Book Review – Page 7

Review of Socialist Dreams and Beauty Queens: A Couchsurfer’s Memoir of Venezuela

Intrigued by the title, I decided to read a less academic work on Venezuela and so decided to pick up Jamie Maslin’s book Socialist Dreams and Beauty Queens: A Couchsurfer’s Memoir of Venezuela. Having done an extensive amount of backpacking myself I was curious to read how he connected his various touristic consumptions in relation to the two topics in the title. What I discovered was that while the Socialist Dreams is a recurring theme, the Beauty Queens only make it into the pages as a missed opportunity.

The praise on the front cover of the book compares Maslin to “Bill Bryson meets Jack Kerouac” which is serious praise that is, I believe, undeserving. Meslin’s account of his time traveling throughout Caracas, Maracaibo, various rural areas and parks was on the whole enjoyable, but a few intelligent asides does not Bryson make and travelling with the assistance of the hospitality of strangers and writing long passages describing the beauty of nature doesn’t make one a Kerouac. Regarding the former, I thought the segues he made between what was in front of him and the history prior was generally appropriate, lacking deeper cultural and social connection to the country – as well as appropriate language skills – made me feel that this was also sort of surface level observations. I touch upon this more in an example below. Additionally, given the inclusion of photos in the book, I felt that such long sketches of nature were spurious. No amount of words, after all, can compare to a photo of Angel Falls.

Jamie Maslin travels descriptions of the many natural wonders that he visited certainly piqued my interest as locations to visit were I to go to Venezuela. Cubagua, Punta de Piedras, and the Roraima Tepui all seem like magical places to experience. His descriptive language does a good job capturing the appearance and atmosphere, while the words of others he encounters in them shows a charming self-awareness at the at times absurd situations he finds himself in because of his particular travelling style: begpacker.

While all in all I enjoyed the tale, however it did leave me to think about the nature of inter-cultural exchanges.

At several points Jamie recites his experience as an CourchSurfing host and tells of a traveler that he met in Venezuela taking him up on this offer. Yet despite the reciprocity on offer to those that hose him in Venezuela, he is, however, seemingly ignorant of the near impossibility of them ever being able to take him up on that offer.

Many of the people that he stays with are not only so poor as to be unlikely to ever want to spend the money they could save to travel to a capital of Empire like London, but most are unlikely to be able to obtain a visa to leave. However thoughtful the presumption that his staying with them is predicated on reciprocity, that actuality of it is thus empty.

Jamie also repeats throughout that he only wants to pay “local prices” and tells several was which he is able to accomplish this – always through someone else’s assistance. As someone that frequently travels on a budget I definitely understand the desire to make one’s buck go farther, but I think that he takes being parsimonious and stingy to the point of fetishizing poorness and authenticity instead of recognizing it as a game. Let me give a few examples.

At a park Jamie tries to light a fire the “indigenous way” by rubbing together a number of sticks. An elderly Pemoi woman, seeing him, comes over and offers her lighter – disrupting any notion that the natives wholly reject the products of civilization.

To save a few dollars Jamie puts himself in uncomfortable and undesirable situations multiple times because he either doesn’t have a cellphone; doesn’t speak Spanish; wants to save the equivalent of $10 by taking a “different” tour; doesn’t want to get someplace a certain manner. Going on a five-star tour would be disingenuous as well, however given the refrain he shares regarding the conditions of filth and/or poverty that many Venezuelans live in and how he didn’t feel safe this seems disingenuous as well. I certainly concede that these people would have more authenticity in their assessments of Chavez’s policies as it affected them – but even the conversations that he has on this subject are never deep as he doesn’t know well the history of the country or the language. Besides a few extended asides explaining certain historic events and general assessments – this dramatically undercuts his ability to investigate people’s “Socialist Dreams” within a fractiously divided national context outside of facile stereotypes. Sometime this is a good thing, for instance many outside the country don’t recognize the role racism has in the society so reading,

“If you are white in Venezuela, you are automatically considered higher up the ladder than a nonwhite, but many people will simply be after your money”

is insightful. However, my take away from the totality of encounters was the most people wanted a “free handout” rather than a systemic reconstruction of the hegemonic economic forces such that there was greater opportunity for entrepreneurship and social mobility in the country. Jamie provided some of this context, but the constant ridicule of the embodiments of the state – be they police or park rangers – left me with the impression that he thinks that this is a good goal but impossible given the conditions of the country which easily lends itself to corruption.

All in all I enjoyed the travelogue, though as someone with deep background on Venezuela I found the writing on this to be not really “fitting”. While not likely to pick up his other book about Iran, I do feel pleased for having chanced purchasing and reading this book.

Review of Steal Like an Artist

I picked up Steal Like an Artist at the Delray Beach Library for a buck and read it over a few hours.

Written prior to Show Your Work, but like his other book, Austin Kleon work is filled with practical insights for approaching the creative process, examples of the advice in action and techniques for getting a better understanding of one’s own position in relation to one’s chosen family of creators and other issues of practical concern to a creative.

