Byline: To Catch A Predator

Buford Youthward
stockcap@hotmail.com

All my favorite innovators had rough edges. Something in their style spoke of larger truths.

Trying to return and expose one's authentic voice is the game I'm trying to name.

To reach one's own story is nothing more than a proposal for life's meaning and purpose. It's all about finding the right balance between intensity and clarity while intensely transmitting a personal environment.

While the experiences of literature, film and television are still one way feeds, trends are moving at a fast clip toward truly dangerous interactive mediums. New meanings and symbols for freedom, peace, war and unrest await.

The internet is the closest thing we have to mind reading. We can create a thought, a fantasy, a situation then entrap any mind magnetized to that specific trip. We can press charges, charge credits and secure sentences for the unlucky souls lured into their own digital quicksand. I'm not too cynical to suggest that it doesn't make for great television.

I guess there are worse ways to merge the two mediums. Certainly there must be better ways of producing product, I guess. And who among us doesn't wish our conscience as easy to clear as the cache on our computers?

The shared experiences of riding a roller coaster, catching a film, reading a book automatically shifts select audiences in community with links to shifty characters. You have to watch out.

But it's not like I need to write that out for an audience of graffiti writers. Some new graffiti kid is always on my back making sure I'm looking out for the right things on the right reasons. Making sure I know the score. And what it means to be true.

But I'm just like you. Just another boob sitting in front of youtube. Letting waves and generations of mediums come and go. Something in me still pledges allegiance to all things eight track and reel to reel.

Kids still get itchy and I know there's still a bit more paddling left which makes for good advice considering an old African proverb warning not to mock the crocodile until you have crossed the river.


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