phantasm of prose and poetry that ignites Aliveness in the hearts of hopefully many — please — consider becoming a patron. I would marry you if need be. Just kidding. But really.
Also, last thing before we get to the meat of things: Don’t do it for me.
We are in a tough spot as a nation, a species, and a planet. Sure there is beauty omnipresent and ineffable, and things aren’t all terrible, but many intelligent, sane, and compassionate people are foretelling disaster. On a scale our imaginations can hardly muster.
Why not be brazen? Why not rise to this occasion and help nudge this titanic ship to safe harbor, to sanity and wholeness and a firm anchoring in the Beautiful? My family is on that ship. I’m on that ship. You — and every one of Nature’s sacred, radiant children — are on that ship.
If you have the means, please, consider sponsoring my ticket to the frontlines. If ever there were a time where time could be spared we’ve long ago left it behind.