Yesterday

Yesterday my Dr. told me that after a year my heart efficiency had gone from 15% to 25%.  He also told me that NORMAL was 50% and that the internal pressure had improved.  Being a doctor though he had to tell me things like

• We have done all we can with diet, drugs and exercise
• We should consider having a defribulator installed to replace my current pacemaker

I feel like I did the day after the original diagnosis, lost, vacant, alone and adrift.  Is this how my life ends?  Is this mess that I leave behind all I will be remembered for?  I don't get to see grandkids, I don't get to watch my son succeed, I just end in puff of dust and leave behind yet another mess to clean up for my family.

After that original diagnosis I was left alone for three days in my hospital room to think.  I didn't turn on the TV, when Jeff came to visit I talked to him and then feigned being tired so I could be alone (how I wish I had that afternoon back now!).

The "Scientific man" in me wants to believe everything they say and just get my affairs in order.  The romantic dreaming fool wants to rage against it all.  The 8 year old want to turn off the lights or hide in Warcraft.  The drunk wants a bottle.  In the cocaphoney in my head where is the rational voice that says what I really know...

• That I take things too seriously and let them get to me, which adds stress
• That I have NOT done everything I can do, like totally give up drink and actually lose weight
• That this is only the beginning of the end if I let it be.

I have coasted through most of my life, knowing what I need to do to succeed and knowing I am fully capable if only I get off my fat ass.

...and at the same time knowing that before I do anything I have to learn to love myself, give myself a break and generally lighten up.

Do I finally do that, or just wait for the stabbing pain in my chest that signals "game over"?

Dymo Dreamin'

When I started racing cars just out of High School there was monster on the top of the hill at Laguna Seca.  It was called Turn 4 and it was the key to a fast lap.  Scrub too much speed and you lost that lap to gravity, too much speed at the armco barrier was rifgr against the edge of the track...over which the next place you would land was at the foot of a great long drop.  I used to call it "The Salinas Off Ramp".

Racers being who they are a common sense of humor was in view in each car.  It was on the hub of each steering wheel, resplendent in plastic dymo labels.  It usually had one message...

"Don't lift"

In Vees to do turn 4 right you had to do it it with you foot buried, a leap of faith if there ever was one.

I started out with the same message on the hub of my wheel, "Don't Lift" and I tried my damndest to follow the instructions.  Eventually though that sticker dried up and fell off and I replaced it with a different one.  It said

"...straight on until morning..."

I always have been a bit odd.

...you can't go home, especially to a place you never lived

Last night was my fortieth High School reunion and I actually went.  Well, I tried to go is a better way to say it.  Two of my closest friend, the Steves, were going to be there and I thought it would be a chance to hang out with them for a bit and MAYBE see some other people I might have known from, well what I remember as four years of angst, bullying and general social ennui.  The former on my part, the latter on the part of a goodly portion of the student body at large.  The only previous reunion I had attended was the tenth and that was amusing but not something that registered with me at a very deep level.

Anyone who knows me closely knows that I am possesed of a somewhat prodigious memory. That being said it is somewhat telling that the four years I spent at <High School Name Redacted> have all but been burned out of my memory as if by a laser beam. Still I have of late resolved to face things that I am uncomfortable with the determination I displayed earlier in my life.  This year has been difficult in so many ways, so much loss and so many changes, that I saw this as a potential opportunity for healing.  Additionally Steve (who is Wade) said that he had the most fun meeting new people he hadn't known in high school which I saw as positive and potentially pretty cool.  These days I make an effort to turn my ears on and listen, looking for the story that needs to be told, if I have the time and energy to get off my ass and get my cameras out and tell it.

From the start of the day it was like Sacramento itself, a city that could not get away from fast enough and who I generally have no reason to visit save my sister lives there, was trying to keep me away from the event.  Hwy 80 kicked in with a 3 car accident that tied up traffic for hours but I persevered. I was determined to attend this event,  I was not sure why, but determination is a good thing in any life these days and is something not to be squandered.  When I got to Sacramento it was 95°and still, just the way I hate it, but I was on a mission of sorts and would not be denied.  I found the hotel, found parking and went inside.

Now what I didn't mention was that in High School my pals, the "Steves" were BMOC (Big Men On Campus) whereas I was a socially awkward, introverted nerd. I was a nerd before the term was lionized, I was a nerd when we were still stealth nerds.  So it was not surprising that I found the Steves surrounded by people in the bar, I ordered a Pilsner (Sacramento Local, sorry but not very good) and sat down next to another old pal.  Effectively with that seat in the bar and that beer I had completed the most positive experience of the evening.

What followed after that was an awkward re-meeting of people who I never knew from I time I have done a lot to forget.  Often someone's furtive glance at my name badge would either result in an awkward nod or, even worse, an awkward attempt at social engagement.

"I didn't know you in High School" they would say.

"I did a lot to make sure that was the case much of the time" I would reply.

or

"I was quiet and kept to myself"

When I was greeted with blank stares that evolved into...

"I was voted most likely to be a serial killer"

Surprisingly a couple of people asked "REALLY?!?" when I said that, as if that was a real thing.

I saw a few other people I had SORT OF known and they were all lovely people.  One woman greeted me with a gentle hand on the shoulder and told me that she had been going through her yearbook the night before and had noticed all the cool stuff I was involved in and she "wished she had known me in high school".  I resisted the urge to say that I wished I had a time machine so I could go back and kill Hitler, even though that statement had just as much validity.

Another man introduced himself and when I responded with a blank stare he was visibly relieved.  It seems that in high school he had been one of the elite who didn't just ignore me but advanced to the level of tormentor.  He said he was sorry and I assumed the mantle of the beatific nerd who was not bothered by it at all.  In truth I didn't know him at all.  I told him that over the years I had been contacted by a number of my former tormentors who all wanted to apologize for bloodying my nose or knocking me over.  I told him that I made it a point of accepting their apologies and then asking them which 12 step program they were in and what step they were on.  I might as well have been talking to a deer for the gaze that elicited.

My friend Steve, the taller one, announced that dinner was served and that we should move downstairs.  It seemed appropriate for us to dutifully follow him, this was more my memory of High School.  Suddenly I was alone in a queue of people I didn't know moving at the direction of an authority figure, I might as well have been going to some sort of school assembly.

