So I’ve gotten lazy with my bloggy lately cos I’ve been clicking, cropping, and Indesign-ing my evenings and weekends away. Never mind my social life.
This is my baby of 3 weeks… it’s a booklet I designed for a film and webisode series called Open Minds Open Mouths. The project documents the impact of Berkeley Unified School District’s Food Policy, which ensures that all BUSD students have daily access to organic, locally grown breakfasts and lunches.
In typical Berkeley fashion, the policy’s got its share of fans and haters. Which mostly makes me wonder what the people being most affected by the policy– kids of color and their families– have to say about all of this. Anyway… as someone who doesn’t know much about food policy, I ought to get schooled a bit, check out the doc when it becomes available, before adding yet another 2 cents to the chorus…
This has gotten me thinking about water in general and the ocean in particular. I have enormous respect for it. It’s the most terrifying and humbling presence in my life… for several reasons which I will list.
I live 3 blocks from it and I’m a terrible swimmer
There’s a worldwide drinking water shortage and the ocean is the only growing body of water… yet drinking from it will kill you. Ah the terrible irony.
But I’m not even trying to be a downer. Cos as much as the ocean can destroy, it creates. Think about how much life there is down there that we haven’t even begun to grasp. We try though, and I always enjoy people who try.
So this post is dedicated to the ocean and the artwork it inspires.
The pics above and below are from Mexico’s Underwater Museum, lifted from the UK Telegraph. According to the BBC, the museum is intended to raise environmental awareness by serving as an artificial reef. Apparently tourists were trampling on and destroying the real coral reef.
Shots from The Life Aquatic, directed by Wes Anderson. The scenery and animation are fantastic… the film itself is highly mediocre. In fact I’m only a fan cos I secretly dream of living at sea. But I digress.
This is one of my favorite things to witness at Ocean Beach: older Asian men, fishing in rubber pants. It’s calming and reminds me of my dad, who also happens to fish. Photo minus said older Asian man.
Isle of the Dead, made in 1883 by Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin. From Wikipedia:
Böcklin himself provided no public explanation as to the meaning of the painting, though he did describe it as “a dream picture: it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door.”
If there’s one movie worth seeing while you’re holed up indoors for the holidays, this one’s it.
Medicine for Melancholy is directed by Barry Jenkins, who also brought us this lovely short. It’s the story of Micah and ‘Jo: 2 twenty-something black folks in SF. And I specify “black” cos in my humble opinion, this film offers complex, subtle, and truthful expressions of what it means to be a person of color in the Bay Area nowadays. Intonations of race and class, indie and gentrification, nostalgia and attraction– unfold along the steep chilly beauty of San Francisco.
I first heard about the film after stumbling upon Chinaka Hodge’s review (which is worth reading in it’s entirety, btw). Since I’m not a poet by any means, I’ll let her do some convincing:
Medicine for Melancholy is worth owning because you’re in it. I swear. Me too. This is the first time that I’ve seen an image of someone like me on film, and not in the simple representational TV One sort of way. Not like how my chest swells a bit when Jada takes a good role. And that feeling is nice, don’t get me wrong, satisfying. But what’s at work here is a different kind of sorcery. Micah and Jo are two of the most complex black characters I’ve seen on screen. I’m intentional about qualifying them as black characters because I think the genius of the film is the pronunciation of how spectacular and mundane it is to be a twenty something person of color, in our age and geographic area. Micah and Jo are the people I chills with: reserved and brooding, hilarious under our breath, telling jokes about Carter G. Woodson on the way to indy shows.
I mean, if you know me, you know that I’m all about my Saturday afternoon Blackbusters, but what a special, charmed thing to see a film bereft of absentee fathers, great debates, spelling bees, basketball teams and princely robes. Micah and Jo don’t do that much on screen — in a way that makes me feel vindicated, because if the routines of Jerry and Elaine and Vince and Turtle and Rachel and Ross are entertaining and important, why not the kinds of isht we go through? Aren’t our subtle tensions and conversations at the toll booth and clumsy mornings-after the types of human interactions that change audiences, even in the slightest?
Oh yea, and the cinematography is effin’ beautiful. Check it out.
Last Thursday, I managed to drag my lazy ass all the way to Oakland in time to see the premiere of the documentary AOKI– based on the life and times of the late, great Richard Aoki. He was, among other things, a third-generation Japanese American, a founding member of the Black Panther Party and the UC Berkeley Asian American Political Alliance, and an all-around bad ass with a disarmingly squeaky voice. From his rearing in the WWII internment camps and West Oakland to his involvement with the BPP, AAPA, and the Third World Liberation Front, the man continues to be an iconic leader for students and organizers today. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Kathleen Cleaver, on Richard’s role in the early years of the BPP.
All in all, though, the man Richard Aoki– as opposed to the icon– remains a bit elusive. My favorite parts of the film were the rare moments in which the sunglasses came off (literally and figuratively) and we got a glimpse of the man behind the myth: what compels him, what holds him back, what keeps him going. The parts where he described his childhood in the camps and his more recent struggle to align his physical capacity and age with the tireless radical within.
Other favorites include: interviews with Harvey Dong (so huggable), Bryant Fong (he looks like my dad), and Richard’s assessment of reform, which goes something like this: “if you take shit and mold it into a square, its still shit!”
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