2011 last 100 days
Countdown:
75 Days Left
Day: 25
16 October 2011
- Goal - 1 hour per day doing some work on the movie:
Listened to Karen Everett audio: “Affirmations for Filmmakers” (4X)
Reviewed Karen Everett video: “How to Organize Your Footage”
Generated footage log
template in Word
- Time: 1 hour
- Goal: 30 minutes per day basic music work:
Warm Ups MojoCaster
Granby Street lyric swap
Dies Irae 2X - piece as a whole. Worked on dyads and octaves
Total time: 30 minutes
- Goal: 15 minutes per day (minimum) exercise:
Deep stretching. Total time: 15 minutes
- Goal: 15 minutes per day (minimum) scoring work for the movie:
Details:
It's Your Thing - Isley Brothes
Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing - Living Colour
version
D-sus-Em-C work
So What - Miles Davis
Total time: 35 minutes
Notes:
I got an email from Phil Jacoby, luthier extraordinaire and
owner of the Philtone Guitar Company,
asking
"I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Occupy movement"
Before I go into my response, I want to say that Philtone
Guitars is my go-to place for all things guitar. Phil built the MojoCaster from and
ill-advised assorment of parts and turned what could have been something from
the last verses of “One
Piece at a Time” to a guitar I played every Sunday for nearly five
years. More than a “guitar repair” guy,
Phil is a certified luthier and every time I walk to him, his response is
always an education (ask him to give you the “tone vs. sustain lecture” ), so
now I get to turn the tables and wax philosophical to him. Here we go:
Phil. Thanks for looking
at the blog. Glad you like the pictures
of my axes; thanks to you, they actually get played.
My age tempers my thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement. I grew up during the 60’s when the anti-war,
civil rights and other “movements” began and came to influence the America we
have today. If history tells us anything,
we know that protests tend to expand and
co-mingle rather than die out. If you
look at the protests of the 60’s you’ll see that by the end of the 60’s the
anti-war and civil rights protests had converged on some fronts. A year to the day before his death, Martin Luther King gave
a speech against the war in Viet Nam and tied the money spent on that war
to the lack of employment for people of color in America.
What does that have to do with anything? The biggest complaint I hear about the Occupy
movement is they are unable to pare down “what they want” into a succinct sound
bite. What’s wrong with that? The “Calvin Thomas litany of all things wrong
with the sound bite” goes a little like this:
While the sound bite does enable “news” organizations to
compress events into manageable “chunks:: for “consumer” to process, when the “news’
follow-up on that event (or series of events) does not go much below the
surface of the sound bite, and the “consumers” do little to gather additional
information to flesh out the “news” reported, it is impossible for the public
to make an informed decision about that event.
The common response to this argument is, “Who has time to do
all that research?” It is upon that very
argument that “news” organizations base their utility to the public. Allegedly, they sift through all the data to
bring us the salient facts about the issue.
Such a premise assumes the “news” organizations have no hidden agendas,
aren’t owned by any corporations or organizations with ulterior motives, and
actually have the resources to be independent and comprehensive. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for
the past 30 or so years, you know none of that is true.
Okay, okay, all of that is for another soapbox. To the “I’m too busy to hunt down the facts”
crowd I’ll quote Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence,
of the statue of Virginia for religious freedom and father of the University of
Virginia: “An informed citizenry is the only true responsibility of the public
will.” BOOYAH (Okay, TJ probably didn’t say that last
part)
Now, back to the Occupy
movement. That 1% of the population
controls the majority of the wealth has overwhelming implications. First, I think about how if that is true, why
do we have the poverty we have. The next
thing that comes to mind is since access and influence over the media would certainly
have to resources, how is that 1% influencing what I see and hear about the
Occupy movement? Finally, I have to question
my role in this inequity. If I profess
to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, what is my responsibility in
addressing, reversing and resisting this inequity? It is easy to say, “Hey, I’m definitely not
part of the 1%,” but I’ve been blessed to have a good job and a comfortable
life. Is there more I can be doing to
help others, and how do I do get started?
Add to that Pope John Paul II spoke to this inequity long
before the Occupy Wall Street movement. was
Well-known for his criticisms of Marxism, John Paul II did not mince words
about capitalism in his 1987 encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis 37,
noting the , “…all-consuming desire for profit and the thirst
for power at any price with the intention of imposing one's will upon others,
which are opposed to the will of God and the good of neighbor.” There
you have it, plain as day, where the then Pope equated rampant capitalism as
being against the will of God.
Therefore, I think the Occupy movement has its work cut out
for it. I think the
inequality in the distribution of resources is not just an American problem, it
is a world problem and as the rich get richer, the entire world moves closer to
a showdown over wealth, resources and responsibility. What responsibility (if any) does the 1% owe
to the 99% consuming the goods and services that ultimately contribute to their
majority share of the world’s resources?
Oh yeah, back to the 60’s. Earlier
I said protest movements tend to expand rather than contract. It is interesting that the uprisings in
Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and now Syria are referred to as “Arab Spring.” Many let this term roll off their lips without
knowing what the term means. It is
actually a play on the phrase “Prague Spring,” which refers to the 1968 events
in Czechoslovakia when Alexander Dubcek, a reformer, attempted to implement
democratization. Russia crushed the
movement with a Warsaw Pact invasion. Of
course, no one talks about this when discussing Arab Spring, but a massive
brutal crackdown is still a possibility in Syria. In Egypt, when the Tahrir Square euphoria
subsides, what happens when the results of the changes so far fail to satisfy
the core complaints of the protesters (lack of jobs, horrible economy, and
wealth in the hands of a few (hmm…sound familiar?)) that brought down the
government?
Phil, I hope this answers your question.
I am sorry to have rambled on so much.
In addition, thanks for helping me write my blog for today.
Peace
Cal
