The Downside of Corporate Travel

So, I've been in New York since Monday night and have basically seen the inside of the hotel and the theatre attached to it where we were doing an event.

This is a typical problem. Everyone thinks I have such a glamorous life traveling around the world doing events, but the ugly truth is that many of these trips comprise of nothing more than an airport, a hotel, the event venue and travel between them.

At least on this trip I'm staying a couple extra days, so I should have more news about what's happening in New York by the end of the week.

Friends of God?

On Friday night, Karen and I watched the interesting documentary by Alexandra Pelosi (yes, Nancy's daughter) called "Friends of God" on HBO - http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/friends_of_god/index.html?ntrack_para1=leftnav_category5_show0.

That same day, Paul Krugman, in the New York Times, posited that the overwhelming partisanship we've seen in the last 16 years across the country would only be alleviated if we could return to a state of more economical balance across the wealth spectrums, and that the continuing inequality of the super rich and rich accumulating more and more wealth at the expense of the middle and underclasses is what has led to a great deal of the strident partisanship.

After watching the documentary, I'm not so sure that it's as simple as putting it in the economic terms that Krugman laid out.

The vast majority of those that call themselves evangelicals, or born-again seem to have no interest in rational discourse or debate. They have a certainty about their cause that would seem to defy any attempt at compromise on many issues. And, as long as the Republican party aligns itself with this movement as an important part of their "base", then I don't see how we will be able to move beyond the vast gulf that exists in the ways that some people think about very divisive issues at the expense of common problems.

So, that's the conundrum on the political side of the equation, but what about this whole notion of evangelizing or proselityzing for religion, or for Christ or whatever it may be.

It kind of confuses me and defies logical explanation. On the one hand, we hear that Christ or God (are they one and the same?) have a very simple message - love. So, why all the need for "Warriors for Christ", or "Champions of Christ", or wrestlers or skateboarders or whatever for Christ"? Why not "Peacemakers for Christ", or Lovers for Christ"? Why so overwhelmingly love of country and support of war and troops - as if Christ, or God, who are supposed to be all knowing and ominpotent have only a regard for this country??

And, if the message is one of love, why so much hate of gays, immigrants, other religions, anything other than those you share a common belief with?

It was a little odd (and frightening) to hear so many young people (little kids and teens) stating unequivocally that they did not believe in evolution, did believe in creationism and had somehow been convinced that dinosaurs were on the Earth at the same time as man. Apparently the debate over whether we should be allowing creationsim or "intelligent design" to be taught in schools alongside evolution or biological sciences is somewhat of a moot point as, at least, in communities that are heavily biased towards evangelism, they have already succeeded in instilling a dubious belief system into the younger generations and that just keeps getting propagated from one generation to the next - biology and science be damned.

Clearly, these folks have a vested interest in NOT educating the young and keeping a lid on the ability to think for oneself and not explore the world at large. How else to explain 40,000 plus teenagers showing up in San Francisco, of all places, for a mega evangelical experience.

I wonder if the push for more local control of schools and more school choice has not just become a coded way of controlling the agenda to the point where it's less important to educate kids to compete in a globalized world than to keep a narrow point of view that keeps us from engaging with that world in any kind of serious way.

So, if God exists and is this omnipotent, all seeing, all knowing ruler of the Universe (and I make no claims to the validity of that hypotheses), wouldn't he, she, it have a much more vested interest in the fruits of his creation being highly educated, highly motivated to preserving life on earth through peaceful means, having some vested interest in people engaging with one another regardlesss of national boundaries and ethnicities?

Instead, we seem to have a very narrow interpretation of what the message of Christ was and it seems to center more on a very narrow view of the world and not so much life as death and the after death experience.

Is that being a friend to God?

The Propaganda Machine and Historical Memory

Interesting article today in The New Republic Online, by Rick Perlstein http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070122&s=perlstein012507 that illuminates something that has become a real problem for the body politic known as liberals or progressives.

