The Illusion of More

Copyright and the Creative Process

On July 4th, I announced that I’m rebooting a project that began as a short film in the summer of 2011. goneElvis is a portrait depicting a day in the life of a female veteran of the Iraq War who is homeless and suffers from PTSD. As stated in the new post on the film’s website, there are things I like about the short and things I don’t, but I have decided the subject still warrants a fresh approach, probably as a series, and that I have initiated collaboration with some colleagues to begin anew. I mention the project because its production includes a very common experience in the creative process that contradicts many of the complaints one hears about copyrights stifling new creative or derivative works. Most often, these criticisms come from people who are not engaged in any creative process, which is why they fail to understand that particularly with art, obstacles can be opportunities at least as often as they are barriers. In fact, as an aside, I have long felt that one of the reasons many major motion pictures have become so emotionally flat is that the big-money movies are over-produced. When creators can afford to do everything exactly as planned, this removes some of the magic that comes from quick-witted solutions to various limitations. Any student of film history knows that some of the most highly-praised cinematic moments are the result of off-the-cuff workarounds to technical, financial, or logistical challenges.

While planning the production of goneElvis, I wanted to use my friend Martin Ruby’s cover of “Tonight’s the Night,” famously recorded by The Shirelles, but I was turned down by the publishers when I requested the license for which I could not of course pay. It seems the tendency these days is to view this kind of obstacle as unfair or muting the creative process of the next generation; but this attitude is a mistake, and I’d venture that almost any serious artist will agree. Because I couldn’t have what I thought I wanted in the first place, I ended up with something much better simply because I was forced to go look for it. In this case, I began by searching songs in the public domain, and when I came across the Mexican standard Cielito Lindo (you know the one with the refrain Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay), I got goosebumps imagining what Martin Ruby might do with it translated into English. Although normally sung at a bright tempo by mariachi bands, Cielito Lindo is fundamentally a lullaby, which immediately resonates because the protagonist in the film clings to the hope of finding the daughter she lost when her husband abandoned her while she was in Iraq. Knowing that Ruby grapples with his own challenges as a single father of a young daughter, I imagined his rendition of this song might produce something very haunting. It did. Instead of a bittersweet cover of a love song, we had a piece of highly-original music that is thematically perfect for the film. Suddenly, my little low-budget short didn’t have a borrowed song — it had a soundtrack.

Any artist lives in a world of obstacles — financial, logistical, legal, and hardest of all, internal. Very often, it is the obstacles that define both the artist and the work; and I doubt there is a creator in any medium who has not benefitted from producing something he or she never anticipated at the start of a process. In fact, I would go so far as to generalize that all creators find ways to balance the planned part of the process while leaving ample room for the unexpected. It is this aspect of creative work that is so hard to explain to those who don’t do it, but it is also true that the best results are usually a fortunate harmony of experience, expertise, and inexplicable instinct. In other words, as a mathematical exercise, there are so many elements that must align to produce something good that it’s almost absurd to predict that any one obstacle might be either harmful or beneficial to the end result. Hence, there is no more reason to identify existing copyrights as stifling creativity any more than it would be reasonable to complain about the vicissitudes of weather. In fact, speaking of weather, the scene with the police officer depicted in the embedded clip wasn’t written or blocked for rain, and the rain we got forced me to shoot the entire scene from inside the car with available light. Operating a heavy camera, hand-held on a sultry, rainy night in the front seat of a Cutlass is not a set of conditions I would have chosen, but the resulting scene is more dramatic than what I had planned on paper. But that’s just filmmaking. It’s the norm.

Beyond the myriad reasons why copyrights cannot be viewed generally to stifle the creative process, they also must be understood to support the creative process with regard to the same unpredictable nature to which I refer. Nearly any artist one listens to or reads about will describe variations on the theme of organizing one’s life to allow the work to happen, and each artist requires different conditions — from asceticism to utter chaos — to foster his or her own productivity. With successful works, the passive income derived from copyrights, is the means by which artists are able to reinvest in a career based so precariously on the unknown.

Bits & Pieces – Search, Speech, Privacy, Interdependence

The Illusion of Search

Casey Chan at Gizmodo.com suggests in this brief post that Google.com “barely shows real search results” on an initial results page, devoting a lot of screen real estate instead to Google services. According to the linked study at Tutorspree, the problem is only exacerbated on smaller screens, and searching for products and services appears to put small business in direct competition with Google, which could well be the seeds of an anti-trust violation.

This does look a lot like an Illusion of More subject — the assumption that a universe of knowledge and resources is at our fingertips is betrayed by the reality of a circumscribed world designed to serve one corporate powerhouse. It’s worth paying attention to with regard to consumer-based search, although research based search still seems to be relatively unchanged. If I search something fairly esoteric like “Charles Giteau,” the delusional sap who shot President Garfield, I get links that are arguably valid results.

Free speech has its limits, even on Twitter

Speaking of presidential assassinations, it turns out that it’s a bad idea to threaten the President of the United States (or anyone else under Secret Service protection) even through social media. The New York Times reports that Jarvis Britton (26) posted assassination threats against President Obama and that he is now serving a one-year term in federal prison. After an initial round of threats, Mr. Britton was visited by Secret Service agents, who let him go after he apologized and said he’d been drunk; but it was Britton’s subsequent threatening tweets that led to prosecution.

