Reconnection Email to Mike Rafail — 2026-07-27
To: hello@thatlongblackcloud.com (Mike Rafail) Cc: asia@baseworks.com From: pat@baseworks.com Subject: Update from Canada, and finding a time to call Status: Drafted by Claude via Gmail draft (gws CLI), revised by Patrick directly in the draft, sent.
Drafted as an HTML email with the linked items below rendered as hyperlinked text; the YouTube comparison link left as a plain URL per Patrick’s instruction.
Final sent text
Section titled “Final sent text”Hi Mike,
We’ve been meaning to reconnect properly since our last attempt at a call, around the start of COVID. I wanted to give you an update and see if we can actually get that call scheduled this time.
When we first met in 2016, I think I’d already mentioned that my mother was in the early stages of dementia. Between 2016 and 2020, I made around fifteen trips between Japan and Canada to see to her care. At the start of 2020, Canadian law changed in a way that forced our return, and we had to shut down our studio in Tokyo at the same time: government mandates ended in-person activity with no clear timeline for reopening, and we couldn’t carry that overhead through the uncertainty. After almost 8 years of her decline, she sadly passed away in May of 2024. We’ve spent the time since wrapping up her estate, and slowly getting fully back into the work. We’re now getting ready to move on from Canada.
The direction of our work shifted a lot during this period, in a deep R&D phase during my mom’s care. We have no current interest in opening another in-person space. We’re building hybrid programming now, but more importantly, our research has moved toward a specific focus: how a movement practice shapes perception, and how someone’s approach to movement builds their perceptual and sensory resolution. There are physical benefits/outcomes that come with that, but they’re not the point. The shift in perception is the point, and we think it carries across into other parts of the human experience, well beyond movement. Part of what we’re working toward goes beyond movement research specifically: we think there’s room for a genuinely different narrative in education, one built around developing perceptual and self-regulatory capacity rather than treating it as secondary to skill and information acquisition.
One direction this has taken us is toward the clinical and scientific side: we’re exploring Baseworks as a potential intervention in pathological applications of body representation research. That’s part of why we’ve started presenting at academic neuroscience conferences over the past few years, one of which is in the recap links below.
From a first glance, people might think that Baseworks works through a similar mechanism to Fighting Monkey, since both are in the movement research space and both have been inspired by deep work in physical and artistic expression. What we do is practically rooted: repeatable structures, progressions, and concrete tasks, rather than open-ended exploration. Within that practical root, we’re also interested in unconventional collaborations across mediums aimed at concrete outcomes that support both clarity and creativity. We put together a comparison of the two approaches a while back, if it’s useful context: https://youtu.be/pgT9xoUmyWI
A few recent things from both of us, if useful:
- The poster Asia presented at BRNet, the Body Representation Network meeting, in Padova this June: Three Trainable Components of Body Representation
- What’s Between the Notes, on how constraint opens up finer perception, in music and movement both
- Sensitivity as a Trainable Skill
- The Triple Irony of Asking How Dancers Feel, by Asia
- Disembodied by Dance: When Art Hooks an Embodied Mind, by Asia, on a performance of Catherine Gaudet’s “Les jolies choses” we saw in Montréal
We don’t want to go back to Tokyo. Our original plan was always Europe, and we’re deciding now where to base ourselves. It’s less about what any one city offers and more about proximity: being close to the rest of Europe, able to collaborate across academia, art, and science, and being around people who think about the relationship between science, entrepreneurship, creativity, and culture in an unconventional way. Spain is on the list. So is Greece, and Thessaloniki specifically, partly because of something you said about it a while back.
This is really about the impression you left on us when we first met in 2016, and following what you’ve done since. The design and visual identity work you did for Fighting Monkey stood out to us then, and what stands out about That Long Black Cloud now is how you’ve combined a design studio and an interactive space in one project. Once you’ve had a look at what we’re doing, I’d be curious whether you feel Athens or Thessaloniki would fit the backdrop we’re looking for. Either way, I’d like to get a call scheduled and catch up properly.
Would you have time in the next few weeks?