The whole "support the troops" propaganda machine has been so co-opted by the right that we can't have a decent discussion about the role of the military, the legitimacy of when to go to war or anything remotely related to the military-industrial complex without fear-mongering and false notions of patriotism being thrown in our faces.

Will we ever learn?

What He Should Say

After reading all the pundits and well wishers on what the President will or should say in his State of the Union speech tonight, here's what I hope he says:

"Well, the reality is that after six years in this job, I really still have no clue what I'm doing or how to solve the myriad issues that need addressing in this country, from the war in Iraq, to Homeland Security and the securing of ports and chemical plants, to energy and healthcare, to long term education goals, to reforming entitlements equitably across the wealth spectrum, I just don't have it in me. So, I call for this new Congress to debate and discuss in a bipartisan way all of these issues, present the country with it's proposals, which I will then endorse and sign into law or implement as policy, and in January of 2009, I will go quietly into retirement and turn the country over to someone ideally more qualified to lead this great country forward into the 21st century."

Now that would make for a great, succinct speech and we could all move onto better things.

pretty much the best quote ever...

now if that don't beat all...

Art. Paris. Day Two

A different day altogether. The sun was shining. The sky was clear. Paris in the sun is a different city, all clarity and light. Walking down Boulevard Raspail, after a day of seeing really good art, the trees, winterized and bare of leaves create the empty spaces that were missing yesterday.

What a great day to end the trip. What was missing in the art yesterday was here today. The provocations, the engagement of the viewer, the architectures of storytelling, the political and the mundane, but all wrapped in opening up the senses to what is new and what is possible.

Cinq Milliards D'Annees - Various Artists; Palais de Tokyo

Five Billion Years is the first chapter of a year long program that is designed not as a singular event - a fixed point isolated in time and space - but the notion of a program, an ongoing experience that is constantly in motion and will feature over the year exhibitions, performances, concerts and conferences. It is committed to artists working today by embodying the uncontainable and elastic nature of contemporary art.

There were numerous artists and works in this exhibition and the contrast with yesterday's disappointing contemporary piece - The Magellanic Cloud - was stark. Everything that was not, this was. It was art as engagement, as schizophrenic as the world today. It was alive and dynamic, sometimes confounding, but never dull.

There were great provocations and some mysterious pieces (like the projected circle of light that cast no shadow when you walked into it - my friend Norm Schwab, who is a lighting designer would have loved it).

It brought into question things like the role of the viewer, patience within viewing art (there was one piece that was a single light bulb in a box that was randomly programmed to only illuminate once a year - today was not that day).

What was great that there was also one piece of Marcel Duchamp's - RotoReliefs from 1953). Duchamp was the ultimate provocateur, having bought a men's urinal and called it Fountain and attempted to display it at a show that had advertised that it would display and piece of art. He did it to find out if the jury would be true to their word and truly display anything. They rejected it, this calling into question their own credibility on what constitutes art.

Other provocative and interesting pieces:
Big Crunch Clock - Gianni Motti; 5 billion year countdown to when the sun will explode
Patman 2, 2006 - Michel Blazy; made with 200kg of soya noodles
Glassworks II, 2006 - Kris Vieeschouwer; From time to time a bottle falls
Revolution, 2005 - Kristof Kintera; The figure violently hits his head on the wall in front of him

There were more, but I'll stop there. Suffice to say that this show will be worth going back to if I am in Paris again this year.

Gary Hill - Fondation Cartier

Gary Hill, who is primarily a video artist had two pieces in this show. One was a video and installation and the other was not a video based piece, though it did involve viewing through a screen.

Frustrum was the video piece. A large tank of petroleum grade crude oil sits in front of a large screen on which is projected an electrical power line tower and electrical lines coming off both sides of it towards the viewer. In the middle of the tower is a large (almost as large as the tower) image on an eagle with a giant wing span. The eagle flaps its wings, hitting the power lines at various times and angles which ignites slapping sounds like thunderbolts. Occasionally the force of the lines snapping creates ripples in the oil.

