Monkey see, monkey do?

Monkey totem, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008. www.wk-photoart.com/Georganna/Maypole.htm

There's a long blog post in the works that will focus on how to become the change we all want to see. Let me just say briefly that I spent a couple of hours in the emergency ward with a friend on Thursday. I then had to rush home, leaving her on her own and in pain, equipped only with the paperbacks I'd shoved into a bag and a few pieces of nicotine gum. We got there at 10AM, and when I called at 7PM to find out whether she had been admitted, subjected to emergency surgery, or released, I was told they still hadn't decided what they were going to do with her. By 10PM when I called again, I was angry enough about the situation that if they had told me they still hadn't decided what they were doing with her, I was going to the make the decision for them and go and get her. I am still quite shaken by her description of what she went through during a nine-hour wait for an x-ray.

I wanted to blog a bit about the presentation at Northern Voice 08 that has stayed with me. More than a month later, I think about Dave Olson's presentation, 'F*ck Stats, Make Art.' See his synopsis here, or better yet, download the podcast. It's a shame it wasn't filmed, really, because I do think you had to be there to see how truly engaging he was:

http://wiki.northernvoice.ca/F*ck+Stats,+Make+Art+Dossier

I'm currently taking a speechwriting course, which so far involves watching and commenting on presentations from a diverse group of speakers. I am struggling a bit with some of the material, because to be perfectly honest, it is presented for the most part completely out of context. I am trying to be a good girl and a good student, but I have been so disconcerted by the second speech (from former Saturday Night Live cast member Julia Sweeney) that I've just sort of come to a standstill. I don't really want to post what I'm truly thinking, which is 'who is this Julia Sweeney and why should I care whether she believes in Santa Claus or not?' Setting a cat amongst the pigeons was fun when I was in my 20s but I have to be feeling truly energetic to deal with the fallout from this pastime now.

In describing my quandry to the friend I took to the hospital though, I talked about the difference between Sweeney's presentation and Dave Olson's. Wacky though he (or his persona) may be, he had a point and he moved unerringly towards it from the moment he started speaking. Yes there were asides and yes, a very old copy (not sure if it was a first edition or not) of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was brandished during the course of the presentation. Here's my synopsis of his presentation: think of all the Web 2.0 creative content (blogs, vlogs, podcasts, digital photos and collage, et al.) generated by just ordinary folks as a huge pyramid. The bottom layer of the pyramid will be a fairly thin but broad slice of just sheer dreck. The bulk of the pyramid will be content that is relatively ordinary but gets a fair bit of attention, or as Olson describes it, 'goofy, nonsensical, or cheesy slices of contemporary pop culture [that have] either contrived or wrangled their way to the top of the viral avenues.' But that very top slice of the pyramid is going to yield some real gold in artistic terms. And creating that gold is far more important than getting to the top of the pyramid.

Flickr has recently added a new feature, the ability to check one's stats. Every once in a while I take a look to see how many of my photos have been viewed in a day and which ones they were. I am constantly surprised and usually gratified to see that some of the more offbeat things I photograph are viewed, often years after they've been taken. Yes, the photos of my breasts are my two most often viewed. That was a tagging science experiment though. Just wait till I start tagging all my photos 'breasts' or 'nipples.'