Crushing Planets Post-Memorial Day - June 4, 2008 - "Healing didn't mean forgetting."
"These people are jumping to their deaths....Something terrible is going on up there..I know that for him it was a good-bye call...I love you. Take care of Caitlin, our little girl....You're coming home tonight. I gotta get down on the floor....There was nothing...'Nobody jumped...they were forced out.'....Together forever...My father loved Salsa...He was our main guy. He was our father...And if she jumped, she jumped...Picture was just one in a sequence of twelve...Somebody who was tall, lanky...This might not be Roberto Hernandez after all. The search for the falling man had just begun...Healing didn't mean forgetting."
Last night, Obama gave an inspiring "acceptance" speech. The hope raging around the US reminds me of the hope I felt when I stumbled into Cory Doctorow's 1st talk as part of his Fulbright Speaker series and then began auditing his seminar. I ended up breaking some USC bureau rule and auditing his class, taking an insane four full courses, Manuel Castell's Globalization class, Chris Smith's History/Distribution of Recordings (focus on music industry, but failed to teach us how to do digital music, uhh, duh), Elizabeth Osder's Introduction to Online Communities and Cory's (link to USC Public Diplomacy's audio of Fulbright speaker steries), his Set Top Cop graduate level seminar.
I began to feel possesed as Manuel Castells' theories would speak to Cory's eloquent Jeremiahs. My body ultimately couldn't handle such intellectual pressure and I ended up breaking down multiple times. One of the worst periods, ironically, was the Saturday night, day one of the amazing Re-Mixing the archive conference. I remember being super-tired that Sunday for day two, having drunk the kool-aid, believing losing my peace-of-mind was more imp. than quieting myself down.
For the first time, I started understanding the global forces in our over-networked world and how the struggles Neil Matsumoto and I had in finishing our film, FIXED (where we had to break Bob Dylan's publishing copyright to keep Nico's song in our film), was part of much larger currents and flows re: power, trade, intellectual policy and human rights. How this struggle between US Trade Representatives and activists challenging them has, for the first time in history, beaten back the attempts by US Trade representative at the World Intellectual Property Organization. How, in turn, the US Trade representatives fled to bi-lateral trade negotiation to bully their IP policies as a pre-requisite for "fair" trade. [postscript: how narcisistic it is to prioritize "remix" or "mashup" freedoms when core A2K human rights are being ignored. Finally, how the most important ingredient is a little humility on all side, so we can educate ourselves on these complicated, interwoven, over-networked connections and then debate how to best address them.]
That semester was unique, very unhealthy, inspiring, up-too-late like I am now, not being able to sleep, blogging away. At least now I have a little perspective and will just not fight it and let this one flow out.
Memorial Day has always been hard for me. My grandpa fought the Nazis in Italy. Growing up, I always looked up more to my alcoholic, glamorous great Aunt Francis, his half-sister who had an amazing penthouse in Chelsea. I've since learned that my grandpa was the more noble one, but in my literal adolescence and then blind, stunted 20s, I just couldn't see it. Now they're both dead, but we should honor the dead and have a little humility and remember that as hope increases, this can make the fall all the harder.
Thus, I embed this powerful 9/11 doc on the "Falling Man." I almost lost two close friends on 9/11. My best friend's sister from Vassar, Hilary, worked on the Cantor Fitzgerald floor for Fergie's non-profit. Luckily, I wasn't aware of this fact or that morning would have been even more horrendous. Afterwards, I couldn't believe it.
Then, my best friend from Los Altos h.s. told me that he had been in NYC visiting his brother & sister-in-law in NYC while attending a mutual friend from LA, now in New Jersey, wedding. His sister-in-law wanted him to take one more day off, and leave for SF from Newark Tuesday am on United instead of his scheduled Monday night-Newark-SF flight. Luckily, he didn't switch on to Flight 93.
"These people are jumping to their deaths....Something terrible is going on up there..I know that for him it was a good-bye call...I love you. Take care of Caitlin, our little girl....You're coming home tonight. I gotta get down on the floor....There was nothing...'Nobody jumped...they were forced out.'....Together forever...My father loved Salsa...He was our main guy. He was our father...And if she jumped, she jumped...Picture was just one in a sequence of twelve...Somebody who was tall, lanky...This might not be Roberto Hernandez after all. The search for the falling man had just begun...Healing didn't mean forgetting."
Last night, Obama gave an inspiring "acceptance" speech. The hope raging around the US reminds me of the hope I felt when I stumbled into Cory Doctorow's 1st talk as part of his Fulbright Speaker series and then began auditing his seminar. I ended up breaking some USC bureau rule and auditing his class, taking an insane four full courses, Manuel Castell's Globalization class, Chris Smith's History/Distribution of Recordings (focus on music industry, but failed to teach us how to do digital music, uhh, duh), Elizabeth Osder's Introduction to Online Communities and Cory's (link to USC Public Diplomacy's audio of Fulbright speaker steries), his Set Top Cop graduate level seminar.
I began to feel possesed as Manuel Castells' theories would speak to Cory's eloquent Jeremiahs. My body ultimately couldn't handle such intellectual pressure and I ended up breaking down multiple times. One of the worst periods, ironically, was the Saturday night, day one of the amazing Re-Mixing the archive conference. I remember being super-tired that Sunday for day two, having drunk the kool-aid, believing losing my peace-of-mind was more imp. than quieting myself down.
For the first time, I started understanding the global forces in our over-networked world and how the struggles Neil Matsumoto and I had in finishing our film, FIXED (where we had to break Bob Dylan's publishing copyright to keep Nico's song in our film), was part of much larger currents and flows re: power, trade, intellectual policy and human rights. How this struggle between US Trade Representatives and activists challenging them has, for the first time in history, beaten back the attempts by US Trade representative at the World Intellectual Property Organization. How, in turn, the US Trade representatives fled to bi-lateral trade negotiation to bully their IP policies as a pre-requisite for "fair" trade. [postscript: how narcisistic it is to prioritize "remix" or "mashup" freedoms when core A2K human rights are being ignored. Finally, how the most important ingredient is a little humility on all side, so we can educate ourselves on these complicated, interwoven, over-networked connections and then debate how to best address them.]
That semester was unique, very unhealthy, inspiring, up-too-late like I am now, not being able to sleep, blogging away. At least now I have a little perspective and will just not fight it and let this one flow out.
Memorial Day has always been hard for me. My grandpa fought the Nazis in Italy. Growing up, I always looked up more to my alcoholic, glamorous great Aunt Francis, his half-sister who had an amazing penthouse in Chelsea. I've since learned that my grandpa was the more noble one, but in my literal adolescence and then blind, stunted 20s, I just couldn't see it. Now they're both dead, but we should honor the dead and have a little humility and remember that as hope increases, this can make the fall all the harder.
Thus, I embed this powerful 9/11 doc on the "Falling Man." I almost lost two close friends on 9/11. My best friend's sister from Vassar, Hilary, worked on the Cantor Fitzgerald floor for Fergie's non-profit. Luckily, I wasn't aware of this fact or that morning would have been even more horrendous. Afterwards, I couldn't believe it.
Then, my best friend from Los Altos h.s. told me that he had been in NYC visiting his brother & sister-in-law in NYC while attending a mutual friend from LA, now in New Jersey, wedding. His sister-in-law wanted him to take one more day off, and leave for SF from Newark Tuesday am on United instead of his scheduled Monday night-Newark-SF flight. Luckily, he didn't switch on to Flight 93.
Labels: 9/11, Memorial Day, Obama, United States of America
posted by Lewis H at 4:05 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home