Capitalism: a love story

I'll be viewing this tonight and, as with all michael moore films, I doubt i'll be disappointed with it. Moore has always been entertaining while thought provoking and this is the latest installment of his fulfillment of a civic duty/discourse all too important today. I've taken up digging into things in the past and written op eds, picking at scabs that are rife with hypocrisy and malfeasence. Moore is an example for us all that we are our own most powerful source of information, clarity, and change if we are willing to just show up.

Unfortunately, we're pretty lazy with all the technology we have; it has done some great things for us but all too often, we don't have the attention span, or time to glean and absorb all the information that is important to us. So we leave that to others; they are busy informing, or misinforming, the masses with undocumented opinions from blowhards like glenn beck. It allows someone else to do the work for us, think for us, form opinions for us. Hell, they might as well vote for us since so few of us do that.

It's sickening to see some of the bullshit they cover and blatantly falsify only to be shown how idiotic they are being on comedy shows. Stewart, Colbert, Maher and others in many respects cover the news better than most serious news programs. That's why movies like this are so important today, it's the only way to get the information out there without it being spun out of control in the news cycle.

I'm sure I'll have more to write after seeing the movie tonight.

http://www.capitalismalovestory.com?bcpid=36912576001&bctid=34800298001

Art: An Essay on Mortality and Curiosity

It is no secret there is a drive to push the boundaries of what some consider good taste in the broad spectrum of art. So long as a piece it elicits some emotion it serves a purpose of clearing the mind to look at things in a different way if only for the split second a person first sees it.

If they are so repulsed to look away they cannot deny the power of the piece; I challenge though that those pieces could have even greater influence if the offensive aspects were veiled enough that you take time to wrap your head around that which is not spelled out for you, however offensive the overall subject is; the curiosity that passers-by exhibit at an accident site. It is a natural curiosity driven in my opinion by our fascination and veiled interest in our own mortality.

I grew up with a picture on the wall that was always interesting to me but I never truly understood until my adulthood. It was a colored pencil drawing of the main entrance to the Krematorium at Dachau prison camp. My grandfather was a paratrooper in World War II, and no doubt witnessed a great deal of atrocities. Not the least was the conditions and experiences during the liberation of that very camp.

My grandfather didn't speak much of his time at war and died of cancer when my father was 7 so there is little detail beyond what I've reconstructed here that I know for certain; My father has often speculated that the things his father experienced contributed to his early death. He witnessed walking skeletons of prisoners who allied soldiers would selflessly give food, and later would die as a result of overeating. I couldn't imagine the guilt of their best intention to help these starving people only to kill them. He witnessed prisoners being fed into the ovens and allied soldiers being ordered to execute German soldiers without trial.

I like to think this drawing elicits further curiosity by not being overly detailed. I've looked at it all throughout my life with different levels of awareness and ever increasing curiosity. I like to think a person is drawn to seek out other images and stories of Dachau. I like to think my grandfather, consciously or subconsciously, was moved in the same way when he acquired it. I hope to gain further insight into his involvement there and perhaps request his military records.

It reminds the person of the great atrocities the human race is capable of and the soldiers there to fight those atrocities. It shows our ability to cope through art: as a distraction as well as a documentation that says more than a photograph to me because it is filtered by a soldier's mind and an artist's eye.

The single detail that gives real gravity to the piece for me is the smoke rising from the chimney of the crematorium and how it varies from the rest of the piece. It is smudged and dark. A part of me says in all likelihood it is cigarette ash, while another says there would be some poetic homage to the many killed there to use soot or ash from the furnace. Whether that is the case or not, it elicits that thought, that possibility and, in so doing, reminds the person it's not about the ash on the paper, but the ash remains at Dachau.