STRANGER FROM MILLER’S RAVINE

The purpose for my documentation is not due to inspiration, but rather, skepticism. A conversion of doubt, wonder and dread.

     It all came together when local historical records confirmed these events took place. Also, the dates, when and where and whom, proved accurate. I realized how that night, when I heard this story, something had occurred; and, its meaning, I leave for the reader to decide.

     My decision to record and document this may lead to consequences I have no desire to experience.*

      Damn conscience, damn memory, damn story—it haunts with a relentless need to be passed on.  Even now, the reluctance to continue writing flares up. A familiar paralysis of thought slows the movement of my hand.

In memory of the people whom history and folk tales have unjustly excluded, leaving them forgotten.

In memory of those who died knowing what we do not know and hopefully, never shall experience.

     Neither do we have any concept, nor ability for comprehending, how their lives were ended, taken for no reason, except a Dark Fate. May we remember them now. And also, be wary of the cause, for the Stranger still walks among us, eager with pride.

                             *As the Author risks, the Reader also takes a chance. A subsequent vulnerability contingent with this story warrants a word of caution. Reference to these ‘possible’ consequences, if necessary, are well documented and may be found in the concluding Index. –SPH 2001

CONTINUE READING 

Mining Emotions: What Makes Us So Invincible?

This article was posted exactly 4 years ago, October 2010. It’s worth revisiting….

Originally posted by Remittance Girl here , we are asking what is happening to us today due to a mass media and technological revolution.

Why is it disturbing to see the wife of a trapped miner waiting for her husband to come up in the rescue pod? Because instead of being able to privately experience the horror and emotion, she must experience it publicly. Worse, she is under a microscope with reporters commenting on whether or not her reaction is appropriate. Filming her every move, we then, as an audience, consume it and the effective desensitization remains arguably indicative of a serious shift in our cultural and social AND personal interactions.

Noticing how social interactions and boundaries are not just erased, but realizing how they are being re-shaped as I write this blog post, is the subject of what will be an ongoing discussion. Think about the massive changes that have happened in how we live our day to day lives. How we share information and experience being human has undergone a dramatic shift. We, as individuals and as communities, are expected and encouraged to bare our souls over the internet, on reality television, thru social networks, and more, in a manner that may be unprecedented in human evolution. There is no respect for privacy anymore but at the same time, we sit in front of a screen in private viewing another person’s public exposure.

This emotional voyeurism has taken the place of experiencing emotions, further distancing us from the most natural element of humanity. With so many platforms for distribution and easy-to-use devices for user-generated content, it’s like a virus has infected all of us to such a degree that many of us find it disturbing. But it is hard to identify WHY or WHAT it is that disturbs us, so we do not know how to communicate it and thus, many remain silent.

Is it the fault of the media for producing it or the fault of the public for consuming it?

Very few people recognize how the law of unintended consequences works across the course of human history and most importantly, how we are NOT immune. Often, our technology far advances our tactical ability and as a result, it takes years for cultures to either catch up or recover from the profound effects. Compare today with the age following Gutenberg’s printing press and the introduction of moveable type to Europeans in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Think about all of the changes that occurred due to the spread of information: The Christian Reformation, Scientific Revolution…

Now consider the Information Age of Media and Technology, for all its good but unintended consequences. It is a valid hypothesis to argue that we DO underestimate how our own brain functions are being effected: http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=brainBriefings_MirrorNeurons

Discovered in the early 1990s, Mirror Neurons are revolutionizing the way Neuroscientists understand human neurophysiology and brain function. This could do for Neuropsychology what DNA did for Biology. It also explains why Remittance Girl poses a valid argument towards how this dynamic in media technology today may be damaging us. Most certainly, we spend more time in front of a screen than in a social setting or among a group of people. We experience human emotion more frequently via television, photographs, social networks, mobile devices and the internet as opposed to being physically present.

CONTINUED

Little Moments of Freedom, Fireworks & Spontaneous Song

Surprised, I See The 4th Of July Fireworks From My New York City Balcony from Gidget Widget on Vimeo.

I was late for the party uptown. I looked at the clock. I knew it. I’d miss the fireworks… again. Then, BOOM! I ran to my window to look out and to my surprise a perfect view. So, after battling with the door leading out onto our balcony, I stood watching them, a perfect view. I had my phone in my hand. I turned on the video record and then, for no reason, I started to belt out the “Star Spangled Banner.”

