Empty his pockets and Wreck his days.

Misconception is such a funny thing. Having someone's best interests at heart is an oxymoron, because in the end, we all see what is best for our own selves via someone else, and we view others through the goggles of our own perception. Some people's Rose is a little more blood red, other's, a vintage dusty pink, and the shade of our glasses cannot but tint every reaction we have to the world around us with self serving emotions. Not suggesting that is necessarily a bad thing, merely something to be considered as we encounter mentors and spiritual guides as we navigate the channels of our lives.

One of the most profound subtleties I've started to become aware of, is the legends in which we associate with, and how we drape these associations around ourselves, almost unaware of the stereotypes that cling to us in our views of the 'self'. The Jamaican Man who drives the company truck, has revealed to me recently a hint of the VooDoo Man, and as I have increasingly learned to unwind our discussions for the half truths and leading statements designed to tease out secrets... I am stunned by the intensity of spells he weaves with conversation, the cloak and dagger of familiarity and pretended disinterest so artful, so natural to a human being who may or may not even care about the messages and truths he tricks from his victims, but apparently plays the game out of force of habit and to combat boredom in his own life. Him being a Sagittarius, half horse and half human, I find it fitting that his speech is a half breed of truth and lies, that as the driver he is part of a much larger symbiotic being, literally a vehicle for transporting heavy equipment from the waist down, and that he bets heavily on horse racing, with a past he vaguely refers to as related to training horses in Jamaica. He often shares his lunch with me, with oxtail and whole snapper, and the most seductive jerk pork this side of heaven. But sometimes, as adventurous a soul as I am, even I have qualms with chicken feet and cow hooves as a main source of protein. As another layer into the hoodoo in him, he is quick to offer up bizarre remedies, a common one being to save a horse (and recently babies, to mine and my partner's horror) from colic, is to urinate into a bottle and force it down the affected creature's throat and force it to walk. Aside from medicinal wisdom, he often has very sharp, earthy comments about the interaction between men and women, and always relates it to strong sexual imagery that could just as easily be applied to any type of animal, so rooted in the animal world of male and female dynamics, is this man's perception of the world.

Yesterday I became aware of it for the first time, when listening to him describe how he tricked information out of someone, and watching his eyes rove along my collarbone and shoulder, down the the line of my snake tattoo and the blooming definition of my bicep, in the rhythm of casting a spell, a glance so strong it was practically a caress. There is something unsettling about his eyes, not in a negative way, but a lack of commitment to color maybe, and a jellied quality, like sunlight must travel deep through its clear surface to interact with the milky brownish color. When he smiles a true, wicked smile, you can see a good couple of inches of pink gums above his teeth, like a horse, in fact. In the sunlight, his glance as strong as  touch on my skin, he told me some of the secrets to the spells he casts, with a variation on his favorite tales from the Ghetto, and his own personal legend was laid bare before me, illuminated like the brassy greenish color of his eyes in the powerful afternoon light.

The time of the traveling salesman seems like something from wizard of oz, from the great depression, but I met one this past week. I'd encountered the owner of this global company before, have wandered empty Louisiana streets in the dead of night and drunk absinthe in the sulfuric aftermath of flaming sugar cubes on top of our glasses, and stripped off my boots to crawl around under aluminum structures to lubricate joints with airplane wax alongside him, this quiet, gentle giant of a man. Like the Jamaican Man, he too is a spinner of tales, but with very different tactics. While there is a gossipy Grandmother feel to Jamaican Man, the Traveling Salesman resonates with a Grandfather to the World persona, is like Oz himself, and in direct opposition to the control of others sought through petty human jealousy and guilt of the Jamaican Man in his VooDoo incarnation, the Traveling Salesman must inherently believe his tales, to convince others of the truth of his product as a direct validation of the truth of himself. He lives out of a suitcase, in a constant attempt to outrun responsibilities he has created, delving into emotional dramas and nuances of human relationships, protected by the image of the Grandfather, packing up and leaving before his vulnerabilities threaten to rise to the surface and expose him for what he really is. His whispering voice and sage like stories cannot veil his carpenter's hands or the strength of his sudden bursts of laughter, and in my recent conversations with him, I could distinguish the bias in his tone, an imperialism in some of his references, and with a blinding flash, I saw the death of the Grandfather he tried to depict, as it flickered out of existence leaving only the Traveling Salesman in its ashes, I felt myself become a matter of profits and not individuality, felt myself being played to distract me from my own visions of the future, in a desperate attempt to fortify his Emerald City with an offer of smoked green glasses. He does not see the world like the Jamaican man, as a separation between male and female, and ultimately as an earthy animal existence - but rather as a separation between animal and intellectual forces, and I felt it rather sharply when he tried to artfully, disdainfully suggest that I should be involved in work that was less animal, brutal, 'hairy' than what I am proudly involved in. Comments I barely noticed before, but struck me so fiercely in their destructive nature, I realized the underlying cords of much of this man's projection of self.

