Looking back, I can't discern a path or point to an inciting incident in my life that lead me to pursue my craft. There are tangible moments of catharsis, of triumph, of sheer terror that get at something essential to my thoughts on visual art, but they are all mixed within the detritus of my life. The "path" is a long, circuitous trek through the deepest - sometimes darkest, uncharted parts of the self. What matters ultimately is not that you reach the summit, but how you conducted yourself along the way. I think that the pursuit of the truths behind human condition–through creative work–informs how you live, how you love, how you handle success, and certainly how you handle failure. I'm drawn to the personal, the ineffable aspects of the human condition and I think cinema is the perfect vehicle for inner exploration.

I read a recent interview with [Director of Photography] Roger Deakins, while he was in production on Skyfall, in which he described cinematography as something "one doesn't learn but rather something one discovers." That resonated with me; a splash of cold water in my face. I think when we choose to pursue a craft, we set ourselves inexorably on the path of self discovery. The ancient aphorism Temet Nosce "Know Thyself" is a call-to-action; do work in the world and by extension self-actualise as a human being.

I was giften a Pixlevision camera one year as a gag Hanukkah gift, does that count? For those of you who weren't around in the early '80s these babies were a real technical marvel; primitive, low-fi video cameras that shot to Compact Audio Cassette tapes. This was great for me as I was an awkward, spooky, introverted only child from a nomadic family. This camera became my conduit to the world–I recorded absolutely everything around me–but also a buffer between my sensitive heart and the sensory maelstrom of that time. Also, I love books, so the application of narrative to images happened almost immediately. There was always an electrifying sense of wonder in the simple act of seeing; I was constantly experimenting with ways of seeing, taping different substances to the camera lens, trying to bend and wrangle light, the world around me.

As I grew up, my relationship to image-making turned inward, away from the exotic wonders of the world. I started using cameras to make sense of some of the goings on of my life. One of the first true films I made, Ophelia, a little 16mm KODACHROME vignette, dealt with the suicide of a lover–I’ve never tended towards whimsy about antyhing; the process of shooting and cutting it was as much the labour of working through the grief and confusion surrounding that episode in my life as it was creating true cinema. I had a six-man crew, we shot it on 16mm with a wind-up 1959 Bolex H16 over the course of a month and cut it on a Steenbeck. The days were excruciatingly long, the scenes were intense, the art-direction, and performances demanding and I was laying bare one of my most private experiences. More than once I wanted nothing more than to bleach the negatives and forget the whole thing! We showed the film once, returned it to the can and it has stayed there ever since.

I went on to train professionally in 16mm and 35mm. Around 2001 I went to work with Director Jerry Aronson on a documentary he'd been making since the mid-eighties, The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg. We shot that one on an Arriflex SRII 16mm Film camera, really a beautiful system. I pulled focus on that film, and that's where I met Hunter S. Thompson. Anyway, the curious thing about working professionally is each show you work on is a first experience in a sense. There you are, working with new people, a new vision, a new set of problems, new potential lessons to learn and a new truth to explore and express. You carry your knowledge and skills with you from show-to-show, but no two sets are alike. To use a nautical analogy: You are very much in uncharted waters–you know the ropes and you have a trusty sextant–if you’re lucky you’ve been sailing with your Boatswain for years, but inevitably “here be monsters.”

It’s tremendously challenging for me to narrow my answers down to a handful of examples. In a broad sense I‘d say that I draw my greatest inspiration anything that gives me a sense of wonder. Every aspect of our modern lives is so fraught with dialectical polarisation: Logic vs. emotion, right vs. left, introverts vs. extroverts, faithful vs. skeptics, men vs. women, Boomers vs. Millenials, Star Trek vs. Star Wars. We are perpetually of two minds on everything; enthusiastically encouraged to side one one of two opposing conceptual poles, and that puts us largely out of balance - dangerously out of touch with our human will. That is the most powerful force we posses. I feel a duty to make the fruits of that inner exploration available to a wider audience, but the traditional artforms where that is the standard–literature for example, are waning in reach. Cinema isn't experiencing that problem quite yet. I wanted to add my voice to the chorus.

