And given that I have decided to keep the golden strand of love interwoven throughout my dissertation, I will point out that Kincheloe’s act of sharing himself in this highly personal manner as he has throughout his work is one of the deepest acts of love possible. He spoke in his last book of putting it all out on the table and, indeed, he did. In support of this assertion about love, in an article, “The Alchemy of Relationship” Tom Kenyon (2012) describes intimate relationships as sacred, demanding the utmost honesty: “Instead of hiding our cards, we lay them all out on the table. . . . And the reason for this radical type of honesty is that without it, the Alchemy of Relationship cannot take place” (para. 4, author’s emphasis). Kenyon was referring to relationships between couples, but the concept applies to all loving relationships and sheds understanding on how Kincheloe may have viewed the commonly used term in critical pedagogy, “radical love.” With this dissertation, I also am laying all the cards out on the table in anticipation of the day when more people will realize what it means to truly be free and share openly and realize the value it provides for moving society forward. Someday the popular notion that it’s narcissistic to do so will be seen for what it is: an ideology to keep us from sharing openly, honestly, and lovingly. In contrast, it seems narcissistic, in my view, to think we can observe, evaluate, and “fix” people using traditional (FIDURODian) social and psychological forms of research. As Kincheloe (2004b) points out, bricoleurs are always “struggling to transcend the traditional observational constraint on social researchers, as they develop new ways of exposing social, cultural, political, psychological, and educational forces not discernible at first glance” (p. 20). This form of research requires great sensitivity, compassion, and empathy.

For those who are not ready to take the giant leap and are in the early process of learning, Kincheloe’s bricolage can be applied in more a traditional sense at the surface level of analysis, but keeping in mind that there are multiple interrelationships that need to be explored even without venturing into the deeper fourth dimensional research. There are countless applications. There is always the requirement for the philosophical dimension, however, to ensure rigor and it is especially powerful when used for a deeper understanding of who we are and what we do in relation to our outside environment and the people we come in contact with. If we do not fully understand ourselves, who we really are or the reality we participate in, how is it we believe we can create accurate representations or interpretations of other people and their reality? The Western worldview with its FIDURODian dictates, as Kincheloe (2008c) has clearly described, is most debilitating when it comes to being able to see and describe reality. Bricolage moves researchers away from the limiting traditional research paradigms by requiring them to investigate different realities and interpretations, highlighting their own subjectivities, based on the acknowledgment that everyone has their own voices. The multidimensional critical complex bricolage even frees us to speak in our multiple voices. This was a major reason I chose this process for my research; I can speak for myself, from my own perspective, using my own interpretations, interpretations of other people’s perspectives, but I do not wish to speak for someone else or claim my understanding is the one true and unchanging reality.

Sadly, I have learned by participating in many different discussion forums that most people do not have their own voice no matter how it appears there is freedom of speech. Many people don’t even want to have their own voice; groupthink is a powerful force and it evidently provides some kind of benefit which I have yet to discover. Even among doctoral researchers, for whatever the reasons, there is simply rarely a desire to engage in discourse, even about their research. Society would gain so much if we learned discourse skills and people felt free to express their true selves, in the moment, and if social networking systems were properly designed for that type of discourse. However, I have learned that as soon as one exercises their “freedom of expression” and encroaches upon some of that “dangerous knowledge” Kincheloe mentions throughout his work, the gatekeepers show up and hegemony is proven to be alive and well. Thus I have been locked out of some social networking sites and blindsided a few times, similar to Kincheloe’s experience in a dark alley (Kincheloe, 2008c, p. 176).

In William Tierney and Yvonna Lincoln’s (1997) book, Representation and the Text: Re-Framing the Narrative Voice, a number of authors present their views about the need to transcend traditional ethnographical approaches in research. There has been great controversy over whether narrative accounts of other people can be produced without causing harm, as I have previously discussed (Lincoln, 1997). Narrative that escapes the abstract third-person perspective for disseminating research is a powerful approach for revealing and contesting power and opening our consciousness to new ways of viewing and being in the world. Critical to the personal reflective ethnography are performance texts. As Denzin and Lincoln (2011) articulate, “Finally, we anticipate a continued performance turn in qualitative inquiry, with writers performing their texts for others” (p. xiii). When this trend takes hold in concert with Kincheloe’s bricolage we will advance in our understanding of what it means to be human. We will be able to relate to each other in genuine and loving ways, and some highly creative and entertaining ways as well. Performance text is a powerful method to combine with bricolage.

