Friday, October 9, 2009

Sonicsgate

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was a great film and I'm glad I was there. My hat's off to Adam, Reidster, and Camp Jones. Sherman Alexie was emotional, compelling and conveyed my feelings since the team left. During that last cut when he talked about the winters here, I almost lost it man. Unfortunately I had to miss the after party at the Spitfire. It was a great event and I was able to meet Jessie Isreal, Percy Allen, BR, and the humungous Art Thiel. I called him Mr. Thiel btw. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of impact it will make on the general public locally and on the national level. And I can't help but appreciate the willingness of the fans who have spent so much time and emotion to keep this concept alive, of not just letting a significant part of Seattle culture just fade away.

Mr Baker said...

I think the impact will be in a form that is not a obvious as the general public will expect.

People like stories about themselves, fact. You watched it and liked it, for example.

The people that participated in the film saw it or will likely see in it. That is, the people that were interviewed will likely see it. The people that were in it might see it if they want to know how they were presented, except the villians. The "bad guys" might not bother.

The real power of this, that is lost on the people that did not live with all of those clips as part of their lives over the past 5 years, is that it is all together. Those people in the film are cast in the context of each other's clips and fairly tell the fan, and citizen, story.
Many of those people probably thought their little part was a meaningless drop of rain falling from Seattle's Winter sky. Together they washed away 41 years of Seattle culture.

One of the best lines in the film is from Tom Carr, Percy Allen, of the Seattle Times, describes how unusual it is to have an arena in a neighborhood, Carr says that is why he moved in, because he could go to a basketball game or to the opera.
I heard they crowd kind if laugh at that, but really think about what he is saying. This was part of his Seattle life, it had civic value in his life, it was unique, special.

Back to my larger point, those politicos, media folks, insiders, got to see their drop of rain with so many others.
Their drop mattered, one way or another, it mattered to somebody else, and it mattered a lot.

Selfishly, I like to write, and much of my time has been spent capturing drops of rain in Dixie cups, and showing them to others. It try to construct a narrative so that I can understand how this stuff fits together, and then I show it to others. Then people tell me what they see, and that adds to by understanding. This is not anything on the scale or intensity of the Sonicsgate film. The medium is more powerful, extending beyond words on a computer screen. But for me, I am always surprised when in introduce myself to someone and they "thank" me. It is strange, but I get it now that I see the Sonicsgate film.

I thank them.