by hans peter meyer
Media that Matters. What happens when 50+ multi-faceted media creatives gather at Hollyhock on Cortes Island for 4-5 days?
IN THE BEGINNING: a mirror of the world we are all struggling with, the conference as a "firehose" of information and ideas threatening to wash away sense of time/place/order. This persists through the days we are together. There are only rare moments to reflect, to stand back from it all and get perspective. A breathing space.
Is there a conflict between storytellers' traditional desire to create narrative, and emerging media champions' delight in the seeming messiness and volume of information? How do we share meaning when there seems to be no syntax, nevermind narrative?
References to the "ADD" quality of culture being produced by emerging media.
SECOND, confusion meets eagerness to learn. We begin to tame the firehose effect.
As manipulators of information we give shape to the inchoate. We filter and screen. We create taxonomies. Lists. Reference points. Technologies to give focus. To point towards meaning. Old media meets new media in the same impetus to shape, to manipulate, to handle and share. Sometimes meaning only becomes apparent in the rearview mirror.
The ADD culture warriors wrestle with the same issues. Although some of us reference the changing brain, we're not yet willing to live entirely wild in the field of chaos. Paraphrasing KK : I have no time for things and people that waste my attention; it's the most valuable thing I have. I think about Bruce Sterling's novel, Distraction.
Mike Littrell introduces several ideas that resonate over the next few days. One has to do with knowing our personal narrative, and the wisdom of knowing how and when it has reached or is reaching the end of it's usefulness. The most telling for me comes, ironically, from my least favourite of Hemingway's novels (Farewell to Arms): "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places." Here, I realize, is a juicy bit: it's when and where I've broken that I've tasted the juice of my life and been inspired to be bigger, more than I thought I was. Isn't this why I love story? Because it is how we try to connect the pieces, to feel the flow of juice in a sometimes arid, decidedly not-juicy world?
THIRD, much animated and application /action-oriented conversation (remember: face to face is still our most persuasive and authentic medium; we are humans, we love to talk and to listen and to hang out together and generate new things - ideas, projects, things to hold in our hands, things to hold in our minds and hearts).
Stories. The telling of stories of pain and suffering and laughter and inspiration and playfulness. Fragments that ask for a story. Stories about the nightmares most of us enjoy, the sheer glut of this life we live thrown back, empty. A child earnestly and excitedly doing what children do in my life: making me laugh, connecting me to another very, very juicy place. Not the place of breaking, but the place of forgetting. I keep coming back to this idea too: how much I learn from my children, from being given the opportunity to remember who and how I was at their age.
FINALLY, we dance and sing and laugh and get too little sleep and go back out into the world. And on the way I get to listen and talk with Sarah and Mike and learn a little more about how we come together.
Thanks to the 50+, but especially the Media that Matters team!
-- 30 --
©hanspetermeyer.ca / 2009
5 comments:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Media that Matters - I'm still trying to stitch it all together. Great to meet you!
Hello Hans,
I was impressed not only by your observations but also by the structure you created when expressing them. On a personal note, I was moved by your kind words of appreciation.
I wish {for my own selfish reasons} that you could have been with us all the way into Victoria, as the conversation morphed into personal stories. You were right, it would have been cool if there'd been someone filming, then posting to YouTube, our Iliad journey to Hollyhock and then our Odyssey like return. Since than I've imagined each vehicle was much like ours, bursting with the narratives of its travelers.
Fundamentally, the story of MtM has to be the story of its storytellers.
I marveled at our driver’s self-awakening of the power of her own narrative, with her "car brothers" {and later, those she met at Hollyhock} playing supportive {but essential} roles within her story. Our acknowledging the ancient stories' similarity to ours {the “what was to what is" relationship} echoes still.
I appreciated how another of our group utilizes his immense "felt-life" energy to heal the unspoken wounds that separate those in his community {through his use of music and dance}, and by doing so, touches everyone.
This was real Shaman stuff !
I witnessed the traits of both warrior and healer emerge among those present, but refreshingly, not the mercenary. I think this was deeply felt by everyone for it ritualized safety and allowed our shared, safe harbour, our sacred space to emerge.
The benefit of such a re-animation ritual is that it offers the opportunity to challenge the shadow-illusion that we're invisible, that we're alone and that somehow we don't matter. I recall watching as this shadow-myth's broken places emerged, then watched it falter and then finally, just melt away.
It was here, it's always here in safe-harbour, that the traveler has the opportunity to find both their mentor and the one who sees their true face. Fundamentally, isn't the only reason that media matters is that "we" matter. All of us matter: no one is left by the side of the road. How could it be otherwise?
This is why {when MtM was "at its best"} what was felt wasn't just the "teachings", it was different than that...it was more than that. It was witnessing, it was being "in service", it was sacrificing some of our illusions for our own benefit.
All of that allowed some of the ancient wisdom resident within each of us to emerge and remind us of one essential truth: We are all storytellers and have the right to speak of those moments when we too walked the Earth, together.
Your friend,
Mike
Thanks for this Hans...and Mike, I've been spun into a portal of reflection and discovery that I can't thank you enough for.
Sarah
I'm moved by Naomi's desire to be part of this road trip to #mtm09 and back to write something, to keep the convo going.
Just a couple of things: I like how you've described what the #mtm09 experience meant for you "at its best." It's got me thinking about when it was "at its best" for me.
The idea that, at bottom, what matters is the stories we have, that we create – this is where everything (including #mtm09) gets interesting/real for me. Much of what I see in my life and in the various media around me (including face to face conversation) is removed from the personal story. It's one of the things I like about the mashing up of personal/public that happens when people get on facebook – and then get "caught" being real people.
I did a "social media bootcamp" recently that underscores much of what I'm reading these days: there is so much more transparency to our communications, our conversations, that it's hard to maintain "managed" selves/narratives. This makes for much messiness right now; I think it makes for cleaner cmns down the road: you can't get away with being flakey/phoney/nasty for too long.
If nothing else, transparency and "putting things on the table" means less time wasted with the flakey/phoney/nasty fear-based stories that persist, even in convivial gatherings. Sometimes this shows up in posturing or "chip-on-the-shoulder-ism," the kind of on-upmanship that happens too often in conference situations. Thankfully, I found that when I was able to be "transparent" about my story, my intention, etc people responded in kind at #mtm09.
I've been doing a bit of a ramble here. It's Sunday, and I'm feeling the need to get out into the garden rather than sit here in the office.
Thanks for this conversation.
ox h.
more on this conversation here:
http://development-issues.blogspot.com/2009/05/development-issues-june-2009-first.html
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