FRAGMENTATION

 

When blog postings go up on the site I try to insure that there's some corresponding note on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and on Facebook. I mean, it won't mean a thing if no one knows it exists. Or as the great, late physicist Richard Feynman once put it, if you don't write it in your journal, it never happened.

Hang on one second, I just need to pick up this call…

"Hello? Yep. Yes, we'll be there. Three o'clock? Sure. With the documents? Sure. Okay, see you then."

So, yeah. The blog. It's tough sometimes when there's also a major project we're all working on. But it's especially tough between projects, when there are a million things in development, all sorts of ideas cooking, when we're taking meetings and running around to scout locations and working on technical and artistic tests. Sometimes then it's especially tough to focus. Sometimes in the middle of a crushing production schedule, it's strangely easier for the ideas to just come out. Blood pumping, with a focus that's laser beam tight, the clarity of ideas often shines bright.  Of course, sometimes there's the issue of just having the energy to get them out, but that's another story.

Just one second…got to respond to this quick Facebook tag.

"Blueberry pie, oh my."

Right. Anyway, the team is fully engaged in a gigantic new spherical production, and we have a list of other projects in the pipeline. Speaking engagements have been busier than ever this past year, and we continue to get offers from a wide variety of clients. As for the website…

Hang on one sec.

"We could shoot it sixteen-by-nine if we do it for ordinary HDTV playback, but we'd be pleased to show you some examples of ultra-wide playback options if you'd like. We think that could be terrific for your venue. Or if you really want to do something interesting, let us design a multi-faceted surface, with carefully timed sequences running among non-contiguous screens."

Okay, so yeah, the website is firing on all cylinders right now. With some of the matching social media efforts we've been putting out, plus the ancillary blog posts elsewhere (Tumblr, Wordpress, etc) people are talking and the phone keeps ringing. Can't complain about that! But the real issue is...

Sorry.

"Hello? Hey! Yes, great to hear from you. I'm sorry, but can I call you back? It's a bad time right now. Sure. Just in the middle of something."

Where was I? Oh, yes: the real issue is…

Sorry.

"Hello! Sorry, yes, this is a bad time. I'm just trying to do this one thing. One thing! I'll be right with you."

…as soon as I take the teapot off the stove…whistling like a….

So, anyway.  There we were. Cameras rolling, sound was clean, when this client comes charging across the soundstage, and says, "…

Listen. Why don't you come back next week. Next week the blog will be talking about the cultural ubiquity of video and the various ways that's affected our industry, as well as the public's ability to consume media of any sort. Trust me, it will be interesting.

I'm going to make a sandwich. And a cup of tea.

--MS

PS -- Does this make you smile? Make you think? Make you wish next Monday were one sunrise away from arrival? If so, you may be ready to become one of our loyal outreach team! How do you assume that lofty role? Tell your friends! Tell your colleagues. Share our link on your Twitter and Facebook page, and let people know where you turn every Monday morning for a blog of a different color. You were expecting horses?

FOLLOWING THE BLUE DOT

I do it. I bet you do it, too.

Maps! I'm talking about digital maps!  Getting from "here" to "there"! (You never know what people really think when they read a blog.)

Not too very long ago it used to be that we all found our way around the flat earth with crinkled paper maps. When we couldn't get good ground truth from our multi-colored route finders, we'd stop for directions at a local store or gas station and ask for directions. We'd scribble notes about where to turn and how far to travel. We'd try to figure if the received guidance jived with clues we could glean from our printed maps, and we'd try to estimate which compass direction we thought we were headed.

Now we follow blue dots, or let disembodied voices in our telephones tell us where to turn.

Those cloud-based, scalable maps are marvels, to be sure. Millions ditched paper maps faster than bowls of cold oatmeal and instantly found where they needed to go. Major new market segments exploded, supply-chain management and package delivery systems accelerated, and traffic information finally offered the potential that things might get better where it counted. Where could there possibly be a downside?

