Dada Robotnik

For someone who enjoys taking photos

2012-01-31T20:36:00.000-08:00

I take photos far too infrequently.

Unbeautiful A_, Tripping on Acid

2012-01-23T22:12:00.001-08:00

Her cumulative appearance is that of a feral animal, filled with a playful meanness that might edge into violence if the trip takes a turn. Crooked nose with a little bulge at the bottom, hooked and splayed teeth. Her eyes are brown and dilated plus size. Freckles and frayed brown hair. An agent of chaos in a leather jacket and a gossamer white skirt. She dances capoeira on the subway, spanks passerby, and picks fights with girls that vibe her the wrong way. It's New Years Eve. Brooklyn was a nice 50's dance party filled with queers and freaks and people with Palmade and pocket combs for the occasion. A wise partier would have stayed there all night but the group wanted to venture, the girls seeking adventure, as they do, talking about 'the bars' like they're out there with a magic offering, the perfect vibe, instead of more drunks and more tabs and more logistical confusion. Venture we did at 2:00 am, into the following predictablities:
Cold corner/no cab
G Train/glare of light on unclean tile/the collective faith of the platform/train will come.
Happy New Year's love onboard/the mob swelling as we approach manhattan/the mean city's post-new years trash beginning to manifest.

It started at the L Train transfer, with people throbbing and twisted on bad substances, the cokeheads angry and empty, furiously rubbing their noses, the drunks bumbling and roaring, covered in marker, mounting a cry on the crowded train: "Sex. Sex! SEX!" Literally yelling the chant. People share glances, alarmed or annoyed, then shrug. "I guess that's a sentiment we can all get behind." Girls on E asking for things. This stop, that stop, In my way, in her way, don't kick the baby. The subway was filled with life but the life was adventurous, as it dared to give public transit a try, and the communal spirit in the crowd was cheerful and harmless.

Above ground on 1st Avenue, however, life was a Hunter Thompson caricature, peopled mostly with Jersey Shore types instead of slick overweight hamster-wheelers. 'Men' (boys) with fake tans and jewelry were shouting at and being shouted at by sobbing women in heels, women whose identities had googled 'sexy girl' and selected the first page of results.
Still unpretty A_ was dragging her ragged earthy chalk line through the streets with her nails, heckling, hissing. I made escape plans of disassociation should she get punched, though if held at gunpoint I'd take her approach over the guido drama. She was more like me than I cared to admit, though enviably she was still sure of things. We settled into a bar and the host asked our names. He was well dressed, with a polished mustache and a game right hand, which meant he went for a reverse lefty handshake. The next time he comes back A_ pounces. "What are our names?"
Host sweats and stutters, and accurately names 3 of us. Not A_.
"I'm sorry. I'm bad with names" He says, eyes bouncing, ringing his hands. My heart falls. First mistake, dude.
"What are you doing with a job like this if you're bad with names?" she growls at him, and I slink deeper into my chair. The place is pricy and cute, a faux-speakeasy with a hidden entrance in a phone booth. The kind of place that tricks customers into an attitude of exceptionalism. The drinks are shockingly good, but should the lights come up and the edge of the buzz fade one might notice the mahogany finish is a veneer. One might notice that the hidden hip spot with the secret number has a yelp page and a phone listing and a jackelope at the wall, your own personal court jester reminding you not to take things too seriously.

A_ continues to demand the host's attention, glaring into his eyes. He concedes to remember her name and escapes the table.
I straighten up.
"A_, that wasn't fair. The reason he didn't remember your name isn't because he's bad with names. It's because you're a routine to him, another table. You didn't do anything memorable."
She holds her hands up. "Now I have."
"Yeah, now he thinks you're a jerk."
"So? He'll remember me, and I'll be able to get a table. The fact that I was an asshole is unimportant. That's a detail. In time all these details fade, names fade, the content fades. All you're left with is THIS, this right here." She points at her two swirling, black-magic eyes and draws a line to my own.

You're right, A_, the content fades. My job is to record it. To remember not that you thought yourself exceptional and therefore were, but to remember that your superiority was based on the browbeating of others in a canned stereotype of a speakeasy, where class divisions between patron and server are marked with an cliche New York colored pencil. That you needed to take advantage of that is what I'll remember. Your posturing was based on a manipulation of a sick culture that we should strive to undermine and do without, rather than pimp it to our advantage. These are the takeaways of the night, those and the dangerous, rabid emptiness behind your eyes.

New, and New, and just as natural.

2011-12-31T12:47:00.000-08:00

Happy new year, everybody. Our vanity says this is the big one. If we could only be so lucky. Instead let's get together and solder on through another year of Doing the Right Thing©, with some time now and again to reflect on the implausibility of the universe in general. In New York, someone's dancing across the city, and someone else is walking every street of it. Be sure to participate or give these people their required approbations or encouragements. The latter journeyer, I hear, likes cookies.

The last, say, 6 months for me have gone by in a bit of a haze, involving dozens of places with at least a dozen states of activation, learning, fuzziness, out-of-sorts, inspiration, and connection for each. I have emerged from this dream-like state and find myself in a space of my own for the first time since about fall of 2010. I've been realizing that Brooklyn is my new home and it's a comfortable feeling, I like what I've made for myself here and wherever it's heading.

I've been writing up a storm, stacking up shale-like fragments with the hope that a structure emerges, eventually, Meeting the city, inventing myself in relationship to it, and tinkering with my new apartment, in which my roommates and I have already introduced a hundred imperceptible changes to make the place our own. I like my room tremendously and will probably never leave it. I built my desk out of free wood that I carted from a loft on Bedford, lashed to my bicycle. My radio is yellowed and silly, a frumpy little cube that blares WNYC constantly, giving me a window to the world and only occasionally asking for member contributions. My bed is a bunch of bookshelves turned on their side, I took my mattress on the cross-town B38 Bus and engaged in a battle of wits with the bus driver to secure passage.
"What'll you do if it falls on someone? They'll sue the MTA!"
"Dude, have you been in a pillow fight? It's like a giant pillow. They'll love it."
My dresser is a pathetic little thing, which wobbles and sways, I truncated its legs off to cover for a missing drawer and to allow my shirts to hang. Little changes. I stand before the bicycle map of the city, two sides stitched together, and wonder where I'll end up next. My books, bicycles, milk-crates, clothes, and pantry all bear the mark of communication-as-currency, things acquired through conversation, craigslist, and currents more inscrutable. There is always someone to talk to, and everyone's a stranger.

I came here in a fury of action, my schedule booked. I was riding down to Occupy Wall Street every day, working on a project for Digital Democracy, consuming literature about the movement, writing a little and being -just- too slow to contribute to the literature. I was sending out ten bids for freelance jobs a day, and hearing back from very few, jobs with pay tallying a pathetic count which I'm willfully vague about. New York is the city of the intern, the volunteer, the start-up, the deferred until distributed 3-ring circus. Now, with a lease, 2 bikes, and a (purported) heating system, I find myself taking a breath, and realizing that the hermetic, bopping, productive lifestyle that I pursued in Salt Lake it possible here, with the addition of an insane, buzzing, ever-present little creature that reminds you constantly of the flowing honey of events, ideas, projects, productions waiting for you to get involved with them.

The buzzing thing (I think it has fur) won't leave me be, but I appreciate its motivation. Input=Output, castle building. All the better to navigate this unsleeping world.

Beautiful Masquerade Behind Glass

2011-12-26T21:13:00.000-08:00

Divas. The window displays at Bergoff Goodman blew the rest of the storied 5th avenue box-displays away. Rich opulence crammed with nostalgia, victorian finery, and cabinet of curiosity relics.

One entirely of wrought brasswork, another of paper and books contorted into magnificent shapes, another semi-precious stones.

The high fashion works fit seamlessly in. Prada, Tom Ford, etc. The fragile, intense worksmanship of each window a crushing antidote to the slick marketing of the rest of the moneyed world, and the lazy, half-baked expression of many galleries.
I've never heard of the store before, but when I'm rich they'll get my money as a result. Just kidding. I'll still shop at thrift stores, just more pretentious ones.

Wiki-Geeking out: These streets have stories.

2011-12-02T12:14:00.000-08:00

I just procured, with a number of friends, a 2nd story apartment on Marcus Garvey Boulevard and Greene Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York. I'm currently undereducated about the history of the neighborhood, but the street names stood out to me. As the child of a nameless grid, walking down streets descended from specific characters or sites in our national history is a pleasant change of pace. Greene is a bit of an incidental, named I believe after Nathanael Greene, a boringly noteworthy Revolutionary war General who probably partied hard but whose exploits have been dulled by the heavy hand of history.

Next up is Marcus Garvey, whom I'm also woefully undereducated about, but who is a total badass. Not only was Garvey from Jamaica, the coolest of islands to originate from, but by the time he was my age he was editing two newspapers. Not to be content with island living, he hoofed it to New York, and got a job as a lowly printer, earning his public speaking chops by lecturing anyone who would stop and listen on street corners. Oh but can I ever relate! That didn't last long, because Garvey was a hustler, he soon was representing and running black community and political interest groups and touring the US as a speaker, garnering support and striking fear into the hearts of white folk everywhere. He struck so much fear into the status quo that the assistant DA, Edward Kilroe, investigated Garvey's group for terroristic activities. When that resulted in an editorial harranguing by Garvey, Kilroe sued for libel, and then some assassin dude showed up and shot at Garvey 4 times, failing to kill him. The assassin killed him self a bit later, and Garvey kept on trucking. Garvey is known for being the father of Black Nationalism and Zionism, seeking a homeland for African Americans. He also ruffled the feathers of W.E.B. Debois and pretty much everybody by consorting with the KKK, with the attitude that, while they were hateful racists, at least they were honest about it.

Our final candiate for wiki-study is Charles Sumner. Marcus Garvey Blvd has an identity crisis: Though it runs through Bed-Stuy and only through Bed-Stuy, it pretends to have another name, like it's the continuation of some other street. Maybe it was renamed, recently, maybe the street just enjoys being deceptive. Whatever the case, Sumner is an appropriate predecessor to Garvey, as an abolitionist and as the receptor of angry anti-black violence. Sumner was a Congressman preceding the Civil War, but a rad one, lyrical and idealistic, his writing style both fluid and biblical. It comes as no surprise, then, when arguing against the Southern opposition to slave freedom he exercised a little literary licence, likening his opponents to Pimps and Lechers, he derided them for supporting an immoral practice, orating: "Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight. I mean the harlot Slavery."

This sat none too well with southern Congressman Preston Brooks, who decided to take matters into his own hands and beat Sumner within an inch of death with his cane. On the Senate Floor. In front of dozens of clerks and witnesses. That didn't do a lot for the reputation of southern intellectual prowess. So Sumner got whacked, Garvey got shot, and both had streets named after them. History wasn't as kind to Kilroe and Brooks, though I hear Preston and his brother Elisha did rather well with a line of mens suits...(n't).

Which brings me back to Bed-Stuy. Bed-Stuy, the place of legend. Bed-Stuy, the gap in the subway maps. The vanguard of gentrification (oh, hey folks, sorry about that...). The place, according to rap songs, where people get beat up and shot. How fitting, then, that ol' Garvey and Sumner hang out around here.

November 17th: conversations with the 1%, what next?

2011-11-17T11:56:00.000-08:00

Awoke at 5 am. Rode along the Hudson, waking up in the pre-dawn, fast but groggy. I was headed to Zuccotti, to be a bike scout for today's blockading of the Wall Street entrances. I was vaguely aware of what that entailed, imagining I would be reporting on the movements of cops and the construction of police baracades. The short answer was there were cops everywhere, barricades everywhere. An army of police in the constructed DMZ around the financial district. I lean into a blue-helmeted cop. "you guys must get called in from everywhere! Is everywhere else on a skeleton staff?" He grins. "40000 of us in New York." if you've had occasion to be wary of standing armies specifically or authority in general, that's a pretty terrifying thought. The cops outnumbered protesters easily 3 to 1. I felt like asking them what they were protesting, but remembered my ostensible position was to be discreet, and thought better of it.

I watched a small number of people congregate near the park, feeling disoriented. I couldn't tell what the plan was, where this group was headed, or how i could help them. I stood around with a few friends, a rising urgency in my stomach. Had i once again signed up for what sounded like a fun job but was in fact edging me our of other effective action? The crowd began to rumble, I stared to bike.

I soon realized that my group was just one of 5 or 6, all swelling and congregating around the many entrances to the stock exchange. I lost my trepidation and, calling back to coordinate with the central group conference call, began informing the crowds.

I would witness a paddywagon unload, a column of police march in, a group lose morale. In response I would floor it, dodging and swerving the stalled traffic, and roll up to another group. "mic check! Mic check! Bike report!" and in that fascinating passage from self to group, my words would be roared back to me in the people's microphone. The effect is thrilling and immediately humbling, I was compelled to keep my updates as factual as possible. People reacted, or didn't, but the fact alone that for brief moments a mass of people are able to act as one is a tremendously empowering thing. The lines of communication were open.

I witnessed some arrests, some beatings, some notable quips and street conversations. I was shoved aside by a cop mid-message for being in the street, and the crowd howled, supporting me. A young woman in business attire and I exchanged smiles. "Sorry, I work here, but I support what you guys are doing." "you aren't the enemy" I reply, obviously. "the thing we're fighting is a broken system, corruption, not people. We're FOR people."

Later, once my work feels done, I post up by a police barricade and watch wall street workers get upset at the heavy-handed and arbitrary treatment they receive in the hands of the cops. "This is an Exit only!" shouts an officer, much like a child when, having freshly made his own rules, he clings to them with unbreakable resolve. I felt like pointing out to the well-dressed men with thinning (yet *perfect*) hair the similarities between their situation and the everyday experience of palestinians or anyone else trapped the the mechanism of authoritarian bureaucracy, but I thought the point might be a little graceless under the circumstance. So instead I watched, and listened, to power argue with power. One elegantly dressed businessman was shunted out the exit, roughly. "why are you shoving me, officer?" he held a neon green sign. It read, "Get a Job."

I had a chance to talk to this fellow a little later, after I heard him rant on camera about mismanaged government spending and rampant free marketeering being the root ills of society. He sounded like an OWS protester, but he couldn't have been angrier with them. "these assholes are just lying around a park, when the problem is policy in Washington!" He went on to say the group could be sending mass calls to representatives and frying their phone systems. He had a point. I argued diversity of tactics, and suggested her get involved in a working group through NYCGA. He wasn't interested.

Later, from the other end of the spectrum, I was shouted at by a carpenter for suggesting that there was merit behind protesting a broken system. His argument also centered around the whole 'these bums should go get a job' tack. "I worked 3 jobs out college! I had 3 kids! These freaks just wanna do drugs!" We yelled at each other for a while and that was nice, but after drawing sone other bystanders into the conversation we were suddenly on better terms. He didn't think a single person under 30 would work hard with their hands. I assured him there were competent engineers and carpenters living in that park. He brought up a good point, within a limit: what people needed to do was work, hard, at whatever came their way, and be grateful for it. What evolved was a larger conversation on the lines we draw regarding personal needs and personal values. He saw the contradiction in hating that the US was losing jobs overseas and personally investing in an outsourcing company like Sysco (cisco? I'm too lazy to fact check on my phone), but he ultimately shrugged off the moral burden in favor of having a retirement. I, on the other hand, wasn't going to cede that getting a job at walmart was a solution, because of the systemically awful things they perpetuate societally and environmentally. Thus we talked, and I almost asked him to give me a job, until I quietly stepped back and reminded myself that I didn't come to New York to do construction. Thus passed another morning in the struggle.

What both of these men were evidencing and getting close to articulating was the root problem the movement is facing: how do we stop whining, pointing, and counter-whining? How do we best take these core issues and work on changes to them? Through protest occupations around the world? Through intervention in political policy? Through education? Through burning the fucker down and starting over?

The suit-and-tie's right: we need to move from protests to influencing policy, the carpenter's right: we need to learn the value of hard work, with your hands, and the protesters are right: we need some attention on these issues, and the whole thing's a mess.

Diversity of tactics. Get in however you see fit, and get to work.

Cranksgiving 2011

2011-11-16T07:57:00.001-08:00

The Morning After: Bulldozing Liberty Square

2011-11-15T08:01:00.000-08:00

In the middle of the night on November 15th cops finally decided to oust the protesters from Zuccotti park, on the flimsy premise that they needed to clean it, that the park was unavailable for other users, and that the protesters would be welcome back, sans any of the tents, awnings, and other structures that make the physical location of the movement tenable. Nice compromise, NYPD. There's also some schlock out there about the peaceable dispersal of a few hundred people, which is glaring sharply with some protester accounts of sound cannons and teargas. I don't know, I wasn't there. But this guy was...

(this photo was floating around in a very prominent news source's photo essay until today, when it inexplicably went missing. #copwash.)

I was present, the night before, in the public atrium on 6o Wall St, where a buzz of different groups organizing with diverse tactics filled the air.

photo thanks to Jameswagner.com, who has a nice write-up about the space.

I was present in Charlotte's Place for a conversation with Ted, from the Open Source working group, about the future and power of the movement. "I love having this locus, where people can congregate, share ideas, give a face to the movement." At the time I had been thinking how permanent and filled with momentum Zuccotti park was, how it couldn't be washed away nearly as easily as Salt Lake, or Oakland, or other evicted movements. Ted shook his head. "We're to the point where we don't need to be centralized, there's too much going on to stop." He smiled. "In fact, destroying the park would just let us be one step ahead..."

I hope he's right. At the moment it's clear what a resource the park was, a place of free shelter and free food for a diverse group of activists to come together and focus, in their gamut of ways, on problem solving. Tactics as diverse as the energy bikes built by Time's Up...

here being rounded up and presumably trashed (as per the Police's statement that all objects 'left' in the park would be destroyed) by the Police after a huge effort to construct them) to the great art of Rachel Schragis and the Call to Action working group (headline image).

Yesterday this movement seemed full of productive energy, which to the guardians of status-quo and order was untenable. Now we evolve, in an unknown direction, but the work will continue and the people who labored, loved, and were activated behind the barricades and under the tarps won't easily lose the education they gained in Zuccotti park.

(one of many good before/after images from enhanced buzz)

See you November 17th.

This needed to be shared

2011-11-13T18:47:00.001-08:00

Orange bike, a photo by dreamiurg on Flickr.

This guy knows how to do it...

Relentless Art: The mean, huge brain of William Powhida

2011-11-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

Wandering around Chelsea Galleries is a good way to be shunted into a green passive-agressive disgust/envy at all the earnest art-world salesmanship that circulates around mediocre work in the big city, which is my highbrow way of saying that I have my personal tastes and the things that fall outside of them annoy me. It is also a great way to learn about actually interesting stuff. Today that stuff was the work of William Powhida in the Postmasters Gallery, which not only blew my mind but left a residue of cynicism toward all the other art that followed it. Powhida's work centers around a style of pencilled, colorful art-world rants on a facsimile of notebook paper.

His snarky insider commentary and sarcastic anti-capitalism alone would probably be enough for me to fall in love, but beyond that it turns out the dude is SMART. Angrily smart, in fact, with a mathematical brain that has a penchant for mapping out social and political infographics with cutting personal attacks and diatribes. My favorite works in the show were giant parsings of the political landscape that appeared to contain years worth of interconnected, venomous insights about, well, everything. You could probably justifiably devote a news channel to extracting and presenting all of the information in this one piece:

The picture is huge, 5x10 feet. And though the gallery has some high-res versions of his pieces online, it's only in person that the barrage of information becomes apparent. And that one's logistically simple; it only separates political players by their place on the bi-partisan spectrum. My favorite piece in show is a 4-way nexus of the forces of pro-culture and sub-culture along a political spectrum, a "Continuum of Ideological Futility."

The artist appears to be hitting on all cylinders. The banner piece for the show deals with the challenge of art and protest articulating over-arching social problems. #OWS is a standout footnote, and he nails the collective messiness and circuitous nature of the challenges facing the radical social reform that we're attempting to get our heads around. He also may be the most prolific bridge-burner I've ever heard of, with pieces like a 'where are they now?' of Williamsburg's turn-of-the-century art startups. Mean as hell, but he's got the goods to back up the rhetoric.

Being new to New York

2011-11-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

feels exactly like this, in case you were wondering:

Just kidding. Kind of. What it really feels like is a total reinvention of the self under an unfamiliar network of very bright constellations. It's an adrenaline rush and filled with potential and utterly disorienting. This morning on the subway I was set upon by a goofy-looking semi-crazy fellow whose breakfast hobby, it appears, is to eloquently bitch and insult other subway riders, breaking that 4th wall of collective public indifference that we all know so well. I appreciated his spirit, but his choice of target (me) was obnoxious. My current situation of slightly heartsick joblessness was done no favors by the fact that I was late, on a train during rush hour, with a bike (oh the inconvenience, my fellow riders collectively asserted), headed to a sterile office environment where I was expected to masturbate into a cup and otherwise cement my position in society as a desperate creative type. So within all that psychic malaise Richard (for he introduced himself in soliloquy) struck me as a dick, and I told him so (in different words, rising to the occasion of his eloquence). The look with which he then regarded me told me, quite plainly, that I didn't belong. "As a native New Yorker I have long since learned..." he began his next diatribe, and with that phrase I knew I'd been bested. See, I have been on a bit of a winning streak when it comes to being out of place.

In Palestine it was fairly easy, given that people regard foreigners as you would a rock star and treat them with shocking deference, interest, celebrity, and hospitality. But any good post-colonialist gets tired of that positon after a while, and at the end of the day getting stared at wears you out regardless. In Haiti it was more of the same, but now whiteness was a synonym for exploitation and bad history, which made breaking the ice with a videocamera a bit of a challenge. Then there was not speaking Spanish in the DR, or, for that matter, speaking Polish in Poland, Mayorg in Hungary, etc. All's this to say that after 10 months of travelling in as many countries this puppy is worn out. And the last thing I wanted, in the US of A, the goddamn melting pot, and furthermore the only place I can ever be from, was to be an outsider. But an outsider I feel. Up on 181st I feel like a visitor in a sea of black and brown faces whom have made this place theirs, over the generations, and down in Greenepoint I am disgusted by what I see as the fruits of the young bright things' invasion into such places. With the punks of Zuccotti park I feel like a square (who needs an apartment! Who needs a job! Who needs upward mobility to be effective! That world's tired, and broken, and no fun anyway.), on my bike I feel like a stereotype that's been co-opted, and in a tie and a button-down shirt I feel like I'm playing dress-up and being earmarked as an impostor with my self-inflicted haircut.

