Terrorism Hurts Everybody

Hi everybody,

As you may know, today marks the 10th anniversary since Daniel Pearl's death. Pearl was a Wall Street Journal international correspondent, who broke many stories around the world, including an incident where a US airstrike on a supposed weapons factory in Sudan actually hit an aspirin factory. In early 2002, he was sent to Pakistan to search for al qaeda moles in the Pakistani government, was subsequently abducted by one, held for demands from al qaeda, and then murdered by beheading.

When I learned of this act in depth, it was the barbarism of the acts that made me so mad about it. It was a feeling of simultaneous anger and disgust at the act. You know how he was killed? He was decapitated (head cut off), then chopped into ten pieces, and thrown in a ditch someplace in Pakistan. What other word is there for an act like that but pure animal savagery. It's just a horrible thing to do to anyone of any nationality. When I hear about groups like al qaeda carrying out acts like this against people doing their job, I almost understand the kind of guttural anger that drives people like Dick Cheney to want to bomb countries out of existence, or Rick Perry to have criminals executed, even if they are in fact innocent of murders.

It's not that I would ever do these things, or condone them, in any sense, it's just that sometimes, events in the international arena of news sometimes make you so upset that you do get to that point. You do get that level of intense anger, terror, despair about your species, cynicism, a thirst for vengeance. It can be (and sometimes has been) so overwhelming that it scares you. It scares even me how much of that emotion I have sometimes.

This is not the first time I have given issues of an international scope much thought. I came of age, spent my preteens and teens, in a world shadowed by the spector of terrorism. On the morning 9/11 occurred, I was 11 years old, overwhelmed at starting the 6th grade. So it isn't like I've had much choice in what I've become aware of. In past decades, like the 80's or 90's, you could get away with having little or no opinion in international strife and conflicts, because it didn't have a tangible effect on people's lives here in the US. On that Tuesday morning in September 2001, that perception ended abruptly and shockingly.

Since that day, I've felt like there has been a progressively more urgent nature to what happens to people in other countries. So this issue has been on my mind a lot over the years, even though I am still very young. Since I came across this information on Daniel Pearl, I was looking for a way, in my art, to deal with it. I know that won't have an effect, but it will help me express how I feel about this whole issue. Hopefully, just my sharing it with you will have some small effect.

On the one hand, as I said, I do have that anger and fear, but on the other, I do care about other nations, countries and cultures. I want to protect the people of America and the West, but I also don't want to see people on countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Iran, shredded, incinerated, then written off as "collateral damage." Sadly, a flipside of our American optimism is this our blindness to the damage our foreign policies, and wars, can cause. If we are an exceptional country, surely we could never kill someone who didn't deserve it. So I get that there are bad people abroad, but I also think we need to take a look at our own soul.

For a while, I racked my brain to try to come up with a way to express this. The phrase "terrorism hurts everybody" went through my mind, but I wanted to come up with a picture that represented it. That is how I express what I find through art best. I wanted to draw up an image that got at the universality of having life ripped from someone you care about. I got the idea to do this drawing.

I was inspired to do this from the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. On the night of December 21, 1988, the plane, Pan Am 103, was blown up as it was heading from London to New York City. Everybody on the plane (259 people) was killed horrifically, and when the plane hit the ground, it destroyed several houses in the Scottish town of Lockerbie, and 11 people in Lockerbie were killed. The attack was carried out by two Libyan Intelligence agents, one of whom was imprisoned, later released and returned to Libya. There is also good evidence, from official sources, that it was planned within the Libyan government.

Again, the horrible, terrifying way those people were ripped from their lives is gut wrenching. Hearing of it makes it all the more distressing that the perpetrators "got away" and one was sent back home. Again, I had dark thoughts about what I would like do to inflict pain on the people resposible, only to try to take them back soon after. In one account I read, they reported that some christmas presents that the plane was carrying back to the US lay smashed in Lockerbie. That heartbreaking image really stuck with me.

So I decided to make this image as broadly applicable as I could. I wanted it to be about the feeling of a loved one ripped from life. Just the shock, horror, and pain, is something that unites us all. I decided to make this a jarring image of the keychain of a close love falling out of the side of the plane into the darkness. I included the jettisoned christmas present alongside it. This makes it about what terrorism really costs us: people we love, care about, or know. People who don't deserve to be a victim of political or religious hostility. Thus, it applies beyond just the bombing of Flight 103, or terrorism from the Middle East.

It becomes about us all. What do we lose from terrorism? We lose fellow human beings, we lose humanity. By the way, the majority of victims of Islamic terrorism are themselves Muslims. 30 of the victims of September 11th (a full 1% of them) were Muslims, including people on the flights to Los Angeles, and Firefighters, Police Officers, and Paramedics in New York.

Listen to this beautiful video, done by Queen Rania of Jordan, about victims of terrorism who live in the Middle East and pratice Islam.

This inspired me to make this more of a universal statement. That's where I came up with the statement "Terrorism Hurts Everybody." While focusing on this "clash of civilizations" that has claimed many lives, we lose sight of those things in common that give us our humanity. We need, therefore, to reclaim this sense of common experience across borders or cultures. We need to understand that when one act of violence is carried out, someone always suffers, lives with pain for weeks, months, years afterward.

To return to my starting point, Daniel Pearl was killed because he was doing his job. He was doing his work one day, and then he got killed in this horrible way. The same could be said of nearly all other victims of contemporary terrorism. It's just that his job was to highlight goings-on in the world few of us ever encounter. His job may be one of the most crucial in this world.

