SAR_13_along_the_way
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Above: FP 30K SAR BL training. Start it, do it, consolidate it.
“A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist, moving an audience…making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark.” Gordon Willis on Jon Fauer's 'Film and Digital Times'
"I’m Gordon Willis. I’m a Director of Photography." Gordon Willis, ASC
"The largest grip/electric truck the world has ever seen backed down Mr. Willis’ precariously steep driveway. One slip of the brakes, and his very large, beautiful house would be toothpicks. Gordon was watching, looking amused. “What’s with all this stuff?” he asked. Ken Perham, gaffer, explained that he was under strict orders from Tibor not to scratch, blemish or scrape anything,hence lighting with big HMI PARs from outside, with no heavy metallic feet touching the inside of the house. “Too complicated,” said Gordon. “Just bring in one Kinoflo.” So, one 4-bank 4-foot daylight Kinoflo it was. After it was all over, Gordon asked the electric crew to turn the light off. “Aha,” he said, “that’s better, isn’t it—no light at all.”" Jon Fauer in 'Remembering Gordon Willis, ASC'
" […] media violence is causing its citizens to accept violence as a viable alternative. Governments around the globe, try as they might, have not been able to [ protect ] citizens [ from media violence ]. And they will never truly be able to control violent crime unless they stop infecting their children. One common response to any concern about media violence is, "We have adequate controls. They are called the 'off switch'. If you don't like it, just turn it off." Unfortunately, this is a tragically inadequate response to the problem. In today's society the family structure is breaking down and even in intact families there is enormous economic and social pressure for mothers to work. Single mothers, broken homes, latchkey kids, and parental neglect are increasingly the norm. The worst thing about the "off switch" solution is that it is so blatantly, profoundly racist in its effect, if not its intent, […] Bronson James, a black Texas-based radio commentator whose show I was on, observed that this is identical to the genocidal process in which for centuries the white man used alcohol in a systematic policy to destroy the culture of the American Indian. For a variety of cultural and genetic reasons, the Indians were predisposed toward alcoholism, and we dumped it into them as a crucial part of the process that ultimately destroyed their civilization. The pumping of media violence […] today is equally genocidal. Media violence-enabling […] is the moral equivalent of shouting, "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre. As a result, murder is the number-one cause of death among black male teens, and 25 percent of all black males in their twenties are in jail, on probation, or on parole. If this isn't genocide, then it is close.
What makes the "off switch" solution so racist is that, if these murders and incarceration rates were happening to the sons of white upper- and middle-class America, you can bet that we would have seen some drastic action by now. Viewed in this light, I think that most individuals would agree that the "just turn it off' solution probably rates right up there with "let them eat cake" and "I was just following orders" as all-time offensive statements. In developmental psychology there is a general understanding that an individual must master the twin areas of sexuality and aggression (Freud's Eros and Thanatos) in order to have truly achieved adulthood. In the same way, the maturation of the human race necessitates our collective mastery of these two areas. In recent years we have made significant progress in the field of sexology, […] After nuclear holocaust, the next major threat to our existence is the violent decay of our civilisation due to violence-enabling in the [...] media." Dave Grossman in 'On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society', chapter: 'Introduction to the paperback edition', Page 23 'Just Turn It Off, or Let Them Eat Cake' (first published in 1995)
Gordon Willis interview here: http://www.fdtimes.com/2014/05/20/remembering-gordon-willis-asc/
Consolidation
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Kennemer dunes, today. Consolidation [ together we know more ]
Min/max temperature: 3°C/10°C; humidity: 91%; precipitation: 9 mm; sea level pressure: 988 hPa; wind SE 33.8 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 609 m., Scattered Clouds 1249 m
"Our era is the individualistic one, and the myth of the happy single obscures our longing for the other in combination with our distrust of this other. This is strange. We live in one of the safest regions of the world and we have never been so afraid of one another! Why do we view the other as a possible threat? In my opinion, the explanation is to be found in the dominant nature of neoliberal ideology, setting the tone of the past thirty years or so. When it started , Margaret Thatcher produced a very prophetic formulation: ‘There is no such thing as society, there are only individuals’. In the meantime, neoliberalism has installed a society with isolated and ever competing individuals. An unexpected side effect was the growing need for top down control of everything and everyone. We have been turned into lonely hedgehogs filling in forms for every step we take. And we have to take it, that’s for sure. The golden goose is called success. Michael Douglas puts it quite clearly in one of 1987’s blockbusters ‘Wall street’: “Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works.” Neoliberalism has realised its own principle, a ‘rational’ selfishness. We do no longer parent, or teach or love. We invest in parenthood, education and relations. And if the investment does not return satisfactorily, we dump the lot, and move on to the next. Get rid of the weakest links in order to boost productivity. The other is first of all a competitor. Team spirit has become rare and needs to be boosted by team building weekends, ironically enough filled with survival of the fittest games. In the early stages of neoliberalism the principle was limited to industry and trade, but today it dominates everyday life. An ironic example can be found in so called ‘reality shows’ on TV, with striking titles such as 'The Weakest Link', 'Temptation Island' or 'Top Starter'. The irony is that they pretend to show us who we really are, whilst they are dictating how we should behave. Their message is clear: the ideal human is a rat-raceloving player, always looking for number one. We have to score. In bed, at work, in life. The winner takes it all. Under the skin of our successful society, fear thrives, from fear of failure to a general distrust of the menacing other. Indeed, if everybody is only looking for number one, then no one is to be trusted. […] For the last thirty years, our neoliberal society has been promoting competitive individualism and top down control. Today, the smoke is clearing and we are left with a world of winners and losers, all of them on their own. The winner, swell but lonely at the top. No favours for the lady. The loser, lonely and ignored anyway. Both of them controlled by Big Brother, with almost no autonomy left. And we are sick of it, both literally and metaphorically."
