Author Archives: oinsketta

Only Time I’m Happy’s When I Play My Guitar

Cream had a song called NSU that contained this great bit:

driving in my car, smoking a cigar, only time I’m happy’s when I play my guitar

No idea what NSU stands for, but, dig it.  If I could spend most of my time playing my guitar I’d be a much happier camper, no doubt about it.  Yet, somehow, three days  sometimes pass when I don’t so much as pick up my guitar (though I sleep next to a tenor ukulele every night that Sekhnet’s not next to me– and it is rare that I don’t at least play the uke a little as I’m lying in bed).

What’s up wif dat not playing the guitar, though?

It’s not that I’m too busy cleaning up the mess on my desk, or kitchen table, or chair, or floor.   It’s not that I’m a workaholic rushing straight ahead in a crazed, glassy-eyed pursuit of greater income and success.   What the hell?   Why don’t I play the guitar three hours a day?  

One of the great mysteries of my mysterious life.

Freedom and Politics

My nephew had a good point to a teacher in Florida recently who was pressuring him to speak the words of the Pledge of Allegiance along with his 17 year-old classmates.   “What kind of pledge is it if you have to repeat it every day, year after year?  Once you make a pledge, you’ve pledged.  What kind of bogus, insecure pledge has to be repeated daily?”  The teacher’s reaction is unknown, though my nephew was excused from final exams because his grades were already too high to calculate.

$150,000,000 a year to keep the remaining 166 prisoners (of a total of 779 at one time incarcerated there) locked up at Guantanamo.   This includes 86 cleared for immediate release, people not currently charged with being anything like the worst of the worst, many charged with nothing.   Also at Gitmo is a group of 48 who are probably dangerous haters of our freedom, capable of exacting bloody revenge and even more motivated now than a decade ago when they were first grabbed.  

The problem with these dangerous haters is that they have been tortured by agents of our great democracy and so any trial or attempt to prosecute them would  bring what was done to them into the harsh light of public scrutiny.   So we can’t really try them, or release them.   They truly, truly hate us.

The president, quoted in June 10, 2013 TIME magazine: 

[History] will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism and those of us who fail to end it

An eloquent echo of Thomas Jefferson’s famous observation about how he trembled to consider the harsh punishment a just God would rightfully inflict on those, like him, who owned human beings as part of their personal wealth.

And, like our current eloquent president, Jefferson was instrumental in not ending the practice he deplored.  

Jefferson would have been just as tormented, I’m sure, by the innocent children killed in the targeted drone strikes the president continues to order.  He would have been as concerned about the 100 hunger strikers at Gitmo, 35 of whom are being restrained and force fed twice daily in what the UN Commission for Human Rights has condemned as a violation of international law.  The World Medical Association has declared doctor supervision of involuntary force-feeding unethical.   I suppose they would say the same of physicians who made sure prisoners were not accidentally killed while being subjected to a technique that made them experience drowning in a most visceral and convincing way.  In spite of our best efforts to keep these people alive, nine of them died in Gitmo.   Things happen during war.

I can hear the chorus of freedom loving Americans, and I understand.  Not our fault!  They hate our freedom!  And what about all those innocent people the terrorists they might well be associated with, or are at least sympathetic to, killed?  The UN, bah!  World Medical Association, foo!  How easy it is for the world to cast its judgments down on us, the hypocrites!

I also understand why the trial of Bradley Manning must be kept as quiet as possible.  He will be given a fair public trial, even if much of it will be in secret, and then convicted of betraying this great nation.   Manning disclosed some documents and videos that made the American military look very bad.   Such behavior must be punished harshly and publicly (even if the trial is not) to deter any other would be “light shiners” and people of “conscience”.  

What business was it of Manning’s if a helicopter crew laughed after killing some unarmed civilians in Baghdad, reacting like the machine guns and tiny humans sited in their scope were part of a video game?   Who is Manning to judge that Americans in harm’s way can’t blow off a little steam once in a while?  It’s not like plenty of other civilians weren’t being collateral damage while this particular, insignificant accidental killing of an unfortunately located Reuters camera crew and unarmed Iraqis coming to rescue wounded civilians happened.  The incident was marked classified for a very good reason– WE DON’T WANT PEOPLE TO THINK BADLY OF AMERICA.