I'm not crying "downside", but I am raising a philosophical point. You're gonna roll your eyes (I know you are!), but try to open your mind to this. I miss the moments of unexpected discovery that came from finding less predictable ways through space. I miss the moments of achievement, the brain work necessary to figure out complex routes, the discoveries of how cities and towns were arranged. And, like endless examples in a million different forums, I miss the casual brush with unexpected people whom I might have to ask for directions.

Yes, I have to admit it: even as I miss certain aspects of what used to be, route finding is better now. It's faster, more efficient, surprisingly accurate, and with crowd sourced inputs getting better all the time. But the nuanced moments of invention and discovery are largely gone from the process. Creative solutions to ordinary dilemmas are the sparks of ignition that often provoke greater flights of invention downstream. Sure, modernity has replaced old problems with new ones, and individuals--and cultures--constantly encounter new challenges to lash to the creative wheel.

But for a creative person, I suppose the thing that most captures my attention is that we are gradually ceding our personal responsibility to inhuman systems. I'm concerned about algorithms seeping into every aspect of our lives under the guise of "making life a little easier".

First it was speed dialing that made us forget phone numbers. Then auto-correction software killed our collective ability to spell. Kids no longer learn to write cursive handwriting--whither the personal signature? Now it's maps, and all that goes with it.

It's better now, yes. But when the software police come to bolt algorithmically pre-digested dialogue into one of my screenplays, I think we'll know that things have gone past the point of no return.

--MS  (Hey, you can follow me on Twitter @michaelstarobin if you're so motivated.)

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ALONE

Modern electronic media and traditional art are not synonymous, although they both draw water from the same well. Creative media always seeks to establish a relationship with an audience, while art may be the product of other motivations. Both inevitably require substantial creative energies to come into being. Both may invest a great measure of personality from their creators. But above all, creative work of all types inevitably demands a sizable measure of time on the part of the creator focused in his or her own head, often alone.

The irony here should be obvious. Whether by force of a pen inscribing a few precious lines of poetry, or a stage director looking to send shivers all the way into the back row of the theater, most moments that convey meaning and emotional response stem from intense, focused, often private labor. We understand the poet immediately, quietly scratching out verse while leaning thoughtfully against the trunk of a tree. If you're wondering about the stage director, remember that long before he or she meets with actors and set designers and lighting techs, a director must do the work of refining a vision. There's reading and there's often writing, too. There's research and study, and like your parents always used to tell you about homework, no one can do it for them.

The same is true for those who produce soda commercials and magazine make-up advertisements. Even as more billable creative work tends to operate inside the forum of larger organizations, the day- to-day effort of writing scripts, drawing storyboards, or processing digital images from photographic memory cards comes down to one person leaning in to the work, often for many hours alone.

Of course, creative types often DO work with other people; most disciplines demand it. But I find those to whom I pay most attention are capable of motivating themselves outside the pressures of groups.

Make no mistake: I love working with teams. The energy and invention and even bonhomie camaraderie of creative teams has rare equal, even if it occasionally comes with intense interpersonal challenges. The pleasures of sharing ideas, of finding growth that always surpasses the limits of what any one person could singularly invent, imbues resonant satisfactions. People are interesting! The best experience from working in groups is the reflection of larger humanity's historical sweep of achievement, of culture. In a narrow microcosm, we recreate the best of our own shared triumphs as a species and celebrate it with re-enactment.

But like all performances, the lights ultimately dim. Even after standing ovations, audiences always go home. Players who live for the applause often don't survive. Applause is fleeting. But those who can take pleasure and satisfaction in the intense world of singularly creative mind return to quiet spaces and dream again. If they're good, applause may very well return. If they're perceptive, they may even be aware that applause is something they can court. But if they care about their craft, whatever it may be, that time alone is something they're not going to trade for anything in the world.

