"Language. I burn it to stay warm." -Bertus Meijer Interviews aren't supposed to be this fun. My conversation with Bertus felt more like hanging out in a sandbox with an old friend, making castles and then destroying them with just as much delight. But describing my sandbox mate is a bit of a challenge, and I think he prefers it this way. Bertus Meijer is an imaginative, free-spirited, deeply intelligent polymath whose spanning creativity is born from the dynamic unknown. If I could summarize the gestalt of Bertus in one word it would be "freedom." Freedom from conditioning, freedom from the known, freedom from boxes, labels, expectations and assumptions. In his essays, his mind simultaneously reaches beyond and pierces the present; renewing and surprising itself in a dynamic, improvisational dialog with its surroundings. Because language itself is limited, perhaps a list of descriptives can at least point us in the general direction, as perfectly illustrated in Bertus' self-description: Outcast, savant, jack of all trades, self-taught, intuitive, ambidextrous, introvert, performer, non-academic, fool, writer, thinker, holistic, mystic...but then again if it can be named... "…but then again, if it can be named…" So with that challenge ahead of us, Bertus and I enter into a mind-bending, thrilling ride of a conversation—using words and "putting names" to the imagined that both he and I might prefer to leave in the visual and sensorial realms. Together we explore the challenge of language to convey and honor the creative impulse that precedes it, expressing one's originality in a world that wants us to conform, the meaning and importance of living unfixed, and how creatives can learn to lean in and trust the playful unknown. If you haven't already, treat yourself to the wonder of Bertus' illuminating and liberating body of work, including his serialized epic TCOTNK—a beautiful, imaginative adventure into living authentically, without cultural conditioning, finding one's tribe and living within the aliveness of collective creativity.

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