Ghost Ship

        The term “Ghost Ship” is one that I use to metaphorically describe any organization that appears to be real, that appears to be strong and solid, but in actuality isn’t there; it’s existence is an illusion. From the outside looking in, it looks like a real, healthy vessel. But if you examine it closely, or if you get on the ship, the truth reveals itself to you. And it’s an ugly truth.
         Most of us have some experience with this sort of system, be it a dysfunctional family, or a poorly managed place of employment, or a badly coached sports team. All three appear to serve various functions, like love, support, community, service, or achievement. And on a very superficial level, they most likely do (even the worst run sports team on the planet gets out there and plays). But just below the surface, things break down completely. The family, or the company, or the team, is just a facade.
         Imagine being out on the ocean, and seeing what appears to be a ship sailing beside you. From this distance, it looks like a great ship. It looks real. So you make your way over to it and hop on board. Now you’re on the ship. Now you’re in it. At first, all appears normal, even wonderful. But if you’re paying attention, you slowly realize that things are very different here. The ship itself has disappeared. You find yourself in a sort of nether-world where nothing makes sense, and the rules of the world don’t apply here. When you’re part of the Ghost Ship, you find that it operates by it’s own set of laws that have nothing to do with reality. That have nothing to do with truth or integrity or honesty. The Ghost Ship is it’s own completely self contained entity. It’s own, totally fucked up, completely self contained entity.
         My own experience with a Ghost Ship lead me to beg, borrow, and steal from my own sense of self in a futile attempt to make the ship real. To turn the phantom into an actual living, breathing, feeling, compassionate, loving, evolving entity. But the Ghost Ship doesn’t want to change, so I can’t change it. So I don’t try anymore. I put the energy into making myself a better person instead of trying to make something unreal real.
         My personal observations, and they are strictly mine, regarding my experience with a particular Ghost Ship are what follow....

        On the Ghost Ship, Truth is merely a commodity. It is bought and sold, traded and bartered for, depending on the whims and wishes of the buyers and sellers. On the Ghost Ship, Truth has no intrinsic worth. It’s value fluctuates and changes depending on what other commodity Truth is being sold for:usually Money or Power. So Truth has no value. But Lies are priceless.
         Lies become the gold standard. The more valuable the prize, the more valuable the Lie. And a Valuable Lie takes great effort and skill to create and sell and maintain. And the Lie becomes the “truth”. And this “truth” has value.
         To accomplish this, the Liar must work very hard and put lots of energy into lying. Good deception, is, after all, hard work. The Liar must possess certain skills and attributes. The Liar must remove self examination, self awareness, and introspection. The Liar must not accept any inconvenient facts. The Liar must delude themselves with an endless stream of rationalizations and excuses. The Liar must constantly blame somebody else for their own problems and never take responsibility for their own shortcomings or mistakes. The Liar must endlessly spin reality to always put themselves in the right. The Liar must constantly re-write history in any way that best serves their shifting and all consuming agenda.
         Above all, the Liar can not appear to be lying. The most important thing for the Liar is that they appear to be telling the truth. If they are really good at that, then they actually believe their own lies and the process becomes much easier for them. Effortless really. And then they can lie forever. And it’s easy to stay on the Ghost Ship. The Ghost Ship becomes home. And the illusions of the Ghost Ship become real. And when that happens, they are lost. They lose the ability to realize what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.
         What is your desire? More money? More control? More power? To hurt or punish someone? To assassinate someone’s character? Whatever you want, the right Lies, at the right price, carefully propagated, will get it for you. That is the way of the Ghost Ship.
         Like a dollar that’s worth 20 cents one minute and a pound of gold the next, Truth offers no stability, no benchmark, no standard from which to assert right from wrong, good from bad, fair from unfair, dream from nightmare, friend from foe, real from unreal, greed from altruism, cooperation from manipulation, scarcity from abundance. There is no objective Truth. There are no objective facts. Everything is subjective. Like a dream where the people change before your eyes from one moment to the next. Where the landscape is forever shifting. And as long as one stays on this Ghost Ship, the only way to function is to surrender to the madness; to accept the insanity. The only way to make sense of it is to have no sense.
         On the Ghost Ship, the only reality is that of the ship itself. There is no outside influence that can penetrate the thick wall of denial. There is nothing that can change it. Or influence it. Or help it. You see that the Ghost Ship is sick. The Ghost Ship is sinking. The only way to save yourself is to jump off. To abandon ship. To leap into the vast, churning ocean alone, and find whatever you need out in it. Because the ship holds nothing for you anymore. Nothing but Lies. And grief. And madness.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a Love Boat full of Wrongs) Reserved.