Thankfully, his death was not for nothing. Now our world is getting more and more interconnected, in an economic sense, in a communal sense, in a cultural sense, in an ethical sense. This is made possible by technology like the laptop I am using right now, and the IPhone I currently own. What is diclosed in Washington DC, can now be passed on to journalists in Europe, and can launch an uprising in the Middle East.

The good thing about this interconnectedness is that it makes it much harder for us to kill indiscriminately. At the same time that technology is bringing us farther apart, it is bringing us closer together. Now our humanity is being brought to bear, as cultures around the world are not as far apart as they used to be. I do not believe this is the end-all-be-all of what needs to happen on Earth, but I do think this is the beginning. The beginning of a journey that needs to happen.

Well, more on the subject of 9/11 in the next post. I was thrilled to finally get to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last Saturday night. I would have blogged about it sooner, but for the last few days, I have been tied up with homework, already, yes. I'll have that for you tomorrow.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Creating Three Dimensions

Hi there,

I'm back already. My schedule is still manageable this early in the semester, but once I get toward the last few weeks, with all the long essays and projects due, and the tests, I will have very little, if any, time to blog, and around April and May the entries will probably have to go on the backburner for a while, until the semester ends. Anyway, for the new few weeks I should have a good amount of time open for blogging.

Anyway, I had some time open in between classes yesterday, around 11-ish. I was able to grab about 45 minutes to an hour at a table on the top floor of my campus's main library. Most of the floors have this big study area, with a huge section of windows looking North (away from the ocean), but on the top floor, they have these tables with these really comfortable chairs right next to the windows, and from there, you have this spectacular view of the whole LA area, all the way up to the San Gabriel Mountains.

The inside of the Library's top floor study area (taken from my Iphone).

My main goal was to get some reading done. I was doing some play reading from The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh, and Death of a Salesman. The Pillowman is pretty dark and twisted comedy, but there is lots of interesting character development in it, which really makes it worth reading. Today, I really got into reading Death of a Salesman. I worked with it about a year ago, and I've just gotten it out again. Anyway, I was staring out the window, with my personal notebook out. It was a fully-illuminated day, and the mountains were clearly visible, in all their towering presence.

This was the view from the Library's top floor. This was also taken from my Iphone. Blow it up, examine carefully the view in the picture, and then look at my drawing of it, seen again below for comparison's sake.

If you blow it up, you can see some of the small details which were nevertheless done with care. This was a more rough, approximate rendering of a scene than I usually do. I do not always do the grand drawings with the full coloring job. However, I knew this one was worth putting on the blog from the time I was working on it yesterday morning. The point of drawing it so rough was to create the visual feeling of depth, of three dimensional space and objects, on the page.

I did a similar work about a year ago. When I was up in San Francisco, on my own last April, I was walking past Ghiardelli Square, and I found this view that looked north across the Bay, with Alcatraz, and the hills up in Marin County (toward Sausalito and Novato) were nice and green.

I took this picture to give you a sense of it. I decided, however, that this wouldn't do on its own, and given that I sometimes like to challenge myself, since this challenge is what makes creative work vital, alive, I sketched this in as little time as I could do it. This is the "finished" product of what I came up with.


All told, this work took twenty minutes to complete. I was sitting on these big concrete, stadium-style steps, in the shade overlooking Ghiardelli Square and the Bay for that time, while I was working on it. I put this up because I took a similar approach here. I was trying to give the feeling that the mountain actually goes back in space, that there is this large bay between you and it. Here, I had to do it as quickly as possible, so I used the bare minimum of lines I needed, indicating the form of whatever it was that I was seeing. An example of this would be, if you were trying to draw someone's arm, and it was coming toward your eye, to draw a cyllinder, and the circles indicating it coming toward you. It's a basic trick most drawing teachers and instructors teach, and it works. It really gives that depth to what it is you are trying to produce.

Perspective is what a lot of people get hung up on. Perspective can be a really tricky bastard. It can be difficult to accomplish for people who don't draw often. You can indicate it, though, if you have the patience to take that step. Look at the difference between a perspective drawing, and a line drawing.

You see? There is just a line indicating the top of the mountains. Not nothing, but still, doesn't go as far as it could. Now look at the original again.



See the difference? It goes so much farther in showing you the depth, all three dimensions of the scene. Add in the shadows and that makes the perspective so much more apparent. You can see those structural lines that I described better in this one than you could in the other one I showed.

One thing people say a lot is "Oh, I can't draw! I'm no good at it!" Bull. It isn't about "being good at drawing." It's about getting into what you're doing. You have to have enough patience to express yourself through it. Having patience is the key. That's what a lot of people don't have. I didn't have a lot of patience when I was young. You can learn to draw like a photograph, which I do, but I only do it because I have been doing it for 15 years or longer, at least since I was 6. You can do it, but you don't need to do it. All you really need is a willingness, a patience, and a creative drive to communicate something through the image. I'll have more material for you soon.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Why the Tennessee Tea Party Made a Serious Mistake

Hi there everybody,

Well, it's back to political issues again. I just had to share this little tidbit with you. The reason I am putting this up is because this goes back to the tone of discussion I would like to set. This is a tone of honestly, a willingness to talk about the issue, with all the truths of the people and parties present, however uncomfortable or jarring they may be. To me, this also requires a tone of compassion, of understanding accepting the other, whether you push back on them, call them out, or even take some action against them.

Anyway, the Tennessee Tea Party has demanded to the State's Legislature that, as well as rejecting the Affordable Care Act of two years ago, the history of our "Founding Fathers" and the country's development, be "more truthful," to use their terminology. According to them, the characters of the Founders have been "distorted," treated "unfairly." Huh? Really? Somehow, in Tennessee, of all places, Washington and Jefferson are getting a bad rep. I didn't see that one coming. In all seriousness, I believe that the Tennessee Tea Party here has made a huge mistake (like G.O.B. has below). Here's why.

