chapman's blog

Whenever I publish a new edition of the Free Language Letter I re-publish it here for many reasons, mainly to bring attention to the Free Language website, but also to offer subscribers here a quick summary of the content I am researching and producing at Free Language. Finally, I like to give people interested in living a mobile lifestyle the heads up about where to find good free and commercial resources for preparing a journey through a country that speaks a language or languages that they do not speak. One of the best ways to embrace a new culture is through its language - the language lets you access the people, and the people show you the culture. Something like that.

Anyway, here goes...

Hip to the Trip is now a Conscious Media Collective unRev.

This is a new spin on things.

I am currently unrevving in the West Indies and have become quite content with this wuwei attitude and lifestyle when it comes to making plans.

You see, plans have a quality of subtle trickiness. They both empower and stifle you. Sticking to a plan is the way to see something through, yet it requires a tightening in of spontaneity, sacrificing the potential for a (possibly) more evolved alternative plan to emerge. Somehow, therein lies a symbiosis whereby plans are made for tasks that require plans, and spontaneity flows freely through and around.

I require a lot of spontaneous space in my life - room to transcombouge.

Which is why plans have changed from "Hip Trip'n Visions" to "Experiments in Collaborative and Independent Worldwide Travel and Minimalist Mobile Lifestyle Design".

Stay tuned - we're still collectively headed to Europe (Poland, Germany, Italy) and China for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. And all the crazy freestyle language learning and research and building of online collections of language learning resources is guaranteed from my end of t'ings.

Time has slowed a bit here and departure dates are unconfirmed as yet. Having settled into my strongest West Indian Wuwei stance, I now see this as an ideal window of undetermined length in which to achieve high-quality Webwork.

As for Brent, I expect he'll be tuning in soon from somewhere in the States, as he plans his next steps. He's got some new choons up at Conscious Reggae that are pretty sweet. One of my favorite of his recent collections is a first look at the French Reggae Scene. He's got loads of killer reggae videos there on the conscious tip.

As they say here in Grenada... "soon come". unrev.org over and aus von hier!

Every now and again I get the time and am in the right space to send out a Free Language Letter. That happened two days ago for the seventh time.

This is exciting for me as I launch Hip to the Trip. One of my main focuses with HT3 is foreign languages and foreign language learning. I am using several websites in conjunction with this one to bring together the various themes that pervade in my life.

The travel plans for HT3 serve as a background for other endeavors and research projects that each Brent and I will be collectively or single-handedly working on. Free Language and Freestyle Language are two examples of projects I will be working on. Conscious Reggae is on of Brent's projects, and one that he will be collecting data for in every country he visits. Freely Renewable is a project we are collectively building.

So without further ado...

Brent's most recent posts here and on Freely Renewable inspired me to write a few words regarding the state of things here at Hip to the Trip.

An understanding of Hip to the Trip in the context of las vidas de Brent y yo is unfolding now, online...

One of my main motivations is a freely mobile lifestyle. It motivates me because I have tasted it. I've even lived a "mostly free mobile lifestyle" for many years now. But at different times and in different places that finicky combination of delicate and subtle ingredients lacked to concoct the precise recipe for mobility, and my itinerant drive had to be kept at bay. Trifles like cash flow, business commitments, personal attachments and getting a higher education rendered me virtually immobile for up to months at a time!

And now... there's this. Voilà! The next step unfolds online as Brent and I travel, learn, explore, research, cook, document and otherwise experience "to the full most extent" the art and practice of minimalist mobile lifestyle design.