Webtales

Over the weekend, it was party time at the household. One of our guests was the mother of my friend who plays Mystic Mike in the “Not Quite Here” series. She knew nothing about the project, so it was great fun to sit her down, slip on a pair of glasses and watch her play.

There isn’t a lot of money in this work, but there are payoffs. This weekend was one of them.

A friend recently wrote something of a personal update for the Spring Solstice. He asked others to reply in kind. Here is what I wrote:

Joe,

Since March 20th is Kathleen’s birthday, it seems we are not destined to celebrate Spring Solstice together. Still, some catching up is in order.

For me, the past year has been about moving outward, building new connections and communities with the idea of participating in a local, neighborhood art scene. I’ve been trying to watch and absorb the thousands of daily cultural collisions in the Mission and in particular, the Valencia Street corridor between 24th St and 16th. I’ve been building urban landscapes and exploring the urban myths of the area. Those then percolate inside and come out in surprising ways. … See More

I’ve made a lot of new friends this year; participated in a lot of group creative ventures. It is, for me, a time of community. My goal is not to worry too much about what I am thinking or feeling; it is a time for me to listen and open to others. What are they thinking? How are they choosing to live their lives?

Lately, I’ve been sitting at a coffee shop, looking out the window at the great show. I can do this for quite some time. There is a peacefulness about it- catching snatches of the daily drama of hundreds of strangers. I don’t make up stories about them, as I have been known to do. I just watch.

So many people. So many different kinds of lives all existing simultaneously. I’ve always loved Thomas’s “Under Milkwood” or Kurosawa’s ” Dodeskaden,” or the “Spoon River Anthology” of Edgar Lee Masters. In all of these works, the community itself is the subject; the individual stories and players part of a much more intricate fabric. Sometimes, when I sit watching out of the coffee shop window, I can feel the music of it.

Several years ago I participated in the Mediascape project at KQED. It was an exercise in locative media funded by HP. In the course of that project I documented with others the “Mission Village Market; a neighborhood flea market and community gathering.” Today, that market is gone. The stories and images I collected at that time are all that I have left of the place. There remains no physical evidence that the place and its history every existed.

That is the ecology of neighborhoods.

And so the question for me this year has been, how do I open myself to that vision; how do I learn the people, their stories and how those stories collide on a daily basis.

This is the opposite of going global. My work is local. My audience is local. My subject matter is local. The rest of the world still exists, of course, but the discovery of this microcosm of culture, time, commerce and humanity is my focus. It fills me with a sense of place and a sense of peace.

So far, it has been a good year. My family is well. My work continues and grows. What more could I want?

All the best to you and the family, Joe.

=stan

Just sampled the AM radio this morning and the lies are flying thick and furious. One announcer declared that there would be a panel that would evaluate whether or not you could get permission to have a baby.

The Government is in our bedrooms!!!

Not a complaint I expected to hear from the Right.

Some kind soul made a video of my exhibit at Mission Comics and Art.  Who knew?

If you missed the show, here it is.

I was meeting with a group of freelance journalists, talking about my ideas for making content for a specific neighborhood rather than the entire Net, when one lady replied, “oh,  you mean ‘hyperlocal.’ ”

Did I?

I admit I was chagrined to be so easily categorized, but then, I didn’t really think I was inventing the wheel.

Here is the wikipedia definition:     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlocal

I find the suggestion of corporate penetration into hyperlocal markets to be disturbing but predictable. Also surprised to discover the term was coined in 1991.

I never said I was the inventor of this idea. I discovered it as an answer to the idea of writing content for the entire world “a la blog.”

Just watched an episode of “House” this week about a woman who constantly blogged everything about her life all the time. She had a world wide audience.

This is the antithesis of what I am interested in doing right now. I am less interested in “sharing” the daily details of my life than I am in searching out and articulating the emerging personality and stories of a specific geographic location; in my case the Valencia Street Corridor. There is a lot happening there right now. It is an exciting, tumultuous time for the neighborhood- going from down-home Mission to Hipster Heaven.

The change is more complicated than that. It is the 21st century marching in with guns blazing to an unsuspecting locale. It is the gay, Latin, white, bike, coffee, blogging, literary, comic book, zine, green, vegan, laptop,gang, twitter,epicure collision. All kinds of interesting players. All kinds of interesting history colliding with the science fiction future.

In the middle are the usual collection of innocent souls who are caught up in this temporal and cultural whirlwind. The world they knew is changing right before them. THEY are changing. This is how culture works. This is how history works. This is what the millennium is all about. Can I tell that story? Can I be a part of that story?

I’m not convinced this is all hyperbole. I am convinced that the world is changing at a very rapid rate right now because it is being  hammered by social, economic, meteorological, and political forces like hot iron on an anvil.