The food was surprisingly good.  I sat at a table with Steve (who is Wade) who was busy chatting up a woman he had ALMOST dated in High School and the only other person I had been glad to see.  Some alumnus who I did not know stopped by with a high end SLR and we talked a little shop (nerd to the end).  When he started to say things I knew were not true I nodded and smiled.  For a time I spoke to the woman Steve (who is Wade) was talking to about photography, she was knowledgeable and witty and charming.  Her focus though was on Steve (who is Wade) and soon they were lost in that ether known as "catching up".

As I sat there eating my Salmon I had nothing to talk to anyone about.  How do you tell people who hardly knew you forty years ago that, well I am doing fine despite the fact that only a few weeks ago  I lost the best friend I would ever have, that he had passed the day after my beloved dog had left me as well?  How do I start up a casual conversation about how two weeks earlier I had gone to New York City for the first time in my 57 years and on a perfect day had strolled hand in hand through Central Park with a beautiful woman I had only known for a very little while?  How do I drop into polite table chat that in a week I would be dropping my son, the central focus of my life, off at College 900 miles from home where he would be starting his studies in Game Design, following me into the industry where I had started my career?

I would have been glad to discuss any of these things in depth, or other part of my experience, but there was one thing lacking. What was lacking was NOBODY ASKED and strangely enough I did not feel the need to start the conversation either.  In retrospect I am not sure why I think this odd, the connection required for this exchange had been lacking forty plus years ago when I was in High School why expect it now?   Reunions are for catching up with people you had known before, not making new friends (sorry Wade).  I was the guest brought at the last minute to some other family's Thanksgiving dinner.

After dinner I sought out each of the Steves and said my good-byes, hugs were exchanged and I was able to honestly say that I had gotten something out of the event.  So many people in the world these days look so hard for something that is as elusive as a faerie on a thistle, something called closure.  Last night I got closure on that chapter in my life.  I never have to go to one of those events again, in truth I never have to go back to Sacramento (except on family trips and since Jeff's passing those are in question).

On the way to the event in crossed my mind that I was driving my VW to a high school event with the Eagles on the radio, how appropriate.  As I left Sacramento I dropped the Passat into third Gear and spooled up her silky V6.  I opened the moon roof and let in the warm air of one last magic Sacramento summer evening, then I switched over to DAFT PUNK and turned it up

Messengers

I miss my friend Jeff.  I miss him everyday.  I want to call him everyday and tell him...something.  I always will.  His death was abrupt and pointless.  He was too young, he had too much left to do.  His passing has touched far more people than he would have ever thought possible, but all of them never told him until he was gone, and if they had I am not sure that he would have listened.

Suddenly there was POP as the air filled the space where he once stood in our lives, a Magritte like cutout in our hearts and in our lives whose edges will soften with the passing days but which will never be filled for the remainder of our time on this planet.

As I was working I got a sudden idea that seems to sum it up.  It comes from all the changes I have seen in my world and the worlds of all the people who were closest to Jeff.  Changes and adjustments as a result of his sudden passing.

I think sometimes god sends us messengers, not street corner prophets or cathode ray hate screamers but simple souls who come to Earth to be good, and kind and human.  The message they bring is shaped first in the way we love them, then it is finalized in their passing and what their absence from the world creates.  It makes us see things we never saw until they were gone.

It's a cruel process, heartless and loving at the same time.

One more day, I miss you pal.

God Winked...

My friend Pier uses the phrase "God Winked at me" all the time.  Being a liberal son of California any use of the term "god" these days conjures up images of pasty white guys in $2000 suits with gleaming pompadours that shine like a prewar AUTO UNION GP car.  When I say this Pier rolls her eyes and...if within arm's reach...implies potential bodily harm stemming from her frustration.

The thing is though that in the last few months I have started to overcome the way that the more conservative/wacky elements of society have co-opted the word "god" and have harkened back to when I had a much more intimate relationship with the universe.  In those days though I didn't use the term itself, instead using the name "Louie" to define the intangible powers that surround us everyday, but I did acknowledge the existence of something larger than myself.  I was a lot happier and got a lot more done.

It is often my wont tell people that when I lost my god I learned to sail, nothing will make you aware of your place in the world then hanging off the side of a SOLING in San Francisco bay and having the green water wash over you as you beat to weather.  Just now though I have decided to acknowledge the things I have no control over that are bigger than me by just opening my eyes and watching what happens.  Know what?  It's pretty amazing.

The last few days I have been questioning some of the major decisions I have made recently about pushing the rudder over on my life and taking a new course, a course that centers around my lifelong love of film and photography.  Is this a smart idea?

This morning I found out one of my photos from New York sort of won a little contest in a local meet up group. The Red Sea didn't part, the heavens remained intact and nothing arose from the dead.  It wasn't a miracle of any great shakes...just a wink.

Thanks Louie, I will stop worrying and get back to work...

BTW you can see that image over here check out the site an maybe buy something...

The Secret Life of a DogBrain

I have a tendency to find teachings in movies, like celluloid Sufi teaching stories, and the film that most recently has touched me was Ben Stiller's THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER WITTY. I have always loved the story and I found his interpretation personally touching for me. It may not be for you but I think that sort of thing jus dependent on where you are in your life.

Anyway, here is a fun little article related to this recent connection...

Put down the first stone...(and pass the potato salad)

So here's a pet peeve:

I just saw another person use the term

"That's Stupid, why didn't they just give the money to a homeless shelter or the poor"

No I am not going to go into the sentiment, it is a good sentiment and I agree that more should be done for the disadvantaged.  I also wish that the world was much simpler and that a simple act like that could be thought to actually have a cumulative positive effect but it isn't and it doesn't.

I have heard this term used in conjunction with everything from the kickstarter projects to make potato salad to the space program. Now I like potato salad, a lot in fact, and contributing to something like that is pretty silly...but some might think it fun and then they are totally within their right to do it.

WITHOUT JUDGEMENT.

In fact until you can prove to me that you have NEVER gone to a movie, bought a record, painted a room in your house (materials cost you know) or made a meal that did more for you than just supply your daily nutrient requirements you should SHUT THE F**K UP.

