I helped bring Sunni Brown to speak at William & Mary in April, and she agreed to do an interview with me about her path to TED, her doodles, and her Zen practice.
Bodhi Christo
In December I traveled to Thomasville NC and spent a couple of days with the esteemed Dr Rev Heiwa No Bushi. We created a series of teachings about his particular brand of Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity. This has been a fun project.
Dredging
When I doodle, I am not just sketching. I am dredging up my past, present and future all at the same time.
Meditative Work
Revel in Heresy
I’ve been cautiously doing daily IG Live doodles. Today’s is Revel in Heresy
I’ve been a heretic since I was 22. First I was a heretic being charismatic in my faith practice— to the baptist and the orthodox, I was way too extreme in my belief about speaking in tongues and miracle-working. But when I took up an interest in Mindfulness, Zen and the teaching of Thich Naht Hanh and Thomas Merton, I became a heretic to the charismatics.
I think with fundamentalism, it’s a no-win situation, you are either in or out, if you are in, then great, but you lose because every other belief system is out.
Reveling in heresy, for me, means balance. I revel in the fact that I can live my life in balance, and acceptance of other’s belief systems and practices.
Virtual Doodlefest on National Drawing Day
Gathering Artists Together Is Like Herding Kittens - Chris Revels
Over 20 artists, musicians across the US (and a few from the UK) gathered to doodle live via Facebook. We were going to gather at a Brewery in Norfolk, VA, but with the pandemic, that was not gonna happen.
Here’s a taste of what we produced, with a little bit of help from the actress Lauren Vico, some friends at the ODU Center for Innovation and The Chrysler Museum.
This was a ton of hard work gathering everybody, but it was worth it. Watching artists doodle is a very zen practice.
Mojofotoco
Mojofotoco is so much fun to work with, I had to do a film about her work. Shot on iPhone.
Enjoy: Doodlefest
Our latest Doodlefest , codename: Enjoy: Doodlefest, was a time of meditative doodle-gathering with lots of chalking the streets like the artist vagrants that we are. My colleague, sonic genius Sven Nygaard @liquidjourney made some cool circus-like music, with a hint of progressive Yes music and found music from a little-known band called Van Halen.
Doodlefest are best when tons of people are involved, and we were lucky to have a gaggle of incredibly talented Norfolk artists.
What the hell is Kundalini?
Here are the top comments on my movie, Lakeland, which appears to be a target for heresy hunters and people who think their faith is perfect and could judge anyone who does not fit their worldview:
“What a drug-related fiasco of Kundalini-deceived false believers!”
“Todd Bentley is a Kundalini believer/satanist and he deceives people with his lies and false miracles.”
“This is like the overweight revival, that stage is filled with fat people who practice Kundalini.”
“This is a Kundalini revival!”
Curious about what this Kundalini spirit is, I just happened to find a Kundalini Yoga Instructor, Jai Gopal (or as I call him, JyeGople) and asked him what the hell is Kundalini. And...well... I sort of found out.
Collaboration Saved My Life, and My Work.
20 years ago, I co-produced this mini-travel series, and nearly died.
4 guys in an RV for 2 weeks, driving across the country, capturing the heart of America with spontaneous stories and craziness. It was gonna be like Road Rules and the Magical Mystery Tour, only better.
I just remember, first day of our travels, sitting in a hot dog stand, being honest about my ego: “Guys, it’s so hard to trust you with my vision.”
This was my first producing job. Technically I wasn’t even a producer, I was a researcher, but I got lucky. And it wasn’t even my solo vision, my friend and co-producer Pete had a lot to do with getting on the road.
No wonder the camera guys tried to lock me in the RV bathroom for most of the trip.
The journey became a war: we’d command the videographers what to do, never mind that they are a bit pissed off. We shot too much, we ate too much, with not enough sleep: I nearly drove the RV into a KFC at midnight one night. I had no clue how to present to camera, and mumbled a lot.