--MS

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TOAST

 

The bread has edges, beyond which the peanut butter cannot go. But because the bread does have edges, toast made right will support peanut butter--or marmalade, or Nutella, or cream cheese--all the way out to those edges. The details matter, especially if you're preparing that toast for someone else.

What if you're making that toast for yourself? You can do it any way you like, of course. But consider the choice you have if you're making toast for yourself, all alone one morning, with nobody else around. I wonder if sometimes in the service of ourselves we think, "It's just for me. It really doesn't matter how it comes out, and it's just a piece of toast."

That's true to a degree. No one will know if you under-browned the bread or missed a corner with the raspberry jam. But standards begin with an internal adjudication, and the moment we begin equivocating about whether quality matters in private is the moment we begin eroding quality in public.

Sounds obsessive, doesn't it? Sounds a little nuts.

It doesn't have to become a boat anchor around the neck of your life. The point is that small gestures add up. In aggregate they begin to describe how we approach our days, how we think about thinking, how we regard an endeavor undertaken and a mission completed. Making toast should not become a complicated process. But next time you're about to coat a good piece of pumpernickel with butter and jam, notice the fine details around the perimeter. If it's for you, there's a moment's pleasure in knowing it's just the way you like it, however that may be. If it's for someone else, enjoy the fact that he or she will ever-so-slightly appreciate the care you took to do it right.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world.

Like what you see? Set it free.

POLITICS

Are our political leaders supposed to do the right thing because they'll lose the next election or because it's the right thing?

Does it matter?

I think it does matter, but clearly the first option should not  be dismissed out of hand. In politics the art of the possible sometimes has nothing to do with the underlying values powering the pursuit. By means of an example, consider the particular way President Lincoln pursued the Emancipation Proclamation. (Need a refresher? See the brilliant historical encapsulation in Stephen Spielberg's masterful "LINCOLN".) The abolition of slavery on moral grounds alone would have been too onerous for his political foes to support. Instead, an ever-so-slightly weaker position allowed fence-sitters to save face and side with him, thus insuring his victory without the emotionally more satisfying results of complete and total victory.

But you ask, "Why should we care about this in creative enterprise? Why is this in the 1AU blog?"

Creative people don't simply punch a clock. Whether working on a film as an assistant camera person, or playing second viola in the symphony orchestra, artists invest their work with themselves. They have to. Without self, creativity generally rings hollow.  But the moment creative enterprise expands beyond the realm of a singular painter holding a singular brush, politics inevitably accrue. It's inevitable because it's unlikely that the designated leader of an enterprise is the only person with a good idea. Even with a clearly defined hierarchy--a chain of command established from the outset--good leaders understand that they have to deal with people. Good leaders also know that even with a singular vision, they're fools if they don't seriously consider the good ideas of those around them. Likewise, members of the corps de ballet, so to speak, need to be able to express themselves to a director without foolishly expecting public adulation or artificial praise.

That's where politics asserts itself most loudly.

Some people simply have trouble working in groups. They struggle to back down or they cannot speak up. Sometimes they get their timing confused. Sometimes they forget that ideas and technical capabilities are not separate from the emotional containers that convey those ideas. More practically, political simplicity gets you nowhere in terms of funding or fans. A more nuanced political listener will learn from an audience without capitulating his or her vision. A savvy producer will understand how to reach a funding source while maintaining his or her own integrity. I'm not calling any of this easy, I'm just calling it essential. Creative teams need to figure out diplomatic ways to move through challenging dilemmas without losing sight of an even more challenging goal. It's true that some creative groups break a lot of china as they move through the world, but for myself I find this a rather distasteful way to operate. Even if an enterprise is a complete success, the cost of disharmony in the world rarely seems like a reasonable trade.

That said, nobody likes endless campfire songs, full of conviviality and warmth but yielding nothing substantial in the morning. Once in a while: sure. But forever and always? Creative groups of all types need to respect that politics as a means of manipulation is disingenuous, but as a means to bring sensitive perception to disparate, oxygen-starved ideas, it matters. Politics is the art of the possible.  Funny, but that sounds an awful lot to me like making creative projects in a group.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world.

