politicians on twitter

The whole John Boehner / Roseanne Cash asshat kerfuffle got me thinking about it today, but when I think back this dates back to at least the infamous "refudiate" tweet from Sarah Palin.

I love that you're on Twitter. Really, I do. I follow some politicians, too. The ones I read regularly, though, aren't using Twitter to convey their whole message. I haven't spent a lot of time looking at Boehner's feed, nor Sarah Palins, but the tweets I have seen are stand-alone barbs. The politicians I follow are tweeting links to articles and blogs and something with more meat. I guess if you speak only in sound bites, 140 characters is enough to get your message out, but don't we expect more from our politicians than sound bites? I do.

I suppose I could probably distill this whole posting down to a Tweet...

"asshat politicians should take the time to write something more detailed and supported than a tweet if they want to be taken seriously"

There. I feel better now.

one has to start somewhere

I'm actually writing something right now. I don't know what it'll be when it's done (or if I'll even finish it--I have a habit of starting writings), but I think it might become something of a novel. I'm not sure, but I think this is the first time I've started writing something which might become a novel. I guess that's an achievement in itself, and I guess I'd better get back to writing it. Whatever it is.

the Struggle or Why I Love Jack White

"If you don't already have a struggle inside you, you gotta make one up." ~ Jack White

I took that quote from It Might Get Loud, which I think is a thoroughly enjoyable and inspirational documentary about Jack White, The Edge and Jimmy Page. Those three embody three entirely different approaches to the guitar and to music.

Another thing Jack White said in the movie was that he deliberately tries to make things hard for himself sometimes: if it takes him three steps to get from the organ to the microphone, he'll set them up four steps apart just to see how it's going to change his performance to have to rush. I can really dig that because I do the same thing. Not always intentionally, in fact not usually intentionally, but I suspect he started doing this before he did it consciously. I think I should do it consciously more often.

When I get out of my comfort zone, my ego can't interfere with my actions. My ego requires a certain amount of time to act and to get involved. If I'm rushing to get something done because I haven't allowed myself enough time to do it, my ego doesn't have the luxury of second-guessing my decisions.

When my ego is out of the way, beautiful things can happen. My ego is very good at censoring me. Art doesn't do well within censorship unless it can transcend it. The best way I've found to overcome the censorship of my own mind is to take my ego out of the process.

There are times, professionally, when this isn't a good idea. For one thing, some projects demand more control than chaos. This approach is, by definition, chaotic. That's the beauty of it. And his chaos is what I love most about Jack White.

not a very good blogger...

I don't post very often, do I? I could come up with a list of justifications as long as my arm, but there's no point in that. The bottom line is I haven't made it any kind of priority to write in this blog, or to write at all. I craft words, I ponder thoughts, but I rarely put either down on paper, virtual or otherwise.

What's especially interesting to me in looking at my (few) posts here is that they were all written in daylight hours. It's not as though I haven't been up late at night since I started this little experiment. My sleeplessness has improved greatly, but I still have the occasional night--like tonight--when sleep just seems evasive. When I am up late is when the creative flow seems to come in my head. I always thought it was why I stayed awake when it didn't seem wise from a strictly practical point of view: to explore that creative space nestled between dreams and reality. So, today, I'm not thinking I should stay awake just to explore this space, but as long as I'm up maybe I should seize the opportunity to delve deeper rather than spin my mental wheels.

I suppose I'm afraid I won't like what I write when I read it in the light of day... that tomorrow's judgement will make tonight's pondering seem trite or even insane. Judgement. What does it have to do with writing, anyway? It certainly has no place in the initial process of writing, which is what this little blog thing is supposed to be about. It might not belong in writing at all.

I'm not saying every word you read here is unedited--I edit myself very carefully. In fact, it's one of the things I like about writing, that ability to re-craft and hone the message. I also am drawn to the idea of putting it out there without judgement, or at least without the kind of judgement that says "don't publish this, it's 2:30 in the morning, in fact you'd better delete it now."

Maybe I should consider publishing this posting under a different title, as the more I write, the more the title I started with seems awfully judgemental. There's something appropriate about that, though. And then I have to wonder why the spell checker keeps questioning my use of the word "judgement?" Is it trying to tell me something?

ponderings on non-violence, protests and police responses

I just read this blog post--http://ricksturningpoint.blogspot.com/2010/06/strong-enough-for-non-violent-protest.html--and it hit me right where it counts, bringing up a flood of memories about the 2000 DNC protest in Los Angeles. Truth be told, I went for the music: Rage Against the Machine and Ozomatli were playing and I love both bands. I'd never seen Rage live before (or since) and there's something inexplicably satisfying about screaming "F*@& YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME" with a few thousand other people directly at the obvious symbols of authority immediately to our left: The Staples Center full of political delegates and surrounded by a police presence I'd never seen before. Rage finished playing without any incident, although there were a small group of anarchists camped out on top of the fence which defined the "free speech zone." (And here I'd thought the whole country was supposed to be a free speech zone...) Police were literally showering the anarchists with tear gas, but there was little sign this shower even phased the anarchists. This detente continued while the stage was being changed over from Rage to Ozo, although since the crowd had lost their distraction there was more attention being paid to the stand being made by the anarchists and the complete inability of the police to remove them. Well, inability isn't the right word, it's unwillingness. I gather the police, understandably, didn't want to get into a violent confrontation at that point. Occasionally a police spokesman would come out on stage and warn us that if those guys didn't get off the fence, we'd all have to leave. I can't speak for the whole crowd, but I don't remember a big rush to try to talk them into getting down.

