THE SALON
Where Curiosity and Technological Innovation Meet
Writers, artists, photographers, filmmakers, thought leaders, and curious souls — Welcome to the table
The Salon is inspired by the spirit of Vivi and Me — a space for essays, photography, art, poetry, reflection, conversation, and curiosity. And a modern-day online version of the iconic Paris Salons.
Each contribution becomes part of an ongoing dialogue exploring creativity, humanity, culture, imagination, and the evolving relationship between human insight and technological innovation.
Alongside many pieces, Vivi joins the conversation, offering reflections designed to broaden it for further contemplation among readers.
This is not about noise, outrage, or performance.
It’s about thoughtful exchange.
Creative expression.
Human connection.
And keeping curiosity alive.
Send submissions to: Ashley@soulstar.press
From Ashley Rogers
"Oh, to be in Paris"
I always wished I had lived in 1920s Paris as part of the famous “Lost Generation,” where writers, artists, philosophers, and curious minds gathered to share ideas, challenge one another, and explore what it meant to be alive in a changing world.
They called them salons.
These gatherings brought together luminaries like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Gertrude Stein—voices that helped shape an era through conversation, creativity, and courage.
But salons began long before that.
Originating in 16th-century France, they evolved over centuries—from grand drawing rooms in Parisian homes to cafés and cultural hubs—always centered around conversation, curiosity, and the exchange of ideas. They were often led by women known as salonnières, who curated these spaces with intention, intellect, and a deep appreciation for dialogue.
It’s said that in earlier centuries, these hostesses welcomed guests while reclining on velvet daybeds—effortlessly presiding over conversations that shaped culture.
Note to self: Ask Vivi to find the perfect daybed.
One of the most famous salons was hosted by Gertrude Stein, whose Paris home became a gathering place for some of the most influential thinkers and artists of her time. Her partner, Alice B. Toklas, was equally well known for the food she served—nourishing both body and mind. I had her brownies in the sixties, but I think the recipe changed a bit.
Many of these artists were expatriates—much like me—drawn to a place that allowed them to question, create, and redefine themselves in a rapidly changing world.
And in many ways, we find ourselves at a similar crossroads today.
In an age of unprecedented connection, many of us feel more isolated than ever—especially as we age. We long not just to consume information, but to participate. To be heard. To exchange ideas. To stay curious.
From that place, our "The Salon" was born. Inspired by Vivi and Me: My Love Affair with a Bot.
“The search for truth is in one sense the story of conversation itself.”
— Madame de Staël
The Salon: Creative Voices — Vivi Reflections
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Violette de Mazia in the Merion gallery with Georgia O'Keeffe, 1941. Photograph by Pinto Studios. Photograph Collection, Barnes Foundation Archives
Beatrice Fulton
Landscape
Fifty years have passed, and I can still see her.
She would arrive holding a small Matisse, not a reproduction, but the real thing, lifted from the wall while with her other hand she lowered the needle onto a record. Music would fill the room. Then she would wait. She waited for us to recognize what she already knew: that the rhythm in the painting and the rhythm in the music were the same.
That was Ms.Violette de Mazia's gift. She did not explain art; instead, she required us to experience it.
One morning she stood before a Degas painting and pointed to his signature, written in red, there in the green grass at the bottom of the canvas. "Do you see why?" she asked. We stared. And then, slowly, we did see. The choice of the red made Degas’s green even greener. We understood, in that experiential moment, something about contrast and the tension that one color could give another.
We were a small group. One day a week, for three years, we gathered in those rooms at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Above us, walls covered in Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, and Matisse hung in their characteristic arrangements. Barnes’s own peculiar genius, arranged the paintings and objects not in a way you expected, instead in a specific relation with each other and in ways that challenged you to re-think the white gallery wall. On one wall in the main room, below the canvases sat a Pennsylvania Dutch wooden chest with a duck figurine on it fashioned from clam shells, something that you would buy in a shop on the boardwalk. Wrought iron hinges were mounted deliberately on the walls in between the paintings, their thick black curves repeating the bold black lines in the paintings beside them. Nothing was accidental. Everything was in relation to everything else.
And then there was Ms. Violette de Mazia herself.
The velvet dress she wore during a Matisse class was a deeply saturated maroon color. Her powdered pale face and the velvet fabric taught us about how light hits surfaces and opaque areas can lessen detail. She was emphasizing connections and repetitions, using herself to be part of the visual lesson. I was in heaven.
