intellectual properties

Burning Man 2010: Photos

burning man 2010 prologue: the desert and the mind

“In such circumstances the mind is influenced through the body.  Though your mouth glows, and your skin is parched, yet you feel no languor,- the effect of dry heat; your lungs are lightened, your sight brightens, your memory recovers its tone, and your spirits become exuberant.  Your fancy and imagination are powerfully aroused, and the wildness and sublimity of the scenes around you, stir up all the energies in your soul, whether exertion, danger, or strife.  Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded; the hypocritical politeness and the slavery of Civilization are left behind you.  Your senses are quickened; they require no stimulants but air and exercise; in the desert spiritous liquors excite only disgust.

There is a keen enjoyment in mere animal existence.  The sharp appetite disposes of the most indigestible food; the sand is softer than a bed of down, and the purity of the air suddenly puts flight a dire cohort of diseases.

Here Nature returns to Man, however unworthily he has treated her, and, believe me, when once your tastes have conformed to the tranquility of such travel, you will suffer real pain in returning to the turmoil of civilization.  You will anticipate the bustle and confusion of artificial life, its luxuries and its false pleasures, with repugnance. Depressed in spirits, you will for a time after your return feel incapable of mental or bodily exertion.  The air of the Cities will suffocate you, and the careworn and cadaverous countenances of citizens will haunt you like a vision of judgment.”

Source: Personal journal entry of Richard Burton during his Pilgrimage to Meccah and Medinah circa 1853. From ‘The Life of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton’ by Isabel Burton, published in 1893 –via the 7/8/10 Jack Rabbit Speaks

.::.

yes, burning man is art. and parties. and revelry. san francisco values to the max. and perhaps even a secular religious experience on par in cultivity, mysticism and worship of the extremes as snake-handling and ancient egyptian rituals.

but what i love most is the desert. i love being in the desert. i love the feel of being dusty. i love hot sun followed by cool night winds. i love my body being forced to reckon with nature. and not having a choice about it.

despite our wonderful vacation to south america, i am carrying much stress, still, and i am still dealing with this pain management issue that because it’s tiring and boring and unchanging i’ve stopped talking about but is still present.

and while many will go to burning man to have the ultimate excited social experience - thousands of new friends and neighbors, amazing things to participate in 24/7 - i intend to spend a lot of time alone on the playa this year. calming down. this is an intention. but it is also a result of circumstance.

jay can’t go to burning man this year. his work during this time requires him to be at least online and reachable by phone. this means, that for the first time in our 12.5 year relationship, one of us will be going on an extended, non-family vacation without the other. yes, we’ve each gone to michigan to see our families without the other. and in the winter jay often goes up to tahoe on weekends to do the snowy sports things that i don’t like. but the difference here is that once i get somewhere north of Reno, my phone will stop working. and there will be no communication until i come back, 6-7 days later, depending.

this is making us both sad and i think a little nervous. sad because it’s not that jay doesn’t WANT to go - he can’t. and nervous due to separation anxiety. we’ve never been this long apart.

every day that my departure gets closer, our feelings about this amplify and it gets harder to wrap our heads, and arms, around.

i thought about not going. but i want this. i won’t say need, but it feels like need. i want this.

i saw my friend last weekend, shortly after we’d returned from south america, and she noted how much different i looked than the last time she had seen me. younger, she said. my face - so relaxed. so less tense. and it’s true. sometimes you don’t know how much you’re carrying until the weight has been lifted. and i still have more weight to shed.

i am also looking forward to practicing some self-reliance. yes, i am camping with an awesome camp of 50 people i trust and love, inside a village that has a population of…150?. but i’ve never gone to burning man without jay, i’ve never had to consider and organize all of my own logistics - getting to and from, my tent (how to stake it down/cover it up), my food (how much? what cold? what cooking?), my bike. i am not nervous about this - especially since i think my personal needs regarding these things are pretty minimal, and there will be a lot of infrastructure and support. what will be different most of all will be managing all of my own time. outside of a few camp obligations, i will have all of my own time to manage, without the consideration of pull of anyone else’s needs/wants/agenda.

what will i do with myself?

i am hoping that the desert provides me with what i need right now. i just don’t know what that is.

