A godson comes home from prison...

Michigan Prisoner Number 250645

What’s it like to come back to the world after 30 years in prison? I have no idea, but my godson does.

Joshua Puckett walked out of McComb Correctional Facility in Lenox Township, Michigan on July 17, 2024. Exuding joy and wonder upon his release, Josh, 47, had spent nearly 30 years incarcerated in Michigan prisons for aiding and abetting the gang-related murder of a 12-year-old girl. Josh was wearing a t-shirt that said “wahoo.”

July 17, 2024 - Freedom!

Like many of our 2-million-plus American prisoners, he couldn’t have imagined, at 18, that he could be locked up for a murder which he didn’t even witness. 

In 1995, Josh was sentenced to life without parole. Had he been 17, Michigan law would have prohibited such a sentence. But he was 18, and judges were trying to make examples of gang members. He was therefore treated as an adult, even though he’d suffered more than his share of trauma as a child; and his brain, we now know from science, was not fully developed.

 

Joe Creedon and Josh Puckett kayaking on Lake Washington

I met Joshua Puckett when he was a fresh-faced red-haired 7-year-old. He charmed me over breakfast at the Sorrento Hotel in Seattle, a fancy spot where people go for special occasions. The occasion was Joshua’s first visit to his dad, Joe Creedon, a good friend of mine from when I lived in Flint, Michigan. 

Josh was conceived by Christine Puckett, with sperm donated by Joe. Both were gay, and the plan was for Christine to raise Josh in Michigan. After birth, by mutual agreement, Joe didn’t even see him. When Joshua was five, they finally met on a Florida vacation, and the bond between the two was undeniable. 

Joe invited Josh to spend a summer with him in Seattle, and Christine agreed. It became an annual treat for the boy, whose talents and intelligence continued to charm and impress me and Joe’s friends.

 

Randy Wells and Joshua, 1991

Josh couldn’t believe how awesome it was to be with his dad and his community. He was treated more like an adult, and got to go hiking and sailing and traveling in exciting and eye-opening ways. But when he went back to school after each summer, he was bullied, partly because his parents were gay. He had a temper, and he learned to fight back. 

In the late ‘80s, after it became obvious that Josh’s mother was physically and emotionally abusing him, Joe filed for custody. He won, and Josh excitedly moved to Seattle. But it wasn’t long before Joe got sick with AIDS. In November, 1991, Joe died. 

Joe Creedon when I knew him in Seattle

A circle of Joe’s friends tried to care for Josh, then 14, but he was learning he couldn’t trust most adults. He ended up on the streets of Seattle, going in and out of foster care and juvenile detention. Ultimately, he moved back to Michigan to live with his mother Christine, and her domestic partner Susan Pittmann.

Less than a year after his dad died, Josh came home from school one day to discover chalk marks on the driveway where Christine and Susan had been shot to death by their next-door neighbor. It was a homophobic hate crime that became a rallying point for LGBT rights in Michigan. [https://pittmannpuckett.com]

A Family Beach Drum Circle 

Joe’s extended Seattle family let him know that we were here for him. We flew him back for a ritual at Alki beach in West Seattle. With drums and ceremony, we explained to him that he has a family, a circle of friends who care about him and his late dad Joe. Then and there he became my godson, whether we called it that or not. 

 When he returned to Michigan, Joshua’s grandparents housed him, but his teenage rebellion and disobedience were too much for them. His uncle Mike took him in, but Josh was already involved with a Detroit gang. When the police broke into Mike’s house looking for Josh or his weapons, that was the end. Mike kicked him out. 

Josh’s handyman and communication skills made him important to the gang; he loved the sense of adventure and belonging. He enjoyed getting high and dating a series of girlfriends. Ultimately a gang war landed him in prison. On November 9, 1995, Josh and some gang members headed to a building where a rival gang was congregating. While Josh was in one car driving around the block, a gunshot from another car aimed at the rival gang struck and killed 12-year-old Angel L, who was sitting in her mother’s car. 

Because Josh wasn’t present when the gunshot fired, he assumed he could never be convicted of the crime. But Michigan’s laws say an adult can be sentenced to felony murder for “aiding and abetting” the crime. And at 18, Michigan considered him an adult. 

