1. THE NEED TO STRETCH THE CANVAS WIDER AND DEEPER TO A CANVAS WITHOUT END
I was living in Los Angeles, and had grown unhappy with my experience of the Arts. I had a good decade there living within the bohemian/movie world of Venice, California. I'd met many many movie stars. And for a long time it was exciting and rich and cool. I considered Southern California my home and imagined I would be there for life. But toward the end of the millennium I'd grown extremely restless there. I'd fallen into a bitter disenchantment with the entire movie industry. It wasn't the rich communion among fellow creators I'd envisioned. Instead, it was so soaked with Ego from everyone I knew there and every project was so absent of conviction -save for profit value and furthering of Ego- I just became sickened.
What was I doing any of this for? I was a hard worker, willing to take any risks, and once I'd committed to a project I would devote my life to eventually finishing it no matter what the cost to my personal hours. But I didn't want to engage anything anymore. It was no church to me. The Arts, my beloved mistress, my entire life, had lost all sacrament.
What did I want to do? I wanted to do something massive in the Arts and make an example of myself as well.
For whatever reason I kept thinking of this young man on the other side of the planet, the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje. He is the present spiritual leader of the Karma Kagya school, who fled Tibet in January 2000 for India and made world news. At the time I didn't know anything about him while I was still in LA, but he kept popping up in my thoughts. It was weird. I had a photo of him on my desk someone had given me. He was just a teenage young man. I'd never read his words, never heard his voice, never read anything about him, nor seen any footage of him.
Then one day I starting considering this odd thought, could someone become a Western version of him, and what did that mean? I pictured someone making an example of themselves in the Arts, but not for Ego or shallow career aspirations, but instead to embody some deeper richer calling and hope to inspire other artists toward this reach as well.
What did that mean? I didn't know. But instantly I heard this young Karmapa in my head answering back, "Do it." Over and over again I'd see this photo of this stranger on my desk, and he'd be saying, "Do it."
It was a strange thought considering I was deep in the world of Hollywood, and associated with vampire horror films, my funeral home upbringing, death and skulls and Egypt and deep inside the current gothic wave creeping across the USA. It was all the secret filming within the Goth world actually that I started to see the Arts again in a light of enchantment, and eventually pushing that envelope, even a form of spirituality.
"The Arts" became a bigger world than all of Los Angeles, which inverted into simply a tool for sending that message out into the world. If we are created in our Creator's image, we are then indeed first and foremost Creators ourselves. And not only that, being created in our Creator's image, we are also holy and without limit.
2. WE AMERICAN KARMAPAS
Fellow filmmaker friend Baird Bryant filmed a movie called Heart of Tibet, where he followed the Dalia Lama around when he came to LA. I worked as an assistant to Baird on that film, and got to meet the Dalia Lama at that time (though I didn't have a clue who the Dalia Lama was when I stood in front of him and he nodded). Baird and I have the same birthday, and our lives have sort of followed very similar cultural routes, in particular rubbing shoulders with the American Beat writers and independent filmmaking in the world of Southern California, only his steps happening earlier as if we were trading a torch to perpetuate some self-summoning tradition.
We even started making jokes when we said our good-byes (thinking we might never see each other again due to Baird's age) that we were Karmapas, a western version of Karmapas anyway if that were possible, and that these good-byes did not matter because we would absolutely see one another again and again as spirit through time and that none of this meant any real ending.
We still see each other, crossing paths only about once a year anymore, but the Karmapa joke reference has created a bond now within our friendship that has seemed to solidify something greater. Like him, I find myself manifesting wacky projects -like this hotel endeavor- which are summoned on a wing and a prayer, and yet somehow manage to reach un-dreamt of heights, taking on spiritual relevance as they begin to blossom. That is how the experience of some of these 'little projects' have translated to me. They started with a conversation or a vision, next follows a commitment, a communion grows, and suddenly this thing exists. I imagine one day I will play the role of wise man elder filmmaker/artist for some younger man that Baird once played for me. All of us should be doing this for one another, cultivating our human garden into the vast miracle that it can absolutely be.
Coincidentally, it was Baird who I called to seek advice when I first learned of the hotel for sale, and wondered if I should do it: purchase it, relocate that far away into the mountains from California, and summon a kind of different church into the Arts within it.
He answered, "Do it."
3. THE HOTEL AS A TIBETAN SAND MANDALA
This hotel, being the breathing canvas that it has been, has been a home and a playground and a sandbox as well as a machine for myself and the fellow artists that have played here, worked here, lived here, shared here, and made examples of themselves here. All along, the entire time we have been engaged in this hotel project, the building has struck me as a kind of massive Tibetan Mandala, but a Western version of a Tibetan sand structure, or as much of one as our all-American modern Western man could parallel. I'm not going to be here forever, nor are the rest of the artists, nor is this building, so we're perfecting it and investing in it as a kind of exercise and a form of ritual, knowing full well that it will eventually be released into the river.
Still, I'm giving it my all here. The caliber of artists who have come through here, as well as the cultural figures who have graced us with their presence, good wishes, and blessing, has been phenomenal.
So, for whatever it is worth, something is happening here in the Arts, a Western version of some summoning, and if nothing else, the chant is telling you to be fearless and to see yourself as a Creator as well, created in your Creator's image, entirely holy and without limit.