.::.

previously at burning man: 2004 - 2005 -2006 - 2007 - 2008 - but not 2009

AB1998: ban plastic bags, save the world!

if you are reading this, please do me a favor and sign this petition supporting California Assembly Bill AB1998.

http://action.savesfbay.org/savesfbay/issues/alert/?alertid=16092916

The average Californian uses an estimated 400 plastic bags per year for a total of 19 billion plastic bags per year statewide. The production of these single-use petroleum-based bags consumes millions of barrels of oil and the average use time of a plastic bag is a mere 12 minutes. After which, most are sent to the landfill. However, thousands of plastic bags find their way to our creeks, Bay and ocean where they entangle, suffocate and kill seals, birds, sea turtles and other marine life.

please click here to urge your rep to vote YES on AB1998 to protect our creeks, waterways, the beautiful California Coast and the world’s oceans. (yes, if you put in your real email, this may result in other emails in your inbox from Save the Bay. but don’t you want to save the bay??)

click here to do even more!

they say you gotta stay hungry

some days were spent lazing in bed until after noon;  others we were up before dawn and climbing mountains.

urban streets, honking horns, crowded cafes, skyscrapers, shopping malls - raindrops in forests, birds chirping, ancient ruins, mountain peaks in clouds - homeless dogs following, loud crowded bars, club music until 5 am - tall crucifixes and statues of virgins illuminated on hillsides, churches built atop incan ruins, ancient religions mashed into modern life - adobe shantytowns, sustenance farmers, cows wandering slowly, shoeless children waving from the wayside, women in hand-loomed dresses - brightly colored houses, ocean views, smooth cobblestone streets, terraced cafes, art in abundance - snow white sky, powder fresh slopes, ice underfoot, thin air and pale blue sunshine, boarders fly past, off edges and into the sky - crowded buses, overflowing sidewalks, insane taxis, billboards and prostitutes - armories and churches, cannons and idols, castles and prisons -lush green forest, black sand beach, surfers riding the waves.  airports and secluded pastures, teeming with life and death. all of these things.

.:..

the way there.

we had a lot of things on the calendar when we were planning and on the days leading up to this trip. camping trips. family reunions. work. tightly fitting them all in, months ago we booked our tickets.  and then somehow, in all the planning and calendaring, it got stuck in our minds that we were leaving on Tuesday, because we knew we’d either be camping or in Chicago until sunday night, and there was no way we were leaving on Monday. monday we scurried about running errands, getting last minute items, packing, getting ready. and then late monday afternoon i skyped our friend in chile, and she said, “shouldn’t you be on a plane right now?” and i said, “no, we’re not leaving until tomorrow’ and she says “no, i’m pretty sure you’re ARRIVING tomorrow’ and suddenly my brain panicked.  i pull up the email.  she’s watching my face react.  she’s right.  our plane left at 1:15pm MONDAY.  not tuesday.  we missed it.

how did this happen?!

“it’s so unlike you”, helen says.  except, maybe, it’s not, and jay and i both hate ourselves for several minutes for, despite all our preparations, assuming one thing and somehow never doublechecking this very important detail, while helen and her friend, still on skype laugh at the ridiculousness.  she later apologized for laughing, but honestly, it was a perfectly appropriate response.  what else can you do?

90 minutes on the phone with the worst customer servie ever at LAN airlines, in which i talk to 3 different people who tell me three different things, from “the only seats left tomorrow are in first class, it will cost you $3,000″, to “there are no seats on any flights until next saturday” to “i can rebook you for tomorrow but i will cost you $1500.”  option C taken.

then we went out to dinner monday night with our longtime friend Mike, visiting for the Phish shows that weekend at the Greek, and tried to forget all about it.

the next day we go to the airport on time. the flight to Lima is 9.5 hours.  it’s long.  we then connect to the flight to Santiago.  it’s late. we’re bleary and half-asleep. our plane had been delayed at SFO, and as we exit the plane the airline staff are telling us to RUN. RUN through security.  RUN through the airport. we barely make the connection.

.::.

so we arrived 24 hours late, but were immediately welcomed by our friend Helen who is lucky enough to have a 2-bedroom in Santiago all to herself.  over the next week, we wandered the streets and hills of Santiago, taking in the city and it’s people. justin, patrick, and nick met us there after a few days as well. among other things, we:

-found Castillo Hidalgo at Cerro Santa Lucia, perhaps the best and most awesome public place in all of Santiago, a former castle and military outpost perched in a little hill in the heart of the city, the surrounding areas landscaped with twisty turny trails and incredibly narrow steps with cacti and towering trees and waterfalls and fountains all around, like the biggest zen garden in the world with a castle on top.  definitely my favorite place in Santiago.

