History Hologram or Welcome to My Town

 

I traveled the span of 290 years last night at San Antonio's San Fernando Cathedral.

"San Antonio: The Saga" is a unique-to-San Antonio multimedia installation created by French artist, Xavier de Richemont. The projection of images and music upon the walls of the cathedral is a blend of new and old media which premiered in 2014. The 25 minute art/history video uses images to teach local history in the same way stained glass, statues and oil paintings for centuries have taught the lessons of the Bible. It is shown free of charge at Main Plaza on Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 9:00 p.m., 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.  

We watched with a small group of friends sitting on outdoor pillows amid tables of tourists and locals mindfully spaced apart. This was the third time that I had seen the show over the past few years, but last night it seemed like the first time. Blame it on Covid Fog.

The show has surely outgrown the term from the 1960's, "multi media," which calls to mind the mind-bending 360 degree Dome Show about Texas heritages that was a highlight of HemisFair '68. 

"High Resolution Audio Video Animation Digital Projection" is too clunky. While a new word to more accurately describe the show eludes me, I will try my best to describe what the experience of watching "San Antonio: The Saga" evoked.

We watched while partaking the refreshing autumn climate taking us gratefully into a new season. Against the night sky, the facade of the nearly 300 year old cathedral transformed with brightly colored still and moving images. They drifted, flowed, floated and swept in and out of the frame of the night sky, fitting precisely onto the corners and curves of the ornate, hand-carved surface of the three-story structure.  

The images interacted with the physical surface of the cathedral to create a new medium. For kicks, let's call it a History Hologram: The center medallion on the front of the church above the doors became the face of Quanah Parker, Comanche chief. Later we saw the image of Catholic priest and Mexican revolutionary Padre Miguel Hidalgo and then, the United States' President, Abe Lincoln. The Edwards Aquifer was portrayed as springs gushing from each of the Cathedral's windows. It was a tall order for my Covid Fog brain to make sense of each of the images but the audio collage of music helped to guide the passages from one era to another, from the native flute at the start to "Jessica" from the Allman Brothers at the end.  

Viewing the images and music projected onto the cathedral’s façade brought to mind an idea that we were witnessing the birth of a new medium.  Marshall McLuhan wrote extensively about the evolution of media. It was easy to see the arrival of something new, born from the application of high tech digital projection system onto the three-dimensional facade of the limestone structure displaying beautifully curated images and music to tell the story of San Antonio through the centuries.  

There is something in my brain--maybe the same part that, each time while standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, struggles with the scope and majesty of that natural phenomenon. Similarly, the projection onto San Fernando of color and music was perceived by my eyes, ears and heart as very, very close to real. So close, the mind can temporarily lose any distinctions. It is understandable. The color, sound and size are of such realistic proportion and detail.  They very likely appear just as they would have appeared to anyone walking past the church on the plaza anytime during the past two or three hundred years. Consider, in contrast, the difference in the same representation on a postcard or screen of whatever size, whether still or moving. No contest.

McLuhan might have appreciated the intersection of media and the façade used as an instrument for teaching and transmitting the story of us and our city.

Seeing how the installation was placed on a church, and not a bank or a civic building, I see now that I’ve actually traveled more centuries and than three. In a church, every statue and image has a function and that is to teach a story, a parable, a lesson.  San Antonio: The Saga continues the tradition of teaching a story, now on the exterior of the building. 

This Changes Everything

Is America a diverse country? 

If so, do on-screen representations in films, televisions and other media reflect this diversity? 

This Changes Everything is a documentary streaming on Netflix about the effort to have more women and people from diverse backgrounds direct films and television programs. It is also about the power of data.

Why are diverse directors important? Voices from the many cultures of our nation translate directly to stories that reflect and include those of marginalized people. This can mean everything to multicultural audiences in our country and to those who watch what we Americans export to the rest of the world.

This Changes Everything is a thorough, detailed, persuasive and illustrative examination of power and how difficult it is to attain power especially when gaining power for one group equals losing power for another group. 

In any discussion of media, power is an important player. In my college communication classes I focused on the power of government, churches and the marketplace of ideas on mediums of mass communication. 

By definition, power is held with strength and is rarely relinquished voluntarily. It is usually held by muscle and by force. 

But this documentary shows that there is also another force that is also an important player: children. Children reside outside of the usual equations of power in media, such as free market v. government imposed regulations, free speech v. limitations and recognition of the importance of representation of women and minorities in media. 

Children can change the equation because they reside in both opposing camps of mainstream media and the those who want to enter and populate mainstream media, folks such as women and people from diverse backgrounds. 

