At a client holiday party last week, talking to a marketing director at the bar and the subject of Occupy Wall Street comes up.

“I’ve been working with a friend to create some Occupy graphics, maybe even sell them and give the money to the movement,” I said to her.

The marketing director responded, “Oh don’t give the money to them, Give the money to the stores in that area that are losing business because of them. Stores in the area are being forced to close down.”

She was angry with the Occupy movement and I didn’t argue with her, because her anger didn’t seem unjustified to me. At the same time though, the opposite might also be happening – some small businesses doing better because of the Occupy attention. Still, being a small business myself, I certainly don’t want Occupy to be hurting anyone in the 99%. So, to me, her anger made sense, but Occupy makes sense to me too. Every established system around us doesn’t seem to be working very well these days and Occupy could possibly encourage us to imagine systems that do work. A “place” to start… and even though many pundits feel it’s not a movement at all, and that is has already been compromised, I’m seeing it in a different way.

My friend, Thomas Alan Berg (author of “Uncle Tom’s Classroom”) a visionary educator, has participated in the San Francisco Occupy and felt that the feeling in the air was much more than political, much more than economic. The only way he could describe it was to say it felt like a kind of connection was everywhere, going far beyond the original purposes of the physical protest.

Tom sounded inspired and happy about it and he got me going too. I began to think what if Occupy is one big thought, being thought of by millions around the world, all at one time. But then, I am one of those people who believes that we live manifestations of thought; that thoughts are electromagnetic “things” and that everyone’s actually counts for something and makes stuff happen. There are plenty of the smartest and well respected scientists and educators who are coming to this conclusion too so laugh as you will, but I am in very good company on this one…

Tom Berg’s description of his experience at Occupy San Francisco inspired me to create this particular graphic, because he expressed the “heart” part of Occupy. Feeling our own heartfelt connection (to each other, to this place we live called earth etc…) is the invisible force of Occupy. Everyone has their own relationship to that; it’s an individual thing. No leaders, no followers. Facilitators, consensus, respecting individuality and differences…sounds too good to be true as a real working system, and I’m sure it’s also messy to manage. But first steps are almost always shaky. Occupy might be helping us see the first social description of a new paradigm and since we have no idea what to really look for if this is REALLY going to be different from what we’ve known before, so it’s too soon to tell. One thing for sure: Monsanto, Big Pharma, Big Media and our Banking systems would like it much better if everyone just shut up so they could continue to monopolize the world as we know it now…in our “best” interests.

Occupy the Heart is a reminder that our feelings are not only significant, they are at the basis of everything we do; our emotions are the human currency we exchange with one another, every day, at our desks, counters, board rooms and these feelings make our lives “better” or “worse”. By paying attention to this fundamental “invisible” part we all have, I think we have a better chance of making a “permanent” difference on the place we (presently) call home, good old planet Earth. It’s not like we have to put differences aside entirely, we have to understand them for what they are finally…a million different expressions of what is really a beautiful and unstoppable heart, the invisible force of the universe. Am I a dreamer? You bet. And all the best minds of any generation are, too.

Love to you all in this season of celebration…more in 2012!

It seems of late, a lot of my friends have begun thinking about 2012. These are not the flaky, tree hugging types. The most practical and down-to-earth among them are feeling “something” is in the air. They watch  Doomsday Specials on the History Channel and call me during the commercials. “Is this true, Clare? What does it mean?” Since I have spent most of my life cavorting in the playgrounds of the fringe, they figure my odd-ball-ity might come in handy given the unusual nature of the times we find ourselves in.

The 2012 story is big (and complicated) that’s for sure. From my study and sources, we’ve already entered it; the change is in process. Climate instability, natural disasters, jobs and homes in all kinds of crisis, and then of course, the unnatural disasters wrought upon us by our growing corporate fascism*; it’s easier to be afraid now than ever. And of course we’re encouraged to stay fearful on every front – since everything we used to depend on is crumbling beneath us. Things aren’t like they used to be that’s for sure.

