Spell

You know when you can slip in and out of realities?
Well I've been stuck in this one long enough to know that something is definitely wrong
It's like a spell has been wrapped around the heads of the people who exist here
So many things going on and they are oblivious to the urgency
Of the changes that need to happen in order to fix them
It's a thick one though
I can almost taste it
Like a milky goo
Covering your eyelids
Almost since birth
So used to it you think
It's the way it should be
In all the infinite universe
As if this is this is the only way things should be
Taught all your life
There is nothing beyond this
Because if you knew more
This spell could not exist

Digital Super 8!

Digital Harinezumi Final Cut Pro Mash Up from Ashley McFarlane on Vimeo.

So...
I've been really thinking about this film I'm making down in the JA.
It's about remembering. I have an Super 8 camera. But not the cash to develop and digitize super 8 films (6 mins = $100).

So I learned of this camera called the digital harinezumi. obsessed over watching youtube and vimeo videos made with the little thing for hours at end. And finally bought one with the quickness cuz I needed to get it before new year.

Got it only to find out that the new model (the digital harinezumi 2) looks less Super 8mm ish. And that there is a cheaper digital pocket camera called the VistaQuest 1015 Entry (has to be the entry, not the classic) looks EVEN MORE super 8mm ish.

Anywho. I decided to keep the camera after playing around in Final Cut. My secret: Under Effects Choose: Video Generators. In the drop down choose Channels -> Channel Blur and move the Green over to about 39. Then increase the contrast and you're good. Black and white seals the deal. After all that export with Quicktime Conversion at 12 or 15 frames per second for that choppy look (I'm doing 15 cuz my additional footage is 30fps) and you're good. A lot of rendering and conversion time. But better than millions of bucks over the years and the camera is super-cute.

Only prob: the dimensions. Help!

Check my sample video above
; )

Re-membering Maroonage

Re-membering Maroonage from Ashley McFarlane on Vimeo.

First full clip from a doc I'm working on called Re-membering Maroonage. A film on family, migration, and re-membering heritage across land, lives and waters.

I'm usually pretty cut-heavy. Which will get interesting as I film family. It's harder to edit family. I know if I was watching this film by someone else I'd get a little bored. I hope the images and lights floating by are a nice distraction.

As the video says I'll be going to Jamaica this January to document a mini-family reunion and the annual celebration at Accompong on January 6th. I'll also be talking to locals, and more specifically a man named Michael Grizzle about the Maroons. I couldn't find that much info so I thought, given this opportunity I have to dig the info out myself, with the help and support of course of family and friends.

A museum is also being built down there, so I will offer up my communications skills, and equipment to the community. I really support communities telling their own stories so would like to have them learn to use cameras and videos. If needed do some editing. And just submerge myself in my heritage and vibe.

Love
-a

Shot on my Canon 5D mark ii. 50mm lens 1.2

First Poetry/Photography Mix

So I'll be showing my first poetry/photography art installation piece this Monday at the Youth, Colonialism, and Hope - Art Presentation and Film Screening. UofT Women's Centre. It's the piece pictured here. Open it up and explore.

Time:
6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:
Centre for Women's Studies in Education
Street:
252 Bloor Street West Unit 2-225
City/Town:
Toronto, ON

As I already said, I'm putting together a book of poetry and images. Also doing a theatre/poetry residency program with the great d'bi young. Very excited about the work that will be spilling forth from that.

in my mind
i had a line or two
i wished to record forever last night
this morning i have forgotten them
not gone for ever
but still meddling around
in mind
to spill out
in a different form
once formed
and ready

I Am A Man: Black Masculinaty in America

Thanks soo much to my friend Zainab for this video. I think it's a must for all of us and what is being said is in many ways the same for black women and all people in this soceity.

heart

Creating is Natural to Me

I haven't been in the mood to create
For such a long while
I've made things here and there
Performed a bit.
Only when asked. But that's about it
I have a camera and am not experiencing deep writers block or anything
It is there
And my soul yearns to create again
Just not in the vibe state of mind I guess
Will do and be in a bit.
A retreat will hopefully bring me back to it all

Gaia Resistance

This reminded me of something straight out of Harry Potter.

I was really interested in this because I had a negative view of wiccans. Kinda till now. Also my friends and I have been discussing the importance of reclaiming spirit in the decolonization and anti-oppression process.

link: http://activism.ca/wiki/G8_Calls_to_Action/A_Call_for_Gaia_Resistance

A Call for GAIA RESISTANCE
at the G-8 Summit in Kananaskis

The new Empire is having a meeting of its leaders in 2002 in Alberta, Canada at Kananaskis Provincial Wilderness Park*.

Pagans are the spiritual if not literal successors to the peoples first colonized in Europe - the Pagans colonized by the Roman Empire and its heirs the Christians. Our resistance to this latest and largest empire is the continuation of the resistance of our ancestors to the earlier empires. When we fight against the globalized McCulture so they fight through us, and by honoring our Pagan ancestors we find ourselves as indigenous Peoples reclaiming our heritage of resistance.

When the Amazon forests are cut and the indigenous peoples forced off their land, it is like our ancestorsí sacred groves being cut again. These are our sisters and brothers. When the indigenous cultures are overwhelmed and the languages and music submerged in pop pap and junk food, this echoes the destruction of our people hundreds of years ago. These are our languages, these are our people.