His legal advice was sketchy, and he didn’t want to rat on fellow gang members who nonetheless ratted on him. While he could have gotten a 12-year sentence for pleading guilty, he didn’t feel he was guilty. The plea bargain system wasn’t explained to him. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

A piece of art created by Josh and prisoners at Jackson Prison

 In 2024, the Michigan Supreme Court, in the decision Poole vs. State of Michigan, raised the age at which a youth cannot be convicted for life from 17 to 18, retroactively. Josh got resentenced to time served, and he was out in about three months. It helped that he had earned two college degrees; written three books, including one on gang violence prevention; taught classes in computing and self-help; worked with guide dogs; saved the prison system thousands of dollars by cultivating food in gardens; and started two nonprofits dedicated to mercy and justice for those convicted as adolescents. 

Fellow prisoner Steve Nicholson wrote an anthem for TARP, which we played at TARP Villages and fundraisers

In fact, 501c4 The Adolescent Redemption Project (TARP) lobbied for the judges and other "mercy" candidates whose decisions changed the interpretation of the law. I was a proud founding board member, and enjoyed meeting many incarcerated folks (including Everette Taylor, Breonna's father) and their loved ones as we created a Village to build community around TARP.

When freed a year and three quarters ago, Joshua faced a vastly changed world, and he jumped in with gusto. He found jobs, found housing, spoke to churches and media, and joined Michigan’s movement to get a “Second Look” for others incarcerated unjustly or who were fully reformed. He voted for the first time that November. 

Thanksgiving, 2025 with Josh and his wife Tanice!

I guess redemption is possible. Joshua Puckett is no longer a number; he’s a productive, happy citizen, a friend, an organizer, an amazing godson. Josh and I both relish the fact that we can actually talk now for more than 15 minutes at a time, see each other in person (we shared Thanksgiving 2025 in Detroit!), and travel more sanely into each day. ## 

Josh in Detroit's Greektown with Jamie L Meade, a co-founder of TARP who was recently released from McComb Correctional Facility

The Godson reports his feelings: 

 July 17, 2024 

 On that day I felt nervous joy as I waited for the gates to finally open and had a feeling of intense cathartic release as I walked into the arms of my family and friends. Yet there was an underlyling apprehension as I realized that I am an alien creature to this new world called freedom. I knew that I lacked the vast knowledge needed to survive in this technologically advanced civilization I had been dropped in. I optimistically believed that the degrees, books written, programs created -- coupled with my rehabilitation -- would be embraced, and I would be embraced as an asset to society. 

My hopes were that society would allow me to utilize my skills as a loving form of atonement — I had no idea how wrong I was and how hard fought my journey would be. 

April 12th 2026 

 As my 2 years of parole is coming to an end in less than 90 days, I have had the opportunity to experience the most simple and wonderful things mixed with harsh and cruel realities. The positive and new experiences include being welcomed into rooms with Judges, Senators and Mayors of cities, some of which I once caused great harm to. I am now a catalyst for positive change, speaking in schools and educating future generations on how decisions you make can have a lasting impact. In addition, I got to experience many firsts like concerts, comedy shows, and just today my first Detroit Tigers game at Comerica Park. All things I am grateful to have the privilege to experience. 

The barriers to housing which I have faced over that first 19 months, including being homeless and being denied the ability to rent any apartment (because of my felony status), has been a deeply sad and eye-opening experience for me. This coupled with the realization that the 4 books I have authored, the 3 degrees I have obtained, 2 vocational trades and multiple certifications would hold ZERO weight in the job market. 

Most recently, I experienced that getting in one car accident would financially drain me and prevent me from attending college in the summer. This shocked me into realizing that freedom is not free. 

 Regardless of all the struggles and setbacks, being restored to my chosen family, finding love and being able to walk under the stars whenever I choose to, make the hardships of the journey all worthwhile. I can happily say now that despite being so wrong about what freedom would look like, I am blessed beyond belief to have been resurrected from death by incarceration.

*

You can learn much more about Josh by reading his autobiography Mourning Attire, available on Amazon. And you can learn more about (and contribute to) the successor organization to TARP here. 

Josh spoke to students at Churchill School, where he and his Aunt Kae had gone 

Goodbye Forge, Hello Tacoma!

 Why I moved to Tacoma after 43 years on Vashon Island

 The Forge was my writing cabin on Vashon, one of the most beautiful and creative spots on the planet.  Now, our condo in Tacoma is seething with possibilities.  What's next?

