Their Towers burn and their 7 classic disco records are melted for raw vinyl. No one watches their television or buys their movies. It has been years since anyone read their books. As if anyone ever read them.
They want us to mourn, that their cultural industry--their centrally planned and approved thought--is dying.
Do not mourn. New culture, true culture blossoms in the ashes.
Look:
Update on my plan to do side-by-side reviews comparing best-selling novels to beer. So far, my research has been a little lopsided on, um, the beer side. Ok, I haven't actually read past the first few pages of any of the best-sellers I've picked up. But that won't stop me from posting the first Beer V Book later today, if I'm sober enough.
On the not-best-seller side of things, I recommend downloading "Scrotal Cash," the "remix" of Blake Butler's "Scortch Atlas." It's a set of "erasures," cut-ups, mad-libs, write-throughs and other wackiness derived from the original, already wacky novel. You can get the free ebook here.
Lots of pure delightful nonsense. I enjoy looking at this book. It makes me wish I didn't understand English, so I could just look at it without simultaneously reading it. Luckily, some of the remixes have removed the normal boring bullying of "understanding it:"
Das ist drivelwary, creaked what grave elfrom gloaning up the hearth. Dese ara me crap dots. Me crap dots skricked ina wort comment for why my Papapappykins blocked me eyen wid his clock.
That's from Jon Cone's Finnegan's Wake inspired remix.
Other portions follow Blake Butler's original flarf formula to weirdness:
Usually I triple-brew coffee with thoughts of burning tires or tricycle wheels and when I drink the round shapes my fucked lungs nod in rhythm and my brain discovers new ways to laugh
Today, I stopped by Ye Ole A Booke Shoppe, "Borders" to pick up a read and do a little exploritorization. As I am the kind of person for whom WORDS are the most intriguing and compelling media of human expression, I was naturally excited about this.
Until I walked in the door and remembered how willingly entering a Borders is like a root canal of the soul. Only, this time it was JOY! Well, at least it was HILARITY!
See, Borders, the "book store" doesn't sell books any more!
Well, ok, not really... if you try hard, you can still find a few "popular books" among the varied consumer chochkies intended to allow Borders customers to INDENTIFY themselves as "readers" without going through the time-consuming trouble of actually reading. This way, everyone can enjoy the social benefits of being seen as a "reader" or an "intelligent person" without opening up all those boring book things.
So yes, like all other corporate stores right now, Borders is doing its best to stick American workers and consumers with the bill for their bad business decisions by getting rid of their stock. You know, like stores did before the great depression? Yeah, just like that.
What section was the first to go at Borders? "Literature."
The whole section is gone, including the book I wanted to buy. Sad.
Some of the books have been integrated into the "popular fiction" section. The "history" section is now almost entirely "popular biography" books about Obama's secret Muslim/Atheist/fascist/communist/anti-socialist/socialist past.
Interestingly, in a time of woe, the RELIGION section has been given a front wall, greatly expanded and cleaned of all those weird sounding "religions." It's a good honest and wholesome 700 club approved religion section now. (Although I did see the "green bible" with Nelson Mandela's name on the cover--WTF?! Doesn't Borders know that guy was a terrorist according to Reagan? Jesus would NOT approve.)
Now, economics and social horror aside, no more "literature" at Borders? Seriously?
So at a time like this, we're going to cut our culture off from the history of western thought and experience, because the publishing world has no interest in promoting literature?
Notice that I didn't say "because it's not profitable." Because that would have been a lie. Have you tried reading some of that "popular literature" crap at Borders? Well, no, unless you're a writer OF COURSE YOU HAVEN'T!!! Well, I have, and it's crap. I promise you, the only reason anyone reads it is because publishers market the CRAP out of it and Oprah sells it like cheap hooker ass. Apparently, Twilight is worthy of such marketing efforts while the tradition of world literature isn't.
I need to drink.