It’s only after this trip that I sat in my cubicle looking over all the stuff we shot, two weeks travelling across America, exhausted, failing to get my vision, way out of my depth.
I invited the camera operator to look at all the stories we had. I asked, a bit desperately, “Dude what would you do differently? How would you have told the story?”
And guess what i heard? Brilliant ideas, really creative edit choices, concepts that would have taken the project further. One of the people I couldn’t trust to deliver my genius ideas had greater ideas than I had.
This was the most powerful lesson, to learn to collaborate.
As a Producer/Director, its been the most valuable of lessons. Collaboration has become my most important super-power. It has made the projects and films I’ve worked on so much more enjoyable, so much fuller.
Everybody on a project, when you’ve got a good crew, a good team, it’s the best feeling in the world to participate in an atmosphere where there’s an equilibrium, a balance.
Ascending Vs Descending
Last week I was talking with a friend about mid-life, and I realized I’m going to be 52– and I have a Jabba the Hut and a Porg toy on my work desk.
I guess that is ok, I mean, the Jabba has the ability to bite the head off of a fish, and the Porg makes cool noises.
But am I going to be a Fan Boy the rest of my life?
And that question makes me want to attempt to ascend a new career ladder, where things will be brighter and maybe I can make more money, and create good some intellectual property.
But ascending is the exact opposite of where my favorite teachers say to go. Great authors and mystics like Robert Bly and Richard Rohr always write of mid-life being a place of descent, of shadow work and letting go of ego.
When I practice this, I get better concepts and ideas, I get calm, and with better ideas comes greater ways to communicate, which is all I ever wanted to do in the first place - communicate with characters and pictures and ideas and words.
Excellence as Ego
One of my greatest obstacles is excellence.
For years I struggled with half-baked ideas, drawings, screenplays, scenes, and they were left half-baked because they did not have the flair of excellence, and you know, we must be excellent in all things because of whatever warped theological reason.
But then I discovered the beauty of shipping, of completing and delivering something that was, well, done, but not necessarily well-done.
And the fact that I was getting stuff done, led to other work.
Drawing cows that fart popcorn on a moleskin led to writing about aliens and bad magicians and that become a cable tv show, and not a very good one at that! And then hundreds and hundreds of weird doodles, I’d say most of them are done, and a fraction of them I think are really cool.
Excellence can be great, except when it prevents you from making things that are just ok.
I Am An Elitist T-Shirt Snob
Every week I get an affirmation from friends & followers about how I need to put my doodles on a T-Shirt and sell them online.
I am not into this idea. Seriously, it's not my thing.
My doodles might make good T-Shirts, but it messes up my flow if I start to think about slapping them on a shirt.
I'm a top of the line, first class, elitist T-shirt snob.
I have yet to find an online factory that can capture the essence of a doodle and put it on the best fabric to sell. All of them seem like Hanes T's that will stretch and have no color balance.
I was in pure T-shirt bliss when I lived in London, I'd find the most detailed and long-lasting tee's, hugely expensive but I'd wear them for years, they were worth every pound.
Sure, there may be other reasons for my snobbery.
I was 13 when a friend in Junior High asked me to paint an album cover design on the back of his denim jacket. I had no experience doing this kind of thing, but I loved to paint, so I accepted the challenge and the $25, to paint a "Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow" album design on a Levi's jacket.
It wasn't a cool process.
I had no idea of the correct paints to use, or the gloss needed to really make the work look good. I promised it would take a week, but it was months before I delivered it to him.
The day I presented the jacket, my friend took it, stretched the jacket onto a school desk. A dozen of his metal-head friends gathered round him.
There was a long silence.
I imagined he was inspecting the gesture of the giant hand emerging from the ocean, or surveying the color of the rainbow and the visceral quality of the fist as it wrapped itself around that rainbow.