It's a compelling interrogation of ideas on the power of language, perception and interpretation and could also be a commentary on how stuck the US is in their attempts to wriggle out of the power vacuum they've created in Iraq, and the role that oil plays in the geopolitical schema of the world today.

The second Hill piece was called Guilt. A series of telescopes were set up in the space, all pointed at pedestals across the room from them. On each pedestal was a single gold coin, positioned on edge and rotating. On each coin were different Latin phrases. One looked into the telescope to view the gold piece and also could hear a very isolated voice coming from the telescope. The voice may or may not have been commenting on the gold piece you were viewing. The voice was interrupted in nature - words were muffled or dropped altogether in the script, and seemed to be complaining about some circumstance or just haranguing the viewer.

I couldn't make out all the phrases, but one of them translated to A STONE'S THROW AWAY FROM A WHIRLPOOL OF ERRORS. Another was IN WONDER WE WONDER.

Again, Hill seemed to be commenting somewhat on the political situation in the world, the nature of viewing art (is it a guilty pleasure in a world racked with violence?), our relationships to money and power and the overall value of art.

Both pieces are from 2006 - again, provocative, somewhat confounding and definitely capable of making you think. The one thing that was a little hard on the senses was the smell of the oil, which permeated the entire museum, infiltrating into the other exhibit. Perhaps intentional and a reminder of the overwhelming power that oil has on the world today.

Tabaimo - Fondation Cartier

Tabaimo (not her real name, which is Ayako Tabata) is a young Japanese video artist and animator. This show might have been the highlight of the day. The use of animation and video together and the screen surfaces that were used created really compelling imagery and art.

There were 4 pieces in the show - Japanese Commuter Train, Haunted House, midnight sea, and a series of 4 screens that were an installation showing 4 separate, but somewhat related videos, entitled - Japanese Zebra Crossing, Dream Diary Japan, Japanese Bathhouse - Gents, and Ginyo-ru (guignoller).

Japanese Commuter Train was the most interesting one for me (though they were all fascinating in their own way). You stood in the middle of what seemed like a commuter train, surrounded on both sides by screens. The images made you feel like you were standing in the car and could see out the windows and saw the city moving by.

All of these pieces are a little hard to describe, so I encourage you to seek out this artist and discover her work for yourself.

All in all, a very good day.

Score for the day:
Ideas - Aplenty
Air - Clear and light
Art - As it should be

Oh, and brunch at Carrette, which has some of the best croissants in Paris. Doesn't get any better than that.

Air. Dense. Cloud.

The air feels thick and dense in Paris today. The clouds hang heavy with water and gray. I anticipated rain and took my umbrella. It did not rain.

My bones feel dense today. My brain is dense with thoughts and ideas. My feet are dense with tired from walking the dense streets.

The neighborhoods feel denser than usual. Sitting atop the Centre Georges Pompidou, looking out the window, I'm struck with the density of the streets, the people, the buildings all infringing on each other. It feels like there is no empty space.

Today was art.

Ra'anan Levy at the Musee Maillol

Great draughtsman, well drawn and well painted, I was struck with the emptiness and loneliness in the drawings and paintings. Israeli born, now living and working in Paris, Levy started out as more of a portrait painter of nudes primarily, but has moved to different subject matter in recent years - the most recent being paintings of empty rooms with doors in various opened and closed positions evoking both an isolation and a sense of seeking the history of place. The thing I really noticed about the work is how alone it felt. The current work, whether it is of interior spaces or exterior street scenes are completely devoid of human beings.

There are paintings of single gutters in Jerusalem, which though decorative in nature have a sense of foreboding to them, of the pull of the void into which the water from the street flows and one could be pulled into at any time. In some there are stairs. Are we descending them into the sewer, or are they a lifeline, a place to flee to, into a different kind of future?

Despite the abilities exhibited in the paintings, I didn't care that much for the show. It kind of started me down the road of denseness for the day.