Speaking for myself, if Secret Service agents showed up at my door and let me off with a warning, I might just find religion and join a monastery; but somehow there is a persistent yet absurd belief that social media is in some way private and personal. We continue to see evidence that users of social media fail to recognize that it is a soapbox in the city square, and one that creates indelible impressions. The free speech question in this case is settled law. If you say you wish the president would die, that’s protected speech; if you say you intend to kill the president, that’s grounds for being investigated and possibly prosecuted. Why this would be any different on Twitter or other social media is a mystery to me, but I’m sure someone will offer a bizarre theory to the contrary.

Privacy Concerns

While many Americans continue to post gripes about their perception that the 4th Amendment no longer exists, I see far less wall-space being devoted to Google’s privacy policies landing it in hot water again. Inviting censure from five EU countries, privacy watchdogs have expressed concerns as to how user data will be “shared” across the spectrum of Google products and how transparent Google is with regard to user understanding of the policies.

As I have stated repeatedly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping a weather eye on government intelligence services, but I continue to be surprised by the level of Orwell-invoking hysteria while simultaneously volunteering privacy away via private companies like Google. If Snowden reveals anything (and I personally don’t think he reveals much), it’s that at the point when government agents do infringe civil rights their information is going to come from large telecom and internet companies. Where else do we expect them to look?

A Declaration of Interdependence

In a rare moment of digital-age exuberance on this American Independence weekend, I leave you with this wonderful short film that reminds us that interdependence is a requisite constituent to human existence. Directed by filmmaker Tiffany Shain, with animations by Stefan Nadelman, and music by Moby, the film is comprised of clips submitted from around the globe of individuals reading “The Declaration of Interdependence” in their native languages.

The reality of the internet, I believe, is that it does indeed connect us or, as this film reveals, reminds us that we have always been connected. That is the power of these technologies, and the collaborative filmmaking being done at Let it Ripple is certainly inspiring and also humbling. But this film also brings to mind the tension of the digital age. With awareness of interdependence comes greater responsibility to live accordingly. And as discussed in recent posts, the technology seems to foster the dichotomy of committing selfish acts under the cover of a generalized humanism.

What’s at the bottom of the Pandora box?

Once again, Pandora internet radio is attempting to use an act of Congress to lower the royalties it pays artists, and once again, musicians are speaking out against both the tactics and the two-faced approach being taken by CEO Tim Westergren to pay lip service to his respect for artists while sticking his already well-greased palm into their back pockets. The members of Pink Floyd wrote an open letter to other musicians to beware Pandora’s recent “outreach” toward artists, and David Lowery famously got to the nuts and bolts of the matter by posting a royalty statement revealing that 1.1 million plays of one of his songs on Pandora earned him $16.89. Opening up Pandora’s box, if you will, raises many issues, including the overarching question as to just how well digital-age models, at their best, are working for artists. But while we’re still mid torrent issuing from Pandora, one question too often overlooked is where the songs come from in the first place. It’s been said before, but the generation raised on round-the-clock, free access to entertainment really may be as disconnected from the production of that entertainment as many of us through modern convenience became disconnected from the production of food. Perhaps, as we see a renaissance in understanding farming and other food production, a similar awareness might take place with regard to the creative works that feed the soul.

In this New York Times article, author/musician Wesley Stace describes his experience collaborating with poet Paul Muldoon to teach a class in songwriting to students at Princeton. Stace poses the question as to whether or not songs (and by implication other art) can be produced on demand like any other homework assignment, leaving open the more whimsical question of being struck by one’s muse. While reading, I could not help but think of the famous Brill Building, that songwriting factory of the 1950s whence came many of rock-n-roll’s most famous hits. Stace concludes that, yes, songwriting is a craft like any other, and that it has a process that can be taught and learned and accomplished, even by students with little background in creative writing or music. By leading their students to delve into emotion in this otherwise intellectual setting, Stace and Muldoon found the results both prolific and astounding. “I wish I’d written, or could write, some of the songs I heard on these Tuesday afternoons; sometimes it felt like my sole qualification to teach the course was that I was old and experienced,” writes Stace.

One might conclude from the article that “anyone can write a song,” and Stace would probably agree up to a point. The 24/7 coffeehouse known as YouTube has certainly helped feed this notion that “we are all authors” now, which in turn spawns the illusion that songs and other works are of lesser value today than they were 15-20 years ago. But to quote Stace, “Songwriting is a skill — best practiced, easily improved. If you exercise regularly, keeping fit becomes easier and less unpleasant, until it becomes a habit.” In other words, it’s work. And what makes the songs you and I want to hear over and over again is a combination of, yes, luck in the form of possessing raw, unique talents, and then a ceaseless investment of work, often by many people.

My Pandora stations include both a Camper Van Beethoven and a Pink Floyd, and if you ever heard me play “Comfortably Numb” on the six string, you would need no further proof that we are not all musicians. But when we consider the combination of both effort and circumstance that yields just this one song about an experience most of us will never have, yet so many of us can understand, we should recognize that it is rare and therefore valuable. In fact, not unlike the story of Pandora’s Box, the album The Wall itself concludes with destruction and then the sound of an accordion playing like a solitary flower growing though the gray rubble, and the voice of Roger Waters reciting a eulogy with just a tinge of hope. I know for sure that I need Pink Floyd in my life and that I don’t need Pandora to get it. So, that’s what’s at the bottom of the box.