Sister of Cranial Overblosis

I received a great response to the recent Brain Overload piece from none other than my sister, Reba Meshulam. She is uniquely qualified to comment because 1)apparently her brain is about to explode, and 2)she is a renowned video producer who has an Avid and knows how to use it. Enjoy...


Markie,
Just read your article on brain overload and I couldn't agree more.

For some reason it makes me think of Jackie Kennedy. After every social engagement she sat down to hand-write a thank you note. It was personal, witty, clever and sincere. People kept them forever. One sentence followed another and they were mini works of art.
Now THAT is a lost art.

People's communication now is in code, especially the younger generation.
LOL, BRB, POS (parent over shoulder)
It's all shorthand cause we just don't have enough time to say "I'll be right back" or "That was really funny, I'm laughing out loud...you just KILL me!"
Communication is fragments of thoughts and partial words or acronyms.

Everyone is a dude and everything is "freakin" this and "freakin" that. - maybe that's just Alex

I do worry about the next generation. Will they know how to put a complete sentence together? or will it just take too damn long? Sorry mom, I don't have time for a full sentence, you'll just have to fill in the blanks - whatever!

Imagery in films...yes I'm sick of the school of flashing images and screeching, banging, primal noises to get you to want to come and be blasted out of your seat. You're right that if an image is on the screen for more than a second, it's a lifetime. But not only are they manipulating us into this constant state of edge of the seat orgasm by the diet of super short dense action shots, they are being even more manipulative than that.
They are adding blinding white flashes between these ultra short action packed shots. It's an epileptics nightmare. Music and sound effects are composed to hit each and every edit point with fear, drama and constant adrenaline rush.
I just wonder...where do we go from here. Is it the end of the world? Will everything including our brains explode like you hypothesize and we just start over again with 2 trees, 2 people and a snake in a garden.

I do want to clarify something you stated about frame rate.

"In current cinematic language, a few seconds per shot is enough to get the editor fired for sleeping at the Avid. Visual images are now measured in increments of 1/24 of a second, the smallest increment available because movies pour 24 images every second into our heads."

True, films are shot with a frame rate of 24 FPS. Editing on the avid is video editing which is 30- FPS, hence the different "look" of video vs film. When films are shot and AVId edited there is a video conversion which takes place for them to be AVID edited. A minor point.

They now are developing video cameras that shoot at 24P (24 frames -per second) to look more like film. very cool look, a little smeary with pans and motion.

I personally don't want my brain to explode. I want there to be some empty spaces like land that hasn't been developed. Prairie with goldengrasses swaying in the breeze with sun caressing the soft, hairy stalks.

THEY (whoever that is), say that we only use 10% of our brains...or is it 70% ...something like that...anyway I wonder if that number has changed over time. And those formerly unused parts of our brain...what are they doing now? Are they storage places for the flashing imagery? Can we dump the shit we've accumulated? If we don't want to have a memory of something we've seen, a movie trailer perhaps, or a terrible event in our lives, can we selectively dump it? Even mundane things, everyday things that just take up space...
If we can delete stuff from our PC's hard drive shouldn't we be able to delete stuff from our own hard drive?

I think I do this regularly cause I never remember when the chicken in the fridge was originally cooked, or how long we've had the deli meat? I'm not too hard on myself for these lapses cause I think ...well, it's not important. But if someone in my house got botulism from eating old couscous, it would become important fast.

And what about lists...they are a way to back up your brain's hard drive.
or to enable your brain to not use up unnecessary space hanging onto stuff you could write on paper and forget. I guess everything on your computer is meant to do just that. and if you think of all the stuff your computer can store...well, glory be!, life sure is complicated.

I keep going back to this. What do we need? Really need?
warm houses in the winter, cool houses in the summer, food to gather cook and eat, a place to take a shit, someone or someones to love and share life and work, sex and I can't really think of what else...maybe spirituality? maybe creative endeavors?
How much brain space does that really take? 5%, 15%??
The rest could be prairie grasses swaying in the wind, an occasional grazing cow...a rocking chair on a porch, a buzzy bee going from flower to flower.

I think I'd like that...at least for an hour.
What I'm trying to say is I miss the good old days...not the ones without indoor plumbing or hot water... the porch days. Mint juleps, slaves...no not really slaves - just kidding about that. I miss a woman showing her feminine wiles by having an ankle exposed, not her entire ass. Have you watched MTV lately? Jesus Christ! we used to call that soft porn...

Mark I'm sorry, I'm just going on and on. Can't seem to put a cork to stop the dribble of thoughts your poingo philophy has stirred up.

So I'll sign off.

Love Reb






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