Chris from NYC Indymedia writes on his blog about citizen journalism a lot. The other day he wrote about the idea that citizen journalism is really still quite a priveleged activity, and that even a lot of people who can do it just are not going to do it. He quotes lots of bloggers and also Subcommandante Marcos saying in 1997:

The world of contemporary news is a world that exists for the VIP's-- the very important people," Marcos said. "Their everyday lives are what is important: if they get married, if they divorce, if they eat, what clothes they wear, or what if they clothes they take off-- these major movie stars and big politicians. But common people only appear for a moment-- when they kill someone, or when they die." One of the original hopes of Indymedia was that it would empower the very people who were being increasingly ignored by the corporate press to cover themselves, to "be their own media." And while, as Josh Breitbart notes, the citizen's media revolution has succeeded, the poor and marginalized are still being left behind.

Read the rest, it's interesting, if you're interested in the topic.

Last night was the Portland date on my film tour. I'd say it was a success, for some definition of success. There was a much better turnout than I'd feared, 50-60 people, the donations were generous, and the Q&A was very good, with really intelligent and dedicated comments and questions, some of which were fairly challenging. Most of those were of the type "Why didn't you cover ______ or cover it more?" I think I managed to answer everything without sounding defensive.

On the subject of intelligent questions, this is a sign of people already familiar with and dedicated to the topic. I think I'd prefer, actually, to have audiences full of people who were totally or mostly unaware. Comparing notes with fellow activists is one thing, but activating brand new people is the most important. However, I'm not sure how to get that sort of audience.

Anyway, last night was a good start to the tour. 5 more days in Portland just hanging out and connecting with friends, and then I take the train south to San Francisco...

Tonight is the first screening in my west coast tour of my film about the murdered women of Juarez. I'm a little nervous about what the attendance will be like, because Portland Indymedia folks that set up the show have done next to zero promotion for it. I actually felt the need to staple up a couple hundred posters myself yesterday. Ya know you haven't really hit the big time when you're postering for your own shows the day before an out of town event. (What if all tours were like that, and all bands and artists had to hit town a couple days in advance to flyer their own shows?) Of course this isn't about "hitting the big time," this is about getting as many people as possible to learn about this issue. Never forget that, Steev.

In other news, the opposite effect seems to be happening in San Diego. Colleagues there are promoting the screening there and some have set up all this stuff in Tijuana for me - radio appearance, 2 or maybe even 3 screenings.... it's incredible. That will be the Mexican premiere, and i'm a little nervous about that. I've always been nervous about how a Mexican audience will perceive it, ever since the fateful night I showed the rough cut to some people from Chiapas Indymedia and Chiapas Media Project in San Cristobal. That night changed the course of the film, made me go and make it something I know I won't be embarrassed to show to Mexicans, but I still feel like it might meet with some unique criticism from Mexicans that I'm still ill-equipped to deal with.

Off the topic of the film, last night I sat in for a while on a jam session with some friends. they're in sort of a party band called the Golden Greats, and they were asked to play at a party tonite, but their horn players are out of town. so they decided to do a more "experimental," improvisational incarnation of the group, and they asked me to do some laptop stuff with them.

It didn't work out for me. I keep forgetting that the definition of "experimental" for lots of people is pretty different than the one I'm used to, the one that comes out of the academic and art world tradition. For a lot of people who haven't made a life of making experimental art, experimental just means maybe a little less planned, with maybe a little stranger instrumentation. Let's throw in a circuit bent casio keyboard! yay! let's band on some miced metal! But let's still play standard, 4/4 time in a standard tonal key signature and let's never sway from a groove and for god sakes let's not annoy anyone at the party, keep that beat going.

At least the experience didn't turn me off to the idea that I've been thinking of lately: forming a band. I just want to form a band on my own terms with plenty of communication about what the goal is. It might not even be "experimental," but it will be something very concious and aware. (once again I'm reminded of how much bands are like relationships. )

Anyway I ended up bowing out and going with some other friends to see a band downtown called Gin Gang. They're a sort of gypsy eastern-europe folk-rock-goth band. I couldn't understand most of the words, sadly, cuz of the acoustics, but the guy that leads the band had an awesome alto croon. One of the songs for some reason was partly understandable, the chorus came through loud and clear and I could hear him sing over and over: "I know you're not in love but listen to me...."

sigh.