This re-writing of history (because that's what it is, no matter what anyone wishes to call it) creates a convenient fiction. It promotes a simplistic, almost childlike, view of our history, our heritage, as a country. It just erases facts, important facts about what happened in our past. Don't like some aspect of our past? Just write it out of our textbooks.

This reeks of Ministry of Truth-style renderings of historical knowledge. That's why it is scary to think that one ideological faction could bend, knead, and press history into whatever shape or narrative they wish. If this is the case, how can we have freedom? How could anyone have real freedom? The freedom to explore their world, and reach whatever ideas or conclusions they believe to be right. The truth is, the children of Tennessee would not get the variety of perspective they need to be truly free to see our good work, our mistakes, and ultimately our potential as a people.

A dangerous aspect of this is that the "Founding Fathers" are turned into Gods on Earth, this time at the expense of the non-whites in the America of 1776. The submitted request to the Tennessee Legislature explicitly said this. "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership." What this means is that the petitioners here want the curriculum to take out people and incidents which bring to light the white population's oppression of slaves, or their transgressions against the Indians.

Another criticism of theirs is that "the constitution created a republic, not a democracy." I find that interesting. The emphasis here is on the Constitution as it was first ratified back in 1787. They believe that the Constitution must never, ever change from the way it was first conceived of back then. It must never move toward a more democratic framework or expand to "create more rights." Here is the problem with that mindset. In that version of the Constitution, slavery was perfectly accepted, and runaway slaves were even required to be turned in. Slaves had no worth of their own, yet were counted as just three-fifths of a person. Indians were required to be hunted down, butchered and killed. Women were given absolutely no rights outside the home.

The sad truth is that many of the Founding Fathers (with the notable exception of Thomas Paine, who was a real visionary) had slaves of their own. There was, in fact, much concession to the slaveholders in the South, particularly Virginia and Georgia, in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. The Slave trade was at its height right in the late 18th century, around the time that revolutionary spirit caught fire in what became the US.

The Tea Party people down in Tennessee, as well as Texas and other places, will not accept these parts of our history. When Michele Bachmann intimated that the Founding Fathers ended slavery, she wasn't joking, and she wasn't just being stupid. That is what she, and many other people in this country, do believe, and want to keep believing: that the Founding Fathers can do no wrong. That America can never do anything wrong.

The danger of this belief is that it ignores, or even tries to justify, the very real wrong things done in the name of America. Like the systematic destruction and genocide of the Indians, their ethics, and their way of life. Or the violent uprooting of millions of Africans, tearing apart their culture, and stripping them of their humanity in a land where they were beaten down for the sake of profit and goods in America and Europe. Or the deeply entrenched cultural animosity, across history, towards the French, the Germans, the Eastern European Jews, the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, and now the Mexicans. If these are ignored, we are blind to our mistakes, and we will be doomed to the same cycle of animosity that has played out since America began to exist.

However, you can't blame the Tea Party people much. Well, you can if you choose, but it would be wrong. After all, seeing the shadow of something you hold so dear is tough. It would be very easy to simply not accept these facts, wish them away and , when given the chance, to simply write them out of history. It seems like you've defeated the issue, the knowledge of the transgression just disappears. However, the animosity does not. People not in the favored race or class will remember it, every time the subtle contempt comes at them.

Facing such unpleasant, even painful truths of our past is a part of growing up. It is a part of viewing our own heritage and society in a mature way. Being patriotic has nothing to do with being blind to our past, or our country being without flaws. It comes from knowing this country, its victories in the quest for truth, justice, freedom, and its downfalls. To me, it's similar to how you would love a member of your family. You would not pretend they were perfect, you would know they had flaws, but care for them, and help them heal anyway.

Paradoxically, it becomes easier to live with and love somebody when you don't have to pretend they are perfect. This goes the same with the United States of America and its people. Like I said before, I think there is a discussion that needs to happen concerning race and class history in this country. We must confront the ways, individual and systemic, intentional or unintentional, that we have marginalized and ignored the poor and the immigrants. This requires us not to blame each other excessively, but rather, to see our abuses for what they have been, in all that it entailed. We must see the dark flip side of the early prosperity of our country-the campaign against the Indians' culture and the slave trade, for all the suffering they caused.

Recently, I have been reading A People's History of the United States by the late Howard Zinn. It shows, through extensive and unknown research and documents, how the beginning of the United States was not a 100% new, radical declaration of the freedom of humanity, but a continuation of many cultural defects of old-racism, sexism, slavery, contempt for the "inferior" (i.e. native) cultures. It is absolutely required for a comprehensive understanding, what is contained in it.

I think that this also misses something, though. There are two strains of cynicism; one says that because we are the "right" ones, whatever we do must therefore be right. the other says that because what you see is not as pure, wholesome and clear cut as it seems, real transcendence is not possible, and it is pointless to try to achieve it. These are both ideas you must be careful of. I think the Tennessee Tea Party is trying to shut down this type of discussion at the very time it is most needed. Thankfully, there are a small number of people who realize that while we do not live up to our own mythologies, we nevertheless have our drives of compassion and a longing for connection.

Wow! That went on way longer than I expected it to. I always promise myself, Okay, this is just gonna be a short entry. Then, sure enough, it just comes out, and then I've written several paragraphs. Thanks for reading. I hope you bear with this, even though it can be hard to focus on these long entries. So, what do you think? Does learning about, for instance, our history with slavery scare you, or upset you? Do you believe that it wasn't really as bad as they say? Or were some of your ancestors perpetrators, or victims, of our country's racial or class divides?

