Shoot It!

The book "Shoot It! Hollywood Inc and the Rise of Independent Film" by David Spaner,  had me at the intro.

(P 10)
"The studios of early Hollywood are now massive corporate entities with a devastating impact on the quality of movies and on local film cultures….Internationalism and globalization are as different as volunteering to fight fascism in Spain in 1937 and outsourcing Nike production to a nonunion zone in China in 2007. Internationalism is about diverse local cultures and joining to find common humanity across borders. “my nation is cinema and my language is film” says Mexican filmmaker, Alfonso Cueron. Globalization is about worldwide homogenization. The globalization of culture has seen less attention than the globalization of economics, but it is this conflict between internationalism and globalization that, between the local and the global, that defines the difference between independents and studio. “The more local you are the more universal and international you are,” says filmmaker, Jean Pierre Lefebvre, who as a young Montreal cinephile fell in love with Italian neorealism. “What made Italian cinema universal? Because it always talked about Italian values, it showed landscapes showed food, showed people with different attitudes.” American folklorist Alan Lomax, writing in 1968, warned that “soon there will be nowhere to go and nothing worth staying home for. Our Western mass production and communication systems are inadvertently destroying the languages, traditions, cuisines and creative styles that once gave every people and every locality distinctive character-indeed their principle reason for living.”

Fashion is also taking the hit, as design by corporation tends to water down, cheapen, generify and dictate style which pushes it into a very small corner. Independent designers (artist, thinkers...rebels) need our support. Ok this might be a Kerf Project promo, but is also way more :-)

(p 16)
.....Of course, not every purely independent film is great cinema, but like Warner Bros, when it really was the Warner Brothers, independent filmmakers are more willing to take risks that today's business grad--turned-studio executives who always choose the safe route. And it is risk taking that makes possible the movie (the life, the art, the evolutionary adaptation) that shatters expectations. "

As corporations are now controlling so much of the arts, fashion, life -our very ability to imagine possibilities, is limited more and more.  No risk, comfort zone and "safety" are words of stagnation.  Ruled by fear, its proponents are scarcity and greed. Safe under these conditions, simulates the "safety" of death. The issue becomes moot- shoulda, coulda, woulda  -Duh!

Job scarcity enabled by WTO, led to outsourcing that was helped along by the USA Propaganda Inc. (N Snow)  that was paid for with our collective tax dollars, now effectively lowering wages, by raising costs on necessities!  Ideas of food scarcity are made real to raise prices, allow GMOs..etc. (Frances Leppe World Hunger, 12 Food Myths, Farm Aid) The more controlled and narrow the input, the lesser the chance for great output. Remember the phrase "race to the bottom."

That is not the world I wish on my children (my granddaughters)  nor yours. They and we, deserve to overcome this systemic depletion of being. The more we are encouraged to think as machines,  the more robotic like products of manufactured consent, we will become. Trust me, that ain't life, that is an intellectual narrowing into a deficit subreality, the shallows-AKA a super lossy one function plug in. Say no and get out now!

As a "get out" surmises a "get in" elsewhere, we, like the independent filmmakers, need to collaborate, cooperate and build for healthy alternatives.

People are experimenting with meaningful, mindful processes, groups, arts and events. This is conscious doing. It comes in many formats, frames, models and designs. It is the freeing of that which kept "noses to the grindstones," and lives in pain.

I believe that seeking to foster the unique potential of each person will foster more potential in the whole. The sum of the parts is more than the whole, it is following the light of the expanding universe, it is in our DNA, it is our heritage.

The Pulse

Seattle streets are full of art for all and lately a lot of pieces seem to be calling for a compassionate wake up. Is the theme in the streets or is the theme 'in me?'...Is it awareness that opens us to life, or is life showing up to make us aware? The law of attraction perhaps? I know not, but i do know we shouldn't let it/us/them/self down. We should say yes to love and choose the path of the true heart. Why is it so difficult?

WaterRip Installation

Dress from thrift store, yard sale fabric, with trimming bits from Zootsuit days and brown braid from Sew Up Seattle.This time i used a pattern -McCalls- with changes...always seem to go there.

