Harmony

Harmony is the balance of life. All things have balance that when perfectly struck allows for the greatest peace and the greatest prosperity.

I think that it can be agreed that today there is a certain harmony that is missing from our nation. Even now our elected leaders seem to be scrambling to recreate a harmony. But where is it? I don't know. I was taught my whole life to put faith in capitalism. Our leaders don't share this belief. They seem to believe that large companies shouldn't be allowed to fail. They seem to think that success is required once you become so large.

The things that I was taught would claim that large companies like GM, Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac should have the right to fail. In failing they create a vacuum that others can fill and take over. Who is to say that someone else couldn't do the job better.

I think about all the factories that GM owns. I know they have a lot of people employed in them. However I am not concerned too much about the jobs because I think they would ultimately be preserved. I think that if GM were allowed to fail, as they inevitably will if they remain on the path they are currently on, their assets could be sold off to smaller companies hoping to fill the void. Companies like Toyota, which already builds its truck lines in GM plants.

Maybe I am oversimplifying. I really don't know because I am not an economist. However, I have some experience with failure. I have already opened and shut 2 businesses in my adult life. Both were more or less failures. In both cases the failures were neither good nor bad. They were just failures.

My first attempt to run my own business was a simple wedding video company. The entire company consisted of just me. I offered full service video taping, editing and DVD production for my clients. In just about 4 years I did about $6000 of business. I took out ads in newsprint and built a website. I worked out a referral deal with a wedding planner. I even did some work as a collaborative company of some really cool people. However in the end I spent $4000 more than I ever earned. Most of that was spent on equipment. Simply put, I failed, at least financially.

My second attempt was a company I formed with my older brother to build homes. Our business plan was developed so that within 5 years we would have something like a small property development company. Unfortunately we started this business right before the housing crisis of 2007. It failed due to no fault of our own. The market just wasn't going the way we thought it was.

In both businesses I learned a lot of things. Though I may have failed to make a ton of cash like I hoped to I did earn some information. I learned that in the video world technology moves very fast. It really moves faster than the business and the market do. I learned that once you have the knowledge you really don't need to own a lot of equipment. In fact I learned that it is more sensible to rent equipment using money budgeted into the project you are working on. This way you can have low overhead and the latest technology. You can give your clients the best mics and best cameras they are willing to pay for in every way.

In the housing market I learned that the only way to make money in homes is to specialize in an area and become very good at that one thing. I also learned that you should always deal with the people that make money because they are the people that have the most information.

Now, I guess the point is that there are lessons to be learned in failure. If those lessons are not learned then it seems to me that the failure is more likely to occur again. With GM I can't help but think that our leaders are doing nothing more than postponing the ultimate demise of GM as it is today. They have done everything they could do in the last few years to avoid failure. To their credit they have revived 2 discontinued cars, gave a lot of employee discounts to people and hyped up the Volt (which I bet will be delayed by the bankruptcy until after other companies beat it to market with something better).

Despite their best efforts GM is still struggling to survive. The market changed and GM didn't keep up. They failed to recognize the trends and paid the price. They overproduced vehicles and paid the price.

There is just one problem with my last couple of statements. GM didn't pay the price for their mistakes. The American people get to pay it for them thanks to our leaders who decided that it would be a good idea for them to use future taxpayer dollars to bail out this company as well as others. No lessons will be learned. All we can hope for is that GM and others will come out swinging and become profitable again to the point where it will pay us back in the long run. That's a pretty big gamble if you ask me.

Journals

I wrote in my journal today. It was kind of neglected. I realized that this blog is also kind of neglected. Still, I haven't written in my journal for about 3 years.

Have you noticed how a lot of blogs these days are becoming journals? I have a few friends who use their blogs as personal journals. I guess I can kind of understand but not fully.

I recently read through my journal. I actually have 2 but the one I read is the one I have been keeping as an adult the other was a class assignment in 3rd grade that I occasionally took time to write in until I was about 16. My adult journal starts about January of 2000 leaving about a 4 year gap in my personal recorded life history, who cares?

I wrote my journal expecting one day that nobody would ever care to read it. I did that because I was taught in my youth that journals should be kept for our posterity. Once I seriously considered this I realized it was retarded to think that anything personal to me would ever be as valuable to someone else as it is to me. So I wrote to myself and was able to open myself up to write pretty much as freely as I could. Honestly I still think that reading my journal for anyone else would be tedious and boring because of all the stuff that got left out.

Anyway, I learned a lot about myself. I learned that when I was single I wasted an awfully lot of time thinking about a couple of girls that I thought I would always be in love with. If either of them read this I am sure you know who you are and I hope this doesn't embarrass you. On second thought, if it does that would be weird. This should embarrass me and yet it doesn't. I guess it's because I grew up. In fact I would say the act of reading the journal helped me grow up just a little bit more.

