Doors closed and paths faded

Moods - 24OCT16

There was a young lady I grew up with in my senior year of high school.  She graduated the year after me.  During that year we became close friends.  I had a crush on her, but back then I never got out of the "friend zone" with any lady I was interested in.

A summer later I kissed her, once.

Empty Rooms - 24OCT2016

Decades later we reconnected, artistically.  We created a space for our art.  She lived there.  I lived here.  We got together one to celebrate and create.  While it went well... the paths didn''t merge again.  Shortly after, the paths faded into different forests.

As Donald Justice wrote:
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

Doors closed and paths faded

Moods - 24OCT16

There was a young lady I grew up with in my senior year of high school.  She graduated the year after me.  During that year we became close friends.  I had a crush on her, but back then I never got out of the "friend zone" with any lady I was interested in.

A summer later I kissed her, once.

Empty Rooms - 24OCT2016

Decades later we reconnected, artistically.  We created a space for our art.  She lived there.  I lived here.  We got together one to celebrate and create.  While it went well... the paths didn''t merge again.  Shortly after, the paths faded into different forests.

As Donald Justice wrote:
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

Visit, but not live.

Karl and the Bear's tooth - 062616

I travel a lot for pleasure and work.  One of my first reactions when I get to a nice place is to think if I would want to live there.  I look at what life would be like there, including, housing, entertainment, work, art, etc., all the things worth living for in a place.  Almost all the time, the answer is the same, great place to visit, but not to live.


Last week I was in Montana, and I mean IN.  I drove over 2200 miles in that state in 7 days and rarely repeated the same section of road.  I saw Glacier National Park, Fort Peck Dam, Yellowstone National Park, and drove through the big Montana cities of Missoula, Kalispell, Helena, Great Falls, Bozeman, and Billings.  Some how I missed Butte, one of the greatest gems in America, but I've been there quite a bit.

I grew up in Montana and still have family there.  I visit it twice per year to help out on my parents' land and around the home.  I love that state.  It is a part of me, my heart, my loins, my art, my spirit, but...  it isn't home anymore.

I looked at what it would be like to live in Great Falls, Butte, and Red Lodge.  I explored so many options, but in the end I realized, I left their in 1997 for a reason.

There are many reasons I prefer the Bay Area and Las Vegas, but to list them would seem anti-Montana and kind of mean.  I love that state and am glad I can visit it and love it.

On a side note, this photo was taken at 10,800 feet in elevation near the top of the Beartooth Pass.  It is one of my spiritual homes.  I treated myself to a short hike (air is thin and hiking is hard there) and meditated for 15 minutes.

I closed my eyes and focused on breathing.  I tried to be present to all the senses other than vision.  I got lost in that world and forgot where I was.  As my timer went off telling me my 15 minutes were up, I opened my eyes and this was the scene before me.  I started weeping from the grandeur of the moment and my being a small part of it.  I felt so alive after that.  In another post, I will tell you about the clouds above me and how they die.

PS - The mountain range is named after the tiny, craggy, tooth shaped peak you can see at the top far right of the image, the last little point along the horizon before hitting the photo's edge.

Ageism - scientifically speaking.

You are too old/too young to participate.  Sorry.

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space - Umberto Boccioni - MoMA  - 122813

In my last post a about Santa and Dollars, I wrote about many of the "isms" and the hope that they are fading away.  Friend UL wrote about an often overlooked type of discrimination - ageism.  It made me think upon a recent example of ageism I learned about that is part of science and clinical trials of medications.

As I've mentioned before, I work for a large pharmaceutical company in the pharmacovigilance (PV) department (Drug Safety).  We are the group that makes the list of all those nasty side effects that you hear listed in prescription drug commercials (e.g., dizziness, nausea, oily discharge, liver damage, etc.).  Most of these lists come from what is discovered as side effects during the three phases of clinical trials for the product.  When conducting these clinical trails, especially phase 3, you have to have very tight controls on subject selections so that  the product is being tested against the disease and eliminating outside variables, as much as possible.  To determine who gets the treatments (and depending on the target population of the medicine), you have to create a list of the Special Populations  of those that will be excluded from the study.  For most studies, the first two groups most often listed as special populations are pediatric and older patients.

Scientifically, it can make sense to exclude these two groups.  For too long, children were thought of as little adults when it came to medicine.  You just adjust the dose for the body weight.  This was a big mistake since the metabolism, brains, and organ systems of children are developing and are much different than adults.  In the past few decades, the FDA and other health regulatory agencies (MHRA, EMEA, SFDA, Health Canada, etc.) have increasingly emphasized the need for special clinical trials for children.

The older excluded group is a different issue.  Older humans tend to have multiple issues that can affect/draw questions to the clinical trials.  At 44, I am starting to age out of some studies.  That can be attributed to my needing two different asthma medications along with being on the verge of high blood pressure and cholesterol.  If I start taking meds for those, it would further complicate any clinical trials because of the potential issues of drug interactions and other pre-existing conditions becoming exacerbated.   As we age, we become more medically complex.  All of this can make medical testing very tough and is understandable for filtering out during clinical trials, but on the other hand...