A piece of life captured in its moment. Perhaps, little things like this, go unnoticed. Yet, all together they add up. Each of us experience these pockets of moments, insignificant to many, but special for those who share them.

Celebrating Independence allowing for freedom to experience life, here’s a July 4th record by a young woman in New York City, USA.

Monday NYC Theatre, 2005: “From Tel Aviv To Ramallah”

From Tel Aviv To Ramallah  was a production I attended, spontaneously and alone, on a rainy Monday night in Manhattan, late 2005.  As many theatre patrons know, Mondays are the day of the week when many theaters are dark (no performance.) But sometimes, these are the best opportunities to catch the magic of live theatre. And here’s how I managed to catch this one particular night which resonates more and more with each passing year.

Here in New York City, a smorgasbord awaits the avid theater-goer. Even if you are on a budget (students or starving, Bohemian artists; or cash-poor adventurers, like me,) folks have ways of getting tickets. The catch is, most discounts demand the person be ready to go the day-of the performance.

Well, there’s a reason why I love seeing theatre, at the last minute, with no expectations. To elaborate, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict inspired a number New Plays Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway in 2005 and I found myself trying to attend as many as possible. A handful of these plays challenged perceptions, offered insight, a human story, all those things that made other productions worth the risk. To bluntly put it: if I allowed the synopses and especially, the critical reviews, to pick and choose which productions I saw then, I’d have missed the best one.

The habits for overtly political theatre may be a time honored tradition in theatre history but what is it more akin to in the 21st Century? What politics are we addressing and how?

Every time we sit down for a performance arts piece, centered around modern day conflicts and cultural-politico-socio-ideologies, we risk exposing ourselves to the moribundity of Populist Theatre. (Not just theatrical mediums but all media and its audiences are more easily are mistaking political for populist propaganda.) A bad-habit we are all forming, because it is becoming all to “normal.”

That is, to employ mechanisms like “definitive archetypes,” portraying only selective pieces of information, building upon one opinion, one perception of a war, stereotyping each of the cultures involved. Pounding cheap, theoretical conjecture into an audience already over-saturated in Op/Ed news and information.

In the case of certain productions about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and also, the War On Terror, the human experience serves only to cater for the intent of Populism. To add emotional impact, ignite the zeitgeist, am I correct?

A reflection of the humanist struggle when the forces of Political or Cultural Movements subsume a person’s existence?

See, this is why I like walking into a production, understanding the risk, not knowing much about it, and hoping for a jewel.

As part of the Out Loud: New Play Reading Series at Ars Nova in 2005, the show From Tel Aviv To Ramallah performed for only that one night. And for those 75 minutes or so…  Man, I wish I could bring Yuri Lane and his solo production here, today, for people to see. I think its message is more important than ever.

At a small but inviting performance venue on 54th, between 10th and 11th Avenue, I took my seat among the small audience. Two young men, maybe 16 years old, were sitting in front of me, excited to see their favorite beatbox performer and drinking Red Bull. They came in from Connecticut. They were not expecting a powerful piece of theatre and neither was I.

Yuri Lane avoided all the aforementioned pitfalls for the Political and Populist Theatre productions. He did it simply. With minimal design, he told us a story. Using his skills with beatbox, language, rhythm, gesture; using three light cues to distinguish SR, SL and Center; finally inverted pictures, multimedia projected on the backdrop, he set the scene for a fable about one young man from Tel Aviv and one young man from Ramallah.

Instead of showing us who was wrong and who was right, he told us of Amir and of Khalid. The idea that dreams and ideals of youth exist in separate microcosms outside the larger reality of (the Israeli-Palestinian) conflict set the story in motion. We learn about two different, but also similar people, whose goals are not unlike yours or mine. One wants to be a DJ. One wants to own an Internet Cafe. They share the threat of attacks. And their journey shows how a gradual diffusion of the greater reality into each microcosm, negates the youthful idealism for a future independent of violence and injustice. Both have their dreams compromised. Both must transition from adolescent to adulthood. Both must face each other in the end and the choices they make, leading them to the final moment of the play. A vision of peace comes down to two young men, who make one choice. Peace, perhaps, may not be realized by Treaties or United Nations intervening, or a great leader’s solution, but perhaps, it begins with a choice. An understanding.

And the audience is left without any clear answer about who is right, who is wrong and why one side is bad versus the other. Why would we presume an understanding? How to solve the permutations of a conflict, as deep and complicated as the Israeli-Palestinian hostilities?

Rachel Havrelock wrote and directed this play.

