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Laurie Perez Biography

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“Lover winds a guitar string tight enough to slice your fingertip when you strum. It’s the guitar beat against the belly of the bluesman, sitting ugly on a stool, legs open in front of everyone. Lover is Winslow with sun blinding and wind sticking dust to your cheekbones when you peel out from the crater. The swirling force of cream stirring itself in a reheated cup of coffee steamed by exhaustion. The hands that stripped him bare in his sleep, played his hormones like a mean, magic riff 'til he woke up wet and high inside his bones.”

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Book:Virga in Death Valley
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“Bringing a novel to light - revealing the form and cadence, shadows and demeanor of a protagonist constructed from thin air - linking scenes and synchronicity across translucent time - holding up a glass brimming with chilled, never-tasted liquid, then sipping from it with intoxicated focus - allowing lovers to make a perilous mess of things, fall apart and nakedly come back together again - looking through conjured windows deep into someone else’s snow-bound solitude, feeling utterly alone yet being all-connected: this is not writing. It’s world-creating. It’s raw, exposed dreaming. It’s humbling. At first too personal and intimate to share, it evolves like a child into a life of its own until I have no say in what comes next. It’s what I wake at 4am to say Yes to, the spinning possibility of a new story relentlessly commanding me to write it down so it can whirl in your experience.”

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Author:Laurie Perez
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“Not in the sense of confessionals and shameful deeds, but in the sense of self-loathing translated into madness. The sin of a psyche revolting against its own free will, tagging every human interaction with scarring scabs of meanness while inwardly cowering from inadequacy and fear. This sin has been imposed on him and he bought into it, which in itself is the most sinful fall from grace a human being can take.”

FearSinGraceHuman NatureSelf AwarenessSelf WorthSelf LoathingAmie Martine
Book:The Look of Amie Martine
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“It’s neutral creative territory; it’s where we meet when we really want to connect and elevate the game. We’re not here to impose our brand on each other, but to experience, like embodied spiritual hedonists, the richness of what it means to be — well, what it means to exist, period.”

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Book:The Look of Amie Martine
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“It's a curse to have traumas imprinted in our wiring, to accept that what we fear and grieve and impale ourselves upon from day to day defines the way we translate the chemistry of emotions into a fixed identity wired for suffering. It's also a marvelous asset, our malleability. When the imprinting experience is loving, exciting, rich and worthy of our more expansive nature, we align pleasurably with harmony and bliss. But let's face it, we're humans. Disasters entertain our brains far more than comforts, ease and joy ever will. No one straps into the ride for the smoothness of it all going well.”

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Book:The Look of Amie Martine
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“We pick up our shots and for the first time there's a total absence of sound in the room. From the ceiling, shy silver things blink and wait. Dennis doesn't sit, but hovers at the edge of the table, leaning in with a darkroom perfected slump. His hair hangs like its edges were dipped in lead. Thin spears pointing to the table. I'm looking at his face; we're both serious in a self-aware way, pretending not to notice. "It doesn't even feel like I left. God, you look fucking terrible. But it's a terrible face that drinks tequila well. Down. And cheers." We force a dull clash of cups and pour everything down at once. The hard tequila shudders that never happen in the movies. First your head feels light, then it starts receiving the distress signals from throat, lungs, belly. Your shoulders jerk to shake off the snake that wrapped around you and squeezed. It burns. The good burn.”

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Book:Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm
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“Compassion, in its essence, is neutral. It’s holistic that way, and powerful because it yields a much wider perspective free of judgment or stress of any kind. We use it all the time in our work the way we’re always studying humanity intensely — always walking in someone else’s shoes, feeling the seams in their socks, wounds and elations in their souls.”

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Book:The Power of Amie Martine
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“I look around with divine precision and gazing free upon the earth, I see — — architects and earthquakes - empaths and robots - fictions and near misses - lives changing, children sleeping, beauty brimming. I see us - trying on ways of being - so sweet and messy, so worthwhile.”