Ahem. So it's funny, despite all that, that I'm having an incredible time. Building the beast that other folks know as 'the network' and I simply know as making friends, one hears glimmers of things again and again that start to materialize in front of you, names of organizations and initiatives and projects and places. Already, 10 days in, I've popped inside some of those places and felt the potential there. The roofless ability to, if one plays one's cards right, be effective. That's where the intoxication of New York comes from, the fact that behind the glibness and the hipness and the self-involved posturing and the bustle and the grime and the ego and the challenges there's actually potential, real potential. The ability to take what you do and kick ass with it. That's already been worth it. Furthermore, there are 8 million people of every stripe out there, and while you can't get to know them all, you can meet a ton of them, even in your first week, and they'll let you into their worlds. I'm tremendously grateful to the people that have so far done things for me, large and small, considered me for piecework, introduced me to friends, hosted me on their couches, gave me places to connect and volunteer, initiated projects with me, hung out in the park, invited me to meditation, found me jobs, searched for apartments with me, made me feel at home, and are beginning (or returning) to call me friend. So much so soon, and so worth it. Even if there's a moment or two where I feel like I'm getting run over by a ~~Camero~~ Camaro.

Vegas, no place for two wheels...

2011-10-31T21:14:00.000-07:00

Spent a few days in the weird world of Las Vegas, riding my bike and trying to get in as much trouble as possible, documenting it for Urban Velo. Enjoy! Again, click on the images to get the next page of the magazine.

Urban Velo decided not to use my photos, which I obviously think are quite good. They used some rather excellent ones by Allaudin Hightower, like the perfect shot of all the alleycatters lunging for their shoes. No matter, because here on Dadarobotnik we can enjoy a behind-the-scenes peek at the cutting room floor:

Occupy Wallstreet bears winter, wolves, and zombies

2011-10-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

Deep into its second month, the continuous protests in Zuccotti Park have faced their first winter nights and appear to still be going strong. Saturday night brought bitter cold and wet, piercing snow to the shanty-like collection of tents, many of which collapsed under the weather. "Hunker down, it's Valley Forge!" Roared a piratey protester as he charged by in the wind, and others abjectly implored the few passerby for laundry money. One could also find hula-hooping UFOs, from time to time.

The movement carries within it contradicting impressions that manifest themselves simultaneously, to jarring effect. I stood and withstood a dreadlocked moron babble at me about drugs, booze, fat bottoms, and bouts of the Chiquita banana song when I asked him about the most responsable way to discard my banana peel. Other people were engaged in ego battles left and right, yelling predictably obtuse things at each other and storming out of one another's squatted territory. Various factions factionalizing, various hot-heads being hot. The storm grew more bitter. The next morning a rough-voiced, ex-con, angry white man who kept referring to me as 'n**ger' informed me that if one more person took his photo he'd break their camera. When I pointed out that he was at a demonstration, holding a sign no less, he threatened to break my camera. I deferred to his persuasive tactics.

As a counterpoint, everywhere people were getting stuff done. Trucks roll in with donated food, prepared offsite, students compile surveys from their schools that show misconceptions about the protest and then field them to the protesters, creating statistical dialogues, lawyers discuss direct action vs. rule of law, donated transport shows up to house unprepared people temporarily in homeless shelters, and even in the driving rain a General Assembly meeting is held.

All in all it's pretty much like real life. Some people are principled and step up to contribute, others only contribute occasion for facepalm reactions. Little things that are hard to stomach, like the movement's wholesale dependence on a nearby McDonalds for nighttime bathroom relief, are offset by things like Time's Up's (an environmental bicycle co-op/group which I've been volunteering for) appearance with electric bikes to help the movement power things more sustainably.

Everything re-emerged in full force the morning after the storm. My friend Cressa donned her home-stitched Halloween costume and used it as protest art. It was adorable.

She single-handedly created a media frenzy. The cameras were out! and so were smart, engaging protesters. This guy knew what's up. Side note: he's also a hunk.

Speaking of hunks, there was this kid, whom I'm doing the disservice of forgetting his name. He made cookies for the occupiers, which were damn good. I can't wait 'till you grow up to be the best anarchist intellectual baker there ever was, dude.

There were also,of course, Zombies.

Yes, that appears to be a man dressed as a giant French bedbug in the background. No, I don't know why. The world keeps spinning, Zuccotti Park stays occupied, and I still don't have a job. Welcome to New York!

The Lost Fair Mariner

2011-10-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

I've Moved! To celebrate, I'll post a video from the community I left! Just to fill myself with nostalgia and doubt!

Here's an excellent new track from Luke Williams, a biographical seafairing ballad. Luke and I were talking about Captain Thomas James, the dandy poetic wayfairer who inspired this little track, and the notion of mutiny when your life's at stake. When we're in a subordinate position and have to make a call to rebel, as the stakes are too high to stay silent. Echoes of other things.

Luke, never content to take the easy way out, not only played every instrument on this track, but also filmed himself playing every instrument on this track, I assume setting up the lights, camera, and pushing record himself before going and busting out the recording. Forget one man bands, he's a one man army!

Haiti: First Taste

2011-09-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Arrived. Spiraling over the islands on the flight, struck by long gouges of sandy yellow surrounding rivers, sickly veins of erosion and runoff. We may have passed over Cuba, and then through the DR side of the island, because twice I thought 'well, that looks rather idyllic and nice from up here!' Not so. As we approach Port Au Prince the verdant agricultural developments give way to the panicky, metallic sprawl of tin houses and teeming congregations of people. The busy debris of poverty.

The streets don't exist. They're like jeeping trails, filled with people, women with coolers balanced on their heads. Later we get a Moto ride and I think my driver's new, he keeps just ramming people's arms and legs out of the way, which irritates but doesn't unduly enrage them. My first film plan is borne off of this ride. The idea is to get some kids to act as hosts by moto ride. They'll formally, grandly welcome the audience to the open air cinema experience, going through town as if they were royalty, as if they were the mayor. Thanks for having us, Mr. mayor...

It's a rough place, so crowded and broken. People have a good energy about them, smiling and saying 'ca va?' goes a long way, but they're hungry and hot and poor and the whole aspect of being a white guy here, even with good intentions, seems tired, colonialist, and wrong. I represent money, and a continued power structure, my camera is shorthand for exploitation, and I don't have a whole lot to offer in the way of a different narrative. I'm going to continue to do the best work I can here, and I've already done some great stuff, but man, it doesn't feel right.

We essentially employ the 2 little kids in the video as child servants. They're orphans, or estranged from their family for some reason, a trio living in a smoky hut together. I didn't know this when I decided they'd be good video hosts for our screening, so I approached them to see if they had the afternoon free to make a little welcoming video consisting of the group of us roaring around on motos and yelling at each other. They had a great time, and so did I, afterward they asked for some money, as everyone does here. "Souple Davi, m' hungry, merci." 'Little shits, I thought we were buds!' I remarked to myself, and gave them each a princely sum of a dollar. Later that evening I found out they bought soup with my money, that they literally survive off of the patches of money we throw them for errands, washing, etc. That straightened me out pretty quick.

The NGO workers frequent this neighborhood, they've got their own institutions and grocery stores and roar around self-importantly in big SUV's over the 4x4 courses that pretend to be roads. I'm extremely weird, because I dress well, but make eye contact and greet people and stop to shake hands, etc. Most all the other white folks scurry around like scared little mice, or stay detached from the squalor with glasses and cell phones. I think the thing that troubles me most about the NGO presence is it maintains a normal race-and-class dynamic, here, of all places, in the land of slave revolutions. Resourceless, edged out of self-sufficiency by the mechanics of agribusiness and overpopulation, and in the hurricane/earthquake test course, these guys can't catch a break. I have many acquaintances here that came from the US, hustlers and dealers in the states, destined to always be second-class citizens there because of their race and environment. At least here everyone's on the same destroyed playing field, though people still use money to draw lines in the sand like crazy.

My bones are tired from a lack of understanding.

Hittin' the press: Biking In the West Bank

2011-09-03T21:21:00.000-07:00

Urban Velo let me tell the stories of a few of my friends and provide a broader context for the Palestinian/Israeli situation. Checkit! Urban Velo's free where you can find it, to boot!

update: early response shows that while the article's good, the online reader leaves something to be desired, to whit: If the article appears to only be one page long, look for a little green arrow to the bottom right of the first page. It's actually four. I'm not letting you off that easy!

Fun with Photoshop

2011-08-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

One...

Plus Two...

Is Silly!

Would you pick this guy up?

2011-08-10T01:42:00.000-07:00

Me, last October:
"The fear I have in my mind about Palestine is that it won't be successful, which is a useless fear because just by forwarding it and doing it it will be successful, meaning something will come of it that will point me in a different direction and pull from it some kind of experience which, quantifiable or not, will be applied to my next endeavor. And so on and so on. The thing I need to realize is all these endeavors so far have far exceeded my needs and station and 'level' in life, meaning that I'm doing just fine and should, if anything, slow down and have a beer or two with my friends rather than rushing off to the next big thing all the time. "

Seems decent. 10 months later, everything turned out well. And indeed I'm off in the next direction, but appreciating the little things. Good good.

For example: I wrapped up this most recent bout of hard-to-wrap-neatly-in-summation wandering with a hitchhiking trip from Warsaw to Budapest. 6 rides, 3 countries, 2 nights, something like 500 miles. I made it a lazy trip, as I wanted to burn some time. I withdrew 250 dollars in Ukranian money about 10 days before and had spent it all visiting my buddy Monika in Warsaw and living like a king, which was rather great. I decided rather than get more money I'd try to hack it the last 4 days on about 12 euro. Thus the setup: Hitchike, spend no money, have a good (?) time.

Warsaw turned out to be a really cool place, subdued reflections of Berlin in terms of youth, hipness, and approachable street culture. It's pretty hip though. Amazing how many kids looked like San Francisco bike messengers circa 2007. Imagine, for example, you're sitting at this year-old coffee shop:

While there the very picture of your local messenger chick pulled up on this beastie.

Did she have ironic tattoos and wayfarer glasses? Oh yes, gentle reader, she did. And so on. Plaid, Cinelli caps, you name it. But open, good kids, not overly snooty. Maybe nobody's overly-snooty when you're young and disheveled and enthusiastic. I'm increasingly aware of this.

Warsaw is a city with a hard history: stubborn resistance during the holocaust resulted in the entire city being leveled, pretty much every european-looking architectural edifice or monument was re-created shortly after the war. That was followed by decades of bleak communist rule. I happened to be there over the week remembering the WWII uprisings, pictures show strong, intelligent, good-natured young people fighting to their certain deaths in bombed-out european opulence. I was reminded strongly of Gaza 2008-2009, and in fact little plaques dot the city streets in perfect parallel to the martyrdom posters of Nablus.

It was great to see the stomping ground of an old friend, but after a few days I decided to hitch out. She and I took a bus to the southern outskirts of Warsaw, passing nearly a thousand christians on a pilgrimage. They pissed Monika off, with their zealousness and predictable comments ("forget Krakow, walk with us!"), but I was pleased to see them. We walked until we came across a good hitch out spot, braved the light rain, and smiled at the waves and waves of pilgrims between thumbing. After around an hour of honks, waves, and the occasional dudes shouting that they'd take Monika, but not me, a guy with a dog pulled over in a little red hatchback, and I said bye to Monika, on my way. Thus began a series of good rides. Lazlow got me to outside Krakow, through rain squalls and rolling green polish hills. His brother lived in Farmington, UT for four years, too weird. His dog would get restless and spin in little dog circles between my feet, getting hair everywhere, crazy sympathetic bugger. He dropped me off in a pleasant country road and I promised to look him up whenever I came back.

Next, fairly quickly, I hitched a ride to Slovakia from Stanislov, an old fellow in a grey chrystler van with a wine-red interior. His van was filled with vegetables, honey, and preserves, and he had a couple backpacks. He spoke no english and only a bit of german, that was our common language. We got on fine. He was going to spend 2 weeks hiking in the Slovakian mountains, which sounded pretty neat. I never found out what his job was, etc. We made two fun stops: Once at a little wooden church where I got out and checked out the scenery, and once in the last polish town of decent size before the border, which he said had 'good ice.' I thought he was stocking up his cooler, but it turned out good ice meant ice-cream. We got some nice little cones and wandered through the little town's city park with literally 40 other people nursing the same ice cream cones. too funny. Stan refused to let me pay for my own, the dear, keeping up my lack of expenditures. Soon the rolling hills turned into impressive mountain crags similar to the Grand Tetons, and we crossed the slovakian border.

My ride ended, Stan went to his cabin for the week with a smile, and I hiked off into the mountains in search of a place to camp. I wanted to trek up onto the ski hill and find a spot on the tree-line, but the weeds and grass were high and I didn't want to pick up a deer tic or something so I settled for a spot by a little summer cabin that looked unused. Good night, no problems. I loved waking up in the morning and having no idea where I was, or how I got there, just a random variable in my life. I had no reason to seek out that little mountain hamlet as a destination, and now I know it. A great way to see new things. Across the valley through the trees you can see a town of about 600 tourists and villagers who have no idea of your temporary existence in their forest. A life in between, another life.

The next morning I scarfed some of Monika's trailmix. I'd been rationing the Zurek soup she made, our brownies, and now the trail mix, today's fare was mostly to consist of the bread and cheese I bought the day before. I felt confident I could spend no money until Budapest, and then have enough for the train, a kebab, and maybe bribe my way into a shower somewhere. I set off walking through the little resort town of Zdiar in good spirits.

Warning, pedophile crossing? Anyways...

Right away was picked up by Iveta, a good-natured outdoorsy woman of about 35 years. "Where are you going?" "Budapest!" "Lucky boy" she smiled. She was driving almost all the way through her native slovakian mountains to go hiking. The road was long and winding, beautiful, through mountains and resort towns that she knew all the names of. She's the manager of a chalet's resturant and works full time, she's cooked and worked in the region her whole life and likes to take impulsive vacations. She invited me along to go hiking, and I should have taken her up on it, but the language barrier was a little too great. She turned off my route in a place called Liptovsky Mikvias, and again I promised to come back by bike. I'm serious about this idea, it'd be beautiful. I started walking through town with my sign on my back and picked a ride in all of 3 minutes from Tibor and Renata, a cute 30's couple returning from a 3 day adventure in the mountain region. He was a firefighter, she worked with computers. Again, they were sweeties, again, long ride, and again, they gave me food without being asked. Hitchhiking was beginning to look a little unreal.

I walked through Cornado and got a ride from another old feller who spoke only german, this one worked as a truck driver doing huge routes all over the world, Hungary/Italy, and somehow down in Iraq/Iran. I think the man went about 10 k out of his way (in a big truck!) to drop me in a good hitch spot. This left me in Dorag, about 40 km from Budapest. I thought it better to sleep there rather than find a spot in the big city, so I gracelessly crashed for the night in a thicket between the road and the rail-line, listening to traffic and trains all night. Right after I pitched my tent (or bivy, as it is) the rain DUMPED down and I grinned in my waterproof tunnel. I was rewarded for my choice of spot in the morning by a zoological wonderland: snails, beetles, and a billion spiders wove a symphony of orbs and slime trails around me in the night.

Hitching sign and local wildlife. I had to sit up quite carefully to avoid a faceful of orb-weavers like that one.

I dusted myself off and headed back to the road, self-conciously stinky. Got one more ride, a gifted sandwich (food store win!) and finally an arrival in Budapest!

Turns out Budapest is great, and filled with hipsters. I'm thinking all the hipsters from 2007-2008 went to eastern europe, if you were wondering. Tattoos and fixed gears and all. There's this funky little park teeming with skaters and bmxers and scenesters jus' staring at each other, it's like a freakin' wayfairers commercial. They look pretty great, doing it, If I see another 6 ft tall beautiful blonde on a 58cm rad lugged city conversion I'm gonna download a hungarian rosetta stone and never look back. I've still got my messenger bag, man, I'm hip!

Literally, the whole place was like this:

Barf. No actually they were kind of legit I'm just a jerk who thinks he's cool cos he smells bad and gets places for free.

Anyway, goofy commentary aside, it was a great trip. I was thrilled at the idea of living in an alternate reality where things don't cost a thing, where travel is dynamic and new and you're never really sure who you'll meet or where you'll go. I used to see cars on the road as annoyances, now I see them like everything else: potential! I love the social aspect of hitchiking over train-hopping, and even bike touring, for that matter.

Now I'm up in the air somewhere over greenland, almost to Salt Lake City, after a chat with a returning missionary who, having not traveled much, was now interested in couchsurfing, public health, and the real situation in Palestine, good for him. I'm happy and tired and ready to come home. See you soon, or see you next time,

D.D. out, and checking back in to reality. Though if you can tell me what's real and what isn't I'll buy you an ice cream with the $7 I have left over from hitchhiking.

Welcome to the western world... ish...

2011-07-30T01:57:00.000-07:00

"I've lived here 26 years and I can't think of enough reason to stay here 6 months. What were you doing here?!"
"Eh, I dunno. Biking around a ton? Writing?"
"Right..."
"Right!" *smiles awkwardly*

So all in all, I was way too over-prepared for my Palestinian Sympathizer Airport Exit Experience©. I got through Israeli security no problems. Chalk another privilege up to being white, American, non-muslim, and generally charismatic. The agents were low key and generally nice, though still I was taken aside as a heightened risk person and half-stripped, swabbed down for bombs, every article searched, and email/computer combed over. I got away with a 3 out of 6 for dangerousness, which essentially just means I'm weird. And I can handle that. Funnily enough, after I was safely through the gate I opened my phone and realized, after months of alternate-email generation, uploading photographs, Facebook deleting, alibi creating, re-naming arabic songs in my music library, etc, I had left my phone's browser navigating to this blog, where of course ALL of the recent posts illustrate in clear detail just how big of a liar I am. Eh. Well, I got lucky! And then I was free.

Fittingly, I was pre-welcomed to Eastern Europe with by my flight-mate, who sat down, shook my hand, and stuffed a giant vodka bottle into my carry-on. At first I thought this was some kind of insane gift, until I realized that I was to supply him, our neighbor, and myself with surreptitious vodka pours from time to time. The flight commenced in wild style. I was worried David Zion, for that was his name, was going to be a super-zionist,and he may well have been, but our common language turned out to be Arabic. We discovered this about halfway through the flight, which heretofore had consisted of generous vodka pours, expressive shrugs, and dismissive hand gestures. The third fellow was Moses, who sleeps. The pair were on a pilgrimage to visit the tomb of an important Hasidic Jew, Rebbe Nachman, in Uman, Ukraine, a trip they did often. Our flight was largely uneventful, excepting a kurfuffle concerning the ripped packaging on their kosher flight food, an episode which resulted in me eating 3 tin-foiled religiously-soiled chicken dishes. Also a substantial quantity of vodka evaporated on my lap. Good times.

Now happily in Kiev- a sprawling green city with terrifying grids of cheap housing towers surrounding the center. It's a poor but flashy, beautiful place with plenty of decrepitude, Soviet era factories with windows broken out contrasting gilded onion-dome churches and sinister black SUVs. I like it a lot, quite the transition from the West bank, thought the medium income's probably pretty close. Return of brick to my vis. Lexicon. I don't have a camera anymore, so I'll subject you to my feeble drawings:

Actually, it's probably the polar opposite of the West Bank. This country is home to literally the most beautiful women on planet earth, everyone looks like a model, and huge sexual adverts hang everywhere. The women march around in designer clothes with these intense soviet grimaces, while in the west bank you encounter only men who grin hugely and want to know your story. I guess I'm getting what I asked for, an emergency dose of western alienation.

Wandered into the Pinchuk Art Center, where Andreas Grusky (99 cents and Kathedrale 1) Gregory Crewdson, and Olafur Ellaison were all together. It was Pretty amazing. Best so far, besides Kathedrale 1, is the insane gallery bathroom, all mirrors.

The mirrors also connect your gaze between genders, there's no privacy, except the actual stall. A pretty bold and interesting move in such a sexualized place where eye contact comes heavily into play in maintaining social norms.

That was trumped 100 times over by an Ellaison piece thick with fog, spectral lights effectively blinding you with a specific color, destroying your notion of space, losing the viewer in a field of hue. The colorshifts were so strong yet imperceptible you were sure you were hallucinating. You literally couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and would run into walls and other people. Very spooky, very amazing.

If it was 2005 I'd have a sweet myspace pic.

Goodbye Palestine

2011-07-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

Time to say goodbye to Palestine.
6 months of my life have passed here, a substantial amount of time, though I'll forever be an outsider. There's no way to wind up all that has passed into a neat conclusion, the only thing to hope is that I and the people I've effected are better for it. I know I am, and I think they are.

I know it's time to say goodbye because I've more-or-less been living elsewhere in my mind for more than a month now. When I wake up in the morning I don't think about checkpoints and land grabs and settlers with guns and wedding expenses. I don't think about olive trees and being forbidden to travel by Israelis and then the PA and then your father after that.

I've been thinking about being born in poor parts of America, where the rooms are just as empty as Palestinian ones, rows of beds and an over-used kitchen. I've been thinking about women who fear to be on the street, and the women who don't fear at all. I've been thinking about the difference between street-smarts and prejudice. I've been thinking about protest art and bicycle adventures and learning to live with love and conscience in a world gone crazy. Broken systems and broken families and where the drugs come from to maintain and perpetuate those damaged networks. I've been thinking about Lulzsec, reaching up into the corruption and pulling its mask off, and dusty activist train-hoppers on the US-Mexican border. Birth control and equal rights and equal consumption and equal anything as long as it doesn't contribute to someone else's oppression. Punk rock girls with free expressions, the audacity to be pure and bold in the face of the grid.

But still, when I sit around a huge saucer of chicken, rice, pine nuts, and yogurt, with 5 or six cheery people who joke and riff about what's between us in simple ways that I've come to understand, I feel at home. And I'll miss that. I'll miss the heat, and the 8-13 year old boys practicing to be old men. Perched in a plastic chair, struck incredulous by their own exhaustion. "Shaub. Hot." And indeed it is. I'll miss stopping in random villages, under random trees, and talking shop about the number of children a given stranger has, or American politics. I'll miss infinite patience, and simple positive drive in the face of massive unfairness and inhumane conditions.

There are things I won't miss at all, but they'll be outweighed by my love of kunafe after a month or three and I know soon I'll be scheming to come back. But I also know that this isn't the only place I can be effective in this world. I'm not married exclusively to this cause. I'm married to the cause of a better human future. And that's one chain store that's always open for business.

So goodbye for now, Palestine, I'll see you down the road. If I still have air for fighting, and you still have cause to call this place your own.

Beit Ahmad Sidi: Just another reason it sucks to be Palestinian

2011-07-22T04:55:00.000-07:00

Ahmad started building his house a year and a half ago, but unfortunately it falls arbitrarily in Area C. Area C is the designation of areas completely controlled by the Israeli military, and they run contiguously throughout the west bank. Any growth or development or infrastructure planned in these areas has to be cleared with Israel, and it's usually roundly rejected.
So when Ahmad started his house he was informed that, though he owned the land, it could be demolished at a moments notice unless he got the proper paperwork. He's been trying do do so for years, going back and forth between Ramallah, shuffling papers. The village of Jit is surrounded by settlements, which cause constant problems, but Ahmad's house is far, far from them, surrounded by other palestinian developments.

