WHAT DID I LEARN? WHY ART?

It’s my birthday…..

What have I learned about life this year?

Or in my two centuries?

We are remarkably the all the same, except for the very visible, very important, very absurd surfaces.

I am you and you are me.

Male or female, old or young, straight or gay.

Rick or poor. Attractive, average, or not.

Formally educated or not educated.

Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, atheist,.

White, yellow, red, brown, black skin hues.

American, Taiwanese, Chinese, Hakka, Aborigine.

Even Taliban or American, Syrian, and African warlord military

blowing up innocent non-combative children and families.

We bleed, cry, mourn, suffer, laugh, get sick, die.

We get eat, eliminate, have sex, sleep, dream.

We feel loneliness, lust, fear, accomplishment, meanlessness.

Prejudice, jealousy, anger, hatred, self-hatred.

What I have learned, everybody has learned.

It is both profound and cliché, like life.

The purpose of art is to assert that we are alive,

in hope and fantasy that we can communicate with someone else,

what they will care about us, celebrate us, be influenced by us.

Save the world, or at least one person.

We create mudpies to be loved by our parents.

We create painting, dance, music, film, stories to be loved by all.

Or a few.

Or ourself.

It would be nice to earn our living as a creator

of art, craft, technology, wealth, power, dreams.

Few do.

Most can only create families, possessions, neuroses.

Most live and die disconnected to ourselves,

our imagined loved-ones, our society.

We know more when we are born, but have no understanding,

no power or way to organize the new chaos.

We know less when we age, no understanding,

no power or way to stop,

but we believe we do.

We have to believe to continue to exist.

Life is a belief system, designed by us to get us through.

All belief systems are faulty, stubborn, insulated from reality.

Some belief systems contribute beauty, compassion, love, health.

Others only destroy.

Artists destroy less than most,

though they often destroy themselves.

They sacrifice themselves, consciously or unconsciously,

like Jesus, like the insane, like immolating Buddhist monks.

What has all this got to do with teaching or making film and TV?

Why is a single precise edit cut important in a violent world, exploding with human hatred and oblivious nature?

What can framing, image size, camera movement contribute?

What is the deeper significance between

good acting and bad acting, stereotypes or unique characters,

locations, sets, costumes, make-up, atmosphere,

clear or confused storytelling, with something or nothing to say?

Everything we do changes the rest of our lives and the world.

The changes seem infinitesimal in human and historical scope,

but are cataclysmic to bacteria and genes.

It’s true that within one or three more generations,

Kurosawa, Fellini, Bergman, Ho, Yang, Toon, Hu, Hsing, Liang,

film, television, archives, and Cannes will all be forgotten.

On the other hand, they have changed us forever

in tiny invisible positive life-affirming ways.

Military, economic, religious wars and war on nature

also change us in boisterous, not so life-affirming ways.

We only have about a hundred years or less to choose our sides.

Withdrawing from the battle isn’t a viable option.

Art and war comes to us and draws us in,

whether we want to acknowledge them, join them, or not.