2012 as The Interruption
No one wants their status quo interrupted, but everyone I know seems to feel that their status quo IS being interrupted. “Leave us alone with our toasters” Howard Beale said in Network years ago. Right. We don’t want to worry that the drug the doctor prescribed cites “death” as a possible side effect; we don’t want our fish to be suffocating with petroleum in the oceans; we don’t want to bee population to die off because Monsanto won’t stop selling a new pesticide but they’re counting on the fact that we’ll act like it isn’t happening.

“It’s overwhelming” my Fashion executive friend says. “We’re seeing corporate control of the news, the medical establishment, agriculture, privacy infringement under the guise of “safety”– corporations and government are having wild sex with each other. But their not even doing it behind closed doors anymore; they don’t care if you see who’s screwing who. They’re doing it in hi-def RGB 5 foot flat screens, right in our living room!”

Her company just merged with another mammoth and lately they’ve been having a lot of big meetings with HR, to “acclimate” them all to new management goals. She said these meetings are pretty Orwellian. “It’s like they were trying to convince us that if we don’t appreciate the changes, we’re against our own success. The increased demands are ‘good for our team’. But our jobs are almost impossible to do now. Quality control is even more difficult, staff cuts means we average a 60 hour work week; no raises for 3 years now but we still they tell us we need to feel “personally” accountable for our company’s growth. It’s like they are trying to hypnotize us into thinking what they’re saying makes sense, but it clearly doesn’t.”

“And what can we do,” she said. “No one wants to say that they think we are on a sinking ship. No one in the meeting said these new goals are unrealistic; no one asked any questions about what they were being told. Everyone’s afraid of losing their job.”

My own honesty has booted me from a variety of communities, so I am fully aware of the consequences of telling the truth. How far do you go? In some places, you can get yourself killed for asking a question. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for questioning the Pope. (He pointed out that the sun did NOT revolve around the earth). And while the world has come to agree that burning anyone at the stake is an unacceptable response to differing opinion, I agree it’s uncomfortable to question the Powers-That-Be.

Looking for Answers When We Should Be Looking for Questions
Even in that claustrophobic conference room, if only one question was asked that pointed to corporate hypocrisy – that question would have been the only thing that anyone would have remembered about the meeting. It would have been the talk at the water coolers for weeks.

My friend continued. “Of course it makes no difference if anyone really said what they were thinking. The company would just keep on doing what they were doing and it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway”.

Not the kind of difference you see right away, that’s true. But simply by asking “the” question you have created a disturbance in their apparent control of the situation. (How about asking if the emperor is naked!). For a minute, the spell is broken for everyone in the room. Perhaps not as satisfying as rioting in the cafeteria or dramatically handing in your resignation, but don’t underestimate the impact. You’ve just opened a door for someone else, maybe for some other meeting, at some other time. And with one painstakingly small question at a time, whether you’re an HR Manager or a cab driver, these deceptively insignificant moments will add up, making it more difficult for the hypnosis to continue en masse. And considering how little they care about our “status quo”, ending the trance would be an improvement!

The Real Meaning of 2012
So the experience of my well- placed corporate buddy led me to understand what I believe is the real meaning of 2012:  We’ve been looking for answers when we should be looking for questions. The biggest disasters are assured if we remain asleep, accepting what we’re being told as though it were the way it “must be” and the way it always is. Answers are overrated and constantly changing anyway; it’s the question that has always driven our progress.

The asking connects the best part of all of us invisibly; it’s a way of sticking together. As every day brings us closer to Dec 21, 2012,  your voice in the conference room could be the start of something really good for the rest of us. 2012 isn’t the end of anything, except our deepest need to be deceived.