Ozomatli started playing. For those of you who don't know their music, it's all about love and joy and the positive power within us. In many ways, it's just as revolutionary as Rage Against the Machine, but it's not violent and dark and brooding about it; it's happy and celebratory and uplifting. It's probably a coincidence based solely on timing and a perceived escalation of the protest, but the police choose this time to declare us an unlawful assembly and turn off the power to the stage. I say it's probably coincidence, but it provides an important symbol: the positive power of people is more threatening than the negative impulses of the violent and disaffected. Another important thing about Ozomatli: they all play (or can play) acoustic instruments and routinely end their concerts by parading an acoustic jam through the crowd. So when you turn off the power on an Ozomatli concert and call them and their fans "unlawful," it's not surprising they picked up their acoustic instruments and started the parade. The police officer who had declared us unlawful had told us which exit to use on our way out, and the parade started working in that direction. Before we could all get out through the designated exit, the police charged the crowd on horseback, tear gas and beanbags a-blazing. It was at this point I came closest to being tear gassed myself, although I escaped through the other exit--the one we were not suppose to use, but which was not being blocked by any police.

Today, looking at the protests surrounding the G20 & G8 conferences, the police reaction to those protests, and the media reporting on both, I wish I could get the real story. Rick's blog has provided me with the clearest picture of what it was like. NPR this morning sorely disappointed me by leading their story with the protests (if it bleeds, it leads) but not even talking about the protests or the police response at all in the body of their story. The media seems unwilling to report on the nature of these protests and the ways in which the protesters may be representing billions more people than the delegates inside. I'm pretty sure Rick has a point: if the protests were strictly nonviolent in nature, the media would have a harder time dismissing the protesters and the underlying message of their protest. It's sad for me to think, though, in remembering my DNC experience, that the anarchists started with a non-violent action and it was lost completely in the reporting of the event. The local news in LA practically bent over backwards to kiss the police department's collective behind in saving us from an obviously dangerous riot which was destined to start had the LAPD not been there. They clearly were not reporting on the same incident I witnessed.

Well, this is awkward.

Awkward. Seriously, the word itself is awkward. Who came up with that word anyway?

Frankly, I'd rather not be dialog editing

I used to think dialog editors were a little crazy. I think I'm right, too--as a general rule, they are a little crazy. I know this better now because I do a lot more dialog editing than I did when I first formed this opinion. I know I go a little crazy when I'm editing dialog--often more than a little.

Dialog editors spend hours on end wearing headphones and staring at a computer screen. (Alright, they don't always wear headphones. I can't like wearing headphones for very long. I prefer to do the majority of my work on speakers and occasionally check something really tricky on headphones. Maybe that means I'm less crazy then some, but I doubt it.) They listen to the same thing over and over ad nauseum. The old school cats listen to things backwards half the time as they roll back and forth over it. (I'm not even sure how to do that in Pro Tools. Pity.) All the while, they're making subtle changes which few people would notice one by one but which make a huge difference when put together.

Watching (and especially listening) to them work can drive just about anyone crazy. Actually doing the work often seems perfectly normal as I'm doing it, but things get surreal when I take a break and snap out of the trance of minutia. Either the whole exercise seems to have been entirely ludicrous, or I find myself micromanaging the sound of the world around me. Or both. Usually both. On other occasions, I can't concentrate enough on the task at hand and I just want to have a good, old fashioned, "terrible two" style temper tantrum. Today is one of those days. I listen to my inner monologue and it sounds like George Costanza impersonating Jerry Seinfeld: "What's the deal with the background noise at this location? And why can't we get a decent lav on this guy? What? Is he wearing a sandpaper shirt?"

Well, this dialog isn't going to edit itself, so I'd better get back to work.

I guess I'm a blogger now

I guess the way to start these things is to start writing. I never really thought of myself as having anything to say really worthy of creating my own blog, and yet I like to think of myself as a writer. Not an author, barely a wordsmith, but a writer. One who writes. One with fondness and respect for the written word. So, I guess, if I'm going to call myself a writer, even using such a broad and low-pressure definition, I'd better write something aside from email. I mean, I spend an inordinate amount of time writing and rewriting emails before I send them. I compose tweets in my head when I'm doing something else. I write haiku to occupy my mind. It's about time I start putting some of it in a more formal location. I don't know who will read it, or even if I'll tell anyone about it. I probably will, but for now the exercise is to write. I even started writing this blog post (in my head) more than a year ago while I was on a long walk with Sorren (then just over 1 year old) in his stroller.

So that's that. A writers journal. A blog. A bunch of random synaptic firing which corresponds to time I put in front of a keyboard. Whatever you call it, here it is.