HumanityConsciousnessGracePerspectiveGratitudeEmpathyArchitectureCosmicBeingEarthquakesGrit
Book:Atomic Truths and Stellar Seeking: A Joybroker's Guide to the Stars Inside
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“Feel compassion for your own heart that was broken open by grief or confusion. Then tune in to the other level of that experience. Some part of you was heroic inside that moment of your life. Some part of you was looking out for you, wanting you to make it through, encouraging you to love and heal and be larger than the message you were getting. Access the hero inside your own story....”

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Book:Breakthrough: How to Have Compassion for Those Who Do Harm
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“Physicality’s a cage. And a liberation. The cells I’ll fill in, they’re magnificent, burgeoning with aliveness! I’m dialed into them like a station on a radio transmitting constantly. First faint and distant, but growing, amassing, volumizing the very idea of a person this body aims to harbor. Glowing like the universe, always growing. Each new cell increases my momentum, tightening the tether.”

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Book:The Power of Amie Martine
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“This. Is where you ARE. Be active in what you’ve got, not suckling some prescribed monastic salvation belonging to another era that isn’t yours. Start living all these luminous philosophies in the down-n-dirty texture of the real world for others to see and trip over and align with. Try not segregating yourself so much, limiting your choices to one world or the other.”

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Book:The Look of Amie Martine
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“The landscape started hard, sharp black mountains over my shoulder and thirsty young saguaros hugging patchy dirt. Gradually it let go, began to green on me a little. I crossed a river, watched succulents get fatter and farmland start to wave, hoarding the blue above and the few clouds it had to spare. I knew the route somehow, knew the curves, the directions, the exact way to go. I knew it the way you know the stars are still up in the sky even though white sun obscures them. Everything that had happened before Lukeville and Sonoita began to liquify in memory, feeling more like fiction than personal history. Funerals and pain, girlfriends and mothers, roommates and priests all tumble away with the desert behind me. The only thing that's real is the road I see ahead. The only person in my life is the man sitting silently beside me. The place I'm going is the only place I've ever wanted to go.”

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Book:Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm
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“The scene is grim, a dank corridor rising out of Elysium, back to human climes and textures. I feel the man sensing what he’s done and the catastrophic change in the air around him. Grief as swift as a blade that cuts the cord of your innocence but leaves you stranded, still alive and pulsing while she stays stuck in death. Or did she? Now I’m chasing down Eurydice as she disappears into that tunnel. The story of Orpheus no longer interests me; I’ve been there, done that. What I want to know is how she took it, what she wanted to happen in that moment.”

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Book:The Look of Amie Martine
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“A track I’ve always liked by Mogwai goes on a loop while I pour a second glass of Reyka. This time it tastes of lava fields and thermal springs, aromatic alcohol evaporating stale thoughts, familiar and foreign. Something unnamed is melting, germinating, potentiating the currents of tomorrow across frozen, unpopulated dreamscapes.”

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Book:The Look of Amie Martine
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“People outside the industry pruriently ask how he gets through sex scenes, nudity, baring it physically. They miss the point. Sure, that takes some courage. But, man, it’s ALL like that. Try crying in front of sixty-three people, most of whom are there to do jobs like lighting your face so the tears are in focus while the snot and spit fall behind — or surrounding you with mics to make sure the sound of your sobbing, disconsolate self falling apart is picked up cleanly, so you won’t have to dub over it in post six months later. That crew of people, expertly watching you turn feral with the grief that’s causing your character to make monumentally bad decisions leading to the epiphany that finally turns it around in the third act. Could anything be more naked, more intimate than tearing your soul inside out in service to the story? It’s tantric. Visceral.”

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Book:Unbraiding: Actor | Producer | Father: A Story in Three Strands
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“It’s the job of the soul to stretch out across the body of the desert and touch, without skin or fingers or nerves, the hidden creek that wets our knowledge of who we are. Who we are before and after. Who we are when we’re alone and a goddess looks into our eyes, looks into our dreams and says, yes. I see you clearly.”