This shows the distance of his house from the rest of the village.

Nothing around but trees.

His plot was designated area C because it is within a mile or so of a through road used by Palestinians and settlers alike, which means Israelis get to say what happens in all the land around it.

In the meantime, the house is taken care of and sometimes used as a shelter by Ra'ed, a charming and funny deaf-mute guy who does magic tricks and plays practical jokes. He camps out here and sometimes gives foreigners visiting the area a place to stay, making tea and little fires in the the shell of the house.

Ahmad's experience is just a blip, just a single case study in the face of tens of thousands of similar moves, destructions, humiliations, and pressures. On the other side of the power structure, Israel plans and builds hundreds of settlement homes, which will probably never go away, curtailing any mutual reconciliation or peace process.

Lust and Fear

2011-07-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about fear, crystal meth, rape and sexual politics, broken societies, STDs, art, and freedom. So the usual.
I found these terrifying paintings

I think they nail a lot of the lust/fear associated with unsafe 21st century sexuality, though they're all played out on the female body, which is a bit annoying, but it certainly drives the point home about the flip-side to all that glam and allure we're usually schlocked through visual culture. Also, porn's destroying our ability to be warm alive humans. What else is new?

On a completely unrelated note I went swimming today.

We're all groping towards something that makes us elated but possibly could kill us, or ruin something inside us we consider whole. We're all in love with our own mortality, and in a fleeting moment there's a rush to destroy one's whole-ness, but then you have to live with the consequences. Women should not have to bear the brunt of sensual fascination and the subsequent physical degradation of that through disease or brutalization of that through rape. Sexual strength and the hierarchy of trauma conspire to fuck a person up emotionally.

The Future is now.

2011-07-08T08:50:00.000-07:00

Amazingly complicated and effective rainbow painting machine by Akay. Story here.

Heart of Darkness 4, and the good ol' Days...

2011-07-06T01:32:00.000-07:00

Dima Decided his 3 manifest terror from last summer was to be bested, and that he'd do it all over again. Excited for this one, a week and change after I get home. Gonna get killed!

Click on to see where it all began in 2008!

I think HOD was the first Alleycat I threw. I wanted there to be more an' more an' more.
First there was this awesome poster by Zed!

Then I had Mike from the Collective do something really crazy for the event:

And here's what happened.

When I get home...

2011-07-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

There'll be one of these in a box.

But it'll actually fit me. Jus' sayin.

That's All.

2011-07-03T10:41:00.000-07:00

but does it float?

Interview with myself: Debriefing on the FAQ's of the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict

2011-07-01T03:13:00.000-07:00

I'm not an expert anything. I'm just a guy. With a blog. Ugh. And most of the time I'm fine with that, but today I feel like I have some answers. So I got the most credible journalist I could find within ten feet of myself: me, to interview... me. I've been in Palestine five months at this point and I think a thing or two about a thing or two. Read on to see my personal take on those sound-bytey political questions we all think contain some kind of truth about the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

What is the situation on the ground in the West Bank?
It is an occupation, where an Israeli state descended from the people who took the land by force in 1948, control, by military might, all aspects of Palestinian daily and long-term existence. This means that travel between areas, building, goods exchange, resources, infrastructure, and legal and police matters are either directly under Israeli control or heavily influenced through the control of a proxy government. This means Israelis are, under international law, responsible for the human rights conditions of their occupied populations. These conditions aren't great, nor are they encouraging to any long-term development from the occupied region. Palestinians are frustrated and often subjected to collective punishment in the form of arbitrary searches and seizures, interrogations, imprisonment without due process on the individual level, and societal/systemic crimes like land grabs, farm and house demolition, barriers that geographically make life impossible for transit or agriculture, and so on.

Every day settlers and hard-line zionists take more land in the West Bank and violently
attack nearby villagers with impunity, under protection from the Israeli army. This results in the fracturing and disabling of the society at slow and unsensational rate. There is no legal recourse for these crimes, so people simply try to live a normal life and let resentment and anger build up under the surface, exhibiting astonishing patience overall. It is very safe for internationals to be in the West Bank, and most Palestinians I know hold resentment only against the occupation as a system rather than the Jewish people as a whole.

Can you address the notion of anti-semitism as it pertains to the Israeli- Palestine question? Why are you sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view?
It's an important but rather simple question. I continually remind myself in the face of the inequality and violence of the root reason I am here: To struggle for a system that is just and equal in its consideration for all people, a system that is motivated for humanitarian rather than capitalistic or militaristic ends. In this vein I fully support an Israeli desire for self-determination and the international concept of Jewish safety. What I cannot support and in fact work or advocate against is the idea that the self-determination and security of Israel can come at the direct detriment of a captive and oppressed people. In the current occupation, the long-term quality of life for Palestinians is ruined. Their ability to have agency, dignity, and respect is completely demolished in the name of Israeli security, based on motivations that are as unconscionable as they are illogical. From a humanitarian perspective I am obligated to fight this, especially because the Jewish people I know and love and talk to pride themselves on their humanitarianism, democratic outlook, and fair-mindedness. Just as from a humanitarian perspective I struggle against endemic injustice, militarism, and class violence in the United States, which theoretically prides itself on similar values. I am against the idea of 'sides' however, more on that later.

None of this is anti-semitic. Anti-semitism was a real blight and the reason we're aware of the term today is because massive atrocities in the past were suffered by the Jewish people, but at their root those atrocities were atrocious because massive groups of people were systematically imprisoned, oppressed, and killed under rampant nationalism and militarism. I resist the manifestations of those things in my time, which include the actions of Israel as a state and Zionism as a movement.

There's also the issue of relative injustice. Israel often justifies its actions by citing violence from Palestinians. The most fair-minded voices cite this violence as evidence of a continuing conflict between an oppressor and the oppressed, the most hawkish and hateful voices bring up racist arguments and dwell on the western misconception of Islam as inherently violent and Arabs as bloodthirsty savages. In a Post-colonial world it's not even worth dealing with these straw man arguments. But what is troubling is when Israel will kill 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza over one winter with large scale explosives, flooring entire city blocks of civilian housing, in response to some randomly fired missiles which are dangerous and inhumane but a minuscule threat in comparison. I focus on the systemic root of the violence: constant militarization, not the hollow justifications for that militarization.

Speaking of that, what about the question of security for the Israeli people?
Security for any people is an important goal, as is the wonderful motivation of a life without fear. In light of these goals it is important to consider the root origins of that insecurity and where the chosen solutions are likely to lead you. One of the most sustainable ways to live without fear is to love your enemies, not in some cheesy idealistic way, but to cultivate a considerate relationship with them over generations that precludes violence and leads to a diverse, multicultural society. This may sound all cutesy in terms of the reality on the ground, but it has existed for centuries around the Holy Land and elsewhere in tolerant pockets. It's just a question of muzzling the war hounds and encouraging this kind of dialogue in the larger political discourse.

One of the most sure-fire ways to live without security and true safety is to separate yourself from what you fear and characterize it as an irrevocable lost cause. This form of prejudice doesn't solve any problems, especially when it's attached to hyper-militarism. If Israel continues to force the solution of a hyper-vigilant militarized compound as their future state, that is exactly what they will get, until they kill themselves or every Muslim around them who they (and we) have incited into violence over 100 years of otherization and colonialization. We owe it to ourselves to recognize the common ground and common future with a population that in reality is incredibly un-scary, and by-and-large patient and steeped in ideas of hospitality and peace.

In short justifying the occupation from a security perspective, or the American support of it, is a short-sighted, self-fulfilling, and destructive attitude to harbor.

What is the current relationship between Israel and America about?
America and Israel have a mirrored relationship to the Arab Middle East as they both base their approaches in defense of an exaggerated fear: which at the moment is called militant Islam, but for America it has worn many masks over the years. The root problem is that America and by extension the world economy is built on unstable capitalist practices that require resource and wage imperialism all over the globe so that the pace of modern life can continue unhindered. This imperialism takes form in the destabilization of local power in order to reap the resource benefits from a weakened and turbulent region. Also it justifies massive military spending, which puts money into the hands of extremely rich organizations and individuals and keeps the population in fear, hesitant to dissent, and chronically under-educated. America's tactics vary from place to place in these matters, but in the Middle East the foreign relations policy has been to support Israel with military aid to the tune of three billion per year (money which perpetuates an otherizing political mindset, excessive militarism, and symbiotically funnels money back into the U.S. military-industrial complex), and support governments that are open to US intervention rather than ones that encourage a representative democracy. Thus, since the foundation of Israel America has treated them as our only true ideological ally in the region, and contributed to inequality and turbulence ever since. I'm reminded of a hard-to-cite quote floating around the internet: “Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.”

In any case, our ardent support for Israel is was one of the main reasons we are written off by everyone in the Middle East, from Osama Bin Laden to random six-year-olds, as the enemy. Until we move this policy in the direction of true, non-Islamophobic, non-racist humanitarian aims we will make very little progress in diplomatic and civil negotiations, and our self-appointed fate will be endless militarism, violence, inequality and war. No fun.

What can Americans do who are interested in effecting change?
This is where I have to bring up the 'taking sides' thing. I'm clearly against some things, and those things include perspectives that put the security of a few at a vast premium before the human rights of many, especially when the security is an unattainable fantasy in the context of the situation that's been created. I'm also against systemic injustice, and fear as a primary motivator all across the world. At this point I'm not against a Hebrew-speaking place for Jews existing next to or in the same place as an Arabic-speaking place that's predominantly Muslim. I don't care what its name is or who's in charge of it, as long as there's a power balance and every person or culture in that region as access to freedom of expression, dignity, respect, and self-determination within the limitations of what that society can support.

Support of these goals doesn't have to manifest itself specifically toward the Israeli-Palestine conflict, there are huge areas needing work everywhere. From the post-earthquake destruction of Haiti to the failing social systems in the face of drug and gang violence in inner-city America to the brutal responses to democratic voice in Syria, Libya and Bahrain. It's important that we as a people learn as much as we can about these and other conflicts and use them constructively in the context of improving our way of existing in the world. So do what you can, where you're drawn to, and keep an open ear to the similar work being done in other venues and directions.

But as to the specific Israeli-Palestine conflict, basically, you can encourage law-makers to quit spending most of your money on militarism, war mongering, and Israeli aid (again, not because Israelis are BAD, but because there's a power imbalance and we as Americans contribute to it). But more simply you can normalize the dialogue on a understandable level, by arguing that it doesn't make sense to support Israel to the extent we do from a human rights perspective. This can take many forms. There's the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, which starts with consumer options (bleh, I say just live simply and don't buy crap you don't need in general, not for a political motivation alone) but goes up to policy advocacy and divestment in economic and academic arenas. You can talk to friends and family that unconditionally support Israel and dispel them of unfair or unjust notions with evidence. Or you can come to Palestine and suffer near-death by over-feeding while meeting people, thinking and writing, and doing volunteer work with community-reflective locally-informed projects.

If you're Jewish, however, whoa boy do you have a job to do. Because you're already miles ahead of the rest of us in the lazy public-dialogue scale of credible sources. People will listen, American people will listen, American POLITICIANS will listen if you speak out against crimes against humanity being perpetrated in the Jewish state. Also because whether you like it or not, you're attached to those crazy Zionists in Israel! They're doing things in your name, every day, strapping on M-16's and allowing settlers to assault people in broad daylight in the name of a Jewish homeland. Just like my government has spent the last ten years systematically bombing the Middle East in my name, for the sake of American freedom. So if it bothers you to be conflated with those people because of a common ancestry and common religion, speak out! Change the paradigm! Because unless you represent yourself, they'll continue to represent you.

Feel free to re-post this or share it anywhere if it's of interest to you, just let me know in the comments section. Also if the comments happen to take a turn towards the way public internet comments sometimes do (i.e. knee-jerk ad hominem attacks and obfuscating rants that don't actually address the claims of the article) I'll consider deleting them.

Men in Nablus

2011-06-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

I borrowed a Canon DSLR from my buddy Julia in order to snap some shots of Ibrahim for an article I'm working on. It was such a pleasure to have a decent camera, I felt like I could suddenly speak again! Don't leave home without one. On my way to the shoot I familiarized myself with the camera by grabbing some shots of friends along the way. Regarding the title, you'll notice 'Men' is right. The public realm in general and foreigners snoopin' around with cameras certainly don't play nice with Middle Eastern Women. But to all my women friends, I want a picture of you too!

Here's Ameed at work. He's always bugging me to stop and chat at his sewing shop, and is always mad cos' I'm always busy.

Two Husseins. The one on the left is a santa-clausy character that's always jokin' with me like I'm a local. I went with my friend to his stand once and my friend was like 'that guy insulted you like 100 times!' Whatever. I can't tell. The other Hussein is both a football coach and art teacher in Askar. He speaks arabic CRAZY fast and I'm really stoked when I can understand him.

This sweetie's named Baseem, he's a toothless guy who lurks in a picturesqely hidden coffee shop over the old city, rooms randomly filled with electronics. He knocked his teeth out on a scooter a couple years back so he talks with a funny lisp. Photos of his brother, Basim, pepper the old city, as he was a resistance fighter who was gunned down in his sleep by Israeli forces in 2007. I think I know most of this family and we talk all the time about politics, it's amazing that they'll treat me as a friend considering the US's justifiable rep around here.

Here's his son, Basim, named after his uncle. Baseem's an older fella who only wants 2 kids, which is super strange in Palestine. Cool guy.

After a photoshoot in the old city Ibrahim and I went to Balata, here he is with his brother.

Boy with Kite, Balata Camp

I was shooting Ibrahim for a bike article, but somehow horses got involved. Go figure.

The best shots (obviously!) are the ones I'm using for the article, but there are like 20 good ones, so maybe I'll throw them up here so ya'll can help me decide which ones to use. Good to be back in Nablus, good to have a good camera.

Days in the Life, Bike touring Nablus to Haifa and the places in between

2011-06-24T06:20:00.000-07:00

I had about a week to burn with nothing to do between film projects, so I abandoned my cabin-fever inducing routine of waking at 6 and running, writing for 2 hours, bumming around, then studying Arabic for 3 more. It's incredibly productive use of my time but it makes me antsy and sometimes I run out of inspiration. So I packed up my bike and headed out for a circular 5 day route from Nablus to Haifa and back. The route would cross 3 Israeli checkpoints and take me from the most conservative points of Palestine to the most liberal points of Israel in under 4 hours of biking. The checkpoint guards tell me I'm crazy (as usual), crazy for riding a bike, crazy for sleeping in Nablus, for trusting Arabs. The only crazy thing is how little they know about their neighbors, who would kill you by earnest hospitality a whole lot faster than by any direct attack.

They let me through and I bike up a steep grade past Ariel settlement, stop again at checkpoint #2, more security, had to dis-assemble my bike to get it through a baggage scanner, but my story was more plausible this time: I had just biked to Ariel and was headed back to Tel Aviv because I like biking up mountains. After that it was flying downhill, and I was relaxing in an immaculately-maintained park on a riverside straight out of Munich or Paris by 10:00 am.

I went to Yoav's art opening in a brand-spankin' new hip gallery, white and bauhausy, 3 stories, rooftop dance patio, projected video onto the graffiti'd industrial buildings nearby. 50's ballads and mo-town all night long! Yoav's piece looked great, everyone there serious and beautiful in that academic liberal Jewish way we artists know so well.

The gallery was the brainchild of two people who had died before it could come into being. How did they die? one from cancer, one from a Palestinian Terrorist Attack (acronym pending). Damn. Those moments of connection and clarity really chill you. The artsy folks around me didn't know that the night before I was hanging out in Nablus, learning about yet another extraordinary death or collective punishment or circumstance that wasn't part of my reality from people that saw the gallery-owners death as a form of justified resistance. And I'm sitting here looking at a-political creative objects and a bunch of people having a good weekend night thinking 'how is this stuff even related?'

After a couple days of Tel Aviv I start biking up the coast to Haifa. Yoav decides to come with me, and together we set off on a funny journey punctuated by getting lost, heat, and 3 flat tires in a row. We spent the night on the beach, sleeping in sheets in the sand, listening to the ocean, and set off further north the next day.

I was planning on sleeping on the beach again once I got to Haifa, but called an acquaintance who was out of town, he was nice enough to give me his place for as long as I felt like it! So I plunked down in an old stone building sandwiched between the train line and the sea, typing away in my underwear like I've been here for months. Hilarious. My host Jeremy is really interesting and cool for someone I don't know at all. I met him in Nablus and literally talked with him for 10 minutes. He's an inventor and patent lawyer. Judging from my surroundings he knows how to cook well. One of 3 rooms in the house is taken up by an electrical workshop, there are high-powered magnets lying around everywhere, and books on basic particle physics and electrical engineering. I watched a creepy/obscure David Lynch films and read myself to bed with Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Life's good and hilarious.

After Haifa, seeing the Baha'i gardens and hanging out with a cool woman from Salt Lake, I got my bike all outfitted as a perfect MTB tourer (which you can read me geek out about on Saltcycle). It's official now, I have a bike I like, I don't want to leave. Simple as that. The slick tires are comparatively crazy fast and touring's effortless. The Baha'i guys are pretty ideal, I talked for one about religion for a long time, they're basically Secular Humanists with a god fixation. Awesome. They believe in gender equality and compulsory education and interrelation between all people. Sign me up. They also believe in something called Progressive Revelation , which is pretty sensible. It's essentially the notion that all religious teachings throughout history were catered towards the people of that age and what they were capable of working on, in a cultural and social framework that they understand, and so on. So like 'hey bible, you're cool, but a teensy bit sexist...' type of logic going on. As a mythologist I can dig that too.

Crazy descending gardens.

When it was time to leave Haifa I decided it was time to do some serious exploring. Without a map and with a list of village names I set off into the wilderness, and onto some of the best touring roads I've ever discovered.

I was guided primarily by a random paragraph I found on the internet (that I can't find now, go figure) and google maps satellite pictures. I found the connection between a Jewish town and a cool little Muslim village called Ilut by looking at the satelite image and saying to myself 'I bet there's a logging road by that treeline.' After a morning's riding to the end of a random housing development, I dropped off a ledge and pulled my bike through about 20 yards of forest, to where this road emerged:

followed by this one:

and then the town of Ilut! Where the water is gratifyingly cold and the hills steep enough to encourage existentialism in pretty much anyone.

Success. From there I rode what seemed an impossibly long stretch from Nazareth to Nablus, punctuated by an improbably high number of motorcycle-like hairpin curves and the summer sun, scuttling from shade to shade like a spider, resting for half an hour at a time and chatting with various folks on the road.

The whole loop was about 300 kilometers (186 miles) and spanned a whole lot of Israel/Palestine. It was a great use of my sweat, time, and communication skills, and was a huge boost to my personal inspiration. Many times along the way I reveled at my ability to transcend these two cultures who seem incapable of doing so. I'm happy to be back in Nablus, tired and tan, gearing up for a month more, and then a long goodbye.

with that, I leave you with this:

Coincidences don't exist.

2011-06-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

Fine, sure they do, but they certainly help hone our lives and define what's significant. I was sitting there NOT being productive because of a wicked headache listening to Radiolab, the best show ever and apparently the generative kernel of all things inspirational to me. From this segment I learned the inspiring/heartbreaking/memento mori tale of Emily Gossiaux, a young artist from New York who was mowed down by an 18-wheeler. Emily is in the process of being re-constituted, bit by bit, from an a-sensory state. The above radiolab link is REALLY worth listening to, it floored me.

That, in and of itself, was chilling to me. As a biker, Emily's brush with death has existed in the back of my mind as a possible event for me for at least the last 8 years, whispering when I feel the most fragile. It doesn't help that this week a young lady in Salt Lake was killed in a hit-and-run, as was a bike messenger in Santa Cruz. But what really got me was her picture.

from her website.

I've seen this girl before... In my head. She's exactly what my main character looks like from a writing project I've been shelving and working on for more than a year. From my character notes:

"------ is a girl nearing college age with long dark hair and big curious eyes. Her eyes snap to a dull glaze whenever she thinks it's cooler to not be as intrigued by a given subject of interest. She discovers her alternative leanings rather than beginning with them. She's pretty, tall, and of thin build, but awkward and with a layer of slight chubbiness which causes her to be self-conscious around other girls. Further insecurity is shown in the layer of makeup that surrounds her already naturally striking eyes."

Exact. I didn't mention her eyes, but they're that color. And yeah the makeup thing's wrong, but Emily's older, she's already shed that self-consciousness. So that's creepy in and of itself. Then, a random comment, somewhere, says this girl "looks like another Emily, the Gaza Flotilla girl." Huh. Gaza. Relevant. I follow the link. Suddenly I'm learning about Emily Henochowicz, who lost her eye when bolted with a teargas canister in Qalandia a year or so ago.

They DO look alike. They could be sisters. They're both artists, and... wait... they both go to Cooper Union, and know each other! Spooky. But what's more spooky, and ever more apparent to me, is how mortal we all are. How damageable. These two girls, like so many others, were tragically cracked apart, in very different circumstances, extraordinary and ordinary, militarized occupation and routine traffic accident.

It's important to remember that every incident is a symbol for many others, a systemic whole. I hate that the world underlines and sensationalizes one death or transgression over the other. What happened to bicycle Emily could happen to anyone, and what happened to protest Emily often does happen to Palestinians.

It's actually one of the things that makes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict important to me. It's not MORE important to other things throughout the world, but the relationship of power, political manipulation in the name of self interest, and the prioritizing of oppression for gain over self-determination all can be easily transferred in applicable elsewhere in the world in a thousand different contexts.

So when I watch this video, going viral at the moment, of a 19 year old American Jew being beaten and arrested by Israeli military for standing up and eloquently stating why he's against their occupation, I don't think just of him.

I think of every palestinian who's gone through the same struggle of voicelessness in the face of injustice, and every Syrian who can't say what he believes right now, and American radicals who can't stop the destruction of the environment for wealth, and homeless kids in Tanzania who huff glue all night because they can't sleep otherwise, and then...

Well I guess then my headache comes back. Fuck. I'm gonna go live in a log cabin somewhere. Maybe finish this book. G'night everybody!

Free at last... for now.

2011-06-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

This situation is insane. The fellow here is my personal friend who would be better set as a lawyer or head of a successful creative firm than being constantly thrown in prison. He is just one example of many. Another great guy and great friend of mine is picked up before every scheduled demonstration and beaten, detained all day, so he cannot participate, even though he doesn't want to!

The internal Palestinian government is an unstable and draconian grudge machine that does nothing but push its people into apathy. The Israeli occupation would gladly label this kind, capable, bright, creative guy a terrorist, and they actively perpetuate the stupid internal politics through every means at their formidable disposal. Fight oppression everywhere, however you can.

In the press: Bike Palestine!