* http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7260.htm

Graphic Design and its extended family are rotating at a constant tilt these days.  Adobe upgrades about once a year now ; design programs you’ve invested thousands of dollars in are obsolete before you take a deep breath. Lots of technologies are going downstream - stuff that some of us even grew up with (like books !). Graphic Design has become a household word and a very popular Major in lots of universities. There are more “graphic designers” than ever…  the kid down the block with some time and computer skills is a graphic designer. Your Aunt Mary does graphic design “on the side”. The janitor “plays with Photoshop”. But before they publish Graphic Design for Dummies (I wanna write that one !)  and add Graphic Design to preschool classrooms (must have happened already) here are some ideas about Graphic Design I “grew up” with; ideas I would like to bring with me into this next daring, devil-may-care epoch :

1. Graphic Designers are cultural encyclopedias if they’re any good. They speak in many visual languages, not just their native (i.e. favorite style) tongue. Their visual fluency takes history into account, not just their own small lifetime of reference.
2. Graphic Design was never afraid of information or lots of words on the page, since a long time ago, the whole profession emerged from the making of books. The book maker not only printed the thing, but set the type, designed the page layout and sometimes edited it too. The legend of Graphic Designers loving fonts came from this root and legendary Graphic Designers held early book making (as in letterpress) in great regard.
3. Advertising and Graphic Design used to be totally divorced from each other. Maybe this was a good thing in the beginning though they ended up in bed together anyway, most likely marrying for money instead of love.
4. Graphic Designers once considered themselves the little sisters (or brothers) of Architecture, as nuts as that would sound to an Architect. But this meant that there was indeed a science aspect to graphic design as well as a innate respect for the invention and implementation of systems. In fact, was a time when you wouldn’t call yourself a graphic designer unless you were really curious about systems… all kinds. How things worked was equally important as how they looked. I’m pretty sure we’re more interested in the “look” part more than the “how” part today, considering how few systems actually work in today’s world.

But I wouldn’t want to change one thing about the new overpopulation of Graphic Designers on the planet. I think it’s a good sign. Jean Cocteau* once said “Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.” Perhaps the same is true of Graphic Design. I’m counting on it.

Jean Cocteau (who died in 1963) was French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, artist and filmmaker. He has always been a design hero of mine. The photo shown here is Cocteau with one of his ceramic designs and can be found at http://www.picassomio.com/jean-cocteau/63094.html

]]> http://www.clareultimo.com/blog/what-not-to-change-about-graphic-design.html/feed 1 http://www.clareultimo.com/blog/the-artist-has-left-the-building-exit-through-the-gift-shop.html http://www.clareultimo.com/blog/the-artist-has-left-the-building-exit-through-the-gift-shop.html#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:24:54 +0000 Clare http://www.clareultimo.com/blog/?p=288

It seems there are a lot of issues raised with the film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”: Was it a mockumentary? Is this Mr. Brainwash a “real” artist, or is he just conning the audience with a fake French accent and those dumb lamb chop sideburns? Is this art a joke on the art world? Is the art world a joke? Etc. etc.

I thought the film was really provocative, but maybe not in the same way that reviewers are talking about it. And maybe it is a joke, on everyone, even the collectors (yeah) who are putting hundreds of thousands out to buy an “original” from Mr. Brainwash (aka Thierry Guetta). But if you’re an Art Director, you need to listen up (or at least see this film!)

Humble opinion: “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is wonderful and I think it proves, once and for all, there is no longer any difference between “applied” art and “real” art…except of course the attitude of the “artist” and how well he or she is able to convince someone else that this attitude is somehow special or original or important. And in the spirit of the film, this attitude is the elephant in the room, not the art.

The attitude is awesome
Once in a class taught by the venerable Milton Glaser at SVA, someone asked what the difference was between art and graphic design. Milton replied “art inspires awe” and in the case of Mr. Brainwash, he may be right. Only not the kind of awe you might think of when looking at the Sistine Chapel. (Questions like “Wow, how’d he get up there and not break his neck?” are not what Glaser meant).