One of the recurring themes from my journals is that I wanted to be a writer. I seriously thought at the time that I was a great writer. I know now that I wasn't very good at all. To be honest I am not sure that I am a good writer now. If you read the first entry in this blog you will see that I created this as a way to practice writing. The thing I left out is that I am writing this as though there were people who actually read this blog, though I know there are only a few. I write as though I have an audience.

In contrast to this there are many blogs out there that are publicly available that are written by someone as though they are writing to themselves. That seems odd to me. Doesn't it make more sense to keep really personal things on a pad of paper in your night stand next to your bed? I think it does.

I guess where I see the largest problem is in the potential pain and upset it may cause. For example: let's say you write something very personal on your blog, one of your friends reads it, then in conversation they comment on it in a casual manner or a dismissive manner later. It could hurt your feelings. The thing is that you placed that personal information out there for someone to read without thinking about whether or not it should be publicly available or if it should be just for you.

Okay, so maybe that scenario isn't too likely. Really it is just a point, though small, that I want to make. After all, this is my blog and I can make any point I want, valid or not, because I have comments on so you can disagree. That's fair.

Movies

I wish I made movies. Movies have a power that I envy. The power to emotionally move someone. The power to entertain. The power to excite. The power to involve. By many film is considered to be a lesser art form. Books are better. Painting is better. Stage is better. The thing is that film is better. Let me explain.

Sometimes movies leave me in awe. Just now I finished a documentary called Step Into Liquid. You might have heard of it. It's a film about surfing through the eyes of a surfer. The film opens with some of the most amazing shots of the ocean I've ever seen in my life. I thought at the beginning, why are you opening with this? I guess I figured they should save their best shots for the end. They did.

I suppose it isn't the camera that left me in awe though. There were other things. Story elements that involved real people. There was the story of the surfer who was paralyzed but continues to surf, lying down. There was the trip to Easter Island. There was the... well, I won't recap the entire thing. I'll just say that there were things that wrapped me up in the lives of people in the film.

Getting back to the point, this movie moved me in ways that very few things have before, outside of my own life.

Other things that move me include music, architecture, geology, painting, literature, etc. And by move I mean pass on to me a feeling of wonderment, awe, involvement, knowledge, ideas or some other value. It's just that film is better at it that most of these things alone.

A lot of my friends, and by friends I mean the handful of people who may ever read this, know that I love movies. There is an even smaller group of people who participate in this with me. Oddly, these 4 or 5 people are the few friends that most of my friends don't know. Among us we have this idea. I'm not certain where we got it but it's something we keep repeating to each other. It's almost a mantra now. "Film is the greatest medium the world has ever seen." There are a couple other variations on this idea but the point is clear.

The simple fact is that film combines visual, musical and performing art together in a very unique and involving way. Now many may argue that theatre is superior in every way in all three areas. I would never agree but the argument may be made. The thing is that theatre is really just the precursor to film. Film allows for things that theatre cannot accomplish.

Just to illustrate I would point at The Matrix. Imagine if you saw that for the first time on a stage. Use all the same actors but do it on stage. What would it look like? Sure you could get across all the elements of the story. You could deliver all the dialog. How about bullets? How about bullet time? Someone would have to rig some very complicated devices to accomplish much of the special effects. And when you think about it, without some of the effects The Matrix just isn't the same movie. Without them it become harder to believe they are inside a virtual world that can be manipulated by its creators. In a sense the effects are part of the story.

Now, not every movie released is amazing. But the same can be said about almost every art form. Not every photograph you take is amazing. I believe most people are surprised when they take a picture that looks amazing. I know I am.

Still, every once in a while I watch a movie that makes me feel something. It's in those moments that I realize why I want to make movies. It's in those moments that I understand why I sacrifice so much for such a small chance at telling my stories in the medium. I never know before I watch a movie whether or not I'll come out of it with such an experience.

Earlier this year I wrote about I Love You Man. I went in that movie mostly because I was bored and thought I needed something funny. As it turns out it was more than just a funny story. In fact it was much more. As the summer arrived I was excited about all the big shows coming out. I couldn't wait to see Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I went to see them and I enjoyed them. The excitement is gone and all I can think about is how much I want to see I Love You Man again. Because of the experience I had with it I think it is the best movie of the year.

Movies are subjective of course. Often I think the reason certain movies hit me the way they do is because of what I am going through in my own life at the time. Having moved to California in the last year I have been thinking a lot about how much less time I get to spend with the handful of people I consider to be my closest friends. That effected my feelings in the theater. When I was younger I had an amazing experience watching The Sixth Sense. I believe now it was due in large part to my feelings that sometimes I stood alone in who I was. I related to the boy very well. I saw it twice in theaters and enjoyed it just as much the second time.

I'm of course not trying to invalidate other forms of art by writing this. In the end I just want to acknowledge the power a simple movie can have in our lives.