Creating Art, Helping a Community – Danger Schmanger

OK, though much like Pope Benedict is soon to be this site is largely functioning as a Blog Emeritus to the new site I do want to use it from time to time, though, for special announcements, etc. Won’t you consider donating to this worthy project. I know a lot of people (including a ton of artists) are asking for your money these days, but I can vouch for these gentleman and their heart and vision and I want to promote their cause wherever I can.

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Some gentlemen I know from church are part of an endeavor to create a business that does good by helping to foster new artists and to change the perception of a much maligned but amazing city, my city, St. Louis.

Would you watch the video on their page and consider donating? As a personal connection, the house that the video was shot in? Yup, that’s das Haus, my house, right in the middle of the aforementioned city. Check them out on Facebook here and the web here. Click on the image below to go to their fundraising page.

From their Indiegogo page:

“Hey there people. My name is Cardin Irakoze and I am one of the interns for Danger Schmanger. I’m originally from Congo. I have been in St. Louis for five years and the first thing I noticed about St. Louis the danger. It took me awhile to notice the beauty of St. Louis. The first thing I want other people to notice about St. Louis is the beauty not the danger. One of the best ways we can do that is through Danger Schmanger. One t-shirt can make a huge difference. We need your help. We need $4500 to finish buying equipment and things for our shop. And even if you can’t help us financially, you can still pray for us. Thank you.”

Cardin is an awesome kid studying at Forest Park Community College to do web design. We are truly privileged to be burning screens, pulling ink, and making T-shirts with him.

How it all works:

Cornerstone Festival 2012 – July 4th – The Hollands – Carielle – Sean Michel – Run Kid Run – Together in Dust – Leper – Glenn Kaiser & Joe Filisko – Grave Robber – 77s – White Collar Sideshow

Cornerstone Festival 2012 – July 4th, a set on Flickr.

Note: The next few posts will be to Flickr sets from the Cornerstone Festival. If that is not what you come to this blog for, please be patient and don’t unsubscribe. I will be back to the standard fare of whatever it is that I blog here soon enough

When you take over 1500 photos over the course of 4 days at a music festival, it takes a long to time to process them, and some of them just are going to make it on the web. However, since I took them, I am loathe not to post them, especially since some of the smaller bands might dig them.

The Last Cornerstone Festival – A Six Band Sampler – The Crossing – Andru Bemis – Icon for Hire – The Burial – Aradhna – Sqad Five-O

I am spending these roasting in 100 degree heat in the middle of Illinois and catching the last iteration of a music festival that I have enjoyed and which is very important to me. This is a sample of photos of seven bands from one evening. More to come later. For now, its off for more of circle pits and folk crooners.

at trader joe’s

at trader joe’s
i feel the energy
of people getting deals
the sense of making steals
and living to tell about them
(that’s half the pleasure)
like walmart after thanksgiving
but without obesity

i check out
and in my heart I feel
the insidious energy
of scorn

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caveat: I really don’t have much against Trader Joe’s. In fact, I admire its business model almost as much as its distant relation Aldi’s, which I adore. I appreciate the fact that they seem to be doing something in the effort to raise meat more humanely, if I am not mistaken. I appreciate the energy of its employees, one of whom very kindly brought a whole case of the infamous three buck chuck to an event of mine. I even really like many of their products. I don’t know, I suppose it is really only the way some followers of the cult of Giuseppe talk that sometimes gets under my skin

St. Louis Murder Rates in Maps – Visualizing Despair

the murder maps each
year just bleed the same dark stain;
drops like question marks
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While reading the paper online, I came across these horrific interactive maps from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Each image below is linked to its source page and clicking on any drop on the original tells you, in police blotter fashion, the name and circumstances of the person murdered. There are so many drops.

In regards to the last line of my haiku/senryu above, if you take away the metro east and focus just on St. Louis city and county, the pattern the drops makes is like a giant question mark with a big thick blob at the top in North St. Louis with a curve through downtown which then curves back down into some of the neighborhoods of South St. Louis. Forest Park and the neighborhoods to the west provide, dare I say it, “white space” to this dark stain*, with a drop here and there, drops which, I might add, when they occur seem to be reported in the news media with a greater degree of angst and attention.

