520. "Colors Before the Sunrise" A Song? A Poem? A Piece of Vispo? (Plus A Discussion on Vic's Commitment to Cartoons)

"Colors Before the Sunrise" Poem / Song / Vispo in Poetry Format. The PDF of this poem can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/stokastika2/colorsbeforesunriseSONGPOEM.pdf.


Image displays a typical state of pre-sunrise (dusk, so they call it?!) at the Bahia de Los Angeles, Mexico. Image taken toward the end of March of 2010.

A quick effort toward VISPO for the song-poem "Colors Before the Sunrise."

The end of March seems far off (it's now the end of April). I was in a state of a massive, tangled knot from winter quarter of 2010. I was intellectual roadkill that needed a giant restoration project. But Jules swept me away to his and Duke's place to the Bahia de Los Angeles for a good 8-9 days. It was a much needed calibration. Just crossing the border from the United States into Mexico, venturing into brand new territory for myself (south of San Quintin) opened up my eyes, loosened me up, and brought me into a state of establishing new inner-outer perspectives. The people of Mexico barely had any resources and they made the most of what they had. I noticed that people were more attached to each other simply because they truly needed each other's help... whereas in the United States... it seems like visceral attachment to others has been largely replaced by technology, and so there is not much need to communicate and collaborate with others. We commune with machines instead. For about a week or so I was thankful for some clean water and a flushing toilet. I was surrounded by a land of unfinished and abandoned projects... which kind of felt like my mind... externalized.... Quite soon I started realizing that things in the United States are a bit too easy for our own good and once we get in our habits, it's sooo easy for our minds to take for granted what we have and not realize that we have what we need....

So Jules gave me the best possible present... that even my parents haven't given me for so long.... He swept me away into a foreign land full of empty, serene landscapes and depravity/scarcity of human resources.... His presence allowed my inner self to unravel and untangle a little bit... and re-prioritize.... I largely focused on taking photographs in RAW format (man, I'm officially professional now... well... almost...) and downloading music and photography software... which took me a couple of days (even internet was a scarce resource!). I became a sensual, visual creature, visually absorbing the landscape, ignoring the Spanish (I actually enjoy being in a foreign country where I don't know what the hxll anyone is saying, so I view humans as chattering monkeys and end up only visually processing the landscapes). So I took lots of photographs and soaked up the landscape as much as possible--which was a strange ecosystem indeed. Bahia de Los Angeles is a desert right by an inland Sea of Cortez (hence in my poem "desert's ocean"), which totally threw me off because you don't get these kinds of ecosystems in California (or combinatory ecosystems--desert and ocean right next to each other?!!).

Also when I was down in Bahia de Los Angeles, I figured out how to use my new SANSA mp3 player, and retroactively, I'm quite happy I purchased it. The new versions of the IPOD shuffles are appallingly bad (way too small, no control of audio on the device, forcing you to wear ear buds which hurt my ears in an ergonomic sense). I went on fantastic jogs along the beach and through the salt marsh, even one jog from the LA Bay dumpster site all the way down the hill back to Duke and Jule's house. The final jogs I took were toward the south end of LA Bay toward Larry and Lois' house. There was a lot less traffic (quite a bumpy dirt road!) and the last structures I passed were open-ended houses where squid fishermen were staying... and even a micro squid processing plant. And it was these jogs where the poem/song started formulating. The idea of "Colors Before the Sunrise" came to me in my half-sleep I think on the 4th day of the trip. I told Jules and he liked the title. Then during my last two jogs along the bumpy dirt road, out by the cordone cactus and the spindly cirios and other interesting vegetation structures I was listening to a song entitled "The Passenger" by Iggy Pop (to be honest, I was attracted to the initial melody but I had no affinity with the vocals) . And through this happy backdrop melody (with a few minor chords), I began to formulate my song/poem. It took two jogs along the same road to get the main bulk of the poem worked out (plus a few ideas in my car drive home, back to Riverside and Santa Barbara to start spring quarter). On the last day at the Bahia de Los Angeles, I woke up extremely early in order to have the opportunity to take photographs of the sunrise (which I was procrastinating to do) and last minute images of Duke's neighbor's yard (Carolina's?), which is where the above photograph came from....

I suppose I had been sitting on this song/poem for a while because of my personal epiphanies on how to channel my energy in this society. After my initial experiences in approaching "literary journals" with my poetry and short stories, I had become increasingly frustrated. I talked to Barry Spacks about facing my "string of rejections" with poetry and short stories, and not only that, how literary journals are now failing to respond to the input of work. What a complete waste of my time, waste of my life to endlessly send off pieces of writing to literary journals, only to receive thousands of rejections, and more "no responses." Barry Spacks commented that "things are starting to slip"--that the sacredity of human transactions is vanishing as we interact as if we are in a plasma state as a pinball machine only found at the center of the sun. The Rejected Life is the only life that most writers know nowadays. Barry told me that if he were stranded in the desert for seven days without any food or water... he would crawl to the nearest computer and his death words would be to write a very polite rejection letter to all the people in the world he never had the time to respond to (given that he were an editor of a literary journal), wishing them well, hoping that one day their poetry and short stories would finally find a home. This was so visually striking to me, I hope one day to make a short film featuring Barry and the Rejected Writer Life. Good advice for all his students... in the form of a flick!

After that conversation, which was about a couple weeks ago... how Barry said this society was "slipping" whether it was about even providing a nice or even RUDE rejection letter... it was that moment where I just completely gave up on the idea of submitting my poetry to places (except every once in a while to particular people and specific circumstances). My poetry is published here on this blog. What more could I possibly want? Literary journals are not my venue, not my audience. What is the chance that any literary journal editor would understand the fusion of science, art, creative writing, and human-environmental change? 0.000001%. Sorry, it's a nearly stone-solid truth. Most "creative writers" don't have much comprehension of science, let alone incorporate science into their writing or processing of everyday life. So, whatever. What a waste to deal with people who don't even know how to diagnose your validity and contribution to society.

The other problem is that anyone can be a poet or a writer. Little ten-year old kids can write poems and short stories, let alone little old ladies on their 20th year of retirement who have nothing else to do but sit on their porch and write the 5 billionth poem on the metaphorical representation of sunsets in their lives. Writing is analog. Linear.... But combining writing and art requires one to think spatially-temporally... non-linearly... in essence... right brain left handed. And just through this thought, I am eliminating 90% of the population of storytellers, which consist of linear-thinking, left-brained people who express themselves in writing. And then to combine words with images to tell a story with a consistent set of characters, settings, and plots?! I think I am eliminating 50% of the remaining right brained people. And then for this story to make a contribution to society and the environment? Basically, there is close to no one left. I have no competitition. My Biologically Incorrect Cartoons are so unique that they stick out like an eyesore. And if I want to write a poem... it's gotta be in cartoon format. I can dump most of the rest of my artwork into cartoons. I have my own niche and close to no one having the ability to compete. I just have to keep chugging along and cranking out as many cartoons as possible, while simultaneously building a compilation of emails of people who I know will appreciate the cartoons and can provide editorial advice in the process of making my first few hundred cartoons (before expanding to a subscribed email list service).

Plus, through all the pressures of my Ph.D. committee meeting in February of last quarter... combined with an overstimulating environmental history course with Dr. Peter Alagona, Terra and Buz became fully resurrected into my mind... except this time, it was a near-completely visual format (rather than a long manuscript). I came to grips with the notion that the Question Reality manuscript was not a failure. My Question Reality manuscript will never die. It is the fundamental baseline for all else to grow with my cartoons. I will give interested folks a piece of my mind in mentally digestible cartoons (a little bit every day), that will create a continuum of experience form the QR manuscript to my acquired knowledge as of today....

The other thing I noticed in the publishing world is that to approach a publisher (for writing), you need a literary agent. But to approach a publisher of independent or alternative cartoons? You directly submit to the editor and publisher. It goes to show there aren't that many in the pool of storytelling through cartoons. Bless my right brain... take good care of it, and give it a work out every day! Nevertheless, writing is always a part of the creative process, I will still have to write to even evolve my cartoons and films! It's just that in order to make my WRITING financially viable, I am going to have to prove to people that I am unique and that I'm going to have to EARN MY RIGHT TO WRITE through multi-media arts (cartoons, music, film) before I return to the pursuit of writing... safely... with a little bit of financial compensation....

