and so finally we get to announce to the world that we are part of the xXx team. that really dragged on. waiting. didnt care for the contract, but contracts stress me out. because they always say the same thing when you are the little guy. they say “we have all the rights, you have none, please make great stuff for us so we can profit off of it.” when i read about them having residual rights and copyright forever of all things i make in line of duty—even if i get fired or quit a week in—i was like “to hell with this” and then i thought “…so…you dont do the gig that offers you a step somewhere else, to a place maybe where you can BE recognized and do your work, perhaps because you want to keep your songs etc to yourself? in your room? do it! the worst that could happen is they love your stuff and want to use it! that’s good for you.”but i dont trust situations like this. eh. i guess i dont trust much. much except my own will and want. that i believe in.i write this here because i need to write it. maybe i’ll write it “there” too. but i dont feel any moral need to expose all my inner thoughts or musings or feelings on this. this is a personal experiment, and a personal plan. its not all about me, but i do my learning when i want and often in a private space. and then i give the world the results. plus i’m sick of pulling my speech for people. hate that about blogging. always must tend the fragile feelings and egos of readers.  can’t say what i know because it may wrinkle them. or some wont like the tone. or some will be offended by the message and jeeeeheeez. sick of explaining everything. and it gets tiring pretending i’m likable.i’m thinking of the equipment as theirs. i’ll use it, i’ll train on it. but i have my own. and i’m so glad. this lets me keep my integrity. because we have to give it all back if we quit the gig early. having my own (better) equipment means they have no real hold on me.  clearly i’m worried about getting compromised. but then again, i’ve never worked for xXx before.

as i wrote in other places here, we live in an era now where a camera is more dangerous than a gun. and many do see us that way. and those of us carrying cameras into places often unobserved need to be aware of this. a person with a camera is a node that connects to millions, and macaca knows what power that node might ignite. while a gun can stop one person in their tracks, as happened to brad in oaxaca, mx., that gun—even wielded by the highest trained CIA operative under deepest cover in a land not her/his own—still cannot stop or overpower the camera’s truth, which takes the form of a projectile that splinters into a million fragments and blows away ignorance in an inexhaustible number of humans.

journalists in iraq are getting shot to death in great numbers. it is no accident. the men in power now who “learned” so many lessons from vietnam thought that if they adapted accordingly to the devices that (spread the truth which affected the people who) ended the war, they can wage war to their hearts’ content (tho there is no contentment for souls like this, only eternal war). however, these same men cannot understand that parenthetical phrase i just dropped. so they don’t get that their measures of stopping the truth are only temporary ones. but those measures will be used over there, and over here, too. it all depends on what is on your tape.

i am here to be an eye for the people. and a voice for the people. bring some attention to matters that need it. expose any wrongdoing or wrong that i can. whether it be a corporation hurting its employees, a landowner dumping waste in a stream, a man beating a woman, a parent beating a child, a cop beating a man, a corporation breaking health codes, a politician in deep with a corporation, or just a tiny truth that does one person good who wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS said a man once, about his guitar, and so does this camera. fascists and tyrants and abusers and anyone in power who can be checked and needs to be.

of course, this doesn’t mean this is what i do 24 hours a day. i’m not a superhero, and i’m not trying to pretend i am one. but this is a goal of mine and a current direction. here, you find the ideas that guide my actions. i need a place to talk about what i’m doing, and this is that place. other places i write in are hardly anonymous. and by the way, if you figure out that you know me, or think you may, don’t call me out here. not if you care about what i’m trying to do, that is. anyway, i’ll deny it. here, i’m “iris” or “the black iris” and that will be fine for now.

don’t know yet whether i will actually post video here. you’d expect it wouldn’t you? then again, you’d expect a little more imagery on the blog, for someone who is so visually oriented. we’ll see what happens. mainly, there are some things i’ll need to discuss, and i’ll get to that in a post called rebel in the ritz.

i consider myself a guerrilla of the 21st century. a well-dressed, well-spoken, good-smelling, tax-paying guerrilla. (sometimes i am those things.) call it asymmetrical information warfare because this is a new time, and we don’t look like we used to, we don’t carry what we used to, and we don’t come up on you like we used to. but we’re all over. and we’re for the people. because we are the people.

too many crimes are being committed. too much police abuse, too much domestic violence, too much child abuse, too many going hungry needlessly, too many poisons sneaked into the food we do eat, too many stories not being told, too many lies filling our airwaves and tv screens. simply blogging about all of it is not enough for me anymore. don’t mistake what i’m saying, i’m not saying blogging does no good. i’ve seen it do good many times. this is about me, not blogging.

