Where Will Austin Grow?

I have a funny red-headed friend who loves, welcomes and observes life and everything it entails. Her name is Kate, and she and I have been on this creative experimental mission, spending our last few weekends taking to the streets of downtown Austin and the South Congress area. Equipped with a mic/recorder and camera, we talked to anyone and everyone who share our fine city about their life and perspectives: squatters, tattoo artists, indie biz owners, baristas, valets ... whoever.







We created a makeshift 'video' and submitted it to the KLRU Docubloggers contest, simply excited to participate. The nine-minute creation is by no means “masterful” in any sense of the word, and its technical execution shares the flaws of a novice to any trade.





But what began as an experiment evolved into an adventure of the self and a testament to my love and adoration for my amazing city and the beautiful people who share it with me.

What's stupefying about all of this is … the email we received yesterday from the show's producer congratulating us for making it into the top five finalists.

Don’t believe me?

I lieu of any ‘formal’ credits, I now provide this tribute to the creators:


The fearless Kate Sheehy on the frontline


… and yours truly behind the lens.

Watch out Sundance, here we come.

Thoughts on Degrees of Accuracy

I still cannot, in all confidence, comment to whether Chuck Klosterman is a genius or a henchman. I’m relatively sure, however, that he has done a great service to the freethinking literary world. He has provided well-crafted, clever, relatively honest, substantial drug-induced accounts and reflections on some pretty groovy things, man.

In Klosterman’s novel/memoir “Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of A True Story,” Chuck extends his novelistic charm for us literary leeches by including a single-page prologue, appropriately numeraled “v.” Among several relatively brilliant and simple introductory statements on that page reads:
“The journalism in this book is, to the best of my abilities, completely accurate.”

Someone who is not a writer of events or a reporter of life would likely read this as some evasion of blame and responsibility, like the names and faces of unsolved mysteries altered to protect those involved. But for me, conversion of life and events into story and composition is an extremely personal process that results in a unique form of ‘accuracy.’ Thus Klosterman’s statement is that of a true journalist. It always is, in fact, your story.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind (Rudyard Kipling, 1923) but pictures tell stories that aren’t necessarily accurate or inaccurate to the best of anyone’s abilities. They are what they are—captured moments of honest existence that transcend personal, educational, cultural and linguistic barriers.

In case you were ever wondering to yourself what it would look like to pick up and take a sleepy cruise through the small ranch towns of the Texas Hill Country, wonder no longer. I went ahead and did it for you, thought I’d spare you the trouble.

But unlike our friend, Chuck, I’m not going to tell you the story of Texas’s peaceful rugged secrets, even at 85% accuracy. I’ll let the secrets speak for themselves. It’s their story, after all, and mine would only be accurate to the best of my abilities.

Anyhow, you’re in for a treat, so grab some peach cobbler and take a seat. I’ll put great pictures, and they will provide you with your story, regardless of truth or accuracy. How about that?

She Sells Collakages

Here’s some mail art I’ve been up to. Some people call it mail art, but I think I prefer to call them collakages. Cause that’s what they are…
collakages.




Plus collakages sounds a lot like ‘kolaches’ and is much more fun to say. Say it three times, collakages collakages. collakages.

Yes you did.




If you just said collakages three times (or attempted to), send me your address, and maybe someday one of these little beauties will mysteriously appear from Mr. Postman. ... but only if you really said collakages, and no cheaters. It’s my gift to you for being cool.