FOR NOW...

It is one of those phrases that implies ambiguity, prediction of the future … but those implications seem rather to be a sore misinterpretation. It is more a celebration of the present, an acknowledgment that change has come and the past truly is, in the past. We’ve entered the Now and all that brings with it.

Flipping through channels the other day I stopped on SONY entertainment channel to watch The Godfather II (my favourite of the must-have trilogy) and it was wonderfully refreshing and incredibly amusing to notice the corner age-restriction R18. Does such a restriction even exist any longer? The last movie I recall as possibly having that restriction is Natural Born Killers if that. But here on the SONY channel, suave Robert de Niro and an endearingly young Al Pacino are R18. One has to wonder though, is that ridiculous over-conservatism or have we become ridiculously uncensored in terms of what is socially acceptable, not just for adults, but more importantly for children. What age is now socially acceptable to rape children of their innocence?

I find myself currently in a ‘nothing phases me’ sort of state. Not a superwoman complex state however, but blasé, almost déjà vu, ‘yes that’s life’ shrug my shoulders complacency. And that’s not great! I recall reviews years ago about the movie City of God about the favelas of Rio .It took me very long to actually sit down and watch it though, which I only succeeded in doing a few weeks ago, and to say the least, I expected more, more drama, more disturbance, more shock-factor. What is wrong with me that the last movie I watched that crept under my skin was Hotel Rwanda, and this documentary not fictional movie of what is really happening makes me shrug my shoulders, raise my eyebrows and respond with a “hectic”, that’s all. No, no, I’m not saying the poverty, the violent resourcefulness of children does not affect me, I’m saying I’ve become immune to a degree. Yes, I’d like to idealistically believe it’s a defense mechanism to remove me emotionally from the horrors of this world that I feel so helpless to change, but once the thick-skin has settled on, does it really matter how it got to be there? It’s there, and it is entering me into oblivion.

For now, I’m detached in a way that I never used to be. No, I do not crave to be emotionally destroyed by everything around me, but I want to understand how it came to be that I almost care less, almost. Before, I was helpless, yet affected, change isn’t always good. So for now, I resolve to find a better solution than building walls, slicing off the pieces because I don’t like their fit and complacently accepting that innocence is lost. I am relieved that I still cannot watch a Pussycat Dolls music video without cringing and feeling like I am watching soft porn. There is an art to selfishness, a role of the independent in social responsibility. We are individual only to be separate pieces that fit into a whole, so perhaps our complacency can become something of the past and for now, we stop shrugging our shoulders because we are not directly affected, for now…change is come again.

Sure we’d all like to use “For now” as a hopeful implication of what is yet to come…but we’d probably have a better conscious understanding if we saw it as two words linking the past to present and leaving the future where it is meant to be…yet to come. When my brother was little, his animated lion hero was SImba, from The Lion King. For now, my nephews fluffy lions are named Alex, after the lion from Madagascar…

MACHETE

I entitle this piece as an accolade to a B-grade film by Robert Rodriguez. The term B-grade film has such connotations of “made-for-tv” movie, low budget, poor acting. And honestly I believe that that’s probably part of the appeal for creative geniuses like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino to categorize their films into that genre.

Not that that is the sole basis of their appeal, but quite simply there films rarely classify into any classical “A-grade” genres of movie-making and the term “B-grade film” becomes a fantastic satire. The main star of Machete is Danny Trejo, and watching the film you understand why previously most of his roles have been as a physical presence with no or very few spoken words in the script. Jessica Alba, by no means the most talented actress out there, seems to make a concerted effort to exploit poorer acting skills than she possesses, Steven Seagal (who knew he was still alive?!) is an ill-cast representation of a Mexican Mafioso in a Fidel Castro safari-suit, and Robert de Niro and Don Johnson (no white suits in this movie) make for an A-list acting crew who get the point of the creativity of these types of movies and make it a hilariously cartoonish full-length feature film. Lindsay Lohan (I’m not a fan) landed an interestingly autobiographical role of her real-life self as well – the fact that she’s in the movie scored her some points in my book.