Human beings are gifted with the ability to work inside of conceptual abstracts, to apply those abstracts to everyday problems. We are also able to feel so thoroughly and completely a range of emotions that are entirely ineffable despite the six-thousand plus languages on the planet. That is a staggering depth of potential, so how the heck do we navigate it? We're caught in a Hegelian Dialectic, at some point in between what the mind thinks and what the heart feels is the synthesis of the human will - being in touch with that is critical. The martial artist learns that attaining balance is his first principle because when he is balanced he can react rapidly, and effectively to change. What I've discovered about myself in working towards Mastering a craft is the importance of harnessing my individual will and using it in the service of truth, creativity, knowledge exploration, innovation–the human endeavours. The daily battle is in the extreme difficulty of attaining that balance in the first place, let alone maintaining it!

Truth is, and I think this is something that will resonate with my self-described introverts, I have a rich inner-life of the mind. I can generate entire universes in my head, complex characters, histories and scenarios that never see the light of day, bceause I'm not accustomed to talking about them. I'm like a dragon, sat on a horde of narrative treasures. When I don’t have my nose in a book, I spend my time observing the world around me. Sometimes I stargaze–often with a nice brandy against the chill and ruminate on the cosmos. I travel as much as time and money allows, tending towards the backroads in remote places. Psychogeography, the way cities record time, always fires me up. I have a few places in Portland where I can stand and almost see the architectural strata; the way things used to look, the people that once lived, worked, loved and laughed in a place.

Music–playing it and listening to it. I am most definitely a man out of my era. Of a morning you can usually find me rocking out to The Cramps or Johnny Cash, while rockabilly music puts me in the mood for both love and war, I’m also fond of ‘50s Jazz, Classical, ‘70s Punk and just about every other genre you can think of. Remember High Fidelity and Rob Fleming? I’m that geezer, at least when it comes to music. Beethoven's music, so deeply rooted in everything that is human; all of our frailties, our strengths, our capacity to strive for something beyond the limits of our politics and biology: The human capacity to create beauty, you could call it.

I practically devour history books and Biographies. Time and again they prove that a person’s circumstances are always surmountable so long as you have guts, determination and philosophy in your heart. Coco Chanel, Amelia Earhart, Jeremy Bentham, Allen Ginsberg, Thoreau, Solzhenitsyn, Miles Davis… These are all people who experienced adversity and who followed their True North in spite of that adversity. Granted, they all experienced a zeitgeist perhaps less nihilistic than ours, nevertheless they managed to quell their inner doubts and simply act on what they intrinsically possessed. A single human being can shape the world by simply having the strength of will to go his or her own way.

Philosophy especially, which I embraced early in my adolescence, a tremendously difficult ethical path to walk at times, especially when so much of what constitutes your “self” is in flux at that age. It puts you quite at odds with many of the belief structures we cling to. If you’re not careful it can make you a dreadful dinner guest! Moral philosophy has limitless application in my own life, in the way I live business, friendship and love: with integrity, honesty, empathy and empiricism.

Warren Ellis’s Gonzo Journalist Spider Jerusalem, an analog to Hunter S. Thompson who I knew personally in Colorado, made a point in one of the earlier issues of TRANSMETROPOLITAN that never left my mind. He’s talking to his filthy assistant about the purpose of Journalism and refers to the Greek word “Autopsis”–the act of seeing with one’s own eyes and the etymological root of our modern word Autopsy. Life is a sort of Journalism; we must engage with the world purposefully, with intent; treat life itself as an autopsy; seeing and correctly interpreting what you see. That’s my approach to things.

