Writing Samples

2017: A Call to Hearts

Blog, Writing Samples

So it’s time to organize. It’s time to buy the ticket and take the ride. It’s time to mount up, put your hand over your heart and pledge allegiance to one another.

This year, I’m editing and curating the Lucidity Festival blog: Dream Journal. Here’s one of my first articles for this marketing cycle, “A Call to Hearts.”

Captured by Kaylie ‘Violet’ Starkey of Violet Visions

Alright you Lucid rainbow warriors. We got clobbered. Swept up. The world turned upside down and we lost our footing.

Now what? It’s a new year. It’s a new world. We’re back in the counter-culture. So let’s dig in. Let’s act like we have a message and we believe in it. Let’s organize and support one another in deeper, more meaningful ways.

I’ll tell you this, in 2016 at Lucidity, I didn’t talk about Trump once. He never came up. I even mentioned it on a panel and almost everyone in the audience had had the same experience. He didn’t exist.

It wasn’t even about whether it was a possible reality. It just didn’t change the reality we were creating together. He doesn’t. We weren’t afraid. And that’s all that needs to be said about it right now.

It just doesn’t change the reality we are creating together.

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I’m a mass shooter

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photographer

I’m a mass shooter
Hands clasped around an automatic trigger
Crosshairs pointed down long barrels at
Shimmering dreams and setting suns

I’m a weapon of mass deconstruction
Analyzing and theorizing how to justify
The end of civility and to usher in
A new C(K)ali fate

Weapon drawn, I’m strapped for days, sporting
Flashbang Memory
LP-E12 Battery
Shoulder Rig and Go Pros
Canons at the ready
24 Frames Per Second

I’m a pixel warrior
Waging my wager with the
Cocreators

Climbing behind my single lens reflex
I wear my media badge of honor and fight against
The lonesomeness we feel when we walk outside in the morning and no one says our name or wonders where we’ve been holed up for days crying tears of solitude as we grab real weapons and turn them on those who could have saved us with just a little kindness

I point my camera at you to tell you that you are loved
and you are beautiful
and your story is worth telling
and your heart is worth hearing

I am a mass shooter
And my weapon is glass and lasers
Story telling at the speed of light and
Protecting that which can never be destroyed

I clutch my camera closely and inscribe
“This Machine Kills Fascists”

Israel’s renewable-energy dreams set to awaken at Eilat parley

Writing Samples

[box type=”bio”] This Op-Ed was published February 1, 2009 in the Jerusalem Post by myself, Wesley Pinkham, and Matthew Krieger. [/box]

It is not news that the US government has consistently supported Israel as its primary economic and diplomatic partner in the Middle East. But the reasons for continued investment in the region are based on more than lofty democratic and ideological similarities. American dollars sent to Israel have resulted in stable and significant returns on investment. That this economic partnership is now expanding into the field of alternative energy comes as no surprise.

From the wispy, year-round winds in the North to the sun-drenched desert in the South, Israel’s climate and technological ingenuity are proving to be successful launching points for a widespread and sustainable green-energy movement. The US government and private investors – Americans and Israelis – have taken note of this and have already begun investing deeply, both monetarily and politically.

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Concerning the Tumultuous Future of the UCLA Arts Library

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As a student leader in the push to save the UCLA Arts Library from dismemberment, actions including a petition signed by 4,000 people, coverage in the Daily Bruin {not once, but twice} and an outpouring of Social Media hits, we were successful in keeping the library in tact with full operating hours. Below is the open letter I wrote to the University President…

There are many things that college has taught me and a great things I am yet to learn. As a World Arts and Cultures major, I am no stranger to outrage at the disintegration of the arts in our modern society. Indeed, a core principle of my education thus far has been towards sensitivity to the frailty of the arts. Yet, I am not so oblivious to believe that the building of great monuments to the arts in LA such as the New Getty, Walt Disney Concert Hall or the new Kaufman and Broad buildings would not, in time, render other venues in the city inauspicious at best, or frivolous at worst. With every great achievement, previous greatness becomes yesterday’s news. With the crowning achievements that the internet has achieved in the past two decades, the written word, the printed book or the writing on the wall has been rendered sub-par. And it comes with deep regret and sadness that I hear news of the tumultuous future of our arts library here at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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