The other hand is that by excluding these special populations, we don't learn what health issues the new product can introduce to the populations.  It may greatly help them, hurt them, or do nothing at all.  The danger can come though when the drug is approved and it gets out to the general population, which includes these special populations.  We often learn more about the side effects of drugs for these groups from reports of adverse events from marketed drugs than those in clinical trials, especially for special populations.  Sadly though, that meant a sick patient had to live (hopefully) through the adverse drug reaction.  Because we didn't test on these subjects, we may not know the issues caused by more-complex health profiles of children and our older communities.

When practicing PV, we don't only list the side effects, we build up a benefit/risk profile for the product.  We want to help the prescribing physicians, patients, and other healthcare providers by giving them the best and most current information on the drug.  This enables them to weigh the benefits and the risks of the product.  Many risks can be reduced or mitigated by taking special actions, so this knowledge is crucial for making the correct treatment plans.  To truly understand this, we must include special populations in the clinical trials and determine how the medicines work within them.  Sadly though, this isn't done, mostly due to the cost and time.

Currently it costs north of a billion dollars, not including production/manufacturing costs, to get a drug approved by regulatory authorities.  With the short trademark life on the product and that it takes 8+years to get approval, doing further clinical trials aren't deemed cost effective or time efficient.  For many products, warnings go out stating that data for special populations is incomplete or missing and that doctors should be very careful prescribing to them or should avoid prescribing them at all.

We (industry, regulatory authorities, insurance companies, advocacy groups, patients, etc.) need to determine a way to require further clinical trials that include special populations to ensure better data across all patient populations and yet makes it financially feasible for the drug companies to do so.  I think all sides need to be flexible and working toward a solution rather than trying to protect only their own interests.

Skyfall

Valya - 122412

Over three weeks ago I wrote about my growing up with James Bond.  I am only seven years younger than him and to the extent that movies can influence how I view myself in relationship to the world, Mr. Bond was a big part of it.

I now want to write on the recent Bond offering, Skyfall.  I went and saw it alone on opening night and again a few weeks later with my wife.  In it, I noticed four key themes and observations.  Below are my thoughts on each.  Warning - tons of spoiler alerts.  Don't read if you don't want to know.

Bond is aging.  Daniel Craig took up the role in his mid-thirties and is now in his mid-forties.  I feel that Bond is living a parallel age to both Craig and me.  Mr. Bond is still probably in the top 1% of fitness for men his age (and any age) and looks amazing, but all the wounds, bumps, bruises, drugs, alcohol, travelling, stress and age are catching up.  He has to contend with loss of martial mastery, a young quartermaster who thinks he is barely of use, and his own cynicism taking hold of him.

As a man his age and only a small part as fit and adventurous, I feel those wheels grinding too.  I can still do many things I did at half my age, but I will be sore for a long time after.  I know that in the not-so-distant future, I am going to not be able to do those things to the same level or degree.  James was feeling that too.

In Craig's first Bond movie, Casino Royale, he used brute force to get his way through physical trials.  M even called him, "... a blunt weapon."  In this movie, he had to learn that his physical prowess is starting to fade and he has to fight smarter, not stronger.

On a side note, this was the first Bond movie where I saw him shot.  He was shot twice in the first part.

Bond can not love anymore, except for his "Mum".  In Casino Royale, James loved and lost Vesper  after she betrayed him and died.  He spent a good part of Quantum of Solace avenging her death.  In this movie, after he has been shot by a fellow agent and left for dead, he goes into a drug-and-alcohol induced cocoon.  It feels like he can not love anymore until the headquarters of MI6 is destroyed, many of his fellow agents die, and M is endangered.  He slips into her apartment drunk to announce his return.

Both the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig Bonds had the same M, played by Judy Dench.  In the Craig versions, you could feel their complex maternal/child relationship unfold slowly.  She is about the only woman... the only person he loves.  As with Javier Bardem's brilliantly acted villain  Silva, the relationship with M is complicated and not all beautiful.

I first noticed in Casino Royale, and every Craig Bond movie since, all of M's subordinates call her "ma'am", but with the British accent it sounds like "Mum".  She is the tough-love mother that all her people respect, fear, and are very loyal to.  She is the tough mother that knew she may have to sacrifice one of her boys (James) in the beginning by telling the agent with the sniper rifle to take the obstructed shot at the bad guy.  The shot missed the baddie and hit James leading to his above mentioned disappearance.

It is this same relationship that caused Silva, a former agent of M's, to seek revenge.  He was her favorite until he went outside of boundaries and she left him for the Chinese to torture.  Her betrayal of him served almost like a foreshadow for Bond that while she will have his back, if he steps out of line, he will be dealt with.

Bond lost both of his parents when he was young.  M became his Mum, for better and for worse.  When she died in his arms at the end, his tears were for real as he lost another mother.

Bond finally gets a new villain!  In almost every prior Bond, his arch enemy has fallen into two main categories; Dominators or Countries.