If you live in St. Louis and care about such things, either for self-protective or empathetic reasons or both, this pattern is not a surprise to you – you have the areas mapped out in your head – but the sheer repetitiveness of the pattern shown here year after year shocked me today. And even early in 2011, the pattern is asserting itself again already.

My prayer is for all of us St. Louisans to keep our eyes open to this and to try to understand the reasons why it is so and to work against it, and "Help us, Lord Jesus."

*Please realize that I am NOT saying that African Americans are intrinsically more prone to being murderers; there are black neighborhoods on this map with higher socio-economic-status indicators in both St. Louis city and county with murder rates that are like those county and city areas with majority white populations. There is no question that the most murders are in low SES, African American neighborhoods, but I am saying nothing in this post about that beyond noting its very great tragedy.

The lie of keeping it real – A review of Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture by Thomas Chatterton Williams

If you have not been reading this blog for long, and perhaps “reading” is an insufficient word here, perhaps you are confused whether it is a photo blog or a poetry blog or blog presenting prose pieces. The answer to this question is “Yes.”

It is clear that photography takes up most of its real estate, with haiku a close second, but at several stages in this blogs history, that is to say my history, there was a fair bit of prose as well. That has diminished, but when I do publish a piece elsewhere on the web, I do like to point it out.

That is what this is, a review of Thomas Chatterton Williams thought-provoking and excellently written memoir. Without further ado, I will let the review do the talking.

Oh, and for more blog brand dilution/confusion, stay tuned–a blog contest or two are in the wings waiting to make their appearance.

Thanks for reading/viewing.

a man in darkness – a poem for Mohamed Bouazizi, Tunisia, Egypt and Tahrir square

a man in darkness
burns out his life, touching fire
to a firmament

Photography as Inspiration – Mira Nair – The Namesake

If it weren’t for photography, I wouldn’t be a flimmaker. Every film I make is fueled by photographs. Sometimes it is a particular image of a photographer, sometimes it is what I have learned by seeing the world through his or her eyes. Either way, photographs have always helped me crystallize the visual style of the film I’m about to make. -Mira Nair

I have just finished watching the film The Namesake which always fills me with a complicated set of emotions and leaves me with a sadness and an ache, I am not entirely sure for what. And on another day watching Hoosiers will produce exactly the same combination of feelings, though with a completely different tenor. One day, I will write about all that in more depth, but not today, not aside from reprinting two poems below, which will have to suffice for now.

The quote at the top of this post, though is from a featurette which appears on The Namesake DVD which shows some photographs which supplied inspiration for some scenes in the movie. Though, in truth, I did not need a featurette to tell me of the value Ms. Nair places on visual images and her immense skill in creating them herself. It is as if scene after scene of the movie, both in India and America, snap into stills in my mind and catch my breath. As a photographer, this kissing of the moving image and the still photograph which informs Ms. Nair’s process makes me very happy.

In my opinion such virtuosity would all be of little account if it did not service a great story, with deep themes and symbols. And the movie does not disappoint, though not having read Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel I cannot comment on its effectiveness as an adaptation. With Ashima’s goodbye speech and peaceful final smile at the end of the movie, we understand that home truly can be a many splendored thing.

Watching Hoosiers in the Himalayas

I never thought I would ache for Illinois.
Especially here in this cherished place,
Amidst these swaying pines that whisper joy,
Of windswept hills and cold alpine spaces,
Amidst these pines that wreathed in monsoon mists
Transform the world medieval once again,
That silent stand like monks in sacred trysts.
Yet in this cherished place there comes this pain
For rich, dark, furrowed fields a world away
For harvest leaves that dying golden fall
On silent walks of silent towns that stay
More silent still when winter carpets all
And winter snowdrifts sweep, and families keep
To glowing houses. I watch this screen and weep.

