the futility of contests

ach, god, i do hate losing. that's the reason i don't enter most contests, whether it's for a woman or a trip to the moon.

the choices made in most competitions, say those for photos, depend upon criteria i find offensive, like beauty and sentiment. obviously, i prefer the oblique angle, not exactly cynical, but questioning.

so it is with great trepidation i'm entering a fight for high status: the barnack photojournalism award:

http://www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com/#/en/home

of course, it's total nonsense on my part. yet, i'd love to go to arles, france where van gogh painted extraordinary pictures and be feted by the photo world. nothing ventured, nothing gained, i say.

perhaps it's the six-pack of sierra-nevada that gives me the reckless courage. who cares what the reason! here's my request:

a request for help
since i started as a journalist in high school, do photos in a series, and enjoy history, i'd like the enter the leica barnack contest (turns out you can use any camera). for the past two days i've gone through my 2009 photos and have come up with six themes, which i've posted on my site.

www.pbase.com/wwp/entry1

www.pbase.com/wwp/entry2

www.pbase.com/wwp/entry3

www.pbase.com/wwp/entry4

www.pbase.com/wwp/entry5

www.pbase.com/wwp/entry6

i'd first of all like to know which theme has a chance of winning (i like them all). this contest for photojournalism, so it has to have social content. look at past winners and see what i mean.

http://www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com/#/en/home

they don't always go for top-heavy political emphasis. each theme i've chosen backed up by dozens of photos, so these particular ones don't have to be the final choice. i would like curator evaluations of what might be strongest, given the requirements.

thanks much for your insight.

wayne

www.pbase.com/wwp

what do i have to lose except my reputation, which doesn't exist!

the moment of truth

last nite at the blue room theatre a group of actors read chekhov's three sisters. deja vu, for me. fifty years ago i attended a production of the play at san francisco's actors workshop six times. it's memory has never faded. i didn't know why until last nite.

we read two translations/adaptations, one act of each, the tone quite different. the writing styles radically opposed (the second by david mamet). the first act worked wonderfully, lots of humor, charming characters, not what we normally associate with checkov. the mamet version turgid and depressing, the characters coming across as whiners, a common complaint with the audience for these plays.

afterwards, various participants commented on the spoiled nature of the sisters and brother. how they stewed in their own juice and never got anywhere. this certainly didn't make them seem very appealing. we left with the jury out.

suddenly, i realized what the play about: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH, something we all experience. that time when we have to make our own living. dreams come crashing down, the child no longer a child. the play traces the experience of such people hitting the harsh realities of the world and finally coming to terms with them, accepting them.

let's face it, at some point most of us find a situation and place where we dig in and spend a large portion of our lives. security and comfort more important than grand schemes of performing on broadway or re-inventing the wheel.

at first the youngsters, who've never worked, imagine work will free them. they hallucinate the sweat and toil as a kind of ecstasy. we in the audience can't help smiling. alas, in the course of the play they learn how tyrannous and petty labor can be. in fact for the social-climbing working-class woman who takes over the house, work becomes the only reason for existence. when an aging servant can no longer work, she threatens to throw her in the gutter. as the sign over the entrance to auschwitz says, arbeit macht frei. work makes you free. i think the irony of that is lost on none of us.

checkov hated work, complained all the time in his letters about having to write so much to support a large family. as a boy, he felt like a slave in his father's store and said, 'i had to beat that subservience out of me.' looking at the wall of personal photos in his moscow apartment, i had an epiphany. checkov dressed and appeared to be a dandy. i don't know why that seemed to explain so much, but it did.

what liberates us

mostly we go in circles. in our thinking A leads to B to C. we've built a personal logic over time, and we're convinced it's right, the only possibility. in this sense most of us conservative, no matter our political persuasion.

as my friend marilyn says, people who consider themselves always right have a lot of energy. they certainly make it hard for the rest of us, the self-doubters, the ones who exist in pale shades of grey. we get trampled, steam-rolled, as these un-doubters rule the roost.

my union friend charlie once told me, you need two people to challenge authority, to strike from different directions. this proves to be a good policy in the practical world. you need an ally, and thus to believe you can always go it alone can defeat you and your cause.

do we all have causes? of course! people who hate to pay any taxes say to hell with everyone else. this is especially true of government workers whose whole lives have been paid for by the public till. the paradoxes never cease to amaze me.

ah, though what i've said brutally true, you can break the hold of the logic gripping your mind like an octopus, the temporary solutions you've adopted over time to survive, which ultimately solidify into doctrines and knee-jerk reactions. therapy's one. that's the counselor's job, to show you the facts of your existence can be computed in different ways, leading to new results and resolutions. alas, the success of even the most powerful applications don't necessarily free you. lobotomy might be an example, or shock-therapy. the correct drug can do wonders, if one exists for the problems you're having.

my preference remains elsewhere: in the world of art. nobody seems to know what art really is! astounding, after all the talk. well, i'll give you the secret: art re-arranges your dna. it cuts deeper than the banter of freud, the facility of jung, the persuasiveness of present-day practitioners of reality therapy. the latter simply says, conforming you'll be happy.