-drove to the coast and spend 24 hours in Valporaiso, an amazing seaside town with hills that rival san francisco’s, streets so steep they have funiculars to take you from one level to another, brightly colored sun yellow and aquamarine houses stacked on upon the other, cobblestones streets for miles and miles terraced up and down the hillsides, public art that deserves awards, a gorgeous sunny saturday spent wandering in wanderer bliss.  outside of an unfortunate late-night moment with a guy trying to scam us out of money in a bar, it was a perfect 24 hours and i highly recommend Valporaiso as a destiantion.

-drove the other direction up the twisty road into the Andes for a snowy day on the slopes - i faced my fear (and yes, i admit, it was and is total fear. on the way up i literally thought i’d rather be swimming with sharks than trying to ski) and taught myself how to ski that day (sent jay and helen off to have fun while i figured it out myself - i’m a self-learner and a terrible student of others).  after an hour i had the bunny hill and talked myself into the next larger slope - and then spent the next 2 hours going up and down, on and off the chairlift, until my quads were so tired i knew i wouldn’t be able to hold it one more time.  i only fell once, in the very beginning.  i know my friends who have been skiiing/boarding for years will think this is ridiculous, but i was pretty proud of myself that day.  i’d rather jump out of airplanes than go downhill fast - it was a big thing for me. not to mention that the mountains were absolutely gorgeous and the views so vast that between runs i just stood and stared at the scene in total bliss for minutes at a time.

-hiked up into the larger metro parque, a quiet respite of nature trails and scenic views, the crown of which being a 40 foot tall statue of the virgin mary who stands in alabaster while overlooking the city, night and day

-visited the rowdiest, most uncouth pub in town -crowded wooden tables of co-eds, sawdust on the floor of the bathroom, and scrawled drunken writings all over the walls - where the drink of choice is a floaty combination of white wine, freixenet ( pronounced ‘fresh-eh-NET’) and pineapple ice cream that will knock you on your ass.  we had a few, and the pub grew louder and louder, some of our party defected to join the table of friendly chilean girls nearby, and so the rest of us…

-…were escorted by helen to an underground thai restaurant with a secret gated entrance - like most things hidden behind gates, once entered it was a shangri-la of beautiful lighting, leather couches, chandeliers, and a private dining room with a balcony for our small party, because we didn’t have a reservation. we ate delicious foods and drank way too much, ending the night sprawled in our chairs.

-got a hot stone and oil massage at Kutralco Wellness Spa, the perfect thing to do on a cold misty day while jay went back up to the mountains to go snowboarding again with justin

-marvelled at the camaraderie of the street dogs in Santiago, who, unlike those we saw in Bangkok who were emaciated and shivering, were mostly sturdy and healthy looking and playing together in little packs, and so used to city life that they’d learn to navigate the crosswalks, and would often join you to walk you home late at night, the turn on a time back to wherever they came from, like little citizens and guardians of the streets

-had several other small wonderful moments (and meals).  many thanks again to our wonderful hostess.

.::.

after a good solid 8 days in Chile, we went to Peru.

we flew an early morning flight to Lima, and then without leaving the airport directly to Cusco.  Lima is a modern city of 8 million;  Cusco is an ancient mountain town. after a week in Santiago, i’d had enough of cities.  we arrived in Cusco in late afternoon, sought out some immediate Pisco sours (as if he hadn’t had enough already), and then wandered the streets for the evening.  narrow cobblestone paths between old buildings like any old city from Boston to Athens, but these were crowded with Peruvians selling everything from pirated DVDs to soccer balls to handicrafts to unidentifiable produce.  the streets teemed with life as tiny cabs zoomed by filled with tourists, all there to start journeys to the ancient Incan trails and mountain empires.  we went to bed early, as the next day we started the long journey - long even without trekking the Inca Trail - to Machu Picchu.

