Friday, May 27, 2005

as the pattern gets more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough

(monologue by Timothy 'Speed' Levitch, from the movie, "Waking Life")

On this bridge, Lorca warned, "Life is not a dream. Beware, and: beware, and: beware." And so, many think that because THEN happened, NOW isn't, but didn't I mention: the on-going Wow is happening Right Now. We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance, where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel starring clowns. This entire thing we're involved with, called the world, is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments, flabbergasted to be in each other's presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise to our direct experiences. Our eyesight is a test to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write a hundred stories. Jacques Ahmeti, who was once run down by a car, recalled falling into a lucid faint, a sudden exhiliration as he realized at last something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely, which is to say that I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood IS life lived, but the paradox is: bug me and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me, and on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don't forget -- which is to say, remember, because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting -- Lorca in that same poem said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream, and as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person's dream, THAT is self-awareness.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Manifest Empowerment

from "DADA Manifesto," by Tristan Tzara (1918)

Every product of disgust that is capable of becoming a negation of the family is dada; DADA; acquaintance with all the means hitherto rejected by the sexual prudishness of easy compromise and good manners: DADA; abolition of logic, dance of those who are incapable of creation: DADA; every hierarchy and social equation established for values by our valets: DADA;... the abolition of memory: DADA; the abolition of archaeology: DADA; the abolition of prophets: DADA; the abolition of the future: DADA; the absolute and indisputable belief in every god that is an immediate product of spontaneity: DADA... DADA DADA DADA; - the roar of contorted pains, the interweaving of contraries and all contradictions, freaks and irrelevancies: LIFE.


from "S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto," by Valerie Solanas (1967)

No genuine social revolution can be accomplished by the male, as the male on top wants the status quo, and all the male on the bottom wants is to be the male on top. The male 'rebel' is a farce; this is the male's 'society', made by him to satisfy his needs. He's never satisfied, because he's not capable of being satisfied. Ultimately, what the male 'rebel' is rebelling against is being male. The male changes only when forced to do so by technology, when he has no choice, when 'society' reaches the stage where he must change or die. We're at that stage now; if women don't get their asses in gear fast, we may very well all die.


from "The Communist Manifesto," by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels (1848)

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Proletarians of all countries, unite!

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Bob Dylan interview

(interview in Playboy, 1966)

Playboy: What made you decide to go the rock'n'roll route?

Dylan: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy -- he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburator out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

Playboy: And that's how you became a rock'n'roll singer?

Dylan: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Aarfy

". . .Aarfy was an authority on the subject of true love because he had already fallen truly in love with Nately's father and with the prospect of working for him after the war in some executive capacity as a reward for befriending Nately. Aarfy was a lead navigator who had never been able to find himself since college. He was a genial, magnanimous lead navigator who could always forgive the other men in the squadron for denouncing him furiously each time he got lost on a combat mission and led them over concentrations on antiaircraft fire. He got lost on the streets of Rome that same afternoon and never did find the eligible Red Cross girl from the milk-of-magnesia plant. He got lost on the mission to Ferrera the day Kraft was shot down and killed, and he got lost again on the weekly run to Parma and tried to lead the planes out to sea over the city of Leghorn . . . "

(from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - passage chosen for Aarfy's similairity to the proprieter of this blog, who got lost inside of a large grocery store)


from "Art, Space, and Everything that is Anything"

by Chelsea Haramia

As we have seen, one of the main lacking elements of perspective representation in Medieval art was the disregard for presenting the composition from a single perceiver’s point of view.

In fact... Medieval... space... is... a true... point of view... -- Florentine Filippo Brunelleschi.

Yet [Brunelleschi] is very adamant about the assertion that such perspective was [his] own creation, and, because of this, he reasons that “any knowledge of the nature of such a system [from antiquity] had undoubtedly since been lost” (White 113).

[A]rtists and theorists ... broke... artificial ... painters ... by ... mathematics. Nonetheless, representation is ... assembly lines, continually... aesthetic.

In addition... each person got an egg, including Brunelleschi, and it was decided that whomever could get his egg to stand on its end would construct the cupola. Everyone tried and failed, except of course Brunelleschi. At his turn, he gently cracked the eggs bottom and it stood perfectly upright. So it came to pass that Brunellleschi was granted allowance to construct the cupola.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Ken Kesey speech

(spoken to a large Vietnam War protest rally at Berkeley, as recorded by Tom Wolfe)

You know, you're not going to stop this war with this rally, by marching... That's what THEY do... They hold rallies and they march... They've been having wars for ten thousand years and you're not gonna stop it this way... Ten thousand years, and this is the game they play to do it... holding rallies and having marches... and that's the same game you're playing... THEIR game...

(singing with harmonica) Home, home on the range... Home... home... on the ra-a-a-a-ange...

I was just looking at the speaker who was up here before me... and I couldn't hear what he was saying... but I could hear the sound of it... and I could hear YOUR sound coming back at him... and I could see the gestures... and I could see his jaw sticking out like this... silhouetted against the sky... and you know who I saw... and who I heard?... Mussolini... I saw and I heard Mussolini here just a few minutes ago... Yep... you're playing their game...

Home... home on the range...

We've all heard all this before, but we keep on doing it... I went to see the Beatles last month... And I heard 20,000 girls screaming together at the Beatles... and I couldn't hear what they were screaming, either... But you don't have to... They're screaming Me! Me! Me! Me!... Me!... I'm Me!... That's the cry of the ego, and that's the cry of this rally!... Me! Me! Me! Me!... And that's why wars get fought... ego... because enough people want to scream Pay attention to Me... Yep, you're playing their game... There's only one thing to do... there's only one thing's gonna do any good at all... And that's everybody just look at it, look at the war, and turn your backs and say... Fuck it...

Home... home on the range...

Just look at it and turn away and say... Fuck it....

Smelly horse tandem bikes.

(a brief discourse from the likes of Henson C. Robinson)

Tomorrow if you are jumping through the wire take the red
fare to the store. Make sure that the young grass is growing
green dude. Weddings and tan lines....what is the difference?
How many times do you realize tomorrow is not for a while???
If you had 75 dollars right now how would you spend it? what
kind of coffee do you drink?> thinking about grahm crackers
what do you think?? Who do you call for all your technology
needs??? How do you feel about grapes, jelly beans, potato
chips, yams, hammocks, file cabinets, red balls and coffee???
I am expecting this rubics cube to be finished today young
fredo!

Making.

H.