indefatigablog

I met Bradley Bergey in Seattle where we worked together for two years at the Children’s Institute for Learning Differences on Mercer Island.

Around the same time, we each moved from Seattle to different parts of the world : I moved to Alaska and he moved to Mexico City. Over the next 4-5 years, we visited each other regular and I had the good fortune of watching him evolve from a naturally gifted painter into a focused and even more talented artist.

To boot, he’s an amazing educator, the kind of teacher I’m jealous his students get to have. World-traveled, intuitive, imaginative, playful and wise beyond his years - he’s a bona fide compliment to the practice.

Recently, Bergey was featured in Art and Letter, a monthly webzine focused on Architecture, Art and Design.

You can read the interview in its entirety here, if you likey.

He’s our pal and we’re very proud of him : )

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If you’re not hip to Black Cab Sessions, you are in for a treat!

…if you touch me, well i just think i’ll scream
cuz it’s been so long, since someone challenged me.
and made me think… about the way things are…
made me think…about the way they could be.
i believe it- why? oh my…
ooh my lord…ooh my lord…i don’t even know why…but…

oh! this feeling it is wonderful! don’t you ever turn it off!
oh! this feeling it is wonderful! don’t you ever turn it off!

feelings…why? oh my: human needs. heartbeats.
i can see it…all. by the way you smile.
i’m smiling too! i see myself in you.
i am with it! ooh man i am wired!
ooh my lord! ooh my lord- yeah…now i really know why!

oh! this feeling it is wonderful! don’t you ever turn it off!
oh! this feeling it is wonderful! don’t you ever turn it off!

Surely, there are many people who strongly disagreed with his views. More conservative folks especially would rather he hadn’t reached the levels of success he did. He made a career out of stirring the pot and providing balance to the hard right and its overwhelming amount of political correctness and closed-mindedness about the world.

Known as the guy who took black humor to new heights, George Carlin also left a footprint on the media world, having ridiculed television for the seven dirty words you can’t hear.

In minutes, he could make us all question what we’ve just always been told.

That’s scary for a lot of folks.

For others, it’s just good exercise :

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Zach Falcon is a great storyteller because his whimsical muscles are completely intact and functioning optimally.

Most of us stop using these muscles somewhere between the ages of 8 and 10. We start conforming to our risk-averse culture, playing it safe as we say, leaving the inspirations of youth behind and stop listening to voices of mischief that often enough lead us down mysterious paths to discovery.

Falcon has managed to protect his sense of curiosity with an amazing non-stick coating, which keeps it safe from such ridiculous notions. This, combined with a rigorous training regimen for said curiosity and other, related muscles, keeps him fit and dextrous as he delivers these tales with clarity he owns.

This is the stuff that powers great storytellers who’s lives haven’t been spent only in the telling.

Perhaps, that explains how the Alaska native was able to leave his post as Assistant Attorney General in that fine state to pursue his natural gift for writing at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in Iowa City, Iowa.

His work, like “Cloud Fishing” published in Spider Magazine, is moving in a way that will help keep us all continuing to exercise this most-important-of-all muscles : our imagination.

Without it, we’re all just player pianos that might be able to reproduce a tune - but haven’t even a thimble full of the spirit of the real thing.

Don’t count him as just another sweet and jovial kid’s fiction writer, though. When he’s not writing or starring in subversive films, he’s a stone-cold Hollywood pimp.

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