A Life of Wonder

I recently discovered an artist whose work moves me deeply, inspires me to write, and to collect every piece he creates. His future collection is stunning. Each piece captures a moment in life and transports us there. Whatever we are doing: reading, playing online, thinking of our past, we’re invited to stop for 8 sacred seconds as his work plays.

This work invites us to our childhood soul: into that quite place of beauty and self-reflection. I am grateful for him. Here are my poems that were inspired him.

In collaboration, I wrote this poem that accompanies this gorgeous NFT.

Saffron and morning prayer
Ancient words float in the air
Your mysteries wrapped in red
Hidden in the carpet’s silk.

I was inspired to write two more poems. The first for one of his works in progress, which I was able to glance at before it was released. I’ll share the work with you as soon as he releases it.

Somewhere in the bloom 
Between this world and beyond
Your bluest eye returns to me 

Memories of you grow
Vibrant and serene

Here I will wait 
Between what I cannot hold
And what I cannot see

Finally, his work Window of Hope.

In its honor, I wrote this poem:

In the darkest places I invite you in
To heal all that you can’t see
The perfect words cast behind me
As shadows of the tree

Omid Kazemi’s work is among the most beautiful I’ve seen. I know it will move you, too.

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Here are two Flash Fiction Stories I recently wrote

My Roadtrip to You

I knew he had decided to end my life. And I knew the only way out was to end his. He pulled over at the rest stop to “use the can.” And when he returned, I did. And then I ran: the salt from my tears, the lights reflecting off of the cold rain, the lights dancing all over the freeway, all was a blur. 

When this bearded trucker hit the old man with his Mac truck, I said nothing. He didn’t so much as flinch. Once, driving with you, we hit a squirrel. You made me stop and bury her. You said a prayer, and you made me pray, too. “Did you see that?” he asked me about 10 minutes later. “No,” I said.

“Good.” 

“ Good.

But I did see it. And he knew I saw it. And I knew, he knew. “

Drink this,” he said handing me a flask. “The flavor, licorice with a bite like mouthwash.” “

What’s wrong, boy, never had a man’s drink?”

 He asked. 

“Not like this one.” 

I only hitched a ride on this massive Mac truck to be with you. Flying terrifies me. We both know I can’t rent a car. Not with my credit.   I thought of coming to you on horseback with roses, or in a Greyhound with seniors singing show-tunes. 

 “Can you..can you drop me at the next city,” I asked him.

 “Next what, city boy” he taunted, “you don’t like our road trip” 

“I love it, I just need to wire some money.” 

“Wire some money my ass, city boy.”

Johnny Cash broke our silence.

God I love you babe. To infinity and back, infinity and back. Wait for me babe, wait for me… 

Good Pea

He was the mostly unlikely cross-country star. He started running to runaway, away from Penny Larson, and the crew of giggling friends who whispered, “pea” under their breath; away; away from Brice, who gave his puke green, beat up, beauty of an El Camino the name “pea,” which stuck. Later it became his name. “Run pea, Run,” they teased at every event, every moment really. He wanted to tell them to “shut up,” but stuttered so badly with the “S” sound that he said nothing. Ever after placing in each and every cross country meet that seasons, after becoming the Wildcat legend, he walked hiding in his hoodie like a ghost trying not wake the living. The living. They could never understand their taunting brought him this strange, morbid pleasure. Nightly he reenacted it with the toys from his childhood. “You’re a good pea,” he’d whisper grasping the green toy solder, “a Special one,” he’d say without stuttering.

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Some artists inspire me to create.

Their work “speaks to me.”

I take what I hear and translate it into poetry.

This work, in particular, spoke.

In honor of the artist and his vision, I wrote this poem.

A Prayer for the Sword

Brave sword, covered in flowers, stand with me now and always.

I am spirit. I am wind. 

I am: 

The sun’s last light on fishermen’s villages 

I am:

A dark net gliding 

on the still river.