I heard recently from the author of a book about soldier misconduct in Vietnam that the My Lai Massacre, for which Lt. Calley, for his part in the slaughter of hundreds, was famously court-martialed (and eventually served 3 years under house arrest), was one of dozens, if not hundreds of such slaughters of Vietnamese villagers during the years that American soldiers fought an endless war against a popular underground army.  

American boys were subjected to terrible things in that war, by a merciless and cunning enemy, things nobody should ever see.  If a few of them snapped and murdered civilians from time to time, well, the Army considered that something we should take care of in-house.   It was taken care of, in all cases but My Lai, by classifying the reports.  And it worked, the accounts of these mass murders remained secret for 40 years or so.  

The author persevered and after a long, grim dance, got these classified reports of other massacres.   He visited the villages decades after the atrocities to interview those who remembered.  There were plenty of Vietnamese who remembered.  The author reports he was struck by the absence of hatred toward him as an American.  The survivors seemed grateful for the chance to tell an American their stories.  It took more than a year for the slaughter at My Lai to come to light, after some traitor or another made it public, after choking down the memory of it night after night, month after month.

It is amazing that the reports of these massacres that the author eventually read were not destroyed, as is routinely done now with compromising evidence (think air controller tapes from 9/11, secret non-sworn testimony given by president and vice president to the 9/11 Commission  that was not allowed to take notes or reveal what they’d said, video of detainee “enhanced interrogation” etc.).

Let us all be prudent, then, and patriotic, and wait 40 years or so before opening the can of worms that this private, entrusted with keeping classified information secret, prematurely and disloyally pried open.   To paraphrase Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, one of the architects of our highly successful overthrow of a brutal and secretive dictator in Iraq to build a free nation in the Middle East, a bulwark against hatred of American freedom and a beacon of democracy to a world mired in ignorance, superstition and poverty:  What we don’t know can’t hurt us.  Or, at least we won’t know what what we don’t know did to us, since we didn’t know it was even there, really.

Moment of Contentment

Many things are beyond human control.  My friend who surgeons have been cutting at and other oncologists have been pumping full of poisons in an attempt to prolong his life comes to mind.  Woke up one day with a mysterious lump on his backside.  Did you ever hear of soft tissue sarcoma?  I hadn’t.  It’s apparently rare.  The form he has is a rare form of a rare cancer.  They throw darts at a dart board to treat it.   After his first round of chemo the doctor was very serious.

“The tumor has doubled in size,” said the oncologist.  “I think we should try another chemo regime.”

“I think so too, doc” said my friend, sitting uncomfortably on what was left under him to sit on.  They’d told him they’d removed all the cancer when they cut out several pounds of his flesh.  They underestimated cancer’s craftiness.

Why do I type Moment of Contentment and launch right into this horrible story?   Partly my nature and partly to point out what it is.  In the midst of this death by a thousand cuts my friend can still laugh sometimes.  Needs to laugh, more than most.  He has always had a great and infectious laugh too, with a taste for slapstick, the bizarre and the not too drastic misfortunes of others.

When I had the headphones on last night, adding tracks to a mix with a tiny portable USB keyboard, and I’m playing drums, bass, electric piano, more percussion by hitting the small keys of a flat little keyboard that weighs a few ounces (and cost $50– the Korg nanokey 2, if you’re interested) I had a thought of my friend, a great musician who nimbly tickled the ivory with Fred Flintstone fingers and how this little keyboard might be the best present he could receive (assuming, of course, that the neurological damage produced by the chemo still allows him to play) .  

I’m talking about the moment of contentment where we are doing exactly what feels best to us.  The moment we wouldn’t change anything, or, like when writing here when we can change exactly and only what we don’t like and leave only what we do like.  

Not every moment of contentment produces something to share, there are things like letting a cool breeze blow across your face on a hot day, closing your eyes, with relief caressing your face.  There are all the little things we do that produce nothing but a moment of contentment.   These moments are nothing to sneeze at, especially given the world we live in today.

