likesbears: (via: brightredlemons)
fiction inspired by rundonotwalk and stanley kubrick
I looked out my window at the tree branches, which were still waving wildly. Once again I had the strange notion that the white flowers on the branches were somehow “more than flowers” and once again I felt like I was on the verge of understanding something—but then it was gone. In its wake I found myself thinking again about my last purchase, during which the usually reticent, hipster delivery dude with his skinny black jeans and Chuey wool biking cap suddenly opened up and started talking a mile a minute about his time spent working in a growhouse in college. There was something about the plants that he liked being around. He used to sit in the shadowy living room in a canvas camping chair with an iced mango green tea and read science fiction novels (sometimes aloud, he informed me) among these enormous, crystal encrusted pot trees that sprouted pod shaped purple buds like something from another world.
“There was this one season that was really wild,” he said, “The plants seemed to be radiating or something. I’d have these visions of something coming out of them—a crazy spirit being like a plant version of the Aliens from the Alien movies.” He looked at me to gage my reaction and I nodded instinctively, although I was having a hard time processing everything he said.
“I only smoked it once,” he said. “Believe it or not—one toke of that switched your shit up. It was like a super weed. American Beauty Gob-ment styles. We only moved it for a week before the whole shop got closed. Permanent-like. Hewhocannotbenamed didn’t want that stuff getting out on the streets and waking everyone up—calling them to revolution and shit. No way.”
He’d spoken more in those few minutes than he had in the course of several months of deliveries, when he’d glance up from his texting to ask me politely what was up and nod when I told him nothing much as he texted on his phone. I didn’t mind as I preferred to keep it professional with whoever they sent over. I noticed his occasional side glances to the piles of books lying about and wondered which ones he recognized.
Was it Crime and Punishment, or The Trial? Maybe Hemingway or The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson that caught his eye?
Was it Heidegger? Nietzsche, Derrida or Deleuze? Midnight’s Children or Shakespeare? Gertrude Stein or Shirley Jackson?
Or maybe it was the short stack of Manga novels whose colorful spines were slices of art candy?
At one point while talking about the growhouse he bent over to silence the relentless buzz of his phone and revealed a band of white flesh with bones sticking out above the elastic band of his boxers. That night I’d dream about seeing him as a small dot standing way out on a metal beam at some kind of immense construction site. They were building a skyscraper next to a pit. In the dream I found myself predicting that he was about to be blown off the metal plank and falling down for thousands of years, Gandalf style.
“It was almost like they were trying to talk to me about whatever I was thinking…or reading…” he seemed excited by this last bit, and I finally realized that during the entire time he’d been delivering this unexpected monologue, he’d been staring at the Netflix envelope next to the TV. The DVD was on top with its painted title side clearly visible: “2001, A Space Odyssey.”
“That was one of the books I read,” he said, when he felt me watching him stare. “It’s actually the one that really got me wondering if I was meant to be there, reading that book at that moment, in that growhouse with those particular plants close-by.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I looked down at the floor.
“Do you like science fiction?” he asked—his voice low and conspiratorial.
“Yeah,” I said from behind my bangs.
“Have you seen that movie before?”
“2001? Oh, um, no. But I’ve seen a few of the famous scenes, and I know the general idea.”
“Oh. So now you’re finally going to watch it.”
“I guess so. It’s one of those movies that I always knew I wanted to see but never did…cuz, well I dunno why I didn’t. It’s weird cuz it’s the kind of movie you’d think I’d see…just knowing what its about—it seems right up my alley. Given the things I’m interested in.”
My voice sounded funny. I wasn’t use to talking to him, and I certainly wasn’t used to him staring at my mouth while it moved.
“What are you interested in?” he asked, his green eyes sparkling.
My first thought—out of habit—was to shut down. I wanted to hold on to all of this stuff for just a little while longer. At which point it would be necessary to be calm and measured. A few months ago I would never have been having this conversation at all.
But this was the new era—the law of 6 degrees shined over my head like the hundreds of bulbs I’d wired up the apartment with—keeping me lit up and AWAKE—gathering clues like a detective, knowing that each and every person I came into contact could provide the information and the identity of the boy. He could be a friend of a friend—a little brother or the son of the Con Ed guy I never let in to read the meter. It seemed that it was left to me to remain open when I’d be clamped shut.
“Me? Um well, I dunno—time and consciousness, mainly. The next level of human evolution and how it’s all happening on the internets. Through technology, but you know—in a non-Fascist way.”
I stopped talking. I heard birds tweeting outside.
“Wow,” he said, but I couldn’t tell how he meant it.
“Wow—what? Are you interested in any of that stuff?”
“All of it,” he said softly, smiling in a way so open and unabashed that I had to look down again.