The first is the genius villain striving for some type of world dominance, whether with money, resources, or land, he will go to no end to dominate the world.  This is the cliche villain that often has a huge secret base with hundreds of soldiers and scientists working on the plan to rule the world.  He is usually very brilliant, but stupidly sets up some overly-produced death for Bond and leaves before seeing Bond die(why he never thought to just personally shoot Bond himself always confused me).  Bond escapes, grabs the girl, blows up the secret base, kills the baddie and has a post-battle coital reward with said girl.  It is no wonder that Mike Myers channeled this villain so well as Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies.

The second is a country/state trying to steal secrets or weapons that will let them hold world power.  There have only been a few of these movies, including For Your Eyes Only (my favorite Roger Moore movie).

In Skyfall, Bond gets a brand new villain with Bardem's Sylva.  As mentioned above, Sylva was one of M's favorites in the 90's, but was left to the Chinese as part of handover of Hong Kong.  While he does create a powerful terror/financial empire.  It is on a tiny deserted island.  It is mainly one big super computer.  He doesn't have a massive army or a bunch of scientists.

Sylva's main motivation is to deeply hurt M by setting the explosion destroying the MI6 headquarters, releasing the names of undercover agents around the world, and eventually hunting her down.  He outright calls her Mommy.  His motivation is deeply personal.  I wonder how his character would have moved on if he had been successful.

I appreciate his complexity.  He respects Bond and feels a kinship to him.  He hates, yet cares for  M when he sees she has been wounded.  He wants her to kill both herself and him at the same time to end the pain.  In ways, he is a more effective agent than Bond because he better  knows his limitations and plans around them and also has far fewer scruples.

During Sylva and Bond's great meet up scene, you learn more about both characters back story, history, feelings through some of the best character development written in a scene lasting less than 10 minutes. This included the great firework...

...Bond is bisexual.  In one very homoerotic scene, Sylva gently caresses and admires Bond's shoulder, chest, and collarbone.  He is caressing Bond as a lover.  There is the sense he is messing with Bond to fluster him and confuse him.  Even though he may be playing mental tricks on James, I feel Sylva was attracted to him for both his great physique, but also their shared life stories.  As he caressed the inside of Bond's thighs, James utters one of the best statements ever in a Bond movie, "you assume this is my first time."  (I am only paraphrasing since I can't remember the exact words).

For many years, I (and many others) have wondered if Bond has every seduced men as an agent, or even for his own pleasures.  From his response to Sylva I get the feeling both are true.

Other stuff - The movie itself had some major reoccurring themes and aesthetics.  They include how it was filmed and nods to Bonds passed.

Blue eyes, blue shirt, golden grass, and an ill-fated Aston Marton DB5 - Movie Still from Skyfall

Colors - The director, Sam Mendes, also directed American Beauty and Road to Perdition.  Both are beautifully filmed.  In Skyfall, he used color palettes and selected imagery and icons to enhance the story.  I first noticed colors.  In most scenes, there were two dominant colors - either or both blue and gold.  The blue matches Craig's eyes.  You see both Ralph Fiennes and Bond wear blue suits or grey suits with strong blue shirts and ties.  In the assassination bit in the Shanghai high rise,  there is even a scene where Bond enters a hallway with shifting mood lights between alternating blue and gold.  The bar in the Macau casino is a warm gold, as is M's apartment.  The inside of Skyfall is a cold blue, much like Bond's eyes.   After Skyfall explodes and M and the caretaker, Kincaid (played by the great Albert Finney), escape up the hill, the hills are golden in the light of the fire as they run to the old church.  There are many other examples of gold and blue in the movie, but I think you get my point.  These two primary colors are as vital as red was in American Beauty.  Watch the official trailer below to see many of the uses of blue and gold in the movie.

Nods to Bond History- 2012 marked the 50th birthday of Bond movies.  In an homage, this movie had many little bits that referenced many of the older movies, but with new twists.  This is a list off of the of my head and is not all inclusive.  Please share more you observed in the comments section.

Bond shags three women in almost every movie - There is a brunette beauty he is with during his time-out phase after his "death".  We can assume that he and the agent who shot him and turns out to be Ms. Moneypenny was number two.  His last conquest is Sylva's temptress Sévérine.  As a twist though, he doesn't end the movie in bed with any one of them.

Motorcycle chase through a bazar and the obligatory crashes through fruit stands and an amazing jump.-  The twist in this cliche is that instead of jumping the motorcycle onto the train, he crashes it head first into the bridge rail to flip him uncontrolled onto the train.   

No Aston Martin goes unharmed.  Ever since the infamous DB5 appeared in Sean Connery's Goldfinger and Thunderball, Bond crashed many Aston Martins as well as they were, blown up, rolled, wrecked, tortured, and destroyed.  Each Aston Martin is tricked out with weapons and protective equipment. I love Aston Martins and cringe watching their many deaths in these movies.  Another one is destroyed in Skyfall.  The twist starts in the appearance of the vintage DB5 with all of the Goldfinger original kit, including machine guns and ejection seat.  The big twist though is that it is the simplicity and age of the old DB5 that is needed.  It can't be tracked electronically.  It is too old and out of sync with the new world, much like the aging Bond as mentioned above.