Just a brief entry to note that it is SOOOOO beautiful here today. It's one of those absolutely perfect summer Portland mornings. I rode Mykle's bike around town, met Laurel for breakfast, and lazily made my way to the office that I'm using to work from. It's a place rented by the geek friends I used to work with here. Riding around, I felt this repeating surge of emotion; it was so beautiful out, the sun was shining so wonderfully, the city so full of lush greenness, so diffferent than the harsh brown desert. it made me feel like crying. I guess I'm still really emotionally raw. I'm having so much fun here with my old friends and its so beautiful here, I just find myself wishing that somehow I could live here, but I know I can't because the weather is only this beautiful for about 8 weeks out of the year, and the rest of the time i just can't handle the rain and cold. It just makes me so sad because in all other respects Portland is so damn cool. I almost can't stand it.

anyway, i gotta get some work done.

Tuesday night I went to a great July 4 party, a casual fundraiser for Pan Left. It was right at the base of A Mountain, where the firewords get launched from. Great music, lots of cool people, and right after the fireworks ended, another summer monsoon storm kicked up and dumped rain. Luckily there were various tent-thingies set up for the party, so the band played on, kicking out CCR's "Who'll Stop the Rain" while many crazy Tucsonans danced with joy at the rare liquid falling from the sky. I got out there and got wet but eventually felt cold and went under the audience tent which soon got moved to be right next to the band tent. Several songs later the dancing turned into mud wrestling. I abstained from that, but it was hilarious to watch and I got some good photos.

James, whose house it was that was hosting the party, was the leader of the band, Pat Riot and the Flaggots. The rhythm section is also in a local band called Golden Alphabet, if that connects to anybody's personal network out there (only 2 or 3 Tucsonans, none of them particularly into the music scene, read this thing, that I know of, so I don't know why I'm bothering, but oh well). Anyway, they were awesome. They had some very creative country/bluegrass covers, like one of "I Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick.

Anyway, it was a great last night in Tucson for me. Yesterday I flew to Portland for the start of my odyssey down the west coast. It is chilly and overcast here, but I welcome that now as a break from the tripledigit swelter of Tucson, for a bit (i'll still be disappointed if its like this every day), and I'm so happy to be here. I'm staying with my friends Mykle and Gesine and I'm excited about hanging out with them and all my other friends. My screening is this Saturday at St. Francis Church.

Still so much drama, over the telephone now, soap opera or an imagined part of it continuing, causing worry and fear, then receding, being recognized as wild conclusions jumped to from ignorance of the full facts. Hopes and fears battling to the death with rationales and justifications.

Thank God, or whatever part of us we feel is Eternal*, that she's going to be somewhere with no phones and no cellphone reception and no internet, out in a forest in Virginia, for the next week so we can both get some kind of clear thinking and reflecting done. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Feelings is causing major havoc.

I feel like we're both blindfolded in a huge dark room feeling around for something, I don't even know what I'm looking for (for the door or for her?), and I'm yelling to her asking where the door is but she doesn't know either and she also doesn't know where she is and she keeps yelling out reminding me of that, which just makes me even more lost.

And I always complain about drama and everyone pretty much complains about it but how many people really secretly like it? I bet there's a lot, probably the ones who complain the loudest about it. Maybe I'm even one of them. Maybe it's just another thing to consume, something else to use to try desparately to fill the aching empty howling void in our souls gouged out by our sick society.

Meanwhile during all this distraction I still have work to do and various errands to complete before I leave town in 2 days and goddamit I totally forgot to make a call I needed to make before the end of the day. dammit dammit dammit.

Oh and in other news did y'all know that Rod Coronado's 40th birthday is today?

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* I copped this idea, which I love, paraphrased it from something Ethan Hawke said in the movie "Before Sunset": "They're (some monks he met at a monastery) trying to live with God, or whatever part of them they feel is eternal."