I graduated (YAY! BA in Interdisciplinary Studies, focus on environmental science and communications) and am now into setting up workshops at the Kerf (sewing, multi media, have an idea, talk to us!) and developing the Water Spirit dresses.

The WaterRIP installation will go up in the Fall, ready for the October Wallingford Art Walk. Ann Teplick writer, teacher and local treasure, is curating a literary scene that will present sometime(s) during the shows run. This is exciting, as i so look forward to hearing and seeing how our works combine; the magick's in the sum of parts!

This time the story (WaterRIP)  connects the human species and water, not just in a physical resource management way (Huge and Important by itself!), but in a complex atomic reality that smudges the borders between us.

Born of Stars

We are one. Born of stars we are connected to the whole of the universe. Super novas are the extraordinary, the ones who choose to go beyond normal. According to recent Wayne Dwyer PBS broadcast, "Wishes Fulfilled" our imaginations will lead us if we follow them. Yes!!

Mr Dwyer then proceeded to contradict himself. In the Wishes Fulfilled lecture show he preaches that "everything is possible."  However when pushing for PBS "ratings and cash vote fundraise spot" he says that  "if it isn't possible to go to Assissi , Lourdes..then watch my dvd ...like you are there" ..

So what part of not possible works with all is possible?

I am offended

This ad was posted to fashionRIP and is a construct of the false beliefs that influence rational, emotional and spiritual mind fields.

Overturn Roe vs Wade?  Like what dinosaur is behind this despicable violation of women's rights over their own bodies?

We are not here to procreate like rabbits! We are here for more purposeful attention to our genius and to the genius in others.We are here to give love, to understand light and to align with LIFE. Real pro life is about respecting the breath in all of us, to value the full lifecycle as it relates to the whole of a vast living universe.

The right to bear or not bear children is best left to the individuals who elect to cherish, love, nurture, respect and guide them. This ad is not about that, this ad is about control, control for a world vision that is not just antiquated but is logically absurd.

We need to  focus on the true potential of the children already here.  We must care now for the living if we are to ever fully comprehend who we truly are.

Our species rising population is breaking down natural cycles at an accelerated,obscene rate.  This is insane as we are more dependent upon the natural cycles than the stuff of corporations. The stuff that is causing the problem is for the most part unnecessary and will be obsolete at the blink of an eye. How does this make sense?

We need to act in wisdom, now. We have no more time for creepy games in abstracted reality..

So R vsW campaigners-  practice with the living now, create safe havens, an education system run by teachers that get it, more creative diversity, more meaningful, relevant options for work etc. Take those marketing funds and build a future full of possibilities for the poster baby, that would be beautiful.

 You see without a coherent lifecycle understanding,  i must suspect this ad is about raising human crops to insure a good supply of younguns to march into battle.

As resources dwindle, wars will continue, worsen. I understand your business model. However, i have spent years researching, following paths and stories and we humans have far better, do-able, healthier options.

Please stop this game and go into you, find you and i believe you will redirect. Choose light!

Law of Attraction

Adrianna just happened to wear the colors of Colin Days paintings. It is a magickal Life . I am constantly being reminded to stay awake to the dance of the Universe!

Fashion Field Guide

I am starting a serial on fashion, ecology and evolution that will be posted on the Fashion Ethos blog.  The intro is there now.

When i started this journey i knew so much less than i do now. I trust information will constantly change and as we all try to remain afloat we will adapt, dive, leap and swim as needed.

Right now i am feeling the current and instead of treading water i am going to swim against it. I have been doing this quietly, building muscle, heart, breath and spirit.

All the while i have met other swimmers, virtually and in person. I know we are not crazy, we are solutionaries. So it is time to collect and synthesize my findings. Besides my dad asked me when i was going to write the book. he is in his 80s so i figured i better commit. So here you are dad, i am on it.

 There are many doing this "change thing" and i have faith that enough of us will get through to enough others and the human species will have another go, this time with the upstairs brain in charge.

And yes a life metaphor is playing under the description!

Another Love, Down

I go by this community "poster wall" a lot. It is on the way to my mother's place. So when i stopped yesterday to look at the new art, i didn't know it was a memorial.

I did not know Ana, but i feel she was loved by her friends, her community. I do not know much else, but I felt the universe. I was touched inside where life resides and i allowed it to surface.