YES! EXACTLY! DRINK!
And that's why I'll be starting a series of book reviews: Book or Beer?
I'll be lining up the best sellers of our modern publishing and putting them in head to head competition with a selection of beer at a similar price point. Which will win out? The book or the beer?
7:30 tonight in Milwauke at the Basilica of St. Josaphat, I will be doing my small part as the baritone soloist in Karl Jenkin's Armed man. Great piece of modern music. Free concert.
Rereading and putting together thoughts on Reagan Butcher:
Butcher's poetry is so honest its painful to review. Like cutting into a nice steaming hot slice of soul, served up a la mode. If you've never tried it, you should grab yourself a fork and get ready to dig in.
Stone Hotel and Rusty String Quartet, both published by Crimethinc. Letters, fits into the tradition of Buckowski and Celine, a tradition of crotchety outsiders that allow us to see ourselves through different eyes. And Butcher's succinct, crystalized literary kicks to the groin make it apparent that this is a tradition that goes back to "Cold Mountain."
Stone Hotel, Butcher's first Crimethinc book, is like a novel disguised as a prison journal told in short, compelling bursts that get under your skin. The energy, the integration of image with action and the skewed point of view are apparent from the very first line:
showing the gun
to the korean man
behind the counter
my voice smooth as syrup saying
the money
his blank face screwed into puzzlement
his voice a question
the money?
i got pissed
yeah, the money, motherfucker or i’ll kill you
but that was a lie
there was only one person
in that room i wanted to kill
and he is sitting right here
telling you this
But there's something more here than meets the eye. Something in the whole of Stone Hotel that allows it to transcend its parts. And so Butcher transcends being just another guy imitating Buckowski, the most imitated poet of all time.
In Stone Hotel, we find tools adapted more from the Hempel/Carver/Palahniuk "Minimalism" than from any precious poetic minimalism. Imagistic punches, "burnt tongue" and repeated "choruses" flow throughout the piece, bringing it all together into a complete statement.
Choruses like:
...strip, look up the ass, lift the balls, stick out the tongue...
And the constant counting of time become the dehumanizing theme music of prison life and give the reader something to hold onto, something to get comfortable with.
And that comfort creates a cohesive whole that gives the work its emergent quality. We get a full novel-like character arch painted in quick rough strokes and kicks to the groin. And we come to feel like we know Butcher better, like he's given us more of himself than any protagonist painted in thick description. Stone Hotel is so punchy it even leaves out the worst cliche of the prison-lit genre, the tough guy act. All the barriers and excuses that other writers call "characterization" have been left off. The result is a great read.
Philistine Corporate Publishers, The Eastern front Avant Garde, are there Absurdists?.... Is this the same as 2? What is its relation to?
Wait, will it help if I read Blake Butler? Wait, should I read William Trevor? http://magichelicopterpress.com/dragons/blake.htm (Then click on the picture...)
I'm reviewing notes for my recently completed novel "Get Filthy Rich Doing What You LOVE!" More than 80,000 w0rds on the cuttingroom floor. Amongst them, these:
It is the place of those who take the hypocratic oath to DO NO HARM. Tis the place of priests of fame to care and support those who lift them up in worship.
There has never been a society so strictly and rigidly controlled and centrally planned as that which now exists in the US. Virtually every aspect of our lives from our food to our housing to our sex is engineered on the basis of profit maximization first and function later if at all.
IT is the place of those who would be artists to ask: What does a biological human really want? Apart from the MANUFACTURED DEMAND for a new line of spring DUTCH BOY colors, what should HOME feel like? Apart from a fast food medley of easily grown and cheaply distributed nutritional chochkies, what is FOOD?
We have never been further from self-reliance, which is the hidden secret of (FREEDOM.) I don't care crap or carp about your NUTRITIONALLY SUPPLEMENTED pretzels. Get that crap out of your mouth now! What is this, the JEtSONs? You're feeding me the APPEARANCE of "food" with supplements added?