Meaning. What is meaning? Is there a science or methodology of meaning? So-called "Cultureworkers," and I use that term cheekily because I dislike its Marxist postmodernist undertones, are the premier meaning-makers, but the notion of subjectivism and meaninglessness is in vogue. More disturbing, is this obsession with deconstruction in art. The post-modernists continue to reign in Art Schools; becoming as stagnant as the modernist forms they replaced. Now it's all about tearing down; deconstructing the past. Critique as a virtuous revolutionary act. Deconstruction is the low-hanging fruit of art; It's a Hell of a lot easier to destroy that it is to create.

Certainly the quest for self-actualisation is also central. I think at this point in my life–past thirty–the inevitability of solitude and the challenge of community. Don’t worry, I’m not going all Robert Smith on ya, let me explain: Would Thoreau have penned Walden if he’d had access to Facebook? Solitude represents a great conundrum in contemporary life–we are constantly connected through social media, but what if we aren’t encouraged to individuate and explore life on our own terms without including the consensus of our followers in the calculus? How many human truths, are derived from being intimately in touch with the self? We have a sick dichotomy of influencers and followers and we don't even question it; why should this be the preeminent way of being? If so much of our energies are focused on externalities that we are in danger of never developing a healthy relationship with our own inner life. If you look back on the past 20 years I think you’d agree that certainly in The West we’ve seen a fundamental shift in human consciousness from unpredictable and sometimes dangerous individuality to a milquetoast collectivism and I chalk much of that that up to a hyper-focus on the external; on validation transaction; on Narcissistic protocol.

There was a woman involved [laughs], otherwise it wouldn’t be a good story. Look, truth is I was staring down the barrel of a marriage that blew up in my face. I came-to, a little lighter on belongings and my dog, jonesing for a fresh start, a Tabula Rasa on which to find my feet. I packed what I could into two suitcases and left.

One thing I’ve learned traveling the world: Each place in which you spend significant time imprints onto you, like DNA modification. You become part of the fabri of a place, enmeshed in building a life there–completely myopic. WHAM! Life shocks you, forces you to look up. Your field-of-view widens once more and you can see parts of the spectrum you’d forgotten. You re-integrate into wholeness, often that means that you have to seek out a new frontier. It’s a test of resolve, an initiation into a new “self." That forging experience really resonates with me as a man, testing one’s limits against adversity, beating the odds alone is deep in the folklore.

My other considerations were practical. While Colorado has been working for years to develop a robust production community–I worked on many feature films during my time there–what they lack is a strong advertising ecosystem. What many American city film commisions don’t seem to grasp is, in order for a strong film community to develop, you first need an active commercial production industry. Commercials are the lifeblood of production: They enable all kinds of production services and infrastructure to take root in a city, from Production Insurance offices to equipment rental houses, sound-stages and Post houses. Commercials also allow production crew to specialize and advance their skill-sets to the high-calibre a Director and DP desire on a feature.

Portland has that infrastructure: Commercials are shooting here constantly. Independent Features shoot here. Directors like Gus Van Sant are based here. The animators who brought Coraline to life and mesmerized us with ParaNorman are here. The Goonies was shot just 90 minutes away in Astoria. Leverage and Portlandia have solidified Stumptown on LA’s radar also and it was a major production hub between the other West Coast production markets namely Los Angeles, Seattle - both known for numerous feature projects of course and Vancouver, B.C. which has a long history of high-profile Television work from The X-Files to the Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica.

Portland is also location-rich. You have majestic rivers, verdant rain-soaked forests, dramatic Glacial landscapes and many Volcanoes nearby. It’s an outdoorsman’s wonderland. I also dig good food, quality beer and impeccable coffee, so I knew it was a place where I wanted to spend at least a few years.

In some ways Portland feels more like a frontier to me than New York or LA, at least from the standpoint that you can feasibly define your career in production on your own terms. It does often feel, to me at least, that the indie director experience of the ‘90s is still tangible here–if you’ve the right kind of eyes. There’s an esprit de corps in the production community here on every level; it’s like an extended family. You have close bonds with the gal at Koerner Camera who always preps your camera package to Order. You see the Dolly-Grip from the feature you worked on last summer at Kung-Fu Theatre nights at The Hollywood Theatre. The baby-faced intern who was Camera Utility on that Nike Spot you were on last year is working at Picture This now. There’s a continuity here that is hard to find in other places; As long as you demonstrate commitment, professionalism and skill, people in the community are very personable. Because of the quality of those professional relationships you can individuate here and that is tremendously valuable.

