Vision – Sex and Violence

When I was 12, I saw the movie Kids for the first time. It was one of the most important early film-watching experiences in my life – that was a movie that evoked a strong initial emotional response, but has also stuck with me in a deep way, so different from other movies I was into when I was 12 (read: Mallrats, Dazed and Confused, Robin Hood Men in Tights).

Why was it so huge? First of all, it was a movie about kids – really, 12- and 13-year olds – who acted like kids. They were stupid fucking kids doing stupid things like drinking and having sex too soon and purposefully trying to get in trouble. It was real. In fact, it was too real – it was incredibly disturbing. It was violent and erotic (this is the second point) in ways that a no one expects from a film, and it ended up with an NC-17 rating. And at age 12, of course this was part of the appeal – I was seeing a film that even high school kids – high school kids! – couldn’t see without an adult. I watched it with some friends while at a sleep over party at one of our friend’s houses – you know, the one friend you had who had older brothers and whose parents let him get away with almost everything.

The third point was that this was a moral story, a philosophical inquiry into human action, and a real exploration of what it means to live in a highly violent, highly sexualized context – and I don’t think people got that originally. They were so wrapped up in the surface elements of the sex and violence that they didn’t get the deeply disturbing questions the film asked – why are we attracted to sex and violence? why do people hurt strangers? more importantly, why do people knowingly destroy themselves and their loved ones? These are the questions that embedded themselves in my consciousness when I was 12 (of course I didn’t get it then) and rose up later in life. A retrospective introspection.

Read more at http://lowshoulders.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/vision-sex-and-violence/

The Making of a No-Budget, Independent Film: Low Shoulders

I am in the midst of the pre-production process of a film project I am really excited about. It’s called Low Shoulders. For the next few months, find me here, where I’ll be writing about the process of creating a no-budget indy film in the Bay Area.

lowshoulders.wordpress.com

lowshoulders.wordpress.com

lowshoulders.wordpress.com

Hi My Name is Elijah, I’m 24, and I Just Learned How to Ride a Bike

My First Bike

This is the DMV parking lot where I learned how to ride it. Yup, just me and my bike. My bike and me. At the DMV.

Regal Degal Gets the Damon Dash/ADIDAS Treatment

Jigga’s guestin on the next single, woot!

Convert your iPad into a typewriter

This guy Jake Zylkin designed a way to make typewriters into USB keyboards for computers. For only $300 you can have your personal typewriter converted into one! That’s only like eight times the iPad keyboard dock thing, and um, only a little less practical?

It’s for sale on Etsy.

SF Crime Mapped as Topography, or Cartography of Crime

In keeping with the map theme…

(thanks Doug McCune)

The big mountain for narcotics is the Tenderloin, and that peak pretty much repeats on all of the maps. Prostitution is a weird one – the biggest peak for prostitution is Shotwell Ave between 17th and 19th. And I guess your car (vehicle) or home (larceny) aren’t safe anywhere in the city.

For a detailed analysis by the creator of this model, click here.

Transit Maps Are the 20th/21st Century Version of Cathedral Art

Ubiquitous, memorable, a combination of utilitarian and transcendent, challenging but only to the extent that they won’t make you too uncomfortable. I guess the comparison doesn’t go that far, but I have always been somewhat skeptical of the artwork hung in catholic churches and cathedrals across Europe being considered “art” when it was, really, a tool for instruction. Or rather, I think that it is worthwhile considering the artistic merit of other instructive signage.

Which brings me to the new NYC subway map design. The new NYC subway map design!

NYC Subway Map 2010

Replacing an iconic piece of public art & design with, well, pretty much the same thing. It’s easier to read, with smaller text, a wider Manhattan that gives the lines more horizontal breathing room, and softer colors that makes it easier on the eyes. Less squinting in the basement of the Bowery stop, I guess? But it’s really not that interesting, and from a pure design perspective, it’s kind of just bad. It doesn’t hold a candle to the amazingly abstract, schematized, iconic London Underground map. I’ve only been to London once – is the Tube map useful? Confusing? Did you end up somewhere you didn’t mean to go? The NYC map is meant to give you much more info than the Underground or the Paris subway map, for example. But I’ve seen tourists attempt to use the NYC subway map, and they usually quickly move from confusion to exasperation to desperately jumping on the next train that rolls into the station. So is having a street grid and a (sort of) geographically accurate map helpful? Is having the parks and water ways delineated on the map going to help visitors from France or Iowa find Grimaldi’s Pizza? This isn’t necessarily a facetious line of questioning; I’m really not sure.