2011-06-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

While I'm still sitting around with my finger in my nose trying to think of a good way to document my crazy experience volunteer guiding bikers through the West Bank, Olivia Snaije (that's her on the left!) got it all together in this nice, leveling piece in Haaretz, aimed at reminding Israel of the humanity and approachability of their oft-demonized neighbors. She also gave me a paragraph-long shout out that makes me sound cooler than I actually am.

Between Warm and Fuzzy, and Dangerous

Abraham's Path: Walking the Other Face of Palestine

2011-06-07T03:59:00.000-07:00

API: Walking the Other Face of Palestine (2011) from One Light Cinema on Vimeo.

I love this video for Abraham's Path.
Firstly, walking across Palestine, and the greater Middle East, is a beautifully simple action and way of investing in the situation that matches the frankness and honestness with which Palestinians accept their visitors. I think the people who would sign up for such an endeavor are hardy and patient, good representatives of their culture, and the people they meet along the way would teach them many things about Palestine.
Secondly, the local organization which Abraham's path works with for logistics and connecting with guides, the Siraj Center, is excellent. Their people are fun and strong and frank and know the landscape politically and geographically through and through. The worked with us on the Bike Palestine trip and were the saving grace to an otherwise hilariously dysfunctional experience.
Thirdly, the filmmaker's a consummate pro, and pulled a light and luster out of the Palestinian spring that I envy. He also had the temerity to get close-up shots with people in the villages and streets, men and women, which speaks legions to his fluency in the culture and ability to communicate with people.

I want to do work like this.

The one criticism I have of this short film is the gloved-approach they take towards one of the main facets of Palestine: the occupation. I've gone along the route they took, by bicycle, and I know for a fact the tourists I was with learned profoundly from the contrast of villager kindness and simplicity and the restrictions and difficulties they face with their militarized neighbors in the settlements. In the film Hebron, a city nearly destroyed by the prison-like conditions the tension between settlers and locals create, is intentionally glossed over as a normal place, when in fact the tomb of Abraham is divisively pivotal to the city's situation: it is because of the tomb that settlers are so fiercely dug in there. It makes sense that Abraham's Path would omit this, as to them Abraham is a symbol of the uniting aspects the 3 religions of the book share. This is their goal: to dwell and uphold the commonalities that make us human as a path towards peace rather than be divided by our differences. But once someone comes to Palestine they learn undeniably that there is an imbalanced power structure to the division, and the conditions are slowly choking off the future of the people here. To omit this reality in pursuing a dialog towards common ground and peace seems confused, or ineffective, or capitulatory, to me.

But everyone who's spent some time thinking about the conflict here already knows this, and since everyone else is constantly imbedded in the negative aspects it's nice to see and beautiful, hopeful film. I just hope they're being hopeful in the name of progress, and not to avoid stepping on powerful toes.

Look What You People Have Done

2011-06-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

Anti-hate, anti-islamaphobia, anti-racism art in Chicago. A preview of things to come.
There's all kinds of hate in the world, always good to see people talking about it. An excellent video, but I don't think their target audience is going to see it/get it. Personally, though, as a member of the choir they're preaching to, I love it. Thanks Mohammad Bustami for the Link.

Refusing to Leave, or Leaving all the time.

2011-06-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

An excellent episode of Radiolab talked about cities, their behaviors as organisms (growing, breathing, many units making up a whole, product in, product out) but their weirdly unique characteristic of never dying. Around here, where occupiers and cultures come and go to the tune of 7000, 10000 year histories (Jericho, anyone?), it's clear that where people dig in there heels it takes quite the circumstance to get them to leave. Radiolab gives the amazing example of Centraila, a little podunk town in Pennsylvania that was home to an underground coal fire for years, people factionalizing and bickering and never wanting to leave, the ground under their feet literally burning. People fought tooth and nail to stay there. When asked to explain why they held on so long, experts simply chalk it up to human nature. The primal desire to hold onto what you know, to what's yours.

So of course, when you're Palestinian, and someone says, "hey, leave!" you say "hell no!" And everyone knows what happened from there. A century long push-pull, mostly pushing, of new neighbors greeted with hospitality and co-existence to a tenuous balance under a mutual occupier to armed struggle and aggression and mutual conflict to the ever diminishing tracts of crowded, occupied, and strangled land under a militant, victorious, zealous foreign government. Und so weiter.

The very core of the tragedy, from a sustained humanitarian suffering perspective, is that Palestine was not destroyed quickly. It's currently halfway through an era-long strangulation, which, as the imagery suggests, isn't pretty. Couple that with the spiky, unnatural settlement compounds multiplying all over like torturous barbs, and the land starts to appear as some kind of BDSM victim. Sure, some might find that sort of thing quite cool, but I must remind everyone that a key difference between serial rape and an adventurous relationship are the issues of violence and consent.

Wow. So now kink is a metaphor for Palestine. I'm SO going to hell. Moving beyond that...

In short, the people are primally and inextricably obligated to resist the destruction of their homeland. But like the Radiolab guys mention, cities don't die, they just change hands. I think also of Istanbul, that many-named city, where buildings like the Aya Sophia were once sites of pagan rituals, then roman temples, then churches, then mosques, now 'theological monuments.' We're watching that kind of spatial-cultural takeover happen in real time. Ask an Israeli about their cultural food. Shakshouka? Felafel? Hummus (Hummus wars?)? as Arab as the hijab. Or, my favorite example, the Mid-East floor squeegee/mop:

This humble device is an ingenious method of cleaning floors, and both my Israeli and Palestinian friends have championed it as an invention of their culture, going so far as to suggest we open a business selling them, usually at the same time as deriding this:

as a unilaterally inferior way of cleaning the crap off the floor. As the American in Palestine I'm resigned to a healthy dose of anti-American cultural ribbing, but hey, if you're going to criticize, at least do it with things you don't share with your sworn enemy. But that's just it. These two cultures are and have been more similar than dissimilar, from their food to their hygiene to their religious customs. Remember that throw-away comment on hijabs? It's not like Muslims have a corner on the obscured hair market. Sometimes there's room for cultural mixing, where the two peoples create a hybrid existence that is rich and varied, but when the two are kept in constant inequality, one a militarized occupier and the other a powerless, voiceless prisoner, such possibilities are no more than a nice idea. Until the power balance is shifted Palestinians are just an oppressed people who

will.
not.
leave.
their.
homeland.

Now, as I'm in a retrospective vein, it's with a slightly heavy heart that I turn to where I grew up. I'm from, factually, not arguably, one of the most beautiful places on earth. It's boggling how amazing Sundance is.

This picturesque landscape raised me, trained me, gave me my desires, opinions, prejudices. I had no fear of the forest night, and knew I could walk with friends in the streets unmolested and sleep wherever we wished once night adventures wore down at 3 in the morning. We skied every day. Salt Lake, as well, is an escape from rural Sundance, and also my home. It too has never mistreated me. Yet if you told me I had to live there for the next 10 years I would probably mutiny. I have been traveling all my life and constantly running away from Utah. When I return to the states it is imperative to my plans that I move to Chicago or the Bay Area as soon as possible.

Clearly I'm from a radically different environment. Through the comfort and security afforded me by my privilege I have only the slightest qualms about abandoning my land, primarily because I know I will probably always be able to return. Palestinians, obliteratingly obviously, do not have that privilege. Their land has been threatened for close to a hundred years, and resistance is their existence. Some days I see what's happening in Palestine and I want it to die, everyone packing up and moving to the margins or wherever fate takes them, so that the suffering ends, people can have closure, and have lives concerned with something beyond the conflict.

But in reality I want to see more justice than that.

To Jenin: April 16th, 7 years and one day after a revision of my history.

2011-06-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

Liberated by the knowledge that I was finished volunteering, adventures and unknowns ahead, I set off to be the trip mechanic on a week long bike tour from Jenin to Hebron, stem to stern of the West Bank and beyond. It started out from a place called Hamdad Tourism Resort, outside of Jenin, a hard-hit city with a conservative reputation that was rocked by the assassination of Juilano Mer Khamis a few weeks earlier. I biked down into a winding valley called Wadi Badan, one of the best stretches of road in Palestine, a beautiful decent with the option to pop into a swimming hole at the end of it. After that a series of rolling hills wore me out, as underestimating distances seems to be my forte here. I left at about 1 pm to make it to Jenin, which conveniently dropped me in the midst of the first decently hot day of the season. It still felt great to be free, all my things with me in my saddlebags, cruising through cute villages like Aqaba and Zebabida, berms and green fields.

Coincidentally running into some young kids from the village who recognized me from Nablus put me in a great mood. We were so happy to see each other, like old friends. I became giddy and lightfooted, reflecting on my life, a wander. I wrote on the roadside:

"Remember the eyes and soft faces of the girls you've fallen in love with, their work, their power. Remember the draw of attraction and the bittersweet, youthful knowledge that there's more love in the world, always more love."

There was a current of immaturity running through that moment, and a simultaneous acknowledgment of it.

What I didn't write is:
Each moment eclipses the last unless you're careful to record it. Contrast that with the audacious knowledge that we all settle down, someday, and that there's always an end.

Because here, in this exceptionally conservative place and moment in the ever-conservative Middle East, love is not a wander, ever. It's a permanence. An awesomely limiting proposition. If I were from here, paradoxically, there's no way I would have ever left my family, my home. Terrifying, but there's incredible strength in that.

I'd been in Palestine three months, and extrapolated forward another three to imagine the cumulative effect. I'd lived a lot in that time, parts had seemed rough, and challenging. But in that same stretch of time many mundane challenges have taxed others in my family in ways more subtle and more impossible to bear. My grandmother and father were dying slowly, and others taking care of them, their lives on hold as they watched the minutes slip away on sickbed duty. My adventures are easy to sustain compared to the chores of my mother, spending 80 of the first 160 days of 2011 at my grandmother's bedside, and she went about those tasks pragmatically enough. It consumes her. I wonder what her life, free, would be. And me, her clever son, has not the strength to be consumed.

A tractor just drove by, all red and green and yellow, the driver a sharp and kind-looking old man with one of those old-fashioned headscarves that I never learned the name of, simpler than a keffeyah and white. Face like an old apple. He looked so cheerful and kind, a version of my father in the Palestinian countryside. This is his land, and as it died, he lived, and did not abandon it.

I condemn myself, but I take the burden of my decision: My life is my own, and for now, I want to be free. I'll make use of that.

Purchases, fear, and becoming a net Pariah.

2011-05-31T05:57:00.000-07:00

So, among the other things I've done recently, I bought a shiny new computer. With it came the worry that getting through Israeli security would become tougher, as there are all kinds of things they can get a hold of if the security agents deem it necessary to take your computer. They will take your password and they will root through your stuff. Someone I know swears the security went so far as to log into her email, reactivate her deactivated facebook account, delete the photos relating to Palestine, re-name the folders "Israel," delete all of her friends from her account, and -this is really fantastic- change her religion on her profile to 'Jewish.'

Less about security, more about bullying, hazing, and ideological manipulation?
I think so.

If that seems impossible, or an urban legend, or whatever, don't worry, I agree, it's incredibly far-fetched. But not unthinkable. Everything I've heard first hand confirms that, once basic security has been safeguarded, the Israeli security checks are more about furthering warring ideologies and criminalizing diverse things such as Islam, activism, transparent journalism, freedom of ideas, and evenhanded humanitarian concern. Check out what I found in searching for exactly what my rights are as far as travelling, my privacy, and the future of my shiny new computer: What follows is an account both of the absurdity of security culture put into high contrast and a case study exposure of what happens when the internet turns your personal experiences into a controversial propaganda showdown.

Lily Sussman's "I'm sorry, but we blew up your laptop, welcome to Israel"

This incident exploded Lily's computer, and also her blog, into 15 minutes of internet stardom. Check. Out. That. Comments. Section. It's shocking. What resulted in the surrounding posts is a fall-out of hate, dogma, cynicism, all manner of personal attacks, and of course good old fashioned trolling. Lily deleted swathes of texts over the last several years, as it was, y'know, her travel blog, but the impact's still amazing. To see casual text be suddenly blown wide open to this kind of hateful scrutiny is personally chilling. I wonder what my future holds, both in terms of my shiny new computer and my personal reputation. I wonder if it's possible to be involved in this conflict without becoming some kind of Pariah for simply pointing out that systemic violence is a mutually-owned issue, and that one side has the power structure to change that equation.

In short, there are a whole lot of rabid people attached to this issue.

Break for nostalgias

2011-05-30T22:40:00.001-07:00

Life is good. Beautiful yellow light this morning. Dreaming of homecoming, but so happy here. More soon.

Third Intifada?

2011-05-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

Ususally I reserve my blogging for somewhat considered messages, but not today. There's a LOT going on or possibly not going on. F-16's constantly overhead, friends of mine swearing that there are 2 million people marching towards Gaza in solidarity for the third intifada, security clampdowns on temple mount. In moments of confusion like this some people shine. Apparently I remain confused. I feel alright about that, because apparently everyone else is confused too, including the protesters. People are gathering en-masse in Egypt, alright, but some for general Egyptian unity, some for Fatah-Hamas unity in Palestine, some to remember the Nakba, or catastrophe, of Palestine losing moving from one occupation to the other in 1948, and some for the famed march to Gaza to begin the 3rd intifada. It appears that there's a logistical push-pull and fractiousness between the organizers of the uprising, the government spokespeople and leaders, and the frustrated masses themselves.

Then there's this brilliant, simple video underlining all the things that suck about living under occupation and the situation between Israel and Palestine in general:

This is exactly the kind of video I was encouraging in my students, one that is incredibly simple to make but one that can undeniably make a huge impact on the viewer's understanding of the situation. I love how straightforward it is, how it doesn't overstate things, but goes from subject to subject with clarity, tying them all together. Similar, but lighter, is this humorous version of the same thing:

Sensing a pattern? Palestinians are fed up with the situation, and the developments in the larger political field are reaching a crescendo as well. I don't know about a peaceful intifada beginning as we speak, but something's happening. I'm proud to be here and do what I can to be a part of it.

Then, just to keep things completely off the wall, there's these Christian apocalyptic billboards that we've seen popping up around the West Bank. Apparently they're funded by an end-of-days group in Oakland. Right.

Nablus: End of Teaching with Project Hope

2011-04-16T02:38:00.000-07:00

Leaving Project Hope today to parts unknown to the north. Well, I guess they're known, there's nothing particularly mystifying about a name like "Hadad Tourism Village," but still, I'm heading out on my bike with all my worldly possessions beneath me and I must say that sounds rather excellent! The day before I visited my friends in Jeet Village, biking there I felt tense for the first time about my situation as a foreigner on the roads here. I look 100x more like a settler than a Palestinian, and Jeet is surrounded by settlements. I definitely raise some suspicion when I roll up in a conservative village and start asking questions about the nearby geography. Also, more than a few of the settlers have a reputation of international-hassling ("Keep your nose out of my divinely inspired ~~land grab~~ business, you meddling foreigner!") But all turned out well.

Now, nearly 3 months after arriving in Palestine, I thought it time to talk about my teaching experience here. I was hesitant to give reports along the way, as my daily impressions were fluctuating wildly, one week I would be frazzled, ready to give up and the next I would be totally rewarded and invested and generally feeling hopeful for the planet. Looking back, It's hard to keep a handle on all the passed in that time, but like most good things it was incredibly harrowing, rewarding, validating, and made me grow incredibly.

The first month of classes was adjustment. I've mentioned before that as a generally busy person I've never been so busy as I was here, and I think that still holds true for the first half of my teaching position. It was a combination of having SO much to learn, having so many projects and ideas and potential ways to contribute, having a packed schedule, and working with an organization that has about 15 centers to juggle at once and as many volunteers with rotating schedules and varying levels of competence on all sides. Here's an excerpt from 1/21/11:
"Busy, so busy time compresses my head and a day of teaching is an adrenaline rush. Literally back to back meetings, classes, ad-hoc language lessons, sneaking in arabic study and lesson preparation, answering emails, all day, 6 am to 8 pm, go go go. I've never been so busy, which is saying quite a lot. The idea of traditional teaching, once a challenge in and of itself, now seems a cakewalk. How simple to communicate in your own language, in the same place, not everywhere in a city at once as I now am. In 10 minutes I teach a two hour long lesson to ESL college students, a demanding class, their english is good enough to get them in trouble. Then quickly across the entire city by foot and by taxi to Askar camp, where we teach with nothing, trying the wrangle some attention. Then video work, making a blog worth watching, building a critical mass of focus on the country. Justifying the work. Then a presentation, then, maybe, a chance to learn, reflect. Every minute's full."

Some challenges were a result of different priorities and understandings. Project Hope is first and foremost a language center, which is what Palestine needs most and what they're equipped to teach. I didn't want to teach english, but I quickly learned that unless I had some organizational clout behind me and a pretty solid amount of time with each group kids weren't terribly interested in learning about making films. The kids in the refugee camps are balancing a crazy schedule of preparing for exams, taking exams, and resting from exams. I know Islam is a religion of one god, but the fatalism with which people defer things because of rain and examinations makes me wonder if these two subjects don't command the weight and power of animist deities. Just kidding. But the fact of the matter is kids want to run around a be kids and play football and wrestle each other when they're not being subjected to a top-down education.

Things kept changing, changing, changing. My class in Askar started as an English class, an hour long. I shadowed the volunteer before me and witnessed the group of refugee kids devolve into a literally screaming mass before my eyes. The classroom setting was similar to this one:

The next month was spent building trust with them, getting them on board with the idea that if they wanted to learn something fun and creative they'd have to work together to keep the class focused and the disruptive kids in check. We worked on art, photography, and English, and they never screamed or jumped on the desks with me like that first day. Sometimes 13 kids would come, sometimes 4. Then, after a very successful field trip, just as we were starting into film, things fell apart. It took them 45 minutes to do something my other film group had down in 15. I didn't trust them with the cameras, so we took them away. Selma, my co-teacher, said they didn't seem to be getting anything out of the film classes, and we might as well switch to English, and I agreed. When I told the kids that our attempts to do something fun and different had failed, and we would learn English from now on, they didn't flinch for a second. A boisterous, obnoxious girl who suddenly appeared a few times ago simply said she wanted to do English anyway. I told her that I knew she wouldn't behave or pay attention, I'd seen her previous behavior, she shrugged and said she'd be better next time, which is what she always said. The next time we went there were only 2 students there, and we decided to call it off.

In the meantime I was teaching English classes at every level of competence and working on independent film tutoring and projects. I was losing faith in the idea that cameras could be used for anything more than visual aids in learning other subjects, but at the same time I'd hear or learn about other projects that sounded wildly professional and successful, Cinema Jenin or Tomorrow's Youth Organization. It was frustrating. Then I had the opportunity to teach a 6 class film course at the Happy Childhood Center in Balata. It wasn't ideal, as cramming as much material as possible into a 2 week course wouldn't give the students the autonomy and self-empowerment needed to keep their projects up after I left. But it was better than nothing, so I went into it full force. It turned out great. Of the group of 10-12 kids 3 boys and one girl were really keen on the film projects, and two of the boys have wanted to continue working together. We filmed around the camp in a number of fun exercises and made a few good first videos. Monsour and Nayef were the most motivated, they made the contact and scheduled this interview about a house that was demolished by Israeli soldiers:

Then they made this little piece on the day a prisoner was released and talked to him:

The girls took pictures and made a sildeshow of the difficulties children face in the camp, especially girls. We talked a lot about the challenges they had even finding girls to film because all of the spaces in the street are for boys:

The more involved I was in film, the less I sweated the details in the English classes, but they turned out pretty well as well, as I was getting more comfortable with my students, the material, and teaching in general. I tried to keep things focused on discussion and grammar, as the students here are generally quite advanced in terms of vocabulary but never speak or speak timidly, so we did a lot of confidence building stuff. Those classes got to the point that I was well liked and respected by my students and they even threw me a big party with the director of education and an amazing plaque at the Islamic school, which was more than a little absurd.

Toward the end of things I felt a really good balance between my film interest and my ability to be useful as an English first language speaker. There are some things that shouldn't be taught through translation, like editing, blogging, and computer skills. But at other times kids took the film stuff and ran with it, last week concluded another Balata 3 week course that went great in every respect, the kids doing photo scavenger hunts, writing scripts, and producing scenes even though we only had a short time together.

They got to see how to take their videos and put them on youtube and after I added them as my friend on facebook they got excited about the idea of showing me their future creations. Here's their first little scene, about neighbors who are so cramped they start to argue when one accidentally throws trash out his window at the others:

On the documentary front we made a little scene illustrating the inadequate spaces kids have to play. They got one of their friends who is a good as soccer to play in a narrow alley, and the narration talks about the challenges they face in the refugee camp. Then we decided to fool around and film some soccer commentary, which turned out pretty great:

Now that I'm done, part of me feels totally comfortable with this, with the fluctuating attendance, missed translations, and faulty equipment. Towards the end if I showed up to a class and my co-teacher couldn't come I'd just plow on through in crappy Arabic and teach the courses by myself, and they'd turn out great. But when I think about what I want to do next here, and people say, 'oh there's a job opportunity teaching English in X organization', I say, "Hell no!" Looking back on these three months I realize what an invaluable opportunity it's been to volunteer with Project Hope. It gave me a perspective into the way Palestine really works culturally, politically, and logistically, and did so in a way that is locally empowering and locally led, which is really important to consider if your contribution is to be useful.

Response: Arna's Children

2011-04-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

They embraced, the soft crushing of fabrics releasing a dust of stress, their muscles relaxing into each other's support. It had just become real. The anger, the violence, the destruction of lives, these had all previously been empty words. Suddenly the simple rejection of Israeli occupation through fighting, by any means necessary, had been hammered home. The suicide bombings and civilian attacks have been put side-by-side with the demolishing of houses and massive military invasions. Arab houses loaded up with high caliber weaponry, the point is to resist, to preserve a people, to die fighting. Boys laughing in an art class are transformed into the heads of resistance before our eyes, shouldering M-16's and knocking spyholes in their houses to shoot from. The war zone is there all the time, it takes only a shift of circumstance to bring it to the forefront.

They wept, two foreigners wrapped together, for someone else's tragedy. They wept for the generations of death Palestine has to endure. For the individuals with no choice but to be caught up in the struggle, dying on both sides. Nobody's sure why it has to happen. But it's happening. Today.

They think of the third intifada. How many of my students from Balata will kill themselves or die in a firefight in the streets of their refugee camp? Is the boy so quick to pick up camera skills also an excellent sniper? Do our brightest humans have to die in arms?

You can see the full film here.

Web revolutionaries

2011-04-11T03:22:00.000-07:00

The world's all wrapped up in deathbed cloth, cancerous bumps of misconceptions about issues bigger than us, hating and hunting viciously people we can't see but know are wrong, know their rights as humans are somehow flawed or illegitimate, more venom then necessary, as if the problems of the world came spouting from these far-away faces we don't understand and if we crush them everything'll be ok. But it won't be ok. We won't solve hate with hate, we won't solve sadness with sadness. And largely, mostly, we'll never be so right as to be righteous. Zealotry is a luxury we cannot afford.

