From a friend: ” HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam . Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany . In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital.
Take a look at HEMA’s product page http://producten.hema.nl/ . You can’t order anything … and it’s in Dutch — but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. Don’t touch the mouse or key arrows, it is all automatic!!
This company has a sense of humor and a great computer programmer. Turn on your sound!”
Yes, we presented here a “Burning Short”, “HEMA”, but there is something else we must face and now. Yes, it is about Burning Shorts Theater and the destiny of Burning Shorts. And, it is about more than that.
Why?
Because the American Dream is stolen. The “American Dream” was the valid conviction that anyone could pursue where her/his spirit led … to business success … to professional achievement … and, yes, to artistic expression of any kind. And, as one of our Mentors said, “Hollywood was the purest form of that Dream, because you could start with nothing and create whatever you envisioned.”
Consolidation of media ownership has killed the Hollywood American Dream just as consolidation of other major trans-national enterprises have killed the rest of that Dream. Consolidation of power, capital, and above all, control in the Elite Few flourishes and remains robust.
In earlier times, such Consolidators were warrior conquerors of empires. Ah, but now there is a more subtle and perhaps more insidious strategy. During this era of what Kipling called the “savage wars of peace …”, the consolidation shifts to apparent business enterprises which, to the extent they control governments, makes them “meta-national powers”.
The Elite Few, meta-national “business” powers, need not soil themselves with violence. That can be left to nations and ideological movements that can be directed by the Elite Few.
HEMA, the Dutch department store, is consolidated with the holdings of British investment company Lion Capital. And so on and on … And our Burning Short for this Issue is a quiet, clever, inoffensive protest against the Elite Few.
We must do more and better.
Why?
Because Burning Shorts and especially Burning Shorts Theater is uniquely, Providentially positioned to stand up to the media Elite Few by outplaying them: getting artist expression to audience.
That is what Burning Shorts and the Theater have been designed to do.
So. The current plan is, quite literally, to hit the road in hot pursuit of artists who share this vision and just may jump to create a Theater to connect with the Burning Shorts hub.
The pursuit is “hot” because the Elite Few are moving fast, hard, and with limitless resources into the creative space of original online content.
And, so, this Issue is not for a month or two, but for a season, a season of hot pursuit, hot enough to ignite Burning Shorts Theater