The return of Q.  I never knew "Q" stood for "Quartermaster".  Q is the master of weapons and gadgets.  There are two twists in this version though - Q is a youthful computer geek/genius that has little respect for Bond and his old, brutish ways.  The only fancy tech he gives Bond is a Walther that will only let Bond shoot it due to a palm print lock and a radio transmitter that broadcasts his location.  As Q says leaving the museum, "Were you expecting an exploding pen?  We don't do those anymore."  Another poke at Bond's age.

A few more things - the women's perspective.  I've talked about this movie with a number of women and below are some of what they shared.

Liked/loved - Bond swimming in the pool in Shanghai.  Bond in a suit.  Bond doing chin ups.  Those weren't shockers, but all of them felt thrilled when the old DB5 appeared.  I tried arguing for how beautiful the new Aston Martin DBS that appeared in the last two movies is.  They just smiled and continued their appreciation for the old car.  One other thing they appreciated was his relationship with M.  It added depth.  One female viewer though felt tired with the continued cliche that it always takes a male (Bond) to save the day.  One last comment from a female - she loved Adele's singing of the theme song, but wondered if the late April Winehouse's voice would have had the grittier edge that matched the movie.

Final thoughts.  It is obvious I loved this movie.  I wouldn't have written all this fanboy stuff about it otherwise.  Look at the list of great actors, Dench, Fiennes, Bardem, Finney, and Craig.  Throw in some of the best dialog, character development, and action of any Bond movie, and add that most of the movie takes place in Great Britain.  This modern noir movie is my favorite Bond movie staring my favorite Bond.  My only hesitation is that I worry about how the next movie will do after the greatness of this one.  

Fall love

Katie - 091912

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. - George Eliot

I love autumn.  I fall in love with it every year.  I lust for it when the first inklings of its approach become noticeable in August.   I love the colors and light the most.  They make me excited for the winter and the angular sunlight making everything look both dawn and dusk at the same time  I love driving around the countryside a little too fast and watching the leaves swirl behind my car in the invisible air currents.  I love that one of my earliest, and most favorite photo shoots took place in late November, in the hills outside of Berkeley.  Katie was a super trouper leading the way to that magic spot to capture the glorious light. 

Katie - 091912

I wonder where my soul-love for this time of year comes from.  Part of it is the excitement of childhood and going to school with all new crayons, pencils and clothes.  Another part is how beautiful Montana becomes in October.  I should also acknowledge my Scandinavian ancestry a bit.  I think that old blood of living in dark and long shadowed lands courses through me and makes me yearn for those beautiful moments.  Maybe the turning of the leaves and shifting of the light turns me into a different beast much like a full moon does to the werewolf.  Awwoooooo

At times I think I live through spring and summer so I can thrive in fall and winter.  I feel more alive during this time.  I know my own life is shifting from late summer into early fall.  Maybe I am finally aging into my personal time where I feel most at home.  I am not afraid of what my own fall and winter brings.  I know the shadows will grow longer and the light more beautiful until everything becomes a shadow and night consumes me. 

Katie 091912

A diferent time piece

Gabbi (Noon o'clock) - 082212

I saw the first red leaf of fall today, and I was also thinking about change - it's cyclic and reflects nature.

A few days ago Carla mentioned noticing the changes around her in a comment she shared on my last post.  Recently I've felt tick-tock time is losing its meaning to me.  I am losing my ability to feel the seconds go by and know what part of the clock the hands are resting on.

If people have super powers, I have had two.  I can almost always tell where north is.  From that I can usually point toward any direction.    I am sitting in a windowless room right now, and just pointed north and then checked it on my iPhone compass.  I was off by less than 5 degrees.  This doesn't mean I don't get lost.  It just means I usually get un-lost pretty fast. 

Sadly, my second super power, being able to intrinsically tell tick-tock time without looking at a clock and being accurate within 15 minutes is fading fast and is nearly gone.  For many years, I only carried a watch when to-the-minute accuracy was needed.  Now I wear a watch so I know which hour it is in tick-tock time.

I use the term tick-tock time to represent the human-made time measurement system based on seconds, minutes, and hours.  While it is dividing a solar year down into 365 days (not including leap year) with 24 hours in a day, with each hour consisting of 60 minutes, and each minute containing 60 seconds.  That is 525,600 seconds in a year.  I have no mechanism in me to note the passage of a second, minute, or hour anymore.

If we are healthy, our resting heart rate is around 60 beats-per-minute (bpm).  I can't trust my heart to tell time though.  When I sleep, it drops to less than that rate.  If I am excited, it can easily double.  Without having an internal mechanism anymore to tell tick-tock time, where am I getting my cues?  The natural universe provides it.

The earth's daily rotation provides a good basic visual time piece, light or no light.  My next favorite is the 28 day lunar cycle.  I know that if it is a new moon now, it will be a full moon in 14 days.  I am always looking up at the moon, when visible to give me a clue as to it's path.  Here is a link to learn about the phases of the moon. 

