The future of...

Journalism used to be a revered craft. We once received our news from a fully functional, professional writer who had interviewed sources that didn’t always know if they should be giving up the information they tenderly spoke out loud. The articles we read were expertly written with great care and consideration for the art of words and language.

In short, it all seemed so very important.

As of the time of this writing, our news has been sequestered to the realm of the social media abyss. Just as we scroll by the major achievements of our children, the minor accomplishments of our own lives, and the mundane existence we bore outwards for a serotonin boosting thumbs up; we take in our news with an alarming indifference as it flows away from our vision.

Our heroes were writers, at least they were always mine. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was a giant of epic proportions, creating astounding landscapes from blades of grass and grains of sand. Tom Wolfe was a master of the standard in spectacular. Every journalist at the local paper had something to lose if they sacrificed their integrity, and that integrity was derived from a sense of accuracy and morality.

Influential-based money and interest-based censorship signed the beginning of the end. As soon as the opinion section turned to a monetary mission, the intellectual honesty of our information was sacrificed indefinitely and forever more.

There is a light at the end of the subway towards 1984. There are still those out there that have trust in the fifth estate. Those that remain a belief the watchful eye has a place in our broken society.

Every once in a while, there comes along a participation in the patronage of honest journalism.

In my own hometown, a contender for sanity has emerged. Sprawl (in Calgary) has carved a path towards what they call “slow journalism.” Taking time to realize a story that many of us had no idea existed at all, and turning that into a fascinating report of suddenly essential media.

In this web-based easy access way of life, the prospect of a deranged initial vision is always a possibility. If the model of slow and crowd funded news becomes more the norm than the fringe, we will all be much better served towards a brighter future. One in which we can still have our watchdogs and servants dedicated to righting the wrongs most times previously unseen.  

Apparition Musings

Dean Miller believes an apparition is defined simply as “the sudden appearance of something surprisingly remarkable.”  

Upon experiencing an apparition presented on canvas, the ultimate goal is to activate a part of your mind that you don’t usually access. A swift presence of the unexpected.

Dean Miller

Often the reality of our collective struggle in the human experience is strikingly comparable. When the everyday existence we all work through is considered, apparitions become a sort of bar that is out of reach. We know there is more than what is in front of us, we just have trouble taking the blinders off long enough to see the beauty all around us during the journey.

Tunnel vision creates problems that creativity attempts to solve. Without our most bizarre, our most sterile become our most standard, and the vibrant colours that make us human will fade away into a dull gray background.

Dean Miller

Without an unexpected appearance or an apparition, the predictable will easily become the normal way of doing things. Without distractions we become the scenery, as we march towards a certainty that was always expected. Without the sudden appearance of something surprisingly remarkable, nothing is remarkable anymore.

For What it is Worth

"Art is leaving a piece of your soul to stand behind when the ashes of your once existence have long blown away. "
- Dean Miller

The moment you realize that art has a life which dictates and documents the ebbs and flows of an individual experience. Art is our beckoning desires and greatest impulses compressed into a physical creation of which means so much and so very little at any given moment.

Dean Miller

Constantly redefined by every step and every experience, art becomes its own world. Rising from a spark of black emptiness, the ultimate markings of pure imagination take form.

Art is so internally human and something so vaguely alien, art is something that is from another plane of existence yet keeps us rooted with our own sense of history. So incredibly individualistic yet so unbelievably connecting, a landmark of our shared world in each unique vision.

An attempt to define the undefinable, a stab at something more, a legacy left in an eternity of infinite possibility. Have we ever existed? Or have we always been present to experience the scope of what is truly possible?

I am either an artist or not an artist at all and I don't give an actual shit either way. Some have been tapped to release their own vision and some are just trying to survive the reality in front of them.

A hierarchy of needs creates a vacuum of urgency for the majority. The potential of a true artistic expression becomes hindered by the bleak political and dire landscape that has been constrained by the desire for more. That pressure, in turn, creates a yearning to produce diamonds and occasionally succeeds.

The Journey Never Ends

The last time I posted anything here, I was on the trip of a lifetime.

Having never completed the travel blog throughout the whole trip and ending up with far more adventures than I wrote about, I considered relying on recollection to see it to the end. Memory is a fickle bitch however, and is quite possibly the downfall of humans in general, so I will not attempt to finish those blog posts.

I ended up going to Malaysia and Burma, living at a tattoo shop, falling in love with at least 4 more people, and clinging to the brink of existence on several occasions. (You'll just have to trust that it was all very insane and surreal).

I'm sure the scope of my reach with these posts will be far less than it was before as the scope of my life is far, far less.

I have since entered the wild world of procreation and succeeded beyond my wildest expectations of raising a child. My son is now almost 3 years old and he is the joy of my, and anyone else he meets, life. I plan on taking him to northern Europe in a few years and starting back up on the ol' travel blogging hitch.

Until then, whoever is reading this is stuck with my internal musings and overall weirdness about life. And if nobody reads, well at least I'll have a journal to look back on until Skynet or Ajit Pai or whoever becomes aware and destroys the internet completely.

So yeah: Guess who's back, back again... Skippy's back, tell a friend.