What is your TV feeding me? I don't want your G's anatomy with its appearance of ART with BIG QUESTIONS added! Unless that chick's getting naked!
WHAT DOES A BIOLOGICAL HUMAN REALLY WANT?! Art art art the phone is ringing! Who will answer the call?
Art is not propaganda, but Art always represents some attempt at solution and Art movements fit the curve of a society's unique problems. Via: http://www.elahoffman.pl/
This is an open experiment. A putting in words of what is already in the air. The more this declaration is being read, thought or spoken out, the more its energy will manifest in our world and in our society. If what is written here resonates with you, make it your statement. Find ways to read it, share it and put it into action.
DECLARATION OF CULTURAL REVOLUTIONARIES 2009
Cultural revolutionaries in 2009…
_live, act, work with and not against nature _know that life is too complex to understand it intellectually _build and support local, self-governed economies _value and safe-guard diversity of all kind _value interdependence, since they know that nothing is separate _regard themselves as equal to all life forms _protect and support life _love and support children unconditionally _work on themselves towards greater awareness _know about ecological principles and integrate them into their lifes _see music and dance as an integral part of their expression and communication _live on an animate earth and regard it as sacred _know how to grow their own food _appreciate their sensory awareness _celebrate life _cooperate _make the shift from thinking ‘either, or’ to thinking ‘as well, as’ _share their knowledge _understand and integrate process as a way of being _are not identified with their body, thoughts or emotions _see the mind as a tool _realize that there is no right or wrong _are not identified with any social tag, their past or their future _are aware that the very essence of who they are is life itself _take responsibility for their emotions _are aware of and value their relationships to their living and seemingly non-living surroundings _value and integrate the wisdom of women _value and integrate the wisdom of indigenous cultures _value generalist knowledge _are aware of change as one of the core principles of evolution _work towards diversification and decentralization _engage in and create bonds to the place where they live _turn from dependent consumers to responsible producers _are looking for ways so that their interests and talents may unfold _have the courage to resist and disobey laws that render self-rule, self-provisioning, and self-sustenance illegal _are informed about the current money system and identify it as a contemporary form of enslavement _identify and boycott biological, cultural, social and philosophical monocultures _boycott monopolies of any kind _question everyone who promotes one solution _value environmental and human ethics over profit maximization _boycott corporations and banks operating for profit maximization _reclaim land and forests as common good _reclaim water as common good _reclaim biodiversity and knowledge as common good _are aware that they participate in the process of co-creation at all time _allow life to unfold through them
Berlin, 03/2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Been watching David Lynch's Interview Project. Continuing the wonderful work of the late Studs Terkel:
Well, I've been hearing about thiseer Twitter thang for sometime, how it's going to revolutionize art and such. And as an artist with a specific interest in new modes of expression and technology, my twitter-lack would seem an odd oversight.
Although I've long been a skeptic, some friends finally convinced me to join the twitter world. And because of them, I'm glad I did.
And though I'm fairly convinced that the Twitterboom is little more than short-lived advertising hype, I will try to be an open-minded skeptic.
But let me voice my skepticism. May the gods prove me wrong.
Can something like art be made on Twitter?
Well, I'm not sure, but I don't think so. At least not good art. If any, it would be a literary art like haiku. But Twitter brings nothing new to haiku. Relative to the web-publishing ability of blogs to integrate pictures/audio/video/text and hypertext, Twitter is very limiting. The Twitterature movement? I'm trying to stay open-minded. Will Twitter bring something new to Art?
Does Twitter represent the new read/write best of the web--the kind of democratic format that allows artists to build audience?
Absolutely not. Twitter, if anything, represents a read-only regression from blogs. It is not, as I've been told by the media, the new punk rock. It is the opposite of punk. It is much more like a pyramid scheme. In fact, it IS a pyramid scheme. Were you bottom level? Then Twitter is going to be GREAT for you.