More likely he was figuring out how many of his friends it would take to beat the hell out of me after school.
"Ok, Petersen, you're off the hook," he barked, and put the jacket on.
I got my $25, and over the school year watched as the paint chipped away from the jacket, piece by piece, the color faded, and the generousity of my friend as he gave the jacket away to a new student that needed clothes to wear.
All right, I confess I may have escaped a beating from a bunch of mullet-wearing rockers, but I carry a few emotional wounds from the incident.
But even when I get healing from these wounds, I'm still going to be a T-shirt snob. I mean, one of the best days of my life was getting a hemp tee with the Beatle's Apple Logo woven into the fabric in a minimalist design.
I wore that dang shirt for years, it was true art.
What's the Big Idea?
When I get a new idea, a mad rush of a new concept, I tend to go really high.
An idea for a documentary, or doodle, or show, filters through my mind exponentially larger than it turn out in reality. I'll present the idea with high vibes, full color, lots of expression.
A late-night local cable program has a cast of dozens. A film about a worship band germinates as a 24 hour, multi streamed, world-wide event with fireworks and flamethrowers.
The ideas have to filter down into present reality, but some aspect of the original vision ends up being in there!
But a few years ago I had an idea to get a tattoo.
Most people, on their first go, will start small. And with something not complicated, and maybe hidden away on their body somewhere. But not me, I had to go big.
It had to be a celtic symbol. It had to cover the inside of my right arm. I found a trifecta design and the best artist in the coolest shop that I could afford. The dude looked like Frank Zappa, and blasted Black Sabbath as he worked.
Zappa was kind enough to warn me not to place the tattoo on one of the most sensitive areas of my body. He recommended a smaller tattoo.
But no, I said, this is what I want, I am ready for it.
90 minutes of sheer pain ensued, I felt like my arm would melt into a glob of burnt flesh on the table. I think I went into a trance, 'cos that is the only way I got through that experience.
There are mystics who claim that every Divine encounter leaves a mark on your soul, that the encounter can always be accessed by the power of your imagination, you own it, it's a badge of honor.
Once touched by God, they say, that touch is always there to help.
Well, my first tattoo was a big idea that I followed through on to see it in reality. I remember if vividly. It broke other's conception of me, it burned some flesh and stretched my own self-understanding. I never liked pain, whether it be pain from a doctor's needle, or basic exercise, or an ingrown toenail-- pain was not my friend. But I learned I could survive pain. Even the grand idea of the tattoo matched the final reality of what it ended up looking like.
Maybe the bigness of the idea is what helps drive a person through to see a final result.
Maybe receiving and flowing with a grand idea enables a team to make stuff that's larger than life on super-low budgets.
And maybe, like with my tattoo idea, following through with a big vision can bring about a change that you'd never think was possible.
Missing A Flight
"Perhaps one of the surprises of death will be a retrospective view of the lives we lived here and to see how our friends among the dead clothed us in weave after weave of blessing." John O'Donohue
2007 brought one of the busiest summers for me, I was working on some really cool projects, London friendships and work-relationships were blooming, it was a never-ending cornucopia of good things.
A friend from Belfast and I were working on a self-produced documentary. It had a lot of promise, my friend was an author and speaker, in the middle of leaving his Christian fundamentalism and exploring how different faiths viewed life's deeper questions.
We were interviewing the coolest people, we even spent an afternoon talking with the UK's Barefoot Doctor, who is sort of like the Taoist version of Oprah's Dr. Oz.
John O'Donohue, though, was going to be the centerpiece interview for the film. A poet, mystic, author, speaker, priest, guru, I had discovered his book on Celtic Blessings, and soul-friendships.
It just so happened that my friend was good friends with John. I could not wait to fly to Belfast and meet him.
The morning of the flight, though, came several emergencies-- one a health crisis with a friend. The other, a client showed up at the office needing major changes on a project that was overdue.