-Image source

return

i stand and breathe
my last few gulps of air duty-free
shuffling up the aisle
of this airlock between atmospheres

soon i will be complete
torn into a duality
that appears unseamed in separate hemispheres
that tears each time they meet
at the touching of my sleeping eastern flesh with east

i walk through door
and I am me
in ways that i have not been for years
as thick warm eastern air enfolds me
and fills my lungs
displacing stale indifference
and leaves me coughing sputtering
amidst these warm embraces
invading my protesting western space
amidst these cluttered streets
breaking life into me
more honest and complete

it may take some time to breathe

Helping Your Neighbor, Loving Your Enemies – Pakistan Flood Relief

When the Haiti earthquake occurred, the response in our country was immediate and overwhelming, and with good reason, as so many people lost their lives. The needs continue to be great and help should continue to flow.

The response to the Pakistani flooding, though, in both dollars and attention, seems to be muted in comparison. Perhaps this is so because not as many folk immediately lost their lives, though 1600 have done so already. Perhaps it is because the flooding, which covers an area the size of England and has displaced 20 million people, is on the other side of the world. Perhaps it is because some may view the people in Pakistan, particularly this region of Pakistan, as their enemies.

By way of laying my cards on the table, I am both half-Pakistani and a Christian, one who seeks (falteringly at best) to both care for the poor and dispossessed and to love my enemies. So, I have good reasons to help Pakistanis, people with whom I share blood kinship and whom God commands me to love.

Furthermore, I am an American, a member of a country that is hated by many in Pakistan, and this grieves me a great deal. Without sorting out blame from a very complex history, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see more U.S. military war planes delivering food and supplies with a message “From the people of the United States” emblazoned on the sides of boxes and bags, delivered by the hands of men and women from our country. See Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s plea here.

If you are motivated to help, please text one of the numbers either above or below, or check out the guide I have created for my work which provides more information and opportunities to give.

To explain a little more about the phrase “loving your enemies,” clearly many people in Pakistan and America do not regard each other as such, but many in both countries do. Pakistani rocker, Salman Ahmad, who tries to fight extremism through music, describes the problem in a BBC article this way:

Speaking from New York, he told BBC World Service that he realised that people in the West were hesitant about helping, asking why they should care for a country associated with extremism.

“[But] there are 100 million-plus young people under the age of 25 who can go two possible ways into the future,” he said.

“They can follow their dreams or they can give in to the extremists and the Taliban who want them to go blow themselves up.

“If they feel that the world cares for them, you may change the destiny of Pakistan. Not only is it humane but it is urgent self-interest – this is a moment to win hearts and minds.”

Finally, if you are moved to help with the flooding in Pakistan, please consider either linking to this post or writing a similar post of your own. Please feel free to use any of the images from this post, which have been synthesized from images gleaned from news sites.

The Student and the Ustad – The Grand Tabla Tradition

“Ustad” is a word which essentially means “teacher,” but really is a term more specifically used for talented, well-respected musicians (tabla players or Qawwali singers) who take on students, or disciples, and pass their craft on.

On my recent trip to Philly, I got to see Ustad Aqeel at work teaching my cousin-nephew (that is the best way I can describe how that relationship is viewed in Pakistani culture) how to play. The beautiful tabla set was a gift from his true uncle in London.

The tabla is used for both secular and devotional music in Pakistan by both Muslims and Christians. In Pakistani churches, the tabla most often accompanies the harmonium, both of which can be readily transported and brought out in formal gatherings or rather spontaneously in homes. My cousin’s husband is a fine singer and harmonium player.

I love these pictures because they show the blend of cultures pretty well. I like the tabla with the Persian carpet in the background and the iPhone on the ustad’s knee. In the background of one of the pictures is a glass of Rooh Afza, which is a quintessential Pakistani summer drink (although, truth be told, my cousin’s family rarely drinks it and we had bought it on a whim) which I used hate as a child but now think is a cool delight and a kind of distillate of the East.

If you are in the Philly area and want lessons, check out Aqueel’s site. Oh, and one thing that does cross all cultures, is that most children hate to practice, and my nephew, who is acknowledged by many to be the the spitting-incessant talking-laughing-loving-questioning-eating-silliness loving-image of me as a child is no exception.