On any given show I know exactly who I want on my crew, which rental houses I want to rent from and there’s a continuity of relationship where I can move forward on that show with absolute confidence in the people on my team. That’s helped me streamline my process to such a degree that anticipation becomes entirely second nature. My 1st AC will know exactly how I want a RED Epic Package Built based on how we worked the last time I ran an Epic on a show. There’s a confidence of process and an efficiency based on continuity that I am grateful for. That means that I’ve been able to juggle a few fewer hot-potatoes. I can delegate with confidence, avoid micromanagement and focus on delivering the goods creatively.

Portland forced me to make peace with the fact that networking is the key to success. As an introvert networking does not come naturally to me - I am extremely private person by nature. For the longest time I refused to accept that there was value in small-talk and that none of us can afford to be above selling ourselves if we want to succeed, so if I was serious about continuing my career here, I had to abandon those pretenses very quickly. I pushed myself into uncomfortable territory with no guarantee of success, and delivered with reliability, professionalism and skill. Thus, I’ve been able to cultivate some strong collaborative relationships here that keep me busy, keep me challenged and keep the bills paid. Being here forced me to move past certain aspects of my ego - self-imposed barriers of arrogance that were doing little more than holding me back from my potential.

Now I’m in a position to pass my knowledge onto others. That’s key - pay it forward. I’ve had personal assistants and interns and have been training a protegee Camera Assistant, 18 year old College Freshman Andy Francisco.

Easy. I want to solidify my brand, there's business development to continue and a round of fundraising to get underway. We’re hoping to be able to make a few significant equipment purchases during the year as well.

I’m also working on a novel and two screenplays and would like to get back over to Iceland before the year is out to network and shoot. I’m working on developing a gallery show of my photography and hope to have takers this year. I’m also in talks to shoot an independent feature and have a number of shorts and a web series in development too. Modest goals, really.

The death of independant cinema, hands down–at least in The West. I often think this is somewhat to do with the advent of digital cinema and how the technology has become so ubiquitous that audiences expect a certain production value, a certain degree of spectacle. When I think of the heyday of independant cinema, say from the late 1960s through the mid- 1990s there was an emphasis on character, the mundane, the everyperson. It was universalisable mythos and people were interested. Now we have a resurgence of cinema by committee; movies as product, focus groups, franchises, cinematic universes. One blockbuster does well and immediately spawns replicants. Every studio is engaged in trying to build a better moustrap and what you end up with are lackluster permutations of the done thing. I see little real creativity. The industry has become stangant, set in its ways. It needs an infusion of fresh blood.

From the technical side, digital cinema makes everything look the same. I can remember a time where a given show would shoot three or four different film stocks, the look of one film would be distinct from another–in terms of latitude or gradations of light, lens bokeh and so on. We have a multitude of tools available to manipulate the quality and character of images, yet the rage of what we see has narrowed in techincal scope. Ever once in awhile I'll encounter a stand-out film that makes me feel confronted by intent, but those experiences are few and far between. I don't feel that way about older films; I'll look at films from the 1950s or early-to-mid 1960s and there are breathtaking instances of mise-en-scène. Is this the consequence of two generations raised on images? I'm not sure.

The democratising of the technology is an upside to a degree, It is emabling a new generation of visionaries to rise, but along with that comes an attitude towards business that favours the old institutions; they don't want to pay people fairly, they look down their nose at the outsider underdogs who are creating magnificent and techincally proficient content out of sheer love. I think we can expect more gatekeeping on the part of the studios in the near future.

