Wednesday, January 1, 2020

2020 HINDSIGHT

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Custom Portrait Illustration by 
Tomás @Piqself on


As I write this, I’m heading into what seems (at least right now)to be a very important year, 2020. While there are many things worth reflecting on, both in my neighborhood and the world at large, I have chosen (as usual) to discuss myself! More specifically my art.

Artistically speaking, I head into 2020 focused on what I have come to call “At A Glance”. I once had ambitious fantasies of being a world-class storyteller, filmmaker, painter and sculptor but somewhere along the way I noticed that nobody wanted to look at my art or hear my stories. All people wanted to do was look deep into their smart phones. Not just in the privacy of their own home but at work, cafés, grocery stores, galleries, museums and even the movies. As I tried to figure out what all the fuss was about, I too fell under the spell of my phone screen as I discovered memes, GIFS and Apps.


If you follow me on social media, you may have noticed that I have founded the “At A Glance Film Society”. As of now, I am not only the founder, I am the sole member. The objective of the AAGiFS (I haven’t decided what the “I” stands for yet… suggestions are welcome) is to recognize and promote 15 second cinema. In case you were wondering, this is not a medium I ever consciously chose to work in, or even once dreamed about mastering, but is the one that seems to have chosen me. It’s an uneasy place to be. Let me explain:

One of my most vivid popular culture moments growing up was watching Bevis and Butthead on MTV back in the hay-day of music videos. They were mocking a video exclaiming in disgust “this video tells a story. Stories suck!” I agreed with them in previous episodes that “work”, “manners,” “customers” and of course “hell’ all sucked. But "stories" gave me pause. It felt wrong. Very wrong. I probably remember this moment so vividly not only because I was one of those “tell me a story” kids growing up, I was (at that exact moment) also learning about scholars like Joseph Campbell and Claude Lévi-Strauss who have made a strong case that stories are not just escapist entertainment but the very fabric of human civilization

I can also still remember, though, that I understood what Beavis and Butthead were saying. I too disliked music videos with a storyline. As I sat there with my bleached blond hair, dangling inverted cross earring, black eyeliner and leather jacket I painted myself with a bold Anarchy symbol on the back and the band name “Sucicidal Tendencies” (not a typo… that's how I wrote it and I learned the hard way that Punks, unlike me, take spelling very seriously) I wondered if we were on the verge of civilization, as I knew it, unraveling.

High School Self-Portrait 
For those of you who are terrified of a shallow, short attention span world driven by jingles, slogans… and now 15 second cinema, I share your concern. 

That said, one of my goals for the At A Glance Film Society is to write a pamphlet that will be mailed out to new members describing the history and rational for this art form. You may be comforted to hear that my story starts in Ancient Greece. Homer was the first purveyor of brief and catchy messaging and Aristotle offered the first theory of them. He called them maxims. Maxims employed mnemonic techniques of poetry and song verse including rhyme and antithesis executed brilliantly 100's of years later by the world famous Muhammad Ali quote “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” 


Maxim’s were designed to be easy to consume in the moment but also unforgettable. Ultimately, the point was for the question of ownership to disappear, allowing them to spread like wild fire. Frequently they became part of the commonly spoken language and culture while circulating across vast distances of time and space. Plato, for instance, used a maxim to warn you and me about the high stakes of being clueless and shallow: “Ignorance is the root and stem of all evil.”  


But let us not forget the usefulness, fun and pleasure of recognition, or as Aristotle called it, “easy learning.” I believe we should at least consider the possibility that these ancient viral memes are as responsible for crafting of our common culture as stories and myth?  But even I, a wannabe meme-lord, can't deny the Beavis and Butthead problem. Especially combined with the World Wide Web and a supercomputer in every human-being's pocket. Maxims on steroids. 



Even I, the founder of The At A Glance Film Society, must admit that there is something sad about having plenty of time for endless Dos Equis and “The Most Interesting Man is the World” memes but no time for fine wine, painting and poetry. Perhaps we will be the ones who finally forget  Plutarch's lesson: “Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks.” Easy enough for me to predict now, as there’s every reason to believe it’s already true. Hindsight IS the year 2020 in soooo many ways. The exact origin of the expression “hindsight is 2020” (by the way) is unclear , but it probably began sometime around the first arm-chair quarterback in the mid-1900’s.  We may be losing poetry and painting but I won’t be surprised if memes are how we’ll all be remembered. Let’s make them with gusto ⚡️🎬⚡️