Happiness and the Tetris Effect

As a rational hedonist I'm always reading articles on how one can improve one's happiness. This one from Life Hacker perhaps draws a few tenuous conclusions from the "Tetris Effect" but trots out some time tested tools for developing a more positive attitude including gratitude lists, acknowledging the positive impact of others, and practicing random acts of kindness.

http://m.lifehacker.com/5982005/rewire-your-brain-for-positivity-and-happiness-using-the-tetris-effect

Adventures in Hedonism – LACMA – Exploring the Forbidden

As a hedonist I love art. Art inspires and good art often challenges your way of thinking, or at least pushes against conventional boundaries. It can present different ways of perceiving and make us reexamine ourselves. That kind of self-reflection and curiosity in turn can challenge us to be better and live a more satisfying life.

This weekend I went to LACMA. I have to say I enjoy how this museum complex continues to evolve. It has become a place you want to lounge and entertain in, to meet friends or bump into passionate strangers ready to share what they have seen, and what moved them.

I came to see two shows and ended up seeing three. The main reason was to see the Caravaggio exhibit which ends this week. Caravaggio is a master of light and shadows his paintings draw you in with their mix of mystery and radiance. What struck me most was the sensuality of his work. Most were compositions that were already standards for religious work. But the buff luminous bodies of his saints and saviors glowed, as ever present drapery fell just enough to feign modesty.

You can sense how the church fathers must have been both awed by his abilities and made anxious by the eroticism of his work. There’s a fine line between the spiritual and the sensual. Caravaggio walked it. I’m sure there were many drawn to the priesthood just to be able to occupy their churches to make them their secret masterbatoriums sublimating their desires into religious ecstasy.

After viewing such displays of 16^th Century torsos, it was an odd happenstance to stumble upon the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit. The gallery displayed his X, Y, and Z portfolios – X containing images of gay S&M, Y images of flowers, and Z male African-American nudes. I was surprised to see how the exhibit was hung (sorry). Instead of stashing the more explicit works behind a black curtain they were hung on one wall above eye level. I suppose that kept them out of the casual view of children, but still surprising to pass from images of flowers, to nudes, to anal fisting.

Five hundred years since Caravaggio, and the subtlety now turned explicit and yet as the shock of some of the harsher images passed you could see the beauty of line and composition. The pairing of flowers, the genitalia of plants, making sense of turning raw sexuality into an abstract, still sexual, still beautiful image.

The Kubrick exhibit is vast, covering his complete ouvre, but in this afternoon of forbidden sensuality two works stood out to me. The first was the set pieces from Clockwork Orange’s Korova Milk Bar. To go from nude black males, to porcelain white sculptures of nude women used as furniture and a circle was completed. Explicit, in your face, intended to be inflammatory what a perfect set piece to explore the morality of choice, pleasure, and violence.

But perhaps Kubrik got closest to exploring the forbidden in the making of Lolita. The exhibit includes several letters from local pastors imploring him not to make the film. Frankly with 13-year old Sue Lyons playing the title child-seductress role, it’s amazing this film got made at all. It’s uncomfortable to scroll through some of the production stills of “Lolita” eating an ice cream cone. The images unashamedly provocative you can’t help but appreciate the way Kubrick laid out the scenes with nods and implications but keeping within the film standards of the time. In an interview he regrets not being able to be more explicit in the film to demonstrate the extent Lolita had enslaved Humbert Humbert’s desires, but I have to wonder if those same restrictions didn’t help to make the piece more a work of art.

I come away from my day at the museum contemplating the dance one does with social conventions. We like to keep our private lives out of public scrutiny fearing the potential rejection, judgment or condemnation of those around us. Yet it is all the unique and unconventional things about us that make us who we are.

This is the work of the rational hedonist, to explore and discover the things that please and satisfy us, find allies in their pursuit, and navigate around those people and institutions that react with fear and resentment to our choices.

Cheers to the artists who challenge the conventional, they are the allies to we hedonists.

Hedonism and Mortality

My cat Scoundrel died today. A companion of 16 years he lead a life full of mischief earning his name early on from the trouble he’d get into. It’s a sad day to think he’s no longer with us, but he leaves us with a lot of happy moments. His was a life well lived.

Some people think that our lives cannot have much meaning or purpose if we are mortal beings, that our end, our transience, make our lives insignificant. I believe otherwise. The fact that our lives are limited by time or circumstances are many ways makes what we do with those limitations all the more important.

Think about it, were we immortal, not limited in any ways, would our choices really matter? Whatever experience we collect, we could always collect more, try different approaches, professions, friends, lovers, etc. We could never really take a risk. Whatever choices were made could always be revisited in the endlessness of time.

Our lives take place in the continuous moment of turning possibility into history. When we make mistakes, we must learn from them quickly, or more often than not find ways to embrace them. Our choices define us as we create our own meaning. It’s that static legacy that lives on after we are gone. It’s that end that makes every small thing we do all so important. There is no chance to do it again.

Nietzsche had a concept of eternal recurrence, the idea that we are forced to live out our lives endlessly in the same exact way each time. It was a sort of thought experiment, would we face that concept with dread? If so, then we should change the way we lead our life.

So whether or not, he crossed the “rainbow bridge” or is creating mischief in kitty heaven, I will miss my dear Scoundrel. But I will also appreciate his unique soul, the time we spent together, and the memories he leaves me with. He made a difference to me and had a tremendously valuable life.

Adventures in Hedonism - New York City

I’m in New York for a week. An odd impromptu adventure triggered by a desire to see Lucent Dossier perform at the Liberty Theater, an old vaudeville theater right in the heart of Broadway. But like many plans, even the spur of the moment ones, they don’t always turn out as expected - and often that’s okay.