Discussing the disdainful tone towards my work with my shadow brother, us both possessing a little of what the other needs, just as often as I get locked into the image of the intellectual, he gets placed in the role of the brute and brawn, and people in life divorce him from the potential to develop a role that is in the region of possessing brains, we are the cowardly lion and the scarecrow, me searching for the courage to understand my own strength as I have always existed so easily in an intellectual plane, but never tested my body's limits and him, respectively, scared of admitting he has the ability to comprehend and synthesize, crippled by his own powerful fear of failure and a lifetime of being classified as the workhorse by society. Rising up from the working class as we both have, carrying our families on our backs from childhood, we are self made men, respect self made men, and agree when approached by the homeless, the junkies, we know every man can choose to make it , to build something, I so strongly believe we are all possessed of the power to define our reality, that I respect humanity enough to never give in to the feeling of pity, to never place myself so far above another man to look down on him and pity his poor existence, or to denounce where I am in life, like I haven't fought and earned every piece of what I have become, like it was a gift someone else bestowed on me, rather than something that I have built with the sweat and blood and tears of my own being and am wholly deserving of. A christian man, the Traveling Salesman, who often gets involved in reaching out to the homeless, will smile and joke with the beggar and junkie alike, he feels pity for their station in life, and shame tainted gratitude for his own in comparison, a successful businessman who, instead of taking pride in his accomplishments or relationships can only talk about his stained suits and empty wallet, broken love affairs and the time he cannot spend with his grandchildren in his constant running away from his own reality, as it dogs him around the world. His happiness then can only come in sharp, momentary, bittersweet bursts, before it is consumed by the shame of experiencing so animal a reaction to the world around him. So sharply looking down upon his own earthy nature, separating himself from eating animal flesh, as well as his own animal needs gives him a basis to look down upon the working man who lives within the context of his animality, a prison is created in the Traveling Salesman's mind, crucified by needs he so desperately fights to rise above as weakness, an intellectual inconsistency. He feels shame for the very things that make us human.

But the Traveling Salesman believes he is better than the brute, and wraps himself in Jesus to hide from his body's own animal tendencies, just as once, a long time ago, he made the choice to severe himself from the workbench, from the wood and tools, from the brutality of the shop, and lose himself in the cerebral world of building empires with  numbers and contracts and clever tales... that when the animal in him does lash out, thrashing in his blood and his memory, it shows itself in a negative light, because he feels such disrespect for it. The ego is there, the coercive undertones, without any true respect for what I want from life or the direction I am heading, and with a Judas Kiss in the searing afternoon light, I could see through his pretended ambivalent tone to the sneaky, imperial root of his words and his essence. He is the very thing he pretends not to be.

There is another, shifty eyed creature whom I haven't been able to shed light on yet, but he is somehow spawned from the Traveling Salesman, and the more I understand the Traveling Salesman, the more I begin to see the foundations of some of the other tricky beings playing larger roles in my life. My rosy goggles of perception have sustained similar scuffs as my literal glasses, wearing away at the subtle shades of poisonous cadmium, singed from the flame of the welder and darkened around the edges by my interactions with the many shades of human, from the brute force of animal instinct, to the snide superiority of intelligentsia.

Deep in my secret heart, I start to see a pattern in my broken sexual history, that maybe my own fear of that animal nature has found a way to decimate every interaction I have fumbled through and shut down in the midst of. Maybe watching with a child's eyes, I learned an intense disrespect for that part of my biology. Equally terrified and mesmerized by pregnancy, creating and raising children being equal parts intuitive impulses and cognitive responsibility, I dashed away tears and shortness of breath as I rode the train the other day, on my way to a baby shower for my shadow brother. The shower took place on the rooftop of where we work together, symbols overlapping and colliding like atoms, giving rise to new elements, and as the afternoon sun shifted into twilight I saw whispers of another powerful disparity between the personas we choose to associate with and their manifestation in reality. Young and fertile and feminine as a living Venus of Willendorf, in flowing coral against warm brown, gold dusted skin, this young wife and soon to be mother was herself the shadow side of the warehouse we work in, in glaring contrast to the intellectual child born of the woman who runs it, a labor of love for a shifty eyed creature living at odds with his intellectual and brutal selves, trapped painfully and disdainfully within the same body as he attempts to achieve the power of creation. I wonder if this kind of struggle can dry up the womb, by undervaluing our base nature, we further separate ourselves from the very things that brought us into existence. The young mother to be lost her first child, and her body was slammed with another pregnancy in the tide of grief following, she has existed in a suspended state of pregnancy, a year and a half of nurturing life inside of her, and the birth of this child will be such a profound and welcome gift in a family dense and dark skinned as flourless chocolate cake. The woman who's business we danced and celebrated life on top of has too, draped herself with the mother principle, has claimed some of her workers as 'mother', stemming from the imperial 'motherland' from which our country was loosely born from hundreds of years ago.

As she surveyed the baby shower preparations the day prior, from cameras that link directly to her phone, she issued a clipped and sneaky 'big mother is always watching' comment as we drank beer and watched each other across a table surrounded by fairy lights and trellis with Adam and Eve without the hope of conception, and the Snakeoil Salesman convincing us all to taste, the garden closing us in and winding up around us towards a full, ironic harvest moon.

Muscle memory.

because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

It feels like I've been waiting my whole life for a sense that my being leaves a wake in the ether, a ripple in the universe. I have always watched certain people who seemed more real then others, who carried a seismic force of character, the virility of their atoms leaving a residue on the world around them and a tremble of tectonic plates beneath their footsteps. The groove of a wrinkle declaring its owner's history, ancient cowboy boots worn smooth by chain motor grease, the unapologetic expression of one's self, they all make my heart stutter a bit, drawing myself as if around a fire to glean warmth, only what I hunger for is the essence of realness, of deep and true knowledge, the ability to mould one's reality... in the hopes it will somehow rub off onto my physical presence. Typically I have associated these elements with men far older than me, adding strange kinks to my romantic and professional history, but recently have found people possessed of this sense of weight in knowledge and fearlessness that are close enough to my age that it has completely redefined my sense of reality and how much easier it is to manipulate then I had ever realized, that I am having to unlearn everything I ever knew to be true. 

