This happy, glitzy piece is a reel I created for The House of Mercado, a costume design house and performance troupe. Known best for working with Jonathan Peters, this group makes events in NYC and around the globe beyond fantastic.
Peace,
Melissa
Durga: Avenging Goddess, Nurturing Mother
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity - must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions - not in these her honor dwells -
She, the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else!
Rudyard Kipling, The Female of the Species
Virtue is not meant to be convenient. There is no time where it should be seen as a hindrance. We live and die daily victories or deaths by our choices, to tell the truth, even when it costs us dearly - love, friendship, family, country, life. Steal big or steal little, each opportunity to do the right and good thing, keeping in mind the helpless, the greater good, the universal will to better the conditions of all beings, not just human, on this planet.
I have these beliefs burning in me, as axiomatic and necessary. At each turn, trying to fight against the basic goodness that needs to flow through every human being, my will to fight for my personal well being always weighs itself against the greater scope of my connectedness to all things. Who do I fight for, against and why? Am I forcing an issue, making a point, seeking correction, bringing light to darkness?
This short piece was done for the Neruda Project, celebrating Neruda’s 100th birthday. Not sure how far the project has progressed. This piece reflects my mood about the world in 2003.
Peace,
Melissa
Williamsburg Graf - photo by M. Ulto, 2006
To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world-that I am able to change it in positive ways.
Maxine Hong Kingston
One does not find oneself by pursuing one’s self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine who one is and wants to be.
May Sarton
As a filmmaker, particularly a documentary filmmaker, I have to often question the motives of the people I shoot - why are they volunteering information, why are they on camera, what are they gaining. I have to question who is paying for the footage, the final product, and why - commerce, altruism, acclaim. Documentary filmmaking can be a parasitical business - one only has to look at “reality tv” to see the fallout of poorly crafted and poorly considered media to understand that not every situation or conversation has a place on the airwaves.
Sure, one can invoke the first amendment, free speech, freedom to do and say what you want. Fine and good. But where is the honor in manipulating and embarrassing the ill prepared, stupid and fairly naive? Those tactics were originally the province of journalists attacking the powerful, the criminal, the infamous and famous. Now its a tool used against the fame hungry, the 15 minutes of prime time demanding citizenry, to our mutual shame.
multo blue - m. ulto
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.
Helen Keller
Change is the most constant thing on this planet.
Change, painful and abrupt, like war.
Change, slow and consistent, like the movement of glaciers.
Change, standard and complete, like life, like death, like birth.
Should we shake and freeze in the face of it?
Or glide, untouched, into the future, without looking back?
Can we ever be divorced from the past so completely?
Or is change shifting perspective by force, on the past, present and possible futures?
Steps, one at a time, are not the achievement on which we rest.
Steps are plateaus until we are ready to reach for the next step.
So peace can be developed, step by step, as we comprehend and prepare and embrace.
The embrace is a daily practice, done often without fanfare or congratulations, but as a necessary function of life, of peace, of change.
Get up, if you are knocked down. Rise, if you have fallen. Move, if you are standing.
Fall, rise, move again.
Embrace the samsara, continue and then pause at the end of life, a break well earned.
Peace,
Melissa
I edited this trailer a couple weeks ago. Enjoy this flavor of On The Grind - the DVD is available for order here.
Talk as much philosophy as you like, worship as many gods as you please, observe ceremonies and sing devotional hymns, but liberation will never come, even after a hundred eons, without realizing the Oneness.
Sankara
As bombs drop, situations escalate, conflicts continue and suffering goes unchecked, there is something deeper missing in all the bluster and self-righteous rage.
Ross Irivine - PR Anti-Activist Flack
The below is an article forwarded to me by friends. Mr. Ross Irvine, a self-proclaimed Anti-Activist Activist, has disturbing reach into the world stage of corporate responsibility.
GM WATCH daily
http://www.gmwatch.org
—
A version of this article was first commissioned by an Australian broadsheet newspaper and then killed.
QUOTES: “Once these ideas were at the edge of sanity, now they’re at the edge of policy.”
“Only an organization that has wholly alienated itself from the public would even consider attending an event like this.”
—
GRASSROOTS VS ASTROTURF
reportage / Katherine Wilson
Overland 183, pp.13?17
http://www.overlandexpress.org/183_wilson.html
There’s a man in Canada who thinks I’m a terrorist. He was in Australia this time last year, presenting workshops around the country. They were titled, ‘The best strategies to win against activists’. On his ad he called himself “Controversial Canadian PR consultant Ross Irvine”.
But a text scan of media around the world revealed no controversy surrounding any bloke named Ross Irvine. Not until he arrived in Australia, where the West Australian dubbed him “Rambo Ross” and ABC Melbourne’s Jon Faine called him “the anti-activist-activist”.
Still, I booked into Irvine’s Melbourne workshop. Held in a plush seminar room at a city business school, it cost A$595 for four hours, payable to the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA).
In this workshop, I’d learn how to create bogus community groups, false statistics, and links with “far-right-wing nutso activists”. I’d learn to conflate “activist” with “terrorist” and “security threat”.
Still from The Art of Love & Struggle - Nemesis
When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us?
Pam Brown
Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow.
Benjamin Disraeli
The below email is from my friend Wendy, living in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. She held a screening of “The Art of Love & Struggle recently, and this is the fantastic feedback:
Hi Melissa,
Well I showed the art of love and struggle last night. we were 15 women watching it outdoors under the new mexico stars in my yard on a projector. the ages: 2 under 40, 2 between 40-50, the rest over 50. my towns largely retirees and the new generation of young people is a shock! i’m part of that of course. ethnicity: 100% white and likely christian. a few were x activist types from back in the day.