One such instructional section that I like particularly related to homage and inspiration in relation to one’s creative work and process.

Creation as Curation

All great artists are voracious consumers of cultural products.

I’ve spent more money on my personal reading library than is really sensible given my financial conditions – but the sense of joy that they haven give me, of being able to look back at notes that I left for myself or seeing which passages thought were important at the time and so underlined them amuses me to no end so I feel that it is worth it.

Then there’s the smell of books…

Anyway, Kleon’s advice is to make an assessment of where it is that you’re taking from, to ask yourself why, to really determine how the pieces of what you read gets more or less mixed within your self and how it makes it’s way into your art.

You know who really killed it on this mission before Kleon ever wrote about it? Henry Miller. His works The Books in My Life, The Time of the Assassins, not to mention sections throughout his oeuvre, all do this and help world build him as someone equally worthy in status to those he names.

Theft and Art

Emerging from historic, symbolic culture – all art is theft.

Technology certainly changes society and the realm of the possibility, but at a fundamental level, nothing is new under the sun.

For instance my favorite novel by Milan Kundera is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. This is literally an updated, inverted Anna Karenina. Star Wars is based on numbers myths from antiquity. I’m living my life largely based on Henry Miller’s and the goal of my creative work is to turn Dostoyevsky on his head. The list goes on, the take away being that the quest for excessive novelty can lead to bad art and that transformation rather than mere imitation of work – as in the above – is new and ought be viewed as such.

The “Rules” for Creativity

In my preparations to move out of the country I went through a number of old boxes that contained documents of works that I’d written when in my late teens. Reading them 15 years later was amusing, not just because of the vast divide in perspective that has developed since then but also as I realized that I was not waiting for something external to validate my creative journey but that I just did it.

I also came across the 1930’s type writer I’d purchased for myself and a number of notebooks that I collected my various art compositions in. Seeing these made me recall my college days and how much I loved working with a small group of friends to make collages, drawings, paintings, and performance poetry.

It’s these sorts of experience, Kleon says and from experience I concur with, that help build up a more holistic approach to art.

The book is a quick read and cheap so I highly recommend it to all.

And if you have the time watch this Tedx Talk by Austin, it’s worth it.

Review of The Fruit Palace

La verdad es una puta y hay que pagar.
Truth is a whore and you must pay for her.
Colombian Epigram

I picked up Charles Nicholl’s book The Fruit Palace as part of my cultural research before going to Colombia. I found it a very enjoyable yarn, in the vein of a number of other travel and get in trouble narratives.

Something that I love about Nicholl’s writing is the high level of descriptive language and inclusion of local color though out the yarns he spins. Some of my favorite passages are those describing the beauty of the Tensa Valley. After one long, nearly baroque description of the plant life used by the indigenes of Boyaca to produce nearly all of their material needs I found so engaging that it made me want to go off and try my own hand at such an existence. The underworld slang found throughout demonstrates authenticity and shows anthropological insight into the manner in which many of the subjects he writes about think – as individuals in la otro economia; as individuals that grew up in a specific region of Colombia; as people belonging to a loosely knit nation.

The cast of characters – Gus, Waldino, Rikki, Ariel, the various ex-pats in various states of “going native” and the many others involved in the quest for information on The Great Cocaine Story which takes Nicholls all over the many climates and regions of Colombia are described in with novelistic detail. He also does a great job of humanizing the predation that goes on in the country and what’s often described as backwardness. While he doesn’t delve into the geopolitics of the region, the formation of class and politics, etc. I feel like he humanizes a lot of the situations that often times get viewed as black and white. One of the drug dealers, Julio Cesar, tending after an injured, drug addicted journalist, for instance, or the 15 year-old prostitute that he’s set up with who explains that her selling herself is far preferable to the treatment she was put out by her family.

Nicholl’s gift is to include all of their without relying upon extensive commentary to highlight this. There are insightful passages like this:

“It is probably true to say that Colombia’s entire export earnings are matched dollar for dollar by illicit drug earnings. But the money is only the beginning. It is what the money does that counts, the power grip that the drug mafia exerts on Colombia… It not only supports the fantastical opulence of the drug capos. It also buys off police, judiciary and administration, flows into all sorts of legitimate business fronts, becomes a major source of low interest credit, vastly increases the growth of the country’s money supply… These narco-dollars are only a part, though now much the biggest part, of Colombia’s whole subterranean economy, the black market and contraband interests so widespread they are simply known as la otra economia, the other economy.”

However this is mostly limited to the opening of the book, where he explains how he got the writing assignment and onto the trail of The Great Cocaine Story. The majority is not like this.

Most of the tale is of his quest to find Snow White, a particularly high quality cocaine. On the quest to find this he travels across rivers, jungles in the mountains and must lie, cheat and act his way to the heart of a smuggling operate far from civilization. He even witnesses the 1983 Popayán earthquake, which destroyed much of the city and is the subject of the above Botero painting.

