minorobsessions-blog

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Jack White - Love Interruption

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"I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human."

David Bowie 

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World Sick by Broken Social Scene. The song that has been running through my head on loop, endlessly....

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"I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in the darkness, the astonishing light of your own being."

Hafiz

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“Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

Khaled Hosseini 

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"If you don’t believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony."

Haruki Marukami

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“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did now know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

Italo Calvino

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I'm doing outreach for this awesome, awesome documentary called American Bear, which explores the lost concept of finding kindness in strangers. Check out the trailer, it's a really meaningful initiative.

And find out more here:

http://www.AmericanBearFilm.com/

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"We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream, and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death."

Francis Bacon 

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The Example Of Rain

Matthew Goulish’s essay Criticism offers us an array of methods through which to approach the world as more active and receptive observers. His suggestions ring true to what I believe is one of the most essential qualities of a responsible artist- to be aware of the world and what exists beyond one’s own knowledge and experience. But Goulish’s Example of Rain is for me, the most powerful testament of what approaching the world is about as a result of a revelation last spring. I was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and being the adventure-hungry person I am, ended up in a bullet-proof white van that took me through the roads of Rocinha, the largest and arguably most dangerous favela in all of the city. What I knew of the slums of Rio was rooted largely in reported realities in the media. Incessant crime, violent drug raids, and severe poverty that left families unable to fend for themselves. As much as I felt adrenaline rushing through every ounce of my body, fear and paranoia bubbled under the surface of my excitement. I was riding into a place where I did not belong, into a place that had taken the black, frightening shape of all things negative in my mind.  This was my chance to be the journalist I had always wanted to be, a once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph a rarely accessed place without any preconceived notions attached to my work. Yet harrowing images from Fernando Merielle’s 2002 film City Of God about the favelas kept flashing through my mind.  I was undeniably scared out of my mind.

 That sentiment lasted for a while. But after some time, when I lifted my camera to my eye and focused my lens on the little girl making art with her father, the toddler kicking a soccer ball back and forth with his friend, and the mother inside her meager home laughing with her children, I learned something that became one of the most valuable life lessons I have ever taken from my travels. We all walk into scenarios with so much mental baggage. So many opinions, beliefs, and judgments. And as much as these thoughts define who we are as unique individuals, letting go and taking life for what it is can be such a beautiful and expanding quality. Yes, the favelas were plagued by drugs, violence, and social hardships, but there was something far more compelling that embodied the slums: a fascinating culture that stayed true to the same, beautiful values of love, family, and sacrifice that everyone else in world, myself included, have experienced at some level. It wasn’t really a “bad” place. Just people with the same emotions and needs as me surviving in a different, more challenging environment. Like Goulish’s example of the trappist monk Thomas Merton who silenced the world and experienced a chain reaction of sensual observations that led him back to the “hiss of the lantern” (117) that was there all along, but that he never acknowledged, what I have realized about my own approach to the world is that being willing to surrender to a moment without any presentiments can be incredible. When I liberate myself from the bonds of my own filters, an amazing freedom of thought and observation emerges.

 Goulish’s thinking raises a difficult but significant question for my personal journey as an artist. One of my biggest dreams is to be a travel documentarian, telling stories about people who can’t tell their own stories, people who we need to know about. But to really see and understand the global community I live in, I have to take it for what it is before I apply my own interpretations. But how do I go about balancing what I feel and what is? How do I use my personal voice, which is often very strong and dominant, to guide my work while I still stay true to the reality that I set out to document in the first place?  This is a question that only my quest as a filmmaker can answer.  

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NYC Music Festival, WHERE ARE YOU?

Why is it that New York freaking City doesn't have a fantastic rock festival yet? Because we don't have tons of grass? Come on. Give us something incredible. NYC can pull off something more amazing than Sasquatch + Coachella + Bonnaroo+ Lollapalooza put together if we wanted to with the number of legendary venus we've got. MAKE IT HAPPEN!