The Perilous Path of Becoming a Media Producer
During a guest seminar at our class at Applied Visual Communications Studies at the university in Odense, the media producer Klaus Birch gave us an assignment. He wanted us to find out our driving force, and present it to the class. Why did we really want to work with media production?
Pondering over this assignment for the next few days, it became clearer and clearer to myself, what my own driving force was. Partly to my own astonishment, I realized that it was — and is, to a great extent, my rage.
I do not want to beautify the world with my work, glamourize it or give people hollow happy endings. I do not want to sell a million copies, become rich, successful and popular, by giving people what they want, or what they believe they want. I do not want to provide any of that comfort and well-known safety, which the stereotypical television show or blockbuster movie so often satisfactorily delivers. I am not creative, because it is nice, or because I want to be nice to people. I do not work with media to become popular or to sell. And I do not make films, because I like things that shine and glitter in the moonlight.
In part, because I simply cannot. Deep inside of me, there is something unknown, which struggles and whithers and screams and wants to take me somewhere else. Most often in the directly opposite direction of the way mainstream culture flows. Away from the assembly line butchery, the constrained, narrowminded lines of thinking sought induced to us while young. Away to break free from the straitjackets of that industrial grip, which keeps every one of us strapped tightly to our benches, not being able to move, not being able to feel ourselves deeply. The feeling is getting closer and closer, and the struggling and whithering no longer possible to ignore.
All my work conveys this feeling, as it struggles into an expression, which can somehow be communicated. It often takes very different forms, as I explore and learn with each project — and with each little incident of my life, which takes me to a new place and a new experience. But deep down, this feeling of something which struggles to come out, lies at the root of my creativity. All my work bears its marks.
Discovering this deep driving force, my rage, and learning to know it better and work with it, is one of the most powerful things I have ever learned. And I am still learning. This article will examine the horrific secret of this rage I feel, and take one shallow dive into these first few lessons of my own 'coming to terms' with my creativity, of which the FilmTrain project is the latest.
Wannabe Filmmakers
At the time Klaus Birch gave us this assignment, these feelings were probably reinforced by other frustrations of mine, in particular my strongly felt and poorly hidden contempt for my co-students, whom I dismissed as wannabe filmmakers with no serious ambition or vision. Yes, they wanted to work with media. But why? What was it, that they would express and tell to the world, that was so terribly important, and would not only repeat the self-images of popular culture, that I felt were so despicable? Where were their unique voices to be heard?
In part, I had chosen the university to get away from these hoaring crowds of young people who wanted to be cool and make films. At heart so confused about what they wanted to do with it, that they end up blindly repeating old stories and old modes of thought over and over again — or picking up any new trend or fashion, without questioning why. I found it deeply depressing. I didn't want to be or become like that. After a series of turbulent years finding my own way into the media business, I decided to go back to study again. I applied for admission to the university, picking history as my major, planning to combine this with a minor in media studies.
Now, coming from history, which I had become so happy and comfortable with, I suddenly had to start all over again. I found myself surrounded by these untrained individuals, in this loose, unfocused media environment. I wanted to scream and get away from it. I didn't want to start all over again.
Later I came to value many of our differences, and in later projects I came to highly respect and appreciate the mutual discussions and creative cooperation with other members of our group. Being in a new place didn't mean I had to cease questioning things, or flush everything else I'd learned out with the bathing water. And everybody doesn't necessarily need to become an artist, in order to work with living images. There may be any number of different paths, mine not being particularly right for anyone other than myself.
During the course of my studies I acquired an appreciation of my own particularity, that I had not known before. It was sharpened by that angry awakening I felt inside again. Now challenged, growing to become more conscious, than it had been before.
A Shield of Arrogance
Why am I so angry? It has not always been so. Growing up, I was engulfed by my own curiosity and imagination. In my adult life, I am still overwhelmed by curiosity and playfulness, and my want to create and experiment, when I rediscover the little kid in myself. Being at awe at astronauts, firemen and the fantastic imagery found in popular journals of science. The fun in comics, reading or playing with Lego bricks or computers, and being able to create my complete own universes, detached from the harsh reality of school, homework, and the unbearable bullying of other kids. My universes were my escape pods; places I could enter and explore on my own. But somewhere, something I didn't recognize at the time, there was also the slow, but troubling, insidious suggestion that other frustrations ahead would threaten to take me away from this fantastic journey of discovery.