Most people who have no interest, respect or understanding of Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez will be quite astounded and perplexed as to how on earth I can be raving about such a shallow movie. And here’s the thing – we are ever more increasingly becoming a society of sheep that follow celebutants and deathly gothic creatures like Lady Gaga – who’s marketing campaigns are not even their own, her stylists dress he that way so that’s what she works with and alas, she’s got it to work! MTV no longer plays music! The entire channel is consumed with reality tv shows about … nothing. So to find creativity, true creativity not mass-frenzied or influenced is special to hold on to. Whilst I like Robert Rodriguez and am interested in his work, I only noticed him because he is a friend of my guru, Quentin Tarantino. Whilst most of his films are notoriously gruesome, it is violence in a stylistically excessive way which makes it different from merely being categorised as a slasher-film. He has a point, he thinks things through and is meticulous in execution. Kill Bill volume I was a 90 minute movie, there was a volume II because he began work on Volume I with the intention of making a 90 minute movie – and it was, a 90 minute movie. He does not set out the plot in chronological order which is stylistic device on its own. He’s not a guy who made it lucky in Hollywood and is riding the wave, he has a plan, a life, and its not tabloid-dependent or paparazzi flashlight determined. He plans to retire from films when he is 60 to write novels and film literature. He has planned the third volume of Kill Bill already – which is only going to be released in 2014 so that the main character The Bride and her daughter can have 10 years of rest and peace before making another film appearance. They’re not lost souls, these directors/producers/one-man film crews and their regular line of actors, they have purpose and execution in their dayjobs as creative artists. Sometimes, they’re even political activists. Machete for all its comical motives, deals with US immigration and Mexican grievances. Inglorious Bastards about the 2^nd World War. And soon hopefully, there’ll be Tarantino spaghetti-western about the history of the American south and slavery, because its never been dealt with. If you don’t love the guy by now because you’re obsessed with the Kardashians or only watch The Hills on MTV, well then try this, he’s so cool he even has his own film festival!

So here’s the thing. Creativity is not dead, it is just not the entity being blinded by camera flashlights at the moment, which has its perks in terms of an unwritten exclusivity to those who notice it and pay homage. Coolest thing about undertone B-grade…you have to be higher grade to get it.

Sidekicks and shovels

I always admired people who have that skill of political correctness, the ones who are diplomatically applaudable, journalist jargon like “allegations, insinuations, apparent referrals” – it’s all so fantastic because I lack all of those skills. Spades are spades and I call them so. The world has become so sensitive that even fantasy superheroes are affected. Every white superhero has a black sidekick for political correctness and democracy’s sake –Bob in The Incredibles, Ironman, GI Joe, they slipped up with Batman and Robin but when Robin makes his 21^st century appearance aside those bat wings…mark my words! Is it great or have the sidekicks rather than supported or taken over the hero, simply just booted the show altogether?

It admirable, it’s a wonderful rainbow world, but it’s also a terribly oversensitive one.  This culture of political correctness has turned society into a fearful one rather than one that celebrates freedom and expression. Always do or say the correct thing because you don’t want to offend anyone, and worse, the “be correct” because “what if one day in the future”… So many things are based far too much now on fear, of the future, of others, of ostracisation, that we have become ridiculous in terms of boxing things into categories in which everything must fit – and if it doesn’t, it’s just politically incorrect. (If you’re dumb but not hearing impaired…well that’s a purely rude insensitive insult)

Have we killed creativity in our quest for equality? Have we bred a different form of sheep? Sheep all the same? I was horrified that Lady Gaga was named one of Forbes most top influential women! According to them, her techno pop monodromes have revived pop culture. She has large followings all over the world, people imitating her dressing, her image, but not her work, because there is non of the to reenact. She is not creative. Her two stylists invented her look, and all she has been able to do is replicate that look every day, even on “casual” strolls to do some shopping. Sure she’s great at selling herself in this way. But why does she have such a following? She is false, almost mute, there is nothing inspirational about her, nothing new that she hasn’t tried to copycat from artists of the past, and all she has painstakingly tried to reinvent from musical history has failed – none of it succeeded as revivals or reinventions of ‘life’. In most of her music videos she is involved in killing someone. Sadly all this reflects to me is how dead she is as a persona, an ‘artist’ and an inspiration. What has become of us that we can’t even identify this anymore? That we embrace the death of creativity and call it genius.

It’s time to leave the past behind us, I respect that sentiment. So I shall henceforth call spades … shovels.

inspirational

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while DARING GREATLY so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919Twenty-Sixth President of the United States

Great expectations post script

John Malkovich in Burn After Reading

"I know you, you're the guy from the gym."

"Im not here representing our guys"

"Oh yes, I know very well what you present. You represent the idiocy of today."

"I don’t represent that either"

"Oh yeh, you're the guy at the gym when I ask about that moronic women..."

"She's not a moron"

"You're in league with that moronic women, you're part of a league of morons."

"No no"

"Oh yes, you see you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life, my whole f….n life. But guess what, today I win." POW

Great expectations

Great Expectations

“Morning, how are you?” I say

“Fine thank you and yourself?”

“Good thanks, what seems to be the problem today?” I ask

….blank stare…

“Is anything bothering you or are you just here for a check-up?” I reattempt.

…blank stare…

“Do you speak English?” I ask, hoping they will shake their heads or reply ‘No’, my impatience would be appeased.

“Yes yes I do.” Followed by blank stare.

And then I get to wondering, is it me? Am I a bad conversationalist? Is my accent weird? Do I speak too fast? WHY is there a communication barrier when asking the SIMPLEST things?

