Collage by Max Ernst
from his graphic novel Une Semaine de Bonte (A Week of Kindness)
“The novel was first published in Paris in 1934, as a series of five pamphlets of 816 copies each. The novel consists of found images from Victorian encyclopedias and novels, cut up and re-organized into 182 montages which represent a kind of dark, surreal world.”
via wikiP
Folk singer Vic Chesnutt died on Christmas after going into a coma from a suicidal overdose of muscle relaxers a few days earlier. It seems his desire to die was caused, at least in part, by him being overwhelmed by debt from doctors’ bills—over $70,000 according to reports. Vic was a quadriplegic from a car accident in his teens—in addition to the money he already owed, he couldn’t afford to pay for other operations that he needed. It’s another tragic case to add to the fucked-up chronicles of America’s long broken system, as reported by the Guardian UK:
At the risk of turning a personal tragedy into a political issue, it’s hard not to draw lines between the details of Chesnutt’s passing with the shortcomings of the current US healthcare system. While insured, Chesnutt reportedly owed $70,000 in unpaid medical bills and had recently been served with a lawsuit by a Georgia hospital. On the Constellation Records homepage, Jem Cohen, a filmmaker and producer of Chesnutt’s North Star Deserter vented his spleen at the United States’ “broken health care system depriving so many of the help they need to stay around and stay sane, and a society that never balks at providing more money for more wars but fights tooth and nail against decent care for its citizens. Vic’s death, just so you all know, did not come at the end of some cliché downward spiral. He was battling deep depression but also at the peak of his powers, and with the help of friends and family he was in the middle of a desperate search for help. The system failed to provide it.”
Although I hadn’t kept up with his latest albums, I’ve been a fan of Vic’s since the 90s, and was lucky enough to meet him once backstage after a show at Joe’s Pub in the City. He was very kind and charming, with a calm demeanor offset by intensely bright eyes. Those eyes lent a haunting glow to the dark oscillations (to paraphrase one of his lyrics) Chesnutt channeled through his poetic lyrics and evocative, nylon string guitar strumming. The show at Joe’s Pub had been a mix of new and old songs, including a selection from West of Rome, which had just been remastered and re-released. I’d discovered that album in college, and consider it a masterpiece of artistic vision and spiritual disasters. Despite it’s title the album was a definitive product of the Southeast United States—“smoked and honey-cured” gothic indie rock—you could hear it in Vic’s twang and picture it through the descriptions of dusty settings described in the songs. I’d go somewhere else when I listened to the album—somewhere in between my books and notebooks filled with my scraggly attempts to sound like the great writers I read in my literature classes—a place at an undefined clearing up ahead where I was brave and free enough to represent my own style of writing just like Vic represented own style of rock n’ roll.
The following is a blog post from the beginning of the end of the first version of this blog, in which the narrator, long since outed as playing all three characters at once, attempts to invoke the fictional threesome to allay her own impending sense of doom—imagining a scene in which a similarly depressed TRUE describes her feelings of loneliness and loss by invoking the the art of Vic Chesnutt:
04.15.2007
Become Famous 4 Me
I need the characters…the Magick 3. I need to call upon them again. TRUE, Sterling and Fitz. For the best time and also for the last time. I need them to help me get this right. I need to parcel out just the right words using their eyes as measures. As I’m walking down the street I imagine them pulling up alongside me in a car with tinted windows and a secret symbol stenciled across the windshield in iridescent ink. There they’d be—a few years older but still light years ahead. They had the attitudes and the style, miles of style, so much style it was waaaasted…
***
TRUE and I listened to “Little”, by Vic Chesnutt. She was lying across the couch—sick—but nearly recovered from a nasty summer cold. I was supposed to be taking care of her. Meanwhile my stomach ache got worse by the second. I’m always harboring these crazy longings to have a chilled-out time with just the two of us, but when it finally happens I can’t pull it together.