I bow to you now

you who I cannot see

you who I have know all my life

You, the nameless one

Did I create you, or did you create me? 

I’ve seen too much to capture: 

Plastic bottles discarded like cut flowers 

Red flowers: blood of my blood 

All brings me back to you.

My soul is not from here: 

It is song, and I am voice

It is warmth, and I am sun.

When all the warriors have died

You appear to me in a dream

Commanding my return

To a new world 

Made by my own hand

-ZB

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In the fall of ’98, Trevor and I decorated pumpkins for Halloween. Mom gave us paint, brushes, and two carving knives. I painted mine blue. That year I dressed as papa smurf, and the pumpkin matched my costume. Trevor painted his a dark red. He made the color by adding purple, and black, until the shade of red was just right. 

I painted my pumpkin with big, clumsy strokes. He was exacting with each stroke turning the pumpkin’s flesh the color of the layer beneath our skin.

“Do you like it? Do you get it?” He asked.

“Yea bro, yea.”  “Let’s do this,” he beckoned.

We grabbed our pumpkins and headed to the freeway overpass. Sometimes, we could see into the cars: laughing families, fighting families, families in costumes, or tired single men driving to nowhere. Watching them calmed me, like watching clouds.

Then terror.

A bone-cracking scream. From some animal place, Trevor screamed. His desperate and euphoric cries entered my ears, my nerve system, and my bones. As the minivan neared the overpass, he released his pumpkin.  The windshield broke. Trevor giggled joyfully. The car slammed into the tree.

“I did that,” he boosted. “I. did. that!” 

I’d like to say I helped that family, but I ran home through the forest I knew too well as fast as I could

. Mom was making Mikie Mac & Cheese. “Want some honey?” she asked. “No, I”m good, I’m good.”  “What happened to you hands?” she asked. I wanted to explain the red away, and I thought of every excuse and possibility: we hit a deer, had bloody nose, or Trevor cut himself…But before I could answer she said, laughing:  “They’re so blue.”

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I don’t know where the sunsets
Maps perplex me
I’d rather hang them than use them

I am constantly disorientated
Seeking directions from hotdog vendors
And women whose headphones protect them
From questions of any kind

When I am urgently lost I remember
Even five-year-olds can find themselves
On children’s maps

Does asking taxi drivers
For landmarks
Make me less of a man?

My request reveals too much:
That I can’t kill a bear
Assemble furniture
Or recite stats from last night’s game

I live in the state of lost
A pleasurable trance
between “you can’t miss it,” and “take a right on Elm.”

The truth? I’d rather keep
Driving, dreaming, running, thinking
Then stop

Twice I didn’t
at 3 I ran in terror 
At 21 I ran in bliss
Naked on the streets of Paris Amsterdam Prague

I awoke at home
Like a parrot that flew away
Finding himself years later back
In a cage left open for him

-ZB 1/1/22

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Chi Modu, the foremost photographer of the hip hop movement, has succeed in bringing his art to the people…on the blockchain. Chi’s empathy gave him unique access to document hip hop. He dug deeper, and he found truth: the bullet holes in Nas’ bedroom, the moment when Snoop became Snoop, and when Biggie ruled New York Notoriously, and Pac’s deep capacity to focus. Chi’s gift was to showcase the ordinary in the most extraordinary people—to celebrate their vulnerability and their humanity.

Flash Mints, a company with a stunning platform delivering the legendary moments of iconic photographers, recently brought Chi’s work to mint. I had the pleasure of speaking with Enrico Moses, digital artist and Flash Mints’ founder, about his company, Chi’s mint and the blockchain. Enrico’s hustle and savviness captivated me. It has made him the OG NFT Whisper for the hip hop’s most influential photo journalists.