Should he ever read this, a tip of my hat goes to you, Mr. Nicholl, for being able to have the discipline to keep such extensive notes whilst consuming so much cocaine on your way to the find the manner in which Snow White made her way to Europe. The passages describing the binges he took and the effects that they had on his body and mind makes it a feat that he did not go the way of Gus, the journalist he meets who’s nearly gone mad from the amount of basuko that he’s been smoking.

And then there’s Ariel. He and I look nothing alike, but I did like this passage describing him:

‘Tell me about Ariel.’

“She laughed. ‘Ariel will tell you about Ariel. It’s like there’s lots of Ariels: he’ll be someone different for you. He’s hard to find, hard to catch. Like we say, nacio de pie – he was born on his feet.”

I found the closing of the book to offer a really nice coda to the tale of adventure. By closing with his experiences visiting the Arhuaco people I felt that it offered a compelling counter-narrative to the madness of the cocaine-fueled journalism that composed the rest of the book. While everyone else is in some ways economically dependent on the the powder, here’s a people that have grown a culture around it whilst not falling prey to the similar need for greed in the form of more intensity or material possessions. Coca need not be a high but, as they say, something that is sano, healthy, that cuida del cuerpo, that takes care of the body.

Review of Rework

I read Rework by Jason Fried and David Hannson of 37Signals and BaseCamp fame and think that if you are tired of working for other people and are interested in starting your own business, or you have one and you’re looking to make it more effective, than this is the book for you.

Rework has a number of choice endorsements from major names in the business world such as Mark Cuban, who says “If given a choice between investing in someone who has read Rework and someone who has an MBA, I’m investing in Rework every time…. A must-read for every entrepreneur.” and Jeff Bezos, who says “Jason and David start fresh and rewrite the rules of business. Their approach turns out to be as successful as it is counter-intuitive.”

This doesn’t meant that information in this book is limited in application just to CEOs and Entrepreneurs with billions of dollars in the bank and those that want to provide them business service. This is equally applicable to artists who want to achieve real professional success.

I’m not going to go into too much detail on the actual content as the book itself is such a quick read and

Instead, here’s five of the titles of their mini essays and how they relate to my own experience.

Decommoditize your Product

Since competitors can never copy the “you” in their product, make you a part of your product or service. This makes it someone that no one else can honestly offer. I realized that this was something that I was doing with this website, merely by posting all of my book reviews, thought experiments, media analysis and other articles on niche topics.

Chances are those end products have zero relation to my client’s needs, but through them they see that my thought processes are informed by years of research into the humanities and best practices for digital marketing.

Sound Like You

“What is with businesspeople trying to sound big? The stiff language, the formal announcements, the artificial friendliness, the legalese, etc. You read this stuff and it sounds like a robot wrote it… This mask of professionalism is a joke. We all know this. Yet small companies still try to emulate it. They think sounding big makes them appear bigger and more “professional”.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be professional, just that the masque of professionalism can be incredibly disingenuous and farcical.

Another aspect related to sounds like you that I sometimes struggle with is avoiding formal terms and acronyms. They can be very effective when working with an internal team or writing for a specific group of people, but when client or sales-prospect facing, it’s important to avoid this.

Out-Teach Your Competition

“Teach and you’ll form a bond you just don’t get from traditional marketing.”

This point is succinct and goes into much greater detail in Joe Pulizzi’s book.

When starting out a business – or even an artistic enterprise – your competition is bound to have more money for marketing themselves, more connections than you, etc. It can be hard to demonstrate credibility when just starting out but you can always start thinking about out-teaching your competition. Most businesses are focused on getting new clients, improving processes, hiring, etc. However, not many are worried about this. In Joe Pulizzi’s book Content Inc., in fact, he gives a story of one company doing this so well that they developed their business to the point where they no longer just installed pools, but started manufacturing them as well.

This new work ethos is in part why I’ve created this online repository of my research and a portfolio of my work.

There’s No Such Thing As An Overnight Sensation

“Those overnight-success stores you’ve heard about? It’s not the whole story.”

If you’re going to do anything and be successful – it’s going to take some time. Have patience, understanding and prepare for the inevitable delays, set backs and failures along the way.

Stop Working at 5pm

“You don’t need more hours; you need better hours.”

I’ve been in a number of working environments where my co-workers complain about having to work late into the night at home in order to complete certain tasks that they’d not completed as if they were proud of it. I’ve never understood why they would want to do this much less take pride for it.

A productive work ethic is a good thing, but the amount of hours you work aren’t nearly as important as what you get done in those hours.

Let me give you an example.

When I was still working as a private teacher, one of my responsibilities was to input individualized comments into a reporting box on an web-based grading application.

However the manner in which the reporting software was designed was poorly thought out and because of this there was a process in place that required three whole days of work for two people to ensure that they were written according to the guidelines.