5:30 am Friday the 13th, we arose and after a short breakfast took a 30 minute cab to the train station to catch the 4 hour train through the Sacred Valley to Aguas Calienties, a small town inaccessible except by foot or rail.  we passed small farms and wondered about the residents waving at us by the railside - what do they know about the worlds we come from? and what is it like to be them, living off the land in this amazing place? then, a fast shuffle to find the office to buy passes to the park and the tickets to 30 minute bus ride up an incredible switchback mountain road to the entrance to the ancient cloud city.  we finally arrived at 12:30pm - 7 hours after getting up, and that’s the fastest way, without doing any hiking.

the first view of Machu Picchu is the postcard face - the one you see on posters and billboards and in the photos of every person who’s ever visited there. my initial reaction was a mix of elation and initial underwhelm.  maybe because it took so long (and cost so much) to finally get there, standing at that first precipice i wondered, just for a minute, if it was worth it.  also, from that initial view, the looked so much smaller than i thought it was - a tiny village-when in photos, probably taken from higher points of view, it seemed more expansive.

we went first to see the Incan Drawbridge, which initially seems like “what am i looking at?” but is then utterly amazing…. removable wooden slats over a gap (10 feet?) of an otherwise impassible bridge. this photo does not do justice to the facts that 1. the face this is built into is totally vertical and solid rock and 2. the drop off is several thousand feet and 3. most amazingly, where, exactly, does it go?  we looked and looked but once the steps ended could find no conceivable path for it to be leading to on the other side - just sheer cliff.

as we were walking there/back it started to rain, but it was warm, and i didn’t mind.  the forest smelled amazing, and the misty mountain peaks were so big, and so surreal my eyes couldn’t take it all in.

then into the actual ancient village, with it’s terraced layers and now-roofless stone houses - a maze and a garden, a village and a cathedral.  we wandered, played with the grass muching llamas, and then after a few claps of thunder it REALLY started to rain. there was almost no wind, and the rain fell hard from a still sky.  would it ever pass?  we finally took shelter with the other tourists in a couple of thatched huts, and waited.  30 minutes passed, and finally the rain let up, and we spent another hour or so wandering the paths, taking all the steps that seemed to go nowhere and discovering the circuitous nature, the labyrinth, the genius of the stonework, the irrigation paths built into the stones, the rocks laid out so as move the flow of water to prevent flooding. what was life like in this place, then? what did the children do, the women?  their routines, their songs, their kitchens? as someone who came so far to be there, it was only natural to wonder: did they ever go up and down? their vista was vast, but how far did they actually travel, and if so, how?

the mist rose from the valley below, and for a while we were overtaken with clouds, but then the sun came back, and soon it was time to go.

back down down down the mountain, to Aguas Calientes, where we enjoyed pisco sours before getting back on the train.  for the ride back, we had no other option than to take the luxury train, as so many people hike up to machu picchu and then take the train back down that all the cheap backpacker trains were booked. it was a sticker shock when we booked the trip, but at that moment, approaching the train and seeing all the beautifully lit cars with their velvet seats, straight out of a 1920s film, i was immediately over how much it cost.  we were wet, tired, and hungry, and this was the perfect thing.  the train had a bar car in which a live band played music - latin covers of beatles songs, traditional peruvian music - and all the people in the car were given percussion instruments.  with the booze flowing free and everyone on an already natural high from being in such an amazing place, the mood was almost ecstatic.  we sang along and danced, and then went back to our table for dinner, a 4 course meal, served in full.  while the train ride there seemed to take forever, this one flew by fast, and we were back in Cusco before we could even finish our last glasses of wine.

the next day we wandered the streets a little more, purchased some art (paying too much, probably) and sat on the balcony of the organic restaurant, Greens Organic, watching the tourists and the peruvians interact in the narrow street below. then it was back to the airport, back to Lima.

.::.

we only had 24 hours in Lima. even though we arrived in Lima with time to get dinner, take a nap and then go out on the town Saturday night, either i had a wicked hangover from that neverending wine in the luxury train the night before or the days at altitude in Cusco (11,600 feet) had finally gotten to me (or maybe the combination of the two) - i had a pretty bad headache most of the day on Saturday, and was exhausted and not much in the mood to go out.  we stayed at the JW Marriott in Lima - the only 5 star hotel in the city, across from a seaside mall built into the oceanside cliffs of Miraflores, and honestly, there really wasn’t much reason to leave. so we didn’t.

Sunday we woke up late, the weather was drizzling and gray, but we did walk from the beach into the city far enough to visit the Huaca Pucllana - ancient (200-700AD) Incan Ruins of a ceremonial site. well, sort of visit. we got there after it closed. but we could see its crazy adobe structure from the outside.

dinner, then back to the airport to head home.

