g-Think | Issue 11 | An “A.D.D.” Takes on Motorcycle Diaries

I am the creative director of Green Team. Our mission is to harness the success of our clients to promote social and environmental change—in other words, we try to protect the flora and fauna, but we live in New York City. The more I travel and see the world, the more furious I am with the injustice of the capitalist society. At the same time, when I see the shiny Amex black Centurion card, I want one. My favorite photographer is Sebastio Salgado, because of the way his pictures capture the beauty of misery.

Allow me to be clear and honest with you: I am a socialist with an American Express Card.

I live, breath, and nurture in a world of paradox. I don’t believe in black or white. I just see shades—even 100% black is still a shade for me. I understand almost all contradictions, but there is one I am still wrestling to understand, the Che Guevara baby T-shirt phenomenon.

The movie Motorcycle Diaries can shed some light on this confusing topic, and teach us about the state of the world. As we all know, we are in a state of chaos, which (as an obsessive optimist) I take as a good sign. It makes me believe that there is a higher power. There must be when a barrel of oil costs well over the $60 mark; Bush stating the obvious—“we are addicted to oil”; the Islam world going crazy over cartoons; and Latin America moving left at the speed of light. But if you add to this “Mondongo” the ingredient of Hugo Chavez and his oil-financed revolution, you have to admit after drinking this soup that someone is going to spend the night in the bathroom.

Oh, yes! The movie and its paradox. It is one of the best movies I have seen, but then again, I felt I was traveling alongside the two characters. If you have never been in my beloved Latinoamerica, you’ve missed the magical realism, the innocence of humanity, the poverty that frightens you, and the constant spark of revolution.

Motorcycle Dairies is a tale of friendship—real friendship, honest friendship—traveling with a motorcycle with a name that’s an oxymoron “La Poderosa” (“The Mighty One”), and the vulnerability of our mind to change dramatically when exposed to raw injustice. The story explains what happens when our innocence is hurt, not killed. Not killed because Ernesto will need all the innocence he can summon to believe he can change the world.

When was the last time you kissed the hand of a homeless person? When was the last time you believed in something worth dying for? When was the last time you felt so inspired (and I don’t mean Catch Me If You Can inspired) coming out of a movie theater, that you wanted to help the cleaning guy in the bathroom, or pay the subway fare of a stranger? That sense of alternative reality that you knew would end soon but that you tried to squeeze out every moment.

OK, back to the movie: a motorcycle diary of two great guys doing what deep inside we all want to do—just be free, so free that nothing (other than a change of paradigm) will happen. Two doctors who ask the difficult question, why did you study medicine? Can you handle it? Two great friends living the so-hard-to-live cliché of “Now, in the moment.”

What was I taking about? Oh, yes. I want to buy my baby girl, Zoe, a Che Guevara T-shirt, but I don’t know if the contradiction in this will drive me crazy.