Fifty-Four-X Monster Stack

        We’ve all seen at least one of them. Some are cute and make us smile. Others evoke tears. Many do both. They’re commonplace at weddings as well as funerals. Sometimes you pay somebody else for it. Other times you do it yourself or ask a friend to help. Fifteen years ago, they were strictly the province of professionals. Now, thanks to the digital revolution, almost anybody can do one.
         I’m referring to The Photo Montage. Or as I like to think of them: The Personal Music Video.
         In case I’ve lost you, what I’m talking about is simply a short film that consists of photographs, and sometimes footage, put to music and edited together, usually with simple transitions from one photo to the next. They can run from a few minutes to almost an hour. At a wedding, the bride and groom will show one that displays pictures of the two of them throughout the course of their relationship, put to some of “their songs”. At milestone birthday parties, the guest of honor gets to watch all sorts of embarrassing shots of themselves when they were fat with braces, put to the rock ‘n’ roll music that they loved in high school.
         I like photo montages. When done correctly, they can be very moving, beautiful, artistic, creations that pay homage to the film’s subject. When done badly, they can be a train wreck. For everybody. Luckily, I haven’t seen many of those.
         I’ve done quite a few photo montages, both professionally and for the fun of it. I’ve even taught an adult education class on how to do them. Mine are usually different from what most people are used to. Some of that is because of my own “brand” of creativity. Some of that is because I’m a musician, and within the film I use music very differently than a non-musician would. And some of that is because of how I feel about this form of media and how I approach the process of creating it.
         Most people that do these types of films gather a bunch of photos, often times string them together chronologically, and lay some music underneath. I’m not knocking that. It works. But if you want to create something special, you have to take it to another level. I do. And so can you.
         I treat a photo montage like an MTV caliber Personal Music Video.
         A music video for a rock band is made to sell that band. Well I believe a photo montage should “sell” the person, or the couple, or whoever the film is made about. That means making creative choices that are designed to illicit very strong emotional responses from the audience without over-sentimentalizing. Specifically, I want to bring out the essence of that person and put it on the screen for all to see. My goal is to create something that helps the person feel great about themselves. I want them to absolutely love who they see on the screen. And to do that, I have to first love them. And I do. Whether I’ve met them or not.
         I spend many hours with photographs of the person the film is about. I spend hours looking at pictures of their friends and family, of listening to their favorite music, of hearing the stories behind the pictures from people they know. All of this allows me to get to know the person. And through that, I gradually grow, in a way, to love them. I’ve gone through this phenomenon with every photo montage I’ve ever done, and it’s a beautiful experience. It’s a connecting experience. It’s what I love most about doing them. If I already know the person, by the time I’m done, I feel even more connected to them. I love them ever more.
         Like painting a picture of somebody with images and sounds, I want to bring out what’s special about the person. I want to convey their unique self. I want to make them look good, and bring out their beauty, their sex appeal, their passion, their vulnerability, their....whatever. Whatever help makes them who they are. When I watch a good music video of a band, I come away loving that band. They’re sexy. They’re cool. They rock. They’re wild. They’re funny. They’re sensitive souls. Whatever and whoever they are, it gets communicated in a good music video. What I relate to is the essence of that band. Even if it’s a fabricated, marketing driven essence, in this context, it doesn’t really matter. It works. I’m connected to them. I identify with them, or with whatever they stand for.
         When I do this for a photo montage, it’s a little different in that I’m always going for what’s real. I’m trying to extract something I see in the person and present it, embellish it, and weave it in with the rest of them to create something that people can connect to. We all have everything in us. Some of it is just easier to see, easier to identify. If I wanted to create a film that painted an “unflattering” portrait of somebody, I would first connect to that in them that is “unflattering”. Say their selfishness. Or their greed. Or their temper. It’s all there. If I look hard enough, I’ll find it. It’s in all of us.
         But if I want to create a true MTV caliber Personal Music Video of the person, an homage to them that tells some kind of story, I focus on that which makes them who they are. All that beautiful stuff that’s uniquely theirs. That’s there too. So I look for it. And I find it.
         I encourage you to create a Personal Music Video for someone you love. Not the garden variety, simple photo montage kind, as nice as that may be. Give them something special. Give them a bona fide tribute to who they are.
         In the second part of this post, I’ll help you do that by sharing what I’ve learned and getting into some specifics.
         By the way, the title has absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote. It’s a play in football that sounds cool, and I wanted to use it as a title. Seemed as good a time as any.