In this case, I am awed by what attitude can create and provoke. In the film, we see Thierry Guetta, after what seems like years of following other artists around, filming them and helping them in the clandestine process of making street art, decide that he too is an artist and will make his own work. According to the film, this decision was “encouraged” by Banksy himself,  but when it happened and Guetta became Mr. Brainwash, he was so convinced he could become an overnight sensation, he put everything on the line, as in every penny he had or could leverage into making his first show. And with a little help from friends like Banksy and Shepard Fairey, he does become an overnight sensation, possibly overshadowing both of these guys, the ultimate joke of the film. Is nothing sacred?

When nothing is sacred, make everything sacred.
What if “modern artists”, especially the visual ones, were actually Art Directors with attitude? I don’t think this takes anything away from them, but it sure makes me look twice at what we used to think about Art Directors. I’m not talking about the shrill guy (or gal) that carries on all morning about the fact that the client insisted on another font and ruined the ad. It’s the 21st Century artistic paradigm shift –  Either “real” artists today are much lower on the food chain than we thought, or Art Directors are actually much higher. Either way, things just aren’t what we thought they were. I like that a lot.

Doing the work yourself isn’t better, just cheaper
My favorite quote, coming out of the New York/Culture Vulture review and interview with Mr. Brainwash (see link below) is when he says:

“Like I say, a big artist – I don’t want to say name – but this big artist has 140 people working for them. Sometimes, they don’t even come up with the idea. They say: ‘Like, No like.’ But I respect that. The mind goes too fast. It’s not me having a nail and building a box, who cares, it’s a box, take it.”

The honesty of Mr. Brainwash! In the film, we get to see an army of creative worker bees preparing for the “Life is Beautiful” show in LA. They execute the idea: he approves or not. Sounds a lot like an art department, huh?

We were told that artists have “vision”, and maybe, in the end, that’s all they are supposed to have. Mr. Brainwash claims to have it, except that his vision is dependent on the vision of someone else; well, Andy Warhol for one. But this doesn’t matter. The collectors who bought the Warholesque stuff by the dozens didn’t care one bit. In fact, I think it helped them feel more comfortable about writing that big check.

Are you the next Mr. Brainwash?
Art Directors, Graphic Designers, “applied” artists…. take heart. You may be throwing your vision away on that soap ad, but it could pave the way for your first big show. Save your money, get the attitude (at least on weekends) and don’t be afraid to be derivative either. Your client may still force you to change the font on the soap ad, but who knows, an entire world of rich people might be waiting to call you a genius. Confusion about creativity may work to your benefit. When everyone is an artist, we would have transcended artistic attitude entirely and since we don’t know what that looks like at this point, we’re scrambling for a light switch. But I am sure in the future, ideas won’t need to be produced by worker bees, money itself will be old school and we’ll make art between the dimensions of space/time just to have some fun. There would be no reason to “collect” anything and identities would be fluid and unthreatened. I’m looking forward to it as
L­_Switch2020 (aka Clare Ultimo). Keep your eyes on the tops of buildings at night.

I would love to hear your ideas about this, especially if you happen to be an “Art Director”. You don’t even have to use your real name…

Read the New York Magazine article
http://bit.ly/bkR53j

See the film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”
http://www.banksyfilm.com/

The pitfalls of working as a communication designer in the non-profit world have been well documented (I think). I even wrote an article for a trade magazine years ago in an effort to help younger designers avoid the holes on that street. (See link at the end). But things have actually improved since I wrote that list of warnings to the wise; and while I can’t say that the value of graphic design is better understood by your everyday straphanger, it is certainly more visible. And non-profits, like everyone else, see it as a way to send their message out to the world. Possibly more than ever, they are beginning to see that non-profit doesn’t mean poor image.

My latest experience with the Joseph Campbell Foundation is the case in point, and it has been a truly wonderful one, I confess. My long history with non-profit work, years of struggle with budgets, Boards, Directors and “too many cooks” in the proverbial Do-Gooder kitchen evaporated with one phone call. Pinch me but it happened.