From a young age I put myself in the category of survivor, of rising above the negative elements of my childhood, but when I came across an article about child psychology and being raised in different circumstances, how it affects us as we mature, I found that I fit an entire description of lacking major survival skills. In the article I found myself, the difficulty expressing needs, a stunted emotional vocabulary, inherent fear of authority, lack of feeling validated in my judgments, all the things I wrestle with every day in my professional life, that wracked at my adolescent spirit in grade school. This article touched a nerve I never knew was raw. My younger sister had experienced a vehemently painful senior year in high school, but being away at college, I had a hard time resonating with her trauma, and it wasn't until almost 5 years later, meeting her in her adult incarnation that we spoke as peers and I could finally grasp what had happened that awful year for her. She too fit the description of this article, and trailblazer that I suspect she has always been, she had become aware of our reality and its circumstances before she had the emotional vocabulary to explain it. She was choking on the truth.

My mother lied. Like Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, parents lie about what is real. Children believe because they respect authority, and we trust our parents to have our best interests at heart. What if you suddenly woke up and realized your mother was not so different from the mother who sits at the subway threshold with a baby to further elicit your sympathy and guarantee the silver change right of your pocket? Having been raised by con artists, I feel like a child of the court of miracles, having never witnessed capable adults, moral adults, real adults it was a shock to find a bright fierce world, instead of perpetual semi darkness and living at the edge of survival on purpose, because it is easier to elicit pity change. Hearing the infantilizing way in which my mother spoke to my adult sister, and her vague attempts to force me into an emotional stranglehold, I suddenly realized that we had all grown up, so she no longer had purchase on other people's emotions, she couldn't be the single mother raising four children to beg and borrow money for milk and pot, and now desperately attempted to invert our relationship with guilt. No, you did not give everything you had to us. How dare you say that to me. You chose to live a substandard life and are trying to blame your laziness in developing individuality and respect ON us. How dare you call yourself a 'child advocate' and teach child development courses, or talk about the survival skills you gave us when you raised your children to consider it NORMAL to live with a crack addict and convict. Remember how you paid for tickets to Germany for you and my little brother? What do you think that teaches your daughters about how much or how little their bodies are worth? If actions speak louder than words, any values you have ever claimed are null and void the face of your actions, and the supreme selfishness in which you have not only lived your life, but subjected your children to have taught us that you believe in nothing but instant gratification and superficial desires. Like a child of the circus, it's no wonder that I am constantly striving for nuances of what is real, having spent my life in a grand charade, where my young eyes witnessed the adults around me with sagging and cracked faces act out the kind of immature pantomime I was born too old and responsible to ever partake in.

Suddenly I know what my sister saw years ago, and I only regret that she had to swallow the truth, that it writhed inside her, alone and misunderstood for so long.

So I have moved like a ghost through my own life, in a desperate search for gravity. With lovers, friends and work, I have evaporated, cheshire catlike, leaving nothing but an echo of laughter, and no true knowledge of who I am, nothing and no one rooting me to this time and this place. Without a discerning eye, and having developed no clear concept of truth from my childhood, often it has been too easy for people to take what they want from me, without my voice rising convincingly to declare boundaries for itself, so I have been poised for desperate flight for what feels like an eternity. But somewhere in the rush, I have found moments of blinding truth and values that have risen fully formed from the core of my being. The deeper and farther I go in eradicating the blood ties and emotional strangleholds that claw at me, the more I know what I truly believe, what I am derived of, people can SEE me, instead of through me, or project upon me.

I am tired of the pantomime, tired of this mask of sweetness and laughter, even when my insides are aching with anger and bitterness. I want someone to know me. To know the softness under the exoskeleton, the steel under the fear.

Now it begins. For the first time in almost a decade, I unpacked all the boxes. I threw the cardboard away. I claimed the walls, I made a space, and it is mine. Not pieces of other people. I have a family, and while it includes my siblings, it is not one of relatives, but one of my choosing, consisting of people I respect, because to me, love and respect are indivisible. I cannot love what I don't respect. I am finally ready to build an identity, to be something tangible, definable. To be real.

"What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept."

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

I came from crocodile mouths. I swam thru the bronx of my mother's belly.

Beach bound on a Sunday, Church day, for baptism by salt water and I was trepidatious. After three intense years of growth and focus on a very urban landscape, and very urban realities, I had fearfully avoided making the trek to NYC's beaches alone, unwilling to dispel the illusions of my childhood in perfect water and soft white sand. That coastline is ever in my thoughts, so contrasted by my daily life, even a recent vicious hurricane couldn't permeate the concrete membrane that separates the city from the earth, and left us practically unscathed while entire mountain towns around us melted and washed away. I never really understood homesickness, but have often felt the pull of far distant tides and the kind of release of total trust that I would never allow myself in my daily war for respect and knowledge from the people stacked up in this city with me. Closing the car door,  I had to actively reconstruct my atrophied beach sensibilities, insecurities of surrendering the white of my flesh to exposure from the elements and the eyes of the person on the blanket next to me, and once in the water, about rolling with the swells instead of fighting them, the pressing nature of reality pulling and choking and breathing around me, like being inside a much larger organism. And in the smack and flow, I had to re-find the rhythm, the pulse that beats through my own veins, that I had been to busy to pay attention to, the cacophony of other people's needs was lost in the white noise of the waves and gull cries, and quite possibly, for the first time in three years... I could feel myself breathe.

My partner in crime dragged out a body board, and I found myself attempting to navigate the waves from above, something I had never bothered with, and giggling and screeching with the seven-year-olds around me on their boards, I became acquainted with a nuance I had never before paid much mind to - how different it is to be on top of the waves, rather than immersed in them. The strength of the pull up into a budding wave, and the force that carries you on top and then crashing solidly and swiftly into the sand is so different than the rolling punching surge in the underbelly of the wave, that catches you unaware and senseless, unable to avoid the body parts or sea life caught in the motion with you. Later, as the tide crept back in, pulling with it decaying crab bodies and seaweed, a helicopter circled overhead, and a police boat chased shadows in the waves. When I asked a passing vehicle with a couple of nonchalant beach cops what was up, I was informed they were searching for a body. A quiet malevolence seemed to surface, reality rushing in with the tide, wrapping itself around me like the sting of the sunburn spreading down my thighs, a painful reminder that even the sun will do us harm, as it nourishes and sustains us.