For the past few years I've felt the seasonal transitions more and more.  I like some more than others, preferring fall and winter to spring and summer.  I feel each one though.  Every August I can tell when autumn is coming by noticing the lengthening of shadows and the quality of light around me.  I feel the winter solstice by enjoying the long, dark, cold days of winter.  The seasonal changes are one measurement of time I feel deep in me.

Maybe my spirit is trying to tell me something with my loss of ability to internally tell tick-tock time.  It isn't the second that separates present me from past and future me.  It is the changing of the universe around me affected by the cycles we physically go through.  I can't control these cycles.  All I can do is recognize them and make sure I live as much as possible through them. 

 

Kick in the ass

Yes. I used PS Dark Arts on Myself - 012812

"It's great to have a passion, but you must also have a work ethic around it." Unknown*

For the past month or so I received multiple subtle and explicit messages to get my shit together.  Most of these messages concern my art.  All of them are basically saying, "Karl, You take pretty good photos.  You have an eye for capturing people in your photos.  Good boy.  Now you really need to move on to the next level.  You need to do it better and you need to get it done.  Not only done, but done right."

I  hired a graphic/web designer/artist to help me build a commercial website.  She designed  a new logo for me late last year.  I was impressed by it and looked at her portfolio of commercial websites she designed and was very impressed.  I showed her my half-ass, stagnant website and she gently tore it apart in a critique.  I knew then I had hired the right partner to help build the new one.  A month later, and many hours of writing text, selecting key photos, and many other tasks concerning SEO, keywords, aspect ratios, and categorizations, it is almost ready to go public.  I will co-premier it here and Facebook when it is ready to go.  I will also share her name and website in that post.

That experience taught me a valuable lesson.  If I am going to spend a good chunk of money and get a strong commercial site going, I had better go all in or pack up.  You can't go into business half way.  All in or fold.   Balls deep.  Shit or get off the pot.  Ok.  Enough metaphors for that.

While on Christmas break I saw a great a video clip of a George Carlin tribute with Louie C.K.  Louie C.K. is a comic genius and speaks so many truths for me.  In this tribute he shares the influence of Carlin on his career.  The key lesson is to keep reinventing his work and push his comedy further and further and get to what is raw, core, and never stop exploring.  Go deeper.   The gold starts at 4:55.



It is too easy to keep producing the same images the same way and getting the same responses.  I keep creating the same stuff, just with different flavors.  I keep getting the same results, and not going too far both in my art and in the success of my art.

The golden nugget from this video made me realize that I get the best feedback from my stuff that pushes me in new directions, new materials, new concepts, new people, new methods, and new feelings.  It is time to let some things go that are finished and run their course with me.  It feels like being given a new wild world to go out and explore!!!

So, if the first lesson was to go all in or go home and the second lesson was to keep reinventing and pushing myself harder, deeper, and into new areas, the third one was a hard criticism on what I have done.  It made me first question what type of photographer/artist I am in the sense of the quality of my work and then kicked me in the ass to do something about it.

I sent out a few proof portrait images.  The subject liked a few and then did something shocking, but also taught me a lesson.  The subject edited  one of my photos and sent it back with the list of edits.  Holy fuck.  Nobody has edited my photos before, especially without telling me first.

At first I was pissed.  How dare somebody touch my work like that!  I went for a walk around the neighborhood and came back and decided to look at the edits and compare them to the original I had sent out.  In came the head kick of humility and the lesson - Karl, your digital photo editing skills are kind of rudimentary and basic.  Karl, you do some digital photo editing really well, but if you are going to do this seriously, you really have to get better at it.

I use Adobe Lightroom for my photo workflow, everything from downloading and storage, through editing and refining, to creating a print or digital output.  It has many great tools that are similar to what can be found in the traditional darkroom.  It greatly complimented my darkroom knowledge and helped me make the transition from film to digital.   All along I denied the value of Photoshop.  I felt it was too complicated to learn.  It made my art a technical exercise, not a passion of the soul.  I would get lost in all the layers and gadgets and my art would lose its soul.  All of these were excuses, not reasons.

I am in the middle of an intensive Photoshop course now and am finally beginning to understand that its a wondrous tool box that can liberate so many of the limitations that straight photography places on me.  I am quickly realizing that I am not making the best art I can and honoring my subjects by my reticence to learning this important (and let's face it, industry) tool.   It is sort of like learning magic.

I've learned many new things that remind me of the Harry Potter universe.  Magic has both its good and bad arts.  In the books, all Hogwarts students had to learn the Magic of the Dark Arts.  For some it became their primary tool for power, for others it became a last-use weapon or a knowledge on how to defend ones self from it.

I think this is true of Photoshop as well.  There are so many ways to manipulate photos within that program.  There is the subtle stuff like correcting for perspective, saturating or de-saturating colors, reducing wrinkles, getting rid of pimples, etc.  There is the heavy stuff like distorting the body to look thinner, taller, whiter, darker, and closer to an ideal of what someone should like vs. what they truly look like.  All of these tools are available for the photographer to change the photograph from simple edits to a work of fiction.  These are some potentially dark arts that I need to learn and master.  How I use my knowledge and mastery of the dark arts will determine whether my intent was good or not.

Below is a video about the dangers of Photoshop.