I remember standing there, client-in-office, thinking, I could still make the flight, I could sneak out, I don't need a suitcase, I don't need the job, I could get to Gatwick without change of clothes.
But I caved to the pressure. I missed my flight.
We re-scheduled the interview for the next month, and that got pushed to the autumn, then the whole film got pushed back.
And then, John O'Donohue died.
Dang.
There's not a time when I pick up one his books or see a post that contains a quote from him, that I don't have the a physical twinge of regret about not getting onto that plane.
Did the client really matter that much? The films got done.
The health crisis of my friend? It went away fairly quickly.
But today, I notice that if I have an interview scheduled that I know has the feel of destiny, I will go to super-human lengths to get that interview.
And over the years, I have delved into John's work in a way that I may not have had he not passed. His books have followed me through dark days. The simple act of lighting a fireplace, walking on a beach, or doing brunch with friends are cosmic blessings thanks to John's work. I feel close to the guy, as if he's become a guide to me.
Do You Own Your Ideas?
I used to be hugely proprietary on my ideas. If I had an idea, I'd send it out for copyright, I'd be on the lookout for similar ideas or stories, I'd go to film fests and freak out about how similar someone else's short film was to mine and then threaten legal action.
But then I did some reading, and study, and found that at one point in the world's history, it was considered an honor for an artist to be copied. And good Ideas were once thought to be a platform to build on more good ideas, all for the world's education and greater good.
Then I spent some time and went deeper, realising that I really can't claim ownership of ideas, because ideas may come from Somewhere Else. Call it God or inspiration or the field of quantum energetic enlightenment or Oz or wherever.
It doesn't matter where you end and inspiration begins, or what your copyrights are when you draw down ideas from that Somewhere Else, it just matters that you can express and spread these ideas.
In the creative process, when I pick up a copic marker, I like to imagine that I can dissolve into a creative pool. Yeah, my particular pool contains a majority supply of tiger-aliens, narcissistic prawns and orbs, but it's a pool that I like to swim in.
You're pool of creativity might be more of an ocean, or a city, that contains lots of sea monsters or dramatic thrillers or legal battles, and you might be in touch with those worlds more than I am.
I can get to my creative pool with meditation or worship, but you might get there through jogging, yoga, eating fried onions, or driving.
As long as you get there, it doesn't matter what vehicle you are taking. If your row boat sinks on the way there, then swim. If you can swim, float, or take an Uber boat. Just get there.
Jesus, My Therapist Was a Buddhist!
"We buddhists have a saying: 'Did you have the dream, or does the dream have you?'
I was telling my therapist about a vision I had: that I'd soon be directing films for a great Production Company who were friends of mine.
The vision began with a dream, an actual, concrete, full-color dream that was so clear, so brimming with the "voice of God," that I had to yield to it. I had to steer my path to make this dream come true: I gave up a film I'd been working on, and a lot of my freelance work, to the creative direction of this Production Company.
All it did was drive me into a crash.
I sat in a therapists office, after a year of dream-chasing, my life in a creative mess. My friends at the Production Company were unhappy because my ideas were not jiving with theirs. I was miserable because the edgy weirdness I naturally carry was subdued to their normal mainstream-ery.
And now even Jesus, who I previously got along really well with, was probably pissed off at me because my therapist was a Buddhist.
She gave me a book by Sheldon Kopp, "If You Meet the Buddha On The Road, Kill Him."
This book changed my life. It claimed I was responsible for my own life, my own therapy, even my own faith-- my subservience to authority burned away as I devoured each chapter.
Ultimately, I had creatively dimmed my own voice to another, in fear of not being hired by the BBC, or being cast into outer darkness by Heavenly powers-that-be, or not being accepted by the mainstream.
Subservience is a killer of creativity.
Turmeric and Cayenne
Over the last year I've researched an Ayurvedic diet. I've learned that I am predominately kapha in constitution, which means I am able to sink deep into the earth, binge-watch netflix and not recognize the existence of other human beings for days at a time.
