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glossary

Achelach

  1. the name of ruins in the Scottish Isles,

  2. the name for a small blue/green parrotfish in a rare Papua New Guinea language

  3. the enigmatic final mantra spoken by my grandmother

Agent C

"Agent C" is a character based on Special Agent Dale Cooper from the television series Twin Peaks. Agent C is a beloved, lost, and/or fallen hero.

Atlantis Drive

The rampant and growing obsession with finding the lost civilization of Atlantis. Borrowing from Freud's "Death Drive," the Atlantis Drive also references humanity's urge towards its own destruction.

Cornucopia Stromberg

Cornucopia Stromberg is a healing vision in the form of the floating head of a man, Matthew Stromberg, surrounded by a living, moving wreath of fruits, flowers, and miscellaneous changing things. The vision first appeared to Michelle in 2006 while she was recovering from a serious injury. She made a small painting of what she saw and it gave her the strength to heal. Over time, the vision continued to appear and become more elaborate, compelling Michelle to spread it, ultimately resulting in a multimedia presentation where the Cornucopia Stromberg comes alive.

The Field

  1. An area on the border of the Czech Republic and Poland where a phantasmagoric cognition, connected with my grandmother's childhood, occurred. 

  2. A place where the human traces have been erased, now reclaimed by nature.

Five Stage Approach to Creating An Effective Artistic Experience

An instructional method for developing personally urgent stories and transforming them into art, created to approach the Come Back project about Michelle's father, and used as the guiding structure for the focus group/audience participants during its first phase. The original five stages were: 1- the beginning, a story; 2- engagement; 3-the message; 4- building the work and 5- recursivity/the wishing fountain. They were later renamed: Urgency, Risk/Embarrassment, Projection, Manifestation, and the Wishing Fountain. 

Glow

Glow is the first stage of love. It can become so strong that it is not just felt when two are in the same room, but across neighborhoods, cities, continents. Glow most commonly occurs in very ordinary circumstances, while one is not looking, often at an inconvenient time. In fact, if you look for Glow when convenient for you, there is a good chance you will never find it. You may, however, find false glow.

Jim and Pam Principle

The coincidence that results in love involves a transformation when two entities suddenly see each other completely. The glow (see "glow"), which may have started as an ember, becomes very powerful. This is often scary, and does not always lead to quick results if one or both are not ready for it. 

Jim and Pam were two ordinary people who worked for the same unremarkable company for years in the thickness of their glow before anything happened between them. Placed in proximity to each other, the two found solace in one another, bringing out eachother’s strengths. This love grew despite a repressed situation. The people may look different, the environment may change, but this is often how it happens. 

Hubbardism

Based on the life and values of pulp fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron. Hubbard, this term refers to an opaque and mercurial approach to captivate and draw followers that calls upon shifting ideologies, fiction, and mysticism, combined with a lack of ethical responsibility.

Lucky Levy

A once great, motivational speaking sales executive who has since fallen down on his luck.

Marble Drop

A visualization exercise in which a marble (aka the Earth) is clenched tightly, held high, and then dropped to the floor. 

Saganism

Based on the life and values of popular scientist Carl Sagan, this term represents an emphasis on emotional stability, idoeological clarity, deductive reasoning, skepticism, righteousness, poetics, wonder and science.

Sagan/Hubbard Paradox

the tension between the draw to become an effective, enlightened, responsible guide, and the temptation to escape into fiction and lies.

The Void

The emptiness in all of us that interferes with our ability to recognize who and what we can trust as reliable sources.

Wishing Fountain Effect

The ultimate goal of the Five Stage Approach to Creating an Effective Artistic Experience. It follows the metaphor that-- once a coin is wished upon and tossed into a fountain, as long as memory of the act exists, the wisher may associate occurrences around them as a result of the wish. One’s perspective changes by a suspension of disbelief in service of hope, and otherwise ordinary events may seem magical or serendipitous, and we find ourselves in situations that we might not have put ourselves in before. From another angle, the wish attaches to the coin through the oil of our fingers. Molecules from the coin, now resting amongst many coins, become attached to the water that cycles continuously through the fountain and evaporates into the air, until inhaled by another.

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