Yves Klein - Body, Color, Immaterial; Centre Georges Pompidou

Going into this show, I knew little of Klein, was not expecting to like the show, and initially (from the first few pieces) thought I would be bored and would leave quickly.

This show ended up surprising me and became a real source of thinking about a lot of things today relative to art, its role in the world, how it is political in nature, especially contemporary art, and how even what appears to have no surface, has hidden beauty and meaning.

Klein, who died in 1962, when he was only 34, was a monochromist primarily. He invented the IKB (International Klein Blue) and blue was the only color he used for a long time. He eventually added in gold and pink to his palette. A lot of his work prefigured conceptual and performance art, as well as the use of one color in a work, and apparently had some influence on a number of artists that were contemporary or came after him (Warhol, Louise Bouergoise are a couple that I noticed).

He also had some interesting, and what at the time were revolutionary techniques - using a dry gas flame to do "fire" paintings for one and having live, naked models (women, of course - he was a bit of a raconteur and self-promoter) cover themselves in (blue) paint and either roll around or interact with a canvas at Klein's direction, using them as his "brush".

He dabbled in music, film, sculpture, architecture as well as painting and performance and as a note of oddity had a fixation with and practiced judo and wrote a treatise on it. In fact he considered all of these as his elements of inspiration:
Composition
Painting
Sculpture
Architecture
Music
Judo
Politics

There was one point in the exhibit where a piece of text related to one of the painting talked about a sense of being born again into a new kind of philosopher's stone, and it got me thinking about the need for a new and different kind of "born-again" movement for humanity - an anti-religious born againism based on rationality, nature, art and science as a foundation of belief and hope for the future. I need to think on this one more and hope to write about it again soon.

As you can probably tell, I ended up really liking this show, and this list of words that accompanied one of the rooms (called Impregnate) says a lot about both Klein's art and art as a way of life, not separated from life:
Essential
Potential
Spatial
Incommensurable
Fast
Static
Dynamic
Absolute
Pneumatic
Pure
Prestigious
Marvelous
Exasperating
Unstable
Expect
Sensitive
Impregnated (Permeated)
Impregnate (Permeate)
Immaterial

Robert Rauschenberg - Combines; Centre Georges Pompidou

"If you do not change your mind about something when you confront a picture you have not seen before, then you are a stubborn fool or the painting is no good"
Rauschenberg - The Art of Assemblage"

I did not change my mind about something when confronting the pieces in this show. I'll leave it to others to decide if I am a stubborn fool or the painting was no good.

The Magellanic Cloud - Various Artists; Centre Georges Pompidou

The exhibition took its title from a 1955 novel by the Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lern, whose work was marked by an incredible ability to predict technologies and inventions that came into being only many years later (perhaps an earlier version of William Gibson, who tends towards the same proclivities?).

Unfortunately, Lern considered this particular work one of his least successful and this show was equally unsuccessful. Though aspiring to looking at contemporary works and the idea of fallen utopias to the possibilities of the future, the work itself was banal and uninspiring - a real disappointment given the interesting premise.

None of the artists displayed were known to me, are unlikely to be known to you and will likely remain that way.

So, the score for the day:
Density - Full
Klein - Inspiring
Art - Always interesting, but sometimes failing to deliver
Air - Fresh
Clouds - Still gray

Paris by night awaits.

Failing Grades

Could it be more disastrous than the current administration?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/opinion/11thu2.html - Domestic Policy (fiscal) - F
Foreign Policy (see NY Times editorial on Bush speech tonight) - F
Homeland Security (Katrina response, lack of cohesion on intelligence agencies) - F

One has to wonder about the 17% of people polled that still think this administration (or Bush) is doing a good job. Are they seeing something the rest of us are missing?

Can't Help Myself

It's kind of an addiction, I guess. I just can't help myself when it comes to reading about the strains and struggles of the political classes and their meanderings as they claim various influences over our daily lives. I get very caught up in what's up with all things political on most days and now that the NY Times (and all other publications) are online and I can link to just about anyone else on the planet that's writing about the political scene, I spend way too much time reading, weighing, obsessing over what all these "leaders" are up to.