I haven't written a blog post in the past few weeks due to all the work I am pushing into my art while still working my paying job and trying to maintain a life.  I am not getting any younger.  I know I have many more years behind me than ahead of me.  I need to get my art done before I die and I need to get off my lazy ass and do it.  I also have to do it better or why do it all?

*I hate it when I hear a great quote and can't find who said it.  Google can only do so much I guess.  I know it was an author. 

I loved pushing your buttons.

I was born at an interesting time, but aren't we all?  My mom sent me into the world a few months before Neil Armstrong did his "giant leap."  I became self aware in the mid seventies and came of age in the eighties.  During that time, especially 1975 to around 1983 I became fascinated with buttons (the pushing type, not the holding your shirt closed type) for they represented technology and the manifestation of my imagination.

I forgot about this obsession until a few nights ago when I was using my iPhone.  After entering terms for a Google search in it, I realized its touchscreen did not have the satisfaction of feeling the physical responsive reply of a button actually being depressed or feeling the click.  That night I couldn't sleep because a flood of button memories came rushing in and I had to think about why the actual act of pushing buttons used to be my heart crying out for technology (and all its possibilities) that did not exist yet in my personal life.  I also realized just how few buttons existed in my life back then.  They mainly turned on or off things or made things manually open, close or shift.

Computers were just starting to be used in major systems, such as space flight when I was born.  By the early nineties, our cars had computers much more powerful than those that were on the Apollo spaceships.  At the same time as the early Apollo missions, the television show Star Trek (1966-1969) accentuated the major role of a central computer that regulated the ship, kept a huge database of information, was used for navigation, medical diagnosis, making food, and a multitude of other applications. 

I remember the first time I watched Star Trek I was amazed by all the buttons.  They did so many things.  Sulu could fire the phasers, Scotty could maintain the engines, Dr. McCoy could diagnosis patients by twisting a dial, moving slider and pushing a button.  After seeing that I wanted to push every button around, especially if it made something happen using electricity.

During the Christmas break of 1975, we moved into a new home in Billings, Montana and I soon found every new-to-me  button in the house.  The doorbell gave immediate satisfaction but became boring after a few repetitive pushes.   The two buttons on the stove vent hood turned on the fan or the light.  I liked those, one was red and the other was black.  We had a new box fan that used push buttons to select the speeds. The only other buttons around my life were the ones on the car's AM radio that changed the stations.  I would sometimes sit in the car in our driveway and push the buttons to watch the needle bounce around the radio dial.  In my mind I was flying a space ship though and these buttons were controlling everything important.

My obsession with controlling technology and pushing buttons went crazy in June 1977.  My mom took me to see Star Wars.  Along with all the aspects of it that an 8 year old boy could become obsessed with (my first crush was for Princess Leia), I loved all the damn buttons.  The spaceships and fighters had them, the Death Star was full of buttons that could operate trash compactors or destroy planets.  Even Darth Vader had them on his chest which kept him alive.  My favorite button though was the one and only button on the light saber.  I truly understood Obi Wan Kenobi's words of wisdom about this powerful weapon as he gave  Luke Skywalker his father's light saber.  This simple elegant weapon only needed one button to do the bidding of the user.

Obi-Wan: "I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damned-fool idealistic crusade like your father did."
Luke: "What is it?"
Obi-Wan: "Your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster. An elegant weapon... for a more civilized age."

God, I wanted a light saber.  

Robot Chicken Star Wars 3 - Clip 2 from Revolver Entertainment on Vimeo.

Around that time more buttons began appearing at home.  I can remember going to the store with my dad to buy our first calculator and distinctly recall its $80 price tag.  It had red LED numbers and could only perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and nothing else.  It was magic to me.  It was our first computer.  It was TECHNOLOGY.

My mom was so excited for it.  She took care of the family checkbook and finances and always did the math on scratch paper.  This technology saved her hours of work over the course of a year.   On the other hand, I grew bored of its mathematical uses and soon used it as part of a cardboard spaceship cockpit which had many cardboard buttons, but the calculator became the ships computer.  I remember how stiff the buttons were and could sense the click from it both through auditory and tactical feedback. 

After that we got a stereo record player with more buttons, followed by a Kleenex box shaped tape recorder.  More buttons that actually did things were entering my life.  With all of this I was not satiated, my friends had microwave ovens and push button phones that I coveted.  Each time I got to push one of these buttons and tactically feel a response back and and an action as a response, I felt the power of technologies changing our lives.

In 1980 I got my first handheld electronic game, football.  After that I started to slowly lose my fascination with buttons.  Two major things came into my life about then that made me put my button fetish away.

The first were the early Radio Shack computers we got at school.  They started to represent technology because they could actually do the things that I imagined and dreamed of during my playtime with the old buttons around me.  I no longer had to pretend a calculator controlled my space ship.  I could use a real computer to do computer things.  Maybe part of this change also came from entering my adolescence and the fading away of imagination and play and the beginning of early adulthood.  Play was for kids.  Computers were for real.