I wouldn't ask a chef what one dish she’d recommend to a stranger. There's something to be said for allowing others to follow their own inclinations. If I was forced to, I’d have to say The Portable Henry Rollins by Henry Rollins. That book runs the gamut of human experiences; it’s raunchy, hilarious, beautiful and poignant. It’s not for the faint-of-heart; he lays his guts open to the world in that book and you can see his cyclical death and rebirth over the years. It’s an electrifying reminder that we are all engaged in a pitch battle, against doubt and insecurity, to realise a greater truth about who we are as individuals. At one point he writes:

The man may very well be one of the elder-statesmen of my Generation.

I find the industry at some level requires one to walk a fine line between ethics and narcissism. Accountability and professionalism should be assets in any industry, yet the creative fields seem to be very tribal; set up in a way that encourages a duality of self. What I mean by that is the industry is an attention ecosystem with an inherent "narcissistic protocol." A certain degree of fawning is necessary to "show up" and be counted amongst its various cliques. You find yourself adopting certain worldviews, certain opinions of various personalities, even certain speech patterns unlike your own–referred to by sociologists as "code-switching." So much of your advancement and acceptance into the creative tribe depends upon your signaling to them a certain way. You have to remind them of themselves by reflecting themselves back in a pleasing way. You can lose yourself in playing this "role," become dissociated. Because of the feast-or-famine nature of it at times, it becomes difficult to compartmentalise who your are in the industry from who you are in your life in general. This can be profoundly troubling for someone with a history of co-deopendency. Why do you think the industry attracts so many with traumatic histories?

Over the years, I've come to think that there exists a certain personality type who thrives in this business–highly extroverted, traumatised in some way, even histrionic, highly empathetic in a way that demonstrates a pure genius in understanding people and their motivations, but lacking ethics. This certainly isn't meant to describe everyone who "makes it" in the industry, there are plenty of good people with whom I've been priviliged to work with over the years, but it's an assailable culture. Its participants don't think to turn the lens on themselves and take a clear-eyed gander at some of what goes on behind the scenes. As much as Hollywood venerates the rebellious underdog who challenges the power structure, it does tend to ostracise exactly those individuals from within its own ranks.

To anyone going in, I think it's important to drill down to your motivations for working in the industry. Be prepared to accept the duality demanded of you if you're an iconoclast. For goodness sake don’t go into it thinking you’re going to be the next Nicholas Roeg without a tremendous degree of luck; this is a luck of circuimstances, a luck of genetics, a luck of personality, a luck of family connections. All these things have to align; it is not a meritocracy, unfortunately.

One thing I learnt the hard way is that there is no linear path to success in the industry; there are few clear milestones. It can be difficult to know if you are advancing. For many of us, joining the union is a gateway to a degree of prestige and security, but it's not the best fit for everyone and some plateau once in; it is easy to get comfortable.

For those who are seeking technicianship, you can expect to be humbled. You will have to pay your dues. No one cares about the student film you made at Fullsail, or how cutting-edge your program at The Art Institute was. You will start form the bottom like everyone else. Go in knowing how little you know and be honest about it. Learn how to execute tasks properly, why things work as they do a film set. Be disciplined, committed, pay attention. Embody self-ownership. Be prepared to make sacrifices: your time and your social life. The path is not linear, accept that you must have a plan-B. Be employable in a mundane field and Intern production on the side by doing. Don’t waste any time or resources that are given to you. Accept that this is a collaborative art form and no one succeeds alone. Give credit where credit is due. Learn to network and learn to be comfortable with criticism.

Absolutely. However, it's not always practical. There have been a handful of clients I simply wasn’t in a position to fire due to finances. It’s just the way of the market. I vet potential projects with due diligence and there's only so much to be done. Sometimes it's entirely out of my hands. I’ve shot stock-footage that turns up in material by organisations I don't support, but stock footage is a product meant to be used by whomever is lisencing it however they see fit; professional detachment is necessary. I am a strong proponent of free-speech. That requires tolerance, even when a product of your labour is used in a way you personally feel opposed to.

