Dear friends,
This week I started a 5-week course with one of the most inspiring founders in the business world Karthik Puvvada.
I came across him through his wonderful 'Build in Public' podcast, which I enjoyed listening to while running during the freezing Berlin winter.
A series of serendipitous twists led to a conversation with him in Atlanta, and then an invitation to his cohort for founders through a scholarship.
During our call we discussed one another’s missions; his to nurture the next generation of founders, mine to find new solutions for artists in the digital economy.
Afterwards, he wrote with the invitation, and despite it being a manic and transitional period, I knew it was one of those moments when you have to say yes to life.
My newsletter this week explores the role of serendipity in our lives, and details specifically some of the strange twists and turns that led to my conversation with “KP”.
It’s humbling when someone whose work you admire sees the potential in you. His ethos; of being of service, and nurturing talent, is what I hope to pass on in the next stage of my life. The opportunity to learn from someone down the river from me feels like a sign I am on the right path.
Below, are my reflections and ruminations.
With love, Jim
What a strange thing serendipity is.
When we are stuck we feel forever cut off from the heart of life.
And yet one of its purposes is that it tears a fabric in our being.
Although it hurts, it’s through this fissure that life enters.
Since my epochal stuckness in the pandemic, I’ve experienced a gradual trickle of catalysts.
Not the drama of cascade, but the sense that I moving somewhere.
Or being moved somewhere.
And then recently, a serendipitous breakthrough!
I received a scholarship for a 5-week course with a man who has become something of a mentor.
Karthik Puvvada is a serial founder who also runs a wonderful podcast called "The Build in Public Podcast.” To work and learn from him in close proximity, is a wonderful boon.
And so a little story about the funny nature of serendipity and its habit of arriving unexpectedly in our lives.
During the winter months, I made a habit of running late at night.
In all honesty, it was less for the will to exercise, but rather, due to grating loneliness.
I had hit a boundary in the art world.
So began exploring different niches, gaining inspiration from new areas and fields of knowledge.
It was exhilarating to migrate through unfamiliar niches.
From the rousing speeches of Pastor TD Jakes to the business savvy of Justin Welsh, and the profound insights of Pema Chödrön, each day unfolded with a diverse tapestry of wisdom and inspiration.
Having been stuck in my ways for 15 years, I was surprised to find myself so receptive to the business world.
Of course, you engage with it in every aspect of life on some level.
But for me, it was always a task to complete, a box to check, rather than something to ignite my curiosity.
However, the pandemic changed all that.
Like for many, it hit at an inopportune time.
I was on a major upswing musically.
Spotify added "Obstacles" to one of their editorial playlists and it clocked up 500,000 plays in double quick time.
In its swing, the start of the "Love in the Face of Fear" tour became a musical high point for me.
What, buzz? After all this time?
And then?
Lockdown!
It was the second time in my life that I'd reached a musical apex only to be flung back into the volcano.
Funny, how apexes carry their nadir in their pocket.
The first was when my EMI album "Lunatic Lullabies" was released one day and pulled the next after Universal completed their takeover - and dropped all newcomer artists.
How the gods throw us down, and how it deepens us!
During the pandemic, I learnt to inhabit the dark in new ways.
What, are we going to skulk off into the night never to be seen again?!
We traverse many afterlives during the span of our lives.
And there is no resurrection without the cave which precedes it.
The question is, do we see it as a cave, or do we see it as an incubator?
I know too well the spaces which precede rebirth.
Exploration of that house became my house.
At some point, I realised that that is my expertise.
To know the dark room where one day you brew alchemies and the next you wrestle despair.
As I set off in my van after the pandemic, my only intention was to wander further into this abstraction called being.
Instead of trying to climb out of Hades, I will learn to exist in its fires.
And so I dug deeper into the basement of being.
It wasn't world renunciation.
It was knowing that if I was to forge my intuitions into a message, then I had to be willing to be atomised within the process itself.
Could I get to a source beyond the vagaries of the world, and find something new to offer?
It’s the joyful & sickening reward of the arts:
How it crushes you only to reformulate you.
Nothing brings you closer to the mystery.
And in my wandering, from the Black Loch to the Black Sea, I found something new in myself.
Strength to continue beyond my strength.
That is something to experience; to know you are within the alchemy itself, to feel new-formed by it.
Once it would have terrified me. Because I was holding on.
But I was ready to acquiesce to that which I was meant to do.
Don't you understand?
That it’s only in the ways that life breaks you that it teaches you?
It is how it imparts its knowledge.
That is the process, that is the purpose, that is the why behind your suffering.
And so I rewrote myself.
Yet returning was not enough.
How do we activate our knowledge?