 

The Waterwalk from our deck (with old Pt Ruston ferry, inactive)

From Tacoma’s Point Ruston Waterwalk, I’m 

happily watching the Tahlequah ferry ply back and forth, not always on schedule. It looks so picturesque, and I’m glad I’m not often on it.

 

Yes, we now live near the Point Defiance ferry dock. We moved just about two years ago. Grief overwhelmed me as I processed leaving…both for the loss of Vashon beauty and friends, and sadness that Vashon is not what it was.  Not as radical.  Not as inexpensive.  Not as hippie.  Not as safe.  Not as fun.

 

 

When my partner Gordon and I were in Rajasthan, India in November of 2019, we looked at each other and said, “Wow, in 5 years Gordon will be 80 and Stephen will be 75!  We can’t continue to live at our magical Vashon haven, Soundcliff, unless we find an Indian boy to take care of us in our dotage!”

 

This of course was a joke, even though some young men we met in India said they would take the job.

 

And even so, our house - while most spectacular - required way more work than we could easily give it during our “golden years.” Soundcliff has a private road (which needs constant maintenance), a private water system, a cliff slowly sloughing into the Sound, and a dewatering system to keep the cliff and road intact. It may well last another hundred years, but … 

Soundcliff at sunrise

 Our garden was anything but level, and it required lots of work… Gordon announced in 2021 that he had no interest in maintaining the garden in 2023. After two slippery engagements with garden gravity, it became essential to move on.

 

The vision of moving motivated us to look at possible places to live -- perhaps in condominiums or apartments, where we would have little responsibility for maintenance. While we didn’t seem like condo people, we loved staying with my mother Helen at her Minneapolis condo during her 14 years there from 2003-2017.

 

We looked at Seattle, but found more excitement and better prices in Tacoma.  Tacoma is the new Seattle.

 

So, we left our beloved Soundcliff in February, 2023… We bought a condominium on the 8th floor of the “Rainier Condominiums” in Point Ruston. We’re calling it “Huitieme Ciel (HC),” since we endeavor to make it an Eighth Heaven.

View from the HC bedroom

 In some ways it’s a drab shoebox compared to Soundcliff, but we’re figuring out how to make it a cozy vibrant home.  Resonant with Soundcliff, it has a wonderful view of “our mountain,” Tahoma, and it will hopefully become a launching pad for many adventures to come.

 

Our house on Vashon became a palette for our own artistic expressions, and those of many friends.  

 

It was just getting more difficult and expensive for all of us on the Island, especially as we aged.  The Community Care Center closed down. The health clinic suffered multiple financial failures, and now who knows what’s happening with it (or them?).  Most of us could never afford our Vashon houses today.

 

While Vashon – compared to Seattle or Tacoma – has changed relatively little, it’s still becoming bourgie.  Gated houses? Indoor swimming pools? When I moved to the Island, lots of people were squatting in former resort cabins, especially at Lisabeula. The old dance hall there was still on the dock, if in tatters. There was a sense that we were living in a place-out-of-place, a time-out-of-time.

Vashon as "a new order for the world" - Tom Tietjen mural

 Vashon was the blue-collar island.  We all said, “May there never be a bridge.”  Most people didn’t lock their houses.

 

There’s always been a dark side to the Island, despite our green and progressive culture.  But compared to other communities, Vashon is Love-on-Parade.  Usually.

 

For whatever reason, it’s less easy to get any service folks to come to Vashon today… “No, we don’t fix plumbing on Vashon unless you pay $190 minimum.”

 

Then there are the ferries. Once the pride of Washington State, they’ve become sickeningly unreliable. Road maps show that they’re part of the highway system, but nobody would accept roads as dysfunctional as the ferries often are since Covid.  

 

And on top of that, many of my friends are dying.

When my friend Phil Cushman, an extraordinary human and accomplished psychologist, died in 2022, hit-and-run by a young man I once mentored, I fell into a deep depression.  How could one of the smartest men on Vashon be killed by a person I once viewed as one of the most promising young people?

 

As they say, s**t happens.  Even in paradise.

 

I hear crime is worse in Tacoma. But thank Goddess, we’re only a short ferry ride away from your enchanted island. 

 

Stephen Silha is a writer, filmmaker, and communications consultant.  His new address is 4907 Main Street #818, Tacoma, WA 98407.

 

Book Review: Weapons of Mass Deception (2003)

 Well, it's been six years since last I blogged here, and it's time to re-ignite.

