the long war

If anyone who knows me then they may have been waiting for a posting like this from me.....my thoughts on how I do what I do and maybe why.

The long war. We want out, they want us out. Not so easy. I've never agreed with this war in Iraq. I think it was poorly planned for the "unintended results", many things were taken for granted by our State Department, we had incomplete or even misleading intelligence as a nation, and we have/had an administration that listened to a few and surrounded themselves with "yes men"...even "Hell yes men"!

So why don't we just haul ass on the whole damn thing and let "them muslims" sort it out on their own.....after all, they've been slaughtering each other for centuries.

Well, that line of thinking is retarded in nature and irresponsible. We are a nation that is NOT perfect, we make mistakes, we buckle down, and we try our best to fix things when we are allowed to. That's the big picture of my thoughts...and it's very simple. But more importantly, its about being authentic and accountable to the "idea" of American Democratic Values...our values as a society, our belief system.

The United States is in the very unfortunate position of being the global torch bearer of human rights and democratic freedoms (even though we are technically a representative republic...and folks, there is a large type difference). That position in global leadership comes with a heavy burden. As a country, because of this, we will always be a target internally by our media machine and external by other nations and societies alike.

So like after WWII and other wars we've either started or entered, we need to stay and perform the due diligence to at least try to repair the damage we've created, protect the innocent trapped in the aftermath, and give the population a fighting chance to create their own future.

Free of extremist ideology.

In my view, Democracy is a gentlemen's agreement. We agree to debate our differences, we agree to a leadership change (in fact a revolution) evey 4 years, sometimes 8. We agree to a rule of law, we agree to separation of church and state, to freedom of the press, to the right of assembly, to be accountable to a system of rules that apply to everyone no matter of their station in society. Yeah, some people get away with things and it may seem unfair at times, but overall....it is working. The fact that you are reading this from the relative safety of your home, your office, or the starbucks (that hasn't closed) sipping your latte....is proof positive the system, our system is working in general terms....and we still have a long way to go...a long, long way to go.

1. Iraq is not so lucky, it never was, its not now...but hopefully it will be. Wanna know the difference between me and an average Iraqi....actually not much at all. We hurt the same, we laugh the same, we love the same, we just want to go to the grocery store, the library, the stereo shop or our respective places of worship in safety...that is not too much to ask.

An extremist, or better yet Religious Fundamentalist: (Religious fundamentalism refers to a "deep and totalistic commitment" to a belief in the infallibility and inerrancy of holy scriptures, absolute religious authority, and strict adherence to a set of basic principles (fundamentals), away from doctrinal compromises with modern social and political life.) obviously have many alternate views of how we, the USA conduct our daily lives.

The war we are involved in now is really not kinetic in nature, one of guns and bombs and IED's, even though they are certainly a deadly part of this war. The war now...is a war of words and deeds and theories, beliefs, education, moderation and socioeconomic systems...or, OR Maslow's hierarchy of needs., Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem, Self Actualization.

Whether we like it or not, agree with it or not, we are fighting for the environment that will allow Iraqi's to determine their own "new" destiny. To be safe in their own homes, go to the market, marry and have children, be proud of their heritage, and re-acquaint themselves with their pride.

Folks, this does not happen in 5 years, or 10 years, or 15. We are talking a generation or two. We are at this moment fighting for the children of Iraq...the undecided, the curious, the innocence that cause a dream to become a life mission. This is our obligation. We have to provide the soil and water for the seeds of compromise, moderation, openess to grow to a strong tree and bare fruit.

2. The soldier on the ground. Some of the best humans I have met in my life I have met in the past 2 years. They go to places we would never have the courage to go, accept the tasking's we would never accept, and do their best to come home safe and sound. They are hard, and yet they are compassionate, they are wickedly smart...and they have the hardest job on this planet. They cannot afford to make one single mistake in anything. My time in News....we could fuck something up, use a bad graphic, whatever...and fix it with a correction and an apology on air and it's done, over with, on to the next story...fagetaboutit!