The results of my thinking creatively? What had taken my colleagues eight hours to complete took me one hour that semester. In total I saved myself a full 24 hours of work simply by working smart instead of hard.

Now that I make my own schedule and work for myself there are some days where I work past five pm, or over the weekend or have a 12 hour day. But this is rare and stems at based because I choose to do so.

Still not ready to buy the book after all this? Give their Rework Podcast a listen and maybe that’ll help convince you some more

Click for full image to zoom in and see all the designs.

Review of Kafka on the Shore

I read Haruki Murakami’s book Kafka on the Shore after a number of friends had spoken positively of it and, well of all the other things to choose from in the library of the short term apartment I was staying in in Medellin it looked the best.

There were times in the book that I found myself struggling to care about the struggles of the characters, but Murakami’s prose is engaging in a way that makes the occasional breaks in engagement worth pulling through. This isn’t to say that it’s a difficult or unenjoyable read, just that it’s not that type of literature to which I’m normally drawn.

Japanese Magical Realism

Murakami’s novel fits within the stylistic tradition of magical realism first developed by Alejo Carpentier that is most often associated with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The main character’s are directed by hidden forces and assisted by supernatural powers and characters along a hero’s quest aligned with classical Greek mythology.

Set in modern Japan, with several flashbacks to the World War II era, Kafka On The Shore alternately follows a precious, solitary, and mentally and physically self-disciplined 15 year old Kafka Tamura that speaks to and is guided by an ideal projection of himself named Crow (hence the above image) and a mentally-handicapped man named Nakata from Tokyo prefect that can manifest small objects from the sky when upset, talk with cats and listen to stones – when they feel like speaking.

Kafka decides to leaves his emotionally absent father in order to hop a bus Takamatsu with the hopes of finding the mother that abandoned him and the sister that went with her. Throughout this trip he is constantly reminding himself, via Crow, that he has to be “the world’s toughest fifteen-year-old.”

After finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days–continuing his impressive self-education–and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother.

Nakata, cannot read, write, nor explain the forces drawing him toward Takamatsu to the other characters is nevertheless a highly compelling character. Despite the redundancies within his interactions with strangers, consisting largely of re-statements of his cluelessness and ignorance, I never felt that it took over the pace. There were other parts of the book were this happened, however when focused on the characters rather than the commentary on other worlds Murakami composes engaging prose.

Trauma, Oediupus and Personal Development

A main theme of the novel is the manner in which traumatic experiences come to shape the individual.

Both Nakata and Kafka’s stories are ones wherein early childhood experiences traumatizes them in such as way that the two are eventually drawn together – not face to face but in a way such that they confront those formative moments.

For both this means closing a door to their past left open, though while for Nakata this is literal for Kafka it is metaphorical.

Loss of family, alienation from society and the difficulty of finding one’s place in it structure the two main characters as well as the lesser characters like Hoshino the truck driver; Miss Saeki the Head Librarian; Oshima, a transgendered gay librarian and others.

Here’s a great website with illustrations of all the characters and more depth information on the novel worth exploring.

Fantasy, Sex, and Philosophy in Kafka on the Shore

While the age description here means that it’s not Salman Rushdie being spoken of, it’s a pretty recurrent trope that authors enjoy the company of young, attractive ladies. That Murakami put this in here, especially being so unattractive himself, i thought, was funny.

In close I wanted to highlight Murakami’s description of Hoshino’s tryst with an high-class, philosophy student escort while in Nakata’s service because it touches upon a number of themes that I develop in my own creative work and also as it seems to me to be a recurring trait amongst a large number of male artists – the dissolution of the self in the sex act into a metaphysical experience.

Post best-head-of-his-life orgasm, she starts quoting Henri Bergson’s ideas on elan vital and Hegel’s ideas on subject-object relations. I feel that this tryst highlights how writers often view such climactic relations with women in general. It’s never so simple as just a physical release of pent up liquids and energy, but such acts are part of deeper metaphysical dynamic which causes lasting sea changes in the view of the self.

Considering the incestual and Oedipal themes, as well as the many commentaries throughout the book on the duties of parents to children, I think that this could be an interesting avenue of exploration for other commentators to explore.

Review of Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses

Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses is the book for explaining the power of content marketing and explaining how to develop it in such a way as to build your audience.

Joe Pulizzi describes his own work in case study format along with many others in how it is that they grew an audience up around the marketing material that they produced and disseminated. Summing up the entirety of the book into a sentence – Content Inc. shows how to educate consumers to effectively buy in to an organizations products or services.

Understanding The Social Media Ecosystem

Given the rapid explosion of niche channels for content, differentiation of content and establishing an engaging brand voice that will build a base of engaged readers/consumers is the key to gaining audience and thus monetizing the content marketing efforts made. While diversification is a key component of attracting more people once there is an established base, Pulizzi warns against starting this too soon lest the core audience start to feel declining affinity/interest in the material presented. Another words make something that really works first and then start to noodle with other demographics, buyers personas, etc. as otherwise this could lead to a sub-optimal ROI on what is, basically, A/B testing of content.

