Green trees hover over white sky.
Songbird sings me into my home.
Restive kitty meows her way out!
CELL at 7 (and 16)
Back in 2003, a major shift had happened at CELLspace. Events had been shut down and a large group of volunteers had pretty much left 2050 Bryant to start the Mission Market back on Florida Street. Tensions were high, people were burned out, and CELL needed to pay rent. CELL had had one of its few retreats to try to reform the regroup after many caretakers left in a huge pile of animosity. Then the war in Iraq started. We had all been protesting to not start this war and most of us saw the meta-narrative of CELL’s plight as that of the world’s.
I was personally down about the war and CELL. I’d backed off a bit to take a break, but I was answering the info email address (because no one else was). Since 1996, CELLspace has inspired many people to start their own space. There’s the Crucible, the Box Shop, and many others. From time to time, people would stop by to study CELL. And we would get emails asking about how to start a space. At the time I was answering info@cellspace, I got an email from Bucketworks in Milwaukee, WI (now in its 9th year!!). They were starting up a space and had great questions about how to do it. They caught me at a time where I must’ve been ready to talk raw and candidly about what was going on at CELL.
CELL had just turned 7 when the email arrived. I had just finished co-producing the Funky Puppet Supper, which was an amazing show that touched on CELL’s plight and the plight of war with Iraq. I pulled the original emails off of the Oblio hard drive last week, and decided, for CELL’s 16th Birthday (this Spring Equinox), to post it on here in its entirety. It is emotional, raw, unedited (well, I did take out a few bits that were too personal). It is a great snapshot of how I saw CELL back in 2003.
I had no help in answering the questions. I did not answer this based upon any horizontal process. So do not expect this to be the definitive angle on what was happening at the time. Remember, I was going to CELL meetings with about 3 other people while about 12 people were meeting and running the Mission Market. And a group of workers had left the space. These were hard times.
Being a lover of history, I cannot pass up adding the following Q&A about CELL to my Month of Blog. Happy 16th birthday CELLspace! So many amazing and intense memories.
Month of Blog
In the past few weeks, I have become tired of seeing my mind work like a FaceBook post. I actually started noticing this on the 2009 Stencil Nation tour in Europe. As Pod and I wandered around Vienna, Austria, we realized that every city we toured, the word “FaceBook” kept showing up in random places. And we both realized that we were beginning to think as posts to FaceBook. “Woah, that’s funny. I should share that on FaceBook.” I didn’t have a phone in the EU and Pod’s phone was a cheap “dumb” phone, so we couldn’t go from thought to FB in a matter of seconds.
Beyond the concept of having a huge corporation enter my brain as a way to express myself, I have begun to worry about the content that I post on FB. Google just changed the way they gather user information. I’m sure you saw the ads all over the place telling you about Google’s plan to consolidate their user experience, and thus their user’s thoughts. Buddhist ads have begun to appear on FB. I don’t want to buy any buddha t-shirts, but FB thinks I do. As the FTC mulls a “do not track” rule, and Google and other companies get busted for accessing too much user data, I’m beginning to wonder if my already slim profile on FB (and Google+, which I rarely post to), is a bit too much. And as FB changes their format (and user agreements) every 3 months, I am growing tired of the overflow of information. I hear this FB burnout from other people as well, and I think that the FB OD is one reason Google+ just isn’t happening. Most people appear to be thinking “You mean I have to go to yet another website to post my life?!” Continue reading “Month of Blog”
1999 Lost Photos
My storage space spent the past month under plastic sheets to keep construction debris and dust out. After the workers (flipping an apartment above the storage space…. $2000 / mo. 1 bedroom) vacuumed the space, I took some time to purge some stuff. One item was an old Firewire 400 hard drive that I built about eight years ago. I got it working, so I pulled items off and then erased the disc to possibly give to a thrift store.
Three finds on the old hard drive, named Oblio, were these files of scanned slides from my trip to Israel in 1999. I actually tried to photograph people on this trip which is a rarity for me. The man smoking the water pipe was suspicious of my camera, so this shot was from the hip. The camel ended up being on the World Remix flyer for Yair Dalal’s 2001 concert at CELL. Sometimes I miss using my film camera.
Murals at CELL
My mural curating continues in 2012. Late last week I had three meetings about three different murals. I also have been in contact with Dia, the artist who painted the “Liberty” mural (now for sale) as well as the “Dia del Toro” mural over on the ACT shop entrance. Dia is going to paint a new mural at the ACT spot as soon as the weather cooperates.
Last Thursday, I met with Ray Balberan and artist Carlos Gonzalez. Mentioned in an earlier post, several panels from the 1980s RAP mural “Education is Liberation” magically appeared in the back of CELL. I took the panels, contacted the journalist at Mission Loc@l, and Ray finally met with me and Gonzalez to pick up the panels. Ray and Carlos were extremely happy to see the panels. Most of what has been found show gang banger skeletons committing violence. Though the message was education is the way out of the hood, the art is still quite powerful and a historical representation of the Mission District in the 80s.
