The Pure Intensity Revolution

I’m pretty sure Elizabeth Edwards used to be hot.

Bill Clinton gave an interview on CNN today (or perhaps yesterday) regarding the violent extremism here in the United States. Not Jihadists, but Americans, like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, and Joseph Stack, the IRS Building attacker. The thing he said that stuck out was, “beyond the law, there is no freedom.” I think this is a statement worth taking some time over, because it carries a lot of meaning for society in general. Or at least it sounds like it does. Without any law there is no freedom? Some would say the exact opposite. But if there are no laws, what are you free from? Do laws make people free? In what way? I need to think about this one. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

In 1972 John Lennon put out a song called “Woman is the Nigger of the World.” It’s a classic protest song at this point, and at the time it was lauded by liberals and progressives as well. It got flack too, of course. Radio stations refused to play it and a lot of people were angry that John Lennon, a white man, would write a song using the world “nigger (not the “n” word, by the way. “Nigger.” After Michael Richards got himself in deep shit by shouting the word over and over in a comedy club, Bill Maher said he’d used the “n” word. Chris Rock responded, “No, he said Nigger”). The line itself apparently came from Yoko Ono, and they made the song together.

I love the song. It’s really one of my favorites, and maybe my favorite protest song ever. I watched a clip last night of John Lennon and Yoko defending the song on the Dick Cavett Show. The song was defended by a lot of people, including black congressman (now mayor of Oakland) Ron Dellums, who said the following:

“If you define ‘niggers’ as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society are defined by others, then Good News! You don’t have to be black to be a ‘nigger’ in this society. Most of the people in America are ‘niggers’.

I thought this was one of the greatest quotes I’d ever heard. If you define “nigger” this way then I have to agree, most of the people in America are “niggers.” I only have to consider the long line of years in my future in which, instead of TRADING my passion for sustenance, I SELL my labor/body for wages. Wage labor is slavery. That’s why it’s commonly referred to as “wage slavery.”

Of course the term is complicated by its racial past and can’t be thrown around. I don’t believe, however, that John Lennon was throwing it around. I think he was taking it very seriously and expanding its definition to make a very serious point about a woman’s place in the world, with which I also have to agree.

The clip below is great. It’s from the Dick Cavett show where Lennon is explaining the song, and then there’s a live performance of the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5lMxWWK218&feature=youtube_gdata

I also want to publicly declare my support and joy over the passion people have for exercising their right to vote in Iraq. Cynicism over the American voting process and the reality of democracy aside, these people are risking their lives to vote, and it’s because they really think it’s important. I hope they don’t get jaded the way we are (by the way, whatever I or anyone else might think of Barack Obama at this point, he did make us care about voting again. For the record, I still think he’s great). But for now they’re certainly not jaded. There are bombs going off, etc., because some people over there are too cynical to believe in the resourcefulness of the Good. But men and women are still voting. It’s amazing.

I wondered if perhaps I should give George Bush a break, because he did make the decision to go into Iraq. But then I understand that the burgeoning democratic process in Iraq wasn’t a goal of Bush’s invasion. And even if it was part of that goal, he either lied about it, or he didn’t know enough about what he was doing to tell us about it. Either way, it was an accidental positive, and you can’t thank anyone but Fate for that. Or the Fates, or Accident, or Chance, or God, or whatever. So thanks to all those things. I’m glad the Iraqi people can vote.

A quote from Susan Sontag that I think I relate to very much:

“The writer in me distrusts the good citizen, the “intellectual ambassador,” the human rights activist…much as I am committed to them. The writer is more skeptical, more self-doubting, than the person who tries to do (and to support) the right thing.

“One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counterstatements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness. Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another.

“Writers can do something to combat these cliches of our separateness, our difference – for writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but countermyths, jsut as life offers counterexperiences – experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.

“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted – made cynical, superficial – by this understanding.

“Literature can tell us what the world is like.

“Literature can give standards and pass on deep knowledge, incarnated in language, in narrative.

“Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

“Who would we be if we could not sympathize with those who are not us or ours? Who would we be if we could not forget ourselves, at least some of the time? Who would we be if we could not learn? Forgive? Become something other than we are?”

From “Literature is Freedom” collected in At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches by Susan Sontag.

Someone wrote graffiti on a wall of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing. It’s a brand new building that holds exhibitions and collections of work typically from the early 20th century to now. That someone tagged on it is somewhat surprising, if only because it seems like access to the building would be a little more difficult to come by. I also think it’s funny that the museum had to resort to covering the graffiti with a truck. It seems like they’d have better resources. Oh well.