Unfortunately, it turns out Lucent isn’t playing while we are here. Still, we're in NYC for the week, and as a hedonist (or any other things you might identify with), you couldn’t really go wrong finding something you might fancy in New York. We have a flat in Chelsea and haven’t bothered at all thinking about jet lag, what with everything open 24/7 one hardly has to adjust their schedule and can continue living in their preferred time zone. We seem to be most active between 10PM and 4AM. For example our “day trip” to the see the High Line, started with watching the sunset and ended when the park police escorted us off somewhere around 23rd Street.

Walking the High Line

Last night we took in Fuerza Bruta - A dance/performance art piece that I first heard about on NPR some 5 years ago. It was one of those things that made me contemplate a New York trip at the time before realizing the foolish (if not romantic) notion was untenable. I wrote it off right away as one of those moments in time I’d just accept that I would not be there to experience it. It was by accident really that a friend's comment to one of his friend’s posts caught my eye with mention of having just seen this show. And so a desire written off 5 years ago finally got fulfilled.

Fuerza Bruta
Looking at the Audience - Photo by Roger Fojas

The best part of it was that, while I listened again to the archived NPR piece, revisited the Fuerza Bruta website, and read other accounts of the show, it still surprised and delighted me. The show itself engages you physically as well as emotionally as you come into contact with both set and performers and must also keep moving to see it and participate with it. The show adds another dimension as you watch performers dive into a clear bottom suspended inched above your face. This is 21st century Busby Berkeley - post Punk - post Rave - is  high energy and yet flirtatious and intimate. I’m so glad this hedonist wish was finally granted.

Fuerza Bruta
The Pool Descends - Photo by Roger Fojas

Otherwise I seem to be indulging my desires for 24 hour dinner fare - A burger topped with corned beef hash on rye, pulled pork and a side of mac & cheese, fried chicken & waffles, and a slice of coconut custard pie.None of this would make in on anyone’s approved diet but I’m having fun sampling the late night foods of the city as well as a nostalgic nosh here and there. I couldn't resist a sweet elderly women hawking pretzels in the market - a taste of childhood trips with my mother to the German Bakery. I will not go hungry here, but I may have to make a few more appointments at the gym when I get back home.

I’ve scarcely been here 24 hours, and there is some much more to do, to see, to taste - a true hedonist adventure, and it continues on.

Playing the Fool

Giddy the Fool - My ScavenJester self

Lately, I’ve been playing the fool.  No, for real.  Quite literally, I’ve been playing the fool.  My friend Roger Fojas has introduced me to the art of clowning and has invited me to participate in his ongoing series of “ScavenJester” videos. Through these videos he has an aesthetic vision of unlocking one’s inner child. Indeed, the playful mischief involved in making these films is contagious. But I also find another resonance, one that appeals to me as a hedonist.

So what really is a fool, or, what kind of fool am I? You can see the fool as a jester, someone telling jokes – but also one who has mastered hiding truths in jokes. In medieval tradition it was often the fool who provided the most honest counsel to the king, for he alone could criticize the king through jest. 


The Fool in the Tarot deck is one who is laughed at and ridiculed, often for failing to see the consequences of his actions. He is often depicted as obliviously stepping off of a cliff. But in the Tarot, this step also represents a leap of faith. This gives the card a subtext of spiritual enlightenment, breaking with conventional wisdom to again reveal deeper truths. In other traditions the fool is related to Loki, the Norse God of mischief and chaos - and I confess I like this one as an upsetter of the status quo.

The Fool from the Rider-Waite Deck

So this weekend, dressed as a fool, I had fun making another ScavenJester video. Honestly though I probably had even more fun interacting with the people who came across us. The experience was quite liberating.  As we got dressed on a trail, we amused and delighted a number of fellow hikers, some stopped to take their pictures with us, others stopped and then backtracked waiting for friends or family to catch up so as to not encounter us alone. But hikers have code of exchanging friendly hellos to those they meet on the trails.

Back in town walking into the market, a man at the counter exclaimed, “I want to go to the party you guys are going to.” Meanwhile the clerk took a long look at us and asked, “What are you guys up to?” an awkward moment of silence followed until I spread out my arms displaying my full costume and announced matter-of-factly, “hiking.”  Laughter turned to smiles and we were soon on our way, stopping traffic and attracting waves.

It’s probably no coincidence that in this last week, some of my college photos once again emerged and started making the rounds as a motivational meme. I joke that this is my legacy, but in reality it may well be. I shall be remembered forever as the fool in gold pants.  A friend asked me if I was bothered by the comments, since plenty of them are full of mean spiritedness or cruelty, and honestly, it does not. They really don’t know me, and I’m challenging their norms.

My Legacy & Meme - My Foolish Destiny

Here is a major dilemma for a hedonist, especially when one’s desires run contrary to the norms of the community. In this situation the hedonist risks playing the fool and becoming a target of ridicule (or worse). It may well be that one chooses to keep quiet, keeping one's desires secret, or disclosed only to a small very select community of like-minded crypto hedonists. While I was fine wandering the streets and trails of artsy Idyllwilde, I chose to stay out of the Roadhouse in Hemet.

Perhaps that was a mistake. In order for our communities to evolve from ones based on survival, to those enabling enlightenment, one must be willing to play the fool and challenge those norms. But one takes a risk in doing so, particularly those who go first. Some people have much invested in maintaining those norms. Furthermore, there can be great resentment for the hedonist who openly takes their pleasures, particularly when the community at large has denied themselves those same desired pleasures for so long.

As a ScavenJester I play a fool, but perhaps I enjoy it as much as I do because it’s also a metaphor for my hedonism - tossing bits of chaos and subverting expectations with a laugh, with a smile, concealing bitter truths and maybe, just maybe bringing change and acceptance of the unique desires we all wish fulfilled.

Roadside Assistance