What follows is a book review I wrote for YES! Magazine in 2003, and it seems more relevant than ever:

TAKE A PAGE FROM THE SECOND IRAQ WAR 

Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq

By Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber

Tarcher/Penguin, 2003

 

By Stephen Silha

 

When I worked at the United Nations during the Cold War in the 1980’s, I was amazed at the propaganda I saw daily in both Pravda (the Soviet news service) and The New York Times.  I’d been taught to expect it from Pravda.  But not the venerable Times, then known as journalism’s “gray lady,” the newspaper of record.

 

In fact, both operated in and out of the propaganda environments of their respective countries.  The Times’ distortions were much more subtle; they lay in the narrow way stories were framed.  How stories are framed – and which chunks of truth’s messy spectrum get highlighted – help define how we view the world. It determines what counts as a story and what counts as real.   Reporters hate to admit it, but they ARE our national storytellers, our myth-molders.

 

Today’s information environment is infinitely more complex than it was in those Cold War days before the multi-voiced Internet, before the dizzying array of cable television stations, before weblogs and digitally-altered photos.   Lacking adequate tools for sorting through the complexity and arriving at a reasoned picture of reality, Americans tend to oscillate between cynicism and credulity—hostility to Washington “insiders” and “big government” paired with embrace of fundamentalisms and widespread belief in the Bush administration’s (false) claims that Saddam Hussein played a role in 9/11, to name a few examples.“The media” get lumped together, obscuring the vast differences between the big businesses owned by a few vast conglomerates such as AOL/Time Warner and a small independent magazine or a lone person posting a web log [as blogs were known in 2003]. More than ever we need what John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton give us in their new book, Weapons of Mass Deception: a deconstruction of the layers of a complex propaganda machine that transcends administrations and political parties and profoundly shapes our perception of reality.

 

It doesn’t surprise me that The New York Times has yet to review this book, even though it’s consistently shown up on the “gray lady’s”  bestseller list.  This book is dangerous; Rampton and Stauber see through the spin and the spin around the spin.  They run PR Watch (www.prwatch.org), an on-line publication that documents how governments and corporations daily insinuate themselves into our psyches – or try to.

 

 

In this evenhanded, well-documented book, you’ll learn about the people and the motivations behind the multiple messages, repeated phrases, and battles for global hearts and minds that make up a huge part of the War on Terrorism.  While most Americans assume that the truth is slippery in the hands of politicians, few realize the role of public relations firms, doublespeak, and branding enumerated in this book like a barrage of psychic cannonballs.  The corporate-style marketing, Disney-designed sets, Hollywood-influenced messages that work so well to sell products – the buying of which is sold to us as patriotic – aren’t working so well on the global stage. 

 

“Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century,” write Rampton and Stauber, “attempts to market the United States [abroad] as ‘brand freedom’ came into conflict with a U.S. tendency to talk rather than listen, combined with U.S. support of undemocratic regimes whose own political objectives contradicted America’s stated principles.”

 

The ethnocentrism I noticed decades ago on the part of the U.S. seems to have entrenched itself even further in our political institutions, public policy, and approaches to the terrorist threat. Our media, when they look at all,  increasingly cover the rest of the world like some odd curiosity. TV news networks in 1989 devoted 4,032 minutes to foreign stories, compared with 1,382 minutes in 2000.  (After 9/11, foreign coverage went up to 2,103 minutes in 2002, only to dip again until the Iraq war.)  

 

Truly radical or transformational institutions that could change the way the world operates, such as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, get almost no attention in the U.S. press.  The number of foreign news bureaus has steadily decreased in most media organizations, to the point where most news organizations found themselves as clueless as the rest of us when the World Trade Center towers collapsed. “Rather than changing the way we actually relate to the people of the Middle East, [U.S. officials] still dream of fixing their image through some new marketing campaign cooked up by Hollywood or Madison Avenue,” Rampton and Stauber conclude. They are not speaking just about the Bush administration.

 

They document how corporate-style product “branding” in foreign policy uses feel-good glitz to cover over the deep issues, further alienating an Arab world that is already skeptical of the U.S.   It’s not working.  As one Indonesian student from a focus group told The Christian Science Monitor, “We know that there’s religious freedom in America, and we like that.  What we’re angry about is the arrogant behavior of the U.S. in the rest of the world.” 

