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Make Society Livable Again
It’s normal to want friends.
To need connection.
Even introverts require some social contact.
(So a big Fuck You to Caity Weaver for encouraging people to be ashamed of such needs in the NYT Magazine this weekend.)
It’s why solitary confinement is considered torture, and therefore is used as extreme punishment.
Yet hundreds of millions, if not billions of people lived through that torture in pandemic lockdown, in the recent past, and it’s rarely discussed.
In the US these days, (and probably elsewhere,) people are struggling, angry, and have lost the ability to calmly communicate with each other. Yet many people are trying to figure out why they’re having such a hard time in a rigged system, right after the world lived through conditions that aged some brains by 10 years.
These are hard times, (in my therapist’s words,) as America has succumbed to Oligarchy, yet it is poorly understood beyond the cultural fringe.
When I was a Freshman at Duke University, (where I double-majored in History and Economics,) I took Intro to American History, with Dean Gerald Wilson.
Image courtesy of Duke Athletics My first paper was the assigned subject: “Was the Progressive Era Actually Progressive?”
At 18, I didn’t know even what progressive meant, (back in 1992,) and most certainly didn’t have an informed opinion.
Ever the good student, though, I just needed to read the text book, stake out a position, pull evidence with quotes, and I was good to go.
As such, I got an “A” on the paper.
Not much knowledge was acquired, but in my second semester, I took another History class, from Professor John D. French, which opened my eyes to the “real” US history of conquest and territorial acquisition, which undergirded America’s success as a country.
(This History is becoming “banned” more and more each day.)
I might not have learned if America was actually progressive back then, but I did learn that the concentration of wealth and power, during the Gilded Age, was so bad, it almost broke society.
Miraculously, trust busting, anti-monopolistic practices, and increased unionization, approx 100 years ago, allowed the US to build a middle class, which was (once) the envy of the world.
These days, we know that for one group to have resources, most of the time, another group has to have less.
Which leads to all sorts of conflict.
In an Oligarchical society, the most powerful people are always a super-minority.
Dozens of people, in a nation of more than 330 million.
It’s why they work so hard to keep everyone distracted, squabbling and desperate.
And the Oligarchs fight tooth and nail to maintain the power and control they’ve established.
We’re reading about this reality piecemeal, whether it’s an article about Getty heirs dodging taxes in The New Yorker, or Robert Reich dropping knowledge bombs on Twitter.
The overall narrative, though, never penetrates the minds and hearts of all those angry people.
Don’t be angry at your neighbor, your Mom, or the “other.”
Instead, be angry at the super-rich people who think they should be worth $1 trillion, so you have to decide whether you can afford to buy vegetables for your kids.
I’m telling you: this is officially a time in history when things are fucked up.
A century ago, such conditions led to WWII, and the Holocaust, in which my race/culture was almost wiped out.
Nobody likes a know-it-all, (I get it,) but we artists are the canaries in the coal-mine.
Time for some collective energy to make society livable again.
Brooklyn, NY, 2018
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No One is Coming to Save You
No one is coming to save you.
It’s hard to hear, but eventually, you’ll thank me. Because it’s one of the most difficult life lessons to learn.
In this case, we can blame Hollywood.
Thousands and thousands of stories told over the years, and so many of them still use a plot device ripped from the Ancient Greeks: the Deus ex machina.
Most normies won’t know that term, but I’m aware that most of you aren’t normies.
So as not be a pretentious asshole, let me explain: Deus ex machina means the part of the story where someone, or something, shows up, improbably, just in the nick of time.
(The first image in a Google search for Deus ex machina, courtesy of Wikipedia) It happens so often that most people don’t even notice anymore. And one can’t fault the ancient storytellers for wanting to preserve tension for as long as humanly possible.
That desire, to keep the audiences rapt, required that salvation only happen at the Very. Last. Second.
By the gods. (Most of the time, anyway.)
And Hollywood has leaned on that time and again, to the point it became a part of American mythology.
A nation of individuals, but somehow, we always win in the end, and the good guy always wins, and he always has tons of friends, who have his back, and he is the best shot, and the best fighter, and the best lover.
Americans have been trained (especially by Trump) to believe that only winning matters. And they deserve to win, all the time, no matter how they behave.
That is what it all comes down to.
Do you win friends and influence people by being a good enough person that there are people who care enough about you to “have your back,” or do you use power, intimidation, and control to force people to be nice to you? (Otherwise known as kissing your ass.)
In fairness, this rant is not random.
I’ve been writing about friendship, mental health, and the attempted pursuit of happiness since I began Sunshine and Olly six weeks ago.
And this weekend, I read three things that blew my mind, for how tightly they tied together the philosophy I’ve been unpacking, (in real time,) here on the blog.
First, this brilliant, long-form piece in ESPN, about the absolute limits of good friendship.
