Permit Yourself to Imagine

Permit yourself to imagine.

Once accomplished, travel is unrestricted, borders nonexistent, walls breached.

How? Slingshot.  Molotov. Spray paint. Lines of code. Guitar. Microphone.

Crisis or socially activist art offers the possibility of a crucial narrative, which is not new but suppressed.

We’ve been locked into a singular system, which serves official culture.

We are flummoxed by thinking alternatively. Any alternative.

Art must penetrate this numbness. Subvert the official narrative, cut through the advertising and propaganda. Negate marketing. Opening the between space.

Temptations are everywhere. In fact, you’ve likely accepted most without reading the service agreement. We relinquish control for convenience and security: freedom in exchange for a superficial sense of belonging.

But there is this: “One was born into this life to share the time that repeatedly exists between moments: the time of Becoming, before Being risks to confront one yet again with undefeated despair.” – John Berger

As a writer, art critic and political activist, John Berger offers a point of reference in the relational dynamic that artists have to the world around them. More importantly, Berger is representative of the type of progressive writer whose work is driven by a desire to confront the status quo. Refusing to participate in prescribed ideals of marketplace and authority, the artist/writer/revolutionary creates new methods of engagement.

Situational art is confrontational, ”the immoral subversion of the existing order.” It informs the discourse with immediacy. Artists are in a unique position to engage directly with the established value system, call it into question and mobilize against it.

If a distinction between commercial and activist art no longer exists than the medium(s) an artist uses no longer need to be relegated to a single surface or conversation. The subversion happens while viewing.

The Molotov cocktail is the canvas. The canvas is our body, the inner city, barrio. ‘Hood.

Courage of the imagining mind.

 

The proceeding manifesto was a response to a series of art pieces produced by Enrique Lugo, AKA Chikle–a long time friend and collaborator–to be included as a text for his group show at the San Diego Repertory Theater. This is simultaneously a reaction of a reaction to both the art presented there and to the musical A Hammer, A Bell, and a Song to Sing, now playing at the Rep inspired by the life and work of Pete Seeger. The show will be up January 10–29, 2012 on the Lyceum Stage.

Party Barge

“Try and throw a good bacchanalia and a bunch of unwanted, cloven hooved naked fat guys show up. I swear this is the last time we do one of these…pass me that cask, I’m gonna drink till I puke on myself.” – Bacchus to random female attendant.

Painlike Gradual

What could be more provisional than an immediate response?

Yes. No. Maybe.

Disassociating each thought behind each answer.

This daily march along our flesh-caked trench inspires me to poke my head out above the thighs.

Tempt fate.

Nothing but silence on the battlefield since our arrival and I’m in need of sound sustenance.

The symphony of explosion.

Chorus of teeth rattling like glass into pillows.

One little peek is all I need.

Is there anyone over there?

Separated by a field of uncertainty, pinioned in our positions, hands gripping weapon.

Let us leverage the silence with an echoing pronouncement of our discontent.

Our content has deteriorated.

I blame the silence.

As I crawl along the trench, motion exaggerated.

The bones of my body jut outward. Up and over. Oblong angles.

Can they see my tepid indifference crawling through the mud like a rodent, fur coat glistening, combat fatigue.

End the asymmetry.

Official, Collective Statement from the Occupy Movement

The World is going to change. I can’t wait!

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

• They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
• They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
• They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
• They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
• They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
• They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
• They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
• They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
• They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
• They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
• They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
• They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
• They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
• They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
• They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
• They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
• They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
• They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
• They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
• They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
• They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
• They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government ontracts.*

To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

Mastodon – Curl of the Burl

This video has everything one could want in a video. Happy to report these fellows haven’t begun taking themselves too seriously. Not my favorite track on the record but the video friggin rules.

Penguin Prison – Don’t Fuck with My Money (track)

Back to reality.

It [insert catastrophe] was so surreal.

