the extended version:

greetings and salutations,

my full name is darby mae wagner. some people call me darby mae. most people just call me darby - though i have no shortage of nicknames. i can be shewolf-esque, a 'mensch'. a witchy brood. sometimes, i feel like a queer old chap living a double life as a 30-something-year-old woman. ha, can you guess my rising sign?

i'm largely unorthodox. i march to the beat of my own drum (or i at least try). for lack of a more fitting word, i live an 'artistic' lifestyle and like to experiment with various forms of art and craft---recently, light pendants. i am very sensitive to lighting. personal and creative freedom > pursuit of prestige, money, or power. though, ahem, i can nevertheless be vain (at times) and, yes, a little ambitious. i am ruled by the sun, after all. one could describe me as impassioned. i'm also quite savvy - a result of circumstance...more on that soon.

i hold the belief that real success stems from a total immersion within an experience, the outcome of said experience notwithstanding. in my not-so-humble opinion, to truly succeed (as a shewolf, anyway, wink wink) requires a certain amount of clever maneuvering. luck is surely one part of it, but another part of it (and this is key) is not letting yourself get boxed in or pigeonholed as one type of person. on the other hand, you also want to have absolute, somewhat maniacal devotion to your intuition, and to a sort of universal pathos. in other words: embodying the art of ambiguity (as you weld the spirit of your soul). i'm not saying people should be total hedonists or debauchees. but i won't judge you if that's what this sounds like. i'm talking about being present in the moment; i'm talking about bon vivanting; being someone who appreciates life for what it is. you can be an aesthete and a dirtbag. trust me, two things can be true.

in other words: channeling the fool, embodying the sage. 

or take it from Krishnamurti: "there is no leader, there is no teacher, there is nobody to tell you what to do." 

so what do you want to do?

GNOSES is about the art of getting to know thyself. the art of learning. the art of doing. pathos mirroring ethos; ethos mirroring pathos.

[happiness, a contrived cultural currency. happiness, the pressure to be or not to be. happiness, a homeostatic ideal. happiness, how about we stop talking about happiness. for the chemically-imbalanced, happiness seems like a pipe dream, a forbidden fruit in some perverted garden of eden that doesn't actually exist. what it is and what it isn't, what does it matter? everyone will have their own versions and defenses of pretty much everything. myself included. your feelings and mettles, those are for you to feel and embody, describe and prescribe. but i will say this: happiness is not merely the reward for some hierarchal series of events (i.e. if i do this then i will be that). we all know being financially stable does not guarantee a happy life---even if it can buy us the illusion of it. in the same way, financial instability---while it is awfully dreadful and not recommended---does not necessarily guarantee one's unhappiness. some may conceive of happiness as the absence of social conformity, thus, in some ways, social anarchism (mimesis of idealism^^):

"delete social media; wear secondhand clothes; quit poor habits; boycott corporations; become a hermit; move to the country; grow a garden; become fully self-sufficient; fuck the patriarchy."

i love this. i do. and while all of this is seriously great, and encouraged, and agreeable, the inconvenient truth is such that extreme social anarchism or whatever you want to call it---as much as i associate with social anarchism's inherent philosophy and tendencies---does not guarantee happiness or spiritual enlightenment. you've got to figure out your own recipe, your own equation, your own path for keeping the soul vital and resilient, and the spirit in a state of 'lightness' and levity. and this recipe, whatever it entails, will continue to evolve. the goal is not to cross the river to the promised land, but to enter the stream, stay open-minded and trust the current.]

i don't always know how or why i do what i do or am who i am, but deep within me, there exists a daring, playful, observant child, alive as ever, brimming with life. i'd do just about anything to savor that feeling of a happy-n-free-little-darb on the playground or field or bike or lakeside trail in my days of youth. i grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis. a geographic place of extremes. maybe that says a thing or two about me.