I was given the task of creating the Foundation’s “product” line, a series of gift items that would represent the teaching of Joe Campbell. The Foundation is well-run, but like all Foundations, non-profits, etc., it runs on the good graces of members, grants and donations and a lot of not-for-pay work that staff puts in, after their “regular” jobs. It’s also actually run by very few humans, though from the looks of it, this can be hard to believe.

Maybe it’s the subject matter, the ultimate message that Campbell communicated about each of us as our own personal heroes (a truly original message when it surfaced in the 70s) that pulls this group along so well. “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, Campbell’s famous work, inspired me and so many others (like George Lukas when he created “Star Wars”). Maybe it was the people I dealt with, who treated me with respect and kindness and actually expressed appreciation for what I was doing. Whatever the ultimate reason, I have seen the light at the end of the non-profit tunnel, and this one at least, seems pretty well lit.

Since my creative work focuses primarily on the word as image it was pretty exciting for me to work on this. With this initial group, I wanted to remain simple, clean, direct. And of course I had a million ideas, but I purposely pulled myself in so that I could at least get an initial group up and running. Joe Campbell said a lot of things that have become part of our pop culture, but not everyone knows that he was the one who said “Follow Your Bliss”. He said a lot of other stuff too, so there’s plenty to work from I’m pleased to say.

I don’t even mind the fact that I have to tell my younger friends who he was…Campbell was “just” a teacher. He was a professor at Sarah Lawrence, a scholar of course, stuff that doesn’t make front page news. But Bill Moyers put him on a lot of televisions in the late 1980s in hours of engaging conversation with “The Power of Myth” and his passion for the mystical stories of the world began a kind of cross-cultural revolution that America had never seen before. Even my corporate clients were talking about him at the time.

While I begin a new group of Campbell quotes and sayings, I’m happy to be working for “just” a teacher. To me, teachers are the real heroes of our culture, so overlooked and underestimated. When the world gets set straight someday, we’ll see that the folks we sit with in classrooms when we’re young especially, who give us new ideas and new horizons to imagine, are creating the heroes of the future; they really have the power to make a deep difference in our personal lives. I know my teachers have. In the meantime, I’ll give this next batch my most inspired shot and hope to have you visit the store online. There will be more to come soon. Here’s the link so please check out the stuff:
http://www.cafepress.com/joseph_campbell

Read my article “Want to work Pro Bono?”:  http://www.clareultimo.com/des2.php

I was a young teen when the first Earth Day hit, but even way back then, some of us went out of our way to find recycled paper (which always looked brown), find great vegan food, eat organic or raw, stuff like that. I found a naturopathic doctor when I was 17, after asking some questions in a local health food store. Eating organic was seen as eccentric and no one knew what a naturopathic doctor was either. I remember defending my organic food passion to my boss in 1979, who said (as he ate his hamburger) …”it’s all polluted, you’re fooling yourself, it doesn’t matter”. I didn’t like being the only soy eating girl in the room, and I really did feel alone back then. Everyone just thought I was nuts and I accepted it. But even though they laughed, I didn’t stop eating my soyburgers.

No one makes fun of me now, because, after all, I was right. Tofu is on diner menus and health food stores are hip. I’m really happy to see many of my twenty and thirty-something friends “discover” vegetarianism, talk about the dangers of white flour and white sugar, and praise the benefits of naturopathy, raw foods, juicing, alternative medicine, etc. etc. They get all passionate about it, and righteous, sometimes strangely dogmatic too. I don’t have the heart to tell them this is really old news to many of us quiet revolutionaries who basically grew up on the stuff. I’m thrilled that their bodies, their lives (and possibly our planet) will benefit from this new consciousness they’ve found because the quicker we move away from ham sandwiches and coca cola, the better. (Do Americans still eat this stuff? Did it have to take all these years for people to connect their health to the stuff they put in their mouths every day ?) I guess so.