I cried standing in the parking lot as i took the photos. The tears were for Ana, her friends and for all the children sacrificed to a culture that can't shake the lies from its past to look the future fully in the eye.

This is a culture that sacrifices its children for commerce and works more on fear than promise and potential. This thinking can and must be laid to rest.

We can now understand what it means to align with the whole of life; to see from a different viewpoint. We can dare to go inward to free ourselves from the outer false reality that was staged for the benefit of the few. We are no longer controlled by a world of scarcity, a world where some had to lose in order for others to win.

This world denied emotions, empathy, compassion, connection and puffered up the ego, made strict rules and used racism, class distinctions and other false "reals" in order to exist. It became a stage for professional dissonance and mindless distractions.

That world is no longer useful nor tolerable.The old rules and attitudes are being discarded, we are moving towards who we truly are, we are freeing our spirits, our emotions and our minds.

Ana's friends faced the pain and felt real enough to show the world. Thank you. You are that which will flourish, you are beautiful.

Valentine's Day

 Stitch-istration of two trees that represent  traditional 

male/female archetypes. They help ground me when i visit.

What a conundrum, i really diss the market's shout to buy junk. This holiday is another one that begs for presence, not presents.

We want love, not delusional referrals of heart that are what?- control agents, monitors of care, tributes to normed relationships, reflections of cultural values? Somewhere we bought the abstract and lost a lot of the true value.

When humans sought to understand their yearnings for the essence that lies in knowing, pulls them toward an authentic connection beyond self, they wanted to share the idea so they gave it a name and Love was born.

In a culture that gives a lot of homage to things measurable, provable and repeatable,  lovers are losers. Putting faith in science over our own experiences has dreadfully limited our perception of reality.Once again we are looking in the mirror and asking , how did we lose vision and come to this?

Science is a bright light yes, but shouldn't be the only light in the realm. Science is a tool that when used properly can yield terrific results. But it has also led to myopia, a numbers based dependency and a new kind of ignorance. Fearing that which is not controllable we have caged ourselves in this ridiculous empire of data. Safety in numbers, safety behind walls, safety in stuff, we have gotten used to shooting ourselves in the foot. When asked to stand up for heart, we feel the pain and respond slowly if at all.

We send Valentines made by strangers in foreign factories. Question the love.

All around us we see the reflection of a sham reality that our culture projects. See how it postures, poses and glitters, see how our mainstream media prances it about, see how we are seduced into accepting it all as real life.

Once you see through it you can never not see it again!

So here's to Love, here's to Real Love all vulnerable and messy and lacking in data because it is always new, unique and universal, simultaneously at once.

So stop buying love...

Show up vulnerable and courageous for truly that is brave, heroic even.  In a world of bad beliefs based on competitive, dog eat dog, win/lose set ups we must speak up. It is time to kindly ask the old fear based ideologists to back off, for there is  love to give and life to live.

Belief Systems

Wool roving felted onto nylon which 

was once the bottom of a vintage negligee. Felting is great fun and

creates amazing texture. I did this first piece as an experimental sample. 

Now need to find its "home."

Last month's snow put an abrupt stop in my anticipated flow of events. Watching the world transformed by nature created its usual beauty break, but this year it brought to mind climate change and shock.

Why shock? I thought of culture shock, the feelings that are synonymous to sudden immersion in a really foreign land, one where language and customs are very different from your own daily events.  I surmise there is a correlation between this experience and  my own culture' inability to embrace the next reality. No matter how one may research, gather information, study the language and traditions, no matter the plan; stepping into another "way of living" surrounds a person with all matters of the unexpected. This taps our senses and we wake up to the immediacy of being. 

At this point we choose fear of the unknown (what train, how do i say "show me" etc) or we embrace it. Usually there is a mix of both, but with practice the unknown becomes the magic doorway of possibility. 

Perhaps this is where one can consciously choose to evoke the law of attraction, perhaps it is mere physiology, an  adrenaline response, perhaps it is the way our sacred heart communicates with us and the whole of life. Call it what ever, a rose is still a rose, the point is that when our energy meets new energy, we come alive. Sparks get our attention,

Change in everyday reality, where every minute brings us a step nearer to extreme climate chaos with concurrent ecosystems damage and the nihilistic wealth/resources suck to the 1%, has many of us mesmerized by the virtual undrama. (despite Occupy) We are lost to big reality by immersion in shallow reality.

