Ready, Aim, Fire and Brimstone

This blog serves two main functions. One, is to chronicle my night time subconscious adventures. Yes, in short, this is a dream journal of sorts. I have had vivid and sometimes disturbing dreams for as long as I can remember. I feel if I have a collection of writings about them, however trite and cliche blogging may be, I will find better understanding and perhaps locate reason or meaning beneath these imaginative blankets.
Another function of this blog, like any other, is this will be a place for me to ramble and rant. I am currently a grad student at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania working on my MFA in Ceramics. I am married, I have a dog, we all live in a house in a small town, and we all watch a lot of movies thanks to Netflix. Hope I don't have to pay for advertising. As an artist, my dreams, my daily life, childhood, and sexuality are major influences into my art work. I blend and morph animals and humans into forms that evoke a rift or a disturbance in how we look at certain aspects of our lives. I like to use witty or wordy titles for my pieces and I'm not afraid to make artwork that will make me laugh.
Now that the function of my blog has been declared, I would like to discuss a movie I watched last night, one that probably most of the blog reading world has seen. JESUS CAMP. I've never watched a movie with my jaw unhinged for so long. About half way through the movie, I realized I had a look of disbelief plastered to my face. The the fact that the woman running the camp would compare the USE of these children to the extremists who militarily train their children to be weapons for the cause is disgusting. Cultures change, and cultures vary, but there's one thing that seems to tie us all together. We're animals. The difference between animals and us is the need to always be right or righteous. Actually, we're worse than animals. This woman talked about how easy it is to "HOOK" kids because they're so impressionable, they'll believe anything. And its true, but to indoctrinate a child into such a serious cause seems almost like a crime to me. Imagination beyond the religious realm is a crime to these children. A little girl(like 7 yrs old) was a dancer and she made sure to establish to the camera crew that she needs to be careful not to dance for the flesh, only for the lord. The kid with the amazing rat tail(truly impressive hair style) looked like he was ready to die for the cause. While I admit, I am a little jaded towards organized religion, I don't think there's anything wrong with believing in God. But the rules and standards and the mold making...... I just can't handle it. It was impressive to watch these children cry in prayer, convulse, and speak in tongues. I was very impressed at the complexity of ideas coming from their mouths, and their willingness to talk to strangers about their love for God and how they thought these strangers needed God in their life. But I was very disturbed at their quickness to label and judge others. One of the things I miss about being a kid was the lack of serious labels. Before children reach a certain age, they are color blind, religion blind, class blind. And by blind, I mean free of judgement based on this criteria. Being a poor kid in school didn't matter until about middle school. I didn't know other kids went to church until about that age either. And, while I went to a pretty much all-white school system, having a kid of a different race in class was more of a curiosity than a judgement.
I'm not sure that I intended to have a major point when I started ranting about that movie and the horrors of organized religion, but I do have some feelings about them. The movie was suprisingly unbiased. The filmmakers pretty much let the absurdity of the story speak for itself. There was no major need for any sort of commentary over the footage, the extremists can speak for themselves. On a side note, it made me very sad. I believe that childhood should be frivolous and imaginative. Its a time to explore all the formative options there are to offer. Its not a time to devote your life to anything. And if it were, I would still be worshiping my pile of stuffed animals.