I’m not an animation fan, however sometimes one finds such surprising hidden wisdom in these little characters. I’m speaking specifically of  Bob Parr, the father in The Incredibles, whose wife is fighting with him because he refuses to attend his son’s graduation from the 3^rd grade. “Its psychotic,” he says, “they keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity”.

Mediocrity. It surrounds us, engulfs us and slowly it feels as though it is taking over the world. A performance artist like Lady Gaga can spew out an Ace of Base copycat song with five words in it about some dude name Alejandro, and is heralded a genius. The English language has become so diversified that in your own country you cannot communicate with someone of the same first or second language, because they no speaka de English you speak?! Do I just have great expectations or has mediocrity lowered its standards and an IQ of 60-70 is now regarded as the normal, socially acceptable level of existence.

It cannot be. I can’t simply accept that as is. Perhaps a narcissistic approach is best, God tests all of us in different ways, and my test is not a short transient one. It dealing with stupid people everyday in this bigger picture of the world… patience, understanding, and basically stupid people skills are probably my test – and I’m not going to be rewarded by heaven anytime soon because I’m failing. Perhaps it is the fault of geniuses like Albert Einstein and entrepreneurs like Bill gates – both of whom were apparently pathetic at mathematics – so the world feels they don’t need numbers. Sure we have calculators, who needs to learn algebraic equations? The very inventors of algebra, Arabs, have become lazy, ignorant and blissfully wealthy in their baths of oil. Sheep – we’re such sheep, well if Einstein didn’t need mathematics…yes but he had an IQ of 150! Bill Gates got lucky, he had a good idea and he had dedication and hard work.  The point is that a subject like mathematics teaches logical thinking. No, you will not need to remember the rules of functions or trigonometry to help you attain your dreams, but you learn logic from it all, and that is what EVERYONE is lacking! Logic, simple basic thinking to efficiently complete the most basic of tasks, would enhance communication tremendously.

Or perhaps I’m naive. Where have all the logical people gone? Some are the rulers behind Hollywood’s celebutant fascination amusing themselves as they place and replace their puppets for a worldwide sheep audience. The rest, the rest perhaps have adopted Ayn Rand’s John Galt, and gone into hiding to create for themselves the ideal world of logic, functionality, efficiency, happiness that the sheep of this world must have no part it…well at least not yet!

 I was always more of a Howard Roark fan though. He somehow found the balance of selfishness, to manage to coexist with the rest of the world’s inhabitants and not be so affected by it all. Perhaps that’s the way. Not to give mediocrity so much attention though we are forced to deal with it daily, indifference. It’s not easy! Plan B, if this is proves all too ideal… we can always ask Atlas to please shrug again – a new chaos may be refreshing.

Dictators, martyrs, heroes

It often puzzles me to see so many people walking around proudly bearing t-shirts of Che Guevara in his "Guerillero Heroico" pose. Wasn't he a beastly militant with no mercy? Why do all these "Free-thinkers" and libertarians praise him? And it led me to wonder how dictators and militants of certain eras were heralded as heroes later on.


Starting off with Julius Casear, tall, astute, Roman, the original aristocrat - the very fact that he was a dictator has no positive connotations to it. He was, however, loved by his people and the Empire of Rome was built by him and fell after his demise. Adding to that, his elevation to tragic hero status because of his assassination by his friend and betrayer, Marcus Brutus (aided by Shakespeare's dramatisation of his story). It is befitting that this dictator was romanticised - he even had Cleopatra!

El Che. El Che, the guerilla warlord, was a brutal and ruthless commander. So perhaps it was The Motorcycle Diaries - a book and later film of his travels in the early 1950's, that moulded him into a true revolutionary - that idealised him into a hero. And yet there is more. His fiery passion, his affinity for the poor, his unwavering beliefs against capitalism - it is something to be admired, a man's unfaltering faith and conviction, to believe in something and live your life acting for that belief, living for that truth.

It be only fair after discussing El Che, that I spare a word for his leader, Fidel. I daresay I do have a soft spot for Fidel Castro ever since I watched a documentary on the History Channel about how the CIA planned to murder him by inflicting him with an aggressive cancer after several other failed assassination attempts - this plan aborted only because the CIA decided in that time to assassinate JFK instead. What would Cuban cigars be without him? He spent his life dodging bullets, relentlessly continuing to be vocal about communism and socialism - and yes, it may not work in the real world but the actual ideology of pure communism is a beautiful, humanitarian one. No, he will never be romanticised as El Che - the reason being I think he lived too long, and will now probably die of natural causes, rather than as a martyr.

What all admired dictators, militants, great leaders of the past share is an incredible intellect and admirable unwavering conviction for their beliefs. Very few people can manage to live an idealistic-reality so the ones that fight for it to the end...right or wrong, black or white...in our grey world they hold a place in history as admired men.