Like what you see? Set it free.

The Consciousness of Money

With cyberspace populated by semi-autonomous “bots”, and smart phones sending wireless messages onto the web to look for last minute plane tickets, and software agents in refrigerators circuits ordering more orange juice from a wired supermarket before we even notice we're out, one begins to wonder if we're giving up our freedoms one convenience at a time. But incremental developments aside, one human invention that’s been around for centuries remains in such demand as to be perhaps the first artificial consciousness.

Money.

A cursory glance simply casts an eye of desire on it. But it is really the cash that’s got a hold of us. Consider:

It’s really worth nothing, but it convinces us of its value; it talks us into protecting it. It has value because we collectively believe it has value. A bottle of water can quench a thirst. A fertile field can produce sustenance for years. A whole box of money can do nothing, but it’s desire to exist, to grow, to spread, whispers Faustian bargains in our ears and we listen. We take it in, protect it under our mattresses, pay others to project it in steel rooms at banks, obfuscate to friends and relatives about how much we may or may not have. Consider this:

If you squint while stopped at a red light, the cars all around look like blood cells rushing through veins and arteries. Traffic lights act like heart valves, buildings and businesses act like organs, apartment complexes and housing developments act like bone marrow.

Money rushes around the human organism.

Just like in nature, if there’s a niche to be filled, life rushes in and adapts to fill that niche. If an organ needs assistance, blood and nutrients rush to fix it. If money discovers a need--it's own need, mind you-- it pulls people and energy—lives—towards it like a biological magnet. Cars leave their parking spaces at the crack of dawn, their drivers pulled inexorably to office jobs and fork lift operation and days in front of a fourth grade class. We tell ourselves these are our jobs, but the compulsion to these labors are often just the relentless tectonic pressures of money.

Further evidence of money's consciousness is the endless creative energy among financial entities to forge connections where superficial horse-sense seems to fail. Take the French automobile company Renault and the Japanese car company Nissan. Separated by more than 10,000 miles, the two behemoths share an unusual alliance, and the two together market a wide range of cars in the United States, a foreign country to each of the partners. The soul of the alliance is an effort to broaden the power of manufacturing scale without demanding that each partner bow beneath the sword of the other. This union of competitors is predicated on money talking; corporate cultures in France and Japan could not be more different, but there they are, locked together at the brain stem. To the thousands of workers at each company actually assembling the cars, clicking keyboards, and ordering parts, theirs is not even the illusion of autonomy. Their lives are directly governed by the wages parceled out like pollen among worker bees. They can no more go their own financial ways than they can decide to build a new type of engine on their own. The money in the system is the deciding factor. It is money which reached across culture and space to create a partnership of expedience, and it is money which unifies the executive ganglia making rudimentary decisions regarding aesthetics and strategy. But lest any observer of the system, internally or externally, consider that the executive class has significantly more say than the employees on the factory floors, consider: significant corporate missteps might only end the current incarnation of the financial arrangement built by the Renault/Nissan partnership. Just as the wooly mammoth shed its coat for the summer of the post ice age, so to will the money be transmogrified should those companies pass into the historical record.

Supply side economists will rush to say that corporate bankruptcy is proof that money is not conscious, that it's in the realm of humans and the decisions they make. Rising stocks are based on good decisions and a smidgen of good timing, and by the way, also add money to the economic ocean.

But money is not a population issue. More currency does not equal a bigger, biologically more successful population. Money is more akin to biological potential. It's the promise that it's capable of enormous growth if the conditions are right, and the guarantee that it will endure in a slower, even dormant state when conditions are bad. It is the sleeping code of the global genetic germ, activated like an allele, and deactivated by a drug.

