In the Morgan Library there is a newspaper from the early 1840's describing California as a land where abundant agricultural crops and farm animals go unharvested because the natives are "too lazy to even milk the numerous cows which graze on the hills". This front page story on a major Morgan-funded paper distributed in NYC was an incitement to theft and genocide, an obvious ploy to trick New York's poor to get out of town, preparing the ground for a trans-continental railroad. Throughout the intervening 160+ years, the idea that California is less productive has survived despite all evidence to the contrary.
America is filled with crazy beliefs about the West which even our country's leading artists from Whitman to Shepard have mindlessly propagated even though the beliefs served ruthless, racist, bio-terrorist goals, not Art or Humanity.
Now, after more than a century of California-based cultural production and the California-led revolution in personal networked computing, you'd think that Easterners would see San Fran as the big leagues, where the real competition is, where innovations enter the world market, but no, California is usually dismissed as irrelevant. This attitude protects New Yorkers from that truth that their city is only a stop on a tour schedule, no longer the center of cultural influence. Even Sonoma County plays a more essential role in the new world of cultural production through the technology publications and conferences radiating out of Sebastopol from the O'Reilly press, the leading authority on production in the networked economy. There is no equally influential publisher in New York or on the East Coast. There is no equal to Silicon Valley in New York or on the East Coast.
But, of course, this emphasis on geography is, itself, old-school. The new world is geo-independent. The communities of innovation and production exist on the network. Every access point is a central node.Though I will be doing my best to achieve it, it is unlikely that I'll leave New York this fall. Before I can get the design job I want, I need to create a respectable portfolio site. It'll be a month-long project once I start and I won't start until I've got the painting video complete, the painting auction started.
Movie Making
I'd love to follow through my desire to shoot the scene from your play. As I read it, I thought how fun it would be to cast against character, to have young, teen or even pre-teen kids from the LES neighborhood, in all their hip-hop finery, play the roles of the aging actresses. I envisioned shooting it in a space I know in the building where I work. I'd like to use the top floor of the 19th Century skyscraper. The space is vast with lots of dusty windows, a collapsing ceiling and is filled with old dusty furniture. It is, by law, uninhabitable and since the building is the first skyscraper, its landmark status prevents the present owner from developing. In my plan, I'd take a cast of local kids there and run through the scene numerous times. With my camera, I'd follow only one character through the scene on each run-though. On each subsequent run-through, follow a different character until I have one take of the whole scene for each character. I'd piece together a movie from all the takes.
I like the idea of using amateur kids instead of older actors because of the texture the movie would gain from the contrast between the lines of the script and the faces of the actors. Also because of the beneficial perspective the kid's would gain from speaking the lines of an older person from another culture. I'd cast without necessarily matching gender, for more texture. So, the age, the gender, the culture would all run counter to your expectations as the playwright and cause the audience some consternation as they reach for the drama through the unexpected filter of the cast. We'd block each run-though differently. The movie would have jump-cut continuity.
It would be great fun. Perhaps, luckily for your play, I have no access to kids in my neighborhood, don't have the time to make the movie, couldn't really take anyone up to the forbidden floor. But, as soon as I can, I'd like to try that method of movie-making.
Maybe in SecondLife. (I'll save that idea for another post.)
Lifestyle
I'm writing this while editing the last part of our painting movie, during the periods when the computer is processing. The more powerful computers become, the more we ask them to do, so there are still times I have to let it render.
Ruth is talking by phone to my dad. repeating every line two, three times. communication is so tough.
Earlier, Heather called from her birthday celebration in Napa Valley to report that the temperature is 115.
It monsooned here yesterday, the unprecedented amount of rain this year has overwhelmed or threatened nearby low-laying areas, it wouldn't take much more to start filling some basements in lower Manhattan. it's lightly raining today.
I have a mean joke, it's highly unfair, but the joke is to pretend Al Gore is the sole climate-crisis messenger and then blame it all on him by saying "the weather has been Gored" or "we've been Gored by the climate". Stupid, I know, but I enjoy it.
I'm sure that when I get back to San Fran expecting the lovely cool, foggy summers, it will have turned into Fresno weather.
How is it up in BC? You had heavy rain in the spring, is the summer normal?
I'm wondering where i'll have to go to escape the heat and the flooding, Tierra del Fuego? I think the tip reaching down to Antarctica, might be the spot for me. If I can get a fat, synchronous IP connection.
Good luck with the research in Chicago, sounds like a great time.
My Dad's family is from Chicago and from Streeter, Illinois.
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