My first experience in video was a group project in a film and television course; the short horror film Victim of Changes (1994). None in the group had ever made a video before, and we threw ourselves enthusiastically into this project, to make a horror film. The playfulness that characterizes this film is sharply contrasted by its brutal theme. A man has fallen asleep in a ghostly classroom. He is haunted by a nightmare, in which he is chasing a blond girl in the woods. It turns out, that the same girl he used to play with as a young boy, is now the object of his desire. Sometime during his flirt and dance with her, he turns into a monster, catching up on her in a burned-out ruin and killing her, stabbing her to death. Waking up, he reaches for his schoolbag, realizing that the bloody object he holds in his hand, is her dead heart.
When I take a look at my earliest work, I am always amazed at the arrogance I put on display in these projects, as well as in their presentation to the outside world. I wonder how other people have perceived of me; this wandering lunatic, writing, orchestrating and manipulating other people into his playground. I had only little regard for people's feelings or understanding of my ideas, as long as they would play along; be my puppets in my act of puppeteering.
The first rule, I decided, for the editing process of my 'real' first film (meaning the first film I wrote and produced by myself), the short fiction film Insidious Suggestion (1996), was that nothing should be explained. It had to be shown. I was concerned with style, with imagery and metaphors, with achieving particular effects of rhytm, disharmony and deliberate discomfort. I was making poetry. Only a few people probably appreciated this like I did, but that wasn't important to me. The project was finished, and it conveyed the message, however well hidden it seemed to my baffled audience. Once during a performance of the film in the elderly cultural house, where two of my elderly actresses came from, one member of the audience walked out in protest, with the remark, that he didn't 'want to look at that crap'.
I feel closely connected to these films, as they convey to me a vulnerability — behind that shield of arrogance and indifference, that they put on display. The arrogance has been my strategy of defense, the strategy of my persisting claim to be here and express myself.
The 'insidious suggestion' in all my work has been the persistent feeling, that something is wrong. That we are not told the truth, but filled with the lies of mass produced imagery and journalist stereotypes; tricked into believing that our world is safe and can be safe, and that heroes will always defeat the bad guys. I grew up during the last decades of the cold war, with the moral propaganda of the post-WWII era, only to discover, that the images I had come to love in Star Wars and the works of Walt Disney & co. was nothing but camouflage for a regime, which preaches ideals but has no real trust in the children it raises. They have to be filled up with knowledge. They have to be asked, before they may speak. They have to fit in, or be lost. Fine, if they are creative, but who cares, if they cannot write, spell or do their math. Meanwhile, the mob of bullying kids cries out louder and louder over the helpless kid, who happens to look a little different or do things a little differently than the others. Who maybe happens to not even know why he happens to be there, in the first place. Because it is not what he would choose for himself.
The Secret Friend
My first attempt at making a semi-professionally produced film was The Secret Friend (1999, org. Danish title Drengen og englen). It was written and produced in the spring and summer of 1998, and filmed in little over a week on location, on my own old school in Odense, with a full crew of proficient people in each their field. The film premiered in the spring of 1999, and was later sold to the Danish Broadcast Corporation (DR), for a symbolic price however, but, perhaps significant, aired right after a documentary on fugitives remembering the Holocaust.
The film tells the story of Thomas, who vividly imagines things and escapes into his own dreamworld, where his guardian angel, his secret friend, 'takes care' of the bigger boys, who are bullying him. Inspired by the wrath of God, as felt in the old testament, the angel murders these kids, and the school therapist, the teacher and everyone else adult soon turn their attentions to Thomas. Not to help him, because in that regard they are powerless, but to point their fingers blaming him for something taking place only in his imagination. The angel arrives to his aid however, killing the grown-ups as well, helping him into the light. Here the dead are brought back to life, and everyone is happy. The misdoings are somehow transformed into his own imaginative world.
