FLUID Promotional Trailer #1

A new video promoting the release of FLUID is out – take a look!

Benefits of SOPA?

This SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) conflict just emphasizes what we already know: Money touches everything. But it also suggests that the obvious solutions may actually be the most effective.

Let’s recap: “Money,” as we’ve all been taught, has no inherent worth. At one time, it represented something called “gold,” but that was back when David Bowie was doing his best Lady Gaga impression. Today, money is just shorthand, a representation of power, a centralized, somewhat-monitored method of putting time, energy, goods, and services on a level, exchangeable playing field. The E=MC2 of work, if you will. And when we allow that power to be centralized in the hands of a few, those few are going to do their darndest to keep that power intact. That’s what Darwin called the law of nature and David Bowie called “common sense.”

Fluid and the Digital Media Revolution

I love books. Love ‘em. And amidst the cacophony of digital media buzzwords that blew out our ears last year, buzzwords like “transmedia” and “expanded content,” one horrifying declaration was repeated enough times to fill a musty library: The Traditional Novel is Dying. The argument was simple: We eat our media differently now, cut it into smaller bytes, and the experience of a solitary author speaking to a single reader was an event going the way of laser light shows. Like all art forms, the novel was being pushed to embrace new technology, to expand and adapt while still maintaining its essence. But how?

This is where my new book, Fluid comes in.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami: A Review

“Maybe it’s a paradox, like an image reflected to infinity in a pair of facing mirrors. I am a part of this world, and this world is a part of me.”

Not being a traditional book reviewer, and this not being a traditional book, it seems appropriate to begin at the beginning – with the packaging and design. 1Q84 (the “Q” is a pun on the homophone kyu, “nine” in Japanese, and stands for “question”) by Haruki Murakami is an event from the moment you pick it up. In this age of digital words and scrolling text, the U.S. printing of 1Q84 (Alfred A. Knopf) is clearly meant to be an experience.

Artists and Skeptics in OWS

During times of conflict, nations and individuals are inevitably confronted with a few key questions. What the fuck were we doing again? Why did it matter? Why is Snooki here?

No matter what you do or who you are, you inevitably find a purpose for existence. That is, you find reasons why the world needs your skill set, be it confidant, agitator, comedian, athlete, or number-cruncher. As the floodwaters rose in New Orleans, as the buildings crumbled in Chile, organizers and philanthropists got off their asses and motivated the rest of us. Incapacitated by the sheer size of the tragedy, we needed those groups to nudge, prod, and poke our brains into action. Only then could we become a part of the solution instead of an anchor on the problem. On September 11, 2001, it was the police, the firefighters, the able-bodied men and women who pointed us in the right direction. On Sundays, it’s Drew Brees who inspires and leads. On weekdays, it’s the teachers. At nights, the chefs. We all have our place. We all have our goals. We all have someone who needs us. 

Michael Jackson’s Death

This is one I wrote to all the buttheads…

Defending a Michael Jackson memorial is like defending air or water—anything so utterly and horribly over-exposed certainly needs no defense. It’s everywhere, like it or not, unavoidable, ubiquitous. But I feel the need to do so.

Strongly.

Our modern culture is split, fractured, divided amongst languages, factions, beliefs, politics, religions. Cultural pundits across the aisles have consistently bemoaned the loss of “water cooler moments” that unify our culture, that make us “Americans” or simply, “humans.” These events, in the age of three television stations and two newspapers, used to be as simple as Carol Burnett’s new show, or the crrrrrazy new Procter and Gamble advertisement. But, as more stations and websites and magazines take over a cultural landscape, as we’re allowed to find our own niche and not simply slot into the 4 or 5 boxes available, we fragment, we splinter, we separate. And that’s… okay. It’s a necessary by-product of progress, an ironic attribute of connectivity. 

2008 Election

The morning after the presidential election, I sent this e-mail out to some of my friends who work in the arts:

Dear Friends,

As artists, we spend much of our lives reacting, be it to overly authoritarian power structures, mistreatment of the less fortunate, or worldviews we find to be corrupt and disingenuous. It strikes me today, after surrounding myself for the last twenty-four hours with like-minded individuals who shared their hugs and their fears and their tears, that we have another opportunity to consider.

History is dotted by periods of hope and prosperity, intermingled with long stretches of fear and doubt (Fortuna’s Wheel according to The Confederacy of Dunces). The “role” of the artist in these periods is remarkably consistent – we inspire, we create, we paint pictures of the core values as we see them, we mirror society back to itself so that it can fix its hair, straighten its tie. But last night, listening to Barack Obama give as stirring a speech as I’ve heard in recent memory, rubbing the chills away from my arms, I felt that I wanted to redefine my work. That, instead of railing against social injustices, pointing out the lack of clothing on the Emperor, or howling to the moon about the corruption, greed and intolerance shaking society’s fabric, I would try and lead from the front. That maybe, with history on our side for once, we should all try and lead from the front.

Proposition 8

This is an old post I wrote about Proposition 8 and its subsequent failure.

Protests are always a crapshoot. The weather could blow, the turnout could suck, the keynote speakers could fall flat, the donated sound system could break, or, even worse, the protest could be a raging success. The disaffected people, the proletariat who have left their houses, traveled in solidarity for a common cause, they could be whipped into a chaotic frenzy, marched to a second destination, then… left to disband. This feeling of isolationism and confusion that drove them to seek out a group, that forced them to have a voice, it’s now worse before, now that each protestor has been exposed to the notion that there are OTHERS like him, that there are OTHERS who feel the same, that there are OTHERS willing to fight against the preservation of the status quo. But those others are riding the subway home. Those others are at Whole Foods getting lunch. Those others, whose names you don’t know, whose phone numbers you don’t have, they’re hitting the 3:15 showing of Madagascar 2. That dissipation of energy is the comedown off the heroin protest high, and it’s an all too familiar feeling for the modern dissident.