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and an MTV amount of Wrongs) Reserved.

Dinosaur, Junior.

        As long as I can remember, I’ve been into dinosaurs. As a kid, I was obsessed with them. I loved to draw them, read about them, write about them, play games about them; I couldn’t get enough.
        Before they built the entire full scale replica, The Boston Museum of Science used to have just a life sized model head of a Tyrannosaurus. Under it, they had a box for donations, claiming that once they got enough money, they would construct and display the whole dinosaur, in all it’s monstrous glory. Every time we visited the museum, I would empty my pockets of change and throw it into the kitty. I would pull on my dad’s leg and beg him to clean out his wallet, or better yet, write the museum a whopping check to cover the cost. I wanted to see the whole full sized model, and I wanted to see it now. For a ten year old, the thought of waiting years to see something that awesome was unbearable. Hell, at that age, waiting an hour for dinner was torture.
        When I was a kid, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was by far my favorite dinosaur. A strange thing happened as I got older, though. I began to favor the arch rival of the T-Rex, the dreaded, hulking Triceratops, who appeared the only dinosaur remotely capable of holding his own against the king of the prehistoric carnivores.
        At first, liking ”Three-Horned-Face” felt like some sort of heresy. Triceratops and T-Rex were bitter rivals. At least in the minds of all dinosaur-loving kids everywhere. This intense rivalry was most likely a fabricated construct, a conspiracy propagated by publishers of children’s dinosaur books worldwide. They knew what they were doing. To sell books, they had to create conflict, so they came up with the idea that these two behemoths regularly duked it out. I guess it wasn’t fascinating enough just to be learning about these absolutely amazing creatures. They had to make it a kiddy soap opera and throw in some pathos. I could have done without the drama; I watched a few epic Shakespearean plays unfold virtually every day within my own family.
        Part of why I resented the whole arch enemy thing was because, in the books I read, T-Rex almost always lost the battle. That didn’t seem right to me. If he got his ass kicked more often than not by Triceratops, why wasn’t the horned dinosaur called “king” instead of the Tyrannosaur? As a kid, I took the T-Rex’s losses personally, the same way I did when a sports team I liked lost. I got really bummed, even depressed, when something I cared about lost. This is because I often felt victimized as a kid, and a loss at the hands of an opponent, even in a dinosaur book, just felt like another episode of victimization. Twisted, but true.
        But years ago, I had an insight about my subsequent favoring of Triceratops. T-rex was all about attack. He was pure offense. Triceratops, on the other hand, was supremely built for defending himself. He was all about defense. Dee-Fense. And this switch, from liking Triceratops over T-Rex, paralleled a change of heart I had with regards to my favorite sport, football. I started identifying very strongly with the defensive component of football, rather than the offense. My favorite position went from running back to linebacker. Suddenly, I would rather be part of a goal line stand and be the dude who made the game-saving, bone-crunching, bell-ringing tackle than be the guy who ran the ball across the goal line, scoring the winning touchdown.