They are not afforded this luxury, ever. A mistake in a color on a leaflet can cause a riot that directly results in the death of an innocent civilian. This is the game they play everyday. The same press with all it's freedom, awaits anxiously to high lite the mistakes and brush off the successes. The "viewing" population revels in their misteps and yet demands they move faster. We have turned the camera lenses into the most powerful weapon ever created. Media no longer observes and reflects, but rather edits and reshapes the information into an opinion based editorial. If the news outlets of the world only reported fact and allowed you to decide for yourself, there would be no need for CBS News, NBC News, Fox News, CNN, etc, etc....because they would all be saying the exact same thing....and it would be inherently boring. We are in the age of infotainment and tabloid journalism that compete for your money, not the principals of informing you.

A journalist will allow you to think, if you read a conclusion, then you have been given an opinion.

Just like what I'm doing here, but I said that upfront didn't I?

3. War is NEVER human, nor is it Holy....NEVER. If you demand that civilian casualties stay low and we salvage as much as possible....then expect it(the war) to last a long long time...and get over it, except it.

4. The B-52 bomber is the greatest psychological weapon to ever have been created. It is the definition of defeat....why...because it kills everything beneath it. Ask North Vietnam...as a society, if we want to defeat the extremists and bring them to their knees, then we must be willing to be as equally extreme and destroy ALL life until they reach their break point. We did it in Germany, we repeated it in Japan, again in Vietnam.

Is this us? I hope not...not yet, not again. I still have hope in the 4yr old. I have met Muslim's that are worth our continued effort..and they just want the same basic things we do, I am convinced of that. I see a beautiful civilization that is worth saving. A rich culture and wonderful hearts, for fucks sake they invented modern science..look up the origins of Algebra(it's an Arabic word)!!!!

They are as much like us than they will ever be different. We have created our obligation and we must remain authentic to our promise of what we stand for and the torch we carry.

I will never be afraid of extremist in Iraq, what scares me, is extremists in our culture.

The Silent Majority must be heard, we cannot afford to be silent much longer. We must demand more of ourselves and our leaders. We must honor the life that has been taken and cleanse the soil of hatred and righteousness.

So the tree can grow.

I'm tired.

B.

aS-Sabr miftaaHu l-faraj (Patience is the key to freedom)

a choice...from 9/11/03

The long road into work gives time to reflect.
Will I know true peace in my lifetime? In 35 shorts years, there has not been a decade without the war of man. It is now two years since that day. I think of the images of that day, the anger, the sadness, and I see the statues in my living room, given for the glimpse of my heart, and grow heavy with the guilt, of having them. What award will fill the unhappiness and despair? What is my contribution yet to make? I feel I have done nothing, only to have willfully fed the machine that holds the public eye. I help focus the first person view of the destruction of man.

We use freedom of the press as the excuse to invade, just as a terrorist to religion. What has become of the values we so preciously seek? We have chosen to survive rather than create. We know what the public eye will watch, but do we know what they yearn to see?

Why must this choice be made, survive or serve? What if we, together, choose both? What if we choose to make a difference? What if we choose to honor the medium and the freedom granted to it to make our world better today than it was 2 years ago? What can we do to make it better? Not because it can. But because it should.

greed

It is on occasions that we conflict with the fundamentals of our lives. Who are we? What am I doing? Why am I here? For what purpose am I to serve? Why does the world not agree with me?

Why do we, as humans seek to know the essence of our existence? For exploration? For understanding? To better ourselves? Make us more worldly?

I think not..it is for greed. We generally associate greed with financial gains and have tagged it to a corporate culture based on a bottom line. But greed is not as bad as have made it out to be. All progress has been created on the backs of the individuals who were courageous enough to become comfortable with their own greed and then feed it. The issue arises when we become embarrassed by our greed; it makes us feel inadequate and arrogant.