Maybe I need a life.

But. This brings me to the next presidential election, which, of course, has already begun in earnest. It worries me that we've started a national trend of starting these election cycles earlier and earlier each time, and are now poised for the longest general election in history http://nationaljournal.com/todd.htm.

These are not stupid people, but I have to wonder at their wisdom at all agreeing to start so soon. Yes, I know the current system of fundraising and need for being in the media spotlight demands it, but if you look at the psychology of it - we all end up losers. We have this natural tendency to build people up for a period of time, only to then find all ways possible to find flaws with them and knock them back down to the point that by the time we get to the actual election we are so sick of both major party candidates that we'd all like to see anyone other than the guys we chose in the primaries to get the job.

Sure, we need transparency and knowledge about the candidates, but the coverage is so slanted towards quick sound bites and obfuscation of actual positions on issues that we don't really know what they're about until the Cabinet and staff is announced and the first crisis is faced anyway (witness our current adiministration).

It just seems like there has to be a better way of doing this. I think I'd rather see Clinton, Obama, McCain, and everyone else spend 2007 actually exhibiting leadership qualities either through the work they do in governing or laying out substantive policy positions that can be debated and discussed than all the time they will spend courting favor with the moneyed interests and hopping around the country to shore up political support.

It's unfortunate that the trend seems to be for the states to move their primaries up rather than back just so they can theoretically influence the choosing of the candidates. If everyone stepped back and took a breath and those wishing to run waited until later this year to announce they were running, and if the primaries all were closer to the June timeframe, we might then have candidates and a populace that could stay focused on what is important (as opposed to Swift boating each other), and we might actually get excited about choosing a President.

Of course, just to get rid of the current one may be exciting enough in itself.

Reflecting A New Year

I know it's counterintuitive to start out the new year with reflections. I think you're supposed to do that at the end of a year and start the new one by looking forward and making predictions or resolutions about what you think will happen or what you resolve to change or do in the coming year. But, I've never been very good at predicting, as evidenced by my very lackluster performance in the weekly football pool, and after many years of resolving behavorial change of one sort or another and always reverting to my own selfish ways, it seems more appropriate to just reflect on what I think the new year might bring, or what I hope it might bring or what I hope to do, see, think this year - thus reflections rather than predictions.

Each new year tends to bring surprises, both good and bad. Once you've reached that period of life so euphemistically referred to as "middle age", the years both seem to roll by faster than ever and in such a way that you can't remember by May what happened in January. Is that because middle age is much like the Middle Ages, a dark period where events unfold in somewhat random ways and you're cut off from the optimism of youth (The Classical Ages) and the wisdom of late life (The Enlightenment)? Well, probably not, but it seemed like a decent theorem just now.

Actually, we live now in such a fast-paced world with a dizzying array of new communication devices that it seems hard to be cut off from any piece of information for longer than a nanosecond - but no one has yet deciphered if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Do we really need to know that Britney is out in the world sans undergarments or that Paris has been detained on a DUI because she needed a late night burger after a drink or two too many? Or, as we are sitting in meetings or just walking down the street, do we really need to read that latest email?

And yet. (A little literary device I just picked up from reading Nicole Krauss's interesting book "A History of Love"). Information can be quite powerful. Information and education can change the world in profound ways and will likely do so even more in 2007 (uh oh, is that a prediction?).

What we should be reflecting on is whether we should be discussing, as a society interested in information and education, a number of things in the coming year.

If we reflect on a global world that is shrinking in metaphorical (and maybe even physical) size and that the coming years will bring an ever greater need for educating ourselves about a variety of important (to the health of the planet and the people that populate the planet) issues then can anyone tell me how it is that the teaching profession is still regarded so low and how we have not created the incentives for bright and able people to consider teaching as a lucrative profession? This doesn't mean to say that people that have taken on the burden of teaching today aren't bright and able people, but they most assuredly are underpaid for the task and for the challenges that face them in classrooms today.

