El Conquistador Pillages Church

Vultures in Flight. A 1942 Volkswagon Beetle in front of a 23rd Century Greek Orthodox Church in Hungary.*

I´m thinking I will not tag this photo with information specific to the photo. I´m on the move again and I feel the inundation of photos on the Internet with "Look where I am" kind of narrative is not only geometrically abhorrent but is ruining the experience of travel. My advice is to go to unexpected places. Do not research your trip, but when you get somewhere then ask, look around, surprise yourself. Because if you already know what to expect when you travel then why are you traveling? To complain about the hot water or the price of cod? Stay home, if that is the case. These are photos of my travels but I don´t want to give you my itinerary or have these photos appear in google searches. I understand the desire to commoditize and collate everything under the sun, but it´s honestly making travel more like a pre-planned "connect the dots" experience. fuck that. fuck google. *to prove my point I will deliberately mis-identify this photo.

You want to find a hidden beach like this? Maybe get off you ass and go somewhere.

I can say that the Battery that I bought in Labrador City lasted 4 years and one month...and 14,000 miles of insanity...before finally dying when I entered El Salvador. 14,000 miles from Labrador to El Salvador and I had to do the exact same process of jump starting my own van using the auxiliary battery. The battery had 13 volts but simply not enough cranking amps to even turn the engine over. The connections were tight. It was dead dead dead after a little bit of reading the Spanish dictionary at night. So I had to buy a new battery in San Salvador and that fixed the problem fast. I really hope it lasts 4 years and one month too. I gotta figure out a better arrangement for my interior lightning...right now it all runs off my main battery, but I have a good auxiliary battery and can get LED lights for the interior, not these crazy 20 watt bulbs from 1969. Maybe 2 watts. Run all night long.
Speaking of nights, last night the local Policia were banging on my van like they had captured El Chapo. "Come out with your hands up, we have you surrounded!" Fucking bullshit. I was so delirious and naked that I did not explain myself well as sweat poured from my face. Bullshit.

One thing at a time.

I´m too absorbed by the current situation to reflect on 9 months in Guatemala. It´s not much time. I think I´ll be back. Xela is very nice for long term stay, though in one week I could understand a young person wanting something different. If only I could play Cole Porter songs at a cafe...

Propaganda and Imagery Contest: Marshall Plan 2.0

Propaganda and symbolism has been in the news lately as the Confederate Flag (AKA: Walmart Snot Rag) finally came down 150 years after the Confederate surrender. Yippie!

But I don't want to talk about that because I promise you that the problems in Central America are so grave that they are going to make the civil rights movement seem like a PTA bake sale debate regarding cup cake prices.

This is a project that should take 20 years so I'm not going to explain myself in one shot. But the first thing I want to deal with is imagery.

Marshall Plan Posters

Here's another one:

Perfect Propaganda

If you can take a few minutes to visit the Marshall Foundation poster page I want you artists to get inspired.

There are 4 countries that are in dire need of a Marshall Plan 2.0 in Central America. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. And to prove how powerful propaganda imagery can be I'm not even going to explain my concerns at this time. All I want from you is a poster of equal quality and conviction, except mobilizing a country's support of a new Marshall Plan for Central America. CA4. I'm pretty good with mottos, but not art. Some motto like "Americas Unified"

Marshall is maybe one of the last American heroes and he didn't do it alone. George Kennan, William Clayton were instrumental as well, but it required the character of Marshall to somehow to deflect all the attention onto the problem and not onto him. This plan worked. And in 1950 they had a contest for a poster and now 65 years later we need a new poster for Central America. I'm telling you that the situation is grave and Americans and Canadians are definitely going to feel the effects soon. This is definitely your problem wherever you live. So, find some graphic artists who studied propaganda art and get them busy. I will actually pay for this poster and maybe a crowdfunding project would collect more money. Let's say $200 from me. I think that the poster is important because it galvanizes support, and cooperation and support is what is required. There really is no time to waste but I'm begging for a paradigm shift.

