Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More




Essays - Two Years Later:

Glass Walled Studio

Exertec Health and Fitness Center, Napa, California, USA

August 17, 2005



This essay, Essays - Two Years Later: Glass Walled Studio, is the companion piece to Who You Might Be Really.

It is also the second annual State Of The Union  celebration of Conversations For Transformation:
  1. Essays - One Year Later: Critical Mass
  2. Essays - Two Years Later: Glass Walled Studio
  3. Essays - Three Years Later: Internet Presence
  4. Essays - Four Years Later: Side By Side
  5. Essays - Five Years Later: Arm In Arm
  6. Essays - Six Years Later: A Very Good Year
  7. Essays - Seven Years Later: By My Self
  8. Essays - Eight Years Later: Riding The Open Range
  9. Essays - Nine Years Later: Recreation
  10. Essays - Ten Years Later: Decade
  11. Essays - Eleven Years Later: Unimaginable
  12. Essays - Twelve Years Later: A New Beginning
  13. Essays - Thirteen Years Later: A Certain Space
  14. Essays - Fourteen Years Later: Lenses Of Creativity
  15. Essays - Fifteen Years Later: Essence
  16. Essays - Sixteen Years Later: It's All In The Mouth
  17. Essays - Seventeen Years Later
  18. Essays - Eighteen Years Later: The Heart Of The Matter
  19. Essays - Nineteen Years Later: On Being Used By Something Bigger Than Myself
  20. Essays - Twenty Years Later: Connected With Werner
in that order.




Conversations For Transformation
Conversations For Transformation
Essays By Laurence Platt
Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
And More
Exactly two years ago today when I launched this Conversations For Transformation website as a platform for my essays inspired by the ideas of Werner Erhard and more, I intended it would receive one thousand views a month. This website is now twenty four months old. It receives nearly one thousand five hundred views a month exceeding my original monthly intention by nearly five hundred views. It has received over thirty five thousand three hundred views in twenty four months exceeding my original intention for twenty four months by over eleven thousand three hundred views.

I wrote most of this exposé underwater. That's the truth. Literally and figuratively. I like to swim. I swim by time not by distance and neither do I count laps. Half an hour every morning at dawn. Half an hour every evening. I throw my body in the pool and let it swim crawl and butterfly. It's good exercise. It's also a great opportunity to watch the mind going and going and to distinguish the voice. And to distinguish that I am neither: I am the space in which both show up. It's also great quiet time to look at what I'm going to create next.

What I keep seeing is how in this second year of these Conversations For Transformation, these essays demand something new from me than what was called forth a year ago. Earlier expressions in this body of work are characterized by being written after the fact. Some facet of transformation inspired me to write it down. So I did. And then I published the completed work.

That in retrospect was a safe bet. Until I said what I said, no one knew I was going to say it. There's nothing wrong with that. It worked and it's still valid. I can be counted on to produce something valuable every time. It's interesting to note that I, like all people who participate in these Conversations For Transformation, find out what I am going to say after I hear what I've said. If I'm speaking, I would say I open my mouth and the words fall out. When I hear them, that's the first I know what I'm going to say. If I'm typing, I would say I put my fingers on the keyboard and the words appear on the screen. When I read them, that's the first I know what I am going to write.

What happened next was quite without planning, completely unstrategic. I noticed the calling had shifted and the ante had upped. I noticed the abstract of the as yet unwritten next  essay appeared to me, and so I posted just the abstract to this website, calling it a work in work in progress. Now it was known what I said I was going to say even though I had no formula to come up with the substance of it, even though I literally had no idea what I was going to say next. But I had said what I was going to say. So I had to say it. And as I continued to flesh out each piece I posted the ongoing latest current version immediately for international sharing on the internet even though it was not yet complete. It was all out in the open. Warts and all. Nothing was hidden. The artist began to work in a glass walled studio with all doors and windows wide open under a roof with gaping holes in it.

Suddenly, so gradually at first even I was not aware of it, I had shifted from narrative writing to generative  writing. I started saying what I would say next even though I had no idea how I was going to do it or what material I would draw on. I am referring to the framework of real life incidents and situations from which each essay gets its grounding as well as to the abstract mining, if you will, through which each piece is fleshed out until it emerges as a cohesive seamless whole. That had shifted. Slowly that method became the basis for whatever I wrote. Literally. First declare what you are going to write and commit to write it. Declare your commitment publicly so it's known. Who you are as what you say now lives in the listening of others. Then write it. No matter what. No turning back. Deliver. My writing has inexorably shifted from coming from already knowing to being up against it. There is now, for the first time, something at stake. In a very real way, things are no longer safe.

You may link to this website. You may copy these essays. You may reprint them. You may distribute them by e-mail or by any other means as many times as you wish. You don't require my permission to do any of that. My only request is you reproduce them accurately and exactly and in their entirety. Please change nothing - not one comma, not one period. Please leave nothing out. Please be sure each title stays clearly visible stating the essays are written by me inspired by the ideas of Werner Erhard and more. Beyond that, they're yours to own and to share as you see fit. I write these Conversations For Transformation for You.


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