Now back to our regularly scheduled headaches…

10,000 Kicks

I saw a quote from Bruce Lee recently, my man Bruce Lee.   “I do not fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks.  I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”  Dig it.

My father could have been woken from a sound sleep, been urged to put on a suit and rush over to the funeral home.  On the trip, even if the place was close by, he could compose a eulogy in his head to make the mourners cry, then laugh, then cry again.   It was a talent he had, something he must have given a lot of thought to at some point.   I saw his notes for a eulogy, five or six words on the back of an envelope.

He was not a professional eulogist, if there is such a job, but he was a very, very good one.   

His example may not be the best one for our purposes here, because it was somewhat innate in his case.    I am thinking of the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.   If I sometimes spent ten hours straight playing the guitar, it was not to improve my playing, it was because I couldn’t stop.  And because I couldn’t stop my fingers got more and more warmed up, I stumbled on new possibilities, parts, voicings for chords, ways to strike the strings.  So love of the thing made me improve, because the playing was  so much fun for me.  The discoveries were an organic part of how much I love to play.  Same with drawing.

This blahg is a kicking board set up in front of my cottage in dreamland.  I come out each day into the fog and kick the board once, softly but with great focus.  I stand and breathe in the cool, wet air.  I kick the board again, harder.  Then I kick it again.  After a while I am kicking the living shit out of the board, smiling as I recall Bruce Lee’s smirked rejoinder to O’Hara, the evil bully, breaking a board in front of Bruce’s face before their fight at Evil Han’s tournament.   “Boards don’t hit back,” says Bruce Lee curtly before bashing O’Hara directly in the scar on his cheek inflicted by Bruce’s father the day his sister committed suicide after fighting off O’Hara and his lecherous bully friends.

Boards don’t hit back.   But if you hit a board correctly a few thousand times you get the hang of it in a way that people who kick things randomly have no hope of ever kicking.

Peak Experience

We experience countless things each day.  A person with a great memory, which I am often reputed to have, might remember a few grains of these experiences.  Certain experiences are unforgettable, when they involve our senses directly.   This cuts both ways, great memories and terrible ones, both enduring.  But when things are exciting, fun and spontaneous they inspire us, they stick in our memory.  That is because these are the moments when we are most fully alive.

Your soul is on fire, poet, but there is nothing we can do for you but throw spears.

Peak experience is when you operate intuitively against the beat, chose notes and flavors that have not been tried before.   Seasoning a new dish with fresh herbs from the garden, a different combination, delicious.   Hitting the cowbell perfectly against the side of the beat.  The colors spread thickly in a perfect brushstroke gradient, that succulent array of sunset blues going dark.   The spatula of a hand, bending supplely against beats from the Indian Ocean.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please send me an email.   I will in turn send you a rhythm track to improvise to.   You can then send me the youTube link and I’ll add an animation to it.   These times are in many ways hellish times, but the technology is getting fucking amazing. 

Q & A for TED Fellowship application

How would being a TED Fellow directly help you in your mission?

I’m glad you asked!   I am in the strange position of having a program that works very much the way I drew it up, as long as I am doing 99% of the necessary work, much of which I have no experience in.  Children are really engaged with it, I’ve simplified the process so that children can work quickly, and the possibilities of the program are vast.  But unless I meet the right cohort of people to help me expand the program, the entire project is on very thin ice.  In addition the project is wearing a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, with no shoes.  Try sliding around on thin ice in that outfit, TED.  I imagine that I will be energized and inspired by my contact with other TED Fellows and might, directly or indirectly, meet the people I need to meet to let this successful program expand and begin working with its target kids.

Why are you typing instead of going shopping for food before you have to go to a funeral?

While I don’t believe this is strictly a question for the TED application, it is the best one to ask at the moment.  I would have to think about this one.   A conundrum, a riddle wrapped in an enigma.  Damn.  Funny as hell, as shit, as enhanced interrogation and root canal.  Funny as the party line, as idiocy itself.  I have no answer for this.  It is a symptom of something much more serious, something I dare not consider.

Any more questions, wise ass?