when an artist creates from the deepest self, the result's radical, a feeling of euphoria that can last for at least two days. i've just come from the film broken embraces by the spanish filmmaker pedro almovodar.

http://www.amazon.com/Viva-Pedro-Almodovar-Collection-Education/dp/B000EAT24G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1264397217&sr=8-2

i left laughing, in love with the world and happy with myself. outwardly, i suddenly could speak to people and feel free. i wanted to advertise what i'd just seen and encourage everyone to go. why?

this director simply isn't conventional. he accepts what the rest of us consider outrageous (when we have to keep up a face and be socially acceptable), his characters more honest than most of the people you know. enveloped by his world, we absorb a new equation for our emotions. and our judgements of ourselves lift, if only for a few moments.

when is a cigar not a cigar?

i've never liked my name. a sad fact, but true. my mother gave us names that could not be turned into nicknames (her reasoning). even my sister couldn't stand being called cherry and asked us to call her cheryl.

what's in a name? wouldn't a rose by any other...? i remember hiking alone in the sierras, age 20 or so, thinking, 'ah, let these mountains remain unidentified. after all, the native americans called them something else.' the pristine lakes felt like puddles before time, when lightning flashed and caused the first amoebas.

it shall remain nameless. if only it were possible, but that's quickly disappearing. a couple of articles in wired magazine trace this sad fact. the author first recounted the story of a man who tried to abandon his identity while his wife collected the insurance. he got caught. then the author himself attempted to stay hidden for a month, he too ultimately betrayed.

http://blog.newscloud.com/2009/09/how-we-caught-evan-ratliff.html

ah, for the old frontier, where one could vanish, put on six-guns, grow a mustache, and have a new life. or, say, leave lithuania for ellis island. assume an american name, and erase the past, reborn. why don't people do this more often?

as we all know too well, if we walk through a room, the police can pick up traces of our dna. you can find old girlfriends from fifty years ago by tracking them down through the net (i've done it.) despite books like how to disappear and never be caught other books like find anybody, anywhere, anytime belie the premise of the first.

theoretically, you could go to a distant country and begin again. yet, as the poet cavafy wrote, 'destroy your life in one corner of the world and you destroy it everywhere.' other famous sayings like 'wherever you go, there you are' seem to be true. on the other hand, brain-damage can totally change a person, like the brother of a college-friend who skidded on the ice in montana. his IQ dropped from 166 to 72. his family had to adjust to living with a temperamental stranger. and if that can happen...

truly, drugs, madness, brain operations, they could make us someone else, however the fun would be gone cause we wouldn't know who we once were. the magic of changing your name remains in your awareness that you've done so. what good is it to live in tahiti if you can't remember living in cleveland. the world's full of ironies.

samuel clemens changed his name to mark twain, and got away with it. rock hudson (roy harold scherer jr.) was not what he pretended to be in more ways than one. only actors can become someone else without escaping to the desert or erasing their fingerprints. how strange, the most visible become the intangible. replace yourself with an image and maybe you'll be saved from yourself.

i encourage you once again to see the inside story of the munchkins: http://www.blueroomtheatre.com/ you'll never dance with the tin woodman again. www.pbase.com/wwp/bab the actors knocked them dead last nite.

and you might check out the disguises of yours truly at

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/perform

on living like a child

you would be amazed how many times artists and writers told to see things like a toddler, freshly, for the first time. there's no doubt this true. look at tolstoy. vision as new as a baby's.

unfortunately, tolstoy also acted like a kid. and there's the flaw. to act like a child when you are an adult: evidence of insanity. a crazy person is a grown being acting like a three year-old.

acting and seeing, a thin line keeps one from being locked up or merely criticized. 'love and madness closely allied', wrote shakespeare. true enough. don't most murders come from physical passion gone wrong?

this whole business much on my mind, as i feel a longing for childhood. not that it was particularly pleasant. i remember lots of mental pain. every disappointment cut like a knife. every feeling of being denied and silenced threw me into a tantrum. if only someone would listen! yet how rarely it seemed to happen. and i can't forget miss clark, the math teacher in grade school who seemed to have a soft spot for me.

childhood, why? making a living, taking care of yourself, decisions, being protected by parents takes away all that. you can throw yourself into the moment, no matter what pleasure or disaster it brings. later we become so careful. and if we don't, we die in a car wreck or end up in jail.

these things on my mind because of the pictures i took last nite, a dress rehearsal of the play 'babylon heights.' first of all, i have to say, judy garland in the wizard of oz my first love. plump, yes, but adventurous. and the babylon play about the munchkins hired to make the movie. we live with four of them, and you'll see how everything in their surroundings huge and difficult:

www.pbase.com/wwp/bab

adults treated like children, outsiders. we experience four of them living in a oversized hotel room. i don't want to give away the plot. needless to say, the experience provides a telling and strong story.