The best we can hope for is to cultivate love. Love for strangers, love for our closest family, love for the oddities we see on the street, love for the things we taste and build and find in the trash. Love of routine, and love of the unknown. Cultivate creativity. The dignity to find value in small things, in subtle things, and cast around you for sources of inspiration. What can I make today that solves a problem? What can I do today that strengthens my life without costing another?

My role as a human is to live creatively, efficiently, as brightly and constructively as possible.

After spending the afternoon reading this, and this , unfortunately deviating towards the comments section too often on various Youtube videos.

Death of an Artist: Juliano Mer- Khamis

2011-04-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

Playwright, Filmmaker, Peace Activist, and Community Builder Assassinated outside his Theater today in Jenin.

This is awful. I met this man when I went to his play, Alice, at the Freedom Theater. He was kind to strangers, offered me food and spoke at length with me even though it was a busy day for him and he had never seen me before. He calmed a theater full of 500 children easily and spoke gregariously to them, making sure they knew the performance was for them and that they could be heroes if they tried.

He was a mover in his community and worked to give people some color in Jenin Refugee Camp. He does the same work the people and compatriots I respect most do in many other countries in the world, and he was shot dead for it. He had a beautiful baby boy and another child on the way. Rest in Peace.

To the venomous, to the angry, to the oppressed: If you're going to harm someone, spare the artists. Aim for the greedy that oppress you, not those trying to bring life, toiling in your midst.

I recently discovered this video featuring an interview with Juliano, sadly it's exactly the kind of film I came to Palestine to help encourage: It highlights an exciting program and the people behind it, while showing us a little about the lives of the people here, their hopes, aspirations, and humanity.

Asra Karim- Teaching in Nablus

2011-04-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

Finished my second little film featuring the people and places in Nablus. This exceptional woman is the most on-it and together volunteer teacher I've had the pleasure to meet. While the rest of us shuffle and fib our way through English lessons Asra breezed through like a pro, preparing interactive, educational material for her classes, primary through adult. Asra spent a lot of her time teaching teachers, I personally think she should be a parliamentary member or something. She's a kind, patient, beautiful Muslim lady who speaks 4-5 languages and is at home here or in the west... I kinda hope she's running the world soon.

After her interview I shadowed Asra to her class in the village of El Jneed. The kids were adorable and the location pretty cool, the village is up on top of an incredibly steep hill overlooking Nablus valley. The classes are taught in an old mosque, which was turned into a library when a newer one was built nearby.

My time here in Nablus is drawing to a close, and unfortunately I only have time for one or two more film updates. I think next time I volunteer I want to make these my full-time occupation, they're fun to do and give you a smattering of exposures about how the organization works.

In the hands of strangers: Palestinian Hospitality

2011-03-13T15:04:00.000-07:00

Some strange things have happened this week here that illustrate how different things are when seen as a whole or in the extreme. I'll write about them in due course. For now it's time to spill the beans on how easy it's been to be in this place, largely regarded as a tragic, intractable war zone. Right on the back of a most excellent weekend filled with good conversations, delicious food, meeting interesting people, and comfortable progression in the Arabic department. As anyone who's traveled in this area of the world knows, Middle Eastern hospitality has no bounds. For those who don't know, imagine that everyone you meet is a slightly autistic stalker, and then take away any connotations of fear, danger, or prurient interest. This description is immediately problematic, as it paints Palestinians in the unfavorable light of not knowing social bounds, or being so gormless as to latch onto any passerby. But as far as I can understand, society here is just that much more open. People know almost everyone they interact with on a daily basis in the markets, the streets, the neighborhoods, if you're a new face you stand out. The novelty of being a foreigner certainly heightens this, sometimes to a kind of celebrity status, but deep behind the cries of "Welcome to Nablus!" is a culture of respect that exists between people here. Simply put, almost anyone will go out of their way to welcome you and be your friend.

Now, a month in, I have a kind of routine, who I buy things from, who I stop by for a quick chat with, who my good friends are (though that last one's a toughie, as the organization I volunteer with keeps me improbably busy and I literally RUN from class to class, preparing and shooting video on my off days, more on that soon). I have my strawberry guys, who are young and insult each other. My half-yelled childlike introduction with them drew quite a crowd:

When I have time after walking home from class in the Islamic school I do a bit of language exchange with Arafi, who happens to have the excellent occupation of cake seller, which means sugar high at 10:30 am.

I literally think I have ruined my teeth forever here. Despite biking, running up stairs, and Thai Boxing, I've gained 5 pounds for the first time in my life. But we were talking about non-edible encounters.

Language is such an interesting factor in determining relationships. Depending on the fluency of the speaker concepts can either be basic or complex, and my personality fluctuates to suit. So with the vegetable sellers who speak no English I am always a comic, gregarious figure, who blunders through Arabic and mostly talks about where he's going and where he's been. With my co-teachers at project hope I approximate myself, but as a caricature, an ambassador of America which they attempt to match up with their notions about that place. It is only with a few people here that I feel I am myself, and unfortunately that's mostly a handful of the other international volunteers, who have a firmer concept, for the most part, of the variety of ways we have to be in the west. For whatever reason, to my fresh eyes, places like Palestine don't encourage strong cliques or subculture in the same way, say, San Francisco does. There are certainly artistic communities, and writers, and musicians, and other vocational preferences or lifestyle choices, but there seems to be a much stronger mainstream that bonds over similar cultural values here than in "the west."

Husam Abu Heyat (Husam, Father of Snakes!) Artist, Calligrapher, Graphic Designer, and Painter, Jenin.

But no matter who I talk to, in either a simplistic conversation in the market or a full-on discussion with my near-fluent student's family over dinner, there is a deep willingness to be understood and to share Arab culture, to share Islam. Friends and I have long conversations dissecting perceived and actual value differences between our cultures, people give me religious texts and even a English-Arabic Quaran, which I treasure and wonder how I'll be able to take it home. People use our broken language connection to grill me on what I know about the faith, and small children, after finding out I'm not Muslim, inform me in Arabic that Islam is the best. Why? Because it's the best, duh! The other day in Ramallah I sat down by a small tin-fire with some taxi drivers and one of them walked up, made a joke at me, which I responded to, then he said "Yalla let's go prey." It was Friday, the holy day, so everyone would be at the mosque. I said "sure" and he led me through the fruit markets of a city I'd never been to before, quickly cramming inside the mosque and lining up in perfect unison with 750 other men. They would grunt in assent with the Imam as he led them through their prayers, creating this breathy, huge vibration through the room, like a titan clearing his throat. Super cool. Moments later a casual stop in a bakery led to a half-hour long excellent tour spanning two buildings and rickety spiral stairs, seeing all the whirring, anachronistic machines and too-fast workers. The working class are often very young or very old here, I seem drawn to the construction and carpentry workers in the old city, who are usually chalky with plaster or sawdust.

There is a flip-side to all this generosity, however, which is of course the inevitable stress and claustrophobia that comes with too many social obligations. Everyone is grabbing at their phones every five minutes, and it seems perfectly acceptable for a co-teacher to stop translating the lesson mid-sentence and take a call. This coincides nicely with the fact that most phones appear have no ring-silence button and will continue to ring incessantly until the call is rejected or picked up. Indeed as I write this I have ignored 10 calls in the last 3 hours, half from unknown numbers, and half from a group of boys that have a habit of hanging out outside the door of our place here, heckling the other volunteers and yelling my name until I come shoot the breeze with them.

They speak freely with me but it usually takes quite some time until I'm not an awkward center of attention, holding up the conversation with translations and exchanging predictable platitudes about both cultures. That's probably the most tedious part of being a rudimentary speaker and an icon of westernism: the predictability of the course of conversation. Kids of a certain age ask you whether you support football teams FCB or Real Madrid (those two only strangely, like, jeeze Palestine, what's the big obsession with Spain?), or which WWE wrestler you like. They ask you if you know the wrestlers in real life, while in the back of my mind I'm thinking "wait, these programs still exist?" Older boys talk about either sex ("is it true you can sleep with whomever you want? how many girls have you slept with? Which are better, European or American girls?") or about the problems of Palestine. The sex question's getting pretty interesting, I'm just getting to the point where I can stumble through a fight for gender equality and point out that women are pretty involved in the whole consent process and generally are interesting people beyond their reproductive characteristics. Note as well the dearth of women in these pictures, largely because my life is in the public realm, where there are less interactions with women, and most women despise and detest being on camera. All my professional relationships with women are great, however, and probably deserve their own (upcoming!) blog post.

Adults talk about politics and Islam. Along these lines, everyone tries really hard to dispel the notions of Arabs as fundamentalist terrorists. But they needn't bother. It's clear, as a collective culture, that Palestinians just want to live freely and not be impoverished and humiliated. Their hearts are filled with love, empathy, and respect. I feel so much more gentleness and desire for peace here than I do in Israel. More than I do anywhere, for that matter. In respect to the occupation most people show an astonishing, life-long patience that floors me. The fact that this place isn't a gun-filled riotous shit-show all the time speaks legions to the Palestinian desire for peace. Everyone's stressed. Everyone knows someone who has died, who's house has been destroyed, who's in prison. Everyone's stretched thin financially, over-achieving but for what purpose? They're all motivated and intelligent, and daily life here is very close and satisfying, but there's the root listlessness, because they can't leave very easily, so there's an absurdity to excelling at anything. What's the point of being the best thai boxer or painter or mathematician if you can't get a job in it and there's little chance to leave Palestine to conferences or to start a business or whatever? And there's a breaking point. My friend Mamoon lives in Balata, one of the largest refugee camps. He's a thin-faced fellow with kind eyes, good natured and a good translator, waiting until he understands the beginning and end of an idea before accurately conveying the mood of it. His father died 10 years ago and Mamoon and his brothers support the family. He awakes at 6 to study English at the University until 2, when he volunteers for Project Hope for an hour or two. Then he grabs a bite to eat and works in a printing factory until 2 am, at which point he does it all over again, 6 days a week. And still he walks slow. And still he waits patiently for people to ask him favors. And still he commiserates with a silly foreigner who complains about his heavy workload of a handful of classes a day.

People shoulder the burdens of stress, lack of opportunity, inequality, violence, corruption and poverty with a grace and magnanimity that makes these things almost forgettable, and it's the power there that speaks to my heart amidst the sea of voices in this aged, blind, clumsy struggle. Forget what you heard. Palestine is a land of the best examples of human beings.

Uprising here, Uprising there: Tim Dechristopher's Spirit

2011-03-06T01:50:00.000-08:00

I feel far away from the revolutions in Northern Africa, as a newcomer here with an far from acceptable grasp on the language. I feel equally far from an issue close to my heart, the trial of Tim Dechristopher. Much time has passed since he originally blocked the corporate powers of US resource consumption from chewing up more Utah land in the name of profit, now the Federal Court has tried him while carefully shielding his jury from any information that could make this case actually about reason and justice. The machine has not spoken, it has ground forward with another ugly, smooth crush. But Tim is far from silent. Here are his remarks after the verdict:

See more of interplay between awful corporate personhood and the strength of people to fight what they believe in on Peaceful Uprising's website.

Being in Nablus: Mountain of Fire

2011-03-02T10:42:00.000-08:00

Report to the world abroad: I've been incredibly remiss. I have no idea how to fill in the blanks between a month ago and now. I fluctuate like an aperture, a sine wave. I've had the greatest, the worst, the busiest, and the most tedious experiences of my life all in sequence. Time seems to race by, or it seems a lifetime since I rolled into the West Bank on January 31st. I've been incredibly busy here. Two days ago I thought I was a failure. This week I feel competent, on a good path, useful. Before all that I felt elated, and before that lost. But it's fine. Sometimes it's good enough to move forward, ceaselessly, and let the days shape how your muscles and callouses grow. It's time to describe Nablus.

To get us started I'll re-wind my notebook to my first impressions, on January 31st.
"Nablus is fantastic. I knew before that it was couched in a valley, and that Israeli barriers had destroyed its economy until the militarization ceased in 2009. The city center features a masterpiece of a shopping drag that rises to the south, it's absolutely filled with pedestrians day and night, criss-crossing the domain of merciless taxis. Fashionable stores rub elbows with sooty, wobbly eggplant carts, and boys looking fresh from the club greet wrinkled old men wearing what appears to be conglomerated dirt. There's an incredible food selection in the markets, fresh fruit and veggies overflowing at every corner. Everyone must know how to cook. The main fruit and vegetable market is off the central square in a canopied corridor, typical bustle of people and cheap, delicious stuff. Nizar, a Project Hope employee showed me a few preserved treasures like a large scale functional soap factory, which appears to make one product only: 6 oz blocks of fragrant olive-oil soap, spread out on the floor and arranged into insectoid columns to store and cure in a beautiful old warehouse, the floor slick with the sheen.

The old city is a remarkable mix of living history and a profound record of the abuse this place has been through. Computer shops operating out of ancient arched-stone structures, smooth walls getting narrower and narrower. It's ancient, and picturesque, but suddenly here and there you'll discover bullet-riddled walls and officially-ensconced memorials to suicide martyrs, from as recently as the second intifada (2002). Nizar briefly said hi to a young good-natured guy who had a vague look about him, who flinched when Nizar playfully pinched his stomach. 'Is he blind?' I asked. 'Yeah, he was injured' 'During the intifada?' 'He was trying to pull apart an undetonated shell stuck in a wall. He wanted to throw the explosive from it, and sell the copper. It exploded in his face.'

The markets here are less crowded but more claustrophobic, filled with delicious sweets, spreads, olives, dates, cheese, and tons of amazing-smelling bread. I'm in heaven. And unlike in Israel I know the rudiments of how to ask for things. But only the rudiments. Palestinian Arabic is tough and my brain is like a lead balloon. I don't hear subtle distinctions and remember things even more infrequently. I think the learning curve's steep but even on day one can see a light at the end of the tunnel. In truth I'm exhilarated to be here. If I hack this one out I may have a pretty rad future. If I could speak Arabic well, I could see myself working in this region for a really long time. Nablus is fully alive, in a way that only a place strangled by a brutal fate really can be."

I feel pretty good about my initial description still, tempered by a few new realizations that I've come to over time. For one, winter in the mid-east mountains is a perpetual wet spring, with weeks clammy and misty and others in full sunny contrast, perfectly temperate, and possibly even more beautiful. It's a lot like San Francisco, in a way. I think I really fell for this kind of weather in my second week. It had been raining 4 days straight and the world was wrapped in one of those surreal mists that wets your face and helps sound travel. I was walking down a huge ancient set of steps that descend the mountianside beside our house. All chipped up and knobby. It was dusk, and through the fog the call-to prayer reverberated, creating unearthly echoes the likes of which I've never heard. otherwise it was deadly silent. I was alone, in the heart of far away. I live for moments like that. I was so struck by the evening call to prayer I made a little video featuring it later, in the rain. It fails to capture what I experienced, but it's a nice little moment:

Nablus is my home now, though I'm still a stranger in it. I always will be, no matter how good my Arabic gets. The call of "taal, taal ijnebi/come, come stranger!" follows me everywhere, and depending on the combination of my apparel, company, or mode of transport I'm conspicuous enough to singlehandedly draw substantial crowds. Because of this my relationship to my home is a strange one. The public sphere isn't a place I can be by myself, but I don't mind that. I take pleasure in making friends every few meters and try not to be inconvenienced by it. This level of conspicuousness effects me greatly and changes the way I behave. I rarely take pictures in public, any more, and my photos reflect that. I feel awkward and invasive all the time, pulling out a camera puts it over the top. Of course my photography suffers from this, we'll see if I improve in time and can start asking people for their photos again. Friday is a respite, as the streets are dead, and a bustling merchant district becomes abandoned.

Since I'm our narrator here what could a visit be without the view-from-a-bike report? It's fantastic. I swerve and weave like a self-possessed fakenger listening to 'a band of horses' and people LOVE IT. Everyone treats you like it's your birthday. I always have an audience here, but on the bike I'm in my element, obviously, and I ham it up, obviously. It's a party. This city's on a hill, so you bomb through the potholes and minarets and dodge taxis, and they roll down their windows and say funny stuff to you then you dodge some ladies jaywalking and cut to another lane of traffic to avoid the lettuce cart guy splitting lanes against you then you swerve around a military gooseneck, pass some autoshops and a landfill, and you're at the refugee camp, exhausted, having about 200 near misses along the way.

There's much more to say, and much more to show, but enough. Stay tuned next time for either the people, the navigation, or even more harrowing, the classes!

Meet Salah: The first foray into the people of Nablus

2011-02-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

I met Salah early in my time here in Nablus, and he immediately struck me as not only photogenic but a generally gregarious and well-spoken fellow. I quickly got along well with him and started to learn some pretty interesting facets of his personality. He seemed an ideal first ambassador to Nablus. See what you think of him!:

-Salah is a volunteer translator at Project Hope, a computer science student, a Thai Boxing instructor, National Champion of K-1 Kickboxing, a good Muslim, and a Palestinian. He really loves Nablus, and wants you to, too!

Salah's profile is the first of many features to come about Nablus, if you're here and want to hear about someone in particular let us know, or if you're from abroad and want questions about Nablus or Palestine in general addressed in film form drop us a line! Who should we profile next?-

This was a fun project to do and I'm keen to continue it. The intention is to profile a different person or aspect of Nablus every two weeks or so, depending on my schedule. Right now I'm splitting my time between a steady course load of english classes, projects like this, and intensive video workshops. I'd really like to thank Asra for lending me her camera to film with, and Project Hope of course for making my time here possible and allowing me to spend my time on alternative projects.

Slow! Barrier Ahead!

2011-02-05T14:16:00.000-08:00

Riding a bike through the west bank is a certain confluence of insanity and privilege that is as hard to justify as it is unlikely to occur. But it did occur, so now I'm going to justify it.

Well, actually I'm not. Screw justification. I'm alive and nobody's blown the world up just yet, so I do what I do and try to actively help other folks in the process. But I do think there's a lot to be learned about militarized zones, identity-controlled existences, and the politics of space within the little soap bubble that is me biking from Jerusalem to Nablus. I will also boldly say that it was one of the more pleasurable little adventures I've been on.
First off: Google maps has deigned not to give names to the city streets within the Palestinan Territories. The interesting thing is that we've grown so used to using technology that this is strange. Next time I come I'll probably be like 'what? no street view? Pah.' Being the seat-of-the-pants type I never thought about bringing a map, I just set off in the direction of Ramallah with a list of cities to head for and major roads connecting them. I'd figure I'd ask people along the way. Now, it's Saturday, the Sabbath, and I'm wandering around the rainy, empty-of-cars-streets of Jerusalem thinking of going up to the nearest culturally-complicated (in appearance) Jewish fellow (his felt hat in a trim little raincoat all of its own) and asking "scuse me, do you know the way to the west bank?" There's one problem for you: how to ask for directions when you don't want to tell someone where you're trying to go. Unintentional freeway riding ensues.

Next, there's the troubling little habit of routes sometimes inexplicably dead-ending into walled-off refugee camps that are apocalyptic in appearance. This is officially the only bike tour I've been on where certain routes seem direct until, looking at a satilite image, you notice the shadow being cast by a 20-foot 5 mile concrete barrier, and you have to figure out which side of it you're supposed to be on to continue.

Now, remember how 15 miles from here there are lush gardens where 20-somethings lounge on a hilly paradise tending vegetables, hiking trails and watching the sunset? This is the same country. The people are just as kind to a passing biker, but now when I ask for directions I speak arabic with a beautiful young woman in bright clothes and a hijab who looks as out of place on a trash-strewn sidewalk with military jeeps and broken concrete as Marilyn Manson would look in a preschool. I didn't take many pictures as I crossed into the west bank, mostly because I was incredibly intimidated, but it was pretty damn end-of-the-worldy.

It's still raining at this point, just FYI.

Now comes the fun part where you pass the checkpoint (which was actionless going in, it's going out where they getcha) and start asking directions to the next town. Sometimes it's quite easy: you wave at a cab in traffic to roll down his window, and in very broken arabic ask whether this road leads to say, Jaba. At the time I didn't realize it, but it's a modern miracle everyone understood me, because pretty much every word in the sentence "Does this road go to jaba?" is different one country over in Egypt, where I last studied Arabic. Other times it's more circuitous, such as when, still raining, I passed the green line into the outskirts of Ramallah and was admiring the trash, cats, and other third world conditions (oh and I was lost) when I was waved over to an auto shop by a gaggle of mechanics. I say hi, exchange pleasantries, and then an exchange almost exactly like this goes down (again in arabic):
"So is this the road I should take to Jaba?"
"Do you want to drink tea with us?"
"Oh, thanks, but no, I have a long way to bike"
"Where are you going?"
"Nablus"
"Oh god, by bike?"
"Yeah, crazy huh? Is this the road I should take?"
"Are you married"
"Uh?"
"Do you want to have sex?"
"Um. Jaba?"

So there's that. It's still raining. A couple good cheers from passerby and attempting to help un-stick a high-centered car later I found my way and started into some rolling hills on what I knew was the right highway. The rain cleared up and I got really, really happy. Everything was thrumming along well, it was beautiful and I had some fruit (but no real breakfast (Sabbath in Israel= closed everything)). I started noticing the following things:

Palestine pretty much looks like southern Utah, the crusty unremarkable bits that we all know so well. Beautiful but subdued.
Settlers scratch out signs in Arabic or cover them with stickers. They also put up lots of wheatpastes in Hebrew.
Middle Eastern drivers rock, I've never felt safer on the side of a small freeway.

Though the day was beautiful and I had plenty of water after a few hours I started running out of steam and thinking of lunch. There I encountered another problem unique to the region: How to best ascertain whether I'm approaching and patronizing a nice downtrodden Palestinian village or a bastion of western manifest destiny and exploitation: A notorious settlement (that, for all I knew, only just that week stole the water rights from the surrounding area)?

Being nervous about betraying my politics I passed a number of lunch spots (as it seems to be the style around here to keep the highway far from the towns with long exits into them) in search of a definitely arab one. I was flagging, but resorted to a pretty fantastic emergency measure: After resting and drinking water I spied a double-long semi pulling out of a by-road. I did a little wave to the driver then sprinted, catching up in a marvelously well-timed maneuver and grabbing onto a sinch-strap on the back of the truck. Thus I skitched a truck along around 8 kilometers of rural highway, weaving in-and out of the rumble strips to the side of the road. I had a car of young men pass me and my host vehicle cheering me on like it was pretty much the coolest thing they'd ever seen, and I admit I felt good about the situation myself. I hung on until my arm gave out and then resumed my overloaded mountain bike progress.

