Just Another Day at the Office

A recent online chat I had with an insurance agent:

Patrick: I'm going to Haiti on Friday. I need insurance that would cover emergency medical expenses and life insurance if I'm kidnapped, killed, or harmed in any way.

Alan: Hello, my name is Alan, I'll be happy to help you with that.

Patrick: Great.

Alan: Well, we have products that can provide coverage for those events - but not all on one policy. For instance, kidnapping insurance will require an application that would need to be submitted to an underwriter for Lloyds of London. We also have accidental death insurance from the same company, but requires a different online application.

Patrick: Oh ok. Well, my main concern is if I'm hurt or killed in the event of a kidnapping that my family will be taken care of. Does accidental death cover that?

Alan: Accidental death would cover your family if you are accidentally killed - it does not cover kidnapping however.

Patrick: So if I'm kidnapped and killed, accidental death won't cover me?

Alan: Death by kidnappers is not accidental - it would be an intentional murder. And then there are coverages for medical expenses as well. Do you need coverage for war & terrorism for the medical expenses?

Patrick: Um, I believe I do need War and Terrorism for medical expenses. Would that cover me in the event that I'm injured as a result of a kidnapping (or something along those lines) and need medical attention?

Alan: How much medical coverage and accidental death coverage do you require?

Patrick: Maybe 20-30k? I don't know how much it costs to evacuate someone.

Alan: One moment please.

Alan: You might want to consider our Security First War Risk Long Term plan.

Alan: That can provide Accidental Death and Dismemberment coverage as well as $250,000 coverage for medical expenses and $100,000 emergency medical evac coverage - War & Terrorism is covered.

Patrick: Sounds great!

Alan: May I redirect your web browser to the page with that information? Would you like me to do that for you now?

Patrick: Yes.

Utopia = No Place

I love the fact that the Greek word "utopia" translates to "no place". I think about this often and it reminds me that there is no real destination in life. Or to put it another way, each moment in life is a destination. We're wired to always be in pursuit of something - of happiness or success maybe - and we often find it difficult to feel any satisfaction until we've obtained it. How different would things be if we found satisfaction now, even in the midst of great suffering? It might free us from anxiety about the future and perhaps we wouldn't be so inclined to shelve happiness for later enjoyment, but partake now and always.

Post-Production Diet

I'm about three weeks into post-production on The Philosopher Kings and all is going well. I've got a really rough 22 minutes of the film edited which means about 50-60 minutes to go! I've encountered some of the typical challenges editors face at this stage. Editing is a little like acting. You want to immerse yourself so deeply that you are living and breathing the material rather than a half-ass representative of it. No real editing can be done until one has become fully immersed in the material and life, so full of distractions, often works against this process. A frequent consequence of my desperate attempts to remain "in the zone" is having to eat crap food. It's within reach and quick to prepare and consume. I like the microwaveable Japanese stuff. As crap food goes, it's pretty awesome.


I'm no Picasso but I like the way he worked. He would often stand before the canvas for three or four hours at a time making almost no superfluous gestures. He's famously quoted as saying "while I work I leave my body outside the door, the way Moslems take off their shoes before entering the mosque."

Of course there are beautiful distractions. "Golden Delicious", the latest Mike Doughty album was my beautiful distraction of the day. I downloaded it and got a much needed shot of inspiration before jumping back in. It's the distractions that seemingly have no value to the task at hand that you try desperately to avoid, but are simply no match for that are a cancer to my process...like pretending that people actually read my blog.

Religion Is Not The Problem

At a post Flight from Death screening Q&A session in Canada several months ago an audience member asked an intriguing question about the "u-turn" the film takes at the end. I tanked when attempting my answer, as I often do, so I wanted to spend a few minutes briefly addressing it here.

The "u-turn", as he called it, referred to the film positing that religion was the problem at the heart of the world's conflicts and how by its conclusion, the film seemed to contradict itself by offering a mildly religious prescription to the problem.

Religion is not the problem and not necessarily any sort of prescription to the problem either - at least as far as the film is concerned.

There are individuals of all faiths and non-faiths who have done "evil" in the name of their beliefs. Some blow up federal buildings, some fly planes into tall buildings, others go on shooting sprees. Clearly, religious belief cannot be singled out as "the problem". What is consistent among these sort of apocalyptic acts of violence is the perpetrators' death grip on their beliefs, leaving no room for the possibilty that their worldview can co-exist among other worldviews. While the fundamentalist and perverted ideologies alluded to above may certainly be a part of the problem in those specific cases, I believe the problem overall is not ideology itself necessarily, but our relationship with ideology.