After my first pilgrimage to the ocean, I decided to try a more urban accessible path to a closer beach, taking my roommate and the subway, in the hopes that I might find a place I could run to on a whim. I had heard the Rockaways were beautiful, but with a belligerent wind and painfully strict swimming boundaries from insistent lifeguards, it was ominous at best. Stealing myself to the water's edge, by the time it was licking and pushing at my calves I was frozen in place, almost unable to bring myself any further in. Late as it was in the day, I found myself once again greeted by the tide, and all the human and oceanic refuse slapping and sticking to my thighs, being drawn shoreward on a sour sweet smelling wind, with only a hint of brine in its odor. Reality and horror filled me down to the core of my being, I could feel my body stutter in its motion towards the pounding surf and come to a panic-filled stop. Chunks of wrappers and bizarre flat paperlike plant matter swirled around me, and my mind was flooded with images of the ganges river, the masses that bathed themselves and their clothing and animals in the polluted waters, other abused and corrupted natural sources of water that were slightly unreal images in history classes from grade school, of the sea life that breathed and lived in this, how only damaged and mutated genes could survive in the monumental funk, that toxicity would only beget more defensive toxicity in a desperate attempt to survive...

And the the shame I felt was quite possibly the deepest I have ever experienced, my revulsion so intense it felt like a rejection of my roots, of the deepest truths at the core of my being. I was bearing witness to the desecration of the womb from which we all clamored out of, it was no longer far past my peripherals, it is here, and it is real. With a childhood that was comprised of watery memories woven and fed to me by deceitful adults, the disappearing of a weak and lazy father figure, tarot cards on my mother's bed and conch shells and coral in the corners of the bathroom and nooks and crannies of windows, I had always sought a sense of the psuedo mother figure in the shores of my childhood, since I could touch and define its truth, its pervasive sense of reality. Abrasive and temperamental, it burned and bruised without apology, scrubbed me clean of impurities and connected me to something larger, almost omnipresent and rooted me to my sense of self.

Now, in what seems to be a perpetual coming of age, as all my deepest beliefs are being tested and redefined, the ocean continues the shattering of my deepest childlike perceptions. Circumstance like a tidal wave is battering everything I have ever used to define myself and my reality, and when the floodwaters drain away, I only wonder what will be left after the deluge, what will still be rooted, who it will be standing in my place, and whether or not she will still have my sassy grin.

Astronauts love golf.

 

     Action vs reaction. Inertia and momentum are fixed states in a vacuum. Chaos theory is a way of defining probability and patterns in everything around us. We have found the god particle, the higgs-boson, but did we find it because it was waiting to be discovered or because we created a concept to explain reality and manifested our own limitations of existence? Are theology and science really so different?

    I feel like I've been waiting my whole life to be 30 years old, to have laugh lines and a defining wrinkle or two, and suddenly, I can feel the momentum building, and the fear of inertia dropping away as I read and work, converse and watch, as the world continues to fold in on itself. Globalization is creating a fantastic new landscape for human interaction and social development, but depending on what industry you fall into, you witness such differing notes of a grandiose symphony, and we are all so busy trying to master our individual melodies and personal instruments, that it can be difficult to truly experience the powerful pattern we are all so deeply a part of. Running away from the separation between artist and reality, I found myself stumbling into an entire network of powerful young adults who FEARLESSLY navigate the entertainment industry in its technical aspects, rolling and riding the rising waves of our needs for constant entertainment as a way of dealing with a monumental economic shift happening. Such shifts have happened before, and to spare you the history lesson, I'll just touch on a few key moments in the development of the human race. 

   Cultivating/controlling nature to reap its reward in a time frame, agriculture stopped us in our tracks as roving bands of nomads and quite literally rooted us to locales, giving us the permanence to establish communities of wildly different values, beliefs, and personal and spiritual histories. The printing press gave every individual the power to choose how they interpret and share ideas, which gave us access to translations and notions that broke us free from kings and church heads and inspired revolutions worldwide over the next century. The industrial revolution brought materials things into plentiful reach, redefining comfort and luxury as accessible in a completely new way, changing our labor force completely, as machines could seamlessly start to fill laborer's roles, freeing up large amounts of society to cultivate new invention and greater intellectual pursuits. In the past two decades, the development of the internet and the software boom has continued to accelerate our ability to outsource jobs so they get done faster and cheaper, freeing up even more of the workforce to delve even deeper into the virtual landscape that has manifested, in which we all act and react to with the most powerful ability the individual has ever been able to have, and be guaranteed an audience. We are in a time where there is no excuse, there is only lack of drive to explain one's inability to carve out whatever riches they desire from the global community.

   For those of you who have been incubating the same job for 10+ years may need an attitude adjustment, or else the world may provide one for you. 

