Uhopia, that's right, I said it.

I remember the word 'utopia' being a very popular word when I was a kid in the 70s.  It was something that I remember being talked and taught about at elementary and middle school:  how one day we could create and all live in a utopia.  I also recall utopia being a common theme in music during that era and it definitely helped to form my pseudo-hippy mental state as a young person. 

I don't know where or when or exactly why, but I distinctly remember falling out of love with that word and the idea of a utopia.  I'm not a nihilist (I believe the world is actually a better place now than it was when I was ten - not that there isn't a lot of fucked up shit going on), but I suppose I just got sick of hearing that word and then seeing how the people or organizations or whatever that were pumping it out actually behaved or interacted with others.... Off the soapbox.

I'll have to dig it up (if I can find it), but back in the 80s I wrote a poem or some kind of prose piece about a fake society called "Uhopia".  I think it was just me giving the Utopians some of my misaimed anger or disillusion or apathy or whatever political struggle I was going through in the "It's morning in America" Reagan era.  I think me being in the Navy at the time also put a certain skew on my lens, but, hey, the port calls were great!

I think it would be interesting (how many posts about ideas have I started like this?) if we could use our creative effort to create a visual and audio utopia (or uhopia, you make the call).  What would it look and sound like?  Could you create a video that symbolized your utopia?  Would you create a very personal utopia or aim for a more universal one or would it be one and the same?  What rules would this utopia enforce (if any) and how would they be enforced and how would you show that?  I think this is something that we could do as a project in this class as it would be hard for this project not to be autobiographical in some way.