Enrico shared that for too long artists, especially those of color, have been denied the fruits of the their work. The blockchain—with its royalty structure and decentralized ethos, is finally setting this right. He explained many the similarities between Web 3 and hip hop. Enrico is more than a custodian of legacy, he’s a legacy maker. I expect big things from him and Flash Mints in the years ahead. See our interview in full below:

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There is this intangible moment you can feel when someone’s career is about to take off. With fine digital art and NFTs, it occurs at the nexus of their community of committed collectors, the artist’s distinctive style, and their ability to push limits. Mexico’s very own @CoupofGrace exemplifies these traits.

Just as Picasso painted true to life images in the late 1890s before settling on his movement shaping style, @CoupofGrace started his career as a traditional Mexican painter, who came into his own digitally through experimentation. “In this new space I can bring things to life that I’ve been working on for years and years in the physical space with twists that are my own,” he told me. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, Coup shared his approach to NFT creation and collaboration.

I asked, “how do you sit with a haunting image for weeks during artistic projects without being negatively impacted?” He replied, “by using beauty to purify the grotesque.”

In Coup’s, world beauty transcends all, and art comes to life between the figures and reveals inhabitable spaces. “For me,” Coup shared, “painting is about finding space to breathe in the canvas.”

I invite you to his body of NFT work: abstracts, the popular Skull studies and fine digital works with movement. His command of his craft, playful participation in the #NFTcommunity, and especially his ability to give us permission to look at the disturbing and find beauty there, make him an artist I will cherish & collect.

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Maciek Drabik’s work is breathtaking. He is one of those rare artists whose work creates and unfolds an entire world. He invites you in to discover yourself in this strange land. In his vision for the future, I find myself present, welcomed and enchanted. Even though at first the world feels like a celebration of chaos and disorder, the colors and imagery hint a future in which we all have the opportunities to be heroes, and to find ourselves in the selfless expression of technology and light.

See my favorite piece below and a poem I wrote that is inspired by it.

I wish you all a magical evening/night. Special wishes to those in Miami 🙂
And here is an alternative, night version of Favela Swing pic.twitter.com/UgUjOUNJ64

— Maciej Drabik | Negative Vibrations (@NegativeVibrat1) December 1, 2021

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I found my way to NFTs, not because of the stories of them selling for millions of dollars, or because they’re all the rage in my social circle. I found my way to NFTs through an artist whose work awakened my soul. His art and NFTs are alive and colorful–as serious as they are playful, and unafraid to explore life’s shadows.

Meet the artist, Pablo Esteban Sánchez Rijlaarsdam (AKA REY). He recently joined our conversation of young global leaders to share the vision of his art and what’s happening with NFTs.

NFTs have given his work new life, he shared. They “let me put life in my work by animating them.” He revealed that in his culture, death is something that is lived with and even made fun of. And you can see this as a theme in his work. The tension between his vibrant vision and the themes of death and family provide a lens that you can look through, like a kaleidoscope, to see the world in new ways. 

Pablo is a poet of the best kind–one who invites you into his world. Have a peek in the gallery below.

 “The beauty of the blockchain is that it’s eternal,” he told us.  “Eternal in a sense that it lives more than physical work. So that’s one thing I love, that the physical can go and be destroyed, but there’s always the soul which is the NFT.”  He offered that the center of the art world has changed. Where it once was New York, or Paris, it’s now Twitter.

Follow his invitation to this new center. His beautiful works which await you there.

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At night, we walk to the black ocean. In the blackness, and the the cold. In the starlessness, we walk. Hand in hand, saying nothing, waiting for the wind to subside. We approach each other open mouthed, shivering and gasping for lips or air. 

You played in copper bathtubs with imaginary boats sailing on the soap. Attended by widows of unreal wars. Husbands died without knowing why. Unrealized. Never to taste fatherhood.

Widows who raised the sons they never had, raised them alone, raised them with dreams unfilled, like letters unwritten, unsent, unseen from the battlefield. 

I am of them, and of the juniper tree.

I am of simple mind with heart dotted in a vermillion, spelling out “home” in Morse Code. 

-Zjb

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