The power of children in the equation is hard to measure because children and their importance transcends that of money or strength. They are the future of our human race and its survival. 

Children are the keepers of our knowledge, our treasure of wisdom. They are the product of humanity, a product more precious than the sum of the rest our other inventions and ideas. 

The documentary shows that the way to fix a problem begins by recognizing that a problem exists. I have seen the debate about on-screen representation of women and minorities waged loudly or quietly for the past 50 years. There are still many in positions of privilege who refuse to recognize that a problem exists. That could be changing with the arrival of research data. Research data now show in hard-to-argue-against numbers that our on screen worlds in fact do not match our in real life in-person worlds. 

Children are influenced by what they see. Children’s on-screen viewing can affect their ideas on how strong or weak, how powerful or powerless they believe themselves to be. 

In the 1960’s, Fred Rogers and the Children’s Television Workshop were both pioneers of an early recognition of the importance of protecting children’s viewing. Those were the days that television used the public airwaves to broadcast programs, so government had a clear and defined role. I was very influenced by my classes at the University of Texas especially my course on children and television taught by Aida Barrera, the producer of Carrascolendas. The PBS program for children which depicted life in small-town South Texas. 

With the advent of cable and the Internet, the public’s airwaves were no longer used in. TVwould become a private industry and with additional deregulation laws our government’s role became less defined. That role is at the heart of current efforts stop regulate internet monopolies. 

The documentary shows recent research data is irrefutable. What children see on-screen is unbalanced and distorted in its representation of gender and diversity. 

The documentary shows the efforts to quantify and bring data into the present day legal argument to balance representation of women and diverse populations and also to fold in the importance of children into the equation. 

That may prove to be the winning formula. 

It gives me hope for progress. 

I have witnessed the decades of struggle to bring change to the massively powerful and lucrative entertainment media industry. The tipping point may be the role of children and the importance of protecting their minds and hearts. 

People in the industry entrenched with profits-uber-alles mentality may think “hey it’s my paycheck! Get out of here with your gender and diversity equality ideas,“ but everyone—however much money they are making—has a stake in children. 

We all share dreams of a better future. If anything can change the course of media misrepresentation it may be the idea of including how misrepresentations detrimentally affects all children.

Equal employment opportunity commission efforts and other legal remedies are truly important drivers, but in the marketplace of ideas putting kids first may be the way to turn the wheel of change in on-screen representation of women and diverse groups forward, faster and further. 

Children’s well-being depends on changing how gender and diversity are shown on screen. 

It is interesting that finally seeing data that measures misrepresentation may be what brings opposing camps finally together to work together.  I look forward to the day the stories we tell are of who we really are and who we can be, instead of who we aren’t. 

McCartney Series is An Aural Adventure

https://youtu.be/KAkqy5QntGQ 

McCartney 3-2-1 is this Beatles fan’s dream come true.

To hear Paul McCartney talk about the background to some of my favorite Beatles songs is like receiving a letter that the post office lost half a century ago. 

The envelope is faded and stained, but there it is! That is my name on it. 

There are origin stories about songs like Michelle and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that both surprise and make sense. 

There are interesting connections between the Beatles and other performers from Jimi Hendrix to Ray Roy Orbison and Eric Clapton. 

The Hulu series that premiered July 17 includes archival footage— some that I’ve seen before —but the best part is the series’ fascinating deep dives, complete with audio examples, from separate tracks on Beatles recordings. It’s like looking inside of a diamond and parsing the light beneath the surface.

The wonderful interviewer, Rick Rubin, is the host of the podcast Broken Record. 

Watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan TV show in 1964 told me that my life could be better than I could ever imagine. The performance was full-force and unforgettable.  This band’s music transformed me from a glasses-wearing tomboy-bookworm into somebody who found membership in a generation that believed in possibility. 

McCartney 3-2-1 is a gift full of rich details about the music that has been the soundtrack to much of my life. 

Summer Before Fourth Grade

It was H-O-T hot in Laredo all during the summer, but especially during the dog days of mid August, which my mom called la canicula. 

Time during the summer stretched stiff and slow as a piece of taffy. The last school year seemed so long ago. Now there were endless days of watching TV, riding bikes, and during the cool of the night, sitting on the porch listening to the grown-ups telling stories. 

The new school year‘s arrival was still too distant to warrant any serious consideration. What did occupy my mind and time was the Confederate troop I was a part of (my neighbor’s toy long rifle fueled that historical wandering) and also my travels in outer space, which I explored straddling a rolled-up quilt/saddle atop my dresser, which served excellently as the cockpit of my spaceship. 