   Having just taken part in NATEAC, a conference on theatrical elements of engineering, architecture and other key elements to physical productions, I noticed some specific and interesting blips on my radar of where there are starting to develop very strong overlaps across a number of previously almost unrelated aspects of entertainment as an industry. As I attended one of the top animation schools in the country, and watched the animators get snapped up by the top animation companies worldwide, I've been considering the basis of needs in society that are being filled by these individuals, mirrored in the world of gaming, the development of interactive greeting cards, gaming graphics, 3 dimensional movies (since we have all but given up on the 2 dimensional disney landscape of my childhood) in animated characters and environment, as well as live action movies shot in 3D, the comeback of letterpress as an art form profound for the high key of emotional experience of truly handmade items brings us that much closer to other individuals and realistic interpretations of existence. So listening to IATSE union crew's presentation during this conference, I heard a lot of unasked questions trying to surface about the next big development in the world of larger than life theatre. Automation has been developing for some time now, and has succeeded in cutting backstage technicians to a slight few, further dissipating the needs of the labor force. Slowly, patterns are emerging where the industries that I straddle seem to collide, and noticing on my facebook, some of the animators I went to school with were talking about an international tour of an arena show that was based on an animated movie made by a major animation studio. More frequently now we are seeing theatre and literature derivative of movies, just as the comic industry has had to shift their entire story structures to fit the huge movie market for their characters that only previously lived and breathed in the pages of a comic book. At the same time, I found out someone I have been taking notes on in a more technical world, involving some of the foundation structures of the entertainment industry was touring with the same animated movie turned theatre show. Suddenly the degrees of separation have shrunk to olympic standards of hundredths rather than whole numbers. So whilst everyone writing about globalization talk about the software boom and the power of the internet as a force for collaboration, I have just witnessed what seems to be much more all encompassing than that, as expressed through how society either seeks out or is simply given an entire new way of experiencing the world around them.

    After some quick research, I was stricken by a number of implications of our changing expectations of experiences. The automated dragons are massive. Massive. I can't even imagine, with only a slight awareness of weight displacement and the intricacies of rigging myself, the kind of preparation that goes into most shows, let alone multiple characters moving as the CRUX of the magic show that we provide for our patrons, sometimes 3 times a day for a week, before dragging the whole thing to another city, and another, and another. During my sessions at NATEAC, I remember specifically hearing an engineer mention that we as an industry have more frequently completely overloaded the venues we load in and out of beyond their capacities, and this show seems a prime example of a work of art coming into a different venue every week with completely different circumstances in each building, but very set and specific needs for the magic of the show. There are only so many flexible aspects of any show, and one focused almost solely on flying dragons doesn't have much in the way of weight related changes that can be made. But if this is a reoccurring scenario, our shows as a whole have gotten larger in flash, higher in audience expectation and much more intense in its engineering needs to manifest all of these elements. So here we have an interesting connection between Art and Engineering. What makes this even more emphatically important to me, is that in the world of animation, with the 3D programs that have become industry standard, from conceptual development to final movie, you have to take almost the SAME considerations of characters as the automated puppets we see on stage. In Maya, you build the frame/skeleton/rigging of a creature, test out its movements, model in incredible detail the outside surface, from a sculptural and textural standpoint, it has to be lit in a space, all the same kinds of processes that go into the creation of any kind of show. And if companies like Dreamworks know they are planning to create physical representations of their movies, character development then begins to take on a whole entire need for engineering awareness, to more adequately prepare for when their characters come to life in any type of theatre near you.

    In a more philosophical vein, I wonder, with the highly interactive experiences being developed by the entertainment industry at large, especially as they have to collaborate across boundaries that are falling away as you read this what that is unveiling about our own inner nature. Just like the Higgs-Boson, the 'god particle' that has been found and will most likely define this scientific slice of my age group, this prevailing idea that there is some invisible glue holding the atoms in the universe together, this powerful collision of various industries seems to be rooting out the same thing, some underlying connection between all things, a blurring of the boundaries, a freedom to manifest whatever one truly desires, if you know how to ride the waves, whether they are sound waves, or brain waves, microwaves or ocean waves.

The power to see through the differences to the root, where all things are the same.

don't you roll those bloodshot eyes at me.

And change was among the stars.

It has been a lifetime since I had the energy and space in my mind to sit for a minute and postulate about all the things that are moving and folding and stirring around and inside of me.

I have so many thoughts, internet world.

I started writing on this blogspace in an intense need to articulate the feeling of asphyxiation from hitting a vast and lonely standstill, upon graduation, and in a devestating relationship...

But I am free now.

Everyday I rise with the sun to be a crucible, to be within a crucible, everyday I fall in to bed exausted from the hard work of making real things, streaked with dirt and bruises from a holy war against my own fear of not being good enough. And I am satisfied.

I work with steel. I work with my body. I build things. That is all I have ever wanted, all anyone ever wants:



To build something.


-

and they gnashed their terrible teeth.

I tore an article out of the New York Times the other day that struck me as a quintissential battle between moving forward and remain stuck in outdated grooves... and it was about Pope John Paul II, the first non-italian to do the job, and upon his death, apparently the adoring fans across Europe that responded to the pope of a different color fought for an earlier 'sainting' than is typical. But is the customer always right? The article further concludes that his popularity was unfounded, as Pope John Paul II watched a massive windfall of sex related crimes committed by high ranking members of the church, spread out across Europe be brought to light and publicly denounced, and merely turned his sainted cheek. Professing conservative views, and ignoring injustice seems like a quick way to lose your fan base, but maybe having a Pope who's face you reckognize due to modern media coverage, whose lineage suggests things are changing... is enough to incur devotion.