It's analagous to agoraphobia. When the walls that separate us from the rest of the world begin to define everything about us, we cannot, often out of fear, and will not, see past them. If we are to live constructively together we have to step outside, where the world does not revolve around us, and immerse ourselves in the real world which is made up of all sorts of contradictions before we can fully appreciate and understand our own ideas about how we should live and what to believe.

As Socrates might say, accept the possibility that you are wrong or that others have something to teach you, and maybe someday we'll actually learn what it even means to be "right".

As for Sam Keen's closing about hope, it certainly feels religious but one doesn't have to be religious to appreciate being alive and to appreciate the mysterious force that brings us into (and out of) existence. With so much darkness and hopelessness in the world, it helps me to remember that it's better to be in the world rather than NOT in it.

Old Dudes

There's something about the looming inevitability of bingo nights and adult incontinence that inspires people, as they grow older, to stop messing around. Whenever I want to take inventory of the things in my life that ultimately don't matter, I look to old people. Like, really old people. They don't dress well, they don't smell that great, they walk slow, they're cranky when they want to be, and they could sit on a bench all day feeding bread crumbs to pigeons and never once complain about "where the day went".

"I enjoy talking with the very old, for we should ask them, as we might ask those who have travelled a road that we too will probably have to follow, what kind of road it is, whether rough and difficult or smooth and easy." -Socrates

Japan Rules

"What is man's ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty"
-Shinichi Suzuki

Here's a glimpse of my time in Japan. Enjoy!

Shite Happens

I had over $15k worth of camera equipment stolen out of my car during a recent trip to Vancouver and after beating myself up for a couple of days for being such a dumbass, it got me thinking about some things... such as tragedy and suffering, how no one is safe from it, how it's all bound to happen, and most importantly, whether or not I'm psychologically or spiritually prepared for it - at least to the extent that I won't become entirely unraveled when real tragedy does strike.

Cliches may lack impact and originality, and you often want to punch people in the face for using them, but it pays to examine them in moments like these where it's best to just cut to the chase rather than go on and on trying to eloquently say what can be summed up in just two words. In my case, "shit happens". If you still want to punch me in the face after reading this entry, feel free. I probably had it coming anyway.

How brilliant is the dude who coined the phrase "Shit Happens" and slapped it on a bumper sticker? That sticker was in every gift shop and minimart across the globe for just about the latter half of the 20th century. Millions of people paid this man to be reminded that something bad was going to happen. Clearly a genius...and in more ways than one.

So after I filled out the police report, spent a couple of days sulking, and came to terms with the fact that I'd never see any of my equipment again, I got to thinking about this "shit happens" dude and what he was trying to say and began to examine my own intimate relationship with "shit" and the anticipation of it happening to me.

Just about every religious tradition teaches us that being and feeling truly alive involves a degree of suffering. Any attempt to ignore this fact is done in vain and often results in less life lived. It's debilitating to dwell on the suffering that is just around the corner for all of us. Everything from a stolen wallet to the death of a loved one is a part of everyone's destiny. For many, the suffering is here and now. For others, it's closer than they think. The challenge, it seems to me, is not allowing those tragedies to define us and our lives but to weave it into the fabric of our experience in such a way that it makes us better and more alive. Suffering provides context or a framework within which we experience our lives - especially the good things. It's easy to write about, harder to apply, and surely even more difficult to consider when you're in the midst of suffering, but my naivete doesn't necessarily make what I've said less true.

The reality is that "shit" isn't just going to "happen". It's going to rain down from the heavens until we're drowning in an ocean of it. There'll be no life preserver in sight (just a lot of flies) and your arms will give out trying to make it to shore as giant waves of shit break against your back and occasionally pull you under, forcing mouth-fulls of shit into your mouth. And when it's all over, if you survive that is, you're going to stink - probably for years and you're never going to be able to walk outside again without looking up and wondering if the universe is going to take a big dump on your head again. But you WILL walk outside and you'll undoubtedly appreciate those days when it doesn't...at least for a little while until you start taking the good days for granted again.