Is it good for advertising?
Definitely yes, at least until the pyramid reaches it's mid-level burn-out. And especially for low-level pyramiders.
Is it good for making friends?
Maybye. Well, because of the format, more like acquaintances. Certainly not as good as more democratic tools like forums or blog communities.
However, its top-down read-only nature makes it a good place to meet a certain kind of person... the kind of person who'd want a top-down read-only soap box. And that appeal, to that certain kind of person, and the promise to others of meeting this kind of person is the whole hype of Twitter! Of course, I'll retract my cynicism and remain in obscurity for a while.
But I will go out on a limb and say:
without major changes: multi-media integration, longer format, alteration of pyramid structure, well everything that separates Twitter from blogs, Twitter is but a fad. In fact, those things are the only difference between Twitter and blogs:
1. More limited in expression--no logical persuasion (too short for syllogism,) no image/video/sound integration. 2. More "read-only." Less democratic. 3. More pyramid-like in structure.
This last was clearly the whole point! Twitter was based on the business idea that blogs were a fad and clever marketing could move bloggers to Twitter, which, because of its more pyramid/read-only structure is better for centralizing profit. Blogs give those little people too much opportunity to profit off their work!
The oft-stated meme is that people who missed the blog "fad" could be sold a "bottom level" product. But as always, business men know the "cost" of things but the VALUE of nothing. Blogging, as multi-media self-publishing is revolutionary. Twitter is a pyramid scheme, and with new twitter-gaming technologies, guess what, it's probably past the burn out level. Alas.
If you want to be "bottom level," go bet on the next big thing and ride it to networking success, fortune and fame! THe NIN forum and DeviantArt are due some media exposure soon....
But so far Twitter can be fun! So if you like, you can catch my inane, cynical Twittering at: http://twitter.com/zamyatin_lives
Went to a showing of The Unforeseen last night. A compassionate and effective documentary on land use planning, development and sprawl, a Laura Dunn film with Robert Redford as an exec producer and cameo.
This is an excellent piece of propaganda and an interesting popularization of daring film techniques. After, many of the people I talked to said "it was strange how it would go off on these artsy sort of things..." or "I've never seen a documentary that was so beautiful."
The film often integrated in incongruous or even comical images, giving it a sort of zen Buddhist sort of humor. Many images seemed to follow a sense of chance allowing and encouraging viewers to make mental leaps and actively participate in creating meaning. The image of children, or of a sheep escaping its fence aren't directly related to the content of the film except by a sort of synchronicity. Experiments in story-telling and even characterization give this documentary a very new feel...
What is art? What is propaganda? Propaganda attempts to persuade toward an opinion? I don't think art tries to do this.
Met a young film student at a party this weekend. Spoke about art, psychology, the paranormal, film, flash mobs and the Avant Garde. "I love the crazy stuff that makes you think... I want to find a way to imagine other dimensions... love things that open my mind to ideas I've never considered." A big fan of David Lynch and zombie movies....
So experimental a genre of parody was created in honor of him. So experimental he always seemed a sort of parody of himself.
Anyone who's put underwear or a lampshade on his head and flailed about saying "modern dance" is a fan of Merce Cunningham, though he might not even know the name. Cunningham has inspired a generation of artists. Merce, like his Collaborator John Cage, represents the avant garde that so many young artists find so exciting. His choreography represented dance as dance, and dancers as themselves, no attempt to lull us into the romantic fantasy.
The movements often were inspired by nature and animals, but the dancers were not to be animals, but to move with the spontaneity of animals. Not to pretend to be animals, in a way that romanticizes or anthropomorphises but to simply be human animals.
With Cage, Merce experimented with chance operations and letting in new meanings to the symbology of dance. In conversation with Cage and...