Then I met with Paz de la Calzada to discuss her painting at a few spots at CELL. She will paint either wisps of hair or roots on the curved wall of the women’s bathroom as well as somewhere on the exterior walls of CELL (possibly the sidewalks). Then I met with Cy Wagoner to discuss the continued concept of the Native American themed wall at the 2048 Bryant entrance. I think we have an idea of how to move forward on this. The mural will possibly incorporate stencil, wheatpasted paper, free spray, and maybe other styles. If the rain ever stops.
Finally, Tito na Rua from Rio, Brazil stayed briefly at 2048. He does great street comics on walls. The Vexta stencil had been defaced by a tag, so I had Tito spray up his characters next to Meggs’s crazy SF monster. Looks great.
Bab Aziz
Like holding a hand-full of sand, the Iranian/French/Tunisian film “Bab Aziz” sifts through my memory of visual and audial delights. It played to a small screen here in San Francisco, and I was fortunate enough to see it. Certain scenes of this “Iranian Cenemapoem” gave me shivers, touched my heart, and gave my soul a layer of the joy of living. My soul knew, absolutely, that when I die, and I will die eventually, heaven or eternity will be similar to this movie. Ever since seeing this movie, the idea of wandering in a desert, telling stories and dancing, meeting poets, musicians, and madmen, all for the eventual discovery of a spiritual music and dance gathering HAS TO BE ETERNITY.
I loved the movie so much, I begged my friend Jeff Stot, an amazing Middle Eastern producer and musician, to come and see it. He enjoyed it and saw it a second time with some Persian musicians he worked with (they were not as enthused as we were about the movie). I rarely see a movie twice, but I had a hunch that “Bab Aziz” would not be for rent any time soon in my local video store (or, more presently online).
I was correct in assuming this. Not knowing Farsi or Arabic, I have tried to purchase this DVD over the years. I went to many many DVD stores in New York City looking for it. I’ve looked online too, but there is not really an English audience for this movie. I frequently go to YouTube to find segments of “Bab Aziz” to share with people who seem to have a mystical or spiritual depth. Doing this a few days ago, I discovered that Middle Eastern people are posting the full-length movie on YouTube. I found one with no subtitles, and another with Turkish subtitles. Then, I found one in 9 parts with English subtitles. The person who posted the videos describes the movie as an “Iranian Cinemapoem; A poetic glimpse of ‘Sufi-Darvish’ vision and way of life! A philosophical Sufi story.”
Yes to all three. Finally, after years of watching the segments of the movie sift from my memory, I got to watch it again. It was a little bit-mapped, but the tears and shivers came again. And the deep soul-knowing of my connection to music, as natural as walking or breathing, rang true again. Like a meditation bell or a soul clap: we can feel the truth when it comes to us.
Please watch… sharing this movie may help one understand parts of themselves. It is also from a country much maligned in the US media right now. Iranian leaders may call us “satan” but Iranians are humans after all, and some are capable of making great art.
Beach Dreams
You find out about a man-made island and show me where it is on a local map. We bike to a ferry and then take the boat the the island. Our bikes end up tied together in the water. As we sit on the small decked “island,” we watch the bikes barely float on the surface. We talk about fishing and look at the large gold fish shimmering deep in the waters around us.
At a sea town JY is cleaning out his van. I have storage in there and become upset about my things. I go to another truck where I have things stored and it is open with the key in the lock. DJ is using this to store sound equipment. I get really upset but become distracted by seeing young men walking around with Clemson Tigers clothing. My lover then appears and I try to tell her about my storage. But I get distracted again by wanting to “scratch a record” on her body. She’s not into it and leaves. I walk by a station wagon that SB is sleeping in (on a bed of dried grass) and he tells me about his horrible night last night. I remember that I need to complain to DJ about my storage and walk by JY’s van to see it washed and empty! Then I realize that I’ve been walking around this whole time in underwear (at least they kind of look like swim trunks). Walking back to my place to change, I see more Clemson kids. “Excuse me, but why are you all wearing Clemson colors?” “We’re a church group, from PC.” “Ah – Presbyterian College in South Carolina.” “Yeah. Say, you don’t know where we can get good beer? All the places around here serve the same three kinds.” “Try North Beach,” I tell him.
Presence Poem
Sky tucked under white blanket.
Pattering rain breaks quiet.
Too wet for the hens to play!
Last Week’s Dream
I meet a blonde-haired woman. We walk to the edge of the Pacific and begin to swim. As we swim, a large grey whale joins us. We swim all the way to Borneo, where I walk ashore and get lost in a village. I realize that I do not have my passport since I swam over with a woman and a whale. I run into all of my college friends. They have rented out a bungalow and are partying. I party with them amazed at the conincadence of seeing them in Borneo.