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

To Be or Not to Be (In the Theatre)

As You Like It, as performed by CSULB's University Players (Fall 2011).

Hi there,

I've gone back to class today. This is both good news and bad news. First, it is good news because I will be able to interact more, and thus I will have more material for this blog. My daily interactions with people, and with new discoveries, are what power my creative work, and thus this blog. Over the last year and a half, I have gotten to enjoy going to college. It was like, at that time, it suddenly clicked like "Oh, so that's how this whole thing works, and that's what everyone enjoys about this." This was the ability to relate, connect with other people. I began branching out, and enjoying it.

The bad news, however, is that with all the work, I will not have as much time open for this blog. As I have gotten older, I have had steadily less and less time to devote to my drawings and other work. I have gotten more space in college, in between classes, to read and write stuff to myself. One thing about college is that you can have as much as four or five hours in between classes. This has given me some blocks of time where I can exercise my own gifts of expression.

The highlight of my day was going back to my theater class I am taking. I don't know whether to spell it thea-ter or thea-tre, like the old English spelling. Anyway, this was a course called "performance and rehearsal." What this means is that we, the actors, will prepare our scenes and material, and then, the second half of class, a group of directors (undergrads joining us from another class) will enter, and we work with them, we get their notes on the scene.

I'll tell you, when I got there, I got excited to see my friends that I knew there. Half the reason I enjoy being in the theater department is the kind of people that I have met there. Most of the time before I got involved in theater, my encounters with people on campus were passing. I couldn't really connect with anyone. In most of the lecture hall classes (most lower-division classes required are in lectures), you don't have any more interaction with the person next to you than "Is anyone sitting here?" So, outside of a few club meetings I went to, I had few long-term interactions with people where I went. Certainly, I hadn't had anything that moved my life.

I have only been involved in Theater and acting activity for a short two years now. In that two-year time span, my life and the way I live it have had a sea change. This very blog is evidence of that change. At the end of the Fall 2009 semester, I needed 3 fine arts units, so I was given a choice between Studio Art, which seemed like a natural choice, and Intro to Acting. I forget exactly what it was, but something in me was telling me that I should take the acting. So I signed up for it for the Spring of 2010, even though I had no idea how I would survive the first week.

When I went in, we began work off impulse and visualization. Again, the memory is slightly cloudy to me now, but it clicked with me. All the activities we did were to get us interacting, not just for its own sake, but to realize what drove our actions. About three weeks into the class, it started to become the thing. It crept in as the thing I looked forward to doing, come Monday and Wednesday afternoon. It slowly began to filter out into my understanding of others, too. When I viewed people living their lives as characters on a stage, it inspired much more of a connection from me to them. I could see people honestly, and with empathy.

Once I decided to go into the classes that the majors in Theater went into, everything began to shift. I was no longer the same guy I was before. So, over the past year, I have been adapting to my approach to the way I live my life. This was what I meant when I said that 2011 was "The Year of Living Creatively." It meant applying the way I look at acting, and the collaboration of roles, to the way I have interacted with the people I knew and met, with the knowledge that I find, and with what I knew to be true. Slowly, I have been learning to look at the things I used to avoid, to deny, to look away from.

However much I have come to love the theater, there are things about all this that make me nervous. First, I am worried about becoming just the caricature people paint of actors. That is, the prima donnas who only know how to make themselves look good. The fear of it has largely disappeared for me. I assuage myself by remembering that there are prima donnas in every field who have no appreciation for anything that is not themselves. Also, when you know and care for people that are doing it, the stereotypes lose their importance.

Also, there is this fear about commiting totally to a life in the theater. Even with this wonderful thing that has entered my life, I feel this combination of beign trapped, locked into one path (after all, what are you gonna do with a theater BA besides work in theater?), and feeling like this commitment is too much, too soon. I still have lots of things I want to do in this world. It isn't that I have no idea what I want to do, it's that I have so many ideas of things I want to do. Call me the stereotypical male, here, but I've got some commitment issues.

Another issue is the money. Now, you probably know of the term "starving artist." People in the arts do not make a lot of money, and they have very sporadic periods of work. In the case of actors, they always have to be looking for the next role, unless they have some long-term contract and even then, it's tentative. The only way such a career would be recognized as valid was if the actor got famous and rich. So that's a sad commentary on how we treat the arts. They're useless to the society at large unless you can make lots of money and become famous. As a result, the people that tend to make it big in acting are the most competitive, type-A personalities. Unfortunate, since there are many people that have that gift, that have some message in their being that needs to be heard, that aren't great at making it in this type of world.

So what can I do? I am torn between the world that I knew, the world of safe career paths, of clear trajectories, of clear problems and solutions, and that of creativities, where each person I meet isn't just a person, or a caricature, or just a cog in some big machine. Here, it is as if each person has their own micro world that they carry with them, that they share with their friends, lovers, and family. There are things about the world I knew that draw me in, as there are things about this new world that do. It seems that this new view of the world has been with me all along, just waiting for the right influences to cultivate it.

I have currently come up with the idea to major in communication studies, and minor in theater arts. Part of me feels like this is a lame-ass compromise, but I really love both departments, and it feels to me as if that is the deal that will work best. I really do love the communications department. I'll tell you why, simply because I had one lecture class there my freshman year (three years ago), and it was just damn fun and informative. I could have listened to the professor all day. It had a similar affect, albeit on a more subdued scale, as learning how to act. Now, the field of communications is much more broad, in that it can be communications in business, advertising, counseling, organizations, and culture.