I've also been working out what foods are healthy for me, ideal times to eat and not eat at Chick-Fil-A (it's always an ideal time), and that there's an infinite combination of vegetables and fruits that I can add to kale smoothie, but it all ends up tasting pretty much the same each time.
One of the greatest discoveries I've made through the diet is the power of cayenne pepper. When you sprinkle a bit of cayenne into an iced tea or coffee, it creates a buzz even greater than the caffeine in the coffee.
The other morning I woke up way too early, dripped some coffee, reached up to the spice rack for cayenne, and mistakenly pulled down a jar of turmeric.
The scent of the spice transported me.
It wafted me back to a year ago, when my then-roommate would make us smoothies every day, and I'm guessing she'd add a dose of turmeric to what she'd call the deliciousness of the kale.
I didn't know this then, though.
I hadn't placed the taste of the smoothie with the scent of the spice. And the scent of the spice now connects me with someone's loving, thoughtful daily action.
We all go through the routines of life: I wake up, I drink a shake, I drive to work. I check facebook, I mindlessly scroll instagram. Same rituals, same process, every day. Days blend into one another, becoming a hazy cloud of sameness.
But once in a while, though, the scent of spice seeps through the routine, and can wake us up.
Technical Blocks
I was never given the gift of technical prowess.
While I love to paint, write & edit video all day, I lack the ability to frame a canvas, to be grammatically correct, or to know all the specs and encoding details of an editing system.
To begin a work is easy, to complete that work is a bit more of a challenge. Call it low math skills, or ADHD, or maybe i just lack discipline, whatever you call it, it is a weakness.
I'm not an auteur -- when you see movie set portraits of Kubrick or Soderbergh shooting, lighting and directing the same scene-- that ain't me! I'm more of what my producer/director friend Jeremy Higham celebrates as having the gift of being an amateur.
How have I overcome this dilemma? By seeing it as a gift.
Not being able to technically Light a set, I've learned to collaborate with great lighting and camera people who can. Lacking the math skills to navigate an online edit, I have found great working relationships collaborating with editors who are genius. And this process makes my work better.
In more personal artwork, I'm short on patience to stretch or frame a canvas, but I've become blissful just doodling in a moleskine or iPad for hours. I've learned my way around grammar police by not using a lot of semi-colons, keeping my writing style simple, or working with writers who can take my crazier ideas and make them palatable for a human mind.
I think the greatest gift of this weakness has been to learn the power of the tribe. By mixing talents of artists and technicians, working together in a flow, so much brilliance can happen, always making ideas and final deliveries so much more than just one person can do.
Zen Habits Saved Me.
Leo Babauta's Zen Habits is a book that saved me. At least creatively it saved me.
The book teaches to take one simple action a day, and develop that action over a month until it becomes a habit. By practicing one habit at a time, Leo lost a ton of weight, stopped smoking, got out of debt, and changed his entire universe.
While navigating through a 6 month editing process on a documentary where I felt that my creativity could not be expressed, I sat in my local starbucks and read Zen Habits daily.
I found a way out of the stagnation.
I picked up a marker, I drew an alien. I posted it on a Tumblr. I told no one.
The drawing itself was crap, but it unleashed a floodgate of creative expression. I posted another. And another.
I posted a crude doodle while sitting in an editing suite cutting a doc that was under constant review. Sketching out dinosaur aliens and UFO cats became a welcome activity, and I couldn't give a rip what others thought.
My doodles grew, and grew, and all that blocked child-like creativity that was in me spewed onto the page. I ended up teaching workshops on doodling, I befriended other doodle artists, and we produced a festival of doodles.
And that process-- doing one simple action a day, not caring what others think, and doing it for a month-- helped me to eek out some life into a dying documentary, informed my filmmaking, and is helping me to write this very blog post now.
Thanks Leo!