But is human exploration, the attempt to understand what our species IS, and what it can withstand…arrogant? Is LOVE, complete LOVE, arrogant? Well, yes….because it makes us proud to have that someone or something.

a quote

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

~Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

purpose of design

As far as I can remember I have been drawing or creating something…I have always felt an inner peace when I am tasked to design something, to create from that which does not exist. In this, design becomes very personal, it is a process of communicating an experience through my actions, through my heart.

In the literal world of webster’s dictionary design is defined as:
de•sign (di-zin’) v. 1. To conceive: invent: contrive.

By nature of the literal translation, to design is to conceive. I take this to be absolute, I may design for others, but that is still a part of myself that is being given away. I ultimately own the idea and, when employed by others…am required to give that idea or by association, a piece of me away to create an experience for someone else. The process is inherently selfless. It continues to rebirth and evolves itself at every opportunity, continually giving away and then replacing with something new.

Design is not the image infront of you, it is not the spoken or read word, it is not the music track, it is not the color on the wall….it is all and yet it is none of these singularly. Design ultimately creates feeling…to design effectively is to evoke an emotional response, no matter where it is good or bad.

Ultimately, the intended recipient “client” will walk away with a feeling, not an absolute memory. Memory, being organic in nature, is an accumulation of stored electrical signals. Memory, over time will filter details and allow the overall experience to create the definition. For example, I remember that my mother makes an excellent lemon pound cake, but the details of the pound cake are taken for granted and ultimately evoke a memory of being home, being safe. That’s may seem odd, but think of what feelings you associate with even the earliest childhood memories. Overtime, even the most detailed memories get generalize into feelings…love, hate, happy, sad, accurate, deceptive.

Once we realize this to be true, we are free to push even our own limits of communication. Multiple messages can be delivered across one platform, or better yet, these messages can be simplified to allow to a single idea to flourish with great impact in an uncluttered environment. We can be free to create a feeling, a need for our product and/or message.

In the guise of television, its not enough for the viewer to assume that they will get the very best in a news product from us. We have to design and craft a product that reinforces our commitment to them. Through design, of the video, the script, the ots, the edit, the camera work, the audio, etc., we have the opportunity to create an experience that will build an emotional attachment or trust, that will translate into an automatic response. In the world of diaries as ratings tools, we were able to “skate” because our viewers went by a generalized assessment and not an absolute. In the world of meters as ratings tools, it is absolute, they are either tuned in or not. The need for a better product, better delivery is now greater than ever. We must concentrate on refining our product and thereby building trust on every platform of delivery, this trust will create a call to action, like a hand-shake or hug when you first meet a friend. Its automatic, it is beyond the thought process. Everything is at stake in this environment. We must strive to create, in the viewer, a feeling that the viewer is as comfortable with us as we are with ourselves, but we have to be comfortable with ourselves first. This how we prove that everyone is a designer in some capacity.

creative

how do we define creativity?

is it in a painting?
is it in music?
form, or expression?
the list can go on.

how about we start with the core of the word...."create"......or "to create".........something from nothing. I hear a lot of people, who say..."I'm just not the creative type". We are who we "declare" we are I guess in the long run. I have come to see creativity in most people, even those who do not even see it in themselves. I have also come to conclude that the biggest inhibitor to creativity, or the "honoring" of such is when we try to adapt someone elses expression into our own mold. We try to "relate" so closely with the piece, as if to define it, categorize it, understand it fully....................and in return, we only succeed in discounting, disrupting, or oppressing the creativity in return.

I have seen this first hand, expreienced it, done it. I came across this thought when poised with explaining my interest in world music. I don't speak a second language, I only know enough spanish to order a beer or piss someone off! But I have an extensive collection of world music, most of which, the lyrics I know nothing of what they are saying. But the music, the mood, the intent is still easily transferable from the artist to listener once I "give up" trying to figure it out. STOP THINKING IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND!

