Heroic Choices

Sacrifice. Love. Heroic choices. I began crying within the first couple of minutes of CITIZENFOUR. And I cried on and off for the entire film. Sometimes, when we are lucky we get offered an opportunity to do the right thing. How many of us can say we are living in a way in which we can recognize those opportunities and act upon them? Edward Snowden is the very embodiment of science fiction ethos, of the heroic narrative, of life for the healing, alternative cultures that arose in the mid-sixties and has survived within punk music, gaming culture, hip hop, science fiction, dystopian movies, social capital, peer to peer, bartering and meditation culture. I admire him beyond words. I've read as many interviews with him as I could in the past couple years and to see this movie chronicling the meeting and introduction of his stunning whistle-blowing gripped me to the core. The movie triggered a lot of things for me. My love of sic-fi. My love of a good oldfashioned adventure story. And Snowdon's absolute commitment to humanism, with the savvy of a gamer and defender of the internet. The movie triggered the force of living when one lives with making sacrifices. I am a person who has made a lot of sacrifices, happily, blissfully, but with some pain in order to live with my core morals intact. I think seeing Snowden in this film, contrasted with him last year on NBC interview, which is after he was in official exile was very touching. During most of the documentary filmed in June 2013 Snowdon looks, fresh, still unaware of what and where he will be living a year later. We are so very lucky that people have designed encryption models, and airgapped machines...and the filmmaker and journalists who risked their lives and work that allowed us to find out what Edward Snowden knows. Right at the closing scenes of the movie Nine Inch Nails music comes up....and I lost it one more time. The encapsulation of a secret, connected community of people who see a social capital, principals of solidarity, resisting greed and corruption as a potential way to live recognized by the action of Edward Snowdon was really really beautiful. It's a secret unspoken community I am so proud to have lived in most of my life.