Money can never be inherently creative, but the shadows it casts onto the world around it warp and bend like our own mortal umbras as we walk in the world. The challenge for creative people of widely divergent stripe is to recognize that money is not fundamentally what's important, even as the pursuit of money may be a necessity. Moreover, a creative class (potentially everyone alive, by the way) must get smart about what's going on. Money is an android with a mind of it's own. We created it; it required humanity to get up and walk. But once it set out into the world, it began to pursue it's own routes, pushing and pulling and influencing the world in ways that sometimes cause people of great intellect and purported integrity to disagree vehemently. If we're smart-- if we're paying attention and don't want money's limited, artificial intelligence to push us around-- we have a fighting chance to build a culture that values the subjective rather than the objective. I am moved much more deeply before the motley altar of beauty than at the sparkling altar of money. One radiates energy out into the universe, the other sits and gathers mass.

I would rather light up the night.

--MS

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Darkness in the Photo Department

The Chicago Sun-Times recently announced that it was laying off its entire photographic staff. Not long ago this would have been regarded as an almost incomprehensible decision for a credible journalistic enterprise, especially at one of the nation's larger newspapers. Now it seems like only a short-lived, below-the-fold feature. For people of a certain age who regard it as confirmation that an era has faded into the mists (and don't mind a little ink on their hands as they try organize pages through the jump), the mass photo firings are a temporal touchstone, even as it may mean little to the nation's youth. But the newspaper's actions reinforce just how much we have no idea what our culture is going to look like ten minutes from now.

Stepping back from the Sun-Times decision it's not particularly shocking to anybody who's followed trends in digital media. Sad, but not shocking. Everybody has a camera and everybody is snapping pictures. It therefore stands to reason that the value of all photographs must fall. It's simple supply and demand, right?

Yes and no.

Photographs as a commodity, regardless of their value, are no longer magical demonstrations of humanity's ability to freeze time. Yawwwn: these days everyone freezes time with a digital "click". The thrill is gone, baby.

But photographs as a means of capturing a moment, a feeling, an image of a place or idea so that it can be shared and pondered far and wide is still as powerful as cave paintings in primitive cultures. Photography as a collective activity is a talismanic wellspring about our beliefs and our fears, our pleasures and our sorrows. Photography is not about individual images anymore, for better or worse. It's a medium that's consumed in huge gulps, dozens of images in a sitting. It's our mode for distributing memory so that it fades less fast, our highway to insight about places and circumstances we might otherwise struggle to fully appreciate. But perhaps most relevant in the context of the Sun-Times's decision, photography is easy to do in a technical sense, suddenly a fully democratic expression, and it never used to be this way. There's one problem, though. The newspaper's staff weren't ordinary representatives of the democracy. They were comparative craft masters, and thus available for potential insights and acumen through an endlessly compelling art.

Has the ubiquity of photographic images completely reduced their value so that anybody with a camera is therefore equal of a professional photographer? Is professional photography, save for the most elite fashion and commercial photographers completely depreciated?

If the answer to any of that is "yes", then we must ask ourselves if all of the electronic arts -- there are many these days -- are therefore on a exponentially eroding value slope. Everybody now has the tools to do the impossible, at least compared to what you could do if you were alive in 1975.

Here's the circle I cannot square: if there's more to taking photos than just a point 'n click, but NOBODY CARES very much, do the merits of "philosophical quality" matter that much either?

Here's what I believe: even if in the hands of a joyful democratic majority, the potentials of photography to capture more than just random electronic signals is vast. Without pretension, photography pledges artistic, journalistic aspirations, fleeting moments of passion, a tension of muscles and breath and light as a photographer engages directly with the world.

I struggle with this intellectually, emotionally, personally, deeply. I cannot answer it in a way that I feel certain will win my case. I feel low. The Chicago Sun-Times has reduced its decision about staff photographers to a purely economic case, to money.