Varieties of Content Marketing Outlets

Earned media which has links to owned properties that has it’s reach further amplified via social platforms is the primary goal of content marketing. A PPC campaign has a start and end date limited by the budget, whilst effective content marketing continues to draw in leads by merit of it’s placement on appropriate websites.

Let me give an example. Several months ago I attended a presentation given by Alex Furmansky about his company Budsies. For those that watch Shark Tank, this may be a familiar name/company as he turned down the offers for investment presented in order to continue his own path sans their direction. In his presentation he presented internal data that dramatically showed that while there was a spike in visitors and business following his appearance on the Shark Tank, that this was a near blip in comparison to basic content marketing driving business traffic following placements of articles about his businesses on Huffington Post.

Content Marketing Funnels, Conversions and Engagement

Implementing a successful content marketing program requires longer term, big-picture thinking and an advocate with enough authority in the enterprise that their directives will be followed. An effective content marketing project requires a paradigmatic shift from PPC and paid media marketing strategies.

It’s vital to set realistic KPIs and a timeframe for achieving them. Small wins early on are good, but unless there is the recognition as to the entirety of the content marketing process quitting before taking final steps leads to a wasted investment of resources.

It’s only happened twice that I’ve had clients jump into content marketing with enthusiasm, only to fall back to traditional push marketing tactics a month later. Their rationale is understandable – they want speedy ROI and PPC promotions, advertised discounts and similar campaigns deliver the immediate spikes in sales that most businesses budgets are accustomed to. The problem with this is by not continuing to develop and promote makes a brand look stagnant or find the right niches from where it’s customers are naturally viewing content.

Optimizing Content Marketing Efforts via Differentiation

Using content marketing most effectively means being able to edit and remix content according to a variety of format types. Content on videos can be placed into text formats for those, like me, that prefer to read. White papers, which are one of of the most complex forms of content marketing, can be simplified into a variety of smaller formats to garnish readers attention to specific information found within.

One best practice for content marketing that has allowed me to reduce the time and costs associated with market research has been to review traditional marketing content. Using this as a based for ideation and production is one of the reasons that I ask all my clients to provide me as many examples of their marketing as possible and to provide examples of what they believe is the type of style and format that they aspire to have.

From Content to Marketing: Promotion

Creating unique content that engages the interest of targeted demographics is the first step, SEO optimization the second one and placement the third.

This requires knowing the outlets where such information is housed as well as their editorial and community guidelines.

This requires knowing how to do effective outreach with journalists, writers, editors, bloggers, etc. as well as being able to demonstrate trustworthiness.

One of the many reasons why I decided to create this online repository of my research, in fact, was to do exactly this. By having an online portfolio of research in various subject area not only am I able to have social proof of affinity when reaching out but it allows them to confirm that the material I’ve produced and am asking them to place is methodologically sound.

Content Inc. presents an impressive detailing of all the above and more and is definitely something that I will re-read and encourage all those in the field to pick up as well.

Review of Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in Colombia

“The objective of memory is to highlight both the struggle of the dead
and the nature of the powers that silenced them.”
—Luis Carlos Restrepo

As part of my pre-visit area studies and research for Unraveling, I picked up Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in Colombia by Michael Taussig prior to going to Medellin. A first person account told in a diary format over two weeks, Taussig recounts the dynamics, shares the stories of others and contextualizes the history of the region to explain the murders that once made Colombia the world’s murder capital. While conditions and the murder rates have drastically changed since then, it’s still a place where massacres of campesinos over access to land still occurs to this day.

Taussig’s journal describes in at times uncomfortable details a number of large-scale public killings, referred to as limpiezas in Spanish, as well as the backgrounds of the actors and the historical context in which they occur. Besides this, Taussig also reflects on the role of memory and accountability from a personal in reflections on the process of writing a journal as well as in the political sense, ie – through which means hegemony is formed.

Indigenes, Viciosas, Delincuentes, Traficantes, Paras, Sicarios, Guerrillas, Policia y la Ejercito Oh My!

While many of the participants in the conflict are prone to describing things in terms of good or evil, what is really going on is conflict over modes of production and access to fertile and resource rich lands. Though the quote from Karl Marx’s work Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations is one that opens Michael Taussig’s other book The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, I think it a good one for quickly that describes the primary driver for conflict here as well.

Thus the ancient conception in which man always appears (in however narrowly national, religious or political a definition) as the aim of production, seems very much more exalted than the modern world, in which production is the aim of man and wealth the aim of production.

While not nearly as knowledgeable as Taussig about Colombia’s past or collective psyche, my experience with various social strata in Medellin and Jerico, a pueblo in Antioquia, provided me a similar view. Those that primarily outside the capitalist mode of exchange for supplying their daily needs seemed more peaceful, calm and happy then those that depended on it.

