Early this fall, I was asked by my friend Peter Young to provide audio accompaniment to the opening of his art exhibition, "Capitalist Masterpieces", at Tucson MOCA. The original idea was that, instead of having a band or a DJ play normal music that would just get turned to mud by the cavernous, reverberant space of the museum (which used to be the city of Tucson's downtown firehouse), why not provide a soundscape performance that was more fit to that room, and also fill the other smaller galleries with abstract sound inspired by the paintings? Because of problems resulting from the museum's priorities, we weren't able to provide all of Peter's request, but I did create 3 site-specific audio art pieces for 3 of the back galleries, which I'm rather happy with and would love to have heard beyond the one-time, 2-hour event. Here you can listen to these pieces, and if you wish, purchase the tracks for yourself. Buying the whole album also gets you a map and some photos from the opening on December 14.

For the last year or so Greta and I have been part of a little group of backyard chicken-keepers here in Tucson, called Zen Hens. We want to print up t-shirts and other stuff with our logo on it, but we're lacking the capital to invest in that, so we're doing a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. I made the campaign video. Click through using this widget, and if you want to help out, or just get a cool t-shirt or apron or sticker, pledge your support. Thanks!

I just saw this great, weird little film tonight called The Sound of My Voice. It's pretty thought provoking. The film is about two documentary filmmakers trying to make a film about a cult, but they sort of get drawn into the cult themselves, which is led by a woman who claims she's from the future, and it starts not being clear if she's lying or not.

they let you watch the first 12 minutes of it on the film's web site:

Anyway, it's somewhat good timing for me seeing this film now, having just finished reading a great book about Mormons and fundamentalist Mormon cults, and also in the wake of the bizarre and sad events at Diamond Mountain retreat center a few weeks ago - a place where I helped shoot parts of an ongoing documentary about a 3-year Buddhist retreat.

It also brings up a sort of meta-issue, about "weird movies" or more generally, any "weird" art or cultural work. By weird I mean in this case something challenging, whose meaning or "answer" is extremely confusing and isn't easily apparent.  A head-scratcher, something that has you walking out of the theater wondering what the hell actually was going on in the film, and has you talking about it on the way home.

The issue I want to bring up is, why are some people (like myself, for instance) quick to identify some cultural artifacts like this as just purposeful obfuscation, weirdness just to impart the feeling of mystery and confusion, to give you a sort of high from the strangeness and ambiguity, with no real coherent meaning or solution possible? While others look at the same thing and want to spend time to puzzle it out, decipher and debate and discuss and find "the answer"? And which is the more healthy response?

I remember having a similar reaction to all of David Lynch's last few films, starting with Mullholand Drive, and being actually more and more pissed off and angry at him with each film he made after that one, for, I thought (still think?) purposely fucking with us without any hope of real coherent interpretation.  But then recently I read a brilliant and detailed blog post explaining exactly the entirety of Mullholland Drive, written by the genius Film Crit Hulk. I read that and I thought, "wow, it really does make some kind of sense, I guess, explained this way. Well I'll be dipped." Nevertheless, does that mean there's a "solution" to everything? Not neccessarily. 

On one hand, whether there's a meaning/answer or not to one of these kinds of artifacts, it's a waste to spend too much time thinking about it. Right? (I mean, in a world where people are starving or torturing each other or whatever, can't we put off til later the arguing about quirky movies? I suppose this is a sort of  Adorno-esque, poetry-after-Auschwitz response to the problem.)  But, on the other hand, is it a sign of a sort of hopelessness or cynicism (or is it willingness to let go of a desire for meaning?), to assume that something that you can't figure out quickly has to be nonsense, an intellectual laziness chosen over an innocent enthusiasm to explore a fictional world as a pure excercise in entertaining mental puzzle-solving?  What does it say about those that tend to choose the cynical/hopeless path?  What kind of people take the one approach and what kind take the other?