BUT OF COURSE THEY HAVE, you shout at the screen. (It's okay: let it all out.) As a business, that's their obligation. They're in it for the money in the first place.

Well, it may be their obligation, but it still causes me distress. This is serious business that goes way beyond business.

The blog this week began about photography, a discipline intent on finding inner truths, and it ended in a place decidedly in a different galaxy: money. That's why next week, we're going into battle. Next Monday, it's a grudge match: money versus everything else. Bring your camera. You're going to want to post a picture on your Facebook page.

--MS

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PROPERTIES

What is the property of a flower? Diaphanous petals--curvaceous of course--daring declarations of intention to all who notice, seductive edges radiating from a central core: flowers announce themselves. They do not hide. Inherent properties of flowers vary from species to species, but each type has its own list of specifics: bright colors here, spiky there, smooth and round, flat and bold. The properties of a flower define it's identity.

Now, turn to consider the following: what is the nature of ownership? To possess is to govern, or at least define rights of access. To own something is to assert influence. Property defines place, identity, even parameters of time.

There's a fascinating relationship between the two ideas, the concept of property as a description of something's inherent nature, and the thought of property as a concept of ownership, of something belonging to something else, singularly, personally, perhaps intimately. When we consider the properties of a thing, we focus the concept of identity inward on the subject. Properties of an object or an idea itself, a flower, say, resist external ownership. They are inherent; they cannot be bolted on or transferred by contract. A rose by any other name doesn't give a damn who owns it; it smells as sweet no matter who possesses the receipt. Even the mighty Immanuel Kant suggested that the attributes of a something do not come as a direct result of existence; they are inherent unto themselves, with matters of existence demanding compartmentalized vocabulary. Attributes do not prove existence.

I hear my creative Muse impatiently tapping her coffee spoon against her demitasse. Are we talking creativity here or are we talking about law? Or even more exasperating (she's edgy this morning), are we waxing philosophical in this space without good justification?

Properties of individual creative works defy ownership. They defy the concept of becoming "property" even as they often belong to a person or an institution. A painting, a sonata, a superb bowl of French Onion soup each have unique properties. Where the last in the list may have an exceedingly short, delicious, life span, the principal obtains for the lot: what can it possibly mean to own the unique nature of something? (Calmer now, my Muse smooths out her sundress, a faint grin on her face as she stares out the window.) No doubt it's possible to own a Monet, a Moore, a Mondrian, but to assert the potential for transformative "properties" of those works in the same ways that "property" transfers with each contractual writ is to pretend something substantial. It's to assume abilities beyond us. It's hubris.

The most easily identified property, of course, is real estate. But when well made, buildings not only outlive their creators, but begin to abnegate the identities of those who conceive of them. Buildings may be owned in a contemporary, legal sense, but the essential natures of their beings accrue over time rather than by declarations at the bank. Properties of a real estate property evolve over time, tumbledown or exquisite, storied or infamous.

Paid? Sure, we should get paid for creative work. The relative value of creative work varies with each piece, with each category of work. Sidewalk caricatures probably ought to get less per piece than detailed urban planning schematics. Without financial appreciation for the hard labor of creation, those who create would not be able to do so. But payment for work is not the same as determination of property, of who it belongs to. More importantly, payment is also not the determination of it's unique properties.

Creators all of us, each in our own unique domains, we therefore achieve a sense of freedom in our actions when we release philosophical ownership of our works. We discover the properties of exotic flowers each day as we do the labor of traveling through the hard lands of our inventive efforts. Once discovered, the work leaves us, like children flying away to their own new lives, seeds of a blossom borne on the wind, with hopes that they take root somewhere healthy, appreciative, and peaceful.

--MS

PS -- Does this make you smile? Make you think? Make you wish next Monday were one sunrise away from arrival? If so, you may be ready to become one of our loyal outreach team! How do you assume that lofty role? Tell your friends! Tell your colleagues. Share our link on your Twitter and Facebook page, and let people know where you turn every Monday morning for a blog of a different color. You were expecting horses?