I honestly believe that if people knew how to communicate better, the quantity of suffering in the world would decrease greatly. Oddly enough, the theater experience, because it is about an experience, is about communicating too. It is about showing the truth of you, the actor, and the director and the crew have pieces of their truths, their worlds, which the theater needs to operate. The whole thing is happening right in front of the audience. So you have that experience of the actors interacting with each other, elements of the play interacting, and them all interacting with the audience's feedback.

So theater relies on effectively communicating. It involves picking up the tempo of these interactions, which is what drives the audience's interest in the production. It allows the audience to look at the story, the setting, or the characters, think back to it and say, "Hey, remember that thing? You remember it? That just blew you away, didn't it?" It is in these experiences that we grow, that we become better and richer, as human beings in our understanding of each other and this world. It is that experience that I want to give people, in whatever field I go into, whether it's the theater, or something else. As my first acting teacher told me, "It'll never be a waste."

My perception of time unfolding has also changed since I began studying acting. Before, I went to school with the idea that I would some day earn a degree, and then some time after that, I would get a job, which would one day lead to a career. Now, it is as if each semester, every week, every day, has become something significant, alive, important in and of itself. I can feel the change happen. This can be frightening, because so much change is jarring, but there is something wonderful about the discovery. I still don't have a good idea where I'll be in the next five, ten years, but that's not that bad anymore. That's why I sign off each post with "keep wondering, folks," because being able to keep discovering keeps you feeling engaged. I think everybody should have a chance to do that in life.

Well, I've got a few ideas in the works, but like I said, I've got more schoolwork ahead of me now. I'll blog whenever I can, and we'll have a good time. I really look forward to being able to write on this blog. I'm really excited about the direction this is going.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Citizens United: Two Years Later

I did this back in 2007 as taking note of the Corporate influence on our society.

Hi there everybody,

I remember very clearly the week of January 21, 2010. I remember, first, because it rained ferociously all that week, from Monday, the 18th, all through the next Friday, the 22nd. It rained so hard that my college's student union, that it sustained some rain damage and had to be closed for the next three months while it was repaired. The second reason is that on that particular Thursday, the decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission came down. I know I've been on a political kick the last two days, but stick with me here, and I'll tie it back to creativity.

Now, I could bore you right out of your mind with the Supreme Court jargon and legalese (read this if you're in the mood), but essentially, what that verdict said was that money given to campaigns constitutes free speech, therefore, any restriction on it would be unconstitutional. The ruling went farther to declare that all corporations and unions have the same legal right to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns as individuals do. This ruling derives from ambiguities in rulings going as far back as 1886. The question at stake here pertains to the rights of legal entities, like corporations, under the 14th Amendment.

I remember that this was a day when I was, truthfully, very scared for the future of our society. I don't mean this in a rhetorical way, I mean, very literally, that I was scared. I knew that what this ruling was really meant to do was undo all of the rules to limit the influence of money in decision-making. This would make an already-atrociously bad situation much, much worse. I didn't know how much our society might corrode. To me, on that day, and the day after, it looked to me like there was a very real chance that we could go the way of those European countries in the 30's.



I saw this newscast on that night. At the time, I felt like "This is it. Now we're gonna be on our way to a police state." I felt this because the big corporations would give the money to the uber-authoritarian political leaders, who would pass laws making the monolithic power of corporate America invincible, with anyone with any shred of power having to kiss their rings, and any small criticism punishable by God knows what. This was a classic case of worst-case scenario thinking. Like the man on the TV said "Who's gonna stop them now?"

Looking back, the rhetoric of this newscast seems hyperbolic, with the host, Keith Olbermann, infusing as much drama into it as possible. He does raise points that need to be recognized, it is just how he raises them that gives me pause. However, the changes since that infamous ruling, sanctioning any and all financial corruption, have been more subtle. Perhaps they, the financial powers, still couldn't afford to be too blatant about cashing in.The process of purchasing our "leaders" has not occurred in one fell swoop, but rather, as a decades-long process. One that started long before Citizens United came up for argument.

In America, over the years, the "private sector" has gained this ring of absolute faultlessness to it. People who praise it often evoke the image of the small business owner, toiling with great integrity in the store down the street. They invoke legendary names like Henry Ford, or more recently, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, or even Sam Walton, owner of the first Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Arkansas. What they neglect to mention are these things. First, that as more power and clout amasses among the wealthy, there is much less room for people to make it to those ranks, or just to realize their dreams. Second, too heavy an emphasis on competition diminishes our link with our common experience.

Why would I be saying this? In the current model we have, a corporation's sole purpose is to continue making money for its shareholders. Because of this, they have to do anything to remain profitable. Once a company is chronically un-profitable, it is subsumed. That's the nature of "competition" and "free enterprise" that are so above scrutiny or criticism, of any sort. Look at how much power and influence corporations hold over our society. That's why I included the drawing of the various logos at the top. Big corporate names are found all over our buildings, cities, arts centers, even sports arenas. Those seldom have the names of Athletes or folk heroes anymore, just corporate sponsors, like "Home Depot Center," or "Goldman Sachs Stadium."

One question I must ask here is What about the people who worked their asses off in that not-profitable company? That's where the shadow of corporate society appears.

In fact, caring for workers could take away from the corporation's ability to make money. If that hurts profitability, the company will just have to make those people live on less. That means workers will have to work longer, go through more stress, for the same or less in benefits. In this competition, their work no longer is anything of value, just a means to the end of profitability on the company's records. Another means of getting to that end would be to downsize them and uproot those people's lives. This competition is beginning to take its toll.