Not at the moment.  No, ma’am.  I’ve got about 15 minutes to get ready to get out of here.

People Are Funny

Art Linkletter had a show of that name back in the 1960s,  Who is he?  Ax Wikipedia.  I remember what he looked like, but little else about him.  Except that he had a show called People Are Funny and also a daughter who took acid, lysergic acid diethylamide and, while on an LSD trip, jumped to her death out of a window.  You can imagine her believing she could fly and smiling as she took off.

People are funny, I have noticed the same thing.  My grandmother, while she was dying of cancer, got a call from an old friend who’d been avoiding her.  She gushed like a little girl talking to this woman.   “I miss you!  Come over any time, sweetheart, I’d love to see you.  You know, cancer is not contagious, you can’t catch it.  Please, come, I’d love to catch up with you.”   I didn’t hear the woman’s replies, I’m sure she was telling my grandmother how delighted she’d be, how she was looking forward to it.  My grandmother chirped a few more things and hung up the phone.  As she slammed the phone into the cradle she said “I hate the guts from that woman!”   I had no doubt about that.

You hurt most the ones you feel the most comfortable with, isn’t that funny?   Few abusive people go out and abuse strangers, it’s generally those in their lives who will take the abuse, one way or another, that they prey on.  If I act like an asshole to someone who loves me, well, there’s much less chance of being punched in the face, for one thing.  But why do we do it?

Because, get ready for it, get ready for it—- People Are Funny!  Maybe not ha-ha ROTFLMAO funny, but funny as hell itself.  Funny as hell.  That’s pretty funny, eternal damnation and endless torture!   Whee.  I have a friend who says “funny as shit”, which is another good one.  Nothing more hilarious than a nice pile of shit next to you on the couch!

I had more things to write here, but you must excuse me, I’m feeling a little funny.

 

Living In My Own Head

An imaginary application to participate in TED talks as a 2013 TED Fellow:

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF

We take this portion of the application very seriously. Please take the time to answer the questions thoughtfully, with enough detail to help us understand who you are. 

All responses are limited to 1500 characters except where noted.

What is your current primary activity? *

 

I am the facilitator of a child-run animation workshop and the Creative Director of the nonprofit wehearyou.net.  Our mission is to carefully listen to the children’s ideas and concerns and to encourage them to express these things in animation.   And they do.  The children set up the camera stand and lights for each session, create the animation, shoot all the frames, input them to a computer, edit the frames, make the soundtrack.   There is virtually no creative input from adults, whose role is to keep an eye on the clock and make sure things run smoothly.  Being this hands-off is hard work, too, and requires a high degree of calmness, alertness, discipline, attentiveness and humor.  Also, perhaps most importantly, flexibility on the fly.    

In addition to my work as lead facilitator of the workshop I am also the organization’s Director of Development, recruiter, fundraiser, corresponding secretary, trainer, marketing and branding officer, writer, webmaster, social media director, head of outreach, bookkeeper.   I also do the final edit of the weekly animations and mix the soundtracks.   (1,068 characters)

 

What are you best known for? *

Oddly enough, cool under fire, sang froid.  I’m aided in this by an overdeveloped sense of irony acquired during constant warfare in the contentious family of my childhood.   I am known for several skills and talents that I’ve made no efforts to exploit financially, to the puzzlement of many.  I am considered an inventive draftsman, I play guitar and keyboards and arrange, I’m a clear, concise and sometimes moving writer.  I am also known for dreaming and my many ideas, which I have never hesitated to share.  Also for a sometimes uncanny memory. 

In the professional realm, I am best known for variations on the above.  As a subsistence lawyer I was probably best known for my deadpan style, quickness of tongue and odd grace dancing before judges, especially when they were being disrespectful.   As a teacher I was probably best known for my easy rapport with children, candor and quickness of retort.  I also gave a high priority to the students’ creativity and took pains not to pour water on any idea they expressed.  Parents and colleagues often remarked on how creative my classes were.

As a young man I was probably best known for my angry words.   I have been transforming myself into a more deliberate, milder person.   A quick, cutting response may be fun to make, and satisfying in the moment, but one learns (with luck) that it does little to advance a real conversation.  I am known for being someone you can have a meaningful conversation with.  I place a high value on real conversation.