This growing older also brought the second thing to change me, puberty.  Playing with toys, no matter how cool, took a distant backseat to the primal and novel feelings and urges that started pushing through my body and taking no prisoners.  I regressed from the development of technology in a way and started to grow into my primal sexual male self. 

Since those early computer days, these machines became part of my daily life  and were tools more than imaginative play escapes (until the internet came along, but that is a different story).   I used a typewriter when I entered college to write my papers.  I had a 280 PC by the end of that degree to print out my papers.  That computer was a tool and not much more.

The touch screen has taken over in so many electronics in the past decade.  The iPhone, iPad, and even the automated checkout counter at my local grocery store use touchscreens.  I love the speed and simplicity of these machines and the elastic capabilities that can completely change the use of the device by simply opening a different screen and using something new.  While I use these devices everyday, I am starting to miss those simple, early technological devices that had tactile physical responses from being pressed.  I miss the simplicity of one button controlling one thing.  Maybe that is one reason I love my Nikon dSLR over my iPhone and point and shoot digital cameras.  I push the shutter release and can feel it sink into the camera body and then both feel and hear the shutter release and reset allowing the light from the image to be recorded.  One motion, one action, one function. To paraphrase Obi Wan - An elegant technology... for a more civilized age."
 

"Literature isn't innocent."... - Roberto Bolaño

*Butterfly  - 080111

Nor is art or life.  Innocence is just a part of the spectrum of the world and the things in it.  When we look at all of the world (both concrete and abstract), most things can be innocent or exist innocently until innocence is lost, but are rarely innocent forever.  Innocence can be lost through many means direct and indirect, good and bad.

I did a quick online search of "What is the opposite of innocence."  The answers depended on how I chose to define "innocence" or innocent."

If I defined it as "blameless" then the antonyms were: badness, blame, corruption, evil, guilt, and sin.

If I defined it as "harmlessness" or  "naivete "then the antonyms were: experience, impurity, knowledge, treacherousness, wildness.

Another writer offered a more elaborate pairing of words:
guilt/innocence
cunning/innocence
worldly/innocence
offensive/innocence
immoral/innocence
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080423162403AA0sdcK

I have a much used metaphor of comparing many of life's things to drugs.  Drugs are neither good or bad, it is how we use them that are on the spectrum of good to bad.  Drugs are not innocent either.  The same thing can be said of sex, money, humor, power, porn, art, propaganda, politics, cars, travel, humility, confidence, and love. Innocence itself is neither good, nor bad.  It is how it is used or removed (lost) that is good or bad or just is.

"Literature isn't innocent."  The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño

When I was a teacher, we were supposed to plan our classes for the lowest level learners, yet provide content for higher level learners.  If I looked at mathematical innocence (naivete) versus knowledge, I had to make sure my content addressed both.  The same is true for so many other publicly consumed items.

The number one rule for a comedian is "know your audience."  Are they expecting clean comedy like Jerry Seinfeld, political comedy like Tina Fey, or ribald comedy like Bob Saget, or thought provoking, personal, and explicit comedy like Louise C.K. or Sarah Silverman.  In my opinion, all of their comedy is good, genuine, and appropriate for the right audiences.

Comedy is definitely not innocent though.  Clean comedy is not innocent.  It points out bad behavior, bad people, the human condition, and tough subject matter.  It just doesn't have all the fucks, shits, assholes and other expletives.

Art is not innocent either.  It is up to the creator's intent whether it is innocent.  Some people make innocent art.  Children drawing flowers, rainbows, and puppies is about as innocent as can be, but not all children's art is innocent.  A teacher friend of mine saw a child's crayon drawing that showed a grown up hurting a child.  After contacting the counselor and asking questions, they reported the incident to Child Protective Services as a possible abuse case.  It turned out to be a severe abuse case.  This young boy definitely created art that was not innocent.  It came from knowledge and experience.  This is an example when non-innocent art was the most important art that boy could create.  It may have saved his life.

If a child's drawing is not innocent, can a piece of art featuring a nude figure be innocent?  It depends on the artist's intent.  It also depends on how each individual viewer of the piece interprets it.  That is true for all art I guess.  What I may see as innocent rainbows, butterflies and leaves could be interpreted completely differently by someone else.  Why would it be interpreted as possibly loss innocence?  I believe it is the artist or viewers own life knowledge, personal psyche, and other experiences that shape that view.

There are many forces out there on all sides of the political spectrum trying to squelch artistic expression that is not innocent.  Some use religion or profit or politics or power or prejudice or many other reasons to bury non-innocent expression.  Is there ever a time when it is right to censure for innocence?  I am sure there are a few, but only a very few.

Sebastiao Salgado creates amazingly beautiful photos using the finest craft to make a finished fine art print.  The composition is perfect, along with the tonality, framing, and other artistic aspects.  The subject matter though is often tough, charged, sometimes tragic, and often painful.  It is not innocent.  He is sharing the loss of innocence of humanity through showing starvation, slave labor, war, and other catastrophes.  The perpetrators of the evil depicted would probably like to censure him.