The signs and symptoms of change show up, little by little, over time. Like a cancer, our cultural dis-ease feeds best on populations in states of semi inertia. Be it cells or humans, populations respond to alarms and they reAct. This must be why fear driven systems are so dominant; it is easier to "prove" the necessity to respond than to chance prediction. (Predictions hang out with the like of wiccans, pagans, shamans and such, and throughout Western history were akin to calling cards for tortuous ramification. The "original church" wanted zero competition for the "souls" of human beings.)

Without bells and whistles, Insidious dis-eases and toxins creep in under the radar and thrive until our immune systems are too weakened or overwhelmed to respond adequately. Is this what has happened? Is our cultural "real" no more real than a person accepting as normal a condition that irritates but until it really is a bother won't take time to investigate and find a cure? Wow, like our daily shallow over rides our true dharma until we are forced awake. 

This is a version of " the lobster in the pot." The poor lobster doesn't feel the creep of the heat's intensity until it is severe. The lobster's environmental shock-up comes too late in the classic story. However we are more conscious than lobsters and therefore "we" have been noting the evidence of our head towards disaster. As a result, thousands (more?) of citizen's groups have formed to treat the symptoms. This is part of that which Paul Hawken's calls the global immune response system. Now, in 2012, there truly is a new level of urgency. We as a species are pulling ourselves, our families, our world of brothers and sisters together and are jumping "out of the pot." We are risking the ire of the ogre for our very lives. 

This jump from the known "boiling pot" towards a new consciousness is evolutionary behavior. We are putting faith in the currently unprovable, because what we thought we knew has proven flawed beyond repair. We can and will do better. We are moving towards that which we want to manifest, trusting our sacred hearts to be the compass they were intended to be. This is a leap of faith, evolution, courage, but most of all, heart.

The sparks are here, the fire is lighted, we are the phoenix and need not succumb to the ashes of our own distorted beliefs and premises. Our hearts say soar, soar beyond this delusion, soar towards the light.

Choose light!

2012 Time for Change

 Colin Day Abstract Kerf International Gallery 2012

I saw this great flick last night at Wallingford Meaningful Movies.

2012: Time for Change -Teaser

The flick starts with a bit about the Mayan calendar ending in 2012. Then we are taken along with Daniel Pinchbeck to sample a variety of  alternative natural systems and savvy possibilities while weaving through the insanity of our mainstreamed anthropocentric systems design. Along the way there are some fun parallels.

In the Mayan creator story the first "people " were of mud (crawled out of the sea ?) They were oblivious to nuance and therefore were wiped out.  The next batch were wood  and better than mud, but still full of fear which led to a warring nature. The wood people were wiped out by a flood (Noah's Ark?)

Then came the people of the Corn!!!

"We're like corn chips walking because we really have a very, very large fraction of corn in our diets, and we actually can't help it because it's an additive in so many of the foods we find on the market shelves," Dawson says. (Todd Dawson, a plant biologist at the University of California-Berkeley, can test a strand of hair to determine how much corn is in your diet or mine by looking for a form of carbon found in corn.)

 Wow, we "children of the corn," have big choices to make.  We can stick to the rut of business as usual;  controlled by fear and scarcity beliefs, led by systems that seek to create dependencies that further control us by taking our lives into a material spin dry-AKA good for corporations but bad for life.

In defense, we were led to believe this was progress, this was man and science in control of life, dominating the planet. (Having dominion over is a Biblical phrase) I guess that little dopamine rush released during a "buy" was worth the price for awhile. But we are getting over it. As we gain sophistication, we ask more questions. We are seeking our further potential.

Many of us are asking for a life that values life itself.Seeing the connected, interrelated beauty of the living universe will help us co-create the next phase. People of the evolution. people born of stardust, people who respect the intelligence of the natural world and learn to align with that which is us and not us, simultaneously, they choose light.

Ok Corn people, show the world your true colors, lets bloom outta this dive.

City Looks

great look spotted Saturday in the A M.