I had lunch at a town called Turmisseyh, where I stopped at a hardware shop and asked about lunch opportunities. There I met a nice guy named Mustafa, who said, "Oh, you're an American? We're all Americans!"
"Uh-huh," I said, appreciating the gesture of acceptance.
"No really" He said, and pulled out an American passport.
"Oh. Wow. You're serious!"
Apparently the village consists of about 8000 people, 6000 of whom live in America. Makes your head spin, coming to a place known to restrict movement more than almost anywhere else on earth right now and make small talk about the details of say, the Chicago rail system.

After yummies a long religious lecture "All the other religions were created by man! Who can believe the word of man? Islam is the word of god!" and the discovery of Kaki (we call 'em persimmons and they're delicious) I headed out again.

Being back in Arab country, especially roads less traveled, I'm reminded of the fever pitch of hospitality and curiosity about foreigners. In smaller towns every single person wishes to talk to you and befriend you, you'll literally turn down 3 invitations to lunch as you pedal by. As I got closer to Nablus this started to fade slightly, but even still you could make fast friends with ANYONE on the street. Nablus, it turns out, is a big deal. It's said to be the biggest city in Palestine, though I would have thought that distinction belongs to Ramallah. Certainly the first traffic lights I saw since Jerusalem popped up well inside the city itself. But first there's the infamous checkpoint. Because Nablus is a bit of a west-bank problem child. Due to the two biggest refugee camps bordering the city and the ancient heart of the city itself, Nablus but up the strongest fight during the second intifada in 2002. It was here, in Balata camp, that Israel employed the 'through walls' technique which I believe American troops used in Iraq. The camp was so close knit and tight that IDF troops simply went in one house and blew their way through all the rest of them, stunning and killing as they went and never exposing themselves to outside enemy fire. Lovely lovely. Anyway, as a result of this stubbornness Nablus has had a blockade around it since that point, which in 2009 was relaxed into a checkpoint.

But still I rolled up to some rather incredulous IDF kids (no, really, they're kids. I'm talking copious pimples).
"Shalom, Hi!"
"What are you doing here?"
"Um, biking. I biked here from Jerusalem."
"Today!?!"
"Cool huh?"
"Why?"
"No idea. It's just kind of what I do."
"But why here? You know it's very dangerous, right?"
"Oh sure, I'm aware, but I'm willing to take that risk. Ya see, I speak a bit of arabic and I wanted to practice it."

This conversation ended with them informing me that nobody was allowed through on foot. I decided not to enter into the rather interesting philosophical debate about the exact set of parameters that makes a vehicle a vehicle and instead said "oh well, can I go hop in a truck?" They assured me that'd be fine, but after my passport was seen to be "in order" (which is funny, as I don't have an entry stamp to Israel in it) they waved me through. And muddy, tired, happy, and unscathed I made it into Nablus, which exceeded my initial expectations and continues to make me happy and blow my mind. But that's another story.

Break from Palestine for: REALLY SERIOUS SURFING

2011-02-04T12:38:00.000-08:00

Surfing's certainly a reason for living for some, but this little flick REALLY AIMS TO ELEVATE SURFING. Apocalyptic Irish brogue describing a relationship to waves. A desperately dark film about a leisure activity and art. Beautiful, justifies itself in the beauty. Some would say pretentious, I'd say finding the dance in the action.

DARK SIDE OF THE LENS from Astray Films on Vimeo.

Tanks to uncle john for the link. Man's got good taste.

Calm before the storm? Art Therapy.

2011-02-04T03:59:00.000-08:00

I haven't caught up yet, so this post is totally out of sequence and UTTERLY RUINS the rather nice cliffhanger I set you up with contrasting the rides in Israel and Palestine but, whatev. This post has cute kids in it. So all's forgiven, right? Teaching this class began with "hey Davey, you like spontaneity, don't you?" Like any full-blooded art hipster I was obliged to reply "Yes," to which the volunteer coordinator said "Oh good, you can teach this class in 15 minutes." Ah. Ok. This was shortly after I discovered that due to need I would be teaching a LOT of English classes and maybe 1 or 2 film classes. Argh. But I feel pretty good about it and my ability to sneak in my own designs, more on that soon. The result of that ad-hoc teaching position was this 27 second video:

Cute little buggers, ent they? These kids were extremely well mannered and met in a nicely stocked center while they were on winter break after exams (Children in Palestine seem to be perpetually studying for exams, taking exams, or having a break after exams, which usually excuses them from English class as well). Over the next couple days we did art with an English twist, including collages. Check them out below!

Caution! Bicycles Ahead!

2011-01-31T10:58:00.000-08:00

Yoav and I biked from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, around 75 kilometers with some pretty decent climbs throughout the day. I think the city sits at 2500 feet, and we biked from sea level. We thought it would be easy, it totally wasn't. I was certainly regretting knobby tires and a full set of media stuff. Starting my journey into the West Bank off with a tour, though, was an absolutely excellent idea and got me into the right state of mind for this teaching experience. Heading out of town was fairly complicated, as mapless directions go, but eventually we got it with only one getting-lost experience. I was pretty proud of my navigation, and was sure of what caused us to lose our way before it happened, so my intuition was right-on. That portion was the great kind of city riding that only the Middle East can offer, fast-paced and traffic-dodgy with attentive, flowy drivers that don't mind if you weave through them (I love it, my description of traffic sounds like stoner skiers' description of snow. Sentient snow). The sub-cities were all similar and unremarkable, some, like Rehovik, were pleasant enough. We got into the countryside and started humming along, in grassy-but-arid terrain with farming 'experiences' all around.

The first half of the country was pretty unremarkable, but soon we were in pine-style dryish forests and, as the road got thinner and curvier, full on lush greenery. It was absolutely beautiful. For lunch we stopped and had a kind of Arab crepe, Lafah with Labane, yogurt inside it, and my left-over experimental cooking (crap).

My dear MTB (named either "Negev Crusher" or "ITS Refusnik" depending on who you ask) was humming along with minimal idiosyncrasies and I thought how my former self, on my bike trip at 19, would have thought the current me rather posh: sporting a tent, a route, a sleeping bag, a semi-working bike and real panniers. Takes some of the adventure out of it, surely, but it's equally fun to feel capable.

Meeting Yoav has been great. He's easy to travel with but into interesting stuff. He involves his friends in the things we do together (which can be rocky with couchsurfing and the whole second-language thing), every time I thought the day was over we wound get up to something new and interesting, an art opening or having company over. On the summit of the hill to Jerusalem we met an Arab fruit seller, he asked if I spoke Arabic and the words came spilling out. I loved talking again, if only in my stock phrases, but I'm very excited. I think biking gets me into a similarly fortuitous state to learn and speak as slight drunkenness does. I learned "Akol Sababah," Hebrew for "It's all good," and a secular response to "Kefaheilk," or "How are you?" In Arabic.

We arrived in Jerusalem at Yoav's friend Natalie's house, where she lives with her boyfriend, Neil. They are great, they just cook and garden and live with an astonishing view out of the front of their house.

Both teachers. Pretty but removed, pretty removed in this hillside house. Casual and content. We had cauliflower soup, which was great, had a spice in it called baharat, and was food-proccessered up so it was nice and thick. A final night in Israel, watching the sun set from an impossibly beautiful vantage point. One part lush mountain town, one part cusp of an ancient nexus of culture.

An excellent, mind-blowing day, made even more so by what's to come. Stay posted for the other side of this coin.

Dreaming life. Living is easy.

2011-01-26T17:06:00.000-08:00

A great couple days here in Tel Aviv, making my head spin. Reading the Lemon Tree is messing with me too, it almost brings me to tears and fills me with rage while teaching me tons. I read the recounting of the 6 days war like a spy novel or something. Riveted. Took off from the hostel and went to meet Yoav at his place. I looked up the address on Google maps but the intersections and those around it had no english streetsigns. Asking around I found it, but it was a locked-up door. I loafed around and eventually he came down. He has such a cool place. Exterior courtyard with a rusty old wrought-iron staircase, a crumbling single room studio with a chipped-up floor that he's turned into an in-progress art installation.

He's very interested in dirt, clay, and scale, a love of the desert and its fractal nature, which is something I've thought a lot about as well. One of his pieces was all about emulating miniature scale while leaving out the obvious markers of it, like trees or humans. Trying to just use details of the landscape and meticulously controlling the marks tools make in order to maintain the illusion of miniature scale. He's quite prolific and consistent, you can see more of his work here.

We talked a while about art, Israel, and traveling. I really like Yoav, he's easy to be around. He wants to move to Berlin, he biked from Amsterdam to Berlin last summer. Coolo. We talked about how he'd always thought of Tel Aviv as western, thought of himself as western, until he went elsewhere and realized that wasn't the case. Interesting and makes perfect sense, this is a town of European people stuck in the Middle East. They've made it their own but the two effect one another in a great hybrid way.

We rode over to Tal's house, who is sick. I stopped by a shop and learned about dates and figs, which are more expensive than I thought but delicious. She's at home sniffling, showed us some performance art videos she'd made, and talked tons more about whatever. She has a really odd/cool apartment that she got in a really strange arrangement.

She had been living in a family-owned building when I club moved into the basement. They had a good relationship but the club was there illegally. They wanted to stay, and make her happy but were too loud, so the club owner decided to rent her crappy little place for twice the price from her and she moved elsewhere. So now she's living in fat city with a stipend! We made dinner together, listened to Dolly Parton, Edward Sharpe, and watched this video:

Yikes. Awkwardest video ever.

Then, this happened:

Scandal!

Next day was more or less uneventful, mostly wandered and read, riding my new bike around the city. Made great crepes in the morning. I'll let the pictures talk for themselves for the most part, with some explanation (sorry about the imbedding, I've been annoyingly locked out of my flickr account so things aren't as pretty as usual.)

Got approached in the park by a homeless outreach group, which I should take offence at, but it was the middle of the night, so whatever. Ended up meeting a really cool journalist and then, inexplicably, getting drunk in the park with a really crazy russian-heritage goth/punk kid who was extremely (goofily) violent, misguided, suicidal (in a cry-for-help way) and, it turns out, a bit of a neo-nazi. Savory character (on the left).

Alleyway deeds and got a steed

2011-01-24T17:44:00.000-08:00

Good Morning!

Today was spent doing camera errands and looking for a bike, both of which are scads more fun in a foreign country. Drumming up the courage to interrupt some grumpy old mechanic so you can barter over the merits of interchangable chainrings is something I excel at. Also having an excuse to duck into extremely sketchy dead ends and alleyways is always fun.

So far the candidates are: a too small KHS MTB with rack mounts, front fork, and knobby tires for $100, a too small cannondale MTB (!)missing its front shifter and with some crappy components for $100, or a perfect-sized Mid-80's MTB with XT components for... drumroll, $60. The only problem is its seat post is stuck at bottom height. Finding this bike was my favorite, as it resulted from talking to the locals and finding out about a 'very cheap bike shop behind a gas station.' I round said corner after half an hour of walking and see man in a kefffeyh (shorthand for Palestinian solidarity, perhaps with a specific Fatah connotation) and a veiled old woman sitting with a grizzled group of Arabs in a derelict courtyard. The bike shop is like all Israeli (and Egyptian) bike shops, a single indescribably dingy garage bay filled with bikes on hooks which spill out into the pavement (or in this case, dirt) broken Arabic and no-handed trackstands ensue, both of which startled the folks, it was clear. As did my declaration that I was biking to Nablus. Without fail everywhere I go people find the distances in their lives absolutely unimaginable without motorized transport. When I said I was planning on biking there in 5 days (a very arbitrary estimate) there were literally ripples of incredulity. After a stint of google maps I discovered my admirable feat was going to be all of 35 miles. Come on, guys.

I managed to work out a deal: If the bike seller could un-stick the seat post before tomorrow I'd come back and pick up the bike.

The awed/worried reaction could also be attributed to the obvious socio-political conflict we're all so aware of, but I doubt it. Like any area of strife daily life very much continues at a normal pace, Tel Aviv feels safer than most places I've been. For those of us in the lucky position of mutability there is little danger in the West Bank as well. For average Israelis, however, it might as well be Mars. I haven't had too many conversations about it yet, but having an Israeli passport bars one from entering the west bank, an absurd concept in an area with the footprint of the Bay Area. Though like the locals of that cosmopolitan comparison, the people here seem to try to make up with culture what they lack in national real estate. Israel is a very cool place, so briefly into it I can already see why someone with a different take from mine on the politics of the situation would never want to leave.

Next my hunt took me to the markets of Jaffa, where purveyors of sundry linens and knicknacks rub shoulders with shops selling, inexplicably, tons of beautifully crafted antique film-light rigs with wooden poles and pounded brass carapaces. Coming out of a shop that had, side-by side, a shoddily-mother-of-pearl-inlaid mandolin ($100) and an African chamber-less instrument with 2 strings and demon-headed resonating base ($45) I was approached by a smiling young man with glasses.

"Excuse me!" He said, can I ask you something?"
"Sure" I think at this point he's trying to drag me into his shop. "But not about linens. About bicycles!"
He laughs. "I'm an artist. A photographer. You have a look of someone I'd like to photograph. Can I tell you more about it."
So now I'm over thinking he's trying to sell me something, and into thinking he's trying to pick me up. I humor him for a few moments before his friends wander over, a cute red-bearded fellow with a rather excellent flat-bar road bike and a good-looking pixie-ish girl with baggy pants. It turns out:
1) The fellow, Daniel, is actually telling the truth and doesn't want to pick me up. We're shootin' some photos Tuesday.
2) His friend Yoav is on couchsurfing, lives in a loft and wants to host me tomorrow.
3) His friend Tal invited me to go volunteer with refugee kids for the evening at an outdoor library. So I did.

She's a great person, Tal, we immediately had some good conversations about performance art, queer identity, and our relationship as individuals to our nations. Dere she is:

She told me the scoop on this park (Ha Tinkva?) we were headed to. Apparently Eritrian and Sudanese refugees flood into Israel all the time, seeking to become nationally recognized refugees but in reality being held in limbo as 'asylum seekers' that supposedly cannot work and are initially detained for several months before getting shipped to Tel Aviv. This is another moment of odd parallel stories for Israel, where any Jew in the world can expatriate to the country but in the treatment of other asylum-seekers it becomes obvious that the state being sought is still very much a Jewish one. But apparently the very park where we stood was a focal point to this whole international conundrum, as the majority of the new asylum-seekers end up at the central bus station a block away and sleep homeless here until they find apartments and illegal work. Indeed, over the course of volunteering there one night several timid class-style packs of Israelis crept into the park and observed and discussed the goings-on ethnographically, apparently the general vibe the place holds in the Israeli concept is that of the ghetto: dangerous, scary, you just don't go there.

Happily oblivious to this fact, I was busing myself helping to run a open-air library.

It was patronized by hyperactive polyglot round-headed children, who would jabber at me in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. There were books in all three of those languages, and we generally had a blast trying to keep them entertained. They didn't seem to naturally have the reverence for books that I somehow picked up living in a bookstore with a literature-crazy mother, I cringed as battered, ancient, spanish translations of 'Le Petit Prince' went flying around the park, spines ripping apart. After considerable despair at the mayhem (which included a game where three or so 6 year olds would climb to the top of the book stacks, yell at me, and then leap-attack my head when I gave them attention) I resorted to juggling, climbing, and finally leading a rag-tag gang of kids to the jungle gym nearby to do some proper horsing around. We had to displace a couple deflated loafing types that were huddling conspiratorially in the playground, the contrast of these little kids horsing around and infringing on the claimed space of drug-dealer-esque setups was pretty surreal, especially when you'd look up and think, "I hope someone's looking after these guys" and you realize it's pretty much just the lurkers and you taking up that job. This guy pretty much sums up the energy level for the night:

After dark, thoroughly tired out, I walked back to the hostel and made an olive-filled bachelor stew before chatting and writing the night away. Day 2 down, dig it.

Day 3 turned bike theory into a reality. After Arab guys weren't able to un-stick the seatpost (with a hammer, chisel, and a pipe-wrench, no less) I abandoned option A and went back to the first bike I found. After tinkering on it for a whole day I landed it for $125, which is steep for me but whatever. Witness! The ITS (Israeli Turn Sandwich) Refusnik:

That's right. True Temper, suckas. Yeah!

Many readers will soon quake in fear as together we conquer spans that only sound impressive in meters. Stay tuned! Piecing together ol' Refusnik was made especially fun by the to-and-fro scavenging I'd go on to abandoned bikes in the area when it was in need of a part, much to the entertainment of the shop owner, Elian. He's a downhill biker and his shop was different than most, by the end of the day he offered me a job! :) If only I was learning Hebrew...

Later I went to a nightclub on my new steed with the owner of the hostel. The experience was complete with an unmarked door, descent 2 stories, a security pat-down, and an ex-soviet-style bouncer whose neck was wider than my whole body, a pit-bull of a man with bulging veins on his forehead and a shaved head. He looked like he bashed his face through brick walls for breakfast. Other than that the club was boring as hell.

Here are assorted piccies from the day:

Cutting out comics to give to kids as gifts.

Thu-thu-thats all for now, see ya.

Made it! Now we really start up...

2011-01-22T21:02:00.001-08:00

I was nervous off the plane, expecting an interrogation. In that vein I had locked down my phone, erased all my emails, replacing all my incriminating files on my computer with vague titles, hid my extra SD cards, combined my tripods to make them look like there were fewer of them, and moved my bookmark to the beginning of my slightly incriminating book. And of course I prepared a goose-chase of stories justifying my need for a 3 month visa without getting an Israeli stamp in my passport. I had even kept my notebook reflections vague, in order to match with my innocuous front.

So imagine my disappointment and surprise when subverting the vaunted Israeli airport security consisted of babbling to two (very cute!) women about my love of bicycles and fresh dates. No search, no hard questions, just skepticism at my ability to pedal 200 miles. I still have to get through the West Bank checkpoints, but I probably could have gotten away with bringing all 5 cameras. They're apparently harder on you on your way out.

There are no trains on Saturday, so I accosted strangers to share a taxi into city center. Got a ride with Claudio, an Italian robotics professor who works in Artificial Intelligence. His destination was a nice residential neighborhood, lots of people ambling around, cute young couples mostly. He paid the fare (business expense!), and told me to take Sderot Rothschild vaguely toward my hostel's neighborhood. I had no maps, just street-to-street directions I'd scribbled from the web the night before, so I was worried. But the street was pleasant, a walking boulevard filled with perambulating people, bikes zigging around.

The whole world working at about 1/3 capacity on the Sabbath. Tel Aviv is a flat, fairly ugly city with a a lot of little shops and good vibes, cool and breezy but t-shirt weather in January. It reminds me of Athens, dirty and un-neutered cats all around, scooters and motorcycles, beautiful people. I just walked over an hour and eventually found my cross street.

The sketchiest street encountered so far is the one the hostel's on. It's in a little pocket of wasteland! That's it there:

But upstairs is a proper hostel scene, free Internet and tea, hammocks on the rooftop, a sweet pink-haired Argentinian to check us in, dates and lovely dirty kitchens and lots of conversation.

Hit the ground running talking with Matt, working with Anarchists against the wall, a solidarity movement that goes around protesting wherever locals are protesting in the west bank. Here's footage of similar stuff from 2 weeks ago in the town he's been going to. Says there's lots of tear gas fired directly at protesters, use of live rounds, and that the stone-throwing is usually in response to IDF aggression. I don't know how I feel about it. It seems presumptuous to go somewhere far away to engage in protests of other people's struggles, I don't feel personally well-informed enough half the time for protests in my own country. They also seem pretty ineffective and formulaic. But perhaps the internationals have done their research and this is the best way to further their goals. And surely effectiveness is a lot to ask for your average Palestinian.

In any case, he's a cool guy and had some good information. He also holds the dubious distinction of having his bone structure carefully delineated in a tattoo on top of his left hand by someone while at the hostel. He's also responsible for this turn sandwich:

Oh bike co-op travelers, how you represent.

He told me about Ragotka, a vegan coop that has all sorts of interesting radical connections, I'll go check it out tomorrow.

Also talked with Ginendy, a New Yorker who came over with a moderate pro-Israel group that trains college ambassadors for the country. And Bram, a Dutch journalist here to do stories on Dutch Holocaust survivors and their generational relationship to the trauma. Bram and my current (very informative) book, The Lemon Tree, remark on how Holocaust survivors are seen in an oddly unfavorable light considering their weight in their country's history. They have been construed as weak and cowardly, carrying the burden of brutalization by the Nazis, as if they only half-survived, a people of dust. They suffer especially in comparison to the myth/stereotype of the sabra (prickly pear) or the stubborn, macho new generation of Israel which was able to cultivate a modern empire out of the fertile void of the desert and fight against persecution ruthlessly and more effectively than their forebears.

Skepticism at the stereotype aside, the origin story of Israel really is amazing. Disdain for capitalism falls away in the face of what early Israelis did with the benefit of that system. Immigrants from Europe arrived in the thousands in 1948 and in a few short months they created a skill-based import/export economy from the ruins of the previous Arab society. They ran everyone out as war refugees and declared the new Jewish settlers custodians of abandoned property.

As such they had the basic infrastructure and resources of existing Palestine to work from, but still the prospect of turning an ancient, empty land into a 21st century cosmopolitan civilization in the space of 60 years is audaciously mind-boggling. A good reason to dislike capitalism in general is that it does not put the welfare of people as a first priority, it becomes an end in and of itself (more power) rather than a means (providing stability to people so they can follow their priorities, like living their lives). The more correct role of capitalism gets made very clear when you're dropped off in a blank land and made to fend for yourself, and in 7 months there are municipal offices and enterprising businesses. But when comparing early Israel to the parallel struggle of the Palestinians you start to see the huge advantages created by having stable international connections and a multitude of socialized programs in place to kick things off on the right foot. Israeli immigrants were given a house, a lantern, a bed, and rations for flour, sugar, oil, eggs, and milk. They, like the Palestinian refugees, were largely dependent of foreign aid shipped in at first, but unlike the Palestinians they desired to build upon their situation and dug in, whereas the Palestinians wanted to return to their homes. Palestinian refugees were dependent on UNRWA aid in 1948, and many still are.The Batala camp in Nablus is the largest one currently in existence. In the meantime Jews have created places like Tel Aviv.

I have to continue this train of thought a bit further, annoyingly enough, for it's beginning to sound like I believe Israel sprung from ruin into a completely autonomous moneyed super-state thanks to a champion cottage industry. It's not quite that simple. Because apparently soon after this industrious time of can-do-working-the-earth mentality Israel started down the same road of imported labor and exploitation those of us in more developed countries know so well. They took the let's-use-the-less-auspiciously-colored-in-the-skin-department people from around the region route, mainly Mid-East Jews known as the mizrahi. Further, we can't forget that the US aid to this commercial giant in the defense game alone makes the dependence of the Palestinians on foreign aid seem like a crumb pile: A conservative estimate puts total US military aid at 114 billion.

Aaannd we're back to capitalism fail. That was quick.

