the extended version:

greetings and salutations,

so you'd like to get to know me better. 

let's start with my full name: darby mae wagner—first, middle, last. it reflects elements of my European heritage—Scotch-Irish, Franco-German, and allegedly a dash of English. 'darby mae' is a reimagined family name—Gaelic in origin, supposedly. my nationality: American. 

i'm a kook with an unconventional bent—largely unorthodox, mostly self-taught, and forever marching to the beat of my own inner drum. i've stumbled into a more 'artistic' life than most, drawn more to personal and creative freedom than prestige, money, or power. that's not to say i'm unmotivated. on the contrary: i'm impassioned and also pretty damn savvy—a result of circumstance, grit, and a knack of adapting. 

i experiment with art and craft in their many forms. lately: designing and building light pendants. i'm sensitive when it comes to lighting. some call me the light police... i am, after all, ruled by the sun. :)

i believe real success comes from total immersion in experience—regardless of the outcome. to truly succeed requires persistence, patience, clever maneuvering, and a resistance to being boxed in. you also need maniacal devotion to intuition. to universal pathos. to the art of ambiguity. 

i'm not saying you need to be a hedonist (but i won't judge you if are). i'm saying: be present. bon vivant your way through the mess. hold paradox. you can be an ambitious aesthete and a freewheeling dirtbag. trust me—two things can be true.

channel the fool, embody the sage. 

“there is no leader, there is no teacher, there is nobody to tell you what to do.”

—J. Krishnamurti

so what do you want to do?

on GNOSES

i founded GNOSES in 2021—a vessel and vehicle for studying and practicing Gesamtkunstwerk: the total work of art. it’s a shape-shifting platform for experimentation, ritual, and embodied aesthetics. it makes space—for art, for others, for feeling. its existence is real; its presence, amorphous.
part studio, part sanctuary.

pathos mirroring ethos; ethos mirroring pathos.

[on happiness (and its discontents)]

(optional sidebar/essay insert)

happiness is a contrived cultural currency. a pressure. a homeostatic ideal. 

for the chemically-imbalanced, happiness can feel like a pipe dream—a forbidden fruit in a perverted Eden. 

forget happiness. think about joy.

financial stability does not guarantee you a happy life. nor does financial instability doom you to misery. 

some equate happiness to social non-conformity:

'delete social media. boycott corporations. tend to the land. fuck the patriarchy.'

i love all that. truly. but social anarchism doesn't promise joy. you've got to craft your own recipe, your own path for keeping the soul vital and resilient, and the spirit in a state of 'lightness' and levity. and that recipe? it evolves constantly. the goal isn't to reach the river's far shore. it's to enter the stream—and trust the current.]

who i am / where i'm from

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 almost anything to preserve the feeling of that free little me on a lakeside trail or playground in my days of youth. 

i grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis—a place of geographic and emotional extremes. maybe that says something.

i try to read Taoist meditations every morning. i meditate in my own idiosyncratic ways—like sweeping, stretching, or reorganizing a space. my movement practice is varied. it involves a lot of walking and at home, cycle-based exercises. also dancing, biking, hiking, and when possible, climbing. i expel tension in ways that sometime look ridiculous. i have this thing called raynaud's phenomenon (thanks to early childhood frostbite), and a condition I lovingly call austistic laughter, which i inherited from my mother (apparently she has it, too).

i strive for balance over perfection. i draw from philosophies of imperfection. 

DIY, or better yet: do-it-together. i'm an aesthete who's never had much money, so i've learned: good taste pays. 

i find great joy in creating intimate worlds within chaotic places. i dream vividly. i live with intention—and a healthy dose of chaos.

work / movement / memory

i speak french fairly fluently (thanks to my childhood education) 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 wine—and managing a band. it wasn't the plan—but then again, what was? 

six years later, i've found myself deeply enmeshed—and yet more and more on the periphery—of a global community: winemakers, importers, restauranteurs, artists, designers, and oenophiles. the list keeps growing. wine became more than a passion, hobby, or job. it became a vessel. a bridge. a portal. it blurred the poetic with the scientific, the ancestral with the surreal. 

and like any true vessel, it carried me somewhere new.

GNOSES, part II

as COVID reshaped time and space, GNOSES evolved into a personal and collective container. inspired by gnosis, the nose, the body, grief, joy, death, design, art and esoterica, ancestral foodways and beverages. influenced by thinkers and figures from Hegel to Lilith, Patti Smith to Eileen Gray. by objects and symbols, like chairs and candles, bones and sigils.

i've since collaborated with individuals and collectives across several fields of interest. but after a string of events—from salons, dinners, and installations—i felt like something was missing. the format felt too curated, too contrived by trends. i missed the ambiance of the classroom. i missed the feeling of shared learning. 

i wondered how i could bridge communities more intentionally. 

and thus came the concept for one of my on-going experiences: WINE POETIC. a living workshop at the confluence of wine, spirits, poetry, and history. a space for fools, bards, and sages alike. it's integrative, improvisational, alive.

now / next

in 2024, i re-entered the mystical river—this time towards design. urban, spatial, functional. 

i've become an isthmus between industries. floating, paddling, drowning, dancing. i've done it all.

career reinvention is humbling, destabilizing, and exhilarating. it requires courage. 

to anyone who's ever leapt: i see you. and i commend you. brave, you are.

GNOSES is both anchor and vessel. it moves. it pauses. it morphs. i'm learning it's whatever i make it, whatever we make it. 

the end (for now)

i'm here to create—alone and together. 

to build. to bridge. to fall. to try again. and again. 

i'm here to meet the world. 

to love and be loved. 

to make a dent. 

to die happy. 

or at least to die trying.

thanks for reading the extended version of who i am. obtuse, unfiltered, and imperfect—as it should be. 

i hope one day we meet (again).

break bread.

and share tales of what makes us feel.