She sang along to the music, sweetly mimicking Vic’s loopy Georgia drawl.
“’A cup a day to curb visibility…’”
She closed her eyes and shuddered.
“Tea time,” I announced, hating the shrill note in my voice.
I pushed off from Fitz’s prized easy chair and headed to the antiseptic kitchen. He was still in Chicago, picking up sad and skinny indie rockers. “Can’t get enough of those assymmetrical bangs,” he liked to say.
“Hey.”
TRUE’s hand suddenly shot out and grabbed my wrist. I jumped and stopped in my tracks.
“Sterling.”
I looked deep into her blue eyes. For once they weren’t glassy.
“What is it?”
“Have I taken it too far?”
I peered down at her hand. Her grip was tight.
“How do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Tell me.”
I didn’t know what she meant, but I liked the conspiratorial tone she was using. It made me feel a part of something.
“I think it’s art for art’s sake.”
“Really?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Oh, come on!”
“What?”
“You only fuck around like you know what I’m on about.”
“That’s right. What are you on about?”
“You haven’t got a clue, do you?’
“I might have half a clue.”
“Oh, yeah?” she shook my hand free. Her eyes grew heavy.
“Maybe you do, what the fuck.”
“You’ve got to rest. I’m going to make the tea.”
“Fine, fine,” she arched her back and collapsed with a sigh against the pillow. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her so tired.
“Just tell me one thing…”
“Yes?” I said.
“Are we still recording?”
***
(via supersonicelectronic)
The psychoanalyst Carl Jung thought that astrology was an intuitive projection of man’s collective unconscious—connecting his psychology to the stars at such a deep level that no causal link can be found:
It is indeed very difficult to explain the astrological phenomenon. I am not in the least disposed to an either-or explanation. I always say that with a psychological explanation there is only the alternative: either and or! This seems to me to be the case with astrology too. - C.G. Jung in a letter to Hans Bender, April 10, 1958, C.G. Jung Letters, Volume 2, 1951-1961, p. 428.
It was this analogous, acausal connection (“either and or”) that made Jung believe that societal changes could be influenced by astrology even in a world in which its study was marginalized. In the 1950s he predicted that humanity would begin a new era “when the spring-point enters Aquarius.” Jung was not specific about the date, but according to astrologers the fabled Age of Aquarius began during the early morning hours of this past Valentine’s Day. The fact that this major astrological event is occurring along with seismic shifts in the plate tectonics of world culture could be the meaningful coincidence—or synchronicity—that fuels a “magical” change in the world. This Age of Aquarius that we find ourselves in is a time of a major paradigm shift—not in the clean slate way that he thought it would be, but with the same dramatic implications for the collective psyche. The two pressing reasons for why we have to make a choice: we can either go with the ecstatic flow of extraordinary events or stubbornly hold on to the old reality and risk being pulled under by annihilating forces.
The global financial meltdown and the environmental crisis are evidence of a paradigm shift. We are living in a time in which new myths are being created. The stories bubble up to the surface from in between the seismic collisions of world culture—ecstatic “mega-ritual” events that take us out of our everyday understanding of the world—defying the language and the logic of average existence.
(via supersonicelectronic)
The freedom from this distinction was among Andy’s greatest gifts. Not knowing what is real and what is fake creates a sense of all-permeating, existential dread coupled with the hilarity of ultimate freedom: like being lost in an artistic funhouse. Nothing is what its seems and yet it is exactly as it was meant to be.