John Cage is best known as composer of 4'33, the composition that features 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. For those that don't know it, you enter the hall, the orchestra sits, the concert master comes to tune, the conductor appears and bows, raises his hands to begin and...
...then lowers them and looks at his watch.
Then there's nothing for the next four and a half minutes. Of course, we quickly see that it's not just silence, but in the context of aesthetic appreciation, it is filled with sound, humor, meaning and, yes, beauty.
John Cage teaches us to listen, in a very specific way and it's that silence that echoes...
But Cage was more than musical mad-scientist. He was a prolific multi-artist. And perhaps the most important one, in terms of his influence across all the arts, of the last 50 years.
(Listen/View a beautiful film inspired by Cage's aesthetics, with his piece "In a Landscape":)
Among the emerging artists of today, the experimenter, the wizard and witchdoctor is worshiped. We were a generation raised on pop culture, and when we were exposed to the likes of Cage, DuChamp, Jasper Johns, John Ashbury, Gertrude Stein...
...people totally reinventing art with howling at the moon madness, joie de vivre, where poetry meets its primitive heritage in the incantation, eye of noot, hair of toad, the dull pierce of the wolf's tooth. The "cut" of the haiku, which projects a silent image at the base of the skull. The tools that had flooded in from the east, which released the intuitive back into our art, remain the most exciting and inspiring thing that most young artists today will learn about in art/music/writing/dance/theater/etc school.
At its base, the aesthetic is this: something that cuts to the now, that, in an instant, frees us from some illusion that had held us living in the past or future. We discover that there is a raw mad magic to life just under the surface.
And so there is a generation that wants that freedom, and also enjoys Scooby doo.
Which has created a sort of paradox, apparent in artists ranging from Artist Banksy, to the Dresden Dolls and Franz Ferdinand, to Carole Maso, the Flarfist Collective, the White Stripes, Naomi Klein, Chuck Palahniuk, practically all new photography, the films of Kevin Smith, the Wachowski Brothers, the Coen Brothers and on and on and on. And the same is even more apparent in the youngest generation of artists I meet.
The paradox is this:
Wake-ism vs Dream-ism. or the concrete vs the sentimental. Or now vs the drama of learning from pasts and creating new futures.
So we are used to art sweeping us up in narrative. To "get lost" in an imaginary world created by a painting, a novel, a piece of music. We may walk around our entire lives living mostly in a world colored by these imaginary worlds, the sweet conflicts of our literature, witnessed in our own lives. But Art may also wake us up and alert us to the beauty and profound mystical quality of now. And in so doing, create the possibility that we can make our own way, not just live out the dramas of the past and the future we desire. Cage spoke of feeling that paintings wanted to manipulate him, hypnotize him into a fantasy world, whereas he would walk away from a DuChamp painting and suddenly THE REAL WORLD was more interesting. The DuChamp would point to the hidden beauty in cement, or in a door nob. And suddenly he was seeing things as they really are, not just as their trivial and passe "function:" "door nob."
(John Cage speaking of this phenomenon in music, about 5 minutes)
This contradiction between (1) the "fictive dream," which has become so prevalent a tool in our advertising that we've become very suspicious of it, and (2) what moves us toward awake, remains one of the most important problems in emerging art.
------->While Cage, and the previous generation of experimenters were "purists" in their move toward "awake," the newest generation attempts to weave the two contrary elements together.
And it's here that Cage's influence echoes on. Through the paintings of Jasper Johns, who is a major influence on emerging artists and through noise rock, "Language Poetry," which sees raw language as its subject, instead of some romantic fictive dream, Opium Magazine, "Fluxus" and through the exploits of the cacophony society, which inspired Chuck Palahniuk.
How do various artists use/address/solve this apparent contradiction?
I am the Adamantine Asshole. I seek real culture flowering in the the ruins. I seek what smolders in the ashes. I seek flesh and blood from those who dare give it. This is a journal of that search. This is a blog of new and avant garde Art, Music and Literature.
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