Is our civilization so solid that you do not fear to shake the pillars on which it rests? Can you not see that all falls in upon you if one column be shattered? Could you not have learned if not to love one another, at least to tolerate the great virtues and the great vices of each other? Was it not your duty to attempt –you have never attempted it in sincerity– to settle amicably the questions which divided you, the problem of peoples annexed against their will, the equitable division of productive labor and the riches of the world? Must the stronger forever darken the others with the shadow of his pride, and the others forever unite to dissipate it? Is there no end to this bloody and puerile sport, in which the partners change about from century to century– no end, until the whole of humanity is exhausted thereby?

ROMAIN ROLLAND, “Above The Battle,”

Journal de Geneve_, September 15, 1914.

Confessions Of A Multimedia Spinster

Saturday, June 18, 2011

 

NEW YORK CITY

It begins with only a whisper. Like a single spark igniting a firestorm. Holding Strategic Business Contingency meetings among their executive management has proven ineffective. What they thought was a new platform full of promising financial opportunity has indeed generated additional revenue streams, but their focus has been and remains OFF of the “little guy.” All it takes is the smallest catalyst to trigger a chain reaction the news media and corporate conglomerates fear the most.

Executives rely upon a traditional business operations model to work for this new platform: Managers overseeing Editors overseeing their roster of Independent Contractors, Work-For-Hire (the legal term is Work-MADE-For-Hire, but it’s now losing that very important word, ‘MADE’) and Temporary Staff responsible for generating the designated content for the product. These “little guys” are working under the same parameters they always have. For example, writers are contracted to produce content for the company under the same auspices as the writers working for Marvel or DC Comics in 1980. They get their paycheck and whatever intellectual content they generate is no longer theirs, but owned indefinitely by the company. Even if an employee creates a character or product that becomes a multi-billion dollar franchise, she has no right to financial compensation beyond her Work-MADE-For-Hire contract. Why do you think Jack Kirby’s family has been in a legal battle with the Marvel Empire for a share in the billions of dollars the company makes from Kirby’s creative genius?

High above the New York City street traffic, the corporate executives meet to discuss their Strategic Business Contingency plans, again. This time, they’ll have to face a double-edged sword. Or else risk exposing the sweat shops of their information entertainment divisions.

Employees hired to generate content for these growing Multimedia and Digital platforms are neither compensated, nor feel obligated, nor have reason to maintain Confidentiality as they did before. Non-Disclosure Agreements used to keep company policies and internal operations away from public scrutiny. But when hundreds of people are treated as expendable and with the nubile, job-seeking youth always in supply, the question for these media mega-giants will be how to save face when their former employees wise up and use the anonymity of multimedia platforms to air the dirty laundry.

What is the first corporate media giant you think of when you hear that a “former employee reveals how he was told to lie in his coverage, writing for ______ ?”

If you said, “News Corporation or FOX News,” then I am afraid you are too easily swayed by the media propaganda.

I am referring, actually, to this article about AOL: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out

This will not be the last testimonial from a person who has been a writer or producer behind the “news” that millions of people consume every day. AOL and News Corporation are furthermore, not the only companies who operate under similar moral/ethical ambiguities as detailed apropos of this article. The truth is, THEY ALL OPERATE THIS WAY. In fact, it’s getting worse due to the online start-ups. The Huffington Post, for example, was a brand built and made profitable by the “little guys,” who in this specific case, were generating content for FREE and received little to no compensation or credit when Arianna Huffington sold it to AOL.

When I say the decline in journalism today has reached a breaking point, I mean it. It’s no longer publish or perish. It’s Spin. Whoever can spin the best story gets the most hits. The better the Spin Doctor, the more valuable you are to the corporate executives sitting in their Strategic Planning meeting.

Understand, what you read as news is really just spin doctored information produced with the intent to out-spin its rival multimedia platforms. Expecting journalism to be what it used to be remains more than ever before, an exercise in futility.

“Don’t believe what you read in the papers.”

It’s all propaganda. It’s all a telephone game. Wake up and smell the coffee–it stinks!

Recognize how the media itself is spinning out of control. We’re all caught in the Spin together. If the audience does not stop consuming what these media giants are producing, then they will suck us all straight down with their spin-doctored “news.” Do we want to end up back into the Dark Ages?

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I will keep saying it until more people begin to realize it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a mysterious new dynamic in our reality:

There is a new species in the habitat and it’s not biological. It’s viral.

DEVELOPING…

Copyright 2011 by Kimberly Cox, All Rights Reserved