I enjoy the gentle, uncompromising satire of this film, roasting the adult characters for their part in maintaining the institution, which permits this horror. When reading the manuscript after the film was finished, I've often felt that the satire could have been more to the point, had I followed the script more closely — or perhaps, had I loosened up everything a bit. The film became way too polished in its imagery, not so dirty, handheld, and sinisterly monstrous, as I had envisioned when writing it. And not so childishly naive, as I originally had in mind. The kids were much too old, they were not so innocent as I had imagined. And during the production I was much too focused on producing a film that looked and was told 'professionally'. I was intent on proving to others and not least to myself, that I was a professional, capable of pulling a production of this kind together. All these things aside, it was interesting to note, that the film accomplished to tell the story at another level. The audience whom it got to, shuddered from the coldness and indifference of the film's treatment of it's theme. In that regard, the film's 'professional' and distant, monitoring style achieved an absense of moral questioning, that made perfect sense.
Later I confessed to myself, that I had worked much too hard to make this film. I had been organizing the production in a ruthless manner that resembled too much the sacrifices I wanted to get away from. I don't want to be consumed with stress or pressure when I work, like I was when we made this film. It should be enjoyable, it ought to be fun. And had I been less focused on production issues, on being a 'professional', chances are my mind would have been the more set on the film and its inner life; how to deal with its serious theme.
I do not want to make coffee around a production house for several years on a minimum wage, because I love film. I don't really love film. I love what I can do with it, but not to the point of sacrificing everything else and busting my ass for getting near the smell of success of other filmmakers. Nor do I live and breathe for the project to the point of sacrificing myself or others in the process. There's a limit to what I can put into my work. Afterall, it's only film. While I still believe a film — or any other creative work for that matter — must be damn important, and better has to be, in order to do all this work for it — finally, there are things that are more important. I can't live from cigarettes and dreams. I can't live my life, always consumed by a future creation of mine, something else trapped somewhere in oblivion. I want to be here, right now, and care about this moment. This is what is really important, when the day is done.
A Werewolf on the Run
The background for The Secret Friend was my failed attempt at making a feature film project come together in 1997. This project was known under the title The Monster's Soul (org. Uhyrets Sjæl), and deserves to be mentioned here, as it is my most ambitious project to date — and one, that I learned a great deal from. The film is very dear to my heart, as it envelops and underlines the importance of everything I have been through and have touched upon in this article.
The story of the film was inspired by a horror comic by Richard Corben, set in a medieval setting, essentially a werewolf story with a devious twist. A mysterious man is on the run. He can find no peace, driven from one place to another, an unwilling outlaw, everywhere he goes, hunted by angry mobs. One night he takes hold in the abandonded ruins of a castle. From his hideout he witnesses the assault on a young peasant girl, by a gang of peasants. He comes to the girl's aid, driving the attackers away. But as the night falls, he can protect her no longer. He is a werewolf, and when the full moon rises, he will have no control over himself, unleashing his incredible powers, left to him by an ancient curse, concluded with the moon-god by his ancestors. She will have to lock him up, lest he molests her himself.
When the perpetrators return to the ruins during the night, with the confused hero locked up safely in the dungeon, the peasant girl is alone and defenceless. But in the turn of the night's events, she turns out to hold an unusual reserve of powers, and ends up killing the men that attacked her. The restless hero, let out of his chains in the morning, is credited with the monstrous deeds of the night. He is on the run again — this time, not just from the angry mobs chasing him, but from the horror of his own disbelief.
The project came off to a promising start. Zentropa showed interest in the project, after seeing Insidious Suggestion and reading my proposal for the film, and was willing to sponsor the support of a script consultant, as well as the needed camera and lighting equipment for the production, and probably more. It was a huge opportunity, but ultimately I blew it. And in a way I am happy, that I did. I loved the story and I would still love to do this film. But I was on the wrong track, the wrong path. At the time, my motivations and ambitions were much too muddled up for my own good.
I was only beginning to find out a little about what was driving the wheels in the film business, but worked frantically to make everything happen as I dreamed it would. Too frantically, it seemed, as I ended up in a hospital in a bizarre setting not too far from the character gallery and universe of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom. Somehow, in between my work on this project and my application for the National Film School; somewhere along the way between my two full-time jobs, for a Copenhagen-based grassroot TV-station and my daytime job as a postman, I had forgotten myself.
'It looks like a beetroot...'
