Cabinet of Curiosities

A living archive of ideas, people, and places that shape my work

This is where the threads of my practice begin — a glimpse into what shapes me: a living collection of teachings, people, and places that continue to move and ground me; a gathering of voices, images, and gestures that have become companions along the way. 

Everything here is in motion. Nothing is permanent. Like any true cabinet of curiosities, this one evolves and rearranges itself over time — gathering new influences and letting others rest for a while. 

Think of it as an open door rather than a display case — a way of sharing what moves beneath the surface and an invitation to explore what might speak to you, too.

“You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”
— Albert Camus

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you…Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm…
And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Apprenticeship of the Heart and Mind

These are some of the trainings and writings that have deepened how I see, create, and lead.

One discovers the light in the darkness; that is what darkness is for, but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.

This is why one must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

James Baldwin, Nothing Personal

The Circle of Influence

A constellation of kindred minds, from embodiment practitioners to system thinkers, whose work continues to expand my sense of what is possible.

Creative session at the festival

Practitioners

House of Beautiful Business Festival in Tangier

Communities

  • The global, interdisciplinary network for the life-centered economy.

    https://houseofbeautifulbusiness.com

  • An experimental space reimagining the future through creative, interdisciplinary experiences.

    https://revillage.co/

  • Training compassionate, courageous leaders who protect and preserve the human spirit through service, insight and collective care.

    https://margaretwheatley.com/why-warrior-training/

  • Pragmatic utopians, committed to practical action for a radically wiser, weller world. We create conscious coliving hubs, start businesses, do research, and engage in activism to pioneer a wiser culture and plant the seeds of a second renaissance.

    https://lifeitself.org/

  • A network of social artists seeking to create new openings to age-old problems. We aim to disrupt dominant modes of perception, engagement, and responsiveness in a time of crisis by disturbing modern notions of justice, power, and human agency. 

    https://www.emergencenetwork.org/

  • Island School of Social Autonomy (ISSA) is a place for imagining, experimenting with and cultivating forms of knowledge-production and knowledge-sharing for the “age of extinction”.

    https://issa-school.org/

  • A foundation helping individuals align their talent with the world’s most pressing challenges and build careers of purpose.

    https://www.moralambition.org/

  • A global community of mindfulness practice centres offering retreats and teachings on engaged Buddhism and the art of mindful living, founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.

    https://plumvillage.org/

  • We teach the art & science of wondermaking through adventures in awe rooted in nature, art, community & play.

    Our teachers are artists, wild mustangs, neuroscientists, the forest floor, a ball of clay, and our imaginations. 

    https://www.nomadicschoolofwonder.com/

  • A pioneering centre for holistic education integrating ecology, spirituality and systems thinking in service of a regenerative future.

    https://www.schumachercollege.org/

House of Beautiful Business Festival in Tangier

System Thinkers

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”


Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

Field Notes & Invitations

Listen, Watch, Visit

Listen

Watch

Visit

An Open Letter To The Next Generation Of Artists

With love, courage, and a playlist for the road

FIRST, AWAKEN TO YOUR HUMANITY

We are not alone. We do not exist alone, and we cannot create alone. What this world needs is a humanistic awakening of the desire to raise one’s life condition to a place where our actions are rooted in altruism and compassion. You cannot hide behind a profession or instrument; you have to be human. Focus your energy on becoming the best human you can be. Focus on developing empathy and compassion. Through the process, you’ll tap into a wealth of inspiration rooted in the complexity and curiosity of what it means to simply exist on this planet. Music is but a drop in the ocean of life.

Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter

Read the whole letter

Playlist

🎶 The Bridge, Sonny Rollins

🎶 Crescent - John Coltrane

🎶 Charlie Parker With Strings

🎶 Back to the Land - Ohad Talmor

🎶 Eternity - Alice Coltrane

🎶 Venice - Anastasia Kobekina

🎶 Fantasia - Yuja Wang

🎶 Menagerie - Bill Withers

🎶 Adam’s Apple - Wayne Shorter

🎶 Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers - Kendrick Lamar

Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving.

Mary Oliver

Kindred Voices

Artists

Hilma Af Klint • Cecilia Vicuna • Olga de Amaral • Magdalena Abakanowicz • Helen Frankenthaler • Joan Michell • Marina Abramovic • Tracy Emin • Louise Bourgeois • Sonia Delaunay • Mark Rothko • Jackson Pollock

Poets

T.S. Eliot • Mary Oliver • Rainer Maria Rilke • Rumi • W.H. Auden • John O’Donohue • Silvia Plath • Pablo Neruda • E.E. Cummings • Audre Lorde • Andrea Gibson • Nayyirah Waheed

Writers

Albert Camus • Arundhati Roy • Han Kang • Orhan Pamuk • Haruki Murakami • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie • Bell Hooks • Milan Kundera • Deborah Levy • Alice Munro • Fyodor Dostoevsky

From My Desk

Recent writings and conversations

“The most powerful journeys we must take are the ones we are not ready for and cannot be ready for. 

These journeys do not take us to predetermined destinations. These journeys have no maps and no gods to entreat for their protection. These journeys have no seafaring language, no confident constellations, and no fixed rituals. 

But we must take them because we too are taken by Something Beyond Naming, spirited away from the moral shores and glancing spotlights of familiar worship. 

Marked by a crack that curdles the world and sends us adrift on oceans of milk. We must wander because not everything can be settled, because there are places where the world is still being made, and it is precisely in the undoing of our readiness that the voyage is rendered sacred. “

Báyò Akomolafe

In the end, only the beginning

The Cabinet is a living archive of what shapes and inspires my work.
If something here speaks to you, I invite you to continue the conversation — through my Art Practice, our potential Work Together, or the ongoing reflections shared in the Letters From My Heart on Substack.