Earth Day is all about the connections between all of IT and all of us. Now that it’s become hip to care if the packaging is reusable, and school kids are being taught to recycle, I have lived long enough to get to the first plateau you might say, and it does feel much better to have company when I’m eating my escarole. Since I have the added pleasure of having Earth Day as my birthday, I feel like the universe was always winking at me in approval, only I didn’t know it until now. And who cares if some beedie- eyed bald man is making fun of your lunch when the Great Mother herself is giving you the go-ahead ?

Earth Day is a little bit goofy though, if you think about it. Every day is Earth Day. After all, where would we be without her ? Finally, more of us are really thinking about it and that’s really something to celebrate.

There’s a few minutes left to March and it’s been one deadline after another, but I couldn’t let Women’s History Month slip by without noting the greatest female hero I knew first hand, my mom.

Of course I spent the month enjoying whatever public celebrations of great women I could find…the Joan Baez American Masters special on PBS was probably my favorite, since I could re-appreciate her political stamina over a lifetime more than I ever did. Whatta chick!

But I guess my number one female hero would have to be my mom. Everyone called her Millie, though her formal name was Carmela. Carmela Mary Musto before she married my dad.

It would be great to tell you that my mom fought for public justice, ran for senate or started a non-profit organization. I think you would be impressed with her if she did those things. But in her own way, she lived the life of an iconoclast, and I saw her struggle to be herself without the advantage of education or social enlightenment, long before women’s rights were cool. I saw her do what she wanted and face the consequences, no matter what anyone said. I saw her help others without a thought of what she would “get out of it”, and this extended far beyond her family. She saw through people’s facades with an uncomfortable accuracy. And of course, like many Italian American women of her age, she was a great cook! But more than anything, there were two great things she taught me that have become foundations of my life.

Being Different is Just Fine!
Millie  really liked being “different”. In fact, one of the things I remember about her now, was that she encouraged me not to do what everyone else did…one of her famous (and classic) “mom” sayings to me was “so if everyone was jumping off the bridge, does that mean you would jump too?” Maybe this started me off with a certain comfort level to follow my own heart and not someone else’s (though I won’t say it’s not sometimes a lonely road). She was naturally skeptical of what I have learned to call social consciousness: doing, feeling, or going along with what “everyone else is doing”…the mindless march of the masses. Millie was full of her own mind, and certainly marched to her own drummer.

Being Generous is What Life is About
Millie’s generosity was legendary and didn’t seem to have any edges or boundaries to it. When she was in her mid-fifties, she took on the full-time care of two small children, they were three and four years old at the time. Their mom had just died. They were cousins on my dad’s side, not even her side of the family, but my mom took on their care like it was a mission from god. And it probably was. We all lived together and she did everything from breakfast to bedtime, 24/7 with these two beautiful girls; with occasional Sunday breaks when their dad would take them out. I guess I don’t know many women who would take on the care of toddlers at that point in their life, when their own child was almost grown; seems a bit nuts to me when I think about it. Unless the situation was forced on someone, most women would run from this kind of thing. Maybe my mom saw it as her opportunity to really make a difference in the world,  one person at a time. I know it wasn’t easy for her.  And while it’s not like inventing a cure for cancer, this attitude of hers did indeed impact the lives of so many, not to mention those two young girls, now grown with children of their own.

Millie and I argued a LOT, fought like boxers for a championship title and neither of us ever gave in. Like all heroes, she went beyond what was expected, she went where her own heart took her, no matter how unlikely that seemed to be. I still miss her. She’ll always be the first woman who made history in my life and I’ll always be proud to have had the good fortune of being her daughter.

So, speaking of thinking for myself, I had the wonderful opportunity to be interviewed by journalist, poet, and musician Mike Marcellino on Red River Radio (a BlogTalk internet channel) on March 3.  I got to talk about Media Conrol, Verbs on Asphalt and I even read an oldie but goodie at the end. I open the show for the first half hour, but Cherryl Floyd-Miller, Louis Bourgeois and Shaindel Beers follow and are super. Mike is a great host, with an eclectic ear/eye. His journalism background is a great asset to the show.

