Solidtaire Studio

corruption

someone apologized to me for his poor english.  i wrote back that it doesn't matter, that perfect english went out of fashion a while ago. with people around the world dipping into this language, it is bound to be contaminated/enriched by various experiences, challenged by different ways of seeing the world, corrupted by different desires for expression. 

living in the virtual world

  winter 
  Originally uploaded by memoriesofthewind.

how could an old pic from my toronto days get featured on an italian website is rather beyond me.

i'd be in total denial to say that flickr isn't a huge part of my life at the moment.  i still can't get over the richness there, these beautiful strangers who'd become friends to me, some without any personal contacts, even the virtual ones, at all. 

there, everything that is a barrier in the physical world - distance, languages, false modesty - stops existing.  we literally get into other  people's minds and see the world through their eyes, their hearts.

then these barriers haven't completely disappeared - rather, they morphed into a vague protection behind which you become braver.  you become more generous, more open, kinder. 

so we live in this foggy space where there's joy and longing, anticipation and disappointment, past and future.  an amazing knowingness grows, and with it our hearts.

i think that maybe at any given time each of us could have a hundred people on earth that we could be true friends with.  before writing developed, you might run into one of them.  after travel happened, you'd run into maybe a couple throughout your life time.  so on, and so forth.  such sadness of isolation i feel for ancient people.

now maybe we could run into more.  maybe. there's joy in it.

digital patina

i found myself returning to some old thoughts, editing them, refining them.  of course whoever reading them won't know that it was happening.  they'd think that i wrote it two months ago, despite that i probably had just changed it last night.

i suppose that digital patina works the other way around - it's not the past carried into the present, but the present charged into the past.

the mad man at the bus stop

i was just talking about the coke commercial with a co-worker.  we both intensely dislike it.  she being much younger than me couldn't even remotely recall the charm of the old "i'd like to teach the world to sing," but she reluctantly reckoned that it was a nice commercial for its time.  then we started talking about how smarmy the new "i'd like to teach the world to  chill" is.

i said, i actually really liked the uk work, which features a fool roaming the street looking for friendship.  he can't get strangers to hug him, so he carts out a coolerful of cokes and gives those to people he runs into.  and his generosity is reciprocated.

she said, "but do you really want  to  hug  strangers?"

i said, i don't know, it depends on where i am, i suppose.

how i regret that i asked that question.  on my way home, at the bus stop, a mid-aged fool approached various people and solicited friendship.  one of these people he approached - all female i should note - was me.

at first, he waved his hello at me from a few steps away as he talked to another lady.  after a few persistent eye-contacts, there was no mistake that he's talking to me.  he asked for my name.  it's unusual, but i decided that i should be kind to him so i actually told him.  he extended his hand and said, "nice to meet you."  i shook his hand, which was soft as if it contained no bones.  i smiled again, this time more nervously.  i didn't enjoy this, and i wasn't sure what to make of this, or what should i do next.

he immediately backed off, mumbling out loud, "she's avoiding me, she's avoiding me."  i got even more nervous.  the bus stop suddenly froze it felt, and all passengers stiffed up.  one of them gave me a sympathetic glance, which unmistakably said, that nutter.  i felt bad.  the fact that he wasn't very bright doesn't mean that he was second class.  but i  had no idea how to communicate with him, how to give, how to take.  and i wasn't convinced that he's completely harmless, or that it was a harmless situation. 

he approached his next target, a young woman with a book.  she downright refused to have anything to do with him, and immediately returned behind her book.  she was utterly unapologetic about it, too.

i guess my answer to that question is that no, i don't want a hug, or a coke, from a complete stranger, here and now, on the street of Pittsburgh.

story replaces privacy

if i show you everything, what will you see?

i tentatively let go that thing called privacy.  in its place, i struggle to find my story. 

a friend once said to me, "there's an inner piece of me that no one can touch."

as i let go what i once considered my protection -  privacy, i feel that i am slowly getting to know that inner piece of me.

cenorship, part II

Saw this on Guardian.co.uk.  I only quote the beginning of the article - sorry hate length and trust that your internet skill is good enough to retrieve the whole article (hint:  sign up from wherever and Guardian will use your demo info to sell pop-up ads to advertisers from your own region.  very commercial really but  the Guardianites are terrific journalists/people so I urge you to donate a little of your privacy for their prosperity). 

Another example of the highly contextual nature of censorship.  What do I know about the UK system, and the minds of  British civil servants.   

As a freedom loving human being, my response is:  this is silly.  It's a suicide of the mind and morality through one thousand rules and words.

Some of the ads are good:  simple, compelling, and very sincere.  Not particularly thoughtful though, rather fluffy, one-dimentional sloganeering.  It's a good thing that all these beautiful and famous people are lending their voices to the campaign.  Looking at these million-dollar celebrity faces, I'm just a tad uneasy - are they turning a serious global issue into a consumer trend, or are they channeling a trend to a global issue?  But carping about intention is pointless and even a tad mean given the circumstance...  I only want to think about the outcome.

The fact that UK banned this anti-poverty message when poverty is becoming such a global crisis, especially right in the middle of Katrina - is morbidly insensitive.  Bad, bad PR move that damages the brand.

Anyway, the link to the ads is here.  Check it out:

http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/video/

Poverty campaign banned from TV, radio ads    

Dominic Timms
Monday    September 12, 2005

   Ofcom, the media regulator, today banned the charity coalition Make Poverty History from advertising on television and radio, saying it constituted a political body that was prohibited from doing so.

censorship

i blogged a fellow flickrite's "censored" pic here then i decided to  pull it.  as much as i was pissed off by what's happening, the pic itself has a sensationalism  that rubs me the wrong way.  the  pic is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anomalous/41887347/.  i hope this doesn't constitute "censorship" on my part.

the pic is forced off the "interestingness" list because someone in the  dark who hates its political views flagged it as "may offend."  anyone can flag a picture as "may offend,"  so the current flickr system gives everyone the  right to blacklist/censor pictures. 

flickr wasn't set up to be a forum for political debate so the "may offend" feature was intended for something else.  it probably will change soon.  the current system that allow anyone to rat on pics encourages crummy behavior really.

what flickr can't do is to  prevent  people from hating you.  we live in a deeply divided time.  as much as i hate to stereotype, the  quality  of the leader is usually indictative of the qualities of his supporters.  when they can't win an argument with  you they resort to muscle.  that's not flickr's fault.

another development that absolutely fascinated me - many  people seem content with just complaining about the situation and mourning about the inpending loss of freedom.  that attitude really irritates me - we're smart, educated people and we wallow in anomie?  scum will always be scum.  hit back.  abuse the "may offend" system back.  that will put some fire under these nice canadians at flickr HQ busying themselves with that meaningless "interestingness" index. 

part of me also says, get over it, censorship is here to stay.  it has always existed.  the extend to which it's practised probably depends on how incitive the  content is, not how much the government believes in freedom of speech.  politics is becoming much more divisive and charged.  censorship will be here to stay.  learn to deal with it.