In a long passage discussing the transformation of Cali’s agricultural lands in the 1950s and 1960s, Taussig describes how the thousands of peasants, who were outside the capitalist mode of production as the variety of plants they would grow and rotate provided them with all they needed were forcibly dispossessed so that a foreign born family could grow and export sugar. These instances of rapid proletarianization helped contribute to the problems faced within the cities – people without capital or many skills flocking to them – and were accelerated once cocaine became the crop of choice for those wanting to live beyond subsistence means.

When You Don’t Want Your Haters To Know Your Name

The immensity of the cocaine market drove traffickers to form paramilitary organizations to seize land and routes with high use value from the FARC and other large scale farmers. Unable to effectively contest such a well-financed group and still keep their scruples, the FARC got into the protection and trafficking rackets so that they could survive as an organization. Armed conflict over this left many frightened and dead , however this was not the full extent of the new dynamics influencing Colombia’s political economy. Large nuber of addicts too cropped along with a profound incentivization for “bad behavior” as la vida facil – or the drug-dealing/trafficking life – was known to be sweet, but short.

Planfleto Amenzas, or warning pamphlets, like the one above along with the graffiti signs of paras scrawled around the community are the first indication that the paramilitaries are soon coming in for a cleansing of such mala gente. Translating the above picture, it says the following:

“We will be killing all rat bastard sons of bitches, leftist communists, defenders of human rights and the process of peace and restitution of the land, student communist groups, unionists and guerillas.”

Then continues to name the people that will be killed following by the ominous entre otros, or “among others” and a warning that caught or informed upon for helping these people will also be receive lead.

Sometimes warnings are not so explicit and people must rely upon word of mouth news networks or wait until AUC graffiti was painted someplace public to know where and when the AUC was.

The Massive Scope of the Conflict

At the time of this book’s publication in 2002, Michael Taussig states that he’s been visiting Colombia to do fieldwork for 30 years. While the intensity of the civil war has halted, there are still multiple bad effects that stem from the narco-trafficking. There are neighborhoods that require thousands of police in Bogota to clear out the open air drug markets made by vendors and addicts and anyone visiting the area around El Centro in Medellin has seen the improvised encampments filled with bazuco addicts.

Taussig describes in details various encampments and characters he encounters in such places in a way the bring much needed levity to the stories he’s sharing. Behind those moment of levity, however, is the underlying fear. Fear of being seen with the wrong person. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of your name showing up on a computer provided to the paras by the military. In numerous anecdotes the absolute terror felt by those in towns undergoing a cleaning is clear. Just as who is behind these, the local power elites.

¡No Tiene Sentido!

One of the recurring themes in my readings thus far on Colombia which is again reinforced here, is how distorted the reporting of the events are in Colombia. Many journalists fear intimidation, harassment, assault or death as reporting a story in the wrong way would could mean various armed groups would target them, so often they distort reporting in favor of the government or the paras or do not report on important events at all. The result of this is a collective unreality on all sides.

Threats of violence aren’t the only reasons why mass delusions as to the acts of the government, the paras and the guerillas are reported in a manner that later is corrected in the evidentiary findings of human rights NGOs.

Besides the stick, there is the carrot. Writing about the paradoxical viewpoint that many Colombians have, Taussig points out on page 76 the following commonplace hypocrisy of many Colombian political commentators:

“How is it that while the pandillas, or gangs of the young preoccupy everybody to the point of collective hysteria, while the bandas of the local upper class rarely get talked about? Is it because the bandas have for so long been a part of reality and that many people, or at least many influential people, get fat on them?”

The corruption in the country is notoriously endemic. In fact when asking one taxi drive in Medellin what he thought about the President Santos he want on a long rant about how all the politicians were corrupt – Liberals and Conservatives alike – and that stated that there’s no party that represents the poor and the campesinos except for the FARC, who would never come to power given so many people disliked them for the reason I said above. As a result, leading to million and billions of dollars of state money going to development projects. Maybe a few dollars goes in the pocket of a reporter, or maybe the ownerships of the new outlet gets some money out of it so exercises editorial control, or maybe a company that purchases advertising threatens to pull money if certain things are said. Either way, there are are lot of incentives to sow confusion in community by incomplete or false reporting.

Review of “The Idea Writers: Copywriting in a New Media and Marketing Era”

The Idea Writers – Copywriting in a New Media and Marketing Era by Teresa Iezzi with an afterword by Lee Clow and Jeff Goodby is an in-depth look at the state of today’s copywriting and brand creativity in today’s advertising. With insight on creative process and campaign development from the industry’s leading creatives, Iezzi provides solid advice for copywriters at all stages of their career – from those trying to break into it to those trying to become more involved with branding. A useful guide for industry professional understand brand creativity today, the book actually starts with a detailed examination of the changes in the digital realm that have completely remade the advertising industry before jumping into a number of case studies.