And so a look to the future and our possible contenders. French president, Nicolas Sarcozy, makes a fair run for it - divorcing his wife, marrying an Italian model who is now trying her hand at acting - but whilst this is very Henry VIII of him, he is more like the mid-life crisis man than a zealous inspiration.

Kim Il-sung, bless his soul, passed on in 1994 yet remains the eternal president of North Korea. His ideology of Juche: independence in politics; self-sustenance in the economy; and self-defense in national defense, holds convincing, fervent conviction and the theory (of Juche - not the reality of North Korea) allows plenty of sentimentalisation.

Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, was a flamboyant Colonel in his youth that led to admiration by many women. His fame has grown over the years due to his eccentricities, ludicrousness and unpredictable behaviour. He has female bodyguards, he travels with a tent that is resurrected in whatever country he visits and he has time and again reinforced his beliefs in socialism eg refusing a rank and title higher than Colonel since his coup d'etat, claiming Libya to be a "direct" democracy. To most, he's just plain nuts! But then it is said that most psychiatric patients have phenomenally high IQ's.

Last contender...Robert Mugabe. His impassioned speeches and flair of execution of words leaves little to the competition: "The problem we have had is the problem that has been created by a former colonial power wanting to continue, to continue to interfere in our domestic affairs and wanting to continue to have a share in our natural resources. And this is what we have resisted. We have said the land, Zimbabwe's land, belongs to Zimbabweans and as we proceeded to acquire that land and to apportion it to Zimbabweans, our erstwhile colonial masters said no. And what did they try to do? They interfered with our processes, wanted to reverse them and they still want to reverse them. They spoke of regime change and you heard them. They spoke of regime change and they still speak of it. They imposed sanctions. We had not attacked Britain, we had not done anything to Britain. We had not attacked the Americans, we had not offended them in any way. Why, why, why the hand of the British? Why, why, why the hand of the Americans here? Let us ask that. Let us not ignore the truth as we move forward, we must accept reality."

Some strong contenders, but I'm convinced that ALL my grandchildren will be wearing t-shirts of Uncle Bob.

idealistic-realism: Balancing the scales

idealistic-realism: Balancing the scales: "The beauty of life lies in that its melody is a sweet, melancholy lament. It's scale is in D minor - the magnificence of which is that there..."

Balancing the scales

The beauty of life lies in that its melody is a sweet, melancholy lament. It's scale is in D minor - the magnificence of which is that there is a perfect balance in the sound, of joy with sadness, upliftment and depression...melancholy (great word!).

And therein lies the point does it not? To find the balance? Yes there is even a place for the cynics of the world, to smash dreamers down into reality, and idealists to invent new aesthetics to debate the pessimists, and innocent children teaching naive parents the lessons they once new but forgot. All in the soulful march of seeking and maintaining balance.

More and more today, the herbalists, the vegans, the reiki and yoga masters are being given a voice. Scientists, dogmatic religious leaders and weight-trainers are being scolded - because its no longer the "healthy" way. The approach does seem terribly primitive, the whole "out with the old in with the new" manner in which new conformists are being born. *Sigh* at least one things has remained in check - the sheep, will always reliably be sheep.

But we are as always missing the point! Everything has its place and things should not be discarded and continuously replaced - this is why history has only repeated itself up to this point. And I choose religion and spirituality as my forum to exemplify this.

The truth of every religion lies in that they all have the same common core - one of honesty, goodness conquering evil (in the self, in the world and in the unseen reality) and all scriptures preach this to the same extent with very little difficulty in understanding. Religion therefore logically forms the baby-steps of self-growth and maturation into spirituality. But unfortunately religion has been so meticulously and cannivingly masked by the dogmatic dictators that it has formed no basis as a means but unto itself. But in the new age we are starting to see through that and free spirits are born, as they were in medieval times when witches were burnt, women scorched and free-thinkers hung.

We are a far cry from the middle ages so when birds tweet and mother nature sings loudly and the foodchain is disrupted because we no longer eat meat, this should be the happy ending of the story, fireworks have already started and we're once again distracted by our wisdom and advancements and discardment of religiosity or better interpretation thereof.

But pay attention a little longer and listen to those who wish to exist only in the realm of spirituality. To shed themselves of their human flaws and seek to be one with God by attempting to discard any sense of humanism, not for moments of meditation each day, but permanently in this state of trance, their "nirvana". It does seem logical does it not, that whatever your spiritual beliefs of our higher creator, we were made in human forms to exist as such, seeking balance in both humanism and spirituality together - rather than willing our physical selves to die before we're even dead. Which does lead one to wonder about our great leaders of the past (whose work should and will remain renowned and respected) like Ghandi - who adopted the philosophy of Brahmacharya and drank his urine towards the end of his life for its health purposes - surely he tipped over and teetered over into imbalance at the other side of the scale???