At a dinner party earlier this week, a heated discussion evolved about the prevalence and power of the media to affect the public's view in a way that has little to do with the ideals underscoring the individuals seeking power over us. I was asked who the last bald president was, suggesting that starting with the Kennedy Era, we have considered the attractiveness of our presidential candidates as a most important part of the selection process. While I can see the possible vailidity of that statement, and its relation to the powerful impact social media had on Obama's campaign... I see different similarities in the two (D) Presidents - both were agents of a new order, when an older way no longer was serving a purpose to the American People. If we were so easily controlled by the media as a society, than maybe Donald Trump's sensationalist temper tantrum would be taken a lot more seriously. The adage "there is no such thing as bad press" is being liberally utilized by the floundering extremesits that vaguely attach themselves to the Republican Party... but in this case may not be true. Yes, we also discussed Senor Trump, but witnessing the embarrassment of conservatives - at this private gathering and on National Television - makes it pretty obvious that people are getting pretty tired of the 'Birthers' pointless and unpatriotic ranting. Yet I find Trump's public spectacle and whatever interest it may have inspired to be a signal of the lack of focus in the Conservative Party as a whole. Ironically, there have been many references to Obama being the most conservative Democrat in the party. Honestly, the President has a much bigger job that pandering to the wants of Parties, and something that younger Progressives have figured out that older generations can't understand, is that 'Traditional' economic needs and wants have shifted, and the current Democrat/Republican Parties are clinging to values that no longer address current socioeconomic expectations. Donald Trump is just serving to further splinter the notion of 'conservative' and his argument is as petty and unfounded as making racist comments - by attempting to undermine the president about something he was too busy being born into this world to deal with personally, trump is adding to the unrest and discomfort of an already depressed economy, and distracting from the understated brilliance and strength of Obama's actions on recent global disturbances.

How did the American Public turn from 'hiring the best candidate' to a public Firing Squad? From the very beginning the nation seems interested in the idea of Obama's campaign, but it has proved deeply unreceptive to the actuality. 'Change' is cute when heard in a slogan, inspiring even to the previously apathetic youth and college population... yet when changes are attempted, entire sections of the public are up in arms and screaming in defiance. I hated going to the doctor when I was little, too, but we go because people older and wiser see the necessity. Unfortunately, we have not reached nirvana, or Eden, respectively, and current institutions have proved to be imperfect. I am a vehement believer in female reproductive rights, in free condoms and univeral birth control, but I can also respect that funding cut from planned parenthood will instigate some reorganization, new methods for raising funds and awareness, has inspired people to fight complacency... you have to trim back nature for it to flourish. Planned Parenthood is an institution that will only become more important as we move forward, and the Progressives begin to take the reigns. They aren't going anywhere, I can promise you that. I grew up with Welfare, and it was as much a boon as it was a trap, and I can understand the intentions, but I will honestly say it has many many kinks that will take stress and painful fine tuning to better serve our current populace. Change as deeply necessary to redirect big business, to trim away the fat in major corporations, and to evolve the sophistication of the job market to better suit a media heavy, technical and creative workforce that did not previously exist. In the face of our nation's ridiculous temper tantrum, and demand for instant gratification, Obama is calmly undoing the damage done by decades of headstrong and impetuous presidents who chased ratings by starting wars and padding their friend's pockets and sending our men and women off to die while they distract the public with 'Patriotic' Outrage and much wrapping themselves in the flag, telling tall tales of villians with beards and accents and different traditions than ours and instilling a deep xenophobia to replace the fading of racism and McCarthyism to band us together out of fear. Deftly reweaving the tapestry of ideals and mending the chasms between 'us and them', the cautious restraint and respect that Obama showed in his reaction to Libya is a light in the dark of our cultural history. Our collective memory doesn't even recall anymore a time when our presidents were cautious, that it took direct attacks on America to insight our involvement on WWI and WWII. By following the principles he outlined in his heroes of economic and social philosophy, and hearkening back to times when our presidents thought before they acted, Obama is doing everything he promised. And yet we are still unhappy.

Palin's response to the Libya airstrikes were as typical and scary as any racist redneck with a five minute spot on national TV - along the lines of MARCH IN THERE, ATTACK ATTACK!... when this battle in a foreign country had nothing to do with us. It isn't up to us to be the police over other people's moral point of view, and no one wants to invite another Afghanistan - where we swoop in and do everything, so an economy is dependant on us and requires lengthy occupation and trillions of lives/dollars to support a people because we didn't give them the strength or opportunity to do it themselves. We can barely even balance our own economy - who the fuck are we to try to have a say in how other countries handle theirs? The American people have created a conundrum, and impossible situation, where it doesn't matter if our president is gung-ho siding with his own party and getting nowhere, or making concessions and trying to establish a middle ground to move forward with support from both sides, because we will roar our terrible roars and gnash our terrible teeth. Nothing will be good enough for us.

I noticed some scribbled graffiti on an ad whilst riding the subway, and witnessed the voice I hear in my head, the same sentiments that are repeated amongst the progressives, the conservatively creative youth calmly waiting to be handed the megaphone. The bic pen scribbles were telling the disapproving viewer to wait, to be calm, to let enough time pass to see the flowering of Obama's highly questioned political moves. It reminded us that every presidency begins with cleaning up from the previous resident, and that the most important element of economic recovery is TIME.

Don't worry, Mr. President. Some of us continue to have faith.

Where the truth lies.

Staring at a patch of reflected light on the red brick and black detailed facade of a building's fifth floor across the street from the room I sat in, perfectly still, the sweep of blond streaked bangs slowly made its way into my line of vision. I don't really SEE the patch of light, but am listening intently to the old ladies who are scratching on easels clustered in a semicircle around me. They are describing the tones of my skin, the arch of me browbone, the perfect red to make the shape of my hair. They are discussing with the teacher my gesture, the length of my limbs, what parts of my body line up with others, of overlaps, that I am thinner, my hair more multi faceted, my shoulders broader, eyes larger, mouth more unique. I am hearing myself be constructed out of visual references and colors, through the words of teacher student interaction, and I am stricken by how exotic and strong I seem in their word choices. Gorgeous, the teacher tells them, and I am excited for these elderly folk, to be acheiving brilliance at something so late in life. Inspired, she says, and I feel like I have brought a gift to these folks in the uniqueness and earnest quality of my pose. For the first time, I am curious to see what they have produced, as I never am ih classes where my years of learning make me keenly aware of deficiencies in their training and ability to reckognize what is actually present before them. When my break finally arrives and I unwind myself from my pose and nocholantly wander to the opposite side of the room...

I am horrified. They look as all paintings do at this stage of learning and age, like they are painting for the first time. The painting closest to me shows a figure with heavy breasts that are both larger than the sad little head. My "gesture" looks in most of these painting like I might vaguely be related to Quasimodo, in others, my prominent nose and poise reflect the features and stance of a gargoyle that might grace the sloping facade of notre dame. In classes before, I have been asked if I was a dancer, I how overwhelmed students with the intensity of my body's natural curves... but I never expected their work to be brilliant, or even necessarily informed, so I was never quite so taken aback by the performance that I witnesses during critiques.

When my break was over and I climbed back into my pose, my eyes finding the patch of reflected light across the street, I remembered a similar, but more devestating reminder of the difference between perception and truth, a lesson sharply taught during a recent first-time excursion to Boston.

"History is everywhere" I had been told, by US History professors and past lovers, friends and books I read about what Boston had to offer the curious individual. Quincy Market, after being talked up on the food network and previous boyfriend as a culinary haven was little more than an extended fast food network that seemed to me to descrate the idea of what it had been to the first american citizens, the city's center and central market for all goods and necessities, the major port for political discussion, influx of new ideas, and intimate instigator of the crown, as taxes on imported goods were caustically realized in this arena. The Commons, where everyone grazed their animals, and later revolutionary soldiers practiced, home of the Liberty Tree before the symbol of freedom of speech was torn down... well since it was February, it was empty, and the snow so deep that everyone just circumvented it. I know it must be different in the spring and summer, but everything still smacked of a social propriety, and after the intense feeling of community that Central Park in NYC inspired in me, I feel nothing but disconnected to the purpose of this sprawling little space, in the shadow of its IDEA.

After three days of stomping around in the freezing cold, desperately searching for whatever it was that moved the people I spoke to about Boston's wonder, or to FEEL the revolutionary spirit that made this the birthplace of America, and home to an incredible amount of Ivy League colleges that should be housing America's next leaders... I was hard pressed to find anything that wasn't commercial, let alone a single bookstore. After passing my third Urban Outfitters and Crocs store in the university district, my travel companion finally begged me to do "something historic".

Nothing horrifies me more than looking at the jacket of an individual who existed at some important point in time, like there is some permeating remnant of their soul and ideas in the decaying fabric. Museums remind me of tombs, holding on to the flesh and material existence of something, when the important part that suspends it in history, the animation and the idea have moved on. Just because I saw a bayonette, doesn't mean I know what it is like to insert it into another human due to the intensity of my belief of a cause. Just because I saw a moth eaten and shabby red velvet jacket that may or may not have belonged to John Hancock, doesn't mean I know why he was significant, why he was even remembered. That jacket is no more real to me than Prince Charming's red velvet costume piece in a parade of Princesses at Disney's Magic Kingdom. But, obviously, I consented, and we explored the old State House, where the Boston Massacre happened outside in what is now a busy intersection in the business district of Boston.

But I did learn something in the walls of this building, and it had everything to do with ideas. It also sparked in me strong emotions, which I had never expected. This tiny, boring museum, as average and typical as they come, unabashadely explained the reality of the Boston Massacre in a way that I have never understood it from US History loving professors, and the US History loving historians that wrote our textbooks. I have discussed the power of context before, and again, it strikes me like lightning that I am slowly beginning to compile truths underlying the development of our nation. Nothing is so profound as when you are physically present and are faced with your expectations of something greater than yourself, and come to awareness that everyone has misunderstood the reality. The events leading up to the Boston Massacre were fully provoked by an abusive crowd, and was an act of self defense, the kind we would vehemently fight for in this day and age... and every article written and conversation started by a "patriot" in the days following, completely lied about the foundation of the altercation, and it was upon this lie that the final spark of revolution was kindled. We came together as a nation, based on a lie we wanted to believe justified our urges, we took action on an emotional reaction that was not founded in any sense of fact, and that is the basis of this great nation.

If this was the founding of America... how has it lead us to what we are today? It is all there, presented without humor or chagrin, but with simple honesty for anyone who travels forth to this mecca to witness. But why is no one else fearful of what that means about the legacy of justice in our country? About the truth of man, and our willingness to confuse our emotions with what is right and wrong?

The idea of Ben Franklin's "Join or Die" statement fascinates me, as I have a deep respect for the idea of loyalty... but I do not confuse loyalty with outdated doctrines and ends justifying means. I am no longer innocently accepting of the ideas our nation was founded on, because there is little truth in any of it. I do not say the pledge of allegiance, but it has nothing to do with the fact that God is mentioned... it has to do with the fact that I do not believe my leaders to be infallible, and I refuse to give away my freedom to disagree with their motives. My loyalty is to justice, and to basic human rights, but I will not overlook them when my government finds it expedient.

I pledge allegiance to my own sense of morality, my ability to see right and wrong, and will never willingly give up my ability to act as I feel is right. But I am a lone individual, just another face in a sea of tourists who press their faces to the glass enclosing John Hancock's jacket, and take pictures of a sad, dusty white wig that used to mean something, but what it is, they don't care. They have a picture that proves they were there, that they ate at the Red Lobster in Boston, and it was just as good as the Red Lobster in Times Square, NYC, and just as good as the one in their hometown.

And somehow, that is enough for them.

When death is coming- the mockingbird doesn't sing, but speaks with his true voice.

I was reading a potential client's manuscript on a Zombie novella to be turned into a graphic novel, and I was stricken by the similarities of all zombie subject matter I have come across... and even more deeply stricken at the inner discussion I had with myself whilst trying to find value and meaning in the idea of undead cannibalism. Lots of undead creatures and their storylines carry romantic notions and deep seated stereotypes based on human/animal tendancies, just as comic book super heroes are born out of a social outcry for superhuman profoundness hidden in the everyday life we all drag ourselves through. But who has given a Zombie depth? Being defined by emptiness, they are silly and horrifying and utterly disconnected from everything we know to be true about human and animal nature, and the subhuman dysfuntions that twist the two planes of existence together to enfold the genre of horror... and here are some of the interesting visual + philosophical conclusions I came to in my line of questioning:

So the basic framework of any story is based on 3 variations of conflict: Man versus God, Man versus Nature, and Man versus Himself.