Paul Verhaeghe 'Ted-X talk', first published in 2013. Transcript available as Pdf
" [ Jim: ] "I'll tell you one thing about growing up in Beverly Hills. Rich people are fucking weird. Money makes you weird. What I finally realised was these people worked their whole lives, a lot of times -- it's not old money, it's tons of new money -- worked their whole lives to get this stuff that's gonna fix 'em, that's gonna make everything okay, you know, the wife and the car and the house… and it doesn't work. So they get really pissed off and start acting out in really strange ways, like doing large amounts of cocaine and sleeping with prostitutes. People's fathers were doing things like that. […] It was really a trip growing up in this environment. Huge amounts of corruption and drugs and sex. I remember kids in fifth grade that were already in recovery. They had AA chips, but I didn't know what they were at the time. The moms are constantly on antidepressants -- these soccer moms. There are huge things of pills in everyone's house. They would take their kids to the doctor if they had a bad haircut. Everybody I knew was on some sort of allergy medicine, Ritalin or Valium or Percodan, something -- everybody was being treated."
David Weddle in 'Among the Mansions of Eden', Tales of love, Lust, and Land in Beverly Hills', page 231, 232, first published in 2003 by Harper Collins Publishers Inc., New York
"Let me repeat once more that identification is emotion. You might start gently to arouse emotion in us, but your success or failure will depend on whether you can sustain the rising emotion which also corresponds with rising suspense. […] Why has emotion such fatal power over our lives and, finally, why do other peoples' misfortunes arouse in us such thunderous reaction? Fear for their lives drove our forefathers to live in the trees and hunger and fear drove them down to the ground once more. Although we think of fear as a concept, something we cannot touch, the moment it permeates our consciousness it becomes a dreadful reality, causing real pain. Fear is a universal emotion and one of the deadliest of all human experiences. But this singular emotion is responsible for man's survival. It is paradoxical but true that hate or love, treachery or loyalty, spring from one and the same source -- insecurity. Emotion then is a thousand-pronged weapon to safeguard our lives. It spells out for our survival the basic tenet of our experience, insecurity, and now it has become a truism that life would be impossible without that insecurity of which we are so mortally afraid. Insecurity gives impetus to inventors to safeguard our existence. But insecurity […] can disguise itself as any one of an endless variety of things. It is almost impossible to recognise the naked fear behind the disguise of, let's say, philanthropy -- a beautiful gesture, a sign of understanding, love -- is the outgrowth of fear. [ All ] human emotion and conflict, whether personal, national, or international, spring from the same source -- insecurity. Logic doesn't always have a change to win against emotion, because emotion has the power to melt even granite and make prejudice blush with shame. It is the most potent weapon man can wield against man, the prime power behind all human conduct. Reason may triumph in the end but emotion will carry a project to success. […] Our emotions are aroused to the highest pitch whenever -- in reality or imagination -- our security is endangered. No reason or logic governs emotion. Most of the time it is spontaneous […] It is the forerunner of evil or happy tidings and the invisible guardian of our well-being. […] The spectre of danger haunting people in creative literature reminds us of our own safety. Whatever happened to others can happen to us. This is the reason then that even the shadow of danger panics us and our emotions are instantly aroused."