I was pleased with the graffiti. I didn’t get to see the whole thing, because as you can tell in the top photo, most of it had been blasted off by the time I saw it. But it must have been pretty grand.

I wasn’t pleased because I thought the graffiti was some kind of outrageous political act attacking the elitism of the mainstream art world. What I thought was that someone had come along and written some plain black street tag like a Latin King symbol or something. The kind of thing you see on stop signs and garage doors. When I saw the real thing, and realized that it was very big and colorful (in the style of a 1970’s-80′ New York subway train), and that the words “Modern Art” had been included, I was disappointed. I was disappointed because I began to realize that the people who did this probably realized what they were doing. They thought it would be revolutionary or enlightening to put graffiti on an art museum. But unless their work was about the exclusion of outsider art in the mainstream art world, which I doubt, then really it’s just boring. The idea of graffiti as art has been around a long time. Basquiat can attest to it, as well as Snoop Dogg (who’s album covers in the early 90’s included tag-style artwork), and Banksy and God knows how many others. IT HAS BEEN DONE. BORING.

What I’m more interested in is the idea of graffiti as political EVIDENCE, rather than political ACT. I’m interested in graffiti as anthropological artifact. As in, maybe a thousand years from now, some alien will excavate Chicago and find SKAG or LOON written on the forehead of the Lincoln Monument (by the way, please don’t do that. I love Lincoln). And then the alien will have to interpret it, and they will learn something about us. Something bad.

I say something bad because I typically really hate graffiti. I think it’s ugly bull shit. There are types of graffiti that are aesthetically beautiful or politically interesting (politically beautiful), but when I see chicken scratched lines of all red or black or green paint on some family’s fence or small business or even on a subway train, I get really pissed. I think it’s because I associate the tag with selfish teenagers. Brats who are too stupid and self-centered to realize they’re ruining it for everybody, just because they need to feel good about themselves.

As political evidence graffiti becomes very important. I was pleased when I heard about the graffiti because I wanted to believe in the idea that the art museum, as great as it is, can’t hide from the world. The intrusion of genuine, ignorant, self-centered crime into the art sphere seemed like fantastic proof that we are all victims of our trashed society. We can’t escape poverty, disability, insanity or war. They are constantly at our doorstep. In this context, graffiti – the REAL type, tied to some immature, ridiculous gang gesture – was a wake up call. THREE ALARM FIRE! THE SKY IS FUCKING FALLING! Except the sky is actually falling. Even the smallest piece of tag on the Modern Wing might have sent this message.

I’m suspicious, however, that some angsty though socially minded art students thought it would be shocking to put graffiti on the Modern Wing and then write “Modern Art” on the wall in order to blow our minds! But that doesn’t blow my mind, it just annoys me. What blows my mind is the notion of graffiti as human evidence of trauma. The trauma of a narrow life. The trauma of the twenty-first century, saddled with indignities wrought on innocent families and their children around the globe.

I will thank the graffito taggers for one thing, though. They at least got me thinking, even if it was an accident.

See better photos of the graffiti by clicking HERE.

Joseph Stack’s suicidal flight into the IRS building in Austin was ill-advised to say the least. What is truly sad about it is that he felt the need to bring death on innocents in order to make a bold statement. It is sad because it reflects a cynicism that runs deep in most of the people I know, most of our culture, our art, movies, poetry and politics. It runs deep in myself. It is sad because Joseph Stack believed the world is so far gone that the only way to bring it back would be to destroy those living in it. On the surface one might see why.

In the letter he left behind he stated that violence was the only answer to the overwhelming oppression against humans in the shadow of their own shortsightedness (useless government, manipulation, advertising, mind numbing breads and circuses). It isn’t a new thought. Certainly Al-Qaeda would agree. So did many of the writers of our constitution. It is always possible, in hindsight, to ask if a war was necessary.  As for the necessity of past wars, I won’t bother to consider it. What is done is done. Regarding the future, any violent war, in my mind, is the sign of a breakdown in thought – a departing of rationale in the wake of desperation. I refuse to believe the death of innocents is ever the answer. This is what makes Al-Qaeda, the U.S. Government, and Joseph Stack failures. They do not heed the grave tragedy of “collateral damage.” They are not viscerally aware of the dimensions of human loss (see my story, “The Question of the City,” to see my take on the real horror of 9/11).

I expect those who talk about Joseph Stack to dismiss him as a crazy person – a sad loner who had selfish demented reