How does a beautiful idea begin? When does that idea become art? Eyelids, a short film shown this year at Cannes and the Chicago International Film Festival, began in 2007 as a doodle on a post-it note. Brad Bischoff, a student at Columbia College and the co-founder of the production company, Look at Rubbish, first envisioned Eyelids as a Valentine's Day poem for his girlfriend. As friends from Look at Rubbish got involved, the project grew to include a children’s book and eventually the short film. The result of this collaborative process is a touching story narrated by Bischoff’s grandfather and filmed on black and white 16mm film.

This video was almost impossible for me to deal with, since I have two boys of my own. Unlike some of the comment-leavers below the video on YouTube, I saw the ending coming a mile away. This video feels like watching a car accident develop right in front of my eyes.

I would never allow one of my sons to live on one side of that screen so that the other could blissfully exist on the other. But as I tied my son’s shoes this morning and sent him off to daycare, I couldn’t help but wonder where the hands were that made his sneakers. Whose son made those little blue tennis shoes? Where did he sleep last night? When he woke up, did he have a glass of milk to drink? While my son plays with toys all day (possibly made by some other boy), would he get to play at all?

Once upon a time while in college, I found myself on an elevator when the cable broke.  It may have had something to do with 23 guys cramming into a cart that had a maximum capacity of 11.  The cable snapped.  We fell 4 stories.  A "safety" cable caught us 2 feet before we hit the bottom.  (I love safety cables.)  After celebrating the fact that we were all still alive, we waited a memorable 25 minutes before the fire department was able to pull us out of the elevator. 

In October of 1999, Nicholas White had a not-so-similar encounter with an elevator.  While working late in a downtown high rise in New York City, White decided to go out for a cigarette break.   Upon the elevator ride back to his office, his life would be forever impacted as a malfunction in the elevator would leave him trapped for... well, a bit more than 25 minutes.

What happens when a few have so much and so many have so little?  A pillow fight.  

As our world gets smaller, via new technologies (i.e. the internet, video technologies, cell phone capabilities, etc.) we begin to get a clearer view of how the "things" in our world are distributed.  In America we created a middle class (which is a historically significant social step) and began thinking all things were fairly evenly distributed.  Then Bono started blabbing about some country called "Africa" (later research revealed "Africa" to actually be a continent, consisting of many, very diverse countries) and we had a harder time feeling secure in how things in our world were distributed among the people of our world. 

The promotion for Trouble the Water says the documentary is, “not about a hurricane. It’s about America.” Kimberly Rivers Roberts filmed Hurricane Katrina barreling down on the 9th Ward with her personal video camera. The film shows what it feels like to be trapped by a massive storm, isolated in your own city, and abandoned by the government. Roberts points her camera at her neighbors and family, including her husband Scott who figures prominently throughout the film. Through the lens of this first-time filmmaker we see water rising past porches. We see the result of broken levees, as Kimberly’s brother uses a punching bag to rescue neighbors from disappearing homes.

It's been a while since anything new has shown up here at rednoW.com... but we've been wondering about some things.  There's been a lot of questions to ask lately (see some by Craig Detweiler here), questions about the presidential candidates (and their VP's selections), questions for those candidates about war, questions about the financial system, questions about bailing out the financial system, questions about creating a universal health care plan for $700 billion, questions about the American "empire," and on and on.  With so many questions there seem to be a distinct lack of answers.  Then again whenever someone offers an answer quickly it always seems to strike me as too easy of an answer and I am skeptical.  The questions we are asking in America (and in the world for that matter) seem to be large abstract questions that in some ways refuse to listen to answers that are spoken hastily... But I do think the questions we are asking deserve and desire answers.  The question of, which is also the title of, The Great Lake Swimmers' song "Where In The World Are You?" is a questions as large as any we are asking today, and in may ways, begs for others to sit in the question with the askers, as opposed to asking for hasty answer.  How is it that you sit in this question?  How does your life ask this question?  And then maybe, just maybe, someday, we can begin to answer the question "Where In The World Are You?"

I have been in a few conversations recently around the topic of "shared space".  Can we?  Should we? Do we "share space"?  Entertaining such questions immediately forces the realization that "space" is rather subjective and highly dependent on qualified boundaries.  Subjectivity aside, it seems feasible to recognize that "sharing space" is an inescapable reality of humanity.  We are either sharing it - or trying not to.

The recently released music video "Sleeping Sickness", by pseudo-solo-collaborative-Canadian group City and Colour, provides an intriguing perspective on the topic of space.  By expounding on the still novel "interactive" music video concept , director Vincent Morisset gives the viewer the freedom (sort-of) to re-shape spacial boundaries -- which is genius, by the way.  This forces new questions: Does seeing the "greater" narrative impact individual ones?  Shift the meaning?  What do we choose to see?  Choose to ignore?   These are questions that are worthy of wondering about.

I’ll never forget the stand off I had with my dad in the mall before the start of my eighth grade basketball season. Acquiring a pair of Nike Flight high tops, the same style and color that many of the other players on my team (the good ones, who unlike me would see significant playing time) was an issue of grave consequence. This particular pair of shoes was what I felt I needed to run with great speed and agility, jump to heights yet unknown, and otherwise simply be a “baller.”

My father wasn’t buying it…literally. As I broke down into tears my dad told me I could go sit in the car until the rest of the family was done shopping and wear the shoes I used last year. Or, I could accept the fact that he was not paying that much for a pair of shoes and chose another pair.

So much for Jesus’ words on earthly fathers not giving their children a stone when they asked for bread. As far as I was concerned my earthly Papa had just handed me a boulder—not getting these new shoes was social suicide.

In three days I was able to see all or part of 15 shows. That's the beauty of Lollapalooza. The shame of it is that there were about 50 other shows that I wasn't able to see, but would've liked to. This was my first Lollapalooza, and I must say that the experience wasn't always comfortable (it was 90-95 degrees and pretty humid all three days), but still there were 75,000 people drawn to Grant Park in Chicago each day. There was something more at Grant Park this past weekend than could be found by downloading some songs on iTunes, or by watching a few videos of the bands performing. Music is sound, but somehow this weekend -- even in 90+ degree heat -- it was also an experience...and a powerful one at that. While experiencing all this I had some thoughts/questions that seemed of interest for rednoW readers...

In an election year we hear about problems and solutions. Actually, we hear about this all the time, but the election year certainly stimulates the conversation. For example, the foreclosure rate in this country is a problem. We need a solution for it, which includes the government propping up lending companies and offering help to some Americans at risk of foreclosure. We have an energy problem. Depending on your party or political leanings, the solution may or may not include offshore drilling, though it certainly includes exploring alternative energy sources. Additionally, we have a border problem: hundreds of immigrants try to cross into our country every day. The solution, for now, is a fence, along with better border patrols.

We at rednoW don't always buy the problem/solution paradigm. For one, some problems are insoluble. Anyone with a terminally ill friend or family member can attest to this. Beyond this, the problem/solution paradigm often leads us to areas of judgment: one answer is 'right' while another is 'wrong.' It pushes creativity to the fringes and it shoves the art of wonder away. When life is a series of problems to be solved, wonder is not a proper activity.