FYI, they speak Spanish in these 4 countries so you might want to incorporate that into the poster, but the support is going to be for Americans and Canadians to approve of what is probably a $100 Billion dollar effort to educate and modernize Central American countries over the next 15 years. Illiteracy needs to be eradicated...that's 7 years minimum. Sewage treatment plants are required. Geothermal energy. Etc. But none of that will happen without unified support and I'm simply going to copy the Marshall Plan page for page. They got a cool poster, so I want a cool poster. They ended up with 25 posters, but I'd be happy with one good poster.

This is still a moving image. GREAT IMAGE! 1950.

George Marshall may be gone but he left behind the blueprints for how to rescue a continent. The Marshall Plan worked even though Stalin refused to cooperate or allow any Soviet countries to participate. So, since Stalin is not in Central America, it will be even more successful. If the same feet dragging incompetence had existed in 1947 as exists right now in the Senate and House of Reps, I'm certain Europe would've crumbled. The historians say that the Marshall Plan and investment itself was not enough, but it gave other investors confidence in rebuilding. This is what Central America needs. Get busy.

P.S. The Marshall Plan was officially called the E.R.P, European Recovery Programme. So, C.A.R.P would be the Central American Recovery Program. But I also want to add Haiti, and Cuba, so the acronym gets messed up. Work with it.

Local Scenes

Goat and Volcano

It took 20+ years for me to finally drive to Guatemala so I wasn't going to leave immediately. I wanted to spend enough time here that I got to know tailors by name, my favorite restaurants, the fruit vendors, watch the government collapse, etc. Maybe I fit in here because I'm almost living a normal life and when I was living in Austin I was treated like dirt because I was living like an escaped convict. But Austin rent is around $750 a month and it's $120 a month here. I could probably find a cheaper situation but I like where I'm at. Still, change is unavoidable.

Musical Musings

I've been fooling myself for 20 years. More than 20 years I've been playing guitar off and on, even took a class at a community college. I've read books, methods, weaseled into master classes to listen but mostly I've pondered what it means to be a musician and recently, with the help of Jamey Aebersold's methods, I've concluded that a musician is not someone who pokes at an instrument to produce notes. No, that's a technician. A musician needs an instrument to release the notes in his head. This is such a fine distinction that it's rarely even mentioned in method books. 6 years in college music classes and this topic did not come up. I approached the instrument as a means to play a song and I memorized the places where I put my fingers to produce the right notes, but that's actually backwards to what a musician does. I never really internalized the notes. Maybe I memorized the beginning and the end, some fancy licks and what they sounds like, but mostly I memorized the mechanical/physical manipulations to produce the notes. I am basically pantomiming the act of being a musician, going through the motions, and memorizing all the movements requires to play a song...but there is a big difference between this and memorizing the notes, the sound of a song, and then using the instrument to produce those notes. Maybe this is something that can't be taught, but must be learned through experience, but wouldn't it help knowing that's not only the goal but knowing the mental reasoning behind it? I think it will, so I'm going to try to write down my understanding.

This is a big topic, something I've been working toward for years, so I can't break it all down in one essay, but I can give a pedagogical comparison.

Wolf Quest Part XV: Closing Thoughts

The wolf quest about was an experiment, like most of my decisions. I prefer to be surprised from one day to the next and culturally I’m disloyal. I don’t see what other people see in society. I see chaos leading toward the destruction of everything I built. The prospect of living long enough to see everything I participated in either destroyed or underwater can only be ignored for so long. But it’s inevitable so unless I’m really amused by an activity or challenged or entertained, then it’s all academic, history in the making. Human development is too messy for me, too haphazard, chaotic, too much error and too little trial. I recognize that there is no pause button, but there is also no immediate demand for recklessness. That can be avoided, but the tradition is to leap before we look, and the science suggest that has doomed the planet. So, it all comes back to the debate about what can be salvaged from an self-destructive society? Can anything be salvaged? Why? Why salvage anything, any custom or technology? Destroyers of Planets are rare phenomenon so we all need to pay close attention to what is happening around us so if future genetics retain our memories then there’s a chance humanity will develop a collective fear, and that fear will be strong enough not to test.