Serendipity and the Sociometric Matrix

Just read a post on John Frame’s blog on Serendipity.

Mank

… a strange force called synchronicity, or the coming together of things at one moment in time by that non-linear force called synchronicity. I argued how synchronicity might be related to the two greatest films in Hollywood and one of the most famous books in American history.

Lovely stories about great movies follow.

It made me thing about how drama work… how in psychodrama we use synchronicity – we don’t call it that, but we refer to making the sociometric matrix visible.

Synchronously I was just uploading my 1999 thesis to this blog.  I read it through the other day and I was quite pleased with it.  I am working with trainees who are writing psychodrama thesis.  And it seems to do what I teach now.

Have a clear topic  and audience.  The central “thesis” needs to be present throughout.

Imagine the task of the group leader when faced with diverse individuals and how this might conflict with the desire to have coherent group life.

Join me as a systems thinker, becoming aware of the inter-relationships in the group, to be able to use the imagination to see the life of the group and the life of individuals.

In art, poetry and psychodrama things come together…

The-group-and-its-protagonist-Walter Logeman

Shine – Joni Mitchell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtFVIesWLpc

Listening to and loving the beauty and weird acceptance of all we hate.

Especially:

“Shine on lousy leadership”

Ha!

Shine

Joni Mitchell

Oh, let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on Vegas and Wall Street
Place your bets
Shine on all the fishermen
With nothing in their nets
Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas
Shine on our Frankenstein technologies
Shine on science
With its tunnel vision, tunnel vision
Shine on fertile farmlands
Buried under subdivisions
Oh, let your little light shine
Oh, let your little light shine
Shine on the dazzling darkness
That restores us in deep sleep
Shine on what we throw away
And what we keep
Shine on Reverend Pearson
Who threw away
The vain old God
And kept Dickens and Rembrandt and Beethoven
And fresh plowed sod
Shine on good earth, good air, good water
And a safe place
For kids to play
Shine on bombs exploding
Half a mile away
Oh, let your little light shine
Let your little light shine, shine, shine
Shine on worldwide traffic jams
Honking day and night
Shine on another asshole
Passing on the right
Shine on all the red light runners
Busy talking on their cell phones
Shine on the Catholic Church
And the prisons that it owns
Shine on all the Churches
They all love less and less
Shine on a hopeful girl
In a dreamy dress
Oh, let your little light shine
Shine, shine, shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on good humor
Shine on good will
Shine on lousy leadership
Licensed to kill
Shine on dying soldiers
In patriotic pain
Shine on mass destruction
In some God’s name
Shine on the pioneers
Those seekers of mental health
Craving simplicity
They traveled inward
Past themselves
Let their little lights shine
May all their little lights shine

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Joni Mitchell
Shine lyrics © Crazy Crow Music / Siquomb Music Publishing

 

Flyer for the Earth Crosses Opening

 

Earth Crosses

Greater Goods, 105 Orbell Street Christchurch
October to December 2020
Opening evening thursday 15 October 6:30
Opening presentation by Walter Logeman at 7:00

Six prints are on display from the Earth Crosses project I have been working on over the years. These images may bring you down. There is an invitation to depth and to grapple to find your depth. Down to earth.  Definitely there are opposites at play. Or maybe you see an opening?  

You are invited to the opening!

 

Walter Logeman
I make digital images, I think of them as sketches, but they look more like paintings. This began with a personal challenge to do a thousand in one year. 2006-7 http://thousandsketches.com . My work is from my hand and from my heart.  If I like it I save it.  My style has evolved.  Initially I had a hundred styles, now it is all about texture, colour, shapes and composition. I want them to have life and reflect life. 

I’m a slow, self taught artist who began this at the age of 60. I am a psychodrama trainer by day. I am emerging, more than a decade later, as I age, into a more professional phase of image making. More recent images are on my blog: https://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/category/art/ 

Making the digital physical is itself an art.  I take care to create high quality prints.

Walter Logeman
October 2020
walter@psybernet.co.nz

Download the flyer

 

WordPress vs WordPress

I now have two blogs

http://psyberspace.wordpress.com

and this one

https://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com

I tried to migrate to the commercial arm of WordPress to get better service in blog management — this one on Dreamhost, the WordPress.org one  got corrupted a few times. What a mess.

But I can’t abide the new Block interface on WordPress.com. Now I will investigate DreamPress here on Dreamhost. Hopefully my Classic plugin here will survive all the transitions.

Moving over the last 6 months of posts back to here went ok.  If it all goes well I’ll soon just have one Psyberspace blog!

Cheers, Walter

 

HEALTH UPDATE — WALTER — EMAIL SAT, 23 MAY

Hi Everybody

It’s almost 10 weeks since I had bypass surgery on March 12. It started with some mild pain in the night. Thank god we checked it out and they decided to do an angiogram. “When I hear your name now — all I see is that horrible angiogram!” was a recent comment from my cardiologist. The surgery went well enough, I’m alive, writing to you and enjoying life. When I woke up from the event, Kate and my son Josh were there and I said, “Well, that went pretty well.”  It was only later that I discovered there had been a crisis and they had been through a night of agony, not knowing if I would come through.  Recovery has been rough with further complications.  I had to go back in twice to drain fluid from around my lungs. For weeks I could hardly walk, though I did a few more meters every day. Most nights I have restless legs and little or no sleep. I have a swag of pills with various side effects including nausea. (I’ve got to get off some!) Currently awaiting results of an X-ray to see how the lung is doing.

It may sound bad and it has been, but I’m doing well. All through this time Kate has been loving and vigilant, appreciated. We are up at Mt. Lyford. We walk for hours everyday, including up steep hills, I can feel the benefit of a repaired heart. I’ve been reading, writing, watching movies and having conversations, none of that was feasible  a month  ago.  Right now my full time job is recovery, I have no idea how long that will take. The process is psychological  as well as physical. I’m  reflecting on life and the future. I won’t  go to work till I’m sure I’m ready. I’m  reluctant to get out of my bubble with Kate as I feel vulnerable to the virus.  I have told supervisees and trainees I’ll be on leave for six months. It could well be that long.

Thanks for the lovely texts and emails.  Much appreciated.

Love

Walter

The heart

At the heart of the information superhighway is email. Other ways to circulate information usually want your email address to kick off.

*

I wrote that when my email went down.  Then had the heart problem and bypass surgery.