.::.

the way back.

our flight was scheduled to leave at 00:35am on Monday, and we got to the airport at about 10:00pm Sunday night.  the line to check in for flights to the US on LAN was incredibly long, and it took until 11:15 to get to the counter.  note: when they say be there 3 hours early, sometimes they mean it.  we got there, and she says, “your flight has been delayed until 3:40am”.  ARGH. 4 more hours in the airport. FINE.  but then the boarding passes she gives us still say 00:35…..whatever……so we go to the pre-security area, where all the restaurants are. jay plops down at starbucks (for the wi-fi), i go next door to the tiny spa to get a manicure. i have slight anxiety that the flight might get moved back up (it happens), or that she gave us wrong information (their computer systems had so many glitches, so much misinformation, the boards didn’t update), but i tried to relax and let it go.  so i’m sitting there, my freshly-polished nails drying, and suddenly jay comes running over. COME ON WE HAVE TO GO, THE FLIGHT LEAVES AT 1:15.  it’s 12:45. and we haven’t been through immigration or security yet. we basically have 10 minutes. we run.

i get held up at security because of something setting off the metal detector.  jay takes off without me to get to the flight, to hold it. i almost cry waiting behind slow people at immigration. 2 wrongly identified gates later, sweaty, panicked and out of breath, we’re told, “oh, that meant we are going to give an update at 1:15″.  at 1:15 they say, “this flight is expected to leave at 3:40″. and now we’re just sitting there at the gate.

eventually, we get home.

.::.

i don’t mean to take away from the fun we had on the trip by framing the travelogue starting and ending with our airline debacles.  air travel is a luxury, and i always try to put it into perspective that no matter what a pain in the ass it is, we’d never get to see the other parts of the world without it (and our friendly lonely planet guidebook reminded us that just one trans-atlantic flight by one person causes more carbon pollution than most families in the world emit in a year - this is privilege?).  a 30-hour flight to australia seems like forever, but how long would it take otherwise?  the real surreal part about it to me is that walking the ropes of an airport always makes me feel like i’m in some sort of game - there’s always running, stress, odd questions to answer from immigration, changing time tables, people trapped inside, everyone with an agenda, an objective.  it’s a microcosm of modern culture, and if and when i can step back from the annooyances, the stress, i find it highly amusing.

.:.

i’ve been to 9 other countries (Mexico, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Chile, Peru) in the past 12 months, and i still have wanderlust.

.::.

i’ve always found it sort of strange that when celebrities or athletes or anyone who’s accomplished something great gets interviewed on television, the interviewer always asks: “so what’s next for you?”, as if winning the nobel prize or starring in the highest grossing movie of all time or winning 7 gold medals isn’t enough. but that’s how some humans are, seekers who constantly want to know: what’s next?

next, i’m going to burning man, for the sixth time. in 10 days.

Chile+Peru

Chile: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amyleblanc/sets/72157624684347780/
Peru: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amyleblanc/sets/72157624740043934/

and we’re off

look for flickrs (mine/jay’s) from the southern hemisphere

memories and dreams (Waltz with Bashir and Inception)

“We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they’re called memories. Some take us forward, they’re called dreams.”

— Jeremy Irons

(note: this was written before having read any one else’s email/posts about Inception, so as to not blur/influence my initial thoughts, so this is probably missing many things other people have already discussed. this doesn’t really have any big spoilers but you might avoid reading the Inception part if you haven’t seen the film yet and are going to.)

memories, dreams and reality - how distinguishable are they? i have fairly vivid dreams almost every night, and also a lot of memories i’m not sure are real, so this topic is of high interest to me personally. the function of dreams has been studied at every angle from spiritual to physiological, and the psychological process of creating memories has been well studied and recorded. memories and dreams have been the subject of art and films for as long as can be traced, as these realms are difficult to understand, and seem to contain keys to human consciousness. recently i read that recent experiments with sleep deprivation and “dream withdrawal” showed that if a person is deprived of dreams they begin to show psychotic tendencies while awake, and therefore maybe the function of dreams is to allow for a time of quiet insanity and that maybe it is not sleep that is necessary for well-being, but dreams (sorry, cannot find citation).