I was about to start fourth grade the summer I was allowed by Mama to travel solo on the bus to our town’s library, a place I secretly felt was as wonderful and sacred as any church I knew. The magic was in finally getting to do something on my own. It was thrilling.

I pulled open the doors of the air-conditioned library on the second story of Laredo’s City Hall. I was lucky to feel confident that the public library’s  gatekeepers, two gray-haired Anglo-looking ladies seated behind the checkout counter would approve my entry into such a venerable place.  They looked much like the nuns at school, except for their exposed gray curls and ears. 

For hours I walked slowly scanning titles from both the children’s and adult sections. I loved titles and wanted to grow up to make up my own titles. Was that a job? I took home as many books as I could carry. While waiting for the bus I bought with a spare 25 cents a copy of a tabloid newspaper with photos and a story about an Italian family barbecued and eaten by their madman father. When I got to our stop I left the newspaper on the bus seat on purpose. Mama would not approve of either my buying or reading it.

Trips to the library were my first steps in exercising my imagination into reality. It was my idea to get a library card and also my decision when to go there and when come home. Yes, there were still morning forays into neighboring Yankee territory, and space adventures avoiding asteroids during the hottest part of the day. They didn’t compare with wandering the aisles of fiction and nonfiction at the library. I breathed in the aromas of old colonial furniture polish mixed with paper from new and vintage books, magazines and newspapers. It was more than intoxicating adventure, it was liberating.  I had discovered my agency, true, but equally important was that in simply browsing the titles of hundreds upon hundreds of books I birthed the idea that life, however it unfolded, would be plentiful with stories. I wanted desperately to know how other people lived, what they did and what they thought. 

My stacks of horse biographies and joke books fed my imagination during the summer as much as the nuns did with spelling bees, religion class and long division during the school year. 

At the end of la canicula , a rain shower would fall and remind me that just around the corner was the start of a new school year. Soon Mama would drive us downtown, past the bus stop, newsstand and library for the yearly purchase of a pair of white oxfords. I had little time to miss my dangerous incursions into foreign territories whether Yankee or astral. Summer was like that, there endless and forever, then suddenly over. 

Brian T. Gosling's Day of Firsts at San Pedro Springs Park Pool

Read Brian T. Gosling's story here

Songs, The System and So Many Questions

 

I love songs so much that all my life I have wondered how songwriters construct them. 

Do lyrics come to a songwriter first, and then afterwards comes the idea for the music? Or is it the other way around? 

Seeing the mobs’ flag on the walls of the nation’s capitol scaled by lawless weightlifters, I felt the same sort of question form in my mind. 

What came first, the hateful fear-mongering rhetoric of cable’s bargain basement screaming heads programming, or was it the policies that led to the mob’s anger: the loss of good-paying jobs in the U.S. to countries whose workers are forced to work for lower wages? 

Or, as a card-carrying Chicana lesbian, I wonder, too, if the reason includes the changing features and shades on the faces of America’s family portrait?

I wonder also which came first, corporations’ higher profits and our collective reduced support for K- 12 education and colleges  or was it unregulated social media? 

Did new media’s rush for ratings and views blind us to the power shown yesterday of media’s impact and influence over people and their behaviors? 

Disenfranchised people who drank Trump’s Jonestown Kool-Aid and took to the streets at the behest of their leader yesterday sure gave us a show. What a show. 

And I ask were the rioters admitted onto the grounds by an  intentionally under-prepared capital police force? And when they were herded out without being arrested, where did the muscle men thugs go during a curfew to celebrate their failed coup d’état? 

I know this: They got their time on camera, their moment in the spotlight,  their 15 seconds of fame, taking selfies in an elected official‘s office and on the dias  of the senate chambers. Also, I know the system worked. The legislators did their job. The system worked.

 I remind myself that is what’s important. 

As we sat watching the legislators speak for five minutes each when they finally returned to work, we were thrilled with being able to listen to them and watch them. The system at work. They were going to do the job of certifying Biden’s election.

It was magical even if they were limited to five minutes to see their passion and hear their thoughts,  their speeches without interruption from commercials or interpretation. 

I realized it had been decades since I had been able to listen to a live speech! And as I followed on Twitter there were people there complaining about the length of time taken up leading to the final vote. Our collective attention span has reduced, mine included

Yet I thrilled at watching people who I read about for years but had hardly seen on TV.  Even if I didn’t agree with them, I saw their personalities and their passion and appreciated being able to see the system work, live and unfiltered. It had been bruised and battered, true, and we have years of work ahead of us. But the system worked.