I write almost constantly - fiction and nonfiction equally, many essays about whatever topics are bouncing around my mind. I compose music as well, piano and cello.

I’ve also been contemplating working as a youth counselor or mentor for young boys, who comprise a segment of society increasingly in crisis. They have few community initiatives for social support and dwindling future prospects, the highest school dropout rates and the fewest role-models. Consequently they comprise the largest demographic for suicide and incarceration, yet as a society we pretend to be perplexed as to why this is the case. I feel strongly that if I can add my value to being a part of a solution–be a role-model, teach a challenging skill to someone who’s had little support or direction in life–then it’s my duty to do so. I wouldn't turn anyone away who wanted to learn from me, male or female, but I do think we're living in a moment where men should help each other just as women do. It’s important to me to encourage other compassionate men out there to step up in their communities–we’re needed out there now more than ever.

The Last Picture Show (1971, Bogdanovich). Brutally funny, awkward and gorgeous. A little gem of Americana.

I don’t want to be one of these sad geezers down the pub, staring into a drink as if it were an ocean of regrets, lamenting all the things I could have done and didn’t. I work with my very marrow. I learn with every neuron and I love with my entire soul and I will continue to do that until death. I may have a celebrated body of work to leave or I may die in obscurity only to be revered posthumously as a visionary. Whatever happens I would hope that I can touch people's hearts and minds, challenge them to liberate themselves from orthodoxies and live life courageously. Beyond that the legacy is in the lives we touch, the relationships we have, the people we inspire.

Brew coffee. Take in the sunrise if I can. Grab as much quiet as possible before my phone explodes and the madness of the work day begins. Every day I try to do what Bill Adama does; grab a random book off of the shelf, flip to a random page and pick out a sentence that becomes my axiom for the day. Sometimes I get something profound like “Love heals scars love left.” Other times it’s something less profound, like “eat more doughnuts.”

Balkan. Turkish coffee and Cevapi.

If it’s a genuine day off I’m cooking gourmet food or in nature with my nose in a book; I practically live at Powell’s. I’m about town with a backpack and my Rolleiflex. I’m at home with my records. I’m on a motorcycle, riding horses, fishing or I’m taking a Cessna up to a smooth cruising altitude on a clear day.

I like exposing myself to new things as much as possible but I equally like the familiar. I have my haunts: cafes, local vintage theatres and bars. I’m a board game fanatic - I’ve studied chess for 20 years and play friendly tournaments from time-to-time, Settlers of Catan and the Arkham Horror series are personal favourites; I'm also a lifelong D&D nerd.

Whatever I set out to do I don’t do it casually; I engage fully in the task at hand, learn the theory behind it, the calculus of it and work to master it. This usually involves failing and failing better, analysing each and adapting until I finagle a success. So much is achievable with that mindset.

Look, everything under the sun but much of it of my own making: We all have doubts that hijack our will from time-to-time and I’m no exception. The biggest dragon I’ve had to do battle with so far is my nihilistic inner-critic. I have been notoriously hard on myself for as long as I can remember. As a matter of principle I never hold others to the same impossible standards to which I’ve held myself; I'm trying to make room for "good enough" in some aspects of my life.

Broadly speaking, topics of social justice and representation are coming more into centre-stage. I'm of two minds about the subject: I’m probably the only Person of colour in my technical field working in the Pacific Northwest region right now and I sometimes find that isolating. I have had experiences where people doubted my skills and expertise, or where they assumed that the 50-something white grip standing next to me on a show was the DP and not me.