 

 The authors also take us on a tour of the propaganda tactics used by the U.S. government on its own people.  This effort has been more effective than its propaganda abroad, thanks to a largely docile domestic press. They make clear that the 2003 Iraq war (as well as the one in 1991) was sold to the public based on questionable distortions and sometimes outright lies planted by public relations firms.  Once these lies are repeated in the echo chamber of the media, they become “truth.”   The book serves up the best accounting yet of who said what and who knew what about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and links between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden (who scowl at each other in Tom Tomorrow’s hilarious cartoon on the book’s cover while film-director Bush coaches them to look like buddies).

 

While the book is a meticulous snapshot of what lay beneath the surface of “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” it invites further exploration.  It gives citizens – including those who may disagree with the authors’ assumptions – useful tools to understand the war on terrorism, and even its relationship to products like SUV’s, marketed as “urban assault luxury vehicles” to make the reptilian part of our brain feel more safe, even though the vehicles are not so safe, and even as our increased gas guzzling fuels the terrorism we say we’re fighting.  

 

The book invites viewers, listeners and readers to examine how various media filter points of view, and whether media actually offer opportunities for dialogue between multiple points of view.  It notes how many “experts” cited by the media tend to be from think tanks sponsored by corporations or foundations whose allegiance to current power structures give them a common perspective.

 

After a description of government secrecy and the fear-based Patriot Act, Rampton and Stauber conclude:  “Democracy and the free sharing of information … may offer our best protection against future terrorist threats.  Paradoxically, this is precisely what we may surrender if we allow fear to rule our lives.”  In these dark days, books like this cut through the misinformation haze to help us determine our own best take on truth—by exploring multiple perspectives and learning from each other’s experience.  The new information environment has been exploited by government and corporate propagandists, but it can also be wielded by citizens to find our way out of our current propaganda quagmire.  Just as citizens in China and the Eastern Bloc used new technology (faxes, cell phones) to overthrow corruption, we can, too, if we’re aware and awake.

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen Silha is a former reporter for The Christian Science Monitor and The Minneapolis Star who guest edited the first Beta 2 issue of YES! in 1996.

Rio de Janeiro: City of tomorrow?

Landing in Rio, you wonder how such a large city could manifest in this amazing natural place

When I imagined going to Rio, I didn't exactly picture clouds and rain, but that's what dominated my 9-day visit there in January.  And you know, it didn't really matter.  It was the people who made all the difference.

The default vibe is love.  People look you in the eye.

Delicious traditional tapioca lunch, with pulled pork
& egg whites

Despite recent headlines about political and health challenges, the Brazilians we met were full of optimism and good cheer.  Not that there aren't homeless people, and millions living in poverty.

In fact, we visited Rocinha, one of Rio's infamous favelas, or shantytowns, where thousands of people live in poverty, but with a sense of community you don't find in many places.  Our guide, Leo, told us that there over 400 favelas in Rio, housing 1.5 million of the city's 6.5 million citizens.

He mentioned that, despite their poverty, 98% of residents in Rocinha have Facebook accounts and smartphones.  We saw a number of flat-screen televisions, and the neighborhood is full of beauty salons.  Because many men work in construction, the favela's structures are mostly sound, but because the materials are substandard or recycled it's not unusual to have leaks and mudslides. 

Art and high technology make Rio's favelas more liveable

People are piled on top of each other, so they have to learn to live together - or kill each other, which sometimes happens.  Security is provided by police and drug dealers, who sometimes fight each other.  Leo says the drug dealers are often more reliable than the corrupt police, and that drug lords rule in 70% of the favelas. Some public housing projects are helping bring people out of poverty;  Brazil's government has a plan to grow the middle class by 10% in 10 years.

This building is supposed be remodeled into a luxury hotel by August!
Good luck!

I sensed a country on the make.  The streets in Rio are torn up, creating better transportation and new subway lines in time for the Olympics in August.  The tourist industry is growing, despite setbacks from the Zika virus and corruption scandals.  People seemed friendly and anxious to connect.

One reason I wanted to visit was to see if Rio is at all post-racial.  With 43% of the Brazilian population of mixed race, you see a number of gorgeous people, most of them in physically good shape. Combinations of indigenous tribes, African slaves, European colonists and global adventurers make for a panoply of skintones, and a fascinating cultural mix, but I wouldn't say racism is dead.  We heard stories of discrimination based on skin color.  And the gay bar LeBoy hosted a butt contest, won by a hunky white guy based on audience applause (an audience with lots of locals).  There was a black guy with a much more beautiful butt to my taste, who really knew how to shake it, but he came in third.