The need to profit or die in work necessitates companies being as reckless with risk as possible, whether it's a big bank with new financial instruments, or an energy company with new resources for drilling. This means the risks have to be downplayed. This is where things get hairy. Which would be more cost-efficient to do? To, for instance, install a filter in a refinery that cleaned out any pollutants in the smokestack? Or to just ship the material to some body of water to be dumped? Then, if a bunch of people nearby mysteriously begin getting sick and dying, what do you do? Would a good option be to spend money, to elect a senator or governor, to write a law letting you manufacture, and pollute, to keep making money and staying profitable? Probably, even if that means employees have to be short-changed, or the world polluted, or people getting sick or dying.

I say all this to emphasize this point: corporations do not suffer. They do not have to work on poverty wages. They do not have to live in fear of starvation, sickness, or death. They do not get sick, they do not die, and they will not be imprisoned or executed if they steal or kill. I do not say this do disparage free enterprise, or business, or competition. Realize, though, that said concepts are, in many ways, blind to the hardships of our lives. There is nothing wrong with these things. There is nothing wrong with cells in your body multiplying. However, when this gets out of control, the body can get serious, or deadly, cancer.

I believe that we need some balance between the government and business sectors of this country. My point here is that the motive to profit and compete to make the best product needs to be in check. We must have a public entity to encourage unity, collaboration, and to keep businesses working for the good of their clients. They need to be kept from buying off their cops.

Okay, so the profit motive can lead to destruction, but what should we do? In addition to the current model of profit for the shareholders, there need to be more people to whom the corporation is accountable. For instance, the employees, and all the stakeholders in a company's well-being.

Recently, I found this logo in a bike store in Downtown Long Beach. Underneath, I found a charter entitled "Declaration of Interdependence." It listed the missions of a "b" corporation,which spoke beautifully to what we need in our enterprise arena. A model based on workers' needs need not decrease freedom, it could increase the amount of freedom and well-being in our lives.

There have been many established enterprises in which the workers are the stakeholders to which the company much answer. In Spain, there are a number of such companies that operate under the title "mondragon." My brother just brought me back a book from Argentina called Sin Patron (Without a Boss), in which workers in a factory walk out to form a worker-owned collective factory.

In order to accomplish such things, we need to begin to view life in a more creative way. If the employers and the employess were in closer proximity, it would be so much more difficult for the former to exploit the latter when they needed to boost profit margins. All this entails shifting the focus from sole profit and advantage to the meaning of our work. This purpose (i.e. whatever the enterprise is set up to do) must become something that we do first, because it serves a need, and second, because it is what we enjoy. This I believe, would change the nature of what it means to go into business, or to work. This is not the end of my discussion on these subjects, but the beginning of a conversation that will continue, with the help of this blog.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Visceral Anger

(Above photo from the Washington Post)



Hi there,

Well, everyone, today I'd like to talk about some things that make me angry, and how I'd like to get through that anger. I didn't want to get involved in horse race politics, for two reasons. First, because I knew that might alienate some people if I were to talk about why one party, or one ideology was the greatest, while the other was just deplorable. This would invavlidate the readers of that party or ideology, which I don't want to do here.

Second, this blog is called Art From The Heart, which evolved from the previous Daily Reeder ( a much more explicitly political blog, but still more self-expressive than your average blog on these issues), and part of the Fuzz Memorial Project, which is still in its conception stages. So for these issues, I only want to talk about them in so far as they relate to my art, or others' art, or creative expression, particularly as a means of enriching humanity.

I also refuse to get totally swept up in this Presidential Race. You might realize that I have a certain position, however, I refuse to simply plug for any national party, or political ideology. I will tell you what appeals to me, in some cases, about it, but I take great pains to see the drawbacks for what they are, and keep it at arm's length. Just the other day, though, something crossed the line with me. This is something that I need to talk about now. It was a comment Newt Gingrich made at the South Carolina debate this past Monday.

Something about this set me off. I knew there was something bad about Newt, but the totally smug, egotistical "Let me tell you the facts of life, because you don't know any better," attitude was what was totally unjustified. Juan Williams made a totally valid point here. The epithet of "Food Stamp President," and saying that poor kids should "mop the floor and clean the bathroom," to earn money are absolutely insults. That is an attack on the poor, but especially the black segment of the poor. To add insult to injury, this debate took place on Martin Luther King Day.

You can see the incredible disdain on Gingrich's face as Williams asks him that. Williams at least brought this fact in the discussion, setting it up as a softball, and Newt spat all over it. By the way, what Gingrich is saying, when he says "own the job," is "be a janitor, because that's all you'll ever be good for, is cleaning rich kids' toilets." Don't rely on those goddamn Union workers, who dare to bargain for just a passable wage, instead, have those lazy poor kids pulled out of school, to work slaving away at the feet of the wealthy kids, because that's the only skill they'll ever be good for. They're just so fucking lazy that they need to work.

Now, if a kid wants to be a janitor, that's a different story. A child should have every right to pursue the type of work they want, be it rich or poor. So a poor child should have the right to be a janitor, if they want. They should also have the right to go to school, to get into college, and to get into the field the want, whether it's from a degree in engineering, economics, architecture, theater or communications. I believe that this not just better for the kids going into these fields, it is better for society itself, precisely because these kids are happier at their work. I elaborated on the importance of finding work that gives you joy yesterday. According to Newt Gingrich, and many others, these poor kids just "come from lazy families," and "need to learn to work." They need to work like children in China work in toxic factory settings, like this one.