@pareidoliac we have to respect MJ, a world monarch, bigger of course than Iran, America even…
“Mediocrity was not a concept that would even for a second enter Michael Jackson’s being or actions…..
“I became very ill and emotionally/spiritually exhausted in my quest to save him from certain self-destructive behavior and from the awful vampires and leeches he would always manage to magnetize around him. ….Its close to midnight and something evils lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes,
Youre paralyzed
Chorus
cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no ones gonna save you from the beast about strike
You know its thriller, thriller night
Youre fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight…
For over a month now I keep coming back to this post about mega-rituals, for some reason unable to wrap it up, but now it seems I was unconsciously waiting for the sad occasion of Michael Jackson’s death to deepen the grounds of understanding. I learned about the concept of a “mega-ritual” from the writings of synchromystic blogger Jake Kotze—although he eventually swapped out the term for the more optimistic sounding “Starg8”. As he writes on his blog, “The Blob”:
The Mega Rituals mentioned in this post; JFK, Watergate and 911, massively challenged and changed collective perception about the tenacious whorl called America. By implication and extension challenging the very foundation of consensus reality.
What ever isn’t in alignment with the Gr8 WaterG8 mentioned above will be swept away or swallowed by StarG8 Mega Rituals.
I believe WE will all be massively surprised in the ‘near future’ by what structures survive as things align and which dissolve under the pressure of change.
In keeping with the spirit of this change The Blob NOW distances its mercurial form from the term Mega Ritual.
Its essence will remain in the blanket and flexible term StarG8.
A mega-ritual (a term which I will stick with for the time being) is an event in which people from all around the world pay attention to the same thing as it happens in real time, which is to say, “live and without commercial interruption”. This group experience of universal nowness only became possible with the advent of cable news and the internet. The mediated reality of Michael Jackson’s death is similar in scale and scope to the attention focused upon Obama’s Election, the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe and 9/11. The difference was that 9/11, Obama’s election, and Hurricane Katrina were each an even mix of live television broadcast and internet feedback. In contrast, Michael Jackson’s death is an almost entirely internet based mega-ritual, similar to Sully Sullenberger’s “miracle” landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River: while there was no direct footage of the event as it was unfolding, there was a nearly immediate creation of a feedback loop on the internet, primarily on social media outlets such as Twitter.
An internet based mega-ritual is different from those based on TV. The specificity of the image that television provides allows for the worldwide attention to be very finely focused, which has a more concentrated psychic effect—perhaps to the point of overwhelming those who experience it. On 9/11, millions of people watched as the second plane struck the South tower—literally scorching the footage into the collective psyche so that it would exist forever like a burn scar. On the internet the information “hits” in a more diffused, disseminated way—like a virus or a weed—it insinuates itself into our psyche in a rhizomatic way—growing offshoots that operate via a decentralized. self-organizing system. There is no iconic image that represents the event—it happens in the form of many-to-many in doses of one-to-one: via conversation, e-mail, the sharing of youtube videos, and a flurry of short, deeply felt blog posts as well as Twitter and Twitter-esque status updates. There were no live shots of Jackson’s ambulance or press conference updates from his team of doctors—but we did get a few shots of the press itself gathered outside the hospital. This kind of self-reference is a sign that a mass catharsis is brewing. The story was still breaking when it was confirmed that Jackson had in fact, died. Many felt the need to wait for Big Media news outlet such as CNN to confirm the news before they believed it. The mega-ritual was experienced as the internet reaction to his death—in which millions of people got online at the same time to communicate about the same thing. It is this togetherness that makes up the core of a mega-ritual. It is not the event as a whole but the part that is experienced by large groups of people as it unfolds in real time. The mega-ritual part of the Kennedy Assassination, for example, didn’t begin at the moment the gunshots rang out in Texas, but rather shortly after, when the nation gathered together around their radio and TV sets in the interim between the shooting and Kennedy’s death. During that in-between time there was a mass focusing of awareness as everyone paid attention to the same thing at the same time. For many, this had the effect of providing a realization of oneness with everyone and everything, while at the same time throwing each and every person back upon themselves so that they confronted/celebrated/condemned their own unique individuality. This is why everyone who was alive in the 60s remembers where they were when they heard about JFK—just as a couple of generations earlier everyone would forever remember where they were and what they were doing on 9/11.