Sloop John B's Gift That Keeps Giving

Today I learned that my nearly-all-time favorite Beach Boys song, Sloop John B has its origins far from where I've spent the past 55 years or so believing it originated. It's the only song on the epic Pet Sounds album that was not a Beach Boys' composition, according to Wikipedia . Sloop John B is based on a Kingston Trio version of a folksong from the Bahamas.

This discovery prompted me to think  about a history book I received from my mother in law, Francis McAtee for Christmas. It is David Johnson's In the Loop, A Political and Economic History of San Antonio. Dr. Johnson and I met some years back while taping an interview for a Heritage documentary segment for KLRN TV on the Mexican Revolution which I wrote and produced. His book reads like an adventure novel, complete with clashing characters and cultures and the shifting boundaries among countries extending from New Orleans to Mexico City. 

The way Johnson's book brought to life the massive changes in history and how they informed our city's development made me mindful of how I've enjoyed being a bystander to the history of media. 

As a college student and teacher in Communication, I have witnessed the shifting boundaries in our media and cultural landscape. It started with my witnessing as a consumer and becoming a content maker during the apex of mass media 1960's-1970's and the arrival of the Market Segmentation with cable's arrival in the 1980's, home video to the arrival of the home computer, digital technology and the Internet in the early 1990's.  

One possible way to describe what the scene felt like and sounded like during these shifts of culture and technology would be to envision a Victorian home's tidy somber living room parlor. Think lace curtains drifting with the wind from an open window. The furniture is stiff and ancient, highly polished. There are collections of travel souvenirs on the shelves. On the Victrola record player is a 33 rpm vinyl album bringing to life the voice of Janis Joplin, a rock and roll singer born in Port Arthur, Texas whose talent star scorched the Earth until it burned itself out in a heroin overdose. It was that stark a contrast in cultures. 

There, in that tidy parlor the record albums bought at record stores or through a record club subscription service and stored in the living room record player ranged from from those from artists as varied as Jimmy Hendrix to Marty Robbins, from John Gary to Eydie Gorme and the Trio Los Panchos, from Stevie Wonder to the Chambers Brothers, Roy Orbison to the New Christy Minstrels. I missed James Brown paired beside Johnny Cash or Sam and Dave's Hold On I'm Coming played on our town's radio station twice in a row by a disc jockey who liked the song that much! Petula Clark sang next to the Everly Brothers. Smorgasbord of music and a nation of across-the-board fans of it all. Maybe our country had fewer divisions when we listened to everyone's music. Just wondering'. 

The sounds on any car radio anywhere in the entire country were an even wider free-for-all celebration for all ages in their programming. This was the era where a radio station like KTSA in San Antonio showered all of South Texas with rock, country, soul and the occasional international hit like Sukiyaki or the novelty hit that made you chuckle. My all-time favorite example is Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah by Alan Sherman. Click on it! Now it's an ear worm for you today, too. You're welcome. 

In every other aspect of life, we may have been living at least part time in Grandma and Grandpa's world, but that era's movies, TV, magazines and books introduced to us tastes and examples of new and emerging talents on the world stage. Old, new, somewhere in between --all folded in together for our media mix during the 1960's and 1970's for a decade or so. 

Then came the arrival of new media such as cable and FM radio, where segmentation of our population into pop, country, soul, Tejano, etc., became the order of the day because it was lucrative. Segmentation had lasting effects in separating and dividing us. Maybe it's part of the reason we're as deep as we are in our own echo chambers of social media and news today.

Understanding this time  and what happened then is important, because like the parting of the Red Sea in the Old Testament, it was then that two important things happened. First, media content shifted from something-selected-for-us to something-selected-because-we-had-liked-it-before. In the prior model, content was selected by some for the many, in the style of William Shawn and the New Yorker. This is an amazing story of editors presenting to their readers what they the editors themselves would want to read. The latter model's market-driven programming paid homage to profits before art, innovation or novelty. Now it became advertising, polls and surveys based on ratings and sales that determined content. Content never "just happen". It happens for reasons and it's good to know them because media plays such a huge role in our lives, culture and as we've seen recently in our national dialogue. 

Knowing which model for content creation--quality v. quantity, style v. sales, is better or worse, backward or forward, right or wrong might be beyond my pay grade. I do, however, believe history of all kinds is worthy of our careful study.  Our perspectives can broaden, and more importantly, knowing how media evolved helps to set us on our present day journey better prepared to be both content consumers and creators.