And after a week of panicking before my Ph.D. committee meeting, I established my own SI Units for cartooning. Fine Point Black Sharpie. White Computer Paper. Portable Scanning Machine. Photoshopping the Fine Details. Black and White and One Shade of Gray and Occasionally a Gaussian Blur Effect with Lighter Lines to establish a Hierarchy of Lines. My cartoons are evolving to higher quality... and slightly different proportions... just like how Calvin and Hobbes evolved. Barry has been very supportive and I send him lots of my cartoons "fresh off the press." We agreed that once a narrative has become apparent to the reader with my cartoons... and/or once I reach about 200 cartoons, we will choose 12 of the best cartoons and approach the Santa Barbara Independent to start a weekly run... which would be so exciting (Barry knows two editors and I know two editors, one editor overlaps)! Barry recommended I check out the "independent" magazine scene, with"Village Voice" being the top (in New York?). He said that incorporating the themes of science into cartoons in a very satirical, but mentally digestible way... is unique and a very valuable pursuit, especially in these times, eh?!! Ya... Science should be culture. But American "culture" is so divorced from science. We have become a user-friendly-push-button-gossip-about-your-neighbor's-clothes type of society... and it's rare for conversations to go much deeper than the shallow schmoozing... even at a university donating charity event loaded with nerdy professors (which I witnessed LAST weekend).

So, here I am, bitterly Blog-publishing this poem that expresses my "inner soul" at a given point in space and time, which separate from standards of society--is a beautiful thing to pursue, self-expression--except that society has destroyed the enjoyment of self-expression through the persistent psychological devastation of Rejection Letters (or No Response, better yet), only to redirect my thoughts toward the abandonment of efforts toward being rejected 5 million times in attempt to publish poetry and short stories through the traditional BS avant garde avenues (though Barry said it would be a grand idea for me to start a science-art multi-media literary journal, scientific research exploration through multi-media arts--so the door is not completely closed!). And then I am again redirected toward the positive route of cartooning about science, politics, and human-environmental change through my charming little innocent kids, Terra and Buz.

I didn't expect all this information to come out on this blog, but stream-of-conscious venting is all for the better for my own clarity of thought. I am going to have to now condition myself... mentally divorce the PROCESS OF WRITING POETRY AND SHORT STORIES from the PROCESS OF PUBLISHING. I have to convince myself that none of my ideas are in final form (or an audience magnet) unless they take shape of a cartoon (or a cartoon-driven poem-short-story), a piece of music or performance slam poetry, or a film. It's amazing to think that my mind can construct any story format--ranging from scientific articles to poetry to short stories to photographs to cartoons to paintings to pieces of music to film to websites to whatever the next new medium is--but I'm starting to feel the pressures of establishing a unique niche in society--the need to be perceived by society as a "needed storyteller" that needs about $20,000 a year in order to have health insurance and a roof over my head to continue storytelling. Certain doors are "closing" (but not completely) right now but other doors are opening full-wide open. Creative survival is a matter of desperation. As one of my recent cartoons discussed my need to avoid the MacDonald's hamburger flipping treadmill that close to everyone else is pursuing, whether in a science lab or at MacDonald's.

I have more to write about with my positive experiences in the Bahia de Los Angeles... plus LOTS of PHOTOGRAPHS! This poem was just an introduction.

490. The Four-Year Lag Time Email to University of California UC Press::: Vic the Worm-Grub Idiot in 2005 and Attempting-to-Fly Butterfly in 2009

What I Wrote for the Picasaweb Blurb: Metamorphosis from 2005 to 2009 ::: The Four Year Lag Time Email to Uni California UC Press. As I am preparing to send off the "new organism" of "The Mountain's Last Flower" into the world, I was building up my internet social networking habits... and part of my personal goal was to clear up on email account www . questionreality . org @ gmail . com. And there I found an email from an editor of the University of California Press. My default instinct was to write an email stating (1) pardon the four year delay in responding to this email, but (2) I'm thankful for your patience, and yet I'm sorry if I was unprofessional and potentially inappropriate in behavior the first time I approached you as a naive undergraduate.... It was a powerful feeling to writing such an email, and then I started to think what was the "rational underbelly" behind the instincts.... What did I learn these past 4-5 years? What did I not know back then that I know now?!! (2005: worm-grub idiot to 2009: attempting-to-fly-butterfly)