Courtesy of ESPN.com Two wrestlers, new but really great friends, were hunting for shed antlers in Wyoming. They stumbled into a Grizzly Bear’s home, and when she attacked one friend, the other had the chance to get away.
Instead, he charged the bear, trying to execute a takedown, because she was about to kill his buddy. As a result, the hero took the worst brunt of the attack, but they miraculously both survived.
This is the dream scenario, and it worked out.
An actual fucking Deus ex machina.
But these were two dudes who cared about each other, had spent (probably) more than 100 hours as wrestling training partners, and who believed in the values they were taught in sports.
On a deep level.
That is what most people want, but don’t know how to get.
As to the second article, (in the NYT,) it provided some science to something I’ve noticed anecdotally, and begun to write about.
Americans are literally anti-social right now, as many people’s brains aged 10 years during the pandemic.
People are scientifically different, and have lost skills on how to relate to each other, how to connect, and how to offer the kind of friendship they’d like to have in return.
(If you can’t give, you can’t receive.)
The last article is the bleakest.
Consider yourself warned.
It was another long-read, this time in the NYT, about a family-owned sandwich shop in Phoenix, which is located in a neighborhood taken over by a tent city.
The writing is terrific, the photos are great, and overall, the story manages to empathize a bit with the sub-makers, and the people living in hell outside the door.
In this case, it’s LITERAL HELL, as more than 1250 unhoused people have died on those burning, Phoenix streets in the last two years.
1250!
Many of them cooked to death on the concrete.
Elsewhere, it describes the way human civilization works, when only might makes right.
Protection rackets have developed organically in the tent city, and people are killing each other over patches of sidewalk.
They were left to die.
Alone.
In the worst of circumstances.
And nobody came to save them.
If you’ve read this far, I’ll do a nice pivot, and turn my tone around.
This is not (only) a bleak story.
Because once people realize they will have to save themselves, it opens a big door to things like growth mentality, personal empowerment, and the quest for better mental health.
What most people want is to be safe, feel good, to be appreciated for who they are, and to be seen.
If/when a person grows up in a family that undermines that, rather than supporting it, or if they work in the wrong company, or go to the wrong school, it can be functionally impossible to live at one’s optimum.
It’s why sports teams talk about culture all the time.
And why so much of mental health Twitter is always discussing the impact of other people’s negative energy.
From Deion Sanders’ Twitter feed today If you can’t buffer it, or avoid it, you best expect it will affect you for the worse.
So that’s where we’ll land today.
If you love yourself, (and if you have a partner and/or children, love them properly,) you’ll figure out what is actually wrong in your life.
Who is dragging you down?
Who doesn’t see you in the positive way you (hopefully) see yourself?
What makes you happy?
Who makes you happy?
Sunshine and Olly make me happy! It’s a great way to start down the path to being the engine of your own happiness.
Hasta luego!
Olly says hello!
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Dana Stirling: “Why am I Sad?” A Portfolio & Interview
I met Dana Stirling, and her partner Yoav Friedländer, at a photo festival in Portland, back in 2019.
(The before-times.)
They’re both photographers, born in Israel, and together they also run Float Magazine.
Dana recently shared her project, “Why am I Sad?” with me.
Not only did I love it, but found the concept, (using art both to understand, and express our own mental state,) to be in line with what Sunshine and Olly has become.
I’m excited to kick off a new feature here on the blog, with an edit of Dana’s phenomenal work, as well as an interview we conducted via email. (This was not a pre-written Q&A; rather, we answered each other in real time.)
Backyard Water Slide, MA, 2015 
Smile A While Truck, Wyalusing, PA, 2022 Jonathan Blaustein: I know you’re from Israel, but not what brought you to the States.
What was behind your big move?
Dana Stirling: Originally my partner, Yoav, moved to New York in 2012 to study for his MFA at the School of Visual Arts. I was still in my undergrad program at the time, so we were long distance for a year. Once I finished my BA in 2013, I visited many times to be with him and decided to apply for an MFA program as well. I was rejected from almost all of them and ended up also doing my MFA at the School of Visual Arts which is when I moved as well.
JB: Gotcha. So it was for school. Makes sense.
If you’ve been in the US for a decade, (much less the last decade,) you haven’t necessarily seen us at our best.
Why did you stay?
DS: I think every place has its ups and downs, no? It is easy to see how much greener someone else’s grass is so I try not to judge anything or anyone too harshly.
I grew up with immigrant parents who came to Israel from London back in ’88 for many reasons, but including anti-semitism. I grew up speaking English, and my parents struggled with the local language (Hebrew,) but because I was born there I was basically a Tzabar (meaning a person who was born in Israel).
Even though I was native to this place, I always felt pretty disconnected. I was never really British enough but never really Israeli enough too in my mind – I just felt like I belonged nowhere.
There was never a strong connection to my physical space. I never felt a rooted connection to the land, and always felt like an immigrant, so moving to another country like the U.S was just natural to me – I belong nowhere so what does it matter where I am?