We all live in a constant state of, well, simply living.  In that state we don't hurt but we aren't ecstatic either, we are just existing.  If that was all there was in the world we might all very well go mad, that is where "state changers" come in.  State changers are those little things that make us feel, even if ever for so transient a moment, better.

Now for the sake of my point I am not going to go into those in society for whom state changers involve hurting other people, no matter how much FOX NEWS or  THE INTERNET tells you children those people are in the minority. Trust me, the majority of people in this world are pretty good nice people.  They work hard and they raise their kids and yes, the on occasion give to charity when they can.  Those good people are ENTITLED to doing something silly every now and again...for fun.

Which brings me to the second part of this, the space program.  Too many times have I heard pundits attack programs or ideas that have purely scientific or intangible goals because "there are still hungry kids in South Philly".  Having recently driven through Philadelphia I can understand their concerns, if they were real, but usually they are not.

After the Apollo 1 tragedy George McGovern, a man I have to admit having voted for, attempted to use this argument as an excuse to shut down NASA and the space program.  He wasn't the first and he won't be the last to attempt that, but it must be understood that he did it for a specific a reason, a reason all too rampant today.  He did it to manipulate the public for PERSONAL GAIN.

I am not saying he didn't in some part of him believe that shutting down a program that had no direct benefit for his constituents in favor of a tawdry concept meant to tug at the American Puritanical hearts and thus possibly gain him votes from those directly OUTSIDE his constituency.  Then again maybe I am, hell it worked on me but then again I would have sooner chewed off my arm then vote for NIXON.

In that case it didn't work, we still went to the moon...but we never made it to Apollo 20.  There are still 3 surviving Saturn Vs languishing in the dust because there were "homeless people". The evil moon program got shut down, and guess what?

There are still homeless and hungry people.  It's just that they live in a world that hasn't actually learned to navigate the solar system yet, that still has yet to bring back resources from the asteroid belt or the outer planets to make our lives here on Earth a little better.

Is my view of what our race might have gained a bit "rose colored glasses" about the space program, perhaps.  We will never know though, because of lost time and opportunities, because the advancement of our culture has been cut short because of (unspecified) kids in (unspecified) cities.

It can also be said that making sure that no one goes hungry or homeless, not just in our country but anywhere else in the world, THAT would be real advancement of our culture.  That would mean the advancement of us all to a higher moral level and that would be TRUE advancement and I would agree.

The trouble is though until we actually stop listening to people who judge and people who manipulate for personal gain, until we actually all stop JUDGING and go back to giving a damn about other people and situations and their kids that is not going to happen.

So I will repeat myself, until you assume the mantle of a friar and give away all your worldly goods to the poor and forsake everything you enjoy in favor of tending to their wounds SHUT THE F**K UP.

...oh and pass the potato salad.

Christmas in July

I am pretty damn excited, like Christmas in July excited.  Why? Well in accordance with my decision to "...to thine own self be true" I have made some pretty radical decisions as to what I am going to be when I grow up.  Over the years I have been like a kid in a candy store with all the technological advances that have come along, jumping from 2D to 3D to mobile app and so on.  In the end though none of them caught my interest, nor earned my love as the simple act of shoot photos and video. The trouble has been that over the years my income never kept up with my desire to persue this trade, hanging onto film for longer than I should.  Keeping small sensor video cameras longer because, well the kid needed shoes and such.

Tomorrow "the kid" heads out on a road trip for 3 weeks, in August he disappears for a couple of months for his first semester at Digipen. I have a choice of either surrendering to "empty Nest Syndrome" or starting the next phase of my own life.

I choose the latter.  Tomorrow my new GH4 is suppose to arrive, along with various and sundry other components.  The passat is loaded and it is time to try out my idea of being a "Mobile studio".  I wish the Westy was in better shape but such is life.

The sun was dusty gold and setting behind the coastal mountains, over exposing the world, when I pull off at the back entrance to Sears Point Raceway to think.  I was on my way back from Davis where I had seen my dog, my Sparky, for the last time.  The sweetest dog I have ever know, unquestioning love on four legs, was in so much pain that he was too vicious to hug, let alone get a muzzle on him.

In a few hours we would get the call that he had a a ruptured disc in his spine and that his spinal cord had degenerated to liquid.  He was in constant pain when he was awake but they had sedated him and he was still asleep.  They told us they could make sure he didn't wake up again, that he never had to be in pain again, but that would mean we would never see him again.

Laurie, Nick and I agreed that we never wanted him to feel pain like that again.  We formed a circle and hugged each other hard.  We cried the kind of tears that only come from real life coming to call, wrapping us in its her arm.  Those arms felt warm as a summer afternoon and cold as a winter night at the same time.

That phone call was in the future when the Passat shut down and I called my friend Blake Tatum.  We  had been discussing the new situation, the fact that no one had heard from my best friend Jeff Canfield.  Jeff lived alone in Oakland, quietly and kind of secretly. He had missed a call to his Mom the previous Thursday and she had told Laurie that she had a bad feeling.

It is not a good thing when a mother has a bad feeling about their only son.

I had been doing a racing magazine of sorts with Blake for about 3 and a half years.  That would end suddenly, without warning, in a few months and as of this writing I still do not know the details.  That too was all in the future as I sat there watching the sun go down.  At that moment, radio off and the only sound being the hiss of radials on the river road as cars oblivious to me and my thought sped past.  At that moment Blake was a good friend, a former cop and he and I shared a dreadful secret.  Blake had told me to send the Oakland Police to Jeff's condo to have a look.  I knew what the were going to find, Blake knew what we they were going to find.  I held out hope that Jeff had been so depressed that he had just gone for a drive, taking his cameras off on the road he loved, going to points unknown like he had done before.  It was a faint hope but it was all I had. Blake told me it would take time for the police to complete the search and that I could call him if I needed to.

I pestered the Oakland Police switchboard all night.  I sent text messages and I tried to be numb. Other people might say they "tried to be strong" but I knew that was not the path I needed just then. If I made myself strong I would have to feel and I wasn't ready for that.  I needed to be numb, not the numb that comes out of a bottle but the numb that comes from inside.  The numb that comes from not allowing yourself to acknowledge that what was happening was real. When I finally got the report from the police that night they said there was no response to their knock at the door and his car was in its parking space.