Mega-ritual events teach us that we are a part of something much bigger than just our own lives. Michael Jackson appealed to such a broad demographic that EVERYONE knew who he was, regardless of skin color or nationality. He was a true international star, as well as a true enigma—two aspects that will help propel his legend further, for it is the darkness of many buried things that seemed to haunt Michael Jackson. In these days after his death all you hear is his music—wherever you go. Michael is in the clubs and the bodegas, the bars and the baby stores, the Gap and the Highline, Chelsea and the street. Similar to 9/11 the feeling of togetherness lingers on, but unlike 9/11 we have a ready made background soundtrack as we exchange stories of when we first heard Michael, or where we were when the Thriller album blew up. The music increases the vibe as you exchange winks with shopkeepers and dance in the sidewalk outside a bar blasting “Billy Jean” with its doors wide open.
Music goes beyond images, to open up pathways of being long covered up in our brains. Music connects us to that primitive part of ourselves—the raging, dancing animal enigma. Perhaps the reactivation of those channels is Michael’s gift to us now.
Don’t stop till u get enough (cuz this is Thriller nite)…
ak47:
Kyoto Station, Kyoto, Japan (via matt watkinson)
Just because something doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
“Paper Planes”—MIA (DFA Mix)
Dope as it is, I thought I’d had enough of MIA’s Paper Planes after hearing it dropped in every big city set this year but this DFA mix from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack is super catchy. A great remix makes you remember why you liked the song so much in the first place.
MIA uses hip-hop to build a new mythology based on a westernized remix of eastern culture. Danny Boyle uses digital video to do the same thing in a movie.
Lovely Day
- the second of my three drawings i made for my friends.
If you get open and get aware it becomes apparent that everything spins in sync with everything else—you realize that even disasters unfold according to their own logic. In a sometimes wishy-washy world of virtual workforces and TV news cycles, there is the THUD of certainty that something real and undeniable has happened. The sudden, decisive leveling of a landslide or a bomb feels like the hand of history grabbing hold and shaking the place that you live. However horrific it may be, the universe goes on as though it were nothing special. No matter what happens there’s still the same calm sky shining down with a blank indifference. I remember on 9/11 looking back from the Williamsburg bridge and seeing the grey smoke rocketing into the sky in great gushes and realizing that I was looking at a battle zone…it was all very dramatic but soon the immense crowd lurched forward and I moved with it—the bridge groaning and swaying under the weight of our feet. When I looked back again the scene no longer seemed so menacing…the bright blue sky swallowed the smoke like the ocean swallows a drop of poison. It was a lovely day—the sunshine and the crowds made me feel like I’d just exited a giant simulation ride at a theme park such as Universal Studios. On the other side of the bridge the streets of Brooklyn were empty like unused back lots. Everyone was gathered in front of TVs either at home or in bars.
A few hours later the streets filled with people walking around like zombies—hungry for crowds to be alone in…groups formed without words and without leaders. The only agenda was being together.
I didn’t know it at the time but it was the dawning of a new age…
I started to stop believing in books back in college. I knew the great tomes of Modernism had seen their time…David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon hit the ball so far out of the park that they put the genre of the mega book to bed and ushered in the era of hypertext and hyper meaning. Not only were books getting shorter and smaller they were also appearing in new (and renewed) formats: zines and blogs and audio podcasts. So many new formats that the question arises: do we need books at all? The Beats and the Beatles and the hippies and hip-hop beat architects had unearthed, cut and pasted together a new culture—why should we insist on telling its story using the exact thing we spent so much time taking apart? A book is a closed system. A private Facebook profile. Password protected. A walled garden stacked 10 deep at Barnes and Noble where you can’t leave a comment. A book is done. Finished. A pretend totality floating in a pretend moment in time. I thought I’d blogged myself free from all of that. Yet still I’m caught by it’s siren song—steeped in nostalgia and powerful memories of my mind being opened up by the beauty of neatly typed words in the warm summer light. I thought I could write a book as a rhizome—a laterally growing root like that of the ginger plant that allowed for multiple connection points—like A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari. I believed the hype—that a book could be an assemblage of pieces instead of a reproduction of the world. In the introduction to A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari claimed that the book that followed was an assemblage instead of an attempt at recreating an image of the world. The text formed a circle, like that of ancient texts, in which the story did not end as much as return onto itself. As such it could be read in any order. It turned out to be a fake circle, however, as in the end it was still a book—mass produced on pages bound together beneath a flashy cover—but I allowed myself to fall for it anyway. I told myself that I could do what D&G did—I’d create a book in the shape of a circle—assuming this was the best form possible for my work: a book in which the awareness of its own failings was already built in. It seemed the only way—but a part of me refused to believe it. There had to be a better medium to tell the stories that I wanted to tell the WAY I wanted to tell them—without compromise. A better form—a better conduit. A zone in between my brain and the internets where machine and skin became one—tied together by gummy circuits and veiny cabling…
Welcome…step inside to my innernets…where do u want to go today?
Found this on a google image search for shots from the movie, Wings of Desire. This is a painting by the same name by a person named Ron English