I have to work harder to prove competence and earn trust than some of my colleagues. When I was a little younger, I was 2^nd Assistant Camera (AC) on an indie feature. On day one I rock up, of course the only person of my colour on the set and the 1^st AC–who happened to be a woman–took me aside and frankly tore me a new one; There were pieces of gear that all 2^nd ACs were implicitly expected to own that I didn't have. There were minor aspects of the job I hadn't been trained for and I was learning those on the fly... boy, she took me aside and gave me a 20 minute tongue-lashing, "I feel you misrepresented yourself to get on this show!" and "I'm gonna expose you to the union!" and "what are you, some kind of diversity hire?" I was fighting back tears of indignation, my voice was hoarse as I set a firm boundary–I just didn't have what I didn't have or know what I didn't know, but I carried on to the end of the show, kept it professional and saw it through despite how eviscerated I felt. I found a way to work with her, and at least earn her toleration through my hard work and proof of competence. She had only just moved up to 1^st AC on that show–an extremely stressful job, so I knew she had to be feeling tremendous pressure and needed to feel she had the support of a solid 2^nd AC under her. I can understand what that must have felt like. I still found her behaviour shocking, given everything we hear about what women in the industry experience, that she felt it was appropriate to treat me that way–she just as easily could have experienced the same, quite possibly did. I would have expected some empathy.

There was another occasion where I has just moved up to 1^stAC on a commercial; we were doing a dolly shot; a push-in on a Fisher 11 with an ARRI Alexa and an Angenieux Optimo 28-340mm lens–wide open aperture, depth-of-field as shallow as a sheet of paper. Plus, the shot is over-cranked (slow motion), so we're pushing in quick. I'm doing my job, pulling focus and two takes were a little buzzy–it was a big move we were doing on a tiny can of bottom shelf-wine and of course the branding on the can needs to be tack sharp through the move–it’s the “hero” shot. The DP chewed my ear off, and of course the phrase "fucking diversity hire" was uttered and of course this is happening with an entire crew watching and no one stepped up to be the voice of reason. You just don't speak of it. It all ends up swept under the rug. This is progressive Portland, right? I asked for a re-take, took my marks, nailed the focus and didn't buzz the remains of the day, but the damage had been done.

These instances are not easy to talk about. I never wanted to be the guy who prattles on about diversity and racial animus, I just want to be judged on my professional merits. I have felt the compulsion to self-censor to protect the position I do have, but I'm finding that increasingly unpalatable. If that does happen, I suppose I can find the humour in a hyper-progressive industry in a hyper-progressive city in a hyper-progressive region, blackballing its only DP of colour [laughs]. These issues are very real to me, but go regarded as abstract. Some in the industry are uncomfortable when they are pointed out; many do like to think of themselves as progressive, social justice minded in theory. In practice there is a hesitation to risk what has been working very well for some on the altar of an ideal, which sometimes leads people to hope they can coast by on expressing the right sentiments, never having to act on their professed convictions; change is for other people, not for them.

It would be nice to see more diversity and inclusion in the business, not just in terms of identity but also intellecutally. We could be experiencing a second Renaissance in The Arts at large and we're not because so much of the industry is beholden to politics. Concurrently the internal boundaries of the public as a whole continue to erode, there is a lack of critical thinking and an emphasis on emotion over reason that discourages us from stepping outside our comfort zones. Art should be dangerous and challenging at times; that was all well and good when the Avante Garde were deconstructing the conservative establishment–that was very much needed to an extent. The punch-line is, now that the revolutionaries of yesterday have become the bureaucracy, they suddenly find they don't enjoy the deconstruction of their power-structure.

Along with this observation is the fact that our industry, for all it's bloviating about diversity, not much is actually being done. I find that frustrating, but also worry about quotas and state-enforced inititatives being implemented–someone always looses out when such policies are enacted. I'm a strong proponent of meritocracy, or personal agency. Every day I ask myself, “Am I doing my best work? Am I bringing value as a professional?” Where there is doubt, I start by making improvements to my process. There just aren't any guarantees, and while it's reasonable to take a healthy degree of responsability, some things are in fact out of your control. There is discrimination. There is also nepotism. Who gets to decide when that's the case? Who gets to enforce the corrections? Who watches the watchmen? Most of the time there’s just someone out there who is a better fit for the job and there are only so many opportunities. No one wins them all.

I appreciate the opportunity to share with you and your audience; it's a milestone for me and an honour! I hope others get as much out of this as I have!

Thanks for the interview!