Something had begun to grow between my legs. What was it? Was I gradually becoming a freak myself, like the hero of my script? It grew and I ignored it, as too bizarre, too strange to take seriously. But as the pain insisted, it could no longer be ignored. I could hardly walk, and suddenly, in the middle of editing a TV-program, I became diehard feverish. I had to take some kind of action. After an insane night, I finally had the sense to go see a professional. When I came to the doctor, I was sent in to a young medical student, who got to see something he probably never had seen before, and are not likely to forget. Quickly he dispatched me to more learned authority. Before finally being sent into surgery, I was explained what had happened, by the kind surgeon speaking in strong Polish accent. Apparently one of my testicles had 'slipped' around itself, cutting its own blood supply in the process. With the slow but sure result, that the testicle had died, from lack of oxygen. While the testicle festered, the blood had kept pumping and filling up the space, eventually stiffening to become solid as rock.
When I woke up after surgery, I was happy and without pain. I wrote a most telling, short poem to a lady friend : 'I am happy and in love, and between my legs I have a huge, stiff cock. It is yellow, it is purple, and it looks like a beetroot'. One night at the hospital, sick and restless from fever, I asked for sleeping medication. Instead, the kind female doctor came up from her watch, to sit at my bedside, asking me kindly about those terrible dreams, while caressing my arm.
The stay at the hospital gave rise to several thoughts about the way I had been leading my life. God had played his dice on me, and I felt deeply, that this was his way of providing me a chance to think things over. I thought long and deeply about a lot of things. I decided to quit doing things that wasn't true to me. I had to quit pretending to be someone I wasn't. Later I quit both my jobs and decided to move back to Odense. When the huge undertaking of The Monster's Soul collapsed, in the face of the pure hugeness of the project — and my decision not to pull it off, I gathered an important lesson. It is possible to control things — to decide not to do something. I was the one deciding not to go through with the project. I was the one deciding what I wanted to put myself and others through. Nonetheless, it was a downfall, with many disappointments.
All those defeats. All those desperate romances, always failing; so full of passion and confusion, but to no avail. All those hopeless, desperate projects to take the attention away from what was really important — me.
A Work of Love
It was a slow awakening. I didn't know my direction — but I was driven to find it in myself, rather than in any project outside myself. To learn how to firmly detach any idea or project from myself, was probably my greatest gift from this downfall.
Several years later, I edited the film The Murder of Canute the Holy (org. Mordet på Knud den Hellige, 2001). This film was my first attempt at making a documentary film, and it was a work of love. After shooting it in 1999, during the Odense theatrical spectacle Kanutus, I lost inspiration in the project due to a lost tape of, what seemed to me, irreplacable footage. Now, I had found inspiration in the project again.
I fell suddenly and deeply in love with a fellow filmmaker I met during a filmmaker's festival. It had been a long time since I'd felt anything like it, and it took me by complete surprise, that I was able to feel something like this again. That the sensation was greater to me, than it was to her, was the most terrifying thought in the world — and when it dawned on me, invited all the tears and disappointments and sorrows of the world on me. I cried as if it would never end.
But it invited me to a new place. The more vulnerable and naked I felt, the more it sharpened my attention and determination to walk the path laid out for me, and not let things slip. And the more I embraced the wondrous feeling of love, the more light slipped in to light my way.
I was able to overcome the frustrations that had plagued me. I played freely around with the material, dissecting everything into small pieces and putting them back together again. I felt on solid ground, making use of my newly gained historical experience in a creative process. I listened to music, which suddenly was inspired and had new meaning. It was a work of joy to sit inside a warm, joyful editing room in Århus, full with the images of a hot summer's day in 1999. Outside it was winter, with a thick and heavy snow coming down everywhere. During the editing process, I stayed at my father's house outside of Århus, and I even enjoyed wading through the massive heaps of snow from the busstop to his house, when I came home late in the night. I had only love and the creative confidence of this film on my mind.
I had only one ambition. I wanted to be true and loyal to the events portrayed, but in my own form; otherwise I knew no rules. I could be as manipulative as I wanted, play the game however I liked it. The warriors of the play fighting in the arena was my own images of the boys let out to play again — the true heroes of the day. All the words said nothing, except for their passion towards their end of meaning.
De-constructing History
I found history to be an invaluable course for myself to find a sense of meaning, that went beyond the disillusion and superficial confusion in the media business, I previously had met. History is a fascinating subject matter. Perhaps even more so, as it dawned on me early, because it is a study of a subject matter, that does not exist. Yet we would hardly know what the present is, without it. Some of the past stays with us. But there is nothing automatic, God-given or elevated about this; the process of making sense of the past. History is created by someone, from fragments and small pieces of material — much like the spectacles of moving images. Like film, history is language, method and imagination, applied on a certain form. It is shaped by the people, institutions and places that give it meaning — changing all the time.
The documentary television series Roadtrip to Danish History (org. Danmarkshistorien tur/retur, 2004) was an attempt to give this theme a visual form. A form, which emphasized the interpretative character of our history — how different and rich it can be, interpreted by different personalities and professionals. Through four different historical professionals, we explore four different places of widely different historical meanings, chosen in collaboration with the participants themselves.
We didn't want to repeat the popular forms of history on television, usually built from a patchwork of images coming from vastly varying sources. On the other hand, taking a historian to a historical place is nothing new, building on a long tradition in television. We wanted to spice it up; to take away the authoritative character of this kind of thing, making things more personal. We decided early on, that we were making a road-movie.
We produced the series by subscribing to a few rules, decided beforehand. These rules narrowed down the visual elements of interest to the historian, the car and the landscape. The camera would be handheld, the interviews largely improvised, but along the tour and themes we had discussed beforehand with the main participant. With these few rules in place, we sought to be as spontaneous, naked and unprepared as best we could. We did the same in our planning of the production which excelled in unpreparedness.
Working this way, with no script or thorough shooting plan, was a huge challenge. Everything we did depended on instinct. And since we, the camera crew and interviewer, had not seen the places we went beforehand, and much less knew when and where the 'golden words' from the historian would fall, everyone was on their toes, seeking, focusing, listening, for every word, every sentence and every image. This working process, where even the proces was — within the framework of our concept — unplanned, no doubt contributed a great deal to the vibrant energy of the series.
It was also something I never quite tried before. There was no safety net, that would make things work, if we didn't. This made everything unsecure, untried, and gave the experience something fresh. It revealed to me how the frailty of what we're doing, creating living images, that make some kind of sense, could be brought into the production process. It was a new and exciting experiment. I've never felt so much like an amateur, like during this process. Yet quite rarely have I felt so satisfied with my work. If we could make this thing work, we could make every possible future project come together. No material, no process would be too impossible.
It was clear, that many things did not work very well. During the process, however, we tried to build these things into the form of the series. We didn't pretend to be 'professional' or to provide authoritative answers. We wanted the historians to be professionals, but also allow them to be seen from their human side. We used the flaws of our work quite openly in the series, creating an iconography of the fumbling film crew, introducing the handheld, upbeat form in a humorous manner.
Vulnerable Place
To risk being an amateur is not so dangerous as one might think. On the contrary, it allows you to feel vulnerable. You may feel totally worthless. And you have absolutely nothing to prove to anyone. This is the greatest gift. You can begin to feel yourself again, and feel the subject with yourself, totally naked. You can allow yourself to scrap vast amounts of material with no particular attachment. You can change your mind without feeling the least guilty about hurting someone's feelings. You can be brutal. You can be caring, loving, giving — but give it a form of your own choosing.
To go more and more consciously into this abyss, this languageless pit, has become one of my greatest professional methods — and challenges. To loosen up the constraints and the fixed and tried formulas; to be able to go into and be in the middle of the proces, and feel at ease with it, no matter how stressful it proves to be. To try and free myself from any predetermined ideas, which might otherwise hinder my perception of what is right before me and blind me from seeing things clearly. As dreadful as it may be at first, this place reveals the vulnerability of everything to me anew, and in this lies the only way back to construction of meaning and creative solution — to the creative form of this particular work.
This is a lot of hard work, and far from easy, at least for me. To enter and leave this fearful place at will is even harder. To try and describe it to others, is very difficult. Nonetheless, it is what I have tried to do here.
De-constructing a Media Producer
Arrogance and indifference is what sets a media producer apart from other people. You have to think very highly of yourself, in order to believe that precisely your ideas are important — more important than the ideas of other people. Important enough to warrant this gigantic magnification of emotion and imagery expressed in living images, blown up to the big screen. You have to want to be there, expose yourself to the world in this rude, deviously naked manner, and be an influence to people's lives.
And you have to be arrogant, in order to actively manipulate other people. This manipulation can mean many things, and accomplish many different things, but ultimately it is the power to seduce other people; be it on the screen, on paper, on location, or in the editing room. It is the power of appearance, even if your objective is to de-construct the power of appearance; to show that there is something not told, beyond that image that you show, which is more interesting than the image. Interestingly, images, and perhaps living images in particular, gain much, if not all of their significance, in their want of meaning; in their ability to convey something beyond their appearance.
One layer deeper, I find myself engulfed with the rage I have described and feel so very deeply — the frustrations and feeling of wrongdoings, the inner disturbance of something malplaced in the world, in want of fixing, in want of change. It is what drives it all for me. I've found, that it is possible, if not to tame it, to train it and use it to fuel my outputs. To not be a slave by it, but get to know it so well, that it becomes possible to feel it, think it, rationalize it, and make qualified decisions based on it. Creatively, though, the feeling of rage is a diversion; a shallow echo of what is behind it.
Exploring this place beyond the rage; taking a dip in the endless pool of creative ressource and curiosity behind it, is what interests me the most at present. Being in this place of being less certain, more insecure, more vulnerable — tearing all that is high-browed and important down in order to arrive in this mess, that an open-ended creative process can be, that is to begin to act freely. In this place, finally, I can begin to actively give form to something, although the path is by no way laid out or easily seen. In this place nothing is safe, absolutely nothing makes sense and all directions may be tried and traversed at great hazard. It is where everything loses its meaning and purpose. It is the place that makes me swear never to do another film and never place myself in this kind of situation once again. Yet, as a new project arises, this oath has been safely forgotten. With each experience and each project, I feel — I hope, the fear of this eye of the tornado fades to something of greater consequence.
The Matrix
In the film The Matrix, Neo, the main character, is faced with a system of oppressive delusion. In this system, human beings are no longer born — they are grown; produced with the sole purpose of exploiting their energy, much like we exploit the energy of a battery. The oppressive delusion consists in a digital system of mass imagery fed to people's minds, which makes them believe, that they are still individuals with a free will and a mind of their own, going about their daily lives. During the course of the film Neo learns to use his creative power to bend this system, bend this imagery of reality, at his will — to the effect of causing the system to collapse.
There are many systems in the media landscape, as it appears to us today, and many oppressive delusions. Culture has become the ultimate commodity. Educational and cultural systems are increasingly constructed with the aim to produce and control production — rather than enlighten the path ahead for us. With the aid of the present copyright regime, new media and new expressions are forced to compete in already established systems of cultural distribution. As I write this, big business culture threatens to monopolize the ways we think — and the ways we create.
Meanwhile, people in high places are planning and waging wars in foreign lands against a concept — a concept of terror; created and driven by the imagery of modern media, incapable of grasping the reaching power of their own constructions.
Masses of young people yearn to become movie stars, film and art directors, popstars, news reporters, or otherwise live their lives on a screen. But what do they want to do with it? Become popular and successful? Become spokes on the wheel of a system, which combines media, mass production and military power to create scenarios, which are much more scary, than the fiction of any Hollywood blockbuster?
I do not. I want to tear this system down. I want to break everything into small pieces, and then turn the pieces around and upside down, to make them hurt and twist inside for those who dare take a look in my direction. I want to show the backside, show that things can be different than what they are thought to be. That life can be different than this. That change is possible, and that the world has not come to this by itself. Someone made it possible. That someone could be you, or me. Each one of us makes a difference, and it matters what we do, and what we think. If there is not a voice speaking — a vision presented, driven by a passion so overwhelming, that it causes the whole system to break, no other things matter.
It may be interesting for a while to play around with forms, and it may confirm the comfort of my self-imagery or postpone my boredom, when presented with a performance well done, a joke well told or a fantasy well executed. But if you want to communicate something, it is the real you, I want to see, behind all the imagery. Your voice, I want to hear; your vision, I want to see. And I want to give you mine back.
Becoming a media producer is not something you can learn in a film school; in courses of media, dramaturgy, business or marketing. It is not about being a 'professional' or about doing things 'professionally'. It is by far not about getting a 'breakthrough' in a media business, that has lost its senses. Maybe it has much more to do with growing up, falling in love, and being hospitalized for getting your one testicle strangled to death. And then to wake up, from that horrible, scary nightmare, where you lose touch with who you are.
Producing something of meaning, of significance, which is what media is — is to take that long, deep, honest look inside that hollow space from whence we came; that incredible matrix of our own existance, which we need to connect to, if ever we want to communicate something to others. And then tell me what you see.