514 Mailbox, Ithaca, NY, 2021 
Dead Bird, Route 178, CA, 2021 JB: I didn’t know your family had immigrated to Israel from England.
I was curious, and your answer is powerful, but also lines up.
In particular, because the series we’re featuring here, “Why Am I Sad?” speaks powerfully to a sense of disconnection, or dislocation. And you write (eloquently) in your statement about your mother’s clinical depression, which can feel like a wall that exists in a relationship.
The images speak to a mental state, but also to using art in the hope of escaping that mental state.
What is it like for you to be open and vulnerable with others, through your creative process?
DS: Thank you for the kind response to my words – I always say that English is actually not my first language even though I’ve talked to my parents in English only all my life, but Hebrew has always been my first language, so writing in English can be a struggle sometimes.
I actually always felt a deep shame with my situation.
No one really knew about it growing up, besides maybe a couple of friends. I always talked about it in a very shallow way, which led to most of my personal relationships in my young life to be pretty superficial, because I never really wanted to talk about my home or my mother or more importantly – how I felt.
It took me a long time not only to talk about it in this way, but actually understand the impact it has on me, and how it shaped who I am and how I act and feel as an adult.
I have a fear of becoming sad and depressed to the point of not leaving the the house, like my mother, that is so rooted in me that every time I am home not doing something productive I hear these voices in my ear. But at the same time, I’ve always struggled with motivation, and being productive, because it was just always easier to hide, sleep, ignore and isolate rather then do anything active. So this is something I still struggle with.
Photography has really saved me, because it gave me purpose. I think if I hadn’t found it – I might have been completely lost.
Funny enough this project is really all about this struggle.
Photography is a way for me to communicate, because I do have a tendency to hide and bottle my emotions up – but it is also a source of frustration because when I don’t photograph, I feel anxious about not doing enough and feeling like I am failing which becomes an interesting cycle of emotions but it also what makes me photograph the way I do – complex I know.
Ghost Town, Bodfish, CA, 2021 
Glowing Saguaro, Saguaro National Park, AZ, 2022 JB: I can relate to pretty much everything you’ve written.
I think a lot of other people can too.
I respond to your writing, yes, and find it fascinating that you can’t/don’t communicate with your parents in your mother tongue.
Such a powerful metaphor.
The images (at least the ones you share,) do capture an intense emotional energy, which comes from your vision, but also the color and light palette. Though you share in your statement that you made object art in rooms for years, as a form of comfort, I actually love the pictures shot out in the world.
The super-bleak swimming pool in Winter is a great, and obvious one. But there were a lot of photos that include lush greenery, or flowers. As if you were seeking to find some solace, even as you were also attracted to sad things.
That said, I also found a bit of absurdist humor embedded in there too.
It’s known, from a feminist perspective, that men often tell women to smile more.
And your series features an image telling people to smile, as well as smiley-face-emoji graphics.
In a way, is that subtext here?
“Don’t tell me to smile, asshole! You don’t know me, or why I’m not smiling.”
Holding a Girl, Queens, NY, 2020 
DS: I think in a way my work is sad mainly because – I am sad (sometimes). What I mean is that, I photograph thought that mindset.
I am actually a really picky photographer. I use a Mamyia RZ 67 film camera, and I won’t even take it out of the bag if I don’t see something that I think is interesting or makes sense. I can go an entire trip without even photographing a single image.
I can only photograph something that is perfect for what I am looking for, so my work process is pretty slow. When I do find these gems, they are unmistakably a perfect representation of who I am as a person and as an artist.
This is also why photography is such a source of worry for me as well, as I mention in my statement, because I am so picky I won’t photograph for a long period of time which makes me spiral.
I think my work has always been slightly sad, even when I document things that are “happy” like the smiley face because it is just a reflection of myself.
I do like the irony and the humor that comes out of these images as well. It is definitely intentional, and is indeed a part of the work.
I think life is complex, and emotions are not always black and white. I do struggle with depression but I also have a really good life – I love, I enjoy things, I am also happy in addition to having this heavier burden.
This work, I think, reflects all of this. I think there is beauty in sadness and I personally always found my images to be beautiful regardless of what is photographed in it – even if it is something that is decaying, dying or discarded.
I’ve had many people in the past tell me that my work is too sad and it will never sell and that people will not be interested in it – it stopped me for a while and it really made me question my images, but eventually I realized that my work will always be this way because this is who I am and I can only photograph through the lens of the person I am.
I hope people who see the images smile, but I also hope they will come to understand that it is okay not to smile if they don’t want to, and not be okay all the time and that other people struggle just like them and that is okay too.
JB: OK. Fair enough.
A diplomatic, but honest answer. (You’ll get no ball-busting from me on the subject.)
You’ve been really generous to share your work with our audience, as well as taking the time to answer my questions.
I’ve got just one more, if you don’t mind.