The Pagan religions are not the religions of the rulers and their giant cities but of the ordinary people, the peasants, the indigenous peoples uprooted to work in those cities, in those factories. Those women stitching together Nike shoes for pennies an hour - those are our people.

And we must stand with them, with them all. Our Ancestors require it, our Mother Earth requires it, our own spirit and honour require it.

Like the Roman Empire before it the new American Empire wants to make the world into its own image, where the state is the handmaiden to corporate interests. This form of globalization evolved from institutions of the cold war like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. With the WTO, APEC, MAI, NAFTA, FTAA, etc., and every new series of trade agreements we now see the outline of this transnational corporatist Empire.

In a natural dialectic there has emerged an anti-globalist radical opposition movement. This emerging movement is our ancestors reawakened in our people - it is the same part of the broad left that we have always identified with - the fertile, earthy, anti-hierarchic and complex social and political radicalism that is red, green and anarchist - socialism from below.

The most successful resistance to the Empire that has mobilized inspired and radicalized the anti-globalization movement is the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. The lessons of the Zapatista movement are that we mobilize globally, using the Internet, while mobilizing local indigenous mass movements of opposition - cultural, spiritual and political. We are building a new mass movement in opposition to the global hegemony of the American Empire.

A New Ghost Dance Around the Globe

We will use our magicks to resist the neo-liberal globalization of the American Empire.

The mission of GAIA RESISTANCE is to bring together the Pagan oppositional currents, to develop a liberation theology and an activist magickal practice that is not purely one of resistance but also of hope and new growth - the roots finding cracks in the concrete through which to rebirth the forest.

While many in the Pagan movement have taken up this battle on their own, there has not been a global movement that has made common cause through local Pagan communities to express a common goal and practice of combative magick. We will build a political spiritual resistance movement from the bottom up. GAIA RESISTANCE has evolved out of our belief that a global resistance movement of Pagans, Wiccans, magickians, shamans and all our community must be articulated and put into practice to build resistance to globalization at the community level.

It is not good enough to have a handful of witches appear at demonstrations against globalization. We must, as communities, with one purpose, pledge to use our magicks to resist the Empire. It is not enough to practice our magicks just for our-selves, or our circles, covens, lodges, etc. It is time for us to use our magicks in service of the people against the Empire. This is our ancient right, our ancient tradition, it is the reason the state used the burning times against us. It is our most cherished birthright, to use magick against oppression, to fight to free not just our-selves but also our communities.

To make a common Pagan alliance against globalization we need to use our magicks in a concerted effort to reinforce, energize and spread the global resistance movement.

We are calling for a Grand Coven gathering at the G8 meeting in Kananaskis.

As Pagans in Western Canada we invite you to join us in creating a worldwide movement of GAIA RESISTANCE. Whether you can be here in person or not, let us use our magicks in the summer of 2002 against the empire, and in defense of the resistance.

Let us call forth the grand coven, let us make a ghost dance of resistance around the globe.

To join in this effort we ask that you endorse this call for a GAIA RESISTANCE.

On local level we call on all Pagans, Wiccans, magickians, etc. to become active in their local

Anti-Globalization Movement as part of the GAIA RESISTANCE.

Join with us in planning for magickal-political-resistance activities around the globe for the G8 meeting in Alberta in 2002.

* [This environmentally sensitive eco-region and its indigenous wildlife face the prospect of mass intrusion by the corporatist global state and its police. Not satisfied with having intruded in this wildlife area with golf courses and tourist hotels, for the 1988 Winter Olympics, now we have the prospect of global leaders meeting in private surrounded by thousands of security forces. Kananaskis is symbolic of the privatization and rape of our natural environment that results when the G8 carve up the world for the good of Transnational American Corporations.]

Ya Basta! Non Passaran! Ompheda Balasti! So Mote It Be!

Lammas 2001 (CE)
Ashtorethean Wiccan Temple of Alberta (Edmonton)
Pagans for Peace (Canada)

GAIA RESISTANCE, Box 1075, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 2M1 email: gaiaresist@yahoo.ca

GAIA RESISTANCE MANIFESTO

As Above, So Below

Magick is the spiritual and activist expression of the oldest liberation theology in the world.

Magick is opposed to hierarchy, domination, intolerance, exploitation, and oppression.

Magick is the peoplesí spiritual path unmediated by priests, shamans, politicians, the church or state.

Magick is the will of the oppressed made manifest in the world.

It is a weapon, a salve, nourishment, for the spiritual will of the common people.

To be a "heathen Pagan" is to be of the common people, and their struggles.

As Pagans we use magick to aid in changing and liberating not only the self but also all of our-selves.

Our religion celebrates honours, protects, and proclaims for, our Mother Earth and all her children.

We use our magick to maintain our mother, our-selves, our communities.

It is our duty. It is required of us.

We declare that corporate globalization is a material, political, economic, social and spiritual anathema to our mother and all her children.

We declare a Grant Covenant against Corporate Globalization and evoke our magicks to resist the Empire.

Ya Basta! Non Passaran! Ompheda Balasti! So Mote It Be!

Lammas 2001 (CE)
Ashtorethean Wiccan Temple of Alberta (Edmonton)
Pagans for Peace (Canada)

GAIA RESISTANCE, Box 1075, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 2M1 email: gaiaresist@yahoo.ca