The sickest part of this whole episode is how nuts the crowd went with applause. Listen to how absolutely disdainful Newt Gingrich was, in his speech, about these kids in the families. His little point about "those kids went and got jobs when they were little, why are you being so coddled?" was another wrong point. All kids are not meant to be forced to go to work, under pressure, when they are 10 or 11 years old. These young children should be given the time, the space, and the resources to grow, and then they will work more effectively for their employers.

None of this mattered though, to the people in that auditorium. It was that horribly sick mass cruelty toward the poor, and those absent from this discussion that really put this over the line. This amount of riotous applause are unprecedented for a debate. It is literally sickening to watch so many people approve so loudly of such a deplorable statement. This morning, when I was getting ready to do this post, my stomach was literally turned.

This type of anger reminded me of something else I heard that made me really mad. Remember when Sarah Palin first came on the scene, and gave that big Convention speech when she was nominated? There was this snide, spiteful line she threw out against community organizers.



This also got a huge line of applause, and conservatives continue to mock, belittle, and put down the work of community organizers. The most galling thing about this was, practically nobody in the media, not even liberals, talked about this for the rest of that campaign cycle. It was like nobody else noticed or cared that this insult had taken place. Against people with too little clout to defend themselves, no less.

All anyone seemed to be talking about was how provocative Sarah Palin was, or she was a brave feminist, or Look at how stupid Sarah Palin is! This last line was what frustrated me about the liberals. Call her out! I would always think to myself. All this talk about this shiny new woman, and since she's a woman, anyone who dares object is an evil misogynist. All the focus on her, none on the people she so gleefully pillaried. The only thing worse than an injustice, is an injustice that is not recognized as such.

This brings me back to Newt in this debate. There is also the subtle context of racial animosity against the poor in the inner city, many of whom are black. This was in South Carolina, where unemployment is much higher than the national average. It is sad to see, but many poor people in this country, who are victimized, marginalized, turn on each other. So poor whites in South Carolina blame those poor, mainly black, families who "have no history of work," as Gingrich put it.

I do not believe that Newt Gingrich, or the Republicans, are racists. There is a dialogue that needs to happen in this country around race and ethnicity. When you use the word racist, everybody shuts this discussion down, and they retreat into their defensive modes. So I hesitate to throw that bomb. I don't think it would be accurate to call them racists. What I believe Newt, and the others, are doing here, is appealing to the worst parts in the audience members.

This part in all Americans has been pushed numerous times, particuarly in the last few years. All this job loss, job insecurity, money and insurance insecurity, deeper and more terrifying law enforcement power, have been making everyone crazy, even (or, perhaps, especially) me. The economy is still on shaky ground, and just the threat that the economy could turn South again, would mean people could lose their jobs, their homes, their health resources, even perhaps their life, if they get sick.

So those people in the auditorium in South Carolina probably have lots of anger, and anxiety. Here, Newt is challenged on one of his points on "those lazy poor kids," and Newt smacks down the guy who asks him if this could be offensive. This forcefully confirms the order they have been given, that "those people on food stamps" need to just "get to work." The punishment of these out-groups supports the powerful, leader-type presence, like the order that "the Jews are enslaving us," or "the blacks are an inferior race," to borrow two historical examples. They are never shown that "those people" have more in common with them than they realize.

The media is constantly talking about the traits and doctrines that divide us. Races, economic strata, political ideology, these are all ways that we are pitted, sometimes violently, against each other. We see the other groups as having no human worth, or redemptive qualities. To us, the others are just evil, through and through. While we hate them, we are also terrified of them. This pattern existed in the minds of those at the debate, with the inner-city and black poor.

What I have come to realize is that most politics, journalism, and so forth is devoit of humanity. There is mainly a framework of us, the enemy, and how to maximize good for our side, and shut the others out. The downside of this competitive political arena is that there is little room for people to come together around a collaborative solution. It has to be this side, this party, this nation wins, and the other must be ignored. People's experiences of poverty, war, terror and all the rest are left out. In this way, our societal landscape is reduced to teams jockeying for an advantage.

This robs us of our humanity. It must be noted that while those of us for reforms have our deep, rich experiences of life, so do those working against us. Recognizing this is, in part, what distinguishes this country from the more despotic ones. We must also realize that our "leaders" (be it Newt Gingrich or Barack Obama) have their small human experiences too, although these might be darker. They had to get rid of these sides of themselves in order to make it to the top. This makes it easier for them to manipulate, shut down, pit their groups against others, and be so insincere.

This is part of why Gingrich uses these code words that are so divisive. In the world of Gingrich, you are either a "virtuous, Christian job creator," or an "elitist liberal," or one of the "poor that won't work, like you and I." In order for our society to recover, we need to be truthful about leaders like Gingrich, Obama, and others. We must realize that they are ultimately interested in their prosperity. We need to see each others' faults and shortcomings, and those in ourselves, and then accept them, or point out and correct the aggregious flaws.

I realize how powerful this visceral anger can be, particularly when you feel so right, and they are so wrong. I used to get very impulsively angry, when I was being abused. I would yell, scream, swear, sometimes hit people. I knew that my impulsive anger would make me do something I would regret later, even though it was so strong. I have been working on a way to say exactly what is making me mad, even as I recognizeand honor the other. This is a tough thing to do, but I am ambitious about this goal.