They found him the next morning at 9AM, dead in his apartment. I didn't go down to be there when they opened the apartment and I still feel guilty about that.

In two days I had lot my two best friends.  Sparky, who through everything that had gone before was vessel of unrelenting joy and love.  Jeff, my wingman in every sense of the word for most of my life. When they found Jeff I knew that I had to stay numb, I also knew that change wasn't coming, it was here.

Forward into the past

The team and I are finishing up the last of the work on the latest project with Baylor College of Medicine and quite frankly I am exhausted. We came in at the last minute and bailed the art on the project out, as we did on the last project with them, but I had to do more management than I have have had to do in a long time (including crossing swords with a lawyer). In the end though the work we did was great, the client is pleased and we are all settling in for a breather.  I still have some 3D to do but the other are off to their own projects.

All during this project I have been pondering what I need to do next for myself and for my work, a common topic for me.  I have come up with some solutions, but I am not quite ready to reveal them to all.

Kingdom Come

Awhile ago I discovered that HULU Plus had a vast selection of BBC materials, some of which I was aware and quite a bit I had never heard of.  What was I to do but drop my Netflix account (cannot serve two masters after all) and go along.  I have watch ASHESE TO ASHES and LIFE ON MARS again and LUTHER as well as REV.

I like work produced by the BEEB much more than anything produced on this side of the pound.  The writing is better and the cinematographers seem less prone to epileptic fits.  Currently I am wading my way through KINGDOM with Steven Fry.  I have been a big fan of Mr. Fry's work for quite some time but in this series I have noticed something else.

Steven Fry reminds me of Jeff.  Granted Jeff was not Gay, just shy, but in everything else they are very similar.  Intelligent, caring, polite and considerate.

It's nice to find thing like this.

Stuff I love - Prologue

When I got back from Austin I was a mess.  I had been drawn to Austin by the same thing that had drawn the Okies West during the great depression, the promise or work.  Yeah, there had been rumors of cigarette trees and a big rock candy mountain, but I didn't smoke and was watching my girlish figure, but I went to Austin because I was promised an art director's job working on an established X-Box game title.  Add to that the title was owned by Disney, so what could go wrong, right?  In my genius I packed up my entire life, gave up my apartment, and went to Texas WITHOUT a contract.

NOTE: ALWAYS get a contract.

All of that is a story for another time though because I want to talk about is what I learned when I got back.  I learned it from my friend Taunya, one of the most beautiful women I have ever known personally.  Taunya is an actress and filmmaker who had forsaken Hollywood for numerous reasons and was making a go at rebuilding her life in Salt Lake City with her daughters.  At the same time I was struggling to get a foothold back in California Taunya was doing the same in in Utah.  The difference between us was that while I was feeling sorry for myself  Taunya we reinventing herself. While I was sulking in my pal Gordon's spare room starving, Taunya was in her daughter's spare room, starving...and finding out about the local film community, and schmoozing it's denizen, and organizing them and getting together a team to produce a web series, which eventually became Raising Kayn.

I wound up volunteering to help her with that project pro bono because of something she said to me, something that I have adopted kind of as a battle cry:

"If I am going to starve, I am going to do it doing something I love!"

The work I did on Kayn was sub-par at best but the truth is laid the foundation for me rebuilding myself because it reminded me of how much I LOVE film and VFX. THAT is the centerpiece of the future I am building for myself.  Since Kayn I have been working at the things I know, things I can make money at easily, and in the background acquiring the tools I need to do what I want to do.  In the latter category I am close to being at the "put up or shut up" point.  I find myself with the tools and the skills, now all I need is the story I want to tell, a common thread amongst filmmakers.

So to start looking for that I thought I would start writing out the things that I love, the places and memories and activities that have brought me joy over the days of my life. By doing an accounting on paper rather than in my head I hope that the next step in journey will make itself apparent.

UPDATE ON THE GREAT BOOK GIVEAWAY:

I have not forgotten about this guys.  The tunneling crew is working day and night through the morass that is my shop in hopes of reaching a rich vein of pulp, beautiful pulp that I can start to distribute. Everything has been slowed down by a heavy work load but that contract winds up today/tomorrow and then we can get back to making with the book giveaway.  Stay tooned!

We interrupt rationality

This past few days I learned something.  I learned that grief is both sneaky and rapacious.  That it is an ambush predator that lounges just below the surface of day to day life and waits.  It waits for that moment when you drop  your guard.  It waits for that one fraction of a second where you start to think that you are getting a handle on the situation and you relax.

Then it strikes, like an crocodile on a zebra.  The attack is not gentle, or subtle.  When it attacks it lunges directly for your heart and latches on like a piranha.  You try everything you can to get it loose, you try and decapitated, or drug it or even just ignore it but the harder you try the harder the jaws clamp down.

Suddenly you are taken out of the "maintain an even strain" attitude you have developed like a tourist from his loafer.  You become the drowning man, flailing your arms and screaming irrationally. If someone tries to help  you try and escape the grief by turning on them, pressing their heads beneath the tsunami of pain that is engulfing you.

There is no easy way to get out, other then just coming to your senses and facing the wounds, cleaning them rather than trying to cover them with gauze.  It's never easy but it has to be done and each time this happens you get a little better at it.

The trouble is that each time the grief slips silently below the surface.

...and it waits.

"Here there be Art Collectors."

One of the side benefits of the events of the last few months is that I have gotten back in touch with some artist friends who I have lost touch with over the years.  It is a sad testament to where my head was at for so long that I let insecurities, jealousies and petty human squabbles isolate me from the very tribe that gave me so many opportunities.  Opportunities for interesting projects to work on, opportunities for friendship with a broad spectrum of fascinating, creative people.  That was then though, this is now and getting back in touch is fun and enlightening. I say "enlightening" because I have learned just how wrong perceptions can be.