This is espcecially true with one particular artist. Lisa Gerrard. She is the female lead vocalist on the track "Now We Are Free" from the Gladiator Soundtrack. I was doing research to find out what particular dialect she was using and was startled, surprised...and yet inspired by what I found out to be true.....and a topic of much debate! Lisa, in this song as well as her albums, sings in a language all unto herself.......as in "NO KNOWN LANGUAGE".....she essentially allows the feeling of the music to drive the tense, syllables, tone of her voice......it is her own....and it is beautiful..truly. And yet, when you hear it, you can get the feeling she is singing to you in a language you should know already...............................its because you do. Somewhere, after about 1-2 yrs old, we were taught to form our sounds into the various languages of our cultures, but we have never gone far from the small infant that could only rely on the simplest of sound formations to understand and "feel".....happy, sad, empathy, distress, love.........the core of our very spirits.........she is singing to you at the very base level of your understanding, but in trying to classify and interpret...as we've been taught over the years, we are missing the point of her music and loosing the intent and beauty.

Lisa Gerrard's vocals are creativity at its core, not because they fit into some narrow definition that society(s) have placed on it....but because they(us) can't understand any of it, we don't hold the key to it, only she does. We are forced to listen on her terms and not our own, we have to..."think less to understand more"

Bill.

more artist to "just listen" to:
Ofra Haza (Love Song)
Cheb Mami
Ayub Ogata (Kothbiro)

art...it is?

first...a IM conversation between me and another photographer on the topic if whether his photo was worthy of even "his" adoration.

me: it reaches the benchmark of "a moment in time"...a true moment....the pic is above par on a very hard scale...it could be a (movie) still, but the the best part is that it looks like the photog is transparent in the process....shit..its her, its the pic..its the booze.....you name it.

him: thank you!

him: thank you for getting it

him: here's what's going up on my blog:

him: "Sometimes the story in a photo isn't the story you saw at all, but it's just so achingly beautiful the fake story wins."

me: yes....and that is where photography becomes art....when the story can be made up.

A photo makes you wonder....art makes you think.

end conversation.....

since picking up this photography hobby AND diving right in....it seems most conversations in and around the "photography" community are about "what doesn't work" in a particular photograph. there are many online communities out there, such as flickr, that have thousands of "groups" you can join and readily have your work torn apart by what some call "F"Tards (fu@k tards).

i thought golf was an elitest hobby...it holds nothing to photography....and i've been known to go elitest myself....i have certainly made my fair share of comments in the open groups about how a photo could be improved upon.

it made me think about another friends blog recently about how we have been trained by the computer GUI to just negotiate rather than analyze....here is the intro section of the blog.

"The other day I was reading an article by Sherry Turkle about the evolution of the GUI and how the desktop simulation “permits” a user to stay on the computer's surface, never diving below the picture to work with its innards. From this, Turkle says, we learned to "negotiate rather than analyze."

i seriously have obsessed over this assertion, not because i don't understand, but because it finally put into words what i have been stewing over for years but did not have the ability to articulate it effectively.

hense, we have replaced thought with technology, imagination with HDR(high dynamic range..super detailed photos). in these photogroups critiques are mostly about technique, technical abilities, detail (too much, not enough), etc.

what has happened to the damn "feeling" in anything.....in us?

i think any great piece of art, whether its a photo, a painting, a building design, the cut of your underwear, or the presentation of a dinner plate on a night out....will speak to you before you do anything with or around it....it will cause you to "think".

art in all its forms is less about the technique and much more about the feeling it pushes outwardly. thats the creative process as i see it. we must not look to qualify anything as art beyond our own gut feeling. flaws are natural, art and creativity are natural and are imperfect in essense. the techno-crats have forgotten this, but it does not mean we must go along. do not take this as these communities are not worthwhile....just like in everything in life, there is some gold in there, you just need to be willing to look for it, or better yet...allow it to find you.