because me, i need to get my hands right in the mix. some of us were born to fight. and if we weren’t, then along the way, the world made sure we got ready. what we have here is a fight (many fights) that people need to take up. enough deferring to others to inform and save us. and i’m not one to go knocking on doors to ask. i’m about getting it on. getting up and getting out there and doing it. and undoing those things that existing, cause harm.

a camera, because if i were to carry a gun or a grenade, or revolution in my hand, i’d be killed too quickly to make much change, or do much good. so this lens is my weapon, and the world is my theater.

see you out there.

i love images.

more than conversations, often. though you might be fooled by my love of language. i love language as i love music. and i like making music with people. and for people. and i like looking at them. and making pictures of them. and i’ve done this for years. in many ways. i’ve been to school for camera and for video camera and for film camera. i’ve spent a good amount of time and money on this pursuit. for no other reason than that i am good at it and i love being good at it and i love what it brings me. what it brings me cannot be put into words. which makes perfect sense.

i don’t always know the best way to interact with people or businesses. i find my thinking and manners are sometimes at odds with accepted social norms. or maybe i haven’t taken enough time to learn them. or maybe it has to do with my own life and background. i don’t know. but i can spend ten minutes with a person and sometimes mess the whole thing up. and i can spend three days with a handful of images, and think i’m in heaven.

when i was in art school, i met with a couple who wanted to hire me for a wedding video. and i showed them a video reel that featured a piece, an “artsy piece” i guess, that had masks and shadow and light and blood and hands reaching through fog and a grown person, embryonic and naked and twisting about in the water. this couple watched it, and thought i was weird and crazy and insulted me for putting them through it. what you have to understand is that i don’t do those things to shock anyone. i’m the one shocked. and hurt. i’m the one always realizing that i have a love affair with my art that doesn’t always include the people around me. and that i don’t understand the contracts that seem to have been made without my awareness, and with my named signed to them in absentia.

but i tire of trying to speak a language that cannot express my dearest visions.

in the end, our names are not important. our stories are. after all, a name is the marker of personal glory. but it was brad who helped teach me that personal glory is not the most important thing.

when he was killed in the line of his personal fate and story, in the midst of bringing truth to us all, i was angered that he did not take better care of himself, of his own well-being, of his own person.

and in time, and with just a little reflection, i understood that this was part of his story, too. in fact, it may have been the most important part. for if one person puts their life in movement in the hopes of helping others, they can make much change. and if there were only one hundred brads in our many millions, we would have the spark we needed to burn down all the rot that has grown to cling to our eyes and clutter up our vision.

we can do this.

and the forces that would silence truth have no hope of defeating us. because you can kill one human with a bullet. and you can even kill thousands in a coup. but you can never hope to eliminate their hope, their truth, or the mission that fed their fight.

brad is dead. but his truth and his story live on. that tale and that lesson is ours, too. and now, his job, yours and mine to do.

i began by seeing opportunity gleaming at me from atop a towering hill. it was so very distant that the pale glow was nothing more than a late night phantasm. a silky white noise that insinuated itself into my deepest childhood dreaming. but i was tortured by the idea of such heights, by the notion that one such as me could dare dream of things i surely had no chance of knowing.

years passed.

as i climbed the slightest bit closer, i saw that the gleam was not as far away as i had thought. but it was hard to tell. the light would wink on…and off. it would wander to the left, and then disappear. sometimes i ran at it, but mostly, i told myself i didn’t care whether or not i ever found it.

over time, i forgot whether i wanted to reach that light or not. i wandered laterally, tangentially, vaguely. over time, i knew pain, i knew struggle, i knew confusion, i knew frustration. and bitterness. and then one day i looked up and realized i was in snatching distance. i was only one more hop away from the yard from where that light was powered. the one that twinkled and shone over all those peaks and ruts and fences and chasms, and found its way to me so long ago, a platinum-eyed angel who waited until the late show’s static exploded into incoherence before pressing her lips up to the screen and whispering to me every night.and now

now that i am standing here and looking out over all i traveled and all i sought, i realize something. all the warmth of that light was only a reflection of my own desire, and my own energies, and my own dreaming. for now that I am at the edge of this glow, i find that the dreams in my mind might not have been my own to begin with. in fact, i am not sure that the angel of my youth was not but a demon, and its searing luminance something terrible, after all.

which leaves me with the question why was i called here?