        This whole thing goes deeper (doesn’t it always?). As I’ve said, as a child, I identified with the role of victim. Although I felt victimized, and often was, I couldn’t name it. I couldn’t identify what I was feeling. I didn’t understand it. Most kids don’t. They just know they feel crappy when they get victimized. Lots of shame. I experienced intense feelings of worthlessness and inferiority. But as I got older, I realized that I had become perversely comfortable whenever I took on the role of victim. And I didn’t like being that way.
        In my teens, I started lifting weights, filling out, and getting in touch with my burgeoning testosterone. When I got a little older, in my twenties, I developed some psychological defenses, like the ability to put up walls, to keep myself safe. It all helped me feel less like a victim. As I developed more methods of physical and emotional protection, I felt better about myself, and I began to identify with Triceratops, and with linebackers too. Because Triceratops and linebackers weren’t victims. They could take care of themselves. They, at least in my mind, weren’t bullies either. They minded their own business, but drew a line in the sand and said “Don’t cross it. If you do, things will get ugly.” That’s who I wanted to be. No longer the victim. The defender. The protector. Of myself and of people I loved.
        When in college, I did some boxing. I also became able to summon my latent anger and get my blood up if I needed to. I connected more and more to that ultimate defender, Triceratops. He was a living tank. A living tank with big, sharp horns. He had huge, strong muscles that could drive those horns deep into an opponent. He had a bony frill that protected the rest of his body from frontal assault. He had hard, thick skin that could resist blows and sharp teeth. All in all, he was one tough mo-fo. The linebacker of the dinosaur world.
        But there was something else too. Something just as important. He was a herbivore, so in my mind, he was peaceful at heart. Projecting human attributes onto animals, as humans often do, I saw him as a gentle, sensitive creature who wanted to go about his life without hurting anybody. He may have been tough on the outside, but he was sweet on the inside. He was a lover who, if absolutely need be, could become a ferocious fighter. I identified with that. Triceratops seemed a lot more like me than T-Rex.
        Making Triceratops out to be gentle in nature was just as important to me as his ability to kick ass, because I didn’t want to become a victimizer. I did not want to become that which I loathed. I didn’t want to be an aggressive asshole. I didn’t want to be a bully. I knew enough of those, and I didn’t like them.
        When I got older, I could do something that I couldn’t do as a kid: defend myself against the bully. And I knew, at heart, that the bully is a coward. Preying on those weaker than themselves because they couldn’t beat someone of equal strength. If given the chance, I wanted to call the bully's bluff. And then kick the crap out of him.
        I realize the contradiction in that line of thinking. But it’s where I was at for a long time. I didn’t get in many fights, but I always wanted to defend myself and those I loved by pummeling a bully. It was sort of an ongoing fantasy.
        Through lots of work on myself, I’m not where I used to be with that. I’m not angry anymore. I’m much more conscious. More loving. Happier. Ultimately, more myself.
        But I still strongly identify with Triceratops. And linebackers.

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a dinosaur-size tally of Wrongs) Reserved.

Band Aid

        Moments before my band kicked into our opening number at another epic Halloween party, my bass player had a potentially tragic accident. Half heartedly paying attention to the fan he was adjusting, he sliced his finger open on it’s spinning metal blades. Within seconds, red liquid, that looked curiously like real blood, was spurting out of his pinkie. I quickly took him upstairs to find something to stem the invading red tide.
        While in my bathroom, his finger bleeding and throbbing, my friend and band mate started turning to the dark side. “I’ve ruined the gig!” he proclaimed, his voice full of panic and doom. “I can’t play like this. I’ve let the band down. We’re screwed. I’m so sorry!”.
        Well you don’t know someone for over twenty years, play almost a hundred shows together, consider him one of your best friends, and not know a thing or two about the dude. I recognized his acute sense of hyper-responsibility shifting into over-drive. His occasional propensity for worry was taking center stage, instead of his cool, rock god persona. I had to get him back.
        Luckily, I wasn’t in that space with him. In this case, I was completely unperturbed and the voice of reason. But I remember understanding how he felt, and being very aware that for him, this panic and sense of dread was very real. So I didn’t fluff it off, but responded in a way that served my friend in need, and served the situation at hand. I wrapped his finger up and gave him a healthy belt of booze. That helped. As he leaned over my sink, lamenting that he had ruined the show, I patted him on the back and told him repeatedly that everything was going to be fine. He hadn’t ruined anything. He just delayed the performance, that’s all.
        Well the band did go on, totally kicked ass, and had a fantastic time. What I’ll never forget about that night, though, is that I was there for a friend. My most endearing memory of the entire night is not how good the band sounded, or how much fun I had at the party, but that I helped someone I cared about. I helped my buddy through something that he was having a hard time with. I can’t tell you how honored I feel to be given that chance. That most precious gift.
        I’m forever grateful for that opportunity. It was in fact he who helped me, as much or more, than I helped him, because he gave me the chance to be there for him. He gave me the chance to be his friend. And really, there is no greater gift he could have given me.
        I look back and ask myself how many times we don’t give people the opportunity to be there for us. How often I say “I can do this myself. I don’t need any help.” We are actually withholding love for another when we don’t give them the chance to be there for us. On the surface, it may appear that we’re doing them a favor by not “bothering” them with our struggles. But actually, we’re being selfish, albeit unintentionally and often with good intention, by not allowing somebody we love to help us.
        I want the people in my life to ask me for help. I want them to come to me when they need something. Not because it’s a power trip and I want them to develop a perverse dependence on me, but because I experience love in the most profound of ways when I’m there for someone. I don’t want that love withheld from me, and I don’t want to withhold it from another.
        So the next time anybody inadvertently sticks their finger in a fan, call me. I’ll be there.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a bloody spinning fan of Wrongs) Reserved.

Who Are You Wearing?

        A few weeks ago, I was at a club in Boston called Oliver’s, which is part of The Cask And Flagon, in Kenmore Square. I was there to catch a friend’s band. When I walked into the place at about 9 PM, the doorman took one look at me and said “Are you with the band?”. Well technically, no, I wasn’t. I knew the guys in the band, but I wasn’t in the band, or a part of it’s mechanics, like manager, sound man, groupie, or band plumber. But I instinctively said “Yes”, and he stamped my hand and pointed me towards the stage.
        It suddenly occurred to me how much information we convey non-verbally to people without realizing it. My overall package of jeans, T-shirt, long leather jacket, fingerless gloves, earrings, and black wool hat must have screamed “musician:rocker” to the guy at the door before I ever opened my mouth.
        I sat at the bar at The Cask And Flagon because I had some time to kill before the band went on. While there, I started to pay particularly close attention to what people were wearing, and what it might say about them. I was looking for clues about people in how they dressed and in how they carried themselves. I sort of played personality detective, using nothing more that dress and non-verbal cues to deduce certain things. I didn’t take it seriously. I treated it like a game.
        After a while of doing this, I reasoned that certain sides of people become more or less emphasized based on what they wear. For example, would you act a little differently in a club if you were dressed in a suit as opposed to a T-shirt and jeans? Probably. You would probably carry yourself differently as well.
        Then I took it a step further and asked why that would be. Maybe it isn’t that way for some people. And I guess that’s the point. Can the essence of who you are be expressed and shine through, no matter what you wear? If, for example, I were wearing something I didn’t like, somebody would probably be able to see that. I would most likely carry myself differently than I would if I thought I looked kick ass. Some of me would therefore probably get lost in the translation.
        I don’t think this has anything to do with how shallow or deep somebody is. It may, however, have something to do with vanity. I consider myself a very deep person, and anybody who knows me well would say the same thing. That doesn’t mean, though, that I’m not concerned with shallow things like appearance. I make no bones about it: I want to look good. I want to be in great shape, and possess what most would consider a beautiful body. I want people to think I’m handsome, attractive, sexy, etc. So I put time and effort into taking care of myself.
        My standards for myself are much higher than they are for anybody else. Just because I want to look a certain way doesn’t mean I care about what people I love look like, because I don’t. I want them to be happy with themselves, whatever that means to them. I certainly don’t love anybody more or less depending on how they look.
        I am, however, more attracted to a woman who takes care of herself. Who works out and has, what I consider, a nice body. And a face can definitely launch a thousand of my ships. All in her direction.
        It would be a colossal mistake, however, to assume that I’m therefore shallow; that that’s all there is to me. It’s wrong to assume that there’s nothing else beneath the surface of me (or anybody else for that matter) just because I care a lot about what I look like. In some frank and honest discussions with friends, I’ve been told that some people who don’t know me assume that because of how dedicated I am to fitness, and the importance I place on how I look, that I must be a shallow, egotistical, rock-jock who doesn’t have a lot on the ball intellectually, and that I’m probably about as deep as a puddle.
        What’s fascinating to me is that I rarely make such sweeping assumptions about people based on how they look. So sometimes I have a hard time understanding why anybody else would. Like with the whole sparkly shirt thing, I ask “What’s the big deal?”. If a person is concerned with their appearance, that doesn’t necessarily say anything about what the rest of them is about. It’s just one piece of the very big, fantastic, intriguing puzzle of who they are. Maybe it’s a bigger piece for some people than for others, but you wouldn’t discover that until you got to know the person, would you?
        I do realize, however, where vanity can trip me up and cause me lots of problems. And I will readily admit that sometimes, I let it. If I don’t think I look good, it can screw with my head, my self image, and even my self worth. That’s not good. That’s me paying way too much attention to my ego. That’s me inhabiting the space of my lower self. My critical, judgmental, beat-the-crap-out-of-me self that I still struggle with.
        I believe that it’s possible for me to take care of myself the best I can, to look as good as I can, but not succumb to the pitfalls of vanity and ego. I can do it sometimes. I don’t believe it’s an all or nothing type of deal. I don’t buy that just because you’re so evolved and enlightened that you can look past appearance, it automatically means that you yourself don’t want to look killer. I want both. I want Enlightenment. AND a rockin’ bod.
        It comes down to the value I place on my own appearance. It comes down to self love. I can want to look a certain way. I can work at it and feel good about it. But I can love myself whether I look that way or not. I don’t have to hinge any sense of self worth based on what kind of shape I’m in.
        I don’t know how to do that yet. That doesn’t mean I’m shallow. It means I’m human. It means I’m flawed. It means I’ve got work to do.
        So I’m aware of this inner conflict. I’m conscious of the struggle, and I work on it. I work on myself; Body, Mind, Heart, Spirit, and the integration of those into a more whole self. I want to love myself the way I am, but always be growing. I want to be peaceful and content with myself, but always aspire to becoming more enlightened, more spiritual. Closer to my true self and closer to my higher power. I want to stay grounded, which is a lot harder for me than soaring. I can fly just fine. It’s keeping myself on the ground that I have have a hard time with.

Taken from the daily quote at www.yogawithjohn.com :

"he who sees all beings in the self and the self in all beings, henceforth has no more distress."
— Isha Upanishad

“Bingo.”
- Clint

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and the appearance of Wrongs) Reserved.