At the risk of being charged with privileging form over function (which hopefully I’ve hedged against with my brief argument above), I’d like to submit for re-consideration Massimo Vignelli’s super awesome 1972 NYC subway map design:

NYC Subway Map, 1972

Oh man. That thing is gorgeous. It looks like a weird electrical schematic – NYC as a mass of machinery. It was designed in 1972, but looks simultaneously 1920 and 2020 – art deco and outer space. It’s also functional (i think). It’s simple and direct – the lines are clearly differentiated, and your eye easily can find and then travel along them. It may not represent where, geographically, they go, but is that really useful information? Isn’t being able to locate your stop and transfer points the essential ingredient to the map?

NY Times has a tool to compare the details of the 4 NYC subway map designs of the last 40 years or so.

The Meat-Man: Based on a True Story

Peter Kassel and I wrote and shot (with the help of Samuel Partal) this short film in the (hot) summer of 2006. We shot it on a Canon super 8 camera on B&W super8mm filmstock, mostly in the Rocket Building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I can’t believe it’s been that long. I plan on re-editing this at some point, but check it out in it’s current (too long) version. Starring Peter Kassel, Elijah Wolfson, and the Meat-Man as himself.

English-Prime: Stripping Language of Ontological Ambiguity

The other day I happened upon a linguistic system called “E-Prime” or “English-Prime.” E-Prime is basically English, but without the verb to be (in any of its forms – be, am, is, are, were, being, etc.). It’s not so much a practical type of speech – although it can be if you’re really into this idea – but is a kind of academic conditioning and checking of how we speak, and how we speak may not line up exactly with the way things really are or what we believe.

It’s simple to see how this works. Try this sentence: “This apple is red.” Well, the apple isn’t really red – red is how it appears to whoever is seeing it. The E-Prime version states more accurately: “This apple appears red to me.” Or try something like this: “This show is awesome.” Not really. Nothing is inherently awesome about the show. You can say “I really enjoy this show” or “this band’s music makes me dance my ass off.” Or something more better than that, but do you see what I mean?

This apple appears red to my eyes.

E-Prime is an experiential language that divests speech of one of its biggest ontological issues – without a word that says something “is,” things become relative experiences, events, etc. Agency must always be attributed – no longer can things be good or bad, but can only illicit certain responses.

Of course this path also deadens the language a bit. No more metaphors, that’s for sure. Look what happens to Shakespeare:

“To be or not to be; that is the question.”  vs.  ”To exist or not to exist; I ask this question.”

What’s lost here? The ambiguity of “being.” Being here no longer refers to many levels of action/inaction, life/death, care/apathy, etc. Being is simplified into existing, when we all know they are not the same thing. Try Gertrude Stein’s famous, I don’t know, is it an aphorism? Anyway:  ”A rose is a rose is a rose.” I don’t even know where to start with that – the whole point is that a rose both is and isn’t a rose, and that being a rose means so many more things than whatever single affect the rose could produce at any given time. I’m not sure which I prefer – the ambiguity of a multiplicity in a single moment, or the singularity of the instance.

Both these examples kind of lead to Heidegger, which I guess is where I had to be heading with this – that being is, in fact, the linguistic investigation of the concept. In other words – not to put words in Heideggers mouth – if we rid the language of the concept, we rid the language of its ability to do what it has been crafted to do and in turn, suppress what is essential to our existence, or our “being” human. One more try: ambiguity is not only a good thing, but essential.

“Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being.” – MH

Verblendungszusammenhang

Verblendungszusammenhang is a German word that means “the blinding universal delusion generated by alienation.”

This guy knows what I’m talking about:

Oedipus, photo by Albert Greiner