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Book:Virga in Death Valley
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“Each cell within its atom is a raw, formless idea that exists beyond mortality. It is the wild state constantly creating your world, the one word in a collective equation that is you becoming written from nothing into something — and so it knows, ultimately, annihilation is an essential instrument of becoming new to all that can be known.”

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Book:The Power of Amie Martine
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“IN HIS PRESENCE, I FEEL OUR AXIS RECALIBRATING. Where North was once —and for eons — the assigned pull of the Earth, in Sunny’s universe, all magnets drive us South. Or West. Or deep into the core because that’s more interesting to him. He’s a world-creator; he doesn’t walk from A to B the way most humans do, seeing what’s provided then dealing with, lamenting or pondering it. He creates what he wants and when you walk a path with him, you get shaped and reinvented, too. Not against your will, but more in tune with aspects of it, unfolding into the potential of a secret craving, fully funded. ~Amie, getting to know Sunny in The LOOK”

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Book:The Look of Amie Martine
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“Each time, the fall looked brilliant and effectively dangerous against the green screen, but he wasn’t satisfied until he stuck the landing and heard the rebound clap. Everyone from riggers to grips marked the occasion with good, honest cheers reverberating in the giant, hollow cube.”

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Book:Unbraiding: Actor | Producer | Father: A Story in Three Strands
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“...the land is moody, waiting. Den turns around and looks at his father who leans into the bike, leans into a long drag on his cigarette, leans into a thought not ready for words. The man is so familiar. They should be at home by now. They should be sitting at the dinner table. This familiarity is deeper than the desert, longer than the miles they’ve traveled. It confuses Dennis. What is the source of this sadness? It’s time to go home. Den holds the camera steady.”

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Book:Virga in Death Valley
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“This,” The Actor turns to indicate me, one arm casually wrapped around his good friend’s shoulder, “is the secret weapon I was telling you about. Amie Martine.” “Amie,” he takes my hand, “you look surprised.” “I’m sorry,” my smile’s so nonstop, it’s mechanically difficult to speak, “I guess, when he said ‘producer,’ I—” “—didn’t picture me?” “I’m guilty. Of thinking of you as an actor first.” “Me, too.” His smile antes mine, then wins the bet. “I’m always an actor at heart. That’s who I am. You got it absolutely right.” Compelling dark brown eyes with hints of golden amber. His body conducts such radiance, I’m sure the circuits in this room have all been blown by the solar flares in his present emanation.”

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Book:The Look of Amie Martine
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“Physicists have yet to find anything capable of exceeding our known speed of light. The Tao cannot be named, and so I say there is one thing that out-paces all things: we call it “thought.” I can fill a room a with light before I’m anywhere near the switch.”

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Book:Atomic Truths and Stellar Seeking: A Joybroker's Guide to the Stars Inside
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“At the last minute, he broke the rule and he looked. He was so rapt in his view of the light at the end of the tunnel, he got excited, tuned up, he got crazy nervous and for a second he wavered in his confidence and he looked! To confirm or affirm or just firm up,’ students laughing ‘his manly love for her and in that motion of divine stupidity, he killed her dead forever with a glance. Hades ripped her back into his den and that was, proverbially, that.’ A girl across from me says bitterly, ‘No second, second chance for Orpheus.’ ‘He was fucked,’ D continues, nodding. ‘Not because the gods were heartless, but because he fucked up. The guilt of that. Can you imagine? Spent the rest of his pathetic days wallowing, lamenting, composing (or was it decomposing?) heartbreaking tunes upon his lyre, dissolving in grief and music and art, never being the least bit happy or lovable. The saddest sap of all. How do we tell a story like that without being sappy? Oh woe! How do we shape into lines our most harrowing mistakes and losses without drenching them in sticky poetic sap?”

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Book:The Look of Amie Martine
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