And what kind sit around writing blog posts about it?  Sigh. I wonder what Slavoj Zizek would say... Read more>>>

I saw a friend online critiqueing "the bourgeois" the other day and started thinking and writing about it and decided to post here about it. His point was basically that "bourgeois" people in "America" nowadays don't so much conspicuously show their economic place by what they own, but by what they experience and believe. Read more>>>

I've been not quite sure what to think about this comic strip series, Coffee With Jesus, and the whole Radio Free Babylon group and project that creates it.

The comic and everything else they do seems really carefully calculated to be hip and funny, in a sort of Get Your War On, Tom Tomorrow way, but to not be overtly critical of Xtianity or the religious.  At first I thought it was clearly a satire that was making fun of Xtians, and clearly, folks who are really conservative and orthodox and easily offended will be offended. 

However, what they're doing is really just harnessing the now-common tropes of hipster, countercultural humor, without neccesarily taking a clear stance.  The idea of no stance politically or morally is common to hipsterist media products, but these people don't even seem to take what I would call an existential/emotional stance.  The common position that is implicitly assumed by those who peddle "cool," is at the very least a sort of nihilistic, cynical, jaded viewpoint.  This comic, though, despite the appearance of cynical critique by the use of 50s clip art (or evoking the look of 50s clip art, at least), isn't really deeply critical of much.  It has a certain surreality to it, featuring Jesus in a business suit, drinking coffee, talking with Satan and the Easter Bunny and variety of Ward and June Cleaver types, but there's nothing that really states any serious problem with belief in a bearded supernatural guy who supposedly died and rose from the dead for our sins 2000 years ago.  There's some gentle chiding and fun made at the expense of some foolish, dogmatic characters, but nothing truly biting or deep.  The FAQ on their website is also very careful to not say anything in any detail about what they believe or want. Even their name is carefully ambiguous - is it the standard pirate/community radio station meaning, like Radio Free Berkeley, a free transmitter from a bastion of Freedom? Or is it that they're "Radio" (media producers) that wants to free "Babylon" (code for the sinful society)? 

To make my realization about these folks it took me a few weeks of looking at these strips and the other media that RFB makes. But it's pretty clear now that this is the work of some subtle Christian propagandists.  They never address any truly controversial topics of the day, like abortion, women's rights, taxes or gay marriage, nothing to truly tip their hand.  It's all these kind of relatively innocuous little jokes relating to matters like churchgoing and harmless bible matters and Xtian holidays.  So I think this is some very strategic marketing going on by some relatively liberal/moderate, young Christians with some cleverness and media-savvy. It's similar in spirit, I think, to the work of Rob Bell, a young Christian writer/preacher who wrote a book called Velvet Elvis:Repainting the Christian Faith, (which my evangelical stepfather sent me a copy of and I have yet to do more with than flip through). The idea, of course, is to get young, hip, smart people to start getting into Jesus again.

I'm not, although I admit that I used to be, one of those angry atheists. Furthermore, I certainly recognize there are some social, cultural, and psychological benefits to religions, and clearly other people see this too, including the celebrated theorist Alain de Botton, whose new book is called Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion. In this he argues that the question we should be asking is how we can fulfill those needs for people without resorting to systems and worldviews that involve belief in the irrational, supernatural claims of religions. To be sure, neither capitalism, communism, consumerism nor Big Science have provided for those needs or become a worthy replacement.  So, these are things to think about, and it's worth examining what Christianiy gets right, what comfort and succor it gives to people and can they be given that in other ways, or enlightened/educated/healed to a point where they don't need that anymore.  

But I cannot abide intellectual dishonesty and underhanded viral marketing in the name of even a kinder, gentler, hipper, more modern religiosity. Attempting to fly in under the radar of the cool kids to make your pitch in stealth mode is not acceptable, and is still lying, whether you're selling sneakers, gasoline, or Jesus. Read more>>>

From the "If you don't do it yourself it might just not get done" Department:

About 1 and a half years ago, I took part in a now-yearly event where filmmakers all over the world go out and shoot footage of, well, stuff, everywhere, and then it's compiled together by the non-profit One Day On Earth group.  That first one was on 10/10/10 and they've now finished a feature film that compiles the best of that footage from that day.  I'm proud to say some of my stuff made the final cut, including shots of my friend Glenn Weyant, who went with me down to the border with Mexico near Sasabe, Arizona, and let me film him using the border wall as a musical instrument, which is a thing he does a lot that he's becoming pretty known for.