As I mentioned yesterday, Jessica and I camped out in the desert Friday night and then got up at sunrise to gather the fruit of the saguaro cactus. Photos are now on my Flickr page.

It was a really fun and new experience for me. Iconic of Arizona, the saguaro is still a really strange plant to me even after I've lived here for 8 months. In the spring, little green pods start growing on their tops, and then big white waxy flowers bust out, and then the flower dry out and in June the pods turn sort of reddish and they start cracking open. They'll do this until the summer monsoon rains really get going.

So people have been going out and harvesting. I expressed interest in it recently and so Jessica took me to a place she knew. It was really cool and fun, and it was great to be out there first thing in the morning as the sun rose. It's sort of a neat couple thing to do, because it's really a teamwork thing. one person to wield a long pole, usually 2 pieces of cactus rib (the bone-like structures of the saguaro that is left over after it dies and dries up) tied together with twine to form a long enough tool, and one person to hold a bucket. The pole person gently taps and nudges at a ripe fruit pod until it breaks off and then the bucket person catches it. Sometimes the gooey fruit inside comes out as it falls and splatters all over, so in the end we were both spattered with little gobs of dark red goo. It's a pretty sensual fruit - a really juicy pulpy mass about the size of a large strawberry, inside the green-red rind/shell, full of crunchy little seeds, and really sweet, getting sweeter as the season progresses. They also dry out a little and get easier to eat as the summer goes on.

I'm really glad we went, it was a really nice thing to do together on our last morning before we were to part for 30 days. Anyway, check out the cool pics.

Well, it's weird, there's so many people leaving town lately, people I know in the community here. I've never encountered this before, this ridiculous summer exodus. I'm leaving in 4 more days, I timed my departure so I could go to a big anti-July 4 party that should be fun, but I wish I could split now. I just feel deserted and lonely. I have a friend who always tries to hang up the phone first when ending a call, so that she doesn't have to hear that lonely click and then silence when the other person hangs up. I feel like I'm sitting there with the phone in my hand listening to that click and that silence. The subculture, the scene, whatever, just hung up on me.

Reminds me of something Daniela said the other night: "There were times when I thought the Universe broke up with me."

Jessica's gone. She left for Flagstaff this morning. The nice thing is that we spent the night in the desert and then harvested saguaro fruit at sunrise (a really nice and amazing experience which I will blog about later with photos), then went back home and did some more fun stuff quickly and then, she drove off. I won't see her for a month. She's going to a family get-together, then going to the Earth First! Rendezvous in Virginia, and then on a river rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. And after that, when she's back and i'm back, things will be hopefully really really different - at least in my head. If they're not, I fear that I may have to leave Tucson for good. The soap opera is continuing, and at this point I feel like it will be unbearable (There's even a geographic ground zero for the soap opera, it's the hippie-bubble neighborhood of Tucson called Dunbar-Spring - and she just signed the lease on an apartment there! arrrgh!!).

But In a big way, this break is a big blessing. I need to get over her, get over a lot of things that have me in a funk lately, and get on with my life. And this absence and travelling will help with that immensely. Need to get OUT of here and clear my head. and heart.

But for now I have 4 nights to spend alone in her house. Her housemates are out of town too. I moved out of my place yesterday and put all my stuff in storage for my trip. Really needed to get out of that place anyway. That's another whole blog entry. But anyway, it seemed like a convenient thing to do, and in a way it'll be nice, having their place to myself, but it'll be sad, too. In retrospect I should have crashed at someone else's. oh well.

Luckily there's still quite a bit going on around here to keep me occupied. The people left behind are still working away on cool stuff. Dry River has a new space and we have a meeting to talk about the focus of the space and what we've learned from the old location over the past 8 months. There are 2 parties tonite, and then the party on the 4th, another meeting tommorrow night, and of course I have all sorts of paid and unpaid digital chores to do for various people and groups, and some last preparations for my trip. Sigh. If I can just stay busy till I get on the plane wednesday...