Patrick
Edit history
Section titled “Edit history”Round 1 (Claude, initial draft): Built from Patrick’s dictated notes: reconnecting after a lapsed COVID-era attempt at a call, four years in Canada, mother’s dementia, Tokyo studio closure, shift toward perception-focused research, Europe relocation reasoning, Athens/Thessaloniki, Mike’s Fighting Monkey design work and That Long Black Cloud.
Round 2 (Patrick, voice/content corrections):
- Cut the generic opener (“It’s been too long”) for something more direct.
- Corrected the Canada timeline: not “four years” — since the start of COVID (early 2020).
- Cut “we were really inspired by what he did for Fighting Monkey… That Long Black Cloud also looks very interesting” framing (too close to comparing Baseworks to Fighting Monkey); reframed as: what stands out about That Long Black Cloud is the combination of design studio and interactive space.
- Changed “whether Athens or Thessaloniki makes sense for us” (implies a verdict) to asking whether Mike feels either city fits the backdrop being looked for.
- Added an explicit close: get on a call and catch up, independent of the location question.
- Flagged general “AI slop” register (too informal in places, too generically friendly in others) — asked for a matter-of-fact, direct tone against the voice guide, no metaphors.
Round 3 (Patrick, Fighting Monkey framing + additions):
- Requested a direct statement that Baseworks is not “like” Fighting Monkey, without disparaging Fighting Monkey and without implying the outreach is routed through Fighting Monkey or Joseph.
- Requested the mechanism-comparison framing be softened from an assumed fact to an outside perception: “from a first glance, people might think…” rather than “people sometimes assume.”
- Requested a line on academic/clinical direction: exploring Baseworks as an intervention for pathological body-representation applications, and conference presentations as a result.
- Provided the YouTube comparison video (https://youtu.be/pgT9xoUmyWI) as a reference — Claude watched it via the
/watchskill and pulled the line “if Fighting Monkey is a quest for better communication, Baseworks is a quest for better perception” (~47:00) as grounding for the distinction, though that exact phrase wasn’t quoted in the final copy. - Replaced the “not coming through Fighting Monkey or Joseph” disclaimer with a positive framing: the outreach is about the impression Mike made in 2016 and following his work since.
- Requested a line on Baseworks aiming to build a genuinely different narrative in education, not just a movement-research finding.
- Added mid-draft: include Asia’s “What’s Between the Notes” and “Disembodied by Dance” (on Catherine Gaudet’s Les jolies choses, seen in Montréal) in the recent-work links, alongside “Sensitivity as a Trainable Skill” and “The Triple Irony of Asking How Dancers Feel.”
Round 4 (Patrick, final copy edits, applied directly in the Gmail draft):
- “Sadly, she passed away in 2024.” → “After almost 8 years of her decline, she sadly passed away in May of 2024.” (adds the length of her decline and the specific month)
- “We’ve spent the time since wrapping up her estate, and we’re now getting ready to move on from Canada.” → split, adding “and slowly getting fully back into the work” before the move-on-from-Canada sentence.
- “The direction of our work shifted a lot during this period.” → “…during this period, in a deep R&D phase during my mom’s care.” (names the caregiving years explicitly as an R&D phase)
- “We have no interest in opening another in-person space.” → “We have no current interest…”
- “There are physical benefits that come with that” → “There are physical benefits/outcomes that come with that”
- “carries across into other parts of a person’s experience” → “carries across into other parts of the human experience”
Links used
Section titled “Links used”| Text | URL | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Three Trainable Components of Body Representation | https://baseworks.com/communications/brnet-2026-poster-and-panel-at-the-body-representation-network-meeting/ | Asia (BRNet 2026 poster) |
| What’s Between the Notes | https://baseworks.com/article/whats-between-the-notes/ | Patrick |
| Sensitivity as a Trainable Skill | https://baseworks.com/article/sensitivity-as-a-trainable-skill/ | Patrick |
| The Triple Irony of Asking How Dancers Feel | https://baseworks.com/article/the-triple-irony-asking-how-dancers-feel/ | Asia |
| Disembodied by Dance: When Art Hooks an Embodied Mind | https://baseworks.com/article/disembodied-by-dance/ | Asia |
| Fighting Monkey / Baseworks comparison (plain URL, not hyperlinked, per Patrick’s instruction) | https://youtu.be/pgT9xoUmyWI | — |