Have you got anything cool coming up, in the near future, that you’d like to be able to share with us? Either in your photographic practice, with Float Magazine, or maybe something Yoav is working on?
Thank you so much for everything!
Pride of Madeira, Shoreline Highway, CA, 2019 
Upside Down Smile, Ringtown, PA, 2021 DS: It’s been a pleasure and thank you for your genuine interest in the work.
I truly do appreciate it!
I am working towards getting this project into a book, but I can’t really say more than that for now. Hopefully things will work out soon, and we can see this work on the pages of a printed book, which has always been my dream.
With Float I am always looking to make more opportunities for artists to showcase their work in the best way possible with, as little to no cost, which is always a challenge but it is a huge passion of mine.
Because I am an artist myself, I’ve seen the increase in prices for calls for entry, and it is honestly getting unattainable to submit your work to many people. It’s getting closer every day to a system of “pay to play,” in order to get yourself out there.
Now I do understand platforms need money, and I am not necessarily against a submission fee, but the prices are getting to be so high that many artists don’t feel they can justify spending these prices only to get rejected.
I want to make opportunities that are accessible, as much as possible, if I can.
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Waiting for the Sunshine?
Hello there.
How’s it going?
Is Spring almost upon you, as I opined in Monday’s post?
It’s coming here, rapidly, but in all honesty, that’s not a good thing.
April is typically one of the two grayest, windiest months of the year. (Which goes great with taxes, and community ditch-cleaning.)
Normally, it’s something to bitch about, but then quickly get past, as other than April and November, here in Taos, we get plenty of sunshine and blue skies.
Famously, Taos Ski Valley used to advertise 330 days of sun a year as a part of the marketing materials.
NM blue sky, November 2, 2020. However, there’s this pesky phenomenon out there called Climate Change.
And it happens to be… you know… changing the climate?
I fucking hate it.
Back when we lived in New York, (which was admittedly a long time ago,) I used to sing a song to Jessie.
It was all about despair, and hope, in the midst of the long-ass winters.
It went something like this…
“Waitin’ for the sunshine. Waitin’ for the sunshine. Tired of the gray days. Tired of the gray days. Oh, but it ain’t comin’, it ain’t comin’ soon. No, it ain’t comin’, it ain’t comin’, soon.”
I gave it a bluesy, country twang, and to be honest, I was not a very good singer.
(Slightly better now, but not by much.)
Lately, Jessie and I have been discussing how hard it is to feel good, after the sun has been gone since November.
No lie, I can remember about 3 truly gorgeous days, in nearly 5 months.
It is gray for weeks on end now.
Thanks a lot, Climate Change. You fucking asshole!
Now I’m wondering if this is the new normal?
I admit, a lot of people have it worse.
There are floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, mud slides.
It’s bad out there, in a lot of places.
Hell, the NYT just did a story about climate change refugees moving to Duluth, MN, seemingly oblivious to the lack of sun and extreme cold. (Shout out to Jenn Ackermann for the great photos.)
One sucker admitted to moving there, to escape Colorado wildfire smoke, only to discover a fresh batch in MN, which had wafted down from Canada.
Fire smoke in the Taos air, (before fire season,) May 1, 2022 As I’ve previously written here, everything is connected.
Ecosystems.
The Universe.
Humanity.If we accept that obvious reality, it makes everything easier.
Because it’s definitely harder to be as anti-social as Americans have been, the past few years, if you accept we’re all in this together.
(Except for Elon Musk. He can fuck off to Mars.)
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Time for an Adventure?
Hi Everybody!
How’s it going?
For the first time since I began the blog, I’m not sure exactly whom I’m addressing.
Since my birthday, (49 on March 4,) I haven’t looked at the blog stats.
Took this a minute ago. 49, and back at my high school weight. I haven’t looked once, after obsessively checking for the first month of Sunshine and Olly’s existence.
Why would I do such a thing?
Because I realized the beginning stage was proof of concept.
If I write regularly, and share it for free on a blog, will people turn up to read?
We’ve established the answer is yes.
An audience cohered, and I’m hoping over time we can figure out how to engage as a community more. There’s the comment section, obviously, and some of you chime in from time to time on FB, Twitter or IG.
That’s cool.
But I stopped checking where you’re coming from, and which articles you like best, because from the jump, I wanted this blog to be about what feels right.
(It’s art, not science.)
Targeting articles to a demographic, based upon market research, is about as anti-art as it gets.
Eventually, I’ll reengage with the analytics. But this felt like a precarious time, where creativity and business can become adversaries.
Since there is no business in a free blog, (beyond branding,) I figured we’d keep it pure for a while longer.
Offering advice, or sharing how I’m learning through life experience, has been a fun evolution here.
As I did something new and different on Saturday, to deal with the traumatic energy I acknowledged last week, let’s use it to spread some positive vibes.
Shall we?
In my lifetime, I’ve gotten stuck in ruts.
We all have.
It’s what actions we take to break unhealthy patterns that interest me.
If what you were doing, over and over, isn’t working, you have to shake up your process.
In my case, Taos is really far from everything. Seriously, the nearest big town, from my home, is over an hour away.
(Española.)
Santa Fe is an hour and 45 minutes by car, and ABQ is 2.5 hours away. (Without traffic.)
Not to mention, with a bunch of coked-up crazy drivers out there, going 95 mph on I-25, it’s dangerous as fuck on the roads in 2023.
(Not exactly enticing, when you’re stressed out, and need to get in the car and go.)
To the SouthEast, Las Vegas is also an hour and 45 minutes, except you have to go up and over the Rockies, in a ridiculous pass, so that is not the best way to exit either.
To the West is nothing.
Farmington is 3.5 hours away, (if you’re lucky,) and then it’s probably another 8 to Las Vegas.
(The American West is much bigger than you think, if you’ve never been.)
All told, with that much distance between us and anywhere else, you don’t leave town often.
Which leads to deep ruts.
On Saturday, needing desperately to shake things up, I realized I hadn’t been West of Tres Piedras in more than a decade.
I couldn’t remember anything, other than taking Theo to a fishing contest at Hopewell Lake, with his grandfather, when he was 4 or 5.
(The kid is now 15, and 5’11”.)
So that’s a decade.
Highway 64 goes up and over the Rockies, in the Brazos mountains, and is among the prettiest out there.
Going from nowhere to nowhere, it’s also empty.
I’ve got a really good car at the moment, (for the first time in ages,) so even though I saw clouds over the mountains, and had read that storms were approaching, I said,
“Fuck it! Let’s roll!”
After a “fake” winter of dry, dead, brown grass, slowly, I drove into “actual” winter.
First, it was warm-ish, and then ten minutes later, the rain started.
Up, and up I drove.
The temperature dropped.
I noticed a pickup truck, pulled over by the side of the road.
Up and up I drove.
Winter was here!
Huge pastures covered with snow, and endless trees to the horizon.
It was so fucking beautiful.
Winter, and only for me. No one else around.
Then, the temperature dropped again, down to 32 F.
The rain turned to snow, and the snow began sticking to the road. But still, up I drove. My car has AWD, and is high tech, so I wasn’t worried.
Until I felt the snow starting to hit the undercarriage. It was accruing on the road quickly, and I didn’t have much traction.
I started to get a bit scared.
No one knew where I was.
The cell service was spotty at best.
I looked for a place to turn around, but there was none. Just rapidly piling snow on the side of the highway, with no way to break into it.
Up, and up I drove, but now I had some anxiety in my stomach.
It had officially become an adventure.
Finally, lacking options, I said a quick prayer-thought, and slowed the car.
I had to do a full K-turn on a snowy mountain road, just hoping no truck would slide into me from above as I executed.
Or that I’d get stuck horizontally, and then T-boned by the next car that came down the mountain.
It was a dodgy moment, but nothing bad happened.
The car performed, I performed, and headed down the mountain, knowing I’d drive out of the storm soon enough.
And I did.
That’s when I remembered a hiking trail Jessie and I used once. Maybe 16 years ago? I recall the day we did it, but not the year.
It was forever ago.
I pulled the car over in that spot, and walked through hip-deep snow for a few minutes.
Until I found the perfect clear spot, under a Ponderosa Pine tree. (The wind had made the snow distribution uneven.)
It was so quiet.
I was so alone.
Just me, the trees, and the snow.
I noticed one tree, as I leaned on it, had a wet side, and a dry side.
The same tree.
But a completely different experience.
Just like me.
An hour before, I’d been stressed out of my mind, stuck in our little valley, obsessing about my (very real) problems.
But if you think I felt anything other than majestic, as I stood under that tree, looking out at the endless, empty American West, you haven’t had an adventure in too long.
Time to get out there and see something new!
(Or make something old new again.)
Either way, hope that’s helpful.
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Photo Book Review: Fallen Trees
Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact.
Springsteen said that, in “Atlantic City.”
(This wouldn’t be a Jersey-Boy-blog if I didn’t invoke Bruce’s name at least once a month.)
It’s true, though.
Planets die.
Stars die.
People die.Hell, birds dropped from the sky, dead, over Labor Day Weekend, 2020.
September 2020 (Worst. Year. Ever.)
It’s the cycle of life, and as has been said before, (by others,) Homo Sapiens are the lonely creatures aware of our finite existence.
Tough sledding, sometimes.
The ego gets in the way. We each believe we’re so important, because that’s baked into our brains. Having children bumps many people from the center of the Universe, but parenting isn’t for everyone.
Probably religion serves this purpose for many: making meaning out of our time here, and peace with ultimate demise.
Art can help us process our feelings towards death too.
I have a heaviness in my life right now.
Something I can’t share.
But you can trust I take the advice I dispense. Self-care has been prominent, and I’m even going to BJJ tonight, though I’m still not 100%.
We can’t slack, when it comes to mental health, especially when we have children who rely on us.
So today, not only did I plan to write, but I went to my famous book stack, to see if a slight volume might remove my mind from my troubles.
As always, the photo-book-gods provided, as I quickly found “Fallen Trees,” a ‘zine from 2022, sent in by Kevin O’Connell. He’s an artist I’d met once or twice before, and when he came through Taos last year, we met for a coffee.
Great dude.
Not a great book, but it’s perfect for today.
(And it’s a plenty fine, very nice book. Just not brilliant.)
The opening essay is terrific.
Clean, poetic, intelligent writing, setting the scene as dense, lush forests in the Pac Northwest.
(Oregon, if we’re being specific.)
Kevin writes of “the musk of decay,” so I assumed the book would make me cling to my melancholy.
As if!
Rather, what grabbed me was not the decaying, fallen trees, but the insanely lush, verdant, REALLY FUCKING GREEN surroundings.
I’ve previously shared it’s been a long, 4 month winter here in Taos.
News just dropped, TODAY, the 3 year La Niña has finally lifted. It was responsible for this year’s, cold, gray, brown mess.
Few blue skies. No snow remaining on the ground. Just lots of dead brown grass.
Depressing AF.
So looking at Kevin’s book, for a couple of minutes, reminded me that green exists.
Fresh, new, healthy, growing things exist in the world.
It’s easy to forget, when you’ve been cold for 1/3 of a year.
But Spring is coming.
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Danny Dimes Gets His Bag
Yesterday, I wrote about Kobe Bryant.
It was out of character, as Kobe was one of my least favorite athletes.
Having grown up in the Michael Jordan era, watching Kobe try so hard to emulate his idol was hard to take.
MJ was the most competitive asshole alive. (Image courtesy of The Sports Rush.com) I get that KB was über-competitive too, and it worked, as he ultimately won 5 NBA Championships, and is remembered as an all-time great.
Kobe’s “Mamba Mentality” outlived him, as evidenced by the Etsy poster I shared yesterday.
Idols who die young are often turned into symbols.
Like Bruce Lee. Marilyn Monroe. Kurt Cobain. Janis Joplin. Or Biggie Smalls. Tupac too. John Lennon.
You know the drill.
So now Kobe is remembered, and revered, but few people talk about what brought him down: The Helicopter Lifestyle.
I’ve been following sports, (or sport, as the English say,) my entire life.
And I never heard of another athlete who commuted exclusively by helicopter.
The idea alone made Kobe an outlier, much less the execution.
Few people discuss that when his copter crashed in 2020, Kobe took his daughter, and some friends and neighbors down with him.
The idea of living within driving distance of your job, and your activities, dominates everyone else.
Yet Kobe flew too close to the sun, (literally,) and it killed him.
Not to speak ill of the dead, but Kobe was known for arrogance, and also for ratting out Shaq, when KB was accused of alleged rape near Vail.
The Lodge & Spa at Cordillera, where the alleged rape happened. Now closed. (Image courtesy of The Colorado Sun) Kobe Bryant lived like a man who was never told no.
Who never faced failure.
As opposed to the other athlete we’ll discuss today.
Daniel Jones. (AKA Danny Dimes.)
(Image courtesy of NJ.com)
Rarely, in a lifetime of watching sports, do I remember a player who was never really given the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe there was a week or so, (when his nickname came out,) when fans were excited, but from the moment Dave Gettleman drafted Danny Dimes, everyone gave him shit.
Seems like DJ grew up with privilege, in Charlotte NC, before going to Duke, just East of his home turf.
I also went to Duke, and can assure you, the starting QB there lives a sweet life.
The team wasn’t great, but he did well enough to make it to the 1st round.
Then the wheels fell off the bus.
And a young man who perhaps didn’t face much adversity, was then thrust into a 3 year shit storm.
Doubted at every turn.
Beaten up. Physically. Mentally.
It’s all out there.
Things were awful for Daniel Jones, and the world made fun of him every day.
Still, he persevered.
A big white guy getting $160 million is not the kind of news that will typically hook the bougie/hipster folks who read this blog.
(Though I was chastised for the phrase “Republican Assholes” yesterday, so not all of you are of the same demo.)
I get that much of this audience doesn’t care about sports.
Can I help you?
Yesterday’s blog was all about personal growth and development. With professional sports, we have the opportunity to watch other people grow, in real time.
We acquire role models for what can happen when a person puts their/her/his head down, acquires new skills, and refuses to give up.
It happens all the time, in sports, and at the moment, my favorite teams, The NY Giants, Arsenal, and the Brooklyn Nets are fortunate to have such players, and coaches.
The Good-Guy era is fun, as I’m over watching assholes like Jose Mourinho and Bill Belichick win things, again and again, while displaying awful personalities, and questionable ethics.
Jose Mourinho, terrible person. (Image courtesy of AS Roma) Daniel Jones threw for 5 touchdowns once, and 4 twice, in his rookie year, but still, people say he has a bad arm.
He used to fumble a lot, and throw interceptions, but he learned how not to do that.
Just last year, the Giants chose not to extend his contract, (which will cost them A LOT of extra money for this season,) because they used his growth mentality to their advantage.
It provided extra motivation, for a certain type of person.
Because people can develop.
They can grow.
It’s why I was so impressed with Noam Chomsky’s OP ed in the NYT today.
Learning and context, he said, define humanity.
Otherwise, it’s all just noise.
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Advice Column: Be Better
I’m sick and tired.
(That’s the whole first sentence.)
I’m not sick and tired of anything, I’m just sick and tired.
I caught a cough my first week training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, (what with the massive exchange of bodily fluids,) but it held at bay.
It was surprising, just having a cough, without the attendant bother of a cold. (Stuffy/runny nose, body aches.)
Given the limited impact, I kept training.
And working.
Parenting.
Dog walking.
Olly, Sunshine and Haley. Last night. Pushing myself to the max, as always.
So Sunday, when it morphed into a full-blown cold, I wasn’t surprised.
No rest, no improvement.
Because the freelance life teaches you a valuable lesson, with respect to everyone’s experience here on Earth:
No one is coming to save you.
So you best save yourself.
Most people take that as a bad thing.
No White/Black/Brown/Red/Yellow/Blue knights are arriving shortly. They’re not currently steaming across the moors, on their fancy horses, intent on making your life better.
Yes, community is meant to support us.
But communities need to be built.
That takes strength, and energy, both of which get sapped, while people wait around for a savior who’s not coming.
Sounds bleak.
It’s not.
The idea that within each of us lies the capacity to improve his/her/their state in life, through internal work and personal growth, is a hard one to swallow.
This is not the Republican Party line of “Personal Responsibility.”
Those assholes use the term to deny some very, very obvious realities.
Such as, growing up in poverty, or in areas with shitty schools, has a massive impact on a person’s life trajectory.
Furthermore, every single American who has become “successful” has done so based upon the societal, governmental spending necessary to allow civilization to function.
No society, no Jeff Bezos.
(Image courtesy of the NY Post) It’s that simple.
Yet we’re living at a time when the bonds that hold society together are being tested as never before.
What’s the solution?
Be better.
I’ve written a bit about Taoism, here on Sunshine and Olly, but not much about Buddhism.
Obviously, both belief systems are interconnected, though the latter originated in India, before being exported to China. We’re talking about two societies, each more than 5000 years old, sharing some of the best wisdom they’ve been able to generate.
In this case, Buddhism posits that all things are connected. There is one big mass of Chi, or life force, that represents everything.
People. Dogs. Trees. Rocks. Water.
The more individual cells (which comprise the whole,) are damaged, the more the entire body suffers.
Between all the methods of self-care available to us these days, be it therapy, exercise, creativity, friendship, travel, what have you…
Once you know what you can do to be better, (through self-awareness,) invest in those things.
More art-making.
More exercise.
More nature walks. (Should you have access to nature.)
More friend chats.Whatever it takes to improve.
We’re talking about a growth mindset.
And though I did not like him as a basketball player, it’s also what Kobe Bryant was on about, with his “Mamba Mentality.” Relentless improvement, because it’s the best way to fight complacency, and entropy.
(Image courtesy of Etsy) It’s baked into things like Martial Arts, Golf, or cooking.
(Seriously.)
I’m laying here, sick and tired, but since I haven’t written since Friday, I knew I had to push through.
Express the emotions.
Share the thoughts.
So that’s where we’ll land today.
Life is insanely hard. But it’s also magically awesome, at times, and certainly, the only one we’ve got.
(Until proven otherwise.)
Hasta Mañana!
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Making Art Is Not A Choice
Making art isn’t always a choice.
People assume (incorrectly) that it is.
They think artists are slackers who don’t want to get a “real” job.
There may be the tiniest bit of truth there, but it’s not what the process is really about.
Art is self-expression.
And most artists express themselves because they must.
(Hence Kandinsky’s famous phrase, “Inner Necessity.”)
In fairness, as I’ve been blogging about this subject for the past 12 years, some of you may have heard a version of this refrain before.
All artists, (or certainly art professors) lean in to the depth and mystery of the process, because that’s where most of us get our satisfaction.
Sure, we occasionally get the accolades, or make a little money, but for the most part, being an artist is about developing your creativity, and creative strategies to feel OK in the world.
Or, if you’re very lucky, to actually feel good!
(Image courtesy of Michael Dill Action Coach)
One of the things I love about blogging is thoughts, in the form of articles, connect together over time.
Themes emerge.
Having taught art as long as I have, (including within traumatized communities,) I’ve seen first-hand how expressive outlets help people.
Expressive outlets?
What are we even talking about?
All people have feelings and emotions. They’re the body’s mechanism for communicating with itself. But if the “feeling” comes into the heart, or the chest, some people are automatically dubious, while if the “feeling” comes into the brain, via “thoughts,” they’ll trust implicitly.
It’s why artists are often called too “emotional” or “sensitive,” because certain people think the brain is better than the body.
As if the brain isn’t a part of an interconnected system, filled with fluids and energy transfers and neural pathways?
Most average Americans couldn’t tell you three parts of the brain, IF THEIR LIVES DEPENDED ON IT, but they’ll dismiss people for living too much in their feelings.
(Image courtesy of Wikipedia) Fucking idiots.
I started writing today because I had to.
My life is good, sure, but we all have stress and drama, and IMO, due to the pandemic, we all have some version of PTSD too.
But since I’m trained up, I knew that I HAD to write.
This blog is my art.
It helps me be OK.
And if, as a byproduct, it helps you feel OK too, that would be the best possible outcome.
Catch you next week!
Billy Bones says, “Hello!”
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Birth of the Dragon
Bruce Lee is a legend.
You don’t need me to tell you that.
He’s also been dead for 50 years, yet is the titular head of a commercial empire that sells merch, and develops programming, like the ESPN documentary “Be Water.”
I’m not saying it’s a lucky legacy though, because the wealth and fame still didn’t offer Bruce, or his son Brandon, long and healthy lives.
Both died tragically, young, in service of their film careers.
Brandon Lee in “The Crow,” (image courtesy of Cinemablend) In the brief time he was super-famous, making films, Bruce created enough impact that people still invoke his name, daily, all over the world.
Hell, I follow his account on IG and Twitter, and as I said, HE’S BEEN DEAD FOR 50 YEARS.
How is this possible?
As usual in America, it’s all about the money.
Today, though, we’re going to talk (briefly) about China.
Because that’s where funding originated for the martial arts film, “Birth of the Dragon,” from 2016, which I just watched on Netflix.
(Image courtesy of Movies Anywhere) It’s not a good movie, (in the traditional sense,) but like “Hero,” (one if the best films of all time,) this story had some serious PRC propaganda undertones.
Enough that it’s worth writing about.
To be clear, (my favorite phrase,) Hollywood has been promoting “American values” across the world for a century.
I’m not the type to think it’s cool if we do it, and awful if they do it, so it won’t be that kind of article.
Still, I find it fascinating.
While Jason Scott Lee did a great job playing Young Bruce in the 90’s flick, “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story,” that version of events was supported by the Lee family.
Jason Scott Lee in “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story,” (image courtesy of Letterboxd) This one was not, and it’s easy to see why: it casts him as a puppet of Mainland Chinese Taoist philosophy.
In reality, Bruce Lee was (slightly) Caucasian, and grew up a star in Hong Kong, before moving to America.
As the man who made Kung Fu globally famous, (mostly posthumously,) Bruce represented American values: flash, style, individuality, and arrogance.
He was such a cocky guy, Quentin Tarantino even satirized it in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” for he was criticized for being culturally insensitive. (I happen to agree, though it was an electric scene.)
Cliff Booth fights Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino’s imagination (image courtesy of Variety)
In “Birth of the Dragon,” the story created a highly fictionalized version of a supposed true story, as it does not seem to match with recorded history.
(Hence my accusation of propaganda.)
The subtext is that only a properly modest, humble Shaolin monk, from Northern China, could teach Bruce Lee how to grow up enough, (maturity-wise,) to handle his burgeoning responsibility.
That’s the whole message.
The Mainland monk comes to San Francisco, and grinds some Chinese philosophical wisdom into Bruce, (without his knowledge, because the Monk is that smooth.)
Then once he’s done his job, he leaves.
The meta-message is encoded in a story in which they created a fictitious, handsome-blonde-white-guy character, (VERY loosely based on Steve McQueen,) to keep the American viewer sitting still, while they endure the lesson:
Brash America will not win!
China has spent thousands of years accruing wisdom, so, as usual, the young upstart is fucked.
Obviously, no American would sit through a film with that as the main theme, so they snuck it in the back door.
Rotten Tomatoes and all the critics hate this film.
It’s supposed to be awful.
But I enjoyed it.
Great fight choreography, and the Shaolin monk, played by Xia Yu, is so damn likable.
They did a great job shining up their values, but having studied Kung Fu for years, what they discuss in this film is real.
Martial arts are about personal development.
Even more than fighting, or being tough.
It’s a lesson my Kung Fu Big Brother, Dave Duran, tried to teach me, over and over, the last year before he died.
Dave, Summer 2021 It’s all about inner discipline.
If we can’t learn to handle our temper and our emotions, which reside in our body, how can we expect handle things in the wider world?
If we can’t keep our center, when stress builds in training, how will we expect to succeed when life throws its best punch?
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Sunshine and Olly 