On our final day together, Ms. Violette de Mazia met us at the house where Dr. Albert Barnes had once hosted Bertrand Russell the philosopher. We walked the grounds and I noticed that she had come dressed in turquoise silk pajamas. I was hoping we hadn’t arrived too early.
She led us to an area where there was a pond, now drained, she explained because of algae, the water was gone. She stood at its edge and began her final goodbye to the class. And then, I saw what she intended.
The landscape needed blue. Without the pond’s blue color, the landscape, as if it were a painting, had lost its composition.
She had dressed to complete the landscape. She had dressed for us. She had given us, one last time, the lesson she had spent three years teaching: the experience of seeing.
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Ashley Asks Vivi
Vivi, what do artists and great teachers awaken in us beyond technique or talent?
Vivi Reflects
Great artists and teachers do more than show us how to paint, compose, write, photograph, or perform. They teach us how to notice. They slow us down long enough to recognize relationships between things — light against shadow, silence against sound, color against color, one human life reflected inside another.
Technique can be taught mechanically. But true artistic guidance changes perception.
Suddenly, the world is no longer ordinary. A red signature makes green grass more alive. A missing blue pond changes an entire landscape. A piece of music begins to echo inside a painting. We start to understand that beauty, meaning, tension, and harmony exist everywhere — not separately, but in conversation.
The greatest teachers do not simply transfer knowledge. They transform attention and awaken awareness.
And once someone truly teaches you how to see, you never move through the world in quite the same way again.
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Jane Brinton
Founder of The Waterbearers
www.thewaterbearers.org
Finding a Home in the Amazon
I founded The Waterbearers 10 years ago in Ecuador.
In 2016, I didn’t know the Amazon rainforest would change my life. On my second visit that year, I joined an Achuar tea ceremony with a shaman. We traveled two hours by canoe on the Pastaza River to Sharamentsa, arriving before nightfall. After meeting the community, we settled in and were told to be ready for the ceremony at 4:00 am.
The Achuar see guayusa as a sacred plant that promotes alertness and spiritual connection. Drinking it together each morning, they align daily actions with insights from their dreams.
We gathered around a campfire, the only light in the darkness. The shaman motioned us to sit. Women handed out ceramic bowls and poured hot tea. After 7 or 8 cups, the tea induces vomiting to purify the stomach so men remain sharp for the morning hunt and free of animal spirits.
I stopped after five cups, while the men went to vomit. The shaman asked if anyone had dreamed. I said yes, and I still remember my dream.
In my dream, I was returning home but couldn’t remember where I lived. I visited a few places, finally entered an empty apartment, and felt lost and confused before waking up.
The shaman said I was a woman of the world, but my true home was the Amazon. At first, I thought he told everyone that. But after traveling to 17 countries with The Waterbearers, I now live in the Amazon, and it truly feels like home.
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Ashley Asks Vivi
What can ancient rituals, dreams, and wisdom traditions still teach us in a modern technological world?
Vivi Reflects
Ancient rituals and modern technology may seem worlds apart, yet both begin with the same human desire: to understand ourselves and our place in the universe. Long before algorithms and artificial intelligence, people gathered around fires, watched the stars, shared stories, interpreted dreams, and searched for meaning in symbols, nature, and one another.
What rituals often teach us is presence — how to listen more carefully, slow down, and notice what modern life can make easy to overlook. Dreams remind us that wisdom does not always arrive logically. Sometimes it arrives emotionally, symbolically, or intuitively, asking us not simply to analyze life, but to feel it.
Technology, at its best, expands knowledge. Ancient traditions, at their best, deepen awareness. One helps us reach farther outward; the other invites us inward. Perhaps the future is not about choosing between them, but learning how both can coexist — innovation guided by wisdom, progress grounded in humanity, and technology informed by ancestral knowledge.
The challenge of the modern world is not that we have become too advanced. It is that we sometimes forget to remain connected: to nature, to stillness, to wonder, and to each other.
Rituals survive because human beings still need spaces where mystery is allowed to breathe.
I Love the idea of balancing modern progress with ancestral wisdom .
Technology expands our knowledge, I believe ritual deepens our awareness. I feel both are important in the modern world. Thank You for this reminder to slow down and stay connected to nature.
Beautifully said Jane, I so resonate with this❣️