I like to take photos sometimes, documenting the city : subjective lens

Nature says
Pull on the brakes
The quilter is king

Let the music flow in
Seep the moments what it feels to be alive
Just alive with nothing else
Nothing to distract you, to fill in, to make,
This is what I need
A moment of peace when the world stops
Only in my dreams
There isn’t a menacing end
A place to dream like a child with no fear
In my dreams there’s peace
I pull on the brakes real hard
Come to a full stop

If Smokey’s going to be okay
Then I’ll be okay
She will spend her cat life in confinement
In between four walls can’t get out
Her whole life
We can do it for a while
We are part animal
She lays there contemplating
She sleeps she eats she plays
She gets bored she looks for ways to communicate
As she lays here listening to Louis Armstrong
Breathing letting go the stress
There is no stress it’s a lovely day
In her cat life

Those comforting voices
This thing maybe from the past
When you hear the buzz of the city life
This thing maybe from the past
Each on our own on this earth to survive

We are pulling hard on the brakes all together
In order to stop the monster
Let all your demons out the door
Purge

Will we go back to what we know
Go back to doing things like we used to
Or will we let some go
Some of the benefits are of no precedent
Spending much less
And I don’t miss it
The restaurants, the shopping, the futile
I don’t miss that
I miss the hope the light the certainty of things or at least the less uncertain future
We truly don’t know what will happen as a consequence of the times we are living
Will both prime and health minister of England be on respirator and maybe one of them die. It would send this country into some dire shock. Will dictature or war erupt in other parts of the world because let’s face it, if America can inject trillions back into the economy, it isn’t the case of many countries in the world. They are following the quarantine lead. But maybe in the end since some of them don’t even really have an economy in place, it won’t affect them so much. Because the mortality rate between what we are doing and just letting the virus spread isn’t that big of a difference. In the grand scheme of things. We have already established that morally and ethically we don’t have a choice but to do what we are doing. We should have done it sooner. And better but where we stand, we just don’t have a choice. To wreak our economy. But if you don’t have one to start with, the quarantine is just what you do, what they did more than 5 centuries ago, during the plague. They say the black plague led to the renaissance in Italy. This country was already back then, particularly hit by the plague. « Price of food dropped and land value declined by 30-40% in most parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400. The survivors of the plague found not only that the prices of food were cheaper but also that land was more abundant, and many of them inherited property from their dead relatives, and this probably destabilized feudalism. »

This isn’t the plague. Yet. But a similar pandemic could develop. So imagine what that would be like. If this Covid already brought us to our knees. We aren’t immune. This is a test of nature. And maybe nature has some wicked plague like pandemic waiting for us at the end of this tunnel. Who knows, this is just to say that we can take time to reflect. On our society, on the meaning of what we do.

Sit with stillness. Rather than business
Sit with stillness. Rather than business

To sense the full insouciance of children. They know something is up but they aren’t anxious, for them today is like yesterday.

One thing we can do again after all this is over
Is walking across a city, biking. That don’t hurt the planet. We can see friends hang love play music.

Once things settle down and it could be in 50 years, there are things I’d like to do again but some that aren’t essential. And it seems to come down to this delimitation : essential vs non essential business. Where do you draw the line and who will get the pie.
I’m defining what is essential to me. There isn’t many business involved.
So quit ruling the world with it

If you can do it online choose this option
2 weeks ago I would have chosen the other without hesitation
This is the tip of an iceberg made of massive layoffs
With everything coming to a halt
We are learning to live without a job.
Because realistically the chances of getting a new one are slim.
If you live day by day paycheck to paycheck we are asked to make this sacrifice. We gladly do rather then the alternative. There is no alternative. We must figure it out. Survive
We are not offered 1.5 trillion directly
Just the hope that at some point we will get some help until then we figure it out. So far so good I’ve made it through another day, for some.
Suddenly this homeless man feels closer
That is the way he lives everyday while we are passing by.
He right now gets the help of no one either, like everyday he doesn’t have a job and tries to survive in this city.
But right now, very temporarily we hope, we don’t have a job either or close to, a matter of months
A massive amount of us suddenly
In the whole world too

I wonder how they would send individuals each a paycheck. Logistically where do you start. There is no entry point for such a measure. How do you reach every single one of us.
And then there are companies more or less big that choose to go more in debt to sustain those dozen of jobs people depend on.
Hopefully making the gamble on the people is the right one to do.
That we can help out each other

That maybe with 1.5 trillions we could give the knowledge to make the virus test and financial help to each country who would then each select a X amount of medical labs to produce the virus test. In a matter of one month we could have a lot if not all the people of the planet be tested. Quarantaine those who are affected, let the virus die there and let the other ones free. A month is probably feasible for a lot of us. Definitely not all. But it could save the economy. And that sounds a bit more hopeful. That for sure it won’t last too long. Suddenly the message lessen the level of anxiety. It is moral and if ethically raising up to this can put us in a better place it lessen the crisis. It is idealistic but there is really no reason why we can’t do it. My friend Aaron came up with this great plan, it deserves to be heard.