When I meet new people it is often the case that, after a time, I will hear a couple of particular phrases, usually after the friendship moves into the stage where we are getting to know more about the day to day of each other's lives.  When a new friend actually starts to get a feel for how difficult the life of a freelance artist is, usually in comparison to their own more standard form life, I have notice that eventually they reach a point of incomprehension.  It is as iff they cannot fathom how someone who has spent their life gathering skills and knowledge can be treated so shabbily by the world.  It is at this point that I usually hear:

"But you are so talented..."

"...there has to be a place where they will pay you for your skills..."

and finally

"You're so clever, you will figure it out (you always do)"

So for the non artists in the audience let me pause right here. If you ever feel the desire to say any of these phrase to an artist who has just told you they were having trouble finding clients or they might lose their house because they can't make the payments or they have to go move their van because they have been parked too long in one place and the neighbors might call the cops STOP TALKING.  We have all heard it and are tired of trying to come up with clever responses.  The only thing that should come out of your mouth at that point is possibly the tip of your tongue and your incisors neatly snip it off as a result of you biting down on it to prevent the words from issuing forth.

So you will understand my embarrassment when I find myself almost using the same phrases with the friends I am getting back in touch with, artists of skill levels far greater than my own but whom I come to find are in similar situations to my own, or much worse.  As I hear about pals who have been kicked around by the changing art market those same dreaded words begin to form on my own lips more out of incredulity than anything else. The manifold manner in which the stories propagate through the friends on my contact list is even more disturbing. Unfortunately it all fits into a pattern, and that pattern is the bass track to the cacophonous soundtrack that is the "Walmarting of America".

The problem is simple, Americans have never been a highly cultured people.  That can be witnessed by how many painting/ prints that Thomas Kincaid and the Keene sold over their careers. Even worse, with the advent of world markets that allow offshore art to borough in as "textile materials" and the internet serving as a gateway to the "World Market" art has ceased being a luxury item and it has become a commodity. Additionally, in a market driven by contracting paychecks and a communal lifestyle more about Large box stores than cottage industry the concept of PRICE point rears it's ugly head.

Most of my friends and I come from a time when there were Collectors", something we now speak of in the same hushed tones once reserved for the margins of maps where antiquarian cartographers scrawled...

"Here there be DRAGONS."

In the past we lived in the same ways that Defense contractors did in the heyday of the cold war, we did original paintings and sold them for high prices.  The trouble is now that model no longer works and a lot of artists haven't kept up with either the market nor the technology that fuels it changes.  This latter point makes me sad because as I listen to my pals bemoan the extinction of the wily art collector in the wild it becomes obvious that a lot of them are tired, confused and don't realize that even though things have changed they have not changed necessarily for the worse.

The truth is that if you are aware, pay attention and learn from the past the options for the freelance artists in the world are better than they have ever been.

What are they? Well we will talk about that tomorrow...

Doggeral: Ep 3

So I spent as much time as I could yesterday excavating the boxes I need to get at to start the distribution of the wealth.  Unfortunately the weather got too warm to carry on so I had to go back and hide in my "Digital Cave".  The Great book giveaway will happen soon, and I expect it will expand to include DVDs and CDs as well so stay tuned for that.

The last few days have not been as productive as I would like, been feeling under the wether a bit and I fear I may have just crashed as a result of the pace I have been maintaining since I parted ways with my last employer. Still what has kept me going is that this project has gotten me back into my art, the art I spent years struggling and grinding and waiting for the technology to catch up with what I wanted to do. These days I look at the tools available just off the shelf and what they are capable of of and I get excited.  At time I will admit I am jealous of all the young artists coming up, the ones who see the capabilities of the tools to work wonders and tell a story rather than simply as a means to make a living.  If you are working for someone else in the VFX world these days then you are pretty well screwed, but if you have a story to tell and a vision of how you want to tell it then the world is in fact your oyster.

Doggeral Ep 2: Further Details

Thinking further about the giveaway I want to make things a little more interesting , because why do this if it isn't fun and interactive?  So to spice it up there are a couple of new rules

1) If you see a book and request it you CANNOT sell it for at least a year.  Whereas I know this is hard to confirm for me I have to trust in the fact that if you ARE my friend you will respect both my wishes and the spirit in which the books are being given.

2) Handling one book at a time would be far more work then the game implies so your minimum order is 3.  Additionally I will be breaking the books up into "Column A" and "Column B" and "Column C"  You have to take one from each column.

3) Packing and post will be via Paypal

More STUFF in a bit.

Doggeral: Ep 1

It is an artifact of this "Atomic Digital Age" in which we live that on occasion I see a word, or phrase, or one comes to me on the toilet or in the shower and I needs must rush hence to my registrar and save that name as a domain.  Thus I make a concept MINE for eternity (and it only costs me $8.99 a year).  I am not unique in this, far from it.  At Monday Night Dinner I have compared lists of fallow domain under my control and found that I am an amateur .  I have 33, which is why I wear old sneakers I expect.

*****

So I am in need of a green screen room, it is just something I need to do what I want to do.  The trouble is that the one area I have that is large enough for such a thing, my garage NE: Shop, is jammed full with crap.  It wasn't always full of crap.  It used to be a work area where I built furniture, boats and race cars.  That all ended though with the onset of the madness of the commuter wars, augmented by a slide into madness on the part of my entire family involving STUFF.

We have a lot of STUFF.  Our STUFF is important to us.  For some reason we cannot bring ourselves to part with our STUFF.  Much of our STUFF we haven't touched or seen in years, but we still allow it to linger, we still keep it about to clog our cabinets and block our way in the dark, even going so far as to trip us up in the night.

Ungrateful STUFF.

It was a few years ago, when the STUFF issue truly started to get of hand that we had a pow wow about the onset of the STUFF Tsunami.  It was then we realized that the piles and piles of books and paper and etc was where we kept our memories, we were attached to our STUFF in an unhealthy way.

So in the wake of everything with Jeff's passing I have resolved to deal with the STUFF issue.  A lot will go into the trash, some will get donated or sold.  I have some really COOL STUFF though and I would hate to see it go to waste.  So in the coming weeks I will be posting some of this STUFF on here and offering it up to anyone who wants it, so long as they are willing to pony up the dough for postage and packing.

Stay tuned.