The last 2-3 days (or longer... geez) I had become a Facebook Addict, Facebook Junky, Facebook Binge-er, Facebook Purger, Facebook Whatever... as I have been attempting to create a fresh account and delete an old account, affiliated with negative memories... and failures.... In addition, I made a deal with myself to crack into one of my "deadly" email accounts, wwdotquestionrealitydotorg atgmaildotcom, hunt through it, excavate all emails, and close the account.... In the process, I found an ancient email from an editor from the UC Press and instinctfully sent him a polite note generally stating... "Pardon for the four-year delay... but when I submitted my 1000-page Question Reality manuscript to you, I was an idiot. Sorry if I behaved unprofessionally and inappropriately, but also thanks for your patience and putting up with me."

It was an amazing feeling... of redemption of sorts?... to be able to open that ancient email in my life and address it. And yet an instinctful email response was followed by a surge of thoughts overwhelming my mind, when I cam to realize what an "unknowledgeable idiot" I was back in 2005, and how much I have come to learn and know since then about the media world....

To celebrate the passing of a little over four years and all the knowledge I have compoundingly acquired during this time, I decided to make a "generic list" (not a "life story," as to which it can easily become...) of all the things that I didn't know back in Fall of 2005, and all the things I know now... such that I can look back at my old worm-grubby self and even have enough confidence to label my 2005 self as an "idiot." It's funny how it all happened though. I never planned myself to be where I am at now. I'm just at a very fortunate state where right now it's "safe to reflect." Four long years of CONTINGENCY, contingent events, contingent learning processes to achieve a state of being "safe to reflect." As Dr. Nancy Kawalek told me one time... "You will only perceive, unless you are ready to perceive." And again, my father has always been an encouraging voice and describes Question Reality as a "necessary intellectual barf" to order to synthesize and compromise two polar-opposite, strangely, somewhat "mutually exclusive" worlds of "academic-"scientific"-book knowledge" and the "experiential knowledge acquired" of surviving anorexia (As they say, the university is the "frontier of knowledge," it seems like scholars in the university are the "last ones to find out.").

(1). No one in their right mind publishes books of 1000 pages, unless you are a Stephen Jay Gould at the end of your life... and you are the Biblical Figure of your respectable discipline, including Harry Potter pseudo-disciplines.... Basically, I went backwards... as my mentor Hugh Marsh told me... Hugh stated that most people write a series of newspaper articles, and then these articles conglomerate into books.... It's how most journalists earn their "book" merits....

(2). Society does not judge you based on (a) your hard work (b) your intellectual merit (c) your impeccable track record of straight-A-goodie-two-shoes in school (d) but based on your intimate contacts, inherited or acquired (e) your popularity, your "platform," your already-built-in audience through marketing, self[deprecating] promotion, exposure (f) economic affordability (g) degree of coupling with other forms of media campaigning. So the quality of most books in Borders and Barnes and Noble is close to shxt. It's not about quality literature, it's about the popularity media bombardment (mostly). (Believe me, I remember one day I had that epiphany, and I walked into Borders in complete disgust... my entire perception of Borders and Barnes and Noble completely shifted....). I came to realize how many people's beautiful voices, how many geniuses' thoughts must have been buried in history simply because the one's who survived and became famous... were not necessarily the best, but won the popularity contest. (I have a dream of writing a newspaper column discussing the "Unburying the Undiscovered," in which I was to go into deep history of the region and find all the people who had the potential to impact society with their influential thoughts and stories, but ended up being drowned by the winners of the popularity contest, ended up being buried in history. Like the whole Herman Melville Syndrome, giving a second chance for select individuals to be rediscovered... unfortunately... long after they're gone....