ak47:
I looked out the window at the moody elegance of the Chrysler building and watched yellow and white lights blink all around like fireflies. I love this city because something’s always going on several levels deep. Beneath the surface level hustle and bustle is the constant slow churning of the old parts being made into new parts—bigger and stronger than before. Destroyed buildings come back taller—those from decimated families tumbled through and formed off-shoots. Friends that were families. The devotion I feel towards the city is far greater than any I could ever feel towards a single person. I wasn’t able to love the city as fully in my old life. Back then it was something I had to do battle with—it seemed to be grinding down on me and allowing only the tiny, fleeting victories. Now that I’ve changed everything is different than it was before—everything looks feels, sounds and tastes better. State of the Art. The further I drop out, the easier it gets. I’m no longer killing myself to live—just like in the Radiohead song. Next to the window is a large table made out of a piece of butcher block balanced upon four piles of cinderblock. This is where it happens—where I download the synchs into my brain. On one end is my desk with my laptop and my pens and magic markers and my stacks of black and white composition notebooks (labeled according to the subject matter they contained the notes of—“Psychological Weapons”, “The Matrix” and “Will Smith”) and at the other end sits a flat panel TV on a shiny plastic stand that is always on (although sometimes on mute). I sit off to the side of my laptop so that I have an unobstructed view of the TV screen. Sometimes, when the trail’s hot, I don’t go outside for days, living off of frozen bento boxes in my hermetically sealed bubble, 27 floors up.
One of the best ways to see universal feedback at work is through the activity of self-organizing groups. A self-organizing group is one that comes together without the hierarchy of a top-down command. Its members are motivated by their own desire to gather—not by paycheck, leader or religion. It’s non-corporate—grassroots in the truest, organic sense. The group exists because of deep, hidden connections that go beyond the everyday. The sheer number of self-organizing groups around today are only possible because of the flourishing of the social web. Applications such as Twitter and Facebook allow people to gather virtually—as one would at a gigantic cocktail party—complete with overheard conversations and the big names that are crowded by admirers and social climbers. The self-organized groups that have resulted are like groups of friends—the connections are fluid—at time tempestuous and at other times rigid and stuck in old models.
Unlike its social media cousin, Evolver.net, which was built with the intention of fostering not one but several self-organizing groups, the group on Reality Sandwich sprung up unplanned like a rhizome—a philosophical concept by Deleuze and Guattari which likens de-centralized, non-hierarchical systems to opportunistic plants such as ginger that use a horizontal stem in order to grow in-between trees. The trees were the old model—the top-down world in which authority came on high. The rhizomes weren’t bent on taking and replacing the trees as plant kings of the forest—they revealed a way of existing not as an either/or of systems but of an either and or. The botanical and conceptual rhizomes were about an expansion of possibilities—it wasn’t about doing away with the old—it was about coming up with that which was the least expected, like living life as a gathering of decentralized multiplicities in a world of towering, top/down metaphysical ideals.
The RS rhizome sprung up in damp shadows of the comment boxes. The posts themselves were submission only—their closed system based on approval factors formed the forest of trees while the comments became the twisting brambles and moss below where anyone who registered for the site could join in.
An old cohort from back in the blog 1.0 days used to say—sometimes comments are the best part. I don’t know if this was often the case given the generally high quality of the writing on RS, but what I did find to be the case was that the RS comment boxes were ripe for synchronicity—there were always connections being made through links or obscure references that would be mind-blowing with epic levels of uncanniness. I’d think—isn’t it crazy, I was just thinking the same exact thing!…or, wow, that’s the same book I was drawn to on my friend’s bookshelf yesterday—a friend who has the same initials as this commenter, making it not only about the connection of the book but about the friend, and the timing of having been over their place when I was, with the spine of the book sticking out from the shelf, just as the light in the room turned into long strands—the afternoon undoing its golden locks and letting them fall over us…
My research has shown that the grounds for telepathy increase in proportion to the amount of recognition that self-organized group members have of their status as members. It wasn’t enough to all happen to fall into a certain category in which they shared certain things in common—it was the group’s awareness of being a group that made the self-organized group truly dynamic. Not only were the commenters on RS technically members of a group by virtue of having a log-in and password, they were also members by virtue of an assumed curiosity towards RS’s subject matter. That said the group had no real rules—no membership dues or meetings to attend.
What was real was that you had the feeling you were in the middle of something. A way of thinking and being that was happening NOW.