**Bernini's Ludovica - Rome - Jan 2010

I gave up trying to make purely innocent pretty art a few years ago.  I appreciate those who can make it and know I don't want to and am kind of lousy at it.  I  enjoy making aesthetically beautiful photos, but they are not innocent.  My art lost its innocence because I have lost mine as well.  Some of my lost innocence resulted in knowledge, guilt, experience, corruption, and even fun.

My art is not anywhere near the importance or impact of Salgado's.  While we share that our art isn't innocent, that is about the only commonality.  This is good because there is already one Salgado and one Karl.   I've learned that art hates redundancy.

To believe things like art, literature, music, and other creative endeavors of life are or should be only innocent actually takes away any  realistic hope of it being innocent.  By demanding it being innocent, we force it to become ignorant.  We are censuring what it is.  There is a growing battle between purity, innocence and simple thoughts against wisdom, exploration, hedonism, expression, and progress.  We all will need to decide which side we lean to in this culture war and how far we are willing to advocate (or fight) for it.   Just by how I stated those words, I guess I tipped my hand on which side my beliefs stand. All artistic outlets shouldn't have to be innocent to survive and succeed.  Life is not innocent, nor should art be artificially innocent either.

*Taken in my innocent days of photography.
** Was Bernini capturing a non-innocent moment?  Did my photo of it make it lose its innocence? 


Don Henley - The End Of The Innocence by jpdc11

And the band played on...

jacqui and truck - 061211

We caught the direct flight from Missoula, MT to San Francisco.  After take off, I put my iPod on and this song by the great Canadian "politically satirical folk" band, Moxy Fruvious came on.   It is aptly called The Drinking Song.   The lyrics are both nonsensical and beautifully poetic.

This song makes me think of artist/musician friend Joe Crachiola and I don't know why.  Maybe it is just that I'd like to be in New Orleans listening to some great music, creating some great photos, eating great food, and drinking a great bit with him.

This song also makes me think of old and recent endings in my life.  Those moments when something ended, yet parts of me hasn't accepted the passing or impending passing.  By the end of the song my eyes were all tearing up, but felt sadly comforted by the tune.

The Drinking Song - Moxy Fruvious

And the band played on
As the helicopters whirred.
Drunk on the lawn in a nuclear dawn,
My senses finally blurred..

He was a rock
Til the end, a solid reminder
Couldn't deny a friend
We lived in the noise and
The sweet amber poison
Peeking up the skirt of the end
And we'd drink
Two gnarly dudes and some records
Much like plates of black food
We filled up our faces
Saw some far places
Stood on the roof in the nude.

And the band played on
As the helicopters whirred.
Drunk on the lawn in a nuclear dawn,
My senses finally blurred..

Between poles, he said,
"We're like cows in the grass.
Brushing off flies
Chaise lounging around
Standing up falling down
Til we no longer opened our eyes."
And we'd drink
Ever notice how drinking's like war?
Cup o troops oe'r the guns
Til the end of our health
A campaign 'gainst myself
Armed with bourbons and scotches and rums

And the band played on
As the helicopters whirred.
Drunk on the lawn in a nuclear dawn,
My senses finally blurred..

Think of bombs
We're poised on the edge of disaster
Whether it's right or it's wrong
We opened the window
Played some nintendo
Sang a few bars of some pretty old song.
"Irene good night. Irene goodnight
Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene
I'll see you, in my dreams."
Oh to dream, those impotent
Bones of extinction
Flying graceful and free.
None but the best,
Cause the man cannot rest
Til he's finally beaten his me

And the band played on
As the helicopters whirred.
Drunk on the lawn in a nuclear dawn,
My senses finally blurred..

Til the end, he passed out on the
Sundeck that morning
Quietly saying goodbye
But I was so hammered I sputtered and stammered
Told him he couldn't just die
He was a rock
Went straight for his own armegeddon
Face froze in a grin
Ambulance flying in, I never drank again
Can't really call that a loss or a win

And the band played on
As the helicopters whirred.
Drunk on the lawn in a nuclear dawn,
My senses finally blurred..

42 is the answer

Me at 41 - 030910

I've been thinking about the book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.   In the book, a very intellectual species builds a super computer called Deep Thought to find, "... the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything."  The computer spent 7.5 million years to find the answer.

On a huge, momentous day, all the people gathered around Deep Thought for the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

Lunkwill:  Do you...
Deep Thought: Have an answer for you?  Yes.  But your not going to like it.
Fook: Please tell us.  We must know!
Deep Thought:  Okay.  The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is... 42.

Everyone was so disappointed with the answer because it made no sense.  Deep thought then told them they needed to figure out what the questions was that had the answer 42.  That would take another 10 million years.

I appreciate Douglas Adams cheeky writing about this.  We (the royal we) spend so much time looking for the answers that we forget to ask the right question.  It reminds me of when my parents always corrected me when asking for permission.  "Mom.  Can you take me to the store?"  My mom would always respond with, "Yes.  I can take you to the store, but it doesn't mean I will take you to the store."  I then rephrased the question as "Mom.  Would you please take me to the store?".

Now that I am 42, I am trying to figure out both the question and the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.  Actually, I am not trying that hard.  Maybe some parts of all this is better left to being a mystery.  Until I figure all this out, I am happy with being 42.