 

What other achievements (not only academic) would you like to share? *

As hinted at above, my achievements are difficult to quantify, in worldly terms.   My biggest achievement to date has been my ongoing dedication to my beliefs as embodied in wehearyou.net.  My creation of and involvement with this program, which I consider radical and sorely needed, has necessitated many positive changes in my thinking and action.  

I’ve come to understand that most people are mostly preoccupied most of the time and that the modern attention span is very short.  I’ve had to learn things I’d never thought about.   I’ve had to learn, for example, that most people don’t give a rat’s ass about whether or not poor children in Harlem make animation.   I am, after a long digestive period, able to keep those perceptions in mind without letting them deter me or slow my progress.

My mission is to encourage people to listen to and respond to each other gently.  It’s a life-affirming thing for a child to be listened to attentively by an adult, to have a moment to dream out loud uninterrupted.  While this is a sadly rare thing (for anyone of any age) in our hyper digital world of virtual connection and overloaded distraction, the program and I have made some very encouraging first steps in this direction.

 

Beyond your work and studies, what are you passionate about? (e.g. hobbies, causes, activities, issues — please do not talk about your work in this section) *

I am passionate about playing music, listening and preserving the spaces in music that are where the action is.   I am passionate about improvising and helping to bring out the creativity of others.   I play the guitar, mostly, and am always most pleased when another musician comments on how much space I leave for other people’s ideas.  I also enjoy accompanying singers.

I am passionate about justice, which is one reason the law was such an unappealing detour on the road of my life.  Justice in America is largely the justice you can afford to purchase.   I can point you to the relevant provisions in our constitution which obliquely say as much.  The gulf between what is legal and what is right is an enormous, stinking crevasse.  My powerlessness in the face of recent injustice,  “the war on terror” and its related excesses, the widespread,  crippling criminality of the financial sector, led me to imagine a program that would encourage children to plan, stage, critique, problem-solve in groups.  To help them become informed, effective citizens of a democracy.

I dream of helping create articulate young citizens who are able to inform themselves about issues, argue them and organize to change intolerable conditions in our democracy.  I plan to give a digital megaphone and increased sense of agency to children, particularly those society has decided get all the help they need from programs for “at-risk” and “underprivileged” kids.   

I am passionate about letting the larger society, the one busy piously acquiring wealth, see what is in the minds and hearts of young people who are seen, if at all, as profitable widgets for privatized prisons. 

I am passionate about drawing, writing well and, whenever possible, having deep conversation.

 

Share an example of something you have been a part of (including created, led, or joined) that you consider unique, even if no one else does. Why do you think it is mould breaking? (Limit 2250 characters) * 

Not to harp on wehearyou.net, but I consider our approach unique and mould breaking.   Here’s the idea, with illustrations at the end.  The creative potential of young children is increasingly discounted.   When children are allowed to choose their projects, &  control all aspects of production, remarkable things emerge.  Week after week children ages 7 to 11 create, in the chaos of a free-form workshop, surprisingly inventive animation.   I am amazed by some break-through just about every session.

The great Sugata Mitra demonstrated children’s ability to self-organize, learn and teach each other things they are passionately engaged with.   Mitra used a computer embedded in a wall and documented the progress of illiterate children, as a group, who mastered the technology with no outside help.   Wehearyou.net is using the canvas of animation to help demonstrate the rich creative lives of children who are increasingly forced into ever more restrictive learning environments where most of them will learn failure rather than any kind of success.

In the test-prep age of No Child Left Behind children are seen as passive vessels to be filled with information and skills geared to standardized tests rather than as partners in their own education.  Kids are capable of learning much more than most educators give them credit for, particularly if license is given for their creativity to enter the classroom.

8 year-old with cut-out and three foil coins asks how to make the little character juggle.  I tell him I have no idea, see what you can do.  Within moments the little cut-out is juggling, the kid is already on to the next thing, with barely a backwards glance.  Two seven year olds create a guitarist and drummer.  Passing by I suggest they cut off and move the guitarist’s arm to make him strum.   A short while later they shoot a sequence where the two tiny musicians play perfectly in sync, the guitarist strumming then flipping his guitar in the air to catch and strum it on the beat.  The drummer, meanwhile, flips his drumsticks in the air, catches them and, bam!, exactly on the same beat.  How they did it, truthfully, I have no idea.