The rise of smart phones, social media and other internet phenomenon’s have fundamentally changed that manner in which advertising and copy-writing relates to consumers of media. Iezzi quotes New York University Interactive Telecommunications Program professor Clay Shirky in the book Here Comes Everybody, to make her point on the depth of this change: “We are living in the middle of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race.” Because of this the general rulebook that governed advertising affairs for over a hundred years is no longer applicable and for that reason, it’s a more exciting and potentially creatively rewarding time for those in the “since Bill Bernbach put art directors and copywriters together and proved that effective advertising could be witty, quotable and uplifting rather than a dreary recitation of “unique selling points.”

Though this is the case, Iezzi doesn’t dismiss the importance of the ad work created and books written by the Fathers of Modern Advertising such as Rosser Reeves – a pioneer in writing for the emerging media of television, the man responsible for the idea of the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and the person who was the inspiration for Don Draper in Mad Men. What does Iezzi see as the thread that connecting those such as Reeves, Bill Burnbach, and David Ogilvy? Simple. Effective story-telling.

Quoting the book A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink, Iezzi points out how it is the ability to detect patterns and create narratives, to understand human interaction, to seek and convey meaning that are the new marketable skill sets rather than the ability to write a perfectly crafted headline according to a pseudo-scientific formula. These skill are important not only as many marketing agencies in the present are just likely to be producing an app or a web experiment as a form of commercial communication but also in the age of greater corporate scrutiny it’s important for corporations to at least appear that they are doing the right thing.

Another challenge of today’s copywriter is being able to telling a story across multiple platforms while involving the consumer in that story – something also gone into detail in Storyscaping. Here the views of Gaston Legoburu and Darren McColl matches that of Iezzi on the future of advertising. They both state that design and story are key for informing the interaction that plays out between brands and consumers. With this in mind, creatives can achieve the goal of having their customers message proactively talked about and shared by people that will at best transition into brand ambassadors and at least increase sales during the increase in brand awareness.

Building on this Iezzi adds the following:

“The copywriter (is) responsible for putting things into the world, and those things should be useful, entertaining or beautiful, or all of those things. They should make people feel better, not worse, about them- selves, the brand involved and living in the world in general.”

Advertising has to offer an entertaining reason for people to even acknowledge its existence. I’ve heard a variety of numbers but I’ve yet to see a source for the number, but I’ve heard that it’s something like 85 percent of ads go unnoticed by people. Not surprise given the large amount of messages that are being sent past them every day. As Gossage himself words it: “The fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.”

In addition to the analysis of the history of marketing and how the qualities of the new digital age impacts modern marketing, Teresa Iezzi provides a lot of valuable case studies for effective campaign processes and final products as well as giving instructions for those that are establishing themselves as a brand.

The book closes with a number of considerations for career development one someone is already in the field that could be distilled into the words “influencer marketing”. If there are events where what you do will be discussed, put yourself forward as a speaker or panel member. If there’s a story written about the kind of work you do, contact the writer and send her some of your work to keep in mind for next time. Apply the same self-promotion guidelines to your personal projects and you’ll always be wanted by people in the marketing industry.

Review of “The Ten Principal Upanishads”

“Neither neglect your spiritual nor your worldly welfare. Always learn and teach. Forget neither God nor Ancestor.”

The Ten Principal Upanishads, this edition translated and edited by Shree Purohit Swami and W. B. Yeats, are the most sacred texts of the Hindu religion. These are not God’s words to man, but an incarnation of revelation captured by Rishis that contain the ultimate Truth and the knowledge that leads to spiritual emancipation that are considered the distillation of the best of Vedic metaphysical and speculative thought. From the Upanishads the central doctrines of Hinduism are derived, the philosophy of yoga is developed, and through dialogue with Buddhism that a number of sects on both sides emerge. This is what Paramahansa Yogananda and many other yogis have studied throughout their lives. Worth nothing, a number of the benefits of such practices as those written about within are increasingly being verified by modern Western science – both as it relates to mental health, healing and general social welfare.

This particular collection contains only ten of the traditional one-hundred and nine Upanishads and are intended as an introduction to the uninitiated. The specific texts of this collected are titled thusly: Isha, Kena and Katha, Prashan, Mundaka, Mandukya, Tattiriya, Aitareya, Chhandogya and Brihadaranyaka. The text is different from the one I studied at the International Meditation Institute in that it has removed a number of the repeating phrases that are of a ritualistic nature that are normally interspersed throughout. Thus while it is not the best edition for a religious scholar, the essence of it – the delineation of the path of Spirit and its importance for life – remains. This conceptual translation is not, however, without its own merits. Yeats, a poet, maintains some of those mantra-like refrains (i.e. “May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.”) and has musical qualities and well-worded conceits.

Each lesson within the collection of Upanishads meditates upon and interrogates themes ranging from the correct means of thinking so as to avoid disturbing thoughts but also how to properly fixate on the eternal Spirit that animates all human beings and material things. As progress is made in the pursuit of the Spirit, one comes closer to finding enlightenment and ending the cycle of re-birth. The essence of their teachings is that Truth cannot be known intellectually, but embodied through continued action inflected with faith. There are various stages in a person’s development towards moksha, or liberation, as well as reasons for why they may not achieve is.