Christ the Redeemer - Art Deco overlord of Rio

You might expect a Hippie Fair in San Francisco, but Rio?

Among the goodies at the weekly Hippie Fair - all wooden

Leblon Beach, near where we stayed, abuts Ipanema Beach

The beaches are everyone's happy playground.  Nonstop volleyball and kick-volleyball games, even on cloudy days. Physical fitness equipment. Samba Schools selling snacks, drinks and beach chairs. Coconut milk everywhere. People of all colors and shapes walking, running, swimming, playing.  Pregnant women proudly sporting bikinis. Leathery old men jogging and looking great.  And yes, there were thongs - but not as many as I expected.

Ball games on the beach are common

The beaches have many workout stations - free

Yes, there are thongs!

Thousands of beach lovers

Fabulous fish and vegetables at a beachside restaurant

My frequent traveling companion Orlando and I were in Rio during the long buildup to Carnival (Mardi Gras), so we got to witness some rehearsals for the big event - some spontaneous, on the street.  One night we went (on a 3-hour journey that included pickups at 11 hotels) to the Portela neighborhood, where a large Samba School was rehearsing its song (and dance) for 2016.  The goal is for thousands of people to memorize their neighborhood's song so they can parade impressively through the streets during Carnival.   We spent some hours dancing late into the night, and trying to sing in Portuguese while our new best friends from the neighborhood quaffed beer and danced away.

At Samba School rehearsal - with my traveling companion Orlando

Our new friends, who pulled us onto the dance floor

Yes, coffee is big in Brazil - we went across the street from
out hotel to find a good cup!

I love the mailboxes, adorned with hummingbirds

We were fortunate to have been hosted a number of times by two wonderful locals, Cornelius Conboy and his husband Graccho.  They gave us great advice and shared abundant food and drink.

Edward with Cornelius and Graccho in their wonderful penthouse kitchen

Rio has a sense of a healthy future, nowhere more than its new Museum of Tomorrow (Museu do Amanhã), which suggests we need to choose each action with future generations in mind.

Santiago Calatrava's building is
stunning. Photo by Edward Guthmann

The most interactive of museums

The world literally melts and erupts as you wait
to experience the Museum of the Future

I played around with the leadership style quiz, and
it suggested I reconsider my choices...

The Museum of Tomorrow is the most interactive
museum I've experienced...and it embraces complexity

Curiosity, spirit, imagination - this museum's
prescription for a better tomorrow

The museum makes you think.  It focuses on ecology rather than technology.  It starts with a cosmic geological film made by City of God director Fernando Meirelles projected all around an egg-shaped theater, situating us in the cycles of life and death.  Then we're invited to explore biology, DNA, and the connectedness of life ~ including various cultural manifestations of media, prayer, relationships, home life and other topics in Portuguese, Spanish and English.

Then you're overwhelmed with giant digital displays showing humanity's impacts on the planet, including images, data, and questions about ocean acidification, ozone depletion, greenhouse gas emissions, and consumption of water, energy, and beef.

The last part of the museum invites exploration of alternative futures, and suggests ways you can be part of various scenarios. I came back to a spiritual sense of possibility, with interactive artistic expressions of community, storytelling, mystery and an invitation to further explore inner life.

The final mystery chamber that invites further reflection,
stories, community celebrations

Taiwan Art Documentary Meditations

I cannot believe how long it's been since I posted on my blog - that's changing this year.

Almost a year ago, I made my first trip to Taiwan, with BIG JOY: The Adventures of James Broughton.

Here's an essay I wrote for them about my experience.

i

            Documentary films illuminate worlds within worlds.

            Artists’ lives show how creativity can break barriers and surprise ourselves and each other.

            Documentaries about artists can break barriers between worlds, and nurture a city to more creativity.  I was happy to be part of the second Chiayi City International Art Documentary Film Festival, the only one in Asia, and one of only two in the world that I’ve heard about.

            Film festivals are proliferating like rabbits around the world, but it’s rare to find one that is so focused, so well curated, and so engaging, diverse and accessible for citizens.  I was so pleased to meet filmmakers like Jessica Wan-Yu LIN, who made a beautiful film about HUANG Dawang, a cultural outsider who found ways to communicate through music, rapping, and dance.  And I met Rafeeq ELLIAS from India, who told the story of looking for “Fat Mama,” a legendary woman who made the best noodles in the Chinatown neighborhood of Calcutta.  In Beyond Barbed Wires: A Distant Dawn, he continues the story of how many ethnic Chinese from “Fat Mama’s” neighborhood were sent to internment camps during the Chinese-Indian war of 1962.  Many escaped to Canada and other places.