Magical things happen in places where people feel compelled to gather without being coerced into doing so. Wanting to do something makes a huge difference in the experience of doing it—whatever it is. The feedback loops created in the comment boxes effects the entire site—from the writing to the graphics and layout—everything feels like it’s coming together according to remote control powers—there is the nagging sensation of a larger significance, the sensation of being one part of a bigger story.
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(via peachme)
Since the summer I’ve been getting deep in the philosophical mud trying to sculpt a theory of Universal Feedback and Flow. A combination of things—including a Nassim Haramein lecture I attended at Collective Hardware, my experiences DJing vinyl records, and a mystical vision I had on a Florida beach coalesced into the insight that everything that exists is a feedback loop both created by and creating an exchange of energy. What’s more this exchange is constantly happening—on the level of atoms all the way to galaxies and black holes, the universe IS a fractal flux falling apart at the same time that it comes together. It’s a snake eating it’s own tail. I’m learning how to see through the veil of the everyday and experience the constant back and forth just behind it. This exchange can take many different forms (perhaps an infinite number of them) but it is always a give and take of energy. By focusing on that which appears solid and true it is revealed to be mostly empty space with flashes of static appearing and disappearing according to a web of criss-crossed signals. Like the inhale and exhale that form a breath—or the hyper-awareness of one hand touching the other—or the journey inwards that is embarked upon by focusing on the myriad detail radiating in the single NOW of the present. It’s not a matter of cause and effect—that’s the tricky part, getting past the long held belief that one thing causes another. Everything that appears is the result of it being simultaneously discovered and created by our perception. The exchange happens all at once—it’s not that one part comes first and allows for the other, but that one part doesn’t exist without the other—like how the ying and yang is only a ying and yang. Similarly, the insight of universal feedback teaches us that we only exist as individuals because we exist as networks. You can’t have one without the other.
The illusion that one thing causes another has morphed into an entire metaphysics, in which meaning stands outside of a thing as an ideal that infuses it with its essence. We believe that things happen because of other things—taking it to the extreme of interpreting that which happens as being what we deserve, based on whether we are “good” or “bad” people.
Nothing is inherent good or bad. There is only the perception and misperception of individual events—and only from the vantage point of an all-seeing God could anyone know which was which.
It may be too early to tell, but it seems that what I’m creating is a philosophy of collective relativism by which instead of qualities what exists is the infinite quantity of possibilities present in each and every instant. In addition to facts and figures and all that is true and definite the masses learn to focus their attention upon that which overlaps and gets fuzzy, vacancies, null sets and static. These in-between places are where new myths and legends are born. We look for openings in time—wrinkles by which to stretch out an ordinary collection of charmed moments into an infinity of infinities—an epic tale like a necklace with a never-ending string of jeweled stones that forever cast their light in the darkest places.
A few months ago I had the first in an ongoing series of synchs involving the Mona Lisa. It started when I was researching pix of stencil graffiti online. The objective was to find and save pix of anonymous hotness, blow them up and print them out so I could recreate the stencil with a piece of mylar and an exacto knife for my FTW T-Shirts project—thrift store t-shirts customized with graffiti style stencil sprays. FTW (Follow The World) T-shirts was an experiment with online telepathy—the goal was to “magically” select the perfect shirt from the ranks of second-hand goodness and to intuit the right stencil design to add to it. As I searched through various Euro picture galleries of stencil-based street art, I felt my mind drift with the beats emanating from my red Tivoli desktop speaker, dressed in the distinctive clitter clatter it gave them—like the hard wood Italian soles racing across cobblestones. I dreamily clicked on this and that before coming across a Romanian stencil spray of the Mona Lisa—complete with the perfect accident of a tear-drop shaped paint drip in the corner of her eye. This caught my interest—I sat up—ready and awake. When I hit the forward button at the bottom of the pic, the next stencil was the exact same image except that this Mona Lisa had its head half-transformed into Woody Woodpecker. Perfect, I thought to myself, as I right-clicked triumphantly. This must be the feeling a fisherman has when making a prize catch after hours of waiting knee deep in icy water. I started typing “Mona Woody” into the Save File box at the exact same moment Slick Rick’s “Mona Lisa” came on the magic shuffle—a song that I had thought, until that moment, had been accidentally purged from my iPod:
Well, it was one of those days — not much to do
I was chillin downtown, with my old school crew
I went into a store — to buy a slice of pizza
And bumped into a girl, her name was Mona — what?