i read - or try to read - Taoist meditations every morning and meditate in my own idiosyncratic ways, like sweeping or reorganizing a space. i have an inconsistent movement practice, but one consistent enough to know how essential it is for my well-being. i love to walk, to dance, to hike, to bike; to expunge negative energy from my body in sometimes silly looking ways. i have this thing called raynaud's phenomenon, a result of early childhood frostbite. and another thing called austistic laughter, a result of being my mother's daughter. (apparently she has it, too.)

i strive for balance over perfection. i draw from philosophies of imperfection. DIY and do-it-together. i'm an aesthete who's never had much money, so i've learned it pays to have good taste. i find great joy in creating worlds within worlds, intimate spaces in chaotic places, internally and externally. i'm a vivid dreamer. 

i speak french fairly fluently and lived in France from 2015-2018. after a 6-month hiatus from the world, living with my mother and grieving the death of my father, i decided to move to new york city. it was may 2019. somehow, i ended up in wine. that wasn't the plan. i don't know what was. i was freelancing on what turned out to be a dead-end road. 

6 years later, i find myself deeply enmeshed and yet more and more on the periphery of a global community---winemakers + winegrowers, importers + distributors, owners of restaurants and wine bars and wine shops, fellow somms and oenophiles alike, artists and designers and creatives of all types; the list goes on. wine became a vessel for me, not just a passion or hobby or career path. wine became my own private idaho, my own glass castle, one that would lead me down several more corridors and vistas, to rooms with windows to wholly different worlds. through my work in wine, i was able to merge the tangible with the intangible, the past with the present, the poetic with the scientific, the surreal with the ancestral. wine was never my end-all-be-all. for me, it was a means to an end, a stepping stone, a series of lilypads. a paycheck.

in 2021, as coronavirus continued to detonate lives, and time continued to crease into our weathered walls, i created GNOSES. a concept-turned-nontraditional creative studio. a personal and collective vessel centered on: Gesamtkunstwerk - the total artwork. inspired by gnosis, the nose, the body, alternative schools and philosophical minds, esoterica and the occult; inspired by design, art, food, wine, and ancestral beverages; grief and death; by a great lot of writers and figures from Hegel to Vassi to Lilith to Patti Smith; and designers from Van der Rohe and Eileen Gray. the list is extensive and includes objects and symbols as well, like chairs and candles, bones and sigils.

since its conception, i've managed to collaborate with numerous individuals and collectives, blending my passions and leveraging my experience across several fields of interest. however, after producing and participating in various events---from dinners to artistic salons---i felt a drifting feeling, like something was missing in these experiences. they were sometimes too formulaic, too contrived by trends, or simply too 'curated'. i missed the ambiance of the classroom. i missed the feeling of collectively learning. i wondered how i could bridge communities more intentionally. and thus came the concept for one of my on-going experiences, WINE POETIC: the confluence of wine, spirits, poetry, and history; an integrative workshop series that would inspire conversation, ideas, poetry; that would teach people and guide people in a tangible setting; the fool, the bard, and the sage, all together.

in 2024, i again entered the mystical river toward new terrain. i became an isthmus between one world (wine) and another world (design), though one could say an isthmus between several interconnected worlds, or bodies...sometimes floating, sometimes paddling, sometimes drowning, sometimes dancing. i've always wanted to deepen my knowledge of functional + urban design. the art of transitioning from one trade/industry to another is quite a skill. it's humbling. it's inspiring. it's at times extremely debilitating and demoralizing; it can be scary and exciting at once. to set sail in a new direction takes courage. and to all of those who've taken that leap of faith, at some point in their lives, whether once or several times, i commend you. you are brave. 

as it stands, GNOSES is both anchor and vessel. it is on a journey, pausing when and where it needs to. i'm realizing it's whatever i make of it, whatever we make of it. 

i am here to create, both alone and together. to learn. to teach. to build. to bridge. to experiment. to fail. and to try again anyways. and then some more. i am here to meet the world. to love and be loved. to make a dent. to die happy. to die trying.

thank you for taking the time to read the extended version of who i am, ambiguous/unfiltered/obtuse as this spiel may appear to be. 

i hope one day we'll get to meet (again), break bread, and share tales of what makes us feel.