Anyway, I'm happy that both of us will have our work shown on screens all over the world at the premiere of this film, which will be April 22nd, Earth Day.  With the help of the United Nations and others, the goal was to get screenings set up in every country (footage came from every country, by the way). I'm not sure if that's going to be achieved, and I'm sure some locations will be more challenging than others, but sadly for me it looks like the nearest screening to me will be in Phoenix.  The distribution effort is very much a distributed, crowd-sourced kind of a thing, just like the image-production was.  So a couple of months ago they asked if I could bottom-line setting up a screening in Tucson, and I said no, I'm busy, but i suggested The Loft Cinema and that they just contact them.  Unfortunately that did not work...  and I don't think I'm up for driving 200 miles on Earth Day just to see a film and do a Q&A about the 60 seconds of my work that appears in a feature film.

But, if you're in Phoenix, you may want to hoof it up to the Marriott Desert Ridge ResortAMC Desert Ridge Cinemas at 5pm that day and check it out.  And if you're somewhere else, you may want to see if there's a screening near you. It will probably be a really interesting film to see, regardless of my small part in it. Read more>>>

i can't believe Ron Paul is so popular. especially with young people.
he:

- is against affirmative action
- he's against the Civil Rights Act of 1964

- he's clearly a racist, despite all the backpedaling and disavowals recently about his newsletters.

- he's basically against separation of church and state.
- he is pretty waffly about same-sex marriage.
- he is "strongly pro life"; he's also said the government doesnt have a right to interfere with abortion, yet he's voted yes on anti-abortion legislation.
- he's pro capital punishment.
- he's against any federal control of education.
- he's against federal environmental protection and wants only the market to protect the environment.
- In fact, he wants to completely scrap the Department of Interior and sell off all public lands to private interests!

- He also wants to get rid of the Energy, HUD, Commerce, and Education departments!

He's basically a classical, hardcore libertarian wingnut, as irrationally committed to a dogma as any demagogue can be.  And I guess young'uns like him for the same reason many young'uns like libertarianism. It seems at first glance to be a good idea, sexy and radical and apparently full of real fundamental change - but only if you don't think about it much or study history much and think of things as occurring in a vacuum, like many young people do.  The problem with Libertarianism is that we're not starting from scratch, we're not rebooting the world from a blank slate. If we were, the policies it espouses might be okay (at least some of them - of course Paul's deep racism would still be a problem). But we live in a world where compensations need to be made for past injustices and repairs need to be made to the defective machine of society while it's still running.  Libertarians rarely seem to get this.

Some of my friends might think I'm oddly hostile to some ideas of Libertarianism that overlap with Anarchism, given my past involvement with anarchist groups and projects.  But indeed, Anarchism is a similar notion with similar problems: The basic idea is great but it's a utopian notion, and those who talk about it are often naive, ignorant of history and sociology, and propose things that just will not work in the current cultural and social context - but young people who don't understand that love it because they mistakenly think it's all about personal freedom and destroying "the system." Most Anarchism is preferable to Libertarianism only because of its optimism about humanity and collectivism and its anti-capitalism, rather than the cryptoparanoia, fear, pessimism, free-market ideology and individualism that are Libertarianism's context. Of course, Utopian ideas are useful as far-off destinations to shoot for, to guide us loosely. But they must never be the only consideration. The real world and its real complications must always be paid attention to while we're on the road.

Basically, I'd love to have no government if we really COULD wipe the slate clean and remove all unequal powers like corporations and people with unfair accumulations of wealth (and heal the psychological damage that infects almost everyone on the planet and causes the greed and hate and fear that engenders so many problems).  But as long as there are power inequities we NEED strong government to protect the poor from the rich - although I admit that too often the government gets corrupted into doing just the opposite: protecting the rich from the poor. Read more>>>