Choose wisely

Friday I looked out over the  crowd at Jeff's memorial and I found myself "Billy Pilgriming".

[NOTE:If you have never read Kurt Vonnegut in general and SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE specifically I feel sorry for you and you should follow the link and pick up a copy NOW. If you are older and did not read him when you were young, well once again I feel for you.]

My first girlfriend, Valerie, and I came up with that term to describe that moment when an external stimuli unfixed you in the timeline of your life and you find yourself traveling, unbidden, back to another time and place.  This is not to be confused with memory, which is a simple act of recall, when you BILLY PILGRIM you are IN that moment IMMEDIATELY.  When it happens the events are all-around you, you are surrounded by the world of the time in question.  You might actually be able to SMELL what was cooking or the trees in bloom, FEEL the warmth of a long lost summer sun or the rough weave of Levis wet from a dip in the river against your skin.  It is more than memory, it is akin to being unstuck in time.

Jeff and I were friends for so long, passed through so many phases of our lives as friends and companions, that his memorial attracted visitors from a number of "lives" that I have lived.  There was a ubiquitous table of racers of course, the most recent phase, as well as people from places in Jeff's timeline I did not know (work and before we met), but there were also those people from the place on the venn diagram of our days where the circle intersected.  People from Fandom, people from College and so on.

As I looked out on their faces, all drawn together in love for Jeff and to support my family and I realized something, I still loved them all. Each and everyone of them took me back to a time, as Vonnegut put it:

"...when everything was Beautiful
and nothing hurt"

These days a lot of things hurt, physically and emotionally, but seeing the faces of these time travelers of my time line was like a cooling balm that soothed like the touch of the Witch of Westmereland. Their presence made the pains of the years fall away like parasites cleaned away. Smiling faces reminded me of costume parties, and musty classroom redolent with the smell of work print and acetone. I was suddenly in hallways singing bawdy song late at night with the thrill of a young man, just coming of age, that were I just a few years younger I would be doing something naughty.

So much of our culture now is influenced by metaphors from media.  As a refugee from the game development world one springs to mind immediately, the idea that in a game you are given "multiple lives" and that if you DIE you will suddenly be brought back whole and strong to your companions.  Nothing could be further from the truth, we get one shot at it boys and girls.

In addition to this there is simple fact that even though you will meet people throughout your life, the ones that you meet when you are young and starting out will always be the strongest bond.  They will be the ones you do stupid things with, who hold your hair and bail you out and come to get you when that car that was "such a deal" strands you in Kettleman's City on New Years day. They will also be the ones who hold these memories in trust for you for the time when you need to be reminded how good life is and what it is like to really laugh and sing.

So if there is anyone out there who is reading this who has just set their feet upon the road I will give you this one pearl of advice, Choose wisely.  Choose wisely the people who will be the guardians of your early days.

Looking out on that gathering of friends on Friday I realized I had...

Can you feel your heart?

I can feel mine, I feel it everyday.  I have felt it, consciously felt it, since I was in the hospital in Austin when I had my pacemaker emplaned.  Every move I  make with my upper body I feel it.  Every meal I eat I wonder how the food I am consuming is effecting my blood, because that is what the heart pumps after all and if the blood is effected then so must the heart be.  I look at the food before I eat it and wonder:

"Will this kill me?"

I know it sounds melodramatic but hey, when you are living with CHF that sort of thing just comes to you unbidden.  OK, it helps if you are a drama king/queen but I think even the most circumspect and mundane amongst us have to think something like that, after all living with a bad heart is living with real life everyday.

REAL life, if I might quantify, is the life that history turns on.  It isn't a fantasy or a PHOTOSHOP image, it is real by its very definition.  it is life and death, it is that thing that effects not only us but those around us.  Those we love.  Those who count on us and who will be wounded with our passing.

I am trying not to be as morose about all this going forward.  Jeff's passing, the fact that he was 2 years younger than me and still died of what appears to be heart related complications, is a harsh taste of reality.  I have to color it though with the harsh realities about my friend, that he never met a vegetable he liked and that cheese was a part of everyday.  Yes he stopped drinking long ago, but he did not stop eating the wrong things which in the end can kill you just as dead as Jack Daniels.

When they scanned me last September the Doctor told me I did not have coronary artery disease, my veins were clear.  In that there is not an answer but there is hope.  I am learning that a compulsive personality and drink are a dragon you have to face everyday.  In AA they call it a sickness and call upon a "higher power" to help them in their fight with it.  That's why AA doesn't work for me.

I'm not an atheist, I think it is the height of arrogance to think that my little monkey brain can comprehend anything so large as to be able to create everything.  It is the height of pride to think that anything so large has time for the piddling day to day goings on of my little life.  I do believe in free will though, and that few things are as unstoppable as the human spirit.

So it's been four days since I had a drink, three days since I acknowledged my best friend has slipped his moorings and drifted away and it's time to get on with everything.

I know it's time because the sun is up and I can feel my heart.

So How was your weekend?

It is one of those Mondays where I am glad to be back to work. That is not because it was bad this time, but rather because I have new ideas and new focus and want to apply them.

Friday was the Celebration of my friend/brother Jeff's life in Sacramento and it held some surprises. First was a pal from film school showed up I had not seen in 8 years and we did some catching up, as well as resolved to keep in closer touch.  I told him that I would like to do some projects together but we will have to see how that goes.  Additionally Laurie's best friend surprised us by showing up from Oregon.  She is still like family for all of us and a ball of positive energy so it was good to have her there.  The turn out was very good and there was nothing but love and support, both for Jeff and for those of us left behind.  Nicholas gave a great Eulogy and I talked for 10 minutes, it was good to get it out. In the end the entire event was much more cathartic than any of us thought it would be.  When it was over though it was as if all the energy in our bodies had been drained from us. We were all in our respective bed far earlier then usual.  In my case I was surprised that my dreams had returned (they had been missing since that day in Pennsylvania) and they were positive and refreshing. 

My former roommate, Gordon Garb, showed up at the memorial and reminded me that TEDx was this past weekend, which I knew but because the client still(s) has not paid me for all the work I have been doing, and I had to use up my reserves paying one of my artists so he wouldn't quit, I had not bought tickets.  Gordon surprised us and bought ticket for all of us and on Saturday showed up and gave Nick and I a ride to the event.