In case you get mad, listen to this video:



This is from the little-known 2003 comedy Anger Management, which starred Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson. Maybe we need some national campaign of anger management, so that we can solve our serious crises without losing our shit. Maybe that's what we can call the program. When you get really mad, I have found that it is helpful to have some small to do, like take a few deep breaths, to focus your mind. I wanted to boldly, candidly, but relatably face this anger that I used to avoid, if I could. I have turned my creative energy toward the things I previously tried to stay away from, like my deep anger. Your creative lifestyle is much more potent, and much more important, when focusing on something that dogs at you. Thanks for listening.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

"Eventually, Everything Connects"

Hi there,

Well, I'd like to talk tonight about Charles and Ray Eames, two people who I hadn't thought much about until recently, but have been a subtle influence of mine over the years. The reason I bring them up here is because I just saw a documentary on them (Eames: The Architect and the Painter), and I found that the way they worked and what they accomplished had a lot in common with what I desire. As you might know, here in the L.A. area, an exhibit will be shown on the Eames' well-known house up in Pacific Palisades that they designed for themselves in the 1949. Ice Cube did a promo for this exhibit. I didn't know Ice Cube had that background.



The Exhibit is on L.A. art. Anyway, what fascinates me about the Eameses is that they brought all of these elements and fields of design together. They worked in architecture, funiture and industrial design, photography, film and interior design. This diversity in work was inspiring to me, since I've always been a jack-of-all-trades type myself, and I have had diverse elements that I am attracted to. I am interested in politics, environmental issues, interacting with people, capturing images, designing worlds and telling stories that matter. I haven't thought of a good way to do all these things in my career life.

The Eameses also combined their personal, creative lifestyle with their work. For them, there was no separation between life and work and fun. That is really a model for the type of work I would like to be in in the long term. I was pondering this the other day, and I am beginning to realize that your work should really be connected to your joy. It should be something that grabs some part of your soul, and moves it, takes it on a journey. Otherwise, you'll end up like Peter from Office Space, schlepping to work every day, but hating it the whole time.

Breaking out on this new path was not easy for Charles to do. He had a wife, a child, and following an uncertain path in design was not accepted by his then wife. So they split up, and then he proposed to Ray. The two were collaborating on a design for a simple chair, but it fell through in 1940. When World War II was going on, and their design ideas worked well for building more efficient splints than what the military had. So they went to work mass-producing them.

After the war ended, they returned to the original chair design, forming this design. This time, they were successful, and they began mass-producing these. In the late 1940's, they began producing furniture ideas for furniture manufacturer Herman Miller. No longer content to simply be furniture designers, Charles and Ray branched out into film and photography. They were commisioned by many companies to make these films, and produce these building designs. One of their main clients was IBM.

An interesting point, particularly for this time, was that Charles and Ray were serious collaborators, in addition to being married. Remember, this was the 1950's, when women had almost no way of achieving things, or figuring things out. Even though Charles was the one to whom the clients went for consulting, Ray was an essential part of the Eames office. Even to have the limited inroads into this collaboration was a significant frontier.

Anyway, Charles relied heavily on Ray's keen aesthetic tastes. On one occasion, the State Department asked them to commission a film on America, to be shown to a Soviet audience. Now, this was to be somewhat an advertisement for America, a tad nationalistic, however, the Eameses had some vision of their own. This vision was what made their design team so dynamic, so forward thinking. The point is, at the very end, they needed a shot to cap it off, which they hadn't decided on yet. So Ray told Charles "[use a clip of] forget-me-nots," these flowers being a universal symbol of friendship. Charles knew enough to take the risk of building on Ray's vision. This decision changed the whole dynamic of the film.

The Eameses made more than 80 films in their lifetime. Through said films, they explored nearly every subject they came across. Charles wanted to make a film about toy trains? Boom! They made Tocata for Toy Trains. They made one about the circus, after the Eameses visited a circus and went to town with photography there. The exhibits they put together also explored many different subjects, from mathematics, to Revolutionary War-Era history.

Of course, the one they are best known for is Powers of Ten. This film, in particular, used to give me goosebumps when I was young, in fact, it still does. It was originally made to make science more accessible to younger students. I remember that even when I was about 7, I didn't get all the concepts, but I got the sheer vast scale of these images and numbers. I was grabbed by the numerical part of it, 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, so on. That made an impression on me that still lasts.



The whole film is available above. It is about 8 minutes long, in its entirety. Watch it! I rarely directly tell people to do things like this, but here we are. Anyway, it taught me, in a subconscious way, about communication that takes place beyond words. This is something that powers my creative work, including this blog. In person, there is only so much I can say to people. With spoken words, I am not the most articulate guy. I often stumble, or have to correct myself. On this blog, or in writing, or on a drawing pad, I can lay out what I want to tell, what I want to show, the interactions I want to explore.

Charles was quoted as saying that film is rarely used as an art. I think this is, unfortunately, correct. Not that there aren't redeeming parts of film, however, film is rarely used in a way that actualizes its potential, in my view. It can be both an art form, and a means of communication. Another beautiful example of this is Koyaanisqatsi. While different in its subject matter from Powers of 10, to me, those two are highly evocative of those same experiences. They have goosebump-inducing musical scores that work well alongside the images, and the narrative structures, to connect you to the nonverbal essence. Even though Powers of 10 has a clearly-defined, scientific narrative structure, and Koyaanisqatsi has a more interpretive form, they both lead you on a journey of the soul, that physically moves you.

It is this type of creativity that I dream of emulating. I hope, in my own way, to create things, and to interact with people. Many times, people will ask me "Why are you so angry?" I am rarely, in fact, angry. I am usually just deep in thought, deep in my internal exploration. There, I encounter many things that pop up, but only some of them make me angry or annoyed. I really like people, as a whole. There are so many things that I want to be able to communicate to people that I rarely can adequately express in words. How I will express them, I still do not exactly know, but I believe I can use my creative mind to come up with the way. Where it will lead, is a discovery I will make. That's why I wanted to bring the Eameses up tonight.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!