How do we catch our sublimations and pass them on in a way which could be of help to another?
Dare you be someone's guide?
And so the next period began.
Distilling message.
Working out how to help people who are called to the arts but burnt up by what it asks of their spirit.
Yet after message, what then?
You have to work out how to distribute it into the world.
So I started putting it out as a gift.
Over and over.
And people started reacting.
Started writing.
Started exchanging.
It’s early on this new journey.
But it has already brought me to another crossroads.
Because giving gifts is not enough.
You disperse your message in social media, but at some point, you have to aggregate it; to collect it into a whole - whatever form that wants to be.
You have to create something with your knowledge.
I understand that as my challenge now.
Giving it is not enough.
It needs to be embodied.
Something which fuses modern challenges with the ancient promise.
It needs to be practical. It needs to be spiritual.
So this is the fourth stage of my journey.
To create something under a unified architecture.
So I've challenged myself to build a digital course and an accompanying book.
But beyond this is the question of how to offer this to the world.
And it is this question which has brought me to this stage now.
To begin in the business world.
The invitation to Karthik Puvvada's cohort came at a time when I have too many balls in the air.
Like a drunk juggler, I knew it folly to upset the delicate flow I've established between my creative and freelance life.
And yet sometimes the spirit screams "YES".
We had a meeting and I was quickly swayed.
His authenticity walks before him.
As does the clarity of his mission:
To nurture the next generation of founders.
He’s a man who wants to give back and who places service at his essence.
The "Build in Public" ethos resonates with me, as does his belief that I have something to offer in a world new to me.
Beyond that, something else gnaws. I’ve spent 20 years hunting my deepest potential as a creative.
I have touched upon it.
But I have never lived inside it. As if always living at its threshold.
I feel finally, something shifting. As if ready to move beyond where I arrived at.
How surreal life is. That we should experience these things right at the point when prudence says: “Give up”.
I will update about my journey in the following weeks.
For now, I wanted to pass on my takeaway:
Say yes to life.
You have no idea the significance of this moment for you.
How getting lost enriches your tapestry.
How stuckness opens you to revelation.
And how, at the last, the mad hatters in your orchestra, seemingly all playing alone and in different rooms, achieve a thunderous unity.
You realise it’s not your role to conduct the orchestra.
But to be channelled by the music.
"Synchronicity is a manifestation of the collective unconscious at work, guiding us along our individual paths."
Carl Jung
Jim, such a beautiful piece. This part really hit a chord with me: “ We traverse many afterlives during the span of our lives. And there is no resurrection without the cave which precedes it. The question is, do we see it as a cave, or do we see it as an incubator?”
I’m honored to have crossed paths with you at an inflection point in your career and for your vote of confidence (saying “YES”). Can’t wait to see how the program will shape you!
Maybe it is serendipitous that l read your exploration of synchronicity & saying ‘yes’ when serendipity descends upon you this morning as l have been reflecting on this myself over the last couple of days.✨
I received an email yesterday inviting me to a meeting to discuss an internship which sounds like it will exactly fit my skills & my life path to date and will also fulfill my interest in contributing to other people’s lives. So excited!! 🥳
However, although It is an example of serendipity, similar to you doing this fascinating course with an inspirational mentor, it is not ‘spontaneous serendipity’ in the sense that it was you reaching out at the outset and me doing that too, which led to an exchange which led to a scholarship for you
/invitation to collaborate with a worthwhile organization for me. There is a little groundwork laid first and then when an opportunity presents itself later, there is no decision because what also makes it serendipitous is a gut feeling that ‘absolutely YES’ this is what l want to do now as my life has lead me here. 🙌🏼
On reflection, this is similar to the many other examples when serendipity has swooped in at critical points in my life to lead somewhere that has turned out to have enriched my life and then, in turn led to other serendipitous moments a little way further down the path. 💫 In fact living in Germany now is the result of a meandering path set off by a serendipitous moment in 2015 but which only made sense at that time because of an indirectly-related experience which l was fortunate enough to have as a 16 year old school girl. 🇩🇪
So it is having your antennas up & alert to the potential opportunities life has to offer along the way which can be a precursor to something serendipitous happening further down the line. 🐜
In other words, there seems, to me at least, to be a meaningful relationship between the title you have chosen, “Saying yes to life”, and the serendipity/synchronicity which follows, at some point later. 🔁
Conversely, I wonder if you don’t ‘seize the day’ in the first place, is the potential impact of serendipity lessened? I suspect it is. Maybe someone could do a PhD on it and let both of us know the answer! 🤣🥸
That’s it for now. Your deeply personal reflections really spoke to me so thank you.🙏🤩