If we want to leave no child behind, should we not start by making sure that we leave no teacher behind? Shouldn't teachers have the opportunity for wealth by mere virtue of what they offer society as a whole, as opposed to sports and movie stars that entertain us but rarely make a real difference in our progress as human beings? Shouldn't we make sure that teachers get ongoing training to stay up with the latest technologies, teaching methods, scientific ideas, innovations in the world of just about everything? If we expect to compete, as a country, in the coming changes to the global landscape, would it not make sense to make sure we have people teaching the future generations that are just as innovative and thought-provoking as those we set up as role models in the world of business or politics?

Now, it's possible that the teaching profession has brought this on themselves with less than innovative ideas for moving the profession forward and by retrenching into unions that shelter bad teachers and don't reward good ones, and that might need to change if we're going to take teaching and education seriously. But, that should be part of the ongoing dialogue about what it means to provide the kind of education needed to make the US continue to be the innovative country we are perceived to be with an economy that everyone would like to emulate (in terms of ability to grow).

As I reflect on what I would like from the new year it is hard to divorce those thoughts from what is happening around the world, from the religious wars (both physical, as exemplified by the Mid East and cultural - the debates over divisive issues and the silliness of "intelligent design" as something to be taken seriously), to the political arena and what the new year (or next two) will likely bring.

You all know that I have no regard for our current President and have no desire to see him leave office in anything less than total disregard for his failed policies. And yet. We've already started to hear the talk of what the legacy of the Bush presidency will be, and while I have no particular interest in seeing anything positive happen for Bush or the Republicans leading up to 2008, who really knows. Maybe he is a good guy in private, cares about other people, cares that he's led us into the disaster of Iraq, cares what happens to people who have less than he does. I know it's hard to tell from most anything he says or does. But. Who knows.

I do know that it would be unwise for us to have a two year hiatus from discussing or doing anything important for the next two years while both sides of the political spectrum pose and posture and ready themselves for the next election (President, all of the House and 1/3 of the Senate).

So, some hopeful reflections on what we could talk about and work on in the next two years that might even give Bush something he could leave office and reflect positively on if these things even could get into the public domain:

Education - amending No Child Left Behind from a purely test driven initiative to one that tests as needed to maintain the level of science, math, reading and writing comprehension needed to succeed in higher education and in the real world, but also adds in elements of teaching creative and critical thinking that lead to innovative new ideas, adding in a No Teacher Left Behind component, relooking at the spending priorities attached to it, deciding if public education will be taken seriously or just abandoned and we move to a different system.

Energy - taking our "oil addiction" seriously and starting a new go-to-the-moon kind of national fervor that engages everyone in solving global warming, getting rid of our energy dependence on oil and coal, changing the priorities of royalties and incentives to old energy (oil and coal) and investing in new energy with serious goals to get this done by 2015, or whatever seems like a stretch, but realistic date.

Ethics - serious oversight of political/lobbyist relationships with severe penalties for anyone that violates good ethical government. Make government something we can be proud of and trust to get things done for people and less cynical about. Serious election reform by standardizing elections across the country with an Oregon style vote by mail system that has a paper trail attached and is easy for everyone to do.

Engagement - with the rest of the world. Reflect on whether our "national interest" is confined to issues of terrorism or fighting or whatever and look at and work with areas of the world that could really change the dynamic of peace in the world. Pre-empt things like genocide (and engage on the ones that are happening now, like Darfur), by giving hope to areas like Africa, areas of Central and South America with postitive initatives to fight health issues, employment issues - the things that alleviate hopelessness (and lead to terrorim and violence as the only alternatives).

There are obviously many other issues that we could reflect on, but if we started even with those it would make for an interesting year ahead.

For myself, I hope to continue my excellent life with Karen and that we always continue to learn, travel to new places, engage with new people (and old friends), see new things, encounter new ideas and work for peace. And, who knows, maybe I'll even finally win one week in the football pool.

Welcome to 2007. Happy New Year!