I. 2 weekends ago we watched Waltz with Bashir (available on Netflix) - a mostly-true film about participants in the 1982 Lebanon War and the horrible civilian massacre that occurred (warning: i was unprepared for the actual real footage of this event shown at the end of the film). the mission of the main character is to determine which of his memories of such a chaotic and traumatic period as a solider are true. the film is done in absolutely gorgeous animation, which supports the dreamlike quality.

i found this film not only educational (i myself had no idea what happened in that war, as i was an American and only 6, but i remember Beirut being a city name i heard on the news quite often during that time), but brilliant in that it captures not only the confusion that soldiers feel in chaotic wartime (forgetting all training/orders and acting only in self-defense, mass hysteria, trauma), but also the crux of the question of what memories are and how they are created. all but one of the characters in the film is a real person, and each of them, through the series of interviews, questions who/what/where/why/how. if 2 people are in the same place at the same time, but each remembers it differently, how does anyone ever know what really happened? i highly recommend Waltz with Bashir not only for its beauty and history, but for the bravery to question traumatic political events that collectively have a million different memories contributing to the public understanding.

II. watching Inception last weekend [SPOILER ALERT: STOP READING HERE], i have to say i was unimpressed by its lack of creativity and i got bored. my brain just kept returning to every other film on the relative subjects of the intersection of dreams, memories and consciousness manipulation i’ve ever seen (Waking Life, Scanner Darkly, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dream a Little Dream, and the director Nolan’s previous film, Memento), and most of all, the classic Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. the idea of the film was simple but the execution was overly complicated, and somewhere around the “third level” snow scene i was completely bored and wondering why we were being taken through all that ridiculousness. for other people that was probably a very entertaining part of the film, but i’m not someone entertained by shootouts and explosions and special effects, so it all seemed incredibly superfluous and that last 1/3 of the film just dragged on forever for me. that, and the whole embedded love story, there to give personal weight to the intentions of the main character and provide another plotline (and possibly a whole subplot of her participation not brought to light in the film), seemed entirely unnecessary to what otherwise would have been a fairly straightforward idea: we plant an idea in a dream, and make the dream complex enough for the dreamer to believe it was their own, and s/he wakes up and changes life course. however, the big question on that premise, for me, was this: has a dream ever made you actually change YOUR life?

the final question laid in front of the viewer in the final second of the film was just so OBVIOUS - was it ALL a dream? if so, whose dream was it? - that i am not even interested in addressing it, because i think 1. the point is that you will never know, and 2. the script doesn’t seem mature enough to actually have a tight resolution to that even if you watched the movie 100 more times looking for “clues” (here’s a link though if you want to).

the psychological aspects of the film are of more interest to me than the film itself, and while i understand they are all intertwined, the substory of the wife going mad after spending 50 years in a dream and not believing “reality” (i guess i should put that in quotes) was much more intriguing to me than the main plot, looping back to the idea of what it means to remember, and what our consciousness decides our story has been, and how.

i am more intrigued by the ranting homeless people i see screaming at bus stops or cases of extreme savants and schizophrenia: science-fiction unnecessary, there are humans on this planet at this very moment who are living in an entirely different world than we are. those of us who consider ourselves “sane” are only such because our brains have set up layers of filters for the infinite amount of sensory data it receives. what if those filters were to disappear? many suggest that perhaps this is what manifests in our dreams.

i know i am going very wide with this, but i have very little use for fiction unless i can relate it to and question real life (i guess that makes me a “plausibilist”). i am not big on fantasy, and i have little suspension of disbelief when it comes to films. so i spent most of the time watching Inception thinking about all of these other things, and caring less about the plot and the characters. is that what the film was supposed to do? if so it did its job, but i could have done without the blockbuster bits (i much prefer Linklater’s style).

(btw if you haven’t seen Ellen Page in Hard Candy, i highly recommend that deeply twisted film.)

.::.

now that i’ve written that, here’s some good bits of what other people have written about Inception:

Continue reading »

QOTD: M.I.A. on Gaga

“People say we’re similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic.”

—M.I.A. to the NME on April 7, on Lady Gaga.

– Interview Magazine, June 2010

i’m not much into M.I.A.’s music either, but this perfectly sums up why i’m not into Gaga. her costumes? fantastic (but i’m giving a lot of credit to her costume designers there too). her music? horrible, to the point that it annoys me so much that i can’t bear the thought of listening to it just to see the performance art.

lots of other good quotes in there too, such as the opening one:

“I find the new Justin Bieber video more violent and more of an assault to my eyes and senses than what I’ve made.”

—M.I.A. to NME.com on May 12, responding to the furor over the video for her new song “Born Free,” which was yanked from YouTube.

faith, hope and power in 2010

this is a little delayed as this link is from a few weeks ago, but if you, like me, often wonder WTF can be done about the state of the world and maybe sometimes get overwhelmed and depressed about things way beyond our control (or are they?), i highly recommend reading this:

http://social-creature.com/how-to-stand-in-the-face-of-powerlessness-for-a-new-generation

excerpt:

We humans have such a deep need to feel like we’ve got any sense of agency in our lives, we’ll gladly trick ourselves into perceiving we’re in control — or at the very least, that control over chaos is attainable — even when it’s not true. This proclivity is a large part of why God exists — or rather, why we believe he does. In a2007 New York Times article exploring possible answers from evolutionary biology as to how we have come to believe in God, Robin Marantz Henig wrote:

Our brains are primed for [belief in the supernatural], ready to presume the presence of agents even when such presence confounds logic. “The most central concepts in religions are related to agents,” Justin Barrett, a psychologist, wrote in his 2004 summary of the byproduct theory, “Why Would Anyone Believe in God?” Religious agents are often supernatural, he wrote, “people with superpowers, statues that can answer requests or disembodied minds that can act on us and the world.”

We automatically, and often unconsciously, look for an explanation of why things happen to us,” Barrett wrote, “and ‘stuff just happens’ is no explanation. Gods, by virtue of their strange physical properties and their mysterious superpowers, make fine candidates for causes of many of these unusual events.” The ancient Greeks believed thunder was the sound of Zeus’s thunderbolt. Similarly, a contemporary woman whose cancer treatment works despite 10-to-1 odds might look for a story to explain her survival. It fits better with her causal-reasoning tool for her recovery to be a miracle, or a reward for prayer, than for it to be just a lucky roll of the dice.

As an alternative to these external supernatural forces it’s become increasingly popular to reclaim a sense of power in the face of chaos or tragedy by elevating control of our inner selves to this transcendent status of godliness. In Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined AmericaBarbara Ehrenreich recounts, in a chapter titled, “Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer,” how getting diagnosed with breast cancer led to her first introduction with the cult of “positive thinking.” The “Pink Ribbon Culture,” she writes, is defined by a mantra of “positive thinking” that is so extreme, at times it paints cancer as a “gift, deserving of the most heartfelt gratitude:”

it goes on to discuss the cultural exhaustion/overwhelm/paralysis over the BP oil spill.  WHAT CAN WE DO? oh wait - have you stopped thinking about that already? maybe that’s part of the problem.

related previous post: postmillennial hope (2/24/10)

related obnoxious internet meme: affirmations of a little girl

UP and away (in memory of my grandmother)

today is the anniversary of my maternal grandmother’s death on 7/21/2003. she was a loving mother of 8 children, 20+ grandchildren, and now a number of great-grandchildren i can’t even count. many of us grandchildren lived with my grandparents for various reasons for different lengths of time, and i lived with them in Harbor Springs, MI the spring-summer of 1991, when i was 14 and finishing the 9th grade. it was a rather tumultuous period of my family life, but Grandma was always there and having that safe place to go to was invaluable. i can’t write much more about her and the memories now because it’s too hard. we all miss her dearly.

when i saw the Pixar movie “UP” for the first time, i cried during the first montage of the old man and his wife buying their house, growing old together, and the feeling of loss when she died and he was left alone to ponder their lives and things they’d never done, including her lifelong dream to go to South America, and his fight to save his home - the place that held all of the memories. it reminded me so much of my grandparents, and of my grandfather, who still lives on there in that quiet little town. unfortunately, the farm house they built together and lived in for decades burned down shortly after i moved to California and my grandfather lives somehwhere else now. but in my mind, that is always where they lived, and i know that house was full of memories and dreams.

part of the reason i am going to South America (on August 2) is because of that film. i want to grow old with Jay and not have any regrets about what we dreamed of and didn’t do. i want to make sure that we don’t put aside things like travel until it’s too late. i know in the film the wife was perfectly happy with the life they ended up living, and i know the same is true for my grandmother, who loved her home and her children and her church and her small town. i don’t even know if she ever really wanted to travel, but i do, and if i have a fear of anything - it’s regret, and so this trip i’m taking is, in part, in honor of the memory of my grandmother, bless her soul.