            Documentaries about artists are not always happy, but they tend to show the human condition in deep and nuanced ways.

            My film, BIG JOY: The Adventures of James Broughton – about a poet and filmmaker who led a cultural and artistic revival after World War II in San Francisco, and went on to inspire many other artists – was extremely well received in Chiayi City.  People asked excellent questions about his troubled family, his love life, his poetry and his creative process.  I always learn so much from interacting with different audiences, and I felt the Chiayi audience was attuned to the subtleties of the film, its imagery and music and its unanswered questions.

            Obviously, family is very important to people in Taiwan, as it is in many countries.  James Broughton valued family, but he was not accepted by his mother, he lost his father in the Influenza epidemic of 1918 (when he was 5), and he ended up being too wrapped up in his own creative process to be a good father to his own children.

            Broughton also grew up in a time when it was not accepted to be openly gay, even though he was primarily attracted to other men.  He was very interested in Zen, and in the psychiatry of Carl Jung, and he wrote about the contradictions in his life.  Ultimately, after much agonizing, he left his wife and two children and spent his last 25 years with his soulmate, who happened to be a man.  His creative life prospered, and he published seven more books and made eight more films.

            Many people in the Chiayi City audience spoke with me afterwards in gratitude for a film that depicted such a complicated life, and that followed Broughton’s admonition to “Follow your own Weird.”  (He knew that the word “weird” comes from a Celtic root that means “fate” or “destiny.”  So his admonition, to me, means to be true to your core self and be on your creative edge at the same time.)

 ii

            A Taiwanese friend told me that Chiayi means “worthy of honor.”  I was well hosted by the city and its honorable festival.  I was amazed to learn of the city’s past glories in the lumber industry. And, not unlike the past of the region where I live in the United States, the big trees are mostly gone so people are finding new ways to make a living. 

            Bringing tourists to the city to see its art and film, listen to music, eat good food, and ride the narrow-gage railroad is one option. So are agriculture, invention, manufacturing, technology, and the arts.

           

            Hopefully these particular films, shown free of charge to people who show up from all over the country, will spark more creativity and invention in the future.

iii

            In “Song of the Forest,” Chiayi’s beautiful egg-shaped sculpture, I found myself interacting with the wood, the stones, and the invocation of the forest, past and present.  I could not help laying down on the central wooden tree stump, peering up through the skylight at the mottled clouds.  It took me to another world.

 

            Never having been to Taiwan before, I didn’t really know what to expect.  I found a robust country, with lots of talented artists and filmmakers, curious viewers, entrepreneurs, and lovers of life.  The fuzzy toy animals people love so much were a surprise.  Also, the popularity of coffee, books, and night markets.  Taiwanese food is incredibly diverse, fresh, and delicious.

            I was entranced by the complexity of many temples, the beautiful handiwork, the symbolic animals and statues, and what seemed like embracing of many paths to spiritual growth – Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and others. 

           

            I could not help but be impressed with Taiwan’s free and open society, with the many mainland Chinese tourists who were experiencing it, learning what it’s like to read whatever books and watch whatever videos they want. 

            Even though it was only a small taste of Taiwan that I experienced, I left with a desire to return, to learn more about the rich cultures that thrive there, and to reengage with many new friends, ideas, and cultures.  Not to mention the fabulous food.

iv

            Festival director HUANG Mingchuan took some filmmakers and visitors to dinner where we discussed our films, learned about each others’ cultures, sang songs and recited poetry.  We hoped other people who attended the festival were doing the same thing. Film festivals, after all, are about building community, as well as watching great films.

            Imagine a world where people really listen to each other, where their inner lives are seen as at least equal in importance to their outer lives.  Imagine a place where people watch films together, then talk about them, and make their own films, write poetry, or express themselves in their own way.

            Imagine a world where parents teach children their values, and children also learn to think for themselves as they age, to value their parents’ values, but also to evolve with society as they discover their own.

            Imagine a place where people tell their own stories, and tell each others’ stories, and even if they are sad, weave them together into new stories of hope and resilience.