Jeeze. I started with a cool bohemian hostel and got here, huh? I guess that's telling. A clue of things to come, perhaps. The rest of the night was just fine, dinner in an actual expensive restaurant (Honest!) with wine, ambling through graffiti-ed streets surrounded by what seemed to be squads of dark-haired transplants from east cost finishing schools headed to food and parties.

Now the snoring of hostellers. Just fine. It's good to be here, my brain's workin, we'll see what we see.

Time to take off.

2011-01-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

The time, as they say, is finally upon us. I fly out to Israel this morning.

In the last 3 months this plan has gone from a theory to a reality. Along the way encountered all that I love about my world of friends and acquaintances, and through their cumulative actions I've been emboldened in so many ways.

Through the efforts of my community this project was made not only affordable, but almost completely funded by independent donations, a hugely generous grant from Kids With Cameras, and in-kind donations from Children's Media Workshop and The Salt Lake Art Center.

As I got closer to the departure date I learned more about the project. My main focus is slated to be documentary projects with students aged 12-16. They'll work in groups of 2-3 and write/produce complete documentaries all the way through publishing them on the web. Right now we're circulating around a theme of place, and their relationship to it. The next step is to find a community to receive their work, fairly criticize it, and give them feedback throughout their process. This can take the form of other classes of kids becoming e-pen pals with the Palestinian youth, or individuals watching their work on youtube and commenting constructively on it. If you're still interested in participating in this project then I encourage you to keep an eye on this blog and spend some time on the content the kids generate. It'll all end up here. I'll also keep you posted on my personal progress, and I'm sure once the grim realities of homesickness set in I'll live and breathe your encouragement and responses myself, so keep 'em coming!

I've also been overwhelmed by the exceptional results yielded by extending myself to the international community. Through couchsurfing.org and research I've found previous and current Project Hope volunteers, locals in Nablus, thoughtful Israelis, international projects that do inspiring work, and countless NGO's in the area which are all working together against insane odds to improve the life of Palestinians and the understanding of the world at large. I don't know what the future holds for me, but the thought of working with some of these organizations fills me with hope.

Thanks, and see you soon. The stress of considered preparation is tempered with the felicity of the knowledge that anything can happen, with any luck I'll be thinking on my feet. So long, I'll be back before we know it.

Photo from the In This Week article that Daisy Blake was nice enough to write about me. If you haven't seen it it's a nice g'bye to Salt Lake!

Loving this video

2011-01-06T22:24:00.001-08:00

Simple single shot, each new plane and modification added with a perfect build. Lovely.

Eskmo 'We Got More' (Official Video) from Ninja Tune on Vimeo.

The Dada Factory Humanitarian Division: Teaching Film in Palestine!

2010-11-28T15:25:00.000-08:00

All's been quiet on the productivity front for this boy. Last time you heard a peep from me on this blog about work it was either my job as mobile teacher with the 337 Project's Art Truck or back with the Tale of Don Giovanni. I've been busy, here and there, ever since, but it's time for another big project, which I'm very pleased to announce.

I'm going for 3 months to teach film in Palestine as a volunteer with Project Hope. This is a culmination of several personal goals of mine that stretch so very far back to the last time I was in the Middle East, the summer of 2006, in Egypt. Also embedded in this trip are my desires to use the mediums tentatively under my control to do some good and spread ideas, stories, and information worth hearing about, in this case through film. I'm a little leery of the role a documentarian holds, the recorder of other people's stories, it seems to walk a fine line between authorship and ownership, I'm attracted to other ways.

The premise of my project in Palestine is simple: Give kids cameras, let them tell their stories. If that particular mission rings a bell, it's with good reason. I've always been inspired by co-SLC'er Geralyn Dreyfous' Kids with Cameras project, most well known for their involvement in the excellent movie Born into Brothels. Then there's my co-conspiritor John Schafer, of Children's Media Workshop, who goes around with the audacity to use cameras to make education fun. I'd be working with these folks, hopefully, and following in their footsteps, but in a whole different direction.

Palestine's a hard place to get your head around, harder still to articulate, and often divided along contentious ideological lines that go back generations and even epochs. I hope to do a little good while I'm there, make some friends with Jews and Arabs, and learn a ton.

I'll be living in the City of Nablus, north of Jerusalem, entirely Arabic speaking, surrounded by Israeli checkpoints. The city has a beautiful, warrenous old city Kasbah and sits in the hills, it's a mix of humming contemporary development and impoverished decrepitude.

via Velvetart

Unemployment is at 60%, as high as 80% in the refugee camps I'd be teaching in. I'm excited to explore there, this image search has a smattering of relevant pictures. Notice, even in the rhetoric and claims behind those images, how ideologically contentious this area is.

My goals: To enable students to capture aspects of their situation, stories, and lives on camera in a skilled and watchable manner.
My teaching will have an emphasis on narrative, clarity, and image control, with very little agenda when it comes to content or message. If the youth I work with want to write a screenplay and execute it to practice their English they can, if they want to do stop frame animation or mini-documentaries we'll go in that direction. I'll encourage it all. Due to the social and political climate in Palestine my lesson plan in the program will be very flexible, but my goal is to enable a few kids to get their images out, both through blogs/youtube/social media and hopefully through international children's film festivals.

It is important for underprivileged youth to be connected with the world at large and to be able to express their perspective in a creative, compelling manner. This has the benefit of giving the youth a constructive outlet for frustrations and creative energy. In teaching students how to construct a comprehensible film narrative you also build their analytical and communication skills across the board, while allowing them to invest, explore, and break rules.

After the production-based learning experiences, the product of these explorations can be published on a variety of scales. All of which inform the external world about a situation whose media coverage is typically biased, glossed over, dehumanized, or distanced. Further, Internet access is one of the few amenities Palestinians have, it should be used to its maximum capacity both as a connector and a validation for the youth.

In any case, it'll be quite the experience, I'm incredibly excited and looking forward to it. If you're in Salt Lake I'll be having a going away party on the 16th of December at the Salt Lake Art Center:

Music, food, fun. The race before'll be cold and great. I'll maybe play a scene or two from "Paradise Now" and maybe some film stuff I've done. I'll be raffling off two of my bikes to raise money for the trip too, more info soon :).

If you feel so inclined, you can even donate to the project through the sidebar on the right, I'd really appreciate it.If you're not the money type you can make a music mix to speed me along my way, or bring food/snacks/drinks to the party at the Art Center.

Go To Hell: New Theater from... a New Theater.

2010-11-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

Go To Hell. A flippant condemnation, and a preview of things to come. There's lots of skin-deep but fiery anger behind the first production from The New Works Theater Machine, and a whole lot more to behold.

The New Works Theater Machine occupies a black box theater nestled in that delicious space, the Pickle Factory. Its ambitions are to push new ground in storytelling and to break away from conventional theater. In fact, Go To Hell's writer/director Jeremy Catterton seems to shudder at the very word 'theater.' He prefers other pseudonyms for live performance. One can support his claim, in a way, because he and his crew are certainly throwing a lot at you.

The play chews up and re-imagines the Myth of Orpheus, a classic tale of love and descent into the depths of hell. It does so with sprightly, rapid-fire dialog and snappy shifts between deeply energetic emotional drama, a kind of lounge comedy, sensational horror, and tiny interludes of multimedia revery. That variety, set in a contemporary frame story of a love gone sour, twists the audience's neck and keeps us very entertained, true to the Greek roots. The vodka-swilling, trash talking, motorcycling Charon (John Kuehne) steals the show with his Bar-room brooklynite attitude and drunken tirades. Equally impressive are the nightmarish sequences of Hades and his Shades who, with the help of consistently creepy performances and nerve-jangling special effects, do justice on a very small budget to the kinds of shocks horror films have desensitized us to.

Where the show falters is with the frame story between Orpheus (Tyson Brett) and Eurydice (Rhiannon Ross). This tale of two lovers, I speculate, is intended to invoke in the viewer an emotional push-pull between the prison that banal love places us in and the infuriating depth to which we are invested in those normal agonies of human relationship. The clever dialog of matrimonial loathing seems targeted towards the interpersonal hells and suffering we create in failed relationships. The problem is the audience isn't given much to invest in. The setup for Brett and Ross' relationship is short and almost effective, but they so quickly degenerate into hateful, scathing tirades toward one another that their characters become two dimensional. The lead woman in particular is given a pretty difficult task to overcome, as her character direction seems to allow her only operate within the predictable and uncreative confines of over-the-top-anger, over-the-top-fear, and over-the-top...domesticity, if such a thing is even possible.

Further, the basis on which the lead relationship is defined seems so incredibly vague (issues with jobs, material concerns like countertops and mortgages) that rather than being examining or critical of a mainstream existence they simply appear unimaginative and uncompelling. Further compelling dramatic chances are missed when Eurydice's ultimate betrayal of Orpheus isn't confronted by either character, leaving us with merely suffering of the flesh. For an ambitious drama about the infinite hells we create between us, there's a simplicity to the drama that seems unambitious.

All in all, I would and will go to this play again. It provides an impressive conflux of genres and stories, its dialog dazzles, and the laughs and terror are genuine. Further, this is the first work of a fledgling theater company, they did a damn good job, and if anything the nit-picky specificity of my criticisms show how well-executed the company really was. They got me invested enough to deal with sub-textual flaws, rather than being embarrassed into silence on the show's behalf.

Go watch it, it's running Thursdays and Weekends through December 18th.

A Conflicted Radiance A new film on Jean-Michel Basquiat

2010-11-27T05:48:00.000-08:00

by Davey Davis
Originally Published in 15 Bytes.
Of the people who know the childlike, energy-filled, and massively busy works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, most are familiar with the orbiting cautionary tale of success and the art market which consumed and destroyed him, as typified in the 1996 eponymous Hollywood film.

The newly released The Radiant Child contributes an excellent human dimension to that story, a sad portrait of the artist which praises the depth of his work and examines the subjects of his struggles. It is crafted lovingly: bright, lively edits and grainy hand-held film give it an intimate touch, a rarity. One of the great resources of the film is director Tamra Davis' raw interview with Basquiat reflecting candidly on his situation. There's a hypnotism looking into the the long-dead artist's face: he was such a charmer and a cipher. But unfortunately this documentary is not just about the work of the artist and the artist himself, and around that issue Radiant Child is discomforting.

The problem with this film is that it is a praising retrospective of a martyred young artist by all his friends, patrons, collectors and admirers, who seem to have grown up, sleeked up, and landed careers as psychiatrists, designers and massively influential curators. Their youthful freedom and immaturity was something Basquiat didn't live through. It is not unrealistic to expect people to grow up, but the contrast between the youthful energy of Basquiat's era and the established, wealthy art world remembering it loads the film with tension.

If Basquiat's story is admirable and tragic it is because he was a fragile creative soul who was destroyed by his skyrocketing success--which he was unable to adapt to--and the art market's insatiable appetite for "the new." The film is peopled by the individuals who contributed to his success and continue to work within that market, yet they never reveal direct remorse or accountability for their role in the whole destructive process which led to his demise. Rene Ricard’s early Art Forum cover story on Basquiat, for example, is presented with little scrutiny from the filmmakers as a prescient chance for the artist’s star to rise, yet the journalist’s words -- “the next person I wrote about needed to be totally unknown, terribly young, very ambitious, I wanted to latch onto a career that I could watch and write about for a long time” -- seem more than a little bit foreboding and parasitic given the context. To this day curators like Diego Cortez and artist Kenny Scharf are quick to take credit for exposing Basquiat to the world at large, but nowhere is there a sound bite from any of these people acknowledging the possibility that their friend was destroyed by the repetitive machine that is their bread and butter. The film does an interesting tap-dance of condemning these insatiable market forces while only referring to the participants in the art game obliquely, “this artificial world,” in some cases, and anonymously in others, placing blame on a faceless "new crowd" of doting groupies that the filmmakers do not provide a spokesperson for. One is left to wonder who this evil art world is composed of, if not the artists, critics, collectors, curators, and gallery owners interviewed in this film.

To Radiant Child's benefit, it excellently portrays Basquiat's work, especially with a series of side-by-side comparisons of various visual and cultural influences to Basquiat’s pieces that literally pop with color and artistic virtue. There is some truly priceless footage of a fellow with a Ph.D. stuttering and stumbling as he attempts to interview Basquiat and backpedal from the racial implications of calling the artist’s work primitive, and the film's connection of his work to be-bop and jazz is a neat insight. It gives the viewer an honest, loving picture of Jean-Michel's rise and fall in the words of the people closest to him. What it fails to do is critique the overall consumptive art market of which they are a part. In fact, the film's treatment of Basquiat's inability to survive as heroic reinforces the mentality that destroyed him. It lapses into a predictable "good die young/'too rare for this world" kind of mantra that fails to engage with the real problems behind a system that quickly consumes a unique style and simultaneously stifles it from changing and demands that it evolve. The collectors and curators ceaselessly argue for the validity of the works in the highest language possible, and their values ever inflate. Now is it a requirement that a film looking back on the career of a young iconographic artist pick apart the mechanics of art-world capitalism? No. But by making this film at this time the interviewees and participants in Basquiat's life and career are put in a very uncomfortable, one could say complicit, position.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, a film by Tamra Davis will be screened at the Salt Lake Art Center November 12 at 7 pm.

Lars Bengtsson solves some problems for me.

2010-11-24T21:43:00.000-08:00

Mr. Lars Bengtsson has the fanatic honor of having biked 30000+ miles around the world in about every configuration imaginable. I stumbled upon an excerpt from an interview of him that seems appropriate to my current situation:

"The whole world has, as you know, really gone nuts when it comes to fear of a non-existing threat from Islamic countries for example. Almost ten years has gone by since the 9/11 attacks but the fear is still alive and growing, which is very sad.

Me, on the other hand, have spent a long time in about 15-20 Muslim countries over several years and have never had a bad day. Sometimes I wonder what I would be thinking of Islamic countries and the many other minority cultures within them if I had never travelled in them. Maybe I would be one of the many people who feel an unnecessary fear too. Who knows?

At the same time I wish that ordinary people in Muslim countries had more opportunities, so they too could travel around the world and learn about atheism, the West, Christianity, Mother Earth herself and so on. Metaphorically speaking, the best way to build a bridge between two cultures is to start from both sides of the river, not just one side. Things are never painted in black and white but in every colour imaginable. Islam is misunderstood in the West and the West is equally misunderstood in the Muslim world.

I am afraid that if the bridge over the broad cultural river is built from one side only, the whole thing could turn to neo-colonialism. And we have seen that road before, haven´t we? And we don´t want to walk that path again.

But of course – an average woman in Yemen just can´t go to Canada or Romania or Chile for a couple of months to learn and hopefully got a wider perspective about the world and it´s people – but it would be amazing if she could. Today only people from the West can afford the luxury to do that kind of travel."

Greg's Hasselblad x Lindsey Collabo

2010-11-23T17:49:00.000-08:00

I think good things about this picture.

Especially considering the conflux of people and technologies it took to make it. Greg, who burns fast and brightly forward with a yearning eye on the past, and Lindsey, made of steel, wool, wood and horsehair, quietly transforming the world onto a real scale. A film image on the highest-quality camera of yesteryear (I think), uploaded hi-res into pixels on flickr.

Well done.

What Laura Decker's up to!

2010-11-18T15:09:00.000-08:00

My ol' buddy Laura D's been busy, she and her boyfriend Max make all manner of art together, their styles contrast greatly and the overlap is the precious thing to me! I love Max's pictures of Laura:

Coupled with Laura's pictures of them:

Together they are Bird Brain Press, they just had an interview write-up in Gavin's underground, check it out and see what's on their minds!

Cute buggers.

sebastian errazuriz: american kills

2010-11-18T14:59:00.000-08:00

Found this via Greg Hebard, more info at designboom.

Public Art, public statistics. Putting the two together. Instantly more appealing to me than any number of theory-based conceptual art pieces. Keep it up.

Peaceful Uprising and performance that matters

2010-11-07T15:26:00.000-08:00

I haven't been that into art of late. I've spent a lot of time being underwhelmed, not feeling that lifting feeling of inspiration that got me into this world of expression in the first place. When I think of communicating the importance of expression I get disdainful, failing to see how expression for expression's sake can do anything more than provide a consumptive market with MORE. NEW. STUFF.

This perspective forgets, of course, the huge power that comes with expression. The power to awaken people, to make things clear, to teach and spread truths in the hope of a better world.

And what a better way than to be reminded of that by Peaceful Uprising.

If you aren't familiar, Peaceful Uprising is a group "committed to defending a livable future through empowering nonviolent action." They're Utah based, and (quite effectively) sprang up around the case of Tim DeChristopher, who used direct action as an attempt to block illegal land auctions in southern Utah, an action which in part led to the government realizing its mistake and dissolving the agreements Tim was disputing. Tim is still being held on federal trial, however.

The trial has been posponed multiple times, it becomes clearer and clearer that the prosecution is unwilling to allow Tim to make a case for himself while he holds a media spotlight. So he and Peaceful Uprising decided to hold the trial themselves. In public. With puppets. And excellent, directly political dialoge that provides specific ideas and actions to take in its commentary.

I went to the Exchange Place Plaza last Friday to film the performance. Here're some highlights:

You can see the entire half-hour long performance here. I'd suggest checking it out, there's a ton of informative stuff about how we got into the current state of affairs. The performance outlines how corporate power came to weigh so heavily in the civic domain, and what we can do about it.

So what we have here is art. Street theater. It may not be as polished and perfected as the majority of gallery shows out there right now, but it has something most of them do not: Direct, actionable content. I'm sick of vague dithering, and very happy this group is working hard to awaken people to their options in the face of vast environmental injustice.

Some thoughts on economy and activism

2010-11-07T15:25:00.000-08:00

Next post up: Peaceful Uprising's Climate Trial

I got a second to pull Tim away into a darkened pinball room later that evening and grill him about Economics. We talked about various ways to make anti-consumerism more economically viable, alternative economic models to the current hyper-growth that most of America thinks is the only way. He made the point that in our current model all forms of resources are subsidized heavily. All forms of labor, however, are taxed. This provides as financial incentive for consumptive business models over social business models. If you reverse those subsidies and taxes then labor becomes valued.

We also talked about steady-state economics, models where your economy needn't grow at a massive rate to keep up with the inflation of national debt, among other things. The problem being that shifting from that consumption system to a stable one is in practical terms impossible.

The system, most likely, needs to be shown it is unsustainable by completely collapsing. Strap-on-the-boots style collapse. Peaceful Uprising and others try to shift the tide as much as possible before that collapse because that creates an alternative to build towards.

It needn't be embraced by the community at large to be effective, either. Tim made the point that if 10% of America can be convinced that business-as-usual industrialism is not a working model, then there are 30 million people who can be activated. And what can any force do in the face of those numbers? The trick is getting them to care, and act.

Tim's actions are effective because he's willing to articulate his motives to anyone who will listen. That gives him the advantage over big industry and big oil, who are forced to backpedal and refute his claims from the get-go rather than determine the framework of the issue. I find a pretty illuminating contrast in the case of Jordan Halliday, a local guy who was just sentenced with 10 months for resisting a Grand Jury. Jordan's tactics, for whatever reason, haven't been as successful as Tim's. In my opinion, Tim's openness to talk to the press and publicize on his own terms turned him into a media figure, while Jordan's commitment to silence on any ideological stances he may have meant the prosecution was able to walk all over him. Tim's also had a lot of practice, now so his arguments have become very convincing to most anybody who takes a second to think through what he's saying.

This really happened...

2010-11-07T13:54:00.000-08:00

I have an extreme dislike for stuff. That is to say, consumerism. Stuff for stuff's sake.

I created a scene this week when I was accosted with various pointless money schemes by a poor unsuspecting Wells Fargo teller, who then tried to solve my problems for me. Our exchange went a little like this:
"I like my banking to be simple. If I could put my money in a box and knew it'd be there when I went back for it I would do it. I've never been in debt and don't plan to be, I've never taken a loan and don't plan to."
I said this with a look of hopeful expectation, as if bankers, of all people, would understand the desire for firm, dependable capital. Not so. A mere second later my bubbly, hipster-housewifey teller replies:
"You know what you should DO?! You should open a holiday account!"
I felt like I was talking to a monkey.
"The last thing I need is another account. I don't spend money. On anything."
"But, look, you'd get this horse!" She replies, with a look of 'aha' triumph. She grabs a stuffed animal horse from nearby. I'd noticed the things proliferating around the bank branch.
I lost it.
"I don't want a horse! I don't want another account!"
"But look how cute and fluffy he is!"
"He's not cute and fluffy! He's been unlovingly stitched together on a third world assembly line and stuffed with processed crap! No one needs a new account and no one needs a stuffed horse!"

I realized at this point the branch was rather full of recently quieted, worried-looking people.

I smiled. "Sorry about that. See you later."

In the screen.

2010-11-02T20:31:00.000-07:00

I was planning on watching only a moment of this Miwa Matreyek performance/animation, but was transfixed. Imposing screens onto live actors or 3 dimensional space does odd things to the mind of the viewer, who is expecting a discrete world to be drawn into and instead finds an interaction. Is it possible this path might lead to 'performative' video games that, unlike the current genre, are actually fun to spectate?

Brilliant. I have some idea how she does it too, though the illuminated hands are a mystery to me. There's incredible potential in this medium for dancers, I think, and combining with projection mapping:

Which Al is working on for the Leonardo at the moment, I believe.

On an unrelated note, I don't listen to enough music. These guys do. This local blog has been an immense undertaking in the last 3 years, I don't know how I didn't hear about it. Hats off, Potters! I've recently become aware that all my previous music sources are more or less dysfunctional or broken, and as I hate CD's and paid-for music that can disappear if you switch platforms I'm on the lookout for new downloadable venues.

Higgs

2010-10-28T23:31:00.000-07:00

"The Higgs boson is the only Standard Model particle that has not been observed and is thought to be the mediator of mass. Experimental detection of the Higgs boson would help explain the origin of mass in the universe. The Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon, which mediates electromagnetism, and the massive W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak force. If the Higgs boson exists, it is an integral and pervasive component of the material world."

via wiki, and of course this.

"Hi," said Hayduke, grinning. "I'm a hippie."

2010-10-28T23:22:00.000-07:00

Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang: An incredibly sad old book, by the end of things. I wanted desperately to believe old Hayduke made it. Filled my heart with hope that he'd outfoxed them again. The book's free-heeled carelessness up until the butch-cassidy-style standoff was what really did me in, I loved those irreverent anarchists scrabbling at each other, trying to do the right thing, whatever that was. When they finally drop off, one by one, in the dusty canyons and against implacable, stupid greedy conservative militarism you really feel hopeless. The saddest thing about it is what an antiquated book it is, too. Abbey's grasp on the unstoppable industry machine was 35 years ahead of its time, and we're too shocked and awed by all the bullshit going on right now to get our heads around how to respond. It's a slippery world of uselessness and manipulated media out there all right, the damming of Glen Canyon seems like a petty trifle in comparison. We need a hundred Haydukes, some proper outrage.