At TEDx the speakers were all pretty good but two stood out.  The first was Tatjana Dzamboza who works in AUTODESK's 3D scanning research unit.  She spoke on the advances in PHOTOGRAMETRY, where you use multiple photographs to reconstruct a 3D model of an object and how that is being applied to reconstructing the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan that were dynamited by the Taliban. They were able to build a 3D model of the Buddahs using tourist photos and pictures taken by expeditions before they were destroyed.

The other speaker who stood out was Dr. Robert Rubin, an

oceanographer at Santa Rosa JC who has been doing work with Manta Rays.  He told an amazing story about his experiences in the Sea of Cortez that made it so I will never think of Manta Rays in the same way again.

Sunday Nicholas and I did a Father's day tradition, a trip to the movies.  We went to see HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 ,which was wonderful.  The film was beautiful and I think did some things that I had never seen done in 3D animated films before.  The design was beautiful (and I saw my pal Peter Chan's name in the design crew which was cool), the music was wonderful and it really set me to thinking about where I want to go next, after this project winds up next week.

I am standing on a ridge between video film and digital and I am not sure where my heart really lies. After the TEDx event I spoke with Tatjana and when I told her what I was working on with BCM (using game theory for teaching) she was very interested and wanted to talk further. At the same time I have been wanting to pursue my video further.  What will I do?  Well I think I will leave myself open to the opportunities that present themselves and go where the gods lead me.

The morning after

Yesterday's memorial for my brother/best friend Jeff went really well.  We met so many of the people we had heard about for so many years that Jeff had worked with and heard their stories of how much he had effected their lives.  The turn out didn't surprise anyone, but I think it would have surprised Jeff.  I truly don't think that he ever understood how strong and positive an impact he had on people.  Those of us who knew and loved him tried to tell him but he was just too stubborn to listen.

We had stubbornness in common. Now I am going forward without my wingman so I have to deal with that stubbornness on my own.  The stubbornness to not stop poisoning myself with drink. The stubbornness not to acknowledge that whereas my body is older, and thus handling everything it comes in contact with differently, I still have the power to change things for the better before I join Jeff in the great beyond.  I am carrying about 60 lbs too many, I need to shed as much of that as I can in the coming weeks and months.

The question is how?

Further ways in which I seem to have decided to kill myself...

This week I have been dealing with a lot of stressed phone calls from other people.  Stressed artists who are working on a project looking to me to find out why a multibillion dollar client seems to have trouble paying us for the work we are doing.  Stressful calls from the clients, apologizing for their backers being slow to pay and can our team please keep working even though we haven't been paid. Calls from other clients saying that the site I just built for him "is down" (he needed to refresh his browser).

Stress, like rust, never sleeps.

I could add a plethora of other things to the mix, car troubles and the like, but we all have those.  They are all just logs in the Jenga stack of everyday life, the stack we add to everyday flinching away from it as we remove our hand for fear of the oncoming clatter of collapse.

This week I have the added stress of the memorial service for my lost friend/brother Jeff.  It;s tomorrow and I have not written a thing yet to say about the best friend I ever had and how his sudden absence has left a huge gap in my life. I will write something, and I have to lay our a sheet for his service as well  but I have been putting it off.  Putting it off in the same way that I have been putting off accepting that he has gone.  It is no wonder that I have started having a drink now and again...or everyday.

Let me say flat out that I should not be drinking, that drinking was one of the cheif causes of my heart problems.

Let me rephrase that

ALCOHOL WAS THE CHIEF THING THAT HAS IN THE PAST ATTEMPTED TO KILL MY HEART AND IS STILL TRYING TO EVERY TIME I PUT IT INTO MY BODY.

So why is it then that I go out most nights to the liquor store and pick up a crappy canned Club Martini, which I then take back to my room, pour over ice and pretend I am John Steed while I choke down it's vile flavor?  Well it could be attributed to genetics, it could be attributed to the stress of my everyday life, it could be written off at a lifetime of conditioning that tells me it is both acceptable and cool to do...

Wait, stop right there.  As a close friend told me yesterday, those are just excuses.  Drunks make excuses, it's how they stay drunks.  The trouble is though excuses like these can kill me, they should be registered more carefully then assault weapons (not difficult)

Hot fun in the summertime

Another warm day here in Petaluma, my home town. just around noon and things are already heating up nicely.

What is also heating up nicely is my desire for change.  I need to write about it, here in public, to serve as motivation.  This way I am not saying what I PLAN TO DO, I am documenting what I am doing.  Like stopping drinking.  Like going back to the eating pattern I had before I went to work at Nuvolum, namely eating fresh whole foods I cook myself, eating less of it and getting more exercise. Unfortunately I stepped outside to go for a walk and it was already 82 degrees with no breeze.  Not weather for a fat boy with a dickey heart to go walking in.

So back to the computer, tummy growling away, head grumbling about having too much to do and wouldn't a beer taste real good about now...

I am legion (at least inside my head)

Killing me slowly...

When you lose someone who is near and dear to you it's tough.  It's especially tough if that person dies because due to a condition that was treatable. So, delving deeper, what if that treatable condition is one that you recognized the symptoms of and warned them about it, advising them to get checked out repeatedly.

That would suck, don't you think?

So (taking it EVEN further) what if you recognized the symptoms of that condition not because you had read about them online or heard about them but because YOU had experienced them YOURSELF.

In literature I think they would call that a "wake up call", don't you think?

Finally, what if despite said wake up call you ignored the passing of the loved one and continued along your merry way doing things you know are bad for you but for which you can find myriad excuses?

I feel like that just now, like I am reliving LEAVING LOST VEGAS only with a salami sandwich with a gin chaser.

...I got some 'splaining to do!

I love BIG BANG THEORY on CBS.  The characters remind me so closely of so many good scientist friends I have had over the years and as a self professed “grown Up Nerd” the passions that they enjoy, and the uncomfortable situations they get into seem all too familiar. In truth I can remember being even more awkward than the gang are in dealing with what society likes to call “normal” people.