Prior to reading the manuscript, after having perused the descriptions, I find the director/writer is focusing, or actually assuming that his conflict is Man versus Himself, as both the fighting with the ranks of unaffected humans and previously human attacking the remaining human. To me, the conflict is highlighted/triggered by Man versus Himself... but is really a profound discussion of Man versus Nature. What defines us as different from the rest of the animal world as a race of mammals is a certain level of conscious thought. We draw the line between cro-magnon humanoids that shared the planet with us, and our actual ancestors/earliest civilization by the first primitive death rites - the act of burial and marking the resting place of former loved ones (as well as ancestor worship). Pretty much everything that was considered "magical" throughout our developmental history has through science and medicine been defined, ie. pregnancy and birth, disease, weather, fire, domestication and agriculture as a way of always having food, and we have ceased to have magical illusions and associations with these things. We don't pray for a successful hunt and honor mother nature for the gift of fresh meat, we walk to the store and buy it. So the one clear mystery that persists, along with very specific culturally defined rites that follow it, is the concept of death. Why am I telling you stuff you already know?

1. I passed by a ghost bike the other day (you know, the white spray painted bikes that are chained to places where someone was killed in an accident?) and it struck me for a couple of reasons: by marking the spot where the life/soul/whatever animates us left the body, it shows a modern evolution of rites relating specifically to the loss of consiousness rather than the physical body. If we were suddenly placed in a reality where the person died but their body remained suspended in animation - how do we mourn? would we not feel compelled then to mark the place where their individual conciousness ceased to be? This ghost bike phenomenon is interesting also in the fact that we all see it and instantly reckognize what it symbolizes - and businesses, police, hobos do not touch them, either out of respect, cultural acceptance of the act, or superstition. I feel like a society suddenly focused solely on dead/undead trauma as a constant reality would manifest symbols and markers and become a common phenomenon in a decaying landscape. So in a modern society, I think we should consider what kind of symbol could be used to illustrate that, and how it could be visually effective in representing loss in the number of deaths as being overwhelming, and potential danger.

2. So if what separates us from animals is our consiousness, what then is left behind in a body when that is no longer there? I have two answers for that:

First I would say is the animal insticts, particularly smell. But when considering how perfect a machine the human body is, I would also argue that there would still be lingering muscle and mental memories that begin to fade as the body eats away at itself. And smell has an amazing ability to trigger emotional responses. If young animals separated from their mothers can follow the intimate knowledge of their mother's scent, why wouldn't a baby zombie be able to follow its (living) mother's scent? And it is situations like that which really shake us to the core in a supremely deep way. In a similar manner, I could absolutely believe that an old, old man who took an early dawn walk every day for 55 years down the same path, would still feel the muscle compulsion to continue certain habits that the body has repeated for years and years. Like a scratched record, like a footprint left in space and time.

And second, I would say, like wearing a wedding band for years and years and removing it for some reason - death or loss of some sort, I'm sure there is a very profound sense of having a physical hole where it used to be, where you'd feel the empty bed like a bitter and lonely void, that maybe you yearn to fill with what used to be there, but nothing will ever fill that exact shaped hole in your life, heart, space or time... imagine how a body would feel if it suddenly lost all consiousness. We never see zombies eat a body down to the bones. They never do more than take a bite and move on to the next thing. I feel like the act of consumption could represent a hunger/yearning for something else, something that living people have that they no longer do. Something that disappears the minute they bite into the living, so they are no longer interested and move on to what still possesses it. If it was a matter of blood and muscle and flesh, there is plenty of stuff out there for "dumb" creatures to consume. I think the idea of the zombie started as something very different and has been blown out into something that makes no sense. The closer we bring it back to something that we could almost believe, the more poignant and devestating the effect will be on the audience.


Here were some of my extraneous thoughts on treatment of the story and characters/wordplay:

I like the metaphorical play on consuming - we as a consumerist society buy the next big thing, take a bite, and once the newest/better version of it comes out, we toss the original and move on, never satisfied, always hungry for whatever is next. I'd love to suggest that by littering the environments with ads we reckognize universally, like Haddon Sundbloom's Santa Clause that Coca Cola used to define what Santa looked like to the rest of the world, particularly the US. Utilizing ads from older time periods is both ironic (suggesting how it lead to a land of zombies) and helps us to obscure the time period.

When breaking down the action of the story, and what needs to be shown, I would root out sequences that can be suspended in time, imitating slow motion for anticipation purposes. The movie '300' was not a perfect one, but I still watch it for one reason: the fight sequences. In that particular movie, the fight scenes move from body parts flying to an abruptly intense pulsing slow motion, and the movement of body and fabric ripples and flows across the screen. The underwater oracle dance is equally mesmerizing to me. Also consider Muybridge's animated horse sequence, broken down frame by frame. By isolating action (while subtley shifting composition for dramatic effect/reveal of dangerous situation or character) we can control the pacing so it doesn't lack moments to breath or focus. We'll basically be mimicing camera moves, slow pans, slow zoom outs and such while breaking up the flow of the story to agitate the viewer.

Throughout history we have used many different ways of marking a distinct separation between "us" and "them", like the nazi symbol, and the yellow stars for the jews. I would consider developing a symbolic marking that separates the military, doctors and civilians. That offers other ways of insinuating disloyalty or making unspoken allusions.

Just some thoughts I had.