Lajos Egri in 'The Art of Creative Writing', page 26, 27, 28, first published in 1965 by Kensington Publishing Corp, New York
Spirit of the Game
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Kennemer Dunes -- path to the sea, sunset, today. Confidence [ create scope ]
Min/max temperature: -2 °C/-5 °C; min/max humidity: 64/93; precipitation: 0.0 mm, sea level pressure: 1024.22 hPa; min/max wind speed: 13 km/h/18 km/h; visibility: 9.3 kilometers (spring in the air)
"[ question: ] Do you also believe that physical training equals mental training; trough tough physical training we train the mind? [ answer: ] Trough tough physical training we develop discipline. We develop the ability to concentrate on a task. Physical training is essential for mental training. Physical training will lead to neuro-plasticity; it will grow the brains connections; it will grow the brain matter. That is just one aspect of it. At a physical level, physical training will grow your brain. And that has been proven, science is behind that, backs it up. Physical training, when you get into more complicated things, like gymnastics or learning the olympic lifts or learning new and different things […] training [with ] constantly varied functional movements, done in a unique way, every single day, with the big four skills of mental toughness placed into that; develop things like Courage, and Honour, and Discipline; that will develop mental toughness. […] Once you get beyond that, beyond that initial layer of 'I can tough trough something' […] 'I got the physical and mental skill to drive trough a task' ; true mental toughness is […] to develop great vitality over the quality, quantity and directionality of your thinking mind and then integrate your whole mind, so that you can use all of the vast skills that you have. So you can develop [your] 20 times potential, so that you can win on the battlefield of life, kick ass, and take names, develop front sight focus; so you focus on the right targets, the right time, and you win. And you win not for the benefit of yourself, but for your team, for your community, for all -- ultimately -- humanity. […] World centric win, with front sight focus, comes from winning in the inner domain, winning in the mind; before you step into the battlefield […]"
Mark Divine responding to my question in his FSF (Front Sight Focus) live-seminar on his Youtube channel, streamed live on Januari 23, 2017
Parkour is where the heart is
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Kennemer Dunes, today. Recoverytraining [run, bend, stretch, walk, move, rest ]
"Individuals raised in aggressive societies are prone to attribute fighting to man's biological makeup and have difficulty conceiving of people living peaceably. Researchers coming from these settings who subscribe to the belief that man possesses an aggressive drive requiring periodic discharge selectively search for evidence of psychological disorders when they study the people of [peaceful] societies. Considering the omnipresence of problems of living, the dubious validity of personality tests, and the elasticity of referents for psychiatric conditions, one who sets out to demonstrate that non combativeness is hazardous to mental health should have no difficulty in finding confirmatory evidence, regardless of the merits of the belief. The reinforcement customs and habits of aggressive societies are rarely, if ever, studied by observers from gentle cultures. Were they to conduct anthropological field research revealing that in societies in which aggressiveness is idealised and cultivated people recurrently humiliate, injure, and kill each other, they would undoubtedly be struck with how aggression is generated by man's social customs. From the social learning respective, human nature is characterised as a vast potentiality that can be fashioned by social influences into a variety of forms."
Albert Bandura in 'Agression, a social learning analysis', page 113. First published in 1973 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., USA
"The capacity to use symbols provides humans with a powerful means of dealing with their environment. Trough verbal and imagined symbols people process and preserve experiences in representational forms that serve as guides for future behaviour. […] Images of desirable futures foster courses of action designed to lead towards more distant goals. Trough the medium of symbols people can solve problems without having to enact all the various alternative solutions; and they can foresee the probable consequences of different actions and alter their behaviour accordingly. […] From a social learning perspective [social learning theory: the explanation of human behaviour in terms of a continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioural, and environmental determants. This conception of human functioning then neither casts people into the role of powerless objects controlled by environmental forces nor free agents who can become whatever they choose. Both people and their environments are reciprocal determinants of each other], human nature is characterised as a vast potentiality that can be fashioned by direct and vicarious experience into a variety of forms within biological limits. The level of psychological and physiological development […] restricts what can be acquired at any given time."
Albert Bandura in 'Social Learning Theory', page 13. First published in 1977 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., USA
"Pain is delight."
Jan Siebelink's 'Pijn is genot', title of excellent Dutch book with conversations with (among others) Erik Breukink, Wim van Est, Jan Janssen, Peter Post, Steven Rooks, Jan Siemons, Gert-Jan Theunisse, Johan van der Velde en Joop Zoetemelk