NOTE: In a world where accountants geek out over “Game Of Throne”, Tolkien movie gross millions of movie bucks and I have seen NEUROMANCER for sale in the grocery checkout line I put to you that the term NERD needs to be revisited.

Something that one of the “just passing through” characters, Lucy, said kind of explains why I am sitting in STARBUCK’s just now.  Lucy had such crippling social anxiety that she decided to take action against it herself.  To do that she consciously set herself in situations that make her uncomfortable.  The best way to face the dragon is face to face, not with your back to it.

Losing Jeff as we did has really set me to thinking about what is and is not important to me.  Above all things is that I need to enjoy the life I have been given and the way Jeff passed has given me pause.  He was younger than me…and he is gone.  I was privy to everything that he wanted to do, at least what he shared with ANYONE, and I know how much of his song was left unsung when the music stopped.

Along with Jeff’s passing something else that I have noticed in the people I have known, both near (like my Father) and far (like my invisible friends on FACEBOOK).  When we were young we were excited about everything, just the taste of a new drink or the smell of strange place could set every neuron to quivering. When we were also something that is becoming more and more rare in the world, we were open.  We were open to new thing and new people and new adventures.

When your heart is open you can invite all manner of things in, some might be bad it’s true but most of them are good.  Like the Dali Llama I CHOOSE to believe that the world is not so much good (or Bad) but rather it is neutral.  How it affects us is based on how we choose to interact with it, what we choose to let in. The trouble is that as we age we change, for whatever reasons we close like a rose at sunset. Maybe it is armor from all the bad things that happen to/around us.  The why of it is not as important as the fact that it happens.

When I was a child my parents did a lot of entertaining a lot and they had a lot of rowdy, funny people as friends to be entertained.  I remember specifically them throwing a costume party and being chased under the hors d’eurves by a masked Doctor with a giant hypodermic squirt gun (he turned out ot be our family doctor who felt so bad for scaring me he gave me the squirt gun which I used for a lot of summers after). As my folks aged though I watched them change, they closed off.  They didn’t go out to dinner with friends as much, or even leave the house.  In the end my Dad wound up gaining a horrendous amount of weight until he looked like a latter day Jabba the Hutt, perched on the end of the couch in his terry cloth sport shirt and khaki shorts, smoking his Phillip Morris and drinking his coffee. The formerly vivacious couple who laughed so heartily and deeply when I was a child pulled the blankets over their heads and all I could see of them was bathed in the glow of their TV sets.

I have seen this behavior to some extent in so many of my friends over the years, pals who once bounced around a picnics at the lake or swung out over rivers on ropes slow down, close off, go internal.  They go onto the social networks and tell themselves that they are still participating in life not realizing that calling internet communities “social” networks is like assuming you know what the Taj Mahal looks like because you have seen pictures of it.

That is not to say that things like TWITTER and FACEBOOK aren’t fun or are invalid, far from it they have expanded our abilities to keep in touch exponentially, but some of our monkey brains seem to have lost the simple fact that it is a metaphor.  It seems to forget that FACEBOOK was visualized as a “virtual commons” and that your “FACEBOOK Page” was originally called your “wall”.

Anyone who has ever gone to college knows that “the Wall” in the commons is where you leave note for your pals on things that are going on and where to meet up after class and such.  The “Wall” was a simple delivery method and the truth is that if you found someone standing in front of the wall as longs as some people spend time staring at their FACEBOOK “wall” you would think them some sort of stalker, or at least in need of some sort of mental aid.

Another thing about a common is that when you are standing in front of “The Wall” you might actually experience something that, as we age, we experience less and less.  You might actually experience some physical contact and direct interaction. It could be the brush of a shoulder or a simple exchange of smiles but no matter what form it takes it is a simple reminder that we are not alone, that there is something beyond ourselves.

I was first made aware of the potential for this long before the Internet even existed.  Clifford Simak wrote a poignant story about it in the 1940s called THE HUDDLINGPLACE.  I first read it in THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME and it has haunted me ever since.

Since Jeff retired I saw him start to fall deeper and deeper into his solitude, deeper and deeper into himself.  When we spoke about him finding work he often said he knew he needed to do that because he did not need the money so much as he needed the contact with other people.  He knew that he was by his very nature a shy person and that if he did not have the force majeure of going to a job every day that he would not do it.  Racing was a big part of his life, even after I bowed out, but even that had begun to bore him.  Slowly he had begun to pull the covers over his head just as I had seen my parents had before him.  One of our last phone conversation I had not heard from him and I asked him why.

“I haven’t been doing anything so I didn’t think I had anything to talk about.” Came the calm reply.

The things that attract our attention most in others, that annoy us most, are usually a function of the failings we find in ourselves.  That observation isn’t an aphorism, it is a simple fact.  When I got back from Austin I started a BLOG that I called “the Bucky Project” and I did it because I didn’t really care for who I had become over the years and I wanted to peel away the husk that was surrounding me (“Yanking my covers” as my old girl friend Valerie used to say) in hopes of finding that goofy kid I once was.  Even though I didn’t keep that BLOG up (I love blogging but I go through phases where I think it is fatuous and narcissistic, which it is but what are you gonna do?) I have kept up that search. The events of the last few weeks have only thrown aspects of it into sharp relief.

I love my digital art, the act of doing it brings me pleasure.  To do it the best environment is a dark room with an icy blue glow from all my monitors.  When I have worked in offices with other humans they often call it my “cave”, but it is where I am most productive. I have come to realize though that it also something else, it is me pulling the covers over my head.  Like my Parents did.  Like Jeff did. I see people’s lives like a timeline and, through my experience, I have learned what happens when you embrace the covers and pull them over your head.  The next stop on the timeline is eternity.  Even with my bad heart I am not ready for that.

So here I am, pounding away on my MacBook and sipping my Americano.  True I had to put in my earbuds and turn on my music to finish this piece because a gaggle of soccer Moms took up residence at the table next to me.

What is the plural of Soccer Moms?  Gaggle? Herd? Chat? Burble?

But I am out in the world and starting my day with caffine and a simple reminder that the world is out there and I am a part of it.  Maybe it makes me uncomfortable; maybe it is not as ideal as my cave but no matter what it is better.

I can’t ‘splain why but it just is.