Revelations, Destroy All Nations.

2010-10-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

Two quick things:
It's pressing and apparent to me now more than ever how artificial and restricting national identities are in terms of jobs, freedom of location, and culture. Nations are on the decline, common ground as a currency of identity on the rise. Most rockin' case in point: fantastic music video of Gogol Bordello's "Immigrandia" and interview with lead singer Eugene Hutz.

In a tangential but very related note, XKCD has come out with a boggling comic mapping the amount of social time spent online and dividing it into 'nations.' Maps like these seem as relevant as the old fashioned ideas of a shared culture or nation in grouping human energy. Maps of belief, network, community, language fluency, skill set, and so on should serve as a counter-identity to the rigid box of 'American.' Those boundaries are as imaginary as they are based on convenient circumstance to enforce.

It must help that right now I'm applying to volunteer in a part of the world reduced to country-wide incarceration and war over abstract notions like statehood and deity worship. There's something terrifyingly disproportionate about the correlation of human-created categories and actual widespread human suffering.

Dad and Kid in Brooklyn send video camera into space

2010-10-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

... And back again! So amazing:

These guys probably used a GoPro Camera, the resulting footage is spectacular.

Davey D, Hardest working man in Hip-hop.

2010-10-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

Did you know?

I appear to be a respectable black journalist!
Check out Davey D's Hip-Hop Corner.

I'm going to jump ahead through the train-of-links that got me to this video, because if you watch one thing from this blog post it's going to have to be this little message of Cornell West's. I love this man:

But back to Davey D. He's not only got a great and distinguished sobriquet, but he seems to be fighting the good fight, as well. This clip particularly resonates with me, I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about messaging in mainstream hiphop and the lack of humanity in it.

Next, linking away, I found Mr. Davey D talking with aforementioned favorite eloquent brother of all time, Cornell West:

Self-Taught

2010-09-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

A year ago I met a fellow on my travels in Paris. He was American, working a fairly stable but uninspiring job on Berkeley campus, but was taking an extended holiday (or internship) in Paris. On one of his last days there we were out running around until late in the evening, he was jubilant, snapping pictures, buying things for people, and lamenting that he had to leave.

"Come back, Zach" I said. "You could live here. You speak the language, you've got everything it takes!"
He shrugged. "I can't just up and move. I have too many people relying on me at home, and nothing really set up here."
The night was fresh around us. People walking to and fro over ancient bridges, kebabs and snacks in their hands. "Seriously, my friend" I said, tossing a chip into my mouth, "It's as simple as wanting it."

He works here, now:

I need to learn to take my own damn advice.

Lloyd Kahn: Post Domes

2010-09-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

Great little 16mm film about building your own home, working with your hands, why Geodesic domes suck, the privilege of the hippy movement, and longboarding in the suburbs.

SHELTER from jason sussberg on Vimeo.

Some kind of Madness

2010-09-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

The 25th and 26th of this month'll be fun.
First, I'm taking the Art Truck up to Ogden for 8 hours or so, then traxing/riding back. Next I'll be involved with this:

I have no idea what it is, but I do know it's 48 hours of straight performance art, and I'll be working at the art center 9pm to 4 AM (!!!) The night of the 25th to 26th. Further, knowing Gary Vlasic's antics and looking at the flier art, I'm expecting something equestrian and ritualistic, like the climactic scene of Equus slowed down 500 times:

wow. All I can say is wow. Then, it's up the next day to race in Chris's Techtastic Alleycat, Happening at 2:00 PM on the 26th on the U campus, somewhere. I'll get the specifics on that forthwith.

All in all, sounds like fun!

Technomadism and Sense

2010-09-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

I've found a movement that immediately appeals to me: technomadism and neo-minimalism, the move from many things you don't need to a few things that do everything at once, in order to be comfortable and productive anywhere, anytime. A quest that for me began with my bicycle began shaping my choices of luggage, computers, camera equipment and clothing. Cameras must be smaller and more portable, justifying their presence in cross-continental journeys but still delivering high-definition footage. Pants should never wear out, and be versatile enough that one can get away with carrying one pair. Everything should fit easily in a bicycle saddlebag or small backpack.

Boing-boing's released an excellent special feature by Sean Bonner, an account of his own adventures and a bit of a manifesto on throwing away the excess crap that slows you down: Neo-Minimalism and the Rise of Technomads. Sean also has a cute little tumblr site with zen tidbits and general decluttering advice to go with the movement.

This is great and all, this striving to travel light as a feather while still maintaining your link to the glowing webs. But as a featherweight chronic traveler I also know where there's danger in going too far. Bouncing from place to place is glamorous, sleek-designed objects give the appearance of solving all problems. But there is tons of hard, concrete work that supported the creation of those i-whatsits and allowed for easy travel to all points on the globe. Not all of that work was done in ethical or environmentally sustainable circumstances. Further, Sometimes all the digital extensions of an online individual seem just as cluttered as a house full of junk, but with a variety of accounts, interests, spin-off avatars, instead of spare tools, knicknacks, lotions and extra clothing. Sometimes bouncing between digital interests and forums and blogs makes my head swim, and I wonder how productive we're actually being.

Take for example Sean's 12-Hour trip to Dublin. Highlights include patronizing an art museum, a veggie Kabob shop, and drinking 10 cups of coffee. I wonder if this frantic nomadism is justified when the end-result is just some intercontinental dilettantism. Having the tools to get things done quickly is great, and being able to spread the results over a variety of outlets equally validating, but it's important to focus on... staying focused. Don't let the digital pace overwhelm your ability to spend time on deeper contributions in your area of fascination.

Alphabet Soup

2010-09-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

My favorite boing boing post today comes from a reader, who compiled a zeitgeist alphabet based off of Google's new insta-search feature. Know what the world is thinking about, in all its crummy glory!

A is for Amazon, to get all your books.
B is for Bank of America, which holds all your crooks.
C is for Craigslist, no services adult.
D is for Dictionary, to define your result.
E is for eBay, to spend all your cash.
F is for Facebook, web pages like trash.
G is for Gmail, world domination ambition.
H is for Hotmail, Gmail's competition.
I is for Ikea, for a lamp named Bljampäjese.
J is for Johns Hopkins, where they cure your disease.
K is for Kohl's, a store that's old-school.
L is for Lowe's, to buy your tool.
M is for MapQuest, for the place you go to.
N is for Netflix, to add to your queue.
O is for Orioles, a Baltimore obsession.
P is for Pandora, an audio digression.
Q is for QVC, for goods without esteem.
R is for Ravens, another Baltimore team.
S is for Sears, appliances and more.
T is for Target, a Wal-Mart like store.
U is for USPS, where mail you submit.
V is for Verizon, Steve Jobs should use it.
W is for Weather, for forests in flames.
X is for Xbox, a console for games.
Y is for Yahoo, a home page for Chrome.
Z is for Zillow, to value your home.

Urban Gallery All-Star Face Off

2010-09-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

Mark off some time next weekend to check out the 337 Project's Urban Gallery All Star Face Off, a mural painting competition that's the best thing since last year's. The list of artists looks great and I can't wait to see what comes up, especially from Rachel Domingo and Kier Defstar. Yeah!

Trespass

2010-09-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

Yoinked from the soon-released Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Street Art. I'm very excited about this. It looks like an excellently curated compendium of permissionless work with some very good text too. I'll be getting it post-haste as it book-ends with my current writing project quite nicely.

Everynone: Words

2010-09-02T18:17:00.000-07:00

Best Podcast Ever Radiolab has joined forces with a film group called Everynone on their most recent podcast: Words. The resulting video is an altogether great visual exploration of a word-association game, though a little cheesy at times:

full text and interpretation over at motionographer. The genre of videos that exist in this length, between story and music video, is a fun place to play indeed.

Combat in Iraq Over

2010-08-31T19:56:00.000-07:00

Majid Saeedi's Photo of an Afgan woman's hands used completely out of context from TheBigPicture

It may be that I've lived to see an American war open and close within the scope of my awareness. President Obama released a newscast declaring an end to the American Combat phase of the Iraq War, as covered here in the Times. The article's quite good at capturing both the monumental importance of this moment and the bittersweet political and emotional murkiness that surrounds our seemingly unending militaristic nature as a nation. Because of course we have to end our wars. American hubris also requires, unfortunately, that we end them without staining the global tablecloth or our delusional clean-white conscience, and I'm afraid that just isn't the reality. The harm and trauma from this war will reach far beyond its official conclusion. Fingers will be pointed, political sides taken, egos bolstered or deflated in the glammy non sequuntur this country has become defined by. Iraq will be left in the wayside, broken, regardless of what we think. Animosity will have generated at an irreconcilable rate, regardless. We are responsible. America is responsible.

America is also broke. We cannot fight another war and shouldn't, yet it won't surprise me in the slightest if suddenly we dive into Iran, on another fabricated (or maliciously engineered) pretext as we did in Vietnam, Iraq, and I'm sure others. Only to find out years later that an entire generation of suffering, waste, death and hatred was no more necessary than the belief that star-bellied sneeches are better than plain ones. We have to stop or we won't survive this.

Seven years ago when this war began I was still in High School. I remember the entire landslide of falsehoods and fearmongering rancor. I was compelled to do something about it, and entered into college a Middle Eastern Studies/ Journalism major, with an emphasis on Arabic. I felt it my place in the world to correct some of the injustice toward the Middle East perpetrated by my country.

The tenacity of that goal has fallen by the wayside, and as complicated as it is I still curse my own weaknesses which led to it. I know so little about the world, and seem to lose more ground every day as I learn more, but I cannot give up. I resolve to try harder, and not forget. To read and think and learn about the course of things. To do otherwise would be a disservice to our global generation.

The mustache vandal is clever as hell

2010-08-28T21:09:00.001-07:00

Seriously, who is this person, and why are they so awesome?

Egypt

2010-08-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

He realized how long he’d lived, in his short time on the planet, how much was forgotten, and how he’d changed. He’d grown up, simplified, knew less about the world than he did when he was young. Looking back on the pictures of the suntanned young man with the huge grin and tired eyes, in a country far away, he missed his old life like he missed a part of his soul.

See other egypt faves here.

Al by Vermeer

2010-08-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Oh hi there Internets.
I've been biking the Pacific Coast! But instead of talking about that, I wanted to post some pictures of Al playing music. He sure looks good doing it, eh?

Art Truck in the News

2010-07-22T12:44:00.001-07:00

The UVU Review, in fact. Nadia was nice enough to write up this piece for us. There I am talkin' 'bout art a lot. Surprise Surprise :)

Copenhagen's Bikes through North American eyes

2010-07-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

If you're a city planner, cycling advocate, cultural enthusiast, or other liberal commie socialist, you've probably often wished you could just drag your backward-minded opposition to Europe and point around. "See, dammit! Things work great here!" Here's one such little film from Streetfilms:

Granted, the people in the video are already for cycling in the United States, but seeing workable examples certainly strengthens your case.

We will be biking this saturday...

2010-07-19T11:52:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly enough!

Full story here!

Also wanted to post up this flier for the afterparty over at fresh, it's amazing!

Goin' to Oakland

2010-07-07T23:41:00.001-07:00

An' This is What I'll See...:

I could make dance movies like that for forever.

Street Films: The best teaching tool since speak-n-spells

2010-07-06T23:52:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled upon a truly great website, a well-organized series of films on everything to do with urban-planning and sustainable, livable transport. An hour of watching Streetfilms means brushing up on some of the coolest ways cities are changing to accommodate people, rather than cars. Just click through a couple videos at random and I guarantee you'll see something interesting.

Indy and Altertainment, coming up!

2010-07-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

So we all know there's magic all around us. But the next couple weeks is extra magical, what with the upcoming Alt Press Fest at the Salt Lake Public Library!

Also, I just got wind that a gonzo-filmmaker fella is coming to town from Austin, Texas, and playing a double feature:

Check the trailers, and some of his other stuff too. He seems to have an unabashedly grungy take on things, sort of a redneck-meets-counterculture kind of focus, I'm excited to see how it goes.

More biking!

2010-06-28T16:02:00.001-07:00

Just lettin' yall know there's a couple great alleycats coming up, on Saltcycle, as always. Here's the most upcomingest!

Art this weekend an' beyond!

2010-06-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

I got a chance to check out the 337 Project's Mini-Golf Course at the Art Center last night, everyone has to give it a play, some really impressive stuff! I wrote a little preview of things to come this weekend over on the 337 Project Blog, including the arrival of Banksy's film at the Broadway. Sweet!

The internal world

2010-06-16T12:10:00.001-07:00

The internal world
Originally uploaded by Der Blaue Reiter

A hive of infrastructure, rarely seen or understood by the throngs of
consumers it's intended for. Thousands of people, thousands of hours,
years of individual expertise resulting in a sprawling entity
that boggles comprehension.

Why can we build this mecca to buying things we don't need with the
seriousness and focus of an army of ants, yet we're incompetent,
incapable on so many other levels? Everyday people seem fine, and
kind, and genuine, especially if you extend your kindness first, but
their popular culture and political actions at large seem monstrous,
shallow, or selfish. 1 in 4 women are raped in situations so grisly or
so urbane that both seem impossible and outside of my scope of
experience. A medical emergency is enough to debilitate my fragile
world of self-sufficiency, living like a monk in the most excessive,
affluent nation on earth. Oil spills destroy the world for Nigerians
every day and we can barely care on an individual level when there's a
spill near our shores. How do I fit in to all this? I work,
volunteer, and organize community things every day, supposedly
sharpening my skills and effecting things for the better, but for all
I know I'm making things worse. Should I only care about the things
within the scope of my comprehension? Keep my head down and quietly
work on bikes at the collective, spreading enthusiasm for this thing
called art that has no tangible benefits? Or should I care about
everything and do everything I can to destroy this overgrown system of
pointless excess and eroded interpersonal relationships? Or should I
strap on a hard hat and fight for a city that reflects my values?

I don't know. I do know I'm tired, and I have some emails to write,
and I've got to eat dinner tonight and I hope I can summon up the
energy to insure it's not processed garbage. I'm not unhappy with this
situation, I'm just trying to be as realistic and effective as possible.

I'm always in need of more hats.

2010-05-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

Not real hats though, they don't suit me. What I mean by that charming bland colloquialism is that I do lots of things. I'm a man of hyphens, for better or worse. My most entertaining title right now (well, maybe more entertaining than iphone-dumpsterdiver) is: Davey Davis, Art Truck Driver/Docent. Along with my job showing a strange travelling installation piece to diverse little (and big!) people around the state, I also now blog for the 337 project! Check out my seminal blog post on my life as truckdriver/art teacher over here.

Tools and limits.

2010-05-24T22:04:00.000-07:00

Blake, via Wendall Berry on the proportion of just control: "No bird soars too high if he soars on his own wings." Only when our acts are empowered by more than bodily strength do we need to think of limits. Think of the axe. Before the tool, a fight between two people could be healthy. Harm could be caused, an issue subdued in physical form, a dance of fists ending with lasting pain, but rarely death. Suddenly a simple hatchet appears, and the force that goes into, say, a slap, ends in a decapitation. The invention of tools led to a very real need for restraint.

In all phyiscal activity I often find myself coming back to something I first realized skiing. The model of human body I was delivered is capable of about 12-18 MPH unaided, and is built to sustain a fall of 12 feet or so from a little cliff. Into soft things, like dirt and foliage. Something to remember when zipping through a city of concrete grids in between 2 ton chunks of metal on a bike at 25-35 mph. It's a little bit like cheating. A psychological balance, a suspension of disbelief. The high that comes with playing this game is not unlike the experience of an urban Icarus. Except in place of something ambivilant and poetic, like the sun, on a bike you're snuffed out by a trucker with an eagle tattoo and a penchant for Rush Limbaugh.

This is the talisman of restraint, the quiet check and balance that keeps me alive. It is renewed, from time to time, with gruesome stories floating in from friends or the web. 6 cyclists in Montreal scattered like bowling pins. A friend with no memory. An acquaintance with no face. Life is a normaling network, days strung together, how quickly it changes. I consider myself fragile, consider myself lucky.

Fight like hell until it changes.

2010-05-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

In 2010, 4 dark skinned women in aprons shine the shoes of 4 light skinned men in suits.

Outside my window well dressed men are imploring a woman they don't know to perform a handjob on the man she's with.

Burn it all down.

Done and Done

2010-05-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

Cein Watson... A poet and a saint, a ruddy-faced smiler, even his bitterness is sweet. We're losing him to the backwoods of Vermont, where he plans to camp on his newly-acquired land until he builds himself a studio and a treehouse. Will you let us visit?

Check this out if you need a reminder about how great this guy is.

Don Giovanni Premiere Recap

2010-04-28T20:46:00.000-07:00

Spoiler: It went incredibly.

(clicky make biggie, thanks Greg!)

I'm one of those people that's hard to please, as a general rule. But I can firmly and happily report that if not one more thing came from this entire movie project I'd be satisfied. Everything went off without a hitch, and exceeded my expectations. From the turnout to the weather to help from strangers to my two best friends winning the race, I was blown away. My only worry is how I'll ever top it, in terms of things I organize and in terms of personal satisfaction.

The alleycat swelled to 67 people, which I believe is a record for Salt Lake. It was a scramble downtown then up to the theater, check out the manifest here. At one of the stops Cory, Mark, Mark's friend and Meera decided to make a little high art with the help of the racers:

Pretty talented bunch, I gotta say. After that they got photo-shot by Tom Fleming halfway up the hill, here are some of the best ones:

Tony was first up the hill, and apparently took Tom by surprise.

Joergen's suffer face.

For more alleycat awesomeness check out this great little video shot by John Schafer. Thanks John! Check this shot of Heather and JC he nabbed through the Sketch Alley:

Once people started to accumulate up top we gathered up and went inside to watch the movie. Full house! 250 people came out to watch the inaugural screening! They were very kind and energetic and appreciative as an audience, they laughed in all the right spots and made me feel pretty great about the movie. I had to laugh, because as a filmmaker it probably never gets any better than an auditorium full of your closest friends and family. That experience will stick with me for quite some time, I imagine, I'm thankful for it.

Afterward I got to announce the alleycat winners and give them their prizes in front of a roaring crowd! Must be nice... We got some GREAT prizes from our sponsors:

For the top Women's Prize we got a brand-spankin' new pair of Outlier's Woman's 4Season Pants and a Pink Damselfly Saddle from Terry for runner up. We got a ton of great stuff from Pikey Bags, Blaq Design, Archive Bags, Discrete Headwear, Lifetime Collective, Velo City Bags, and Hold Fast. Schwalbe sent in 2 sets of Blizzard Tires, and Peonfx gave us a wild riding hoodie I wanted to keep.

But the top of the toppest, the best prize, by far, came from Burro Bags out of Jacksonville Florida. They sent us Salt Lake City's First EVER champion/bragging-rites bag, custom-made for the event:

And gawd damn it's beautiful.

Speaking of, this gawdy creation will rest on the shoulders of Alex Haworth whenever he feels like stepping his hipster-cred up a notch. Not only is this Al's first Alleycat win (He's placed second twice before, I believe), he's also my best friend and the Director of Photography on Don Giovanni! I swear I was surprised as everyone else when he won the race, even though between that and what comes next I should be accused of rigging it.

Because little Jessica Gilmore, my girlfriend, accomplice, and stunning supporter, won fastest woman and 7th Place overall. You go girl.

I can attest that she wanted the win BAD, going so far as to strap a map to her handlebars for the logistics of the race.

I felt great organizing this event, and extend my sincere thanks to all the friends, family, groups and organizations that helped me along the way. Off the top of my head I'd like to thank Dima, who helped land all the prizes for the race.

friggin' cutie.

Lindsey's Mom, who stepped in to help me sell tickets, otherwise I'd have been swamped. Greg Hebard, who is a good friend and puts up with me making mistakes. And for all of those who toiled, lent, waited, froze, and worried for me these past several months, I cannot thank you enough. You know who you are.

Here's the rough placement for the cat:
1st (Overall, 1st SS, General Badass): Alex Haworth (DP/Editor, Don Giovanni!)
2nd (Fix): Patrick Beecroft of Legal Messenger Inc.
3rd (Fix): Tony
4th (Fix): Joergen Trepp of Jason's Deli!
5th (Fix): Chase
6th (1st Geared): Greg Hebard of Jason's Deli!
7th (1st Woman's Fix, Overall, and Stubborn as Hell): Jessica Gilmore
8th: Max Hoagland
9th: Nate Borganicht (Birthday Boi!)
10th: Adam
11th: Lindsey (1st Woman Geared, 2nd Overall) (Plays Bike Punk in Don Giovanni)
12th: Benji
13th: Nate
14th: Peter Andersen
15th: Max Goldsmith
16th: Inacio Lopez (Plays Ottavio in Don Giovanni)
17th: JJ of LMI
18th: Zach Pina of Salt City Couriers
19th: Gary of SLCBikeCollective
20th: Tobi (3rd Woman)
21st: Dima Hurlbut (FLATTED, better luck next time :P)
22nd: JC of U of U Bike Collective
23rd: John
24th: Raphael
25th: James Miska (Musician on Don Giovanni)
26th: Matt Delporto (who designed our movie poster!)
27th: Luke Williams (Main Musician on Don Giovanni!)
28th: Connor Rickman (Producer, Don Giovanni!)
29th: Heather (4th Woman)
30th: Suzi (5th Woman)
31st: Gudrik
32nd: Skyler Chubaks
33rd: Simon Williams (UPM on Don Giovanni!)
34th: Matt
35th: Cat
36th: JD
37th: NOPE (First Tallbike!)
38th: Chris Rugal
39th: Vinnie of Jason's Deli! (He's a Car Driver, relax :))
40th: Al
41st: Lexie (DNF)
42nd: Joellen Morisson.
DFL: Matt Lemmons (Maybe?)

NOW, let's keep this sort of thing happening. Alleycats all around, everyone plan one. I don't care if there are no prizes and the stops are manned by pieces of paper, let's DO it! I'm waiting to hear if this movie gets into the Bicycle Film Festival, in the mean time lets make some more. I wanna ride in one! Thanks Salt Lake, and good night.

All the pictures we've seen and TONS MORE (Like EVERY SINGLE RACER GOING UP THE HILL) can be seen on my flickr page. Thanks to Tom, Al, Greg, and Zach Pina for the photos.

Caravaggio, remembrances from 2006.

2010-04-21T17:25:00.000-07:00

I was a better writer then.

Caravaggio's La Madonna dei Palafrenieri

"Three figures, light from the ambiguous front and an overhead window.
Mary is so attractive, so innocently evil, as she compels her
strangely halo-less son to crush the skull of a snake beneath his
feet. In the face of danger for the child, Mother insists, aids, yet
shields his body with her own foot. The snake's fragile, roping body
reflects the spin of the obscenely thin halos, its impotent
expiration a quiet indication of Christianity's tendency to dominate
and destroy nature. A momentous painting."