(3). Society DOES NOT READ. A long time ago, there used to be books. People used to have time and energy invested in reading books because there was not much else for distraction. People used to read words and imagine worlds and generate emotions within them. Readers used to be ACTIVE dreamers. But then lots of technologies had arisen such that words could now be coupled with images and music, visions and emotions, such that there was not much incentive anymore to be active dreamers, but more so PASSIVE MENTAL CONSUMERS. And we learned fairly quickly that the human mind prefers IMAGES and AUDIO over sitting down and reading static, symbolic code on page after page after page. And to make it worse, the modern environment of "media bombardment" has placed people in a state of MINIMAL ATTENTION SPAN, MAXIMUM ADHD, so the capability for an audience member to retain a linear train of thought in consuming a piece of media is becoming closer and closer to zilch.... And so... welcome TWITTER to make life even worse.... So now, specialize-then-diversify strategy comes in full blast (the Ian Shive Conservation Photogapher strategy). In order for people to become interested in your central product, in this case a novella, you have to LURE THEM INTO reading your product through SOUNDBITES and IMAGEBITES.... You gotta HOOK THEM and then RETAIN their attention span.... Hence, the TRIANGLE EFFECT in writing, the most pertinent and sensationalized items presented first, and then tapered off to the juicy, but less "sexy" material hidden in the boonies of whatever product. Hence also leading to the FOUR ELEMENTS of ESSENTIAL STORYTELLING (1) What is this about? (2) Why should I care? (3) Why should I believe you? are three questions that need to be answered in the first 15 seconds of meeting any important person in the world who may be able to more widely distribute your product.... and (4) What kind of tricks will you infilitrate in your craft of storytelling that will maintain my interest?! (Also consider the PRISM EFFECT; the ability to speak with multiple different parties/stakeholders, e.g. how to approach literary agents and editors as opposed to how to approach journalists / magazine writers or students or more specialized academics) (The concept of telling stories in MENTALLY DIGESTIBLE CHUNKS, for example, in a short, adventurous story like "The Mountain's Last Flower") (The concept of STORYTELLING IN LIGHT OF MULTI-MEDIA TECHNIQUES, writing stories such that it is EASILY ADAPTABLE to other forms of stories, e.g. art exhibit, music, stage play, film, interactive website... whatever....)

And on that note... given these fundamental philosophical transformations... I engaged in a series of educational and artistic pursuits in order to convert my mind from the "academic treadmill" to the "economically viable treadmill" which I do not support. I do not support mass production. Period. Mass production and growth in quantity is by default non-sustaining. Period. I don't need numbers to show this (except for mass producing proton-electron arrays on a computer screen doesn't really seem to do the world much harm...).

Certain things in the global realm that didn't happen: (1) Bush was voted out of office and Obama's now in [I didn't realize that Bush's power constructed a heavy, oppressive weight in my mind and on my shoulders, which lifted the day Obama was in (2) Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth broke the silence of "international discussion" of climate change/environmental problems. (3) Question Reality was ready to go out into the world in 2005, but I even had editors even tell me "Your writing is beautiful and powerful, but not now." But, WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY "NOT NOW"? What the hxll?!! The political climate under Bush really SUCKED, and drastically impacted the strategies of publishers (4) Several internet-based companies evolved from "esoteric code" to user-friendly push-button publishing (totally my style, WYSIWYG); there was an artms race in quality of internet services, like blogging and social networking, in which in my mind, Blogger and Wordpress and Typepad won for the blogosphere, and Facebook won by a long-shot in social networking (myspace has become insultingly cluttery). It's funny. All these people have jobs "teaching people" about "the media" when the "media environment" has been drastically changing during the time in which I have tried to establish myself as a multi-media storyteller. As a teacher, you have no stake. You're just observing and telling stories, and get paid to do it. You're not a struggling, unpaid "player" trying to survive in this dynamically changing media environment. Hopefully, one day I will succeed as a player and live to tell a story, once this "media environment" has stabilized.... As Jules said, "Dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't evolve fast enough to the environmental changes." The shifts in the internet and human media interface has been so drastic the last few years, that I feel if I fast-forwarded my life, I could say that I've been going through a "meteor impact of cyber space," much equivalent to the KT mass extinction. Fine, fine... I am metaphorically exaggerating. Whatever. That's what geologic metaphors are for. SCALE! (If your product doesn't seem to have the capacity to be contagious and "scale out" then people won't join the bandwagon. Agents and publishers only "join your team" because they see your product in "scale" and they want the piece of YOUR PIE, but then again, many folks can't scale out so well if they don't have help...).

