Point #1

I believe that our brains, our privacy and our lives are being slowly hijacked by mass media. This applies to all media but the internet is the most recent to fall to the dark side. It happens slowly, over a long period of time, and we hardly notice it while it is happening. Our private brain space has been infiltrated with a lot of stuff that is of little to no value (invasive advertising in every corner of our lives), and it happens on a regular basis without our permission. Over time some of the messages from these things have the potential to creep into our psyches and wreak havoc. As well we may have feelings of mental overload, and a feeling of unease without really knowing the source. Our brains after all are sensitive instruments, how can we expect them to function at high capacity when they are overloaded and overstimulated? We know that if we have a diet of junk food, that our bodies do not function well and begin to fail us. Why is that we are willing to accept filling our psyches with crap also?

Point #2

I have noticed recently that the internet is undergoing another period of change, one where we are now being forced to watch ads (on Youtube for example) in the same manner as television (if we wish to participate in the medium of video sharing). Let’s be clear about something, a medium that is driven by ad revenue is no longer democratic and unbiased. This new development means that video sharing on Youtube, or any other medium that has regular advertising (Facebook, Amazon, Google, Goodreads, Flickr, blogs) no longer gives power to the people. It/they exists only to create ad revenue.

Point #3
And guess what? YOU are now the ad. Not only are we forced to watch the ads but we are actually being used to create them without our permission, (or at least our conscious permission, apparently we should have read the fine print).

Point #4

IF we are to inhabit a position of strength and retain our sense of selves, we need to take our power back. The companies who are forcing advertising on us and taking our rights and privacy away can only function if we hand our power over to them. We can say no, I’m not going to use them anymore. No I am not going to be used to create ad revenue for a large corporation who is acting immorally. We CAN use our voice by choosing who and how we align ourselves. We can place a high value on our brain space and not let it be infiltrated on a daily basis and filled with crap. We can choose something better. Something healthier. Something that adds something of value to the world. So what is a good alternative to Facebook? I am not sure about the answer to that. Why don’t we create it ourselves? The internet began with some really amazing communities that started small and grew.

Point #5

I am putting out a call to all creatives out there. We need some alternatives. That are not ad driven but people driven, compassionate, fair, lawful, honest, driven by integrity. One of the reasons people use Facebook is that there are few alternatives. I know there are people out there who are already working on these things. (So often they start out with such wonderful intentions only to sell the company for large amounts of money and let it turn into another ad driven, ugly, piece of crap (Flickr) with no regard for its users.) I will make my stand by opting out. But we need somewhere to redirect the energy.

Point #7

Dear internet,
I know we can do better. I believe in us. Let’s start with a new vision of the future. We need some new leaders. Are you willing?

Cole Skory (15) is wrecking his journal via video series (yes, I know there are a lot of you now). They also have a fun website: http://theskorys.com/videos/

Warning: Do not watch this video if you are squeamish around chocolate and applesauce!

I really had no idea how far this book would reach on social media. It’s amazing really! I can’t keep up with it all.

In other news, I was asked to write a blurb for a new book called “Amaze” by my magician friend Ferdinando Buscema and his partner Mariano Tomatis. I will tell you more about the book at a later date, (suffice to say it will definitely be on my top ten list for the year!) Mariano wrote a post about “This is not a book”, and his solutions to “make this page as big as possible” and “make this page as small as possible” are damn clever. (And you can read my blurb in the post. Which will be a bit of a tease as the book has not been released in english yet. The Italian version is due out in April, so if you can read Italian all the better!)

Tilting Quilting (2010) from Andrea Dorfman on Vimeo.

For one day the residents of Tilting Nfld hang their quilts for all to see. (I have a bit of an obsession with Tilting lately. Reading the book “Tilting, House Launching, Slide Hauling, Potato Trenching, and Other Tales from a Newfoundland Fishing Village. by Robert Mellin.)

Placid small thought no 2

The passage of time (my History) leaves behind a residue that accumulates: photographs, drawings, the corpses of long since dried up felt pens, shirts, non-returnable glasses and returnable glasses, cigar wrappers, tins, erasers, postcards, books, dust and knickknacks: this is what I call my fortune.

