custard (film debut)

peace to all reading this.

back in the afrolab 9000 from some 29,000,000 miles of travel the last couple months.
in march, on tour, my ifone broke in many pieces so i replaced it with a
flip fone. this joint has me properly tuned up again as a 90s baby should be--
i'm connected but not to the hive mind, to tendrils. i can text and call, no apps doe.
parroting mark gonzalez, does a parent really need a smartphone? probably not.
let's read more. my son imitates me whenever i read. that alone was plenty reason for me.

an interesting effect too has been how profound the trauma and death spectres of
social media attack me now that i spend longer space away from them. someone posted a video
of a father being accosted by police on his yard as the police called him by numerous identities other than his, and told him of warrants that were impossible to have been his, and the psychic barrage was immediate, tissue deep. my heart racing. programming already unfolding itself onto me. whomever makes these videos wants me to be panicking, whether they consider themselves my ally or not is almost irrelevant at this point, my panic is being actively sought.

what's disturbing about this line of thinking is that i am already quite familiar with the concept of the allostatic load. this is the amount of stress one's body can handle before destruction. i assume that what is available to me is available to anyone else sophisticated enough to make these videos day in and out, and the culture it creates, of panic, of worry, of stress.

life is for enjoyment, for loving, for creating beauty, for humor, for building, healing, and cultivating understanding. at minimum, that is the good and noble work. doing this despite life's shit odds and chances is what makes the sweet twinkle, what lends the shiver inducing quality when Busta commands: "we gon sparkle now". and if that opportunity, to sparkle, doesn't ever come again-- to demand upfront the appropriate exit from the game, on one's feet, staring in the eyes of the aggressor and yielding nothing. we are hunting grins and belly laughs, on the prowl for the Good Time, can you hear that beat? 

as an artist i want to add propaganda to the social sphere that i think operates as an antibiotic to the allostatic load, to the worry they systematically breed into us. i want to make work that invites meditation and instills a rhythm of peace in the participants.

with that thought in mind, i worked on a short film called custard. it follows my last month's travels, in quiet beats, with friends, on a quest to bring beauty to people far from home. we will never fall the fuck off, we promise.