Visceral things I didn't know about: male Homo sapiens (beyond my father, who I have discovered to be the exception to all the rules), their positive, sensitive inner universe as well as their extremely negative, bridge-burning undersides, I also didn't understand much about death (as I had most profoundly experienced through my grandfather Ray and grandmother Marion)

Elements of Substance / Philosophies I didn't know about: geology (paleontology, paleoecology, sedimentology, my pet pea subjects), the nuances of creative writing a la Barry Spacks :-) (understanding storytelling structures such as poetry, song lyrics, flash fiction, short story, novella, novel, etcetera), Matrix of the Mind: Mapping Language on Landscapes (the feedback between language, images, and emotions), I didn't know that my writing could be classified as "literary fiction [faction] for social change" (finally, a discrete and bounded discipline for the publishing types!), I didn't have people with authority and legitimacy around me (like my new Ph.D. committee, sitting in Mike Davis' class)....

Practical / Artistic / Social Networking Tools I didn't know about: I didn't know how to use Photoshop, I didn't own a Nikon D80 SLR until April 2006 (got my first photography gigs via cousin Mike Dillin!), I didn't know how to blog, I didn't know how to facebook, I didn't know how to design-organize-self-publish a book, like through LULU or CREATESPACE, I had no confidence in singing, I didn't know how to record-mix-master music, I didn't know how to record and edit video (thanks to UCSB's Blue Horizons program), I didn't know about the art of public presentation (thanks Toastmasters!), I didn't know much about experimental stage play (STAGE via Dr. Nancy Kawalek), I didn't know much about acting/modeling (which I learned via Barbizon/IMTA), nor was I ever exposed to wasteful mass production film operations (via Mike Dillin, Central Casting), I didn't know about the operations of a music studio (volunteering at California Sound Studios)

After all things said, I can find "some level of truce" with my first traumatic wave, simply by recognizing my own state of idiocracy, but not necessarily with the way how certain people treated me and responded to me (let's call it "collective abuse," shall we?). For example, to experience the sensation of "censorship," in which a literary agent and editor stated flat out "your writing is beautiful, but not now!" is one of the most traumatizing experiences I ever had in my entire life. Around that time, I recorded myself going through a panic attack in the car. At a visceral level, I could not stand the notion of being "mentally trapped" by the conventions/standards of a national society, and at a conscious level, I understood that my visceral/primal brain was going through a panic attack, and that I should record it. It's buried somewhere in my computer; when the time is right, I will revisit this attack (as a summary statement for most of my panic attacks). Traumatizing times provide the best material for storytelling....

The second most memorable response was a very contentious phone call with the editor from the UC Press. It was funny... I was exploring the website of the University of California Press and was noticing how they had this "non-discrimination statement," stating that the UC Press does not discriminate based on race, ethnic background, class, job position, AGE, or any other factor that could possibly construct the notion of discrimination. And yet, the phone call with the editor showed CLEAR DISCRIMINATION BASED ON AGE ("ageism" as opposed to "racism" or "speciesism" in District 9). He told me flat out (paraphrased, I have exact wording in another computer), "How could any 24-year old have something to say about the world?" which was extremely derogatory to me at the time. I left the phone call feeling like I was "no good" and didn't have anything valid to say because I was "too young." Following this phone call, I went through another panic attack alone, and I ended up writing a poem "It is important to take a moment and consider..." which I will place in the next blog, because I don't want to place too much information here....

Despite these discriminating statements made over the phone, I am going to have to let them slide, let them drip off my shoulder as if I were a random victim of being hit by bird dung. First of all, I have to let them slide because back then, I didn't know a lot, and I was a young idiot (yet with a lot to say) in several respects. And secondly, the editor did review the manuscript and made sincere, polite, helpful comments. Emotional and contentious phone calls should not be the basis for rational decision-making....

So, this "generic list" of all the things I didn't know back in 2005, but I do know now in 2009, is becoming a little bit of a "life story," so I'll catch myself and cut myself off here....