And then there are all these other things of life, those that matter that you can still do. Love and spread positive vibes. That’s one thing. A daily ritual, making coffee, a routine, a corner of street you pass everyday. With a different scent, a different sight, a new sound, with new eyes. We are made of humanity and can still find enjoyment while being submitted to a test, that all things considered is given to us by nature.

We can place blame that we should have been prepared that someone will have to be accountable or we can see the positive changes that this force imposed on us.

Maybe the online option will save our earth. Limit our mobility but in the end, is it such a bad thing if we continue to exist. As a society. As we know it but with some changes. That are reversible. For our grand kids. A sacrifice I am willing to make. Loosing physical daily closeness to each other for a while or for longer, until we find a better way to heal our planet, is worth the trade.

« you either get busy livin’ or you get busy dyin’ »
The pleasures of life
Some remain, find them.
Tomorrow is another day

Tomorrow
The world will go dark
Borders closing down
We are all going to stop doing what we do
All day long
All night long
Some things will remain
Most of it will change
A gigantic pattern change
Breaking the whole chain
Globally by day 3
We’ll have reach a unique moment where the gas emissions, the economics, the businesses, the people
Will be either stranded or get to go on
What will decide
Savings, temporary relief
Who really can get out without scars
Will we get help in one form or another or are we all just taking a gamble
Just getting by see what tomorrow’s made of
Feels like a punch in the stomach
No one asked for but here we are
We unite or we fight
Are we going to read more, be more attentive to what matters most
Everything that was yesterday
That will not be tomorrow will it be missed
Are those concession so hard to make and for who
Will chaos set in
At the brim of the unknown we all retreat
Farewells will society survive
Resilient species like in Sci-fi movies
We learn but we are trying to protect each other
Yo what’s happening
Will we all sing have cabin fever or end up in the hospital
Its a 2 to 3 chance
Mother Nature forcing us to stop frozen in our tracks
What do we do how do we adapt
People maybe will read more and magazines too
Digitally or in news stands
Like in the old days or not
Time is slowing down, the frenzy the busy the buisness
But what if the internet went dark too
Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen
Tomorrow is another day
Been living this way for ages
Months of isolation tunnels of creation
Trained at this like the best soldier

From the forgotten projects archives, homemade circa 2016.
Two clocks, meant to slow down time in real time: meet the slow-down-er visual player here.

Sartre argued that a central proposition of Existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the most important consideration for individuals is that they are individuals—independently acting and responsible, conscious beings (“existence”)—rather than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individuals fit (“essence”). Wiki Existentialism

Why this is, a sort of manifesto. 
Because I’m tired of feeding a meaningless validation based system.

Tired of being at the mercy of Silicon Valley’s business models. Tired of being turned into a product for profit. To anticipate whats the next big thing, what platform will be. I’m just me. As an artist, the tid bits produced are like a window to my soul- my expression, thoughts, opinions- that I won’t give away as a marketing commodity to social media platforms, in exchange for “exposure”. How is this an exchange when constantly prompted to pay for more “exposure”? If you don’t pay (with literal money, figurative “prostitution” or by spending time on the social media platform), you simply aren’t being exposed.

This is an all-in-one Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, [insert hot new social media platform here]. With no likes, thumbs, or even comments enabled. No one may ever come across this free floating atom, but is it any worse than people mindlessly scrolling through feeds looking for funny memes?

We happen to have a gigantic and free www canvas. It once used to be wild, and belong to the people, not corporations. Before social media and platforms started pissing contests to earn its biggest share and rule over it. Lets take it back.

I spend time exploring rabbit holes on the web. I love falling into them and getting lost not knowing where I will resurface from. With new ideas, thoughts and discoveries. I’m thankful for this technology we have been handed in our generation. For someone who loves connecting the dots, to follow signs, it is like chocolate. When I come across a compelling artist, blog or idea, I bookmark it and check back frequently. Its like a chaotic brain map in constant expansion.

That was the role played by library before the web. Then taken over by such medias as radio and TV. But in all of these cases, there was a curated selection made between you and what you could access. What is precious and invaluable about the free web, is the quasi non existence of a curation system. Once you’ve replaced Google with other search engine such as Duck Duck Go of course, we can tele transport into someone else’s world rid of predetermined algorithms. Open Source like WordPress here, allowing anyone to express and contribute to it.

As a music artist, I will extend this thought into the (lack of or) benefits of record labels curation system as well.

But to cut it short, the free web as libraries, don’t aim at “degrading our humanity”. Social Media by design, do.

If you stumble upon this blog, you may or may not enjoy it. I don’t need to know. I love you all, not for reading me, but just for being. Fellow human, maybe our paths would cross one day, we’d have a drink.

“The business models of Silicon Valley are controlling our lives and the price of it all is dehumanization. We eagerly signed up for what they were selling, but soon realized that in doing so, we were accidentally degrading our humanity. We can’t let it subvert our human urge to build meaningful and satisfying life. The problem isn’t the technology per say, but the way so many people engage with these tools.”
— Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism

“Facebook, at its core, is a surveillance machine, and to expect that to change is misplaced optimism.” Tim Wu for the NYT