THE GARDEN

I have no need for my computer in the garden. I'm told there are endless apps and programs, tools and widgets to help me manage my agricultural adventures in the backyard. They hold almost no interest for me. I'm not averse to using the web for research; information is different in my mind then concrete application. But the garden is a place for my hands get dirty in a good way. The day slows down. The sweat on my neck comes from honest effort rather than onerous deadline. Every day in the garden is a moment of invention, and because that invention is a direct result of what kind of attention I put into the Earth, that invention helps me keep my keel on course.

Here in northern latitudes it's still relatively early for the big stuff to go in. Nonetheless, plenty of cool weather crops do just fine, and I've taken good advantage of the small patch of reclaimed dirt behind my home. Carrots, radishes, scallions, lettuce, peas, beans: in neat furrows I've planted tiny time capsules.

The filmmaker in me regards this first stage of my garden like a screenplay. Every year I approach the soil with a plan in hand, tools and my pail, and a willingness--a deep desire, even--to try and make something out of very little. Every year the seeds go in with great care and in no time at all a radical transformation begins. When those tiny sprouts come up, after about seven days, it's hard to tell the plants apart unless I've marked the rows properly, but the implication is vast and profound.

In late spring when the bigger plants go in, the tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and more, vegetable music is already playing. I tend to plant the later crops from pre-sprouted seedlings rather than specifically from seeds. Once in the ground, I take great pleasure in watching the transformation of all the players in the garden grow and change each day. But I must confess, the best part is often in those first few weeks when the almost infinitesimally small seeds declare themselves against all odds and break through the topsoil into the open air.

I think I like to plant gardens for the same reason I like to create videos and movies and books and poems and more. There are always unexpected moments, even though the best laid plans present certain expectations about what's going to happen. Even with infinite variety and variation, a garden enables me to make plans with out feeling a need to be in total control. It opens the door to opportunity even as it facilitates surprise.

--MS

P.S. Want more? Like thoughts a little shorter while you wait for next Monday's blog? I tweet! You can follow me @michaelstarobin If you're really motivated (and we'll be geeked if you are) drop us a line. All of our contact info is here on the website.

COMPETING AGAINST COMPETITION AS THE CENTRAL NARRATIVE MOTIVATION

"Power up!" "Big boss!" "Get some!"

Tennis anyone?

Ha! Gotcha! Even tennis is about wiping out the competition. The question is, "Is that a problem?"

No, tennis is not the problem. But an idea has begun to take root. Here it is: competition and it's darker, fraternal twin self-aggrandizement are the most established narrative threads in our lives. In the arc of business relations, politics, sports, and recreation, competitive forces describing complete domination, even destruction of an opponent propel us to action, justify emotion, and convey relevance to the detriment of more nuanced ideas.

Lost? Let me break it down.

I like a good first person shooter now and again. I'm a bad-ass with a rocket launcher, and you definitely don't want to go head to head with me in a competitive tower defense or real time strategy game unless you want to be served. (I think my kids are rolling their eyes…)

But a non-scientific survey of video game options suggests a vast preponderance of kill-or-be-killed circumstance in the narratives. Games are competitive proxies for our own mortality. Victories tend to be about about survival, but even more, video victories are about proving that the other guy cannot stand up to our prowess. It's true for Call of Duty, but it's also true for slower, older games. Take chess. Each player taken on the board is a proxy for it being killed on the field of battle. In the game of kings, the contest ends in regicide.

Movies and television are largely narrative frames about one of three things: survival, romance, and kicking the bad guy hard enough so that he doesn't get up again, ever. When we consider that romance is often portrayed as a competitive enterprise, where failure to capture the object's heart equals failure most epic, those three categories starts to shrink into two.

