Meet Gerry Fialka | Laughtears.com curator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Gerry Fialka and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Gerry, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I gather the community to breath consciously together and probe the hidden psyche effects of the thought process. The very process of thinking is explored by thinking about new questions and new metaphors ala meta cognition. Break the rules before they are made. “Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Risk taking is essential. One must nurture courage to carefully make plans, then do the opposite. “I am a failure, but not a miserable failure” – Frank Zappa…. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. – Samuel Beckett….”Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
List making is an important habit in inventorying what meetings that I host, like the McLuhan-FINNEGANS WAKE Reading Club. Then lose that list, and start a new list. Then archive all the lists. McLuhan called his probing process “applied Joyce” examining Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, which must be read outloud with a group of people. Joyce sought epiphanies in everydayness, satirized information overload, and invented language about language with new words like “laughtears” and “feelful thinkamalinks.” “Artists live in the present and write a detailed history of the future.” – Wyndham Lewis

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
“Write about what you know” does not always work. Play with advice by expanding imagination, and dreaming up the undreamable. “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” – Martha Graham. I encourage to reinvent, reword, and reboot all advise, maxims, aphorisms to stand on the shoulders of giants and see farther.

Website: laughtears.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@gfa1930

Other: https://www.youtube.com/@pxlthis86

Image Credits
Courtesy of Gerry Fialka