If you don’t support independent media already, think again. There’s a lot of it out there, (yes, and some are dumb I know) but I’d love to hear which shows are your favorite and why so tell me. I’ll post my own list soon…And the best part about radio…you can do your work while you listen. The show was March 3, 2010. This link should do it:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rrradio/2010/03/04/red-river-writers-live–notebook-writer-with-mike-

“My French Canadian roamin-eyed blue-eyed bum, my movie star-lookin wordsmith extraodinaire”…Whatever dimension you’re hanging out in tonight, Ti Jean, here’s a funny poem I wrote to you. Since my theory is that the internet is a kind of inorganic (?) nervous system, even though you’re no longer on this planet, I think you’ll get it. I love you. X

what I would have called him

I wouldn’t want to sound pretentious.
I would have said “my friend Jack”
if people asked me about him.
Actually, I would have liked to say
“my boyfriend Jack”
if everything had worked out the way I wanted it to.
Then it would have been
“oh yeah, so my boyfriend Jack
brought me rocks from Big Sur
no-  not because he’s cheap-
because he knows rocks are transcendental spirits
and knows how much I love them.”
And of course because he was my boyfriend
he would have called me his “baby muse” or his
“truthful youthful angelheaded hipster”…
something like that.

And I would have a pet name for him
like Roamy or Fubberhead or
Frenchie because we knew each other so long and
were so tight that I could have stupid nicknames for him
and he would really like it
it would be as though I was the only person
who could do that
except maybe for Allen Ginsberg or Neal Cassidy
though in public I would just call him “Jack”,
and sometimes “my friend Jack”
so that people would never guess how
intensely intimate we really were.

but when he wasn’t around and I was talking to my
friends about him I would have said
“yeah, the much older guy with a pot belly
who follows me around
and writes me long love poems from Florida
where he lives with his mother…you know
the Canuck guy with the mother thing,
the one with the thick wavy hair
who can really kiss…you know
the guy who wrote ON THE ROAD!”

And of course, I would never be taken
on the road with him,
since he needed to do that kind of research
for his books without me,
and it would be better anyway
when he got back and
Of course, when we were alone then,
I would never call him anything but “Jack”,
or sometimes “Kerouac” if I was trying to prove a point.

Calling him Kerouac would mean
that I was not just some kid with a crush on him
but a real woman who got angry
when he let her to walk to the subway alone at 3am.
which he would occassionally do when he
got really drunk.

Then there would be what I would call him
when I was ready to break it off
because of course he would want to be my teenage idol
for all of his middleaged life
and would never break off with ME
so I wouldn’t want to bring
too much attention to that moment,
I would just call him “Jack” then,
“Jack, it’s me” when he first picked up the phone
….and then I would call him
“My French Canadian roamin-eyed blue-eyed bum,
“my movie star-lookin wordsmith extraodinaire
with a backpack and some trail mix,
“my powerhouse quarterback
with a dime to call home in his pocket
to let his mother know he was allright”…

When that time came, I would say
“My beautiful perfect older man lover,
I got other roads to rail and besides
I’ve got to go to college and get a real boyfriend
that my mother says doesn’t look like my uncle”.
“And I love you Jack and especially
everything you ever wrote,
you big American icon with those big American icon arms.
But its not fair that your mother still thinks
I’m Allen Ginsberg’s roommate
so this has got to end…be sensible.
I’m just too young to be tied down
and you hate Jimi Hendrix anyway.”

“So Jack, let’s be friends and when I call you
‘my friend Jack’, it’ll be for real and forever
and I won’t have to worry about sounding
pretentious in front of my friends
or feeling grungy sleeping on your dirty sheets
and then you can call your mother
anytime (and for any reason)
even when I’m in the room.