Is it a terrorist thing? [echo, echo, echo]

The brief interruption of service(s) cause people to do one or several of the following: raise the price of goods; be more courteous/neighborly; aggressively reactive in traffic situations; write a great tune about commodity and or money.

This is a song that works well with the current economic climate. Thanks to Mr. RedCam for the reco. Much obliged…

Unkind – Harhakuvat (Review)

Somewhere along the approximate trajectory of Integrity’s convincing mastery of gallup-beat hardcore with Guitar World magazine quality solo action dressed in hoody-and-trainers thrash vis-a-vis Systems Overload and the monolithic riffage of Souls at Zero era Neurosis lies the album Harhakuvat by the Finnish band, Unkind. In some alternate dimension, this might have been the record writer and social critic John Berger might have made had he grown up in the 80’s in Finland listening to Discharge. Released by Relapse records, Harhakuvat combines pummeling syncopated mic-in-fist vocals–language barrier not withstanding, the style of music has never been known for clearly annunciated verses or tonal choruses—and though they seamlessly adopt many of the genre’s cliches, Unkind displays an uncanny authenticity.

I have no idea what they are saying. Instead, I can only intuit their unbridled passion. Making music to rail against things like corruption, injustice and disappointment in not just THE system but any system is paramount. The disruption that this music creates in the listener is immediate, visceral and poignant. Not unlike a poem by Nazim Hikmet; painting by Francis Bacon or film by Werner Herzog Harhakuvat sets a new precedent for revolutionary music. Czech band LVMEN’s watershed album Mondo or Japanese hardcore band Envy’s Insomniac Doze are comparable achievements in the hardcore-around-the-globe category. I don’t get paid for these and if I did the pay wouldn’t be enough to buy a Tecate tall boy anyway.

Though the review is nostalgic, hyperbolic, and filled with ridiculously obscure references and five-dollar-words, Harhakuvat will be on constant rotation in the cube, iPod, car etc.

Please tour the US soon. Maybe with Fucked Up.

Here is a cut from Harhakuvat:

Cave In – White Silence

In the summer of 2009, the band Cave In, one of my personal favorite released a four song EP called Planets of Old on vinyl from Hydra Head Records. Only a few years after a self-imposed hiatus, Cave In was back with four songs of monumental riffage. I picked up the single “Retina Sees Rewind” as a digital download from iTunes then mistakenly, albeit promptly forgot about the EP. I’d recently been listening to their watershed album Jupiter as of late and using the googles found out about their forthcoming full-length, White Silence. I received a ping from the Neurosis FB status update that Sovereign had been rereleased on colored vinyl and went to the link provided where I immediately purchased that indelible sonic document. Navigating around the store I found a link to the Cave In pre-order for White Silence and was blown away by the song presented there. Of course I was a huge fan of “Retina Sees Rewind.” The song is a four on the floor (John Conner) noodle fest (Brodsky, Scofield, Macgrath)  of a barn burner. However, much to the satisfaction of my ear-gut, the latest song, “Sings My Love” encapsulates the entirety of the Cave In ouvre: crushing beats, dissonant chords, raging marine sergeant vocals (a la Caleb) and a haunting chorus by Mr. Brodsky. Below is a link to the song, please enjoy at full volume…

Incidentally this blog is named after a line in the song “Big Riff” on the Cave In album, Jupiter.

Here’s a pic of the cover art.

Reclamation Times Square Fotochop

photoshop docuripped online pic

Image manipulation. Part of an ongoing aesthetic intervention project called The Reclamation. Text repurposed for overlay. Source of text: Fugazi “Reclamation” from Steady Diet of Nothing

Journal of Experimental Fiction: 39 (War Splicing)

I’m very happy to announce that my piece War Splicing has recently been published in the Journal of Experimental Fiction: 39. You can grab a copy on the old Amazon. I don’t get any cheddar or royalties for copies sold. JEF is published by Depth Charge and Civil Coping Mechanisms. Lots of great and innovative writers have appeared in the Journal. I’m thrilled to be part of it!