–Georges Perec page 24 of The Species of Spaces and Other Pieces

I am enjoying this new project called Confra-Vision – a UK-based conference on the future where speakers submit 6 minute presentations all shot in 1 take. The speakers are given a future challenge and then have to pose possible solutions. My good friend Steve Lambert is addressing the problem of visions of the future being driven by the need to make money. I highly recommend it! I also enjoyed this video with Arthur C. Clark making predictions about what the future would be like. I could not find a way to embed these, otherwise I would have.

(this idea so fits in with my new book which I can’t talk about yet because I’m still working on it. just know it’s going to be fun to work on.)

Have greatly enjoyed all this huge day, sauntering and seeing, steeping in the mountain influences, sketching, noting, pressing flowers, drinking ozone and Tamarack water. Found the white fragrant Washington lily, the finest of all the Sierra lilies. Its bulbs are buried in shaggy chaparral tangles, I suppose for safety from pawing bears; and its magnificent panicle sway and rock over the top of the rough snow-press bushes, while big, bold, blunt-nosed bees drone and mumble in its pollen bells. A lovely flower, worth going hungry and footsore endless miles to see. The whole world seems richer now that I have found this plant in so noble a landscape.

–John Muir page 103, My First Summer in the Sierra

(guess who is dreaming of spring?)

showing the air (1969) – bruno munari

“a performance at the campo urbano event. munari invites participants to the top of a tower to throw pieces of paper of different forms folded in different ways to fall to the earth following trajectories that are never the same, thus visualizing the air in piazza duomo”

via

“Our lives are a constant swirl of information, of emails that can be checked on phones, and phones that are checked in theatres and bedrooms, for texts and news that stream in constantly. There is so much information that our ability to focus on any piece of it is interrupted by other information, so that we bathe in information but hardly absorb or analyse it. Data are interrupted by other data before we’ve thought about the first round, and contemplating three streams of data at once may be a way to think about none of them.

Nearly everyone I know feels that some quality of concentration they once possessed has been destroyed. Reading books has become hard; the mind keeps wanting to shift from whatever it is paying attention to to pay attention to something else. A restlessness has seized hold of many of us, a sense that we should be doing something else, no matter what we are doing, or doing at least two things at once, or going to check some other medium. It’s an anxiety about keeping up, about not being left out or getting behind.”
-Rebecca Solnit

This article is an important read.

(sent to me by Steve Lambert)

Time to shut it down.

This is the question I ask myself whenever I am facing a big decision regarding my work. As my success has grown over the last few years I have found myself asking it on almost a weekly basis. Our modern culture is decidedly lacking when it comes to role models who demonstrate how to maintain integrity in a culture that pushes mass consumerism and selling out at every turn. At some point early on in their career Fugazi decided that they were going to set some very definite boundaries about what they would (only play venues for all ages) and wouldn’t do (sign a record deal for money) . I have heard a story (secondhand) that they turned down a deal worth millions in order to keep control over their work and maintain their integrity. They never sold merchandise because it felt like a money grab, and it complicated things. When asked why they didn’t take the money and use it for great things (to change the world) Ian MacKaye stated something like, “we all have to do what allows us to sleep at night.”

I can’t say that I’ve been able to tow the exact same hard lines as Fugazi, (yes, I signed with a big publisher), but I will say that I aspire to go as far in their direction as possible (not do products for products sake, give away as much as I can for free, make things that people can afford). Recently I have been turning down deals, product offshoots, merchandise, publicity, etc. on an almost weekly basis. Because I don’t believe in it. I wish to speak the truth, and for myself that means only doing things that I can stand behind, that have a reason to exist, that have meaning for me. This feels good, and allows me to sleep at night. I am very lucky to have an agent and an editor that totally get me and stick up for my ideals too.

I feel myself getting stronger and more powerful with every “No”! But it definitely helps to have Fugazi as something to model myself after. So many times I have wished I could pick up the phone and call Ian MacKaye and say “what should I do here?” Even though I realize that if I sit quietly with myself I already know the answer.