I’m not intelligent enough to grasp the greater picture- it is beyond my comprehension to know how this will all play out.  The Spin Doctors, the bankrupt Corporate Culture, the People vs. the Elite. Where is it going? Another French Revolution? ( Reading “Tale of Two Cities” right now.)

What I can do is talk to people locally;  try to understand their stories, try to find some themes that resonate with this part of the planet and echo them back. What happens next, I have no idea.

For me, that is part of the fun of it.

I understand that this very post may be read by people anywhere in the world. That is inevitable with this medium. More and more, I am writing FOR a small community in my neighborhood. Anyone else who wants to come along is welcome.

I haven’t seen “Alice in Wonderland” yet, but I read a review in the paper yesterday that really annoyed me. The idea of film reviewing is pompous enough; this reviewer compounded it by panning the film because it is not what she wanted to see. I hear that kind of criticism a lot. It is the “if *I* were making this” school of crit. It is bullshit.

In my experience, the people who make these kind of pronouncements are the least likely to create anything individual. But they are great experts on other peoples’ work.

I’ve fallen into that one myself from time to time, and Tim Burton was a great example for me. The first time I saw “Sleepy Hollow” it did not meet my expectations and was a terrible film. I had occasion to see it again years later and marveled at how good it actually was. What kept me from enjoying it the first time was *ME*.

It can be difficult to just be open to someone else’s creative process. Tim Burton taught me a lesson I’ve kept close to me ever since.

Some people go to Mecca, some to Jerusalem. I go to  the Franklin Institute. This is the place that fired my imagination for as long as I could remember. It had been more than six years since my last visit. It was time to pay my respects.

You may have noticed that strange white stuff on the ground. It is called snow and it is one of the reasons I live in California. Philadelphia had just endured two back to back blizzards, leaving about 40 odd inches of snow on the ground. Do I know how to pick a time to visit?

So I sez to Ben Franklin, “Yo, Ben. How’s it hangin’”

He looks down and rolls his eyes. “Hey Stan, welcome back. Still drafty as hell in this hallway. I wish they would do something about it, but aside from you and few other people, no one listens to me much anymore.”

Ben is like that. He would also like a nip or two of the good stuff, but at his age, it is not the best idea.

The most famous attraction of the Franklin Institute is the Human Heart. You can walk through the heart. As a kid, I did so many times. At one point, noticing the small GE light bulbs that illuminated the interior, I thought a heart attack was caused by a burned out bulb. That’s right, isn’t it?

The original heart was a paper mache  and was a temporary exhibit, not supposed to last for more than a few months. It has been rebuilt countless times over the years as armies of eager kids and their parents climb around inside. On this visit, the Heart had obviously moved up to star billing.

There it is, in all its glory; the human heart. The entrance is up on the right at the top. Let’s take a look.

Long before “Fantastic Voyage,” many of us had the opportunity to travel inside the heart. Some found it kind of gross; others like myself, just couldn’t get enough of it. The same was true for the kids who climbed around inside while I was tromping around. Nothing like the Right Atrium to cheer up your day.

My sister was kind enough to accompany me. I guess as the oldest, she felt I should be humored from time to time, as long as I didn’t drool in public or break out in spontaneous “moon walking.” She’s a sport and I thank her.

So I’ve paid homage. I’m good for a few more years. I think I might knit Ben a scarf or something.

We’ll see.

Ken Nordine, the noted word jazz poet, had a piece called “Amateurs” which began,

“We get together every week…”

It also concluded,
“We are all amateurs. No one lives long enough to be anything but an amateur.”

I’m reminded of this when every two weeks this group of new friends gather for a few hours of artistic communion, drawing art to a common theme to produce a community comic in the allotted time. it is great stuff to witness. These magicians do make something out of nothing and they do it with great skill. I appreciate their kindness in welcoming my scribbles as part of their work. I am not a draftsman, but I may be one day if I hang around these folks long enough.

Well, here I am in the land of snow and cheesesteaks. The parents are OK. The sibs are OK. Life is good.

My time sense is really screwed up so I’m wide awake in the middle of the night and ready to crash at 7:30PM. Getting better but still disorienting.

As I mentioned elsewhere, you CAN go home again, but it is a parallel dimension where you are still somehow a kid regardless of your age. My relatives have this image of me from my childhood and they are relating to me based on that. This used to annoy me, but I suppose I have mellowed. Now I find it kind of amusing.

Interesting to me how selective memory is and how malleable. Details of family stories transform, vanish or take on a previously unknown significance. Everyone writes the legends of their own lives and those around them. How can biographies be anything other than fiction or “enhanced realities?”

This is why I find “fiction” so significant. When stories are re-told, the details that survive, the details enhanced and the meaning of the story twist and turn down through time with astonishing flexibility. HOW they change has always fascinated me.

I was present at some of the events discussed in family stories. My version varies greatly. Who is to say mine is any more accurate than anyone else’s?

It is just like visiting a parallel dimension where time stopped when you were a kid. Also- SNOW.