Speaking on the myriad components of spirits, the Upanishads state the following:

“Worship spirit as the support, be supported; worship Spirit as the Great, become great; worship spirit as the mind, become mind. Bow down to Spirit as the sole object of desire, be the goal of all desire; worship Spirit as the master of all, become the master of all”

It is because of such passages, and many others like it, that a large number of corporate cultural leaders are embracing and encouraging others to use Mindfulness practices – which is a de-sacralized form of Hinduism/Buddhism – in the workplace.

I’ve certainly seen how such practices help increase creativity, presentness and productivity while decreasing tension in the workplace. I am, however, suspicious of such initiatives unless it’s practiced from the top down as otherwise it seems to me to encourage the type of workplace apathy that leads to larger social issues (i.e. you shouldn’t ask for a raise when you’re worth it, but instead just be happy with what you have as you are Spirit). All in all, however, meditation, yoga, chanting, reflective silence, and other Vedic practices, are beneficial as it helps to realize the Spirit. I’ve been reading this book prior to and after my yoga practice at Flying Tree Yoga school, found myself feeling lighter as a result of it and will likely reread it again soon.

In closing, here’s a great video by Alan Watts on what the Spirit is:

Review of “The Brethren”

I haven’t read a trade paperback book in a very long time, however only two of the five books that I’d purchased with the intent to read while in Colombia came to me in sufficient time before my trip. Because of this, when I finished my last book on Colombia I picked up a copy of The Brethren by John Grisham for no other reason than it was there. The last time that I read a trade paperback that wasn’t a reissued classic was, I think, when I was early in my teenage years. Back then I read a lot of Grisham as well as James Patterson, Steven King and Clive Barker. I’m glad I read this, however, as it was nice to re-encounter the specific style and voice that based on sales has one of the widest audiences.

The novel develops around two separate plots that at converge to create the purportedly dynamic but unpredictable third act tension. I say unpredictable not as Grisham gives anything away, he plays the scenes close to the cuff, but because I’m sure if it’d been any other way then there would have been thought pieces published in some of the literary journals listing examples and posturing about the verisimilitude of the world we now find ourselves in.

The book opens on three imprisoned ex-judges that have been given the collective name of “the Brethren” by the security guards in the minimum-security prison. In this prison they attempt to re-create their former power by acting as Justices of the Court by hearing complaints amongst the inmates. Their judgements are considered final and are always a 2-1 verdict, so that if an inmate corners one of them they can claim they were the one that voted in their favor for security purposes. The Brethren also engage in an elaborate blackmail scheme that preys on wealthy, closeted homosexual men with the help of a drunkard lawyer. Since their job in the minimum security prison only pays cents an hour, this is a good way to save time and put money aside to prepare for their relase.

The second narrative traces the rise of presidential candidate Aaron Lake. Lake is, essentially, a puppet created by CIA director Teddy Maynard to fulfill his desire for increased U.S. military spending to counter a General in Russia that he foresees as rising in power and leading to an existential threat to America. Grisham does not quickly weave these two threads together immediately, thereby leaving the reader to wonder in the opening chapters how and when these two worlds will collide.

This plotting was tight, but the stakes for the characters involved was so low that I had trouble getting too invested in their struggles. Towards the middle and end, when there’s much more intrigue going on, I still never felt that anyone was in “real danger” or that the cause for actions was all that significant. Part of this is because I think Grisham want’s to cynically highlight the false personalities we expect of politicians and the political process – there are certainly a few passages and asides that accomplish this. However this intrusion of social commentary in sparse and comes off in all but a few passages less as insightful critique and more as scathing but essentially fatalistic pessimism.

I found Grisham’s portrayal of characters to be interesting but not altogether impressive. There are some complex figures, such as Justice Hatlee Beech, but even then this former millionaire judge rendered divorced, bankrupt, and friendless after his conviction for vehicular homicide while drunk (two students outside the car and a naked female stranger in his car) doesn’t strike me as well developed. His trauma is less from the acts that took him there and more from his loss of a job that was a well-paying appointment for life, prestige, his wife’s money. Even his children’s lack of contact with him, so as to stay in the good graces of their rich mother, seems to only be an afterthought. Presidential candidate Lake seems and even the CIA director Teddy Maynard also read to me as nearly one-dimensional. Maynard is not evil, but a puppet-master who uses his knowledge and connections to help mold the public will via ad campaigns, illicit contributions, and international intrigue. There is, however, little description on any of this and instead we read of CIA ops going on in the office of a small town lawyer that’s also a drunkard.

I didn’t particularly find the book’s resolution to be all that engaging. Spoiler alert! Even after The Brethren hustle their way out of prison they return to the scam that helped get them out. It’s sensible, as they were able to make a lot of money the first time around, however I find given their recognition of the precariousness of their safety (they’re being constantly watched) that they would be willing to risk this.