Idea Girl, nine, with five ideas a week she is too distracted to carry out, describes sequence where character will take part of his stomach, make a basketball backboard and hoop out of it, dunk a basketball, turn a somersault, pick up the backboard, eat it, get fat and then turn into a ball.   I ask if she’ll do this with clay.  She nods.  A few hours later, when first looking at the frames they shot during the session, I am amazed to see the frames, which needed no editorial improvement, doing exactly what she described.  (2732)

 

What questions should we have asked, but didn’t? Please write them down and answer them! (in other words, tell us something about yourself that we don’t know yet). (Limit 2250 characters) *

(I’ll get back to them on this one) 

Can you share a memorable anecdote from your life that will give us a further sense of what makes you tick?

My father was brilliant and very funny but also brutally defended at all times.   I learned, at age 40, that he’d been the victim of atrocious abuse from his mother, whippings as soon as he was old enough to stand.  Learning this unspeakable secret, from Eli, an older cousin, gave me great insight I could never have had without knowing about the abuse he’d endured.

My father and I had a life-long debate about whether people could change.   He argued that only superficial things could be changed, that deeper personality traits were ingrained and set.  I said changes in response were the first step toward making the deeper changes.  He angrily denied any insights I may have thought I’d received from Eli, pointing out that his cousin was a problematic historian and tyrannical father.

At 1 a.m. on what turned out to be the last night of my father’s life I visited him in the hospital.  His first comment: “Eli hit the nail right on the head, only he didn’t tell you the worst of it.”  He hadn’t recovered from being whipped as an infant.  This brilliant man remained somehow convinced he’d been the dumbest kid in town.  He told me I was right about change.  He wished he’d had the insight to try to change himself.  “I imagine how much richer my life would have been if I had not seen it as a zero-sum war.”  

As sun set the next evening he breathed his last, I closed his eyes. The profound gift of these last moments with my father remains with me, and sustains my beliefs.  (1476)

How did you hear about the TED Fellows program?

I don’t recall exactly.  I think I stumbled on a TED talk on youTube and have watched many since.  I also subscribe to the podcast on WNYC.   Several friends, it turns out, are also great fans of TED (how can you not be?) and I have done some evangelizing and turned a few others on to these remarkable talks.  I probably learned of the Fellows program on the TED website.

 

Have you participated in TED before? If so, to what extent? (e.g. you watch TEDTalks, you’ve attended / hosted / spoken at a TEDx event, you’re a TEDTranslator, etc) 

Only to the extent of being inspired by many of the talks.  The inspirations have been too many to list in 1,500 characters, but for purposes of wehearyou.net, the talks of Sugata Mitra, Ken Robinson and Seth Godin cannot be praised enough.

Another word about the so-called IRS Scandal

As always, the truth is a bit more complex (dare we use that freedom-hating word nuanced?)  than the headlines.  The headlines in mass media are often framed by the more aggressive, better financed, more media savvy group.   The apparent spinelessness of our cringing majority party aside, there would seem to be something to this assertion:

No one was singled out. The IRS net for possibly political organizations caught some 300 applications. Of these, no more than a third were “conservative” or “tea party” or “right-wing.” The rest were something else, including “liberal” and “left-wing.” None of the so-called conservative group applications were denied. Some were delayed, deservedly so, but a group can function as a 501(c)(4) with an application pending, so it’s hard to see how much damage a delay would do, if any.

You can read the rest of the discussion here

 

NYC Summer makes an appearance

Hot, yes, but also humid as just inside an elephant’s asshole.   Take a shower and feel your skin a moment later– clammy.  The sinuses fill with some kind of pressurized liquid, a dullness behind the eyes.   Dog piss steaming up from the concrete.

Not enough coffee in the apartment to wake myself up today.  Going to go for a strong Dominican cafe negro, if I can summon the strength.