Mona Lisa (what?) *singing* Mona Lisa, so men made you..
I felt the buzz of the synch course through me—mixing with my happiness at hearing the track again. I felt awake down deep, like I’d downed a cup of coffee for the spirit—setting me off to investigate further, casting the hungry hunting bird gaze of my third eye across the internets. The synch told me this image meant something—it let me know I was on the right path. My google research quickly revealed that Woody Woodpecker was one of the few American cartoons shown on Communist run Romanian TV—which meant that the stencil undoubtedly invoked childhood memories for many Romanians of a certain age. Pop culture meets the masterwork, revealing the nostalgia and trauma contained within both of them. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to see the “real” Mona Lisa again—which is to say I wanted to see a picture file reproduction—the closest I’ve ever been to DaVinci’s work. As familiar as the image was, that post-synch google was the first time I could ever remember taking the time to really look at it. Other times I merely sucked in the familiar face vacuum cleaner style but this time I stopped and observed the sparkle in the eyes and the upward curl of the mouth—while all along I saw the reflection of my own face on the monitor screen, adding my own layer to the cultural assemblage that was the painting. I used what I had learned from my ongoing, virtual apprenticeship under Andy Warhol to recognize opportunities for art riffs in the exchange between the image and the culture within which it’s created. I’ve learned that the importance of a piece has to do with the expansiveness of its reach across the centuries. In the case of the Mona Lisa a core chunk of western culture’s expressive genius as well as its crippling repression is revealed in DaVinci’s masterpiece. He paints a deep humanity (light! Heat! Lust! Love!) glowing through a mask of culture and class.
I decided to make both stencils. They didn’t really fit with the ones I already had— the hip-hop head silhouettes and 60’s style psychedelic chicks with stenciled stars in their eyes, but the synch and the charge that being re-introduced to the painting had given me made it feel like a necessary part of my FTW line-up. The only way to really test the power of online telepathy was have lots of stencils to choose from so that I could intuitively choose one that was “right” for that particular shirt and person. I could put the two faces on the front and back of a single shirt—or just use one at a time or mix them up with other stencils. I chuckled as I imagined the possibilities of pairing ML with Eazy-E—or maybe Steven Colbert. I felt certain that no matter how I ended up using them it would be the right way— there was significance to them—something special, something with meaning.
As if in confirmation of this it seemed that as soon as I cut out the stencil I started seeing the Mona Lisa everywhere—on TV commercials and in print ads that appeared across the pages of magazines opened randomly. I saw her on display in the window of a poster store underneath the Port Authority. It seemed there was an especially large number of ML’s within a several block radius of Collective Hardware. A series of wheat pasted ML’s seemed an hommage to Andy on Elizabeth Street. It was a short stroll from the pizza slice bearing ML on the side of Lombardi’s Pizzeria to the Keith Haring mural of tripped-out orange and black faces on Bleeker and Houston—the eyes of which I’d considered making into a stencil for the purpose of giving the Twitter bird crazy staring eyes. I’d forgotten that this corner was it’s home. I wondered if seeing it again was a sign that I should cut out those crazy eye stencils—perhaps they were meant to go with the ML pix.
As I contemplated the green atomic symbol, dancing men and funhouse characters on the giant slab of concrete, a man stopped in front of me and took out his iPhone. I noticed that his screen background was a picture of the Mona Lisa.
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