-Clare Ultimo, 2006
(writ for a March 12 “Tone Poem” reading at the Bowery Poetry Club, NYC)

Photo by Jerome Yulsman

Without a free media, crucial parts of our political landscape will remain hidden to you on purpose–
1. Six companies own all the widely distributed news venues in the world. That’s thousands (and thousands) of local networks, papers, magazines, book publishing houses and internet sites that have to tow the party line and take orders from their owners (and now Comcast is trying to buy NBC!). These mega-companies are “affectionately” called The Big Six. (1)

2. Media conglomerates have never been interested in the old-fashioned, time-consuming, painstaking values of journalism. That stuff takes money, often takes more than an hour to put together and these big guys have to show profits every quarter or else. Yes, money and greed are the first plateau in the problem of corporate owned media. And the bottom line grows needier all the time; a “side effect” resulting in the laying off of thousands of veteran reporters each year to make bigger profits. Which leads to:

3. Less people are doing all the work. And what is the most profitable use for those lucky enough to still have a job in the newsroom? Following Tiger Woods around to report his marital infedelities, not digging through senate hearing papers on Health Care or unraveling the cause of a local chemical waste problem so YOU can make an informed decision next election. Which leads to:

4. The assumption that the public is too dumb to care about the details of the real world that affects them. Read: we will keep them distracted with the sexual life of celebrities so we can do what we want to them! Keep ‘em happy with beer and football and we’ll be able to walk away with the store.

5. Big Media conglomerates own so many other companies that reporting truthfully about one of their subsidiaries is not allowed. You don’t think you’d hear about the dangers of media conglomeration from one of the Big Six, did you? According to Ted Turner: “This ability to control the news is especially worrisome when a large media organization is itself the subject of a news story. Disney’s boss, after buying ABC in 1995, was quoted in LA Weekly as saying, “I would prefer ABC not cover Disney.” A few days later, ABC killed a “20/20″ story critical of the parent company.”(2)

6. Big Media is in bed with the government, which doesn’t allow them much room for objectivity. If you are powerful enough to get your government to give you what you want, you won’t want to make your government look so bad. The truth is often ugly and they’ve given you the right to rule, after all! In 2003, the FCC raised the national audience cap for media conglomeration to 39% (pulling back from the 45% they had originally approved because of public outcry).(3) This means that one company can own almost half of all the media, from print to internet in the marketplace, pushing out all the smaller, independent voices. In days long past, the FCC would not have allowed such a thing. I think, in those days, this was called a “monopoly” and we were all told by Uncle Sam that Americans deserved diversity in the marketplace. Smaller news outlets are barely holding on – this kind of massive conglomeration makes it harder and harder to compete; they simply don’t have enough money to do it.

The “death” of journalism is a sign the degradation of our communication systems. Rotting pipes delivering dirty water, or just so busted up that they don’t deliver anything anymore. This doesn’t mean it has to stay this way, but nothing will change until more people acknowledge that this problem is real and threatens our democracy. If you don’t know it’s happening, if you still get your news and opinions from the thousands of outlets owned by The Big Six you simply will not know the whole story. How can we argue politics with our friends when everyone is repeating what they heard on CNN (BTW, now owned by TimeWarner).

And yes, thankfully, we still have “The Nation” and people like Bob McChesney and John Nichols (who did see the importance of this 20 years ago), Freepress.org, NPR and other independent, underfunded seekers of truth. But New York City’s public broadcasting network, Channel 13, is cutting “NOW” (David Brancaccio/Bill Moyers investigative reporting show) so things are not really getting better on the public broadcasting front.

Don’t want to believe it?
Time to wake up and smell the propaganda. Beware of “bundling things together”, the root of the word “fascism”. It will look like the seamless combination of nationalism and corporatism and it’s here. Millions of us are goose-stepping right into it, too busy watching Snooki and Pauly D to see where we’re all going.

1. The Big Six: See http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main
2. “My Beef With Big Media” by Ted Turner. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html
3. “Sweeping Changes Proposed for Ownership Limits” hearusnow.org,

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