to have a body that doesn't develop, it gets mixed up with those who's brains don't. and to live your whole life with a son or daughter in such a situation...well, that's as difficult as it gets. (it can have high moments, your child always a child and often endearing.)

needless to say, to have escaped childhood without damage seems like an ancestral myth, never to be proved or denied, like the primordial golden age.

see the play at http://www.blueroomtheatre.com/

the only self-help method that works

i'm one of the original self-help junkies. it's me that made depak chopra and wayne dyer rich and famous, while i stayed a pauper.

yes, i devoured titles like 'when helping others is hurting you.' of course, i'd think of the one book that did change my behavior:

http://www.amazon.com/When-Helping-You-Hurting-Me/dp/0824521080/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264018386&sr=1-1

ah, so i was trying to make the world safe for myself by controlling others. and how did this come about? my mother used me as a confidant for her troubles. no wonder i became a rescuer of young women. that never worked, certainly, but i schemed, plotted, and tried, when probably all i really wanted was sex. unfortunately, turning every woman into a sister, the sibling-sex prohibition prevented a culminaton of my desires.

what a damned dilemma! therapists and psychics augmented the books. one told me i was a natural hermit. another, that i'd been too impressed by death when young. the psychics declared i'd had too much responsibility in past lives and in this one i was supposed to have fun. hah! so much for that. all this freedom led me to stewing in my own juice.

not that i regret any of it (except not savoring the moment more). i'm amazed i learned to tie my shoes, open a bank account, hold a job. one has to be grateful to one's parents and teachers, after all. otherwise, look at all those citizens hurrying down a city street. they really don't look like they can cope, but they do.

you've been waiting for the real secret. EMBARRASSMENT. never would have guessed that, would you? only being embarrassed by my actions has made me improve. (this is different from shame, which reduces you to a wet noodle.) no, i mean feeling like i goofed and promising myself not to do it again.

for example, unprepared, i gave a speech, which fell flat. i vowed never to do that again! or being a bad guest, as i was in tokyo, and being made aware of it by my host. i've become a much better dish-washer and contributor to the house-hold. or once i slipped into being the old and bitter critic with a young artist, basically saying, 'oh, i've done all that.' she raked me over the coals. it's definitely a pitfall for the aging. if this happens again, i catch myself. as the tao te ching reminds me, 'everyone is enlighted except me. i alone am dark.'

so, hopefully you will be able to turn blushes into pluses, making vows you actually can keep. for this, you need a conscience. that too may have been given to you by those who were close. another reason to be grateful. and, how did i ever learn to drive a car?

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/album

where angels fear to tread

let's face it, i live like a monk. a room with a view. that's all i seem to need. and the thought of owning a house and tending a yard makes the hair raise up on the back of my neck.

not that i'm exactly happy with this. my mother said i played alone so much as a kid she thought i'd never have anything to do with people. alas, i've enough of the primate in me to like being around people, when it's at my own discretion. maybe this will help some of you understand my behavior.

not that you need to. it's my cross to bear. there it is again. the messiah complex. a therapist (and i've been to half a dozen) once told me, 'your mother and sister trained you very well to be concerned with the well-being of women.'

and it's true. i judge a country by the position of women within it, happy when we invaded afghanistan for this very reason. the taliban little boys who treat their women like slaves. on the other hand, the invasion of iraq destroyed the position of women and threw them back into purda. that i consider to be a crime against humankind.

like all men, i have had trouble with idealizing women, then being bitterly disillusioned. i'd say i haven't completely overcome this tendency. when you keep your distance, desire freedom over sexual comfort, the other remains a mystery. however, i'm a great believer in books. that's part of my monkish nature. libraries give me great comfort and calm me down. and somewhere in them i find the answers i need.

here's the book i ran across at barnes & noble which has helped open my eyes:

http://www.amazon.com/Female-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/0767920104/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263924668&sr=1-1

i've always believed much of what goes on with us involves chemistry. that our experiences change our chemistry, and vice versa. this book shows the difference in the hormonal tides of men and women. women seem in general more at the mercy of their bodies, living often in a state of discomfort. this means, on the positive side, they take care of themselves better than men. and married men live longer than the unmarried cause their wives make them conscious of things like heart attacks. they get their men to the hospital in time.

i once read the men of the old west had to be domesticated when the women arrived. the women had a tough time. the men were used to whiskey and brothels. eventually, the women succeeded in getting men to carry on the species.

anyway, now i understand a little better why women of all ages pore over 'house & garden', magazines on weddings (they go through stacks), worry about what their bodies presenting to the world. self and body get all mixed up. and of course it's frustrating for them the way men mix up self and mind.

the mystery remains. if it didn't, we'd all go smoke cigars and lounge at the club. i've always loved looking at women. they seem to me nature's greatest work of art. and the temptation to play pygmalion finally seems to have faded. the world's less exciting, if sometimes more depressing.

here are some poems i wrote about the stuggles between love and art:

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/bagatelles

no, i'm no angel.