During my preliminary forays exploring bricolage I often wrote in the style that would be considered “performance text,” posting my writings on the Internet as blogs, exploring various types and styles of texts, perspectives, ontological positions, rhetoric, and philosophies, ranging from formal academic prose to imaginary and creative writing. Kincheloe (1997) recommends, in spite of objections, that bricoleurs explore using romance, tragedy, satire, comedy, and “absurdism” (pp. 65-66); I used them all and more. I was free from formal academic constraints to examine a wide variety of topics deeply, becoming intimate with them from various perspectives during the early part of my research. Thus narration, and in particular, self-ethnographical or auto-ethnographical and auto-phenomenological self reflection in relation to one’s perceived social positioning disseminated as performance text are important partners to the multidimensional critical complex bricolage. While they do not constitute Kincheloe’s concept for rigorous research because they do not typically incorporate rigorous analyses, they do constitute background research and preparation work that contribute to the final bricolage, and they contribute to the gradual transformation that takes place which is inextricable from the bricolage. There are no academic rules for these explorations; we can take formal and informal approaches. Everyone has multiple voices (Tierney & Lincoln, 1997; Ellis, 1997). I have even argued from positions I don’t agree with as it is a powerful technique for understanding different perspectives. However, many people do not seem to understand that they are merely perspectives, not a fixed reality. And some people have objected over my descriptions of my phenomenological experiences in “other worlds,” highlighting continued Western domination and the enforcing of a “one true reality.” Our other realities are to be hidden and swept under the rug or we risk being permanently, publicly labeled as “unbalanced.” We do have some work to do in FIDUROD Land. Nevertheless, using multiple perspectives even at surface levels gives everyone something to relate to with the bricolage as well as it exposes them to difference, which is critical for developing new ways of thinking and higher levels of cognition.

Thus, performance texts begin with “mystories,” which involve the story-teller’s entire “being,” their timeless biography of the past, present, and future, according to Denzin (1997). And with this work, I extend the concept of “mystories” to encompass multidimensional experiences. Transcending traditional texts and a one true FIDURODian reality to seek answers to epiphanies, existential experiences, and other phenomenological experiences, the performance text travels outside traditional boundaries to explore and perform multiple self-reflexive ways of “being” in the world. This leads quite naturally to the exploration of a variety of ontological perspectives, freeing writer-performers from social, political, and epistemological shackles. Denzin illuminates: “The reflexive performance text must contest the pull of traditional ‘realist,’ theater, ‘method,’ acting (and ethnography)” (p. 181). This literally can involve breaking all of the rules and the effect can be beneficial in many ways. The freedom for “being” and letting go and allowing others to “be” would contribute to a more loving and creative world. While this work by Denzin was written in 1997, progress has been stalled by the recent Bush and Obama’s administrations’ backlash focus on educational standards and push for positivistic research that “measures” learning and teacher effectiveness. As a result, graduate level educational research being produced at some universities is often dry, third person, terse, out-of-context, and overly condensed. It does not produce much in the way of new knowledge but rather tends to result in redundancy and rehashing with little that can be applied to improve education. University research is also increasingly being funded for corporate, political, military, and technocratic purposes and, of course, that funding currently goes primarily to quantitative research. People do what’s funded. Thus, teachers will become obsolete, replaced by computers that can see, hear, and measure everything about its students. Is this really what we wish to create?

Performance text, the telling of our stories is a bit risky because we are telling a different truth from FIDURODian reality, and this is still relatively new territory today. For example, it’s perfectly fine to talk about the problems and how we suffer as long as we do not present real solutions. In fact, the media flaunt our dilemmas in front of our faces; we are told on a daily basis how our economic and social woes are constructed. But get too deep and start talking about the unrevealed dimensions of those problems, real actions for change, and start implementing them as the multidimensional critical complex bricolage has us doing, we are treading in the realm of “dangerous knowledge.” There can be a price to pay for that. There are too many people holding up the matrix who feel threatened when someone comes along and rattles their cage. Thus, not enough educational researchers are diving into the waters of performance text. Denzin (1997) provides guidance to help researchers move forward. He suggests developing a “performance aesthetic” and an “evocative epistemology” that move beyond “the already-seen and already heard” (p. 181). He explains, “This aesthetic will venture into those taboo spaces where the unpresentable in the culture is felt and made visible, seeking a performance sublime” (p. 181). I do believe I hear celestial music.