Hunter-Gatherer Wannabe With A Blog
(sound) magazine, a Seattle-based NW music magazine gave me a soap box. If you live in Seattle, pick up a copy! If not, read the digital version here:
http://openpub.realread.com/rrserver/browser?title=/MIP/SS4-09-1024
Special thanks to Paige Richmond, Mark Baumgarten & Kristen Truax! It is such an honor to be in a magazine with The Thermals (probably my favorite Portland band) and the creator of www.icanhascheezburger.com (my favorite website!).
What up scout! A while ago I think I saw on your website that you were recommending some sort of all-encompassing, 9 month post-apocalyptic survival school based in the Portland area? If I recall, you were featured as an occasional instructor. I’m pretty sure I didn’t hallucinate this, but I can’t find any evidence of the website, the course, or the blog you made about it.I am desperately in need of something like that as I don’t feel really confident in learning about things like edible plants outside of such an immersive environment, and would really like a 9 month vacation from my real life, besides.Is this school still available? If not, is there any other program or collection of programs you might recommend that might eventually instill in me the confidence and skills to live indefinitely and sustainably in wilderness and semi-wilderness areas? Thanks!- Nachie
Hey Nachie,
You’re not hallucinating! I was going to be involved with a program that taught some of that stuff. Unfortunately the dude in charge stole the show and decided to go in a different direction than rewilding and I did not want to be a part of that. Which brings me to a very important topic on the subject of educational programs; rhetoric. Many of these programs have flashier and flashier marketing with enticing prose and inspiring photographs that are designed to excite you, the consumer, into taking their programs. In the end though, the classes are empty of culture and real content and are often taught by beginners, fresh out of a different year long program, with little to no real world experience or knowledge, who basically parrot what they were taught by other parrots in their first year. This creates a culture of a lot of know-it-all’s who actually have no fluency in skills other than crafting a few hand-made tools or in running “nature awareness” games (which is what they spend most of their time doing). I know this, because I was one of these parrots and still find myself parroting shit! I don’t recommend schools because none of them actually teach rewilding. Rewilding is about creating and maintaining culture, not a few primitive parlor tricks. These schools are either focused on primitive tools or permaculture or some non cohesive jumble of the two. If that’s your bag, then by all means. I’m sure you can find them using google. But tools won’t get you living sustainably in the wilds; culture does that.
The only educational program I ever recommend is Martin Prechtel’s “Bolad’s Kitchen.” It is actually based on re-creating a holistic indigenous culture, taught by someone who lived in, and played a role in, multiple indigenous cultures for most of his life. His school has almost nothing to do with hand-made tools and everything to do with culture.
But mostly I recommend starting a community in your own place: see my chapter “Schooling Vs. Rewilding“
Years ago I created and facilitated an open-mic style video screening in Portland called Broadcast. It ran almost monthly for about 5 years. I stopped it almost 5 years ago now, and for the last couple of weeks I have felt the need to revive it. I love the art of filmmaking, and while I work in and enjoy the field of film production, it’s hardly the same thing to me. Maybe because I work mostly in advertisement, but feature films are not really what I think of as the art of filmmaking. Maybe to the director or writer, but to me the field of production is about working to produce something that someone else wants. The art of filmmaking to me, has always been about producing something that I want to give to other people.
So I’ve had this list of film ideas. I always keep lists of film ideas. I had an hour bus commute to my arts high school, so I would create titles, lists and lists of titles, and sometimes if one of them struck me, I would shoot it. My favorite, and maybe I’ll put it up here sometime, was “Murder Me Elmo,” which of course I made during the “tickle me elmo” craze, and yes, it was basically a bad, 5 minute version Childs Play, only Elmo in place of Chuckie. But this exercise made me good at brainstorming titles, and seeing potential in the idea. There are others I remember that are not really funny, but funny to me, like “Jerry McScientologistGuire” (I had a thing about scientology back then!). But I could tell which ones were more of an inside joke, and which ones would be funny to a larger audience (As an ironic side, in spite of my own propensity of coming up with names, I didn’t give myself the name Urban Scout).
I started Broadcast when I was 17, after dropping out of high school I had no outlet for filmmaking, so I created one. This event grew to have an underground cultish following and also allowed me to experiment with indigenous culture-making tools that I had learned at Jon Youngs “Art of Mentoring.” But more importantly, it inspired me to keep making funny, meaningful shorts.
During a 6 month hiatus of Broadcast, I attended Tom Brown Jr.s “Philosophy I” in which we did various meditations with strangers. One in particular was a meditation in which your stranger would get images that were important to your life. Maybe they would see your house or your car or your desk or some art you made, etc. My partner described a black triangle. I had no idea what he meant, and the image of a triangle, a pyramid, a symbol of hierarchy, scared the hell out of me! He even said the triangle was extended on one side, an isosceles.
Months later I was running Broadcast again, this time I was calling myself a “VJ” the way they do on MTV. A few hours before the event I was making a sort of uniform for my position, a black t-shirt that I was spray painting VJ on. The logo for Broadcast was the play button from a VCR. A triangle, extended on one side. As I painted it onto the black t-shirt I had a flash back to Philosophy I. I opened up my journal from that week and turned to the page to see that in fact, it was the triangle that my partner had seen. I knew at that moment that Broadcast would always have a deep meaning in my life. In fact, it was the catalyst for my entire identity as Urban Scout.
At the time I was big into Joseph Campbell and I read that for a few indigenous cultures, ritual scarification and tattooing was a way of physically changing the body so that the person, after going through a ritual, would recognize that they were different and act accordingly. I decided to get the logo tattooed on my forearm to always remind me of my vision in life; to promote sustainable cultural change through filmmaking.
At some point, I stopped noticing the tattoo. It just becomes part of your body. I forget what it’s meaning was. I’ve made a couple videos in the last 5 years, but now I’m craving them again. I’ve returned to my original inspiration for culture change and I plan on bringing Broadcast back, at least the spirit of it, in a new monthly event I’m going to call “stumptube.”A combination of Stumptown (One of Portlands other names) and Youtube. Portland has changed a lot in the last 5 years, and so have I. A new name, new face, same awesomeness. Hold on to your hats Portland filmmakers!
So here are is my current list of film ideas/titles (both good and bad) that I hope to shoot this Spring and Summer:
• Law and Order: Anit-Civ Unit
• Anti-Civ Canvasser
• Born to Rewild (Music video)
• Rewild Style (Rewilding fashion show)
• Extreme Earth Rapers (New Reality TV show ala “Axe Men”)
• Adventures of Urban Scout shorts
• Rewilding 101 (informative video for rewild.info)
• Earth Skills are Easy (Instructional Videos)
• Urban Scout Voodoo Doll (new childs toy)
• Street Corner Prophesizing (filmed “performance art”)
• CSI: Molalla
• Captain Planet; where are they now?
• Spoof on Internet Dating commercial; Couples that met in real life
• Survivorman: Molalla
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