Look at the language we use. We do not simply defeat our tennis opponent. We beat him like the proverbial dead horse, because winning is just not enough. Competition is about death, and to pretend otherwise it to allow yourself to be swept up in euphemistic rainbows and unicorns that you know you don't really believe anyway. The fantasy victories we pursue are lethal: we either eviscerate our adversaries with a knife, or we obliterate them in the public marketplace. When the story is about the main character's survival, the competitive pressures portrayed are about justifying the character's mere existence more than anything else. Think that's an exaggeration? Rambo exists because he's the one best suited to survive what the Army wants him to do. How about something a little sweeter? Mary Poppins survives and thrives with children who've already driven previous nannies batty. She exists as a narrative force…precisely because we want her to. We should not forget that if a story justifies a character's existence, then viewers -- that's us!-- will inevitably relate and feel similarly justified to endure.

Of course, outside the narrative experiences we consume, you won't find many people actually killing the opposition very often. That would not be an efficient way to structure societies, although it's interesting to note how often mortal consequences seem to follow our national and even corporate goals. Fictional losers often lose everything, even as we pretend to talk about fair play. Carl von Clausewitz's charge that war is simply diplomacy by other means suggests that the real threat may not be war but further back. Perhaps the real threat is the way we regard our obfuscated goals of diplomacy.

The academy has long since discussed the value of altruism. Countless ashrams and neo-utopias and even political movements have struggled to create societies with egalitarian intentions rather than purely competitive ones. Most don't amount to much, despite the endless efforts to make them live and breathe. No doubt there are altruistic forces in many, many people, but I've lately started to doubt the depth of their appeal when I consider how often people resonate with more violent, aggressive alternatives.

One starts to wonder about alternatives. In a blog about creativity, it would seem inevitable that I'd make some suggestions, right?

There are some options. But the question is not about finding them, but in understanding why trends toward competitive ends seems to hold such sway. The great simulation software SimCity suggests an alternative, facilitating a world of invention and social experiments, and pure unbridled creation. A box of Lego bricks does much the same thing, as does a shelf of dolls sitting quietly, ready for a tea party. But when we switch to other seemingly innocuous diversions like the many variations of Nintendo's Mario the Plumber-- running, racing, jumping, or otherwise acting like a kid's character--the jig is up. Dressed in Mario's jokey, cartoony imagery, we're still fed a competitive narrative that demands defeat of our opponent to justify our time spent playing and searching for gold coins. Our entertainments are not about beauty, nor cooperation, nor introspection, nor even experience. We play to win, and winning often means defeating--that is, beating-- the other guy. Our illusion of civility unravels, and yet we often do not even notice. Tea parties with dolls become simulacrums for measured social pressures, for practicing who's in and who's out. Lego enterprises become stories about battle tanks and aerial bombardments. Last I heard, battle tanks were good for killing people and burning a lot of fuel, but not much else.

Does music offer an alternative? Does poetry? Gardening? To some extent, yes. Painting? Cooking? Holding hand and walking on a beach?

By now you're probably thinking that I'm proposing a dull, bland, bloodless existence. No more football; no more James Bond movies; no more all night Playstation tournaments.

I'm not. But I am suggesting that there ought to be a dialogue, or at least an awareness that begins to creep back into the culture, and soon. We live in an era where everything that we once knew about the trajectory of life is now in question, agitated by viscous competition. Get a higher education? Only the strongest can make it and pay for it. Get a job that pays you a living wage? It's uphill all the way, and don't even think of turning your cell phone off at night. International relations have everyone on edge at national borders, and when you travel by ones and zeros across the internet, you're in an arms race with password thieves and virus writers.

I'm wrapping this up with an assertion, and I'm serious about it: this blog posting is not a gloom and doom rant, nor a limp cri de coeur. The narrative of violence and the expression of competition as the singular force driving life on Earth may very well hew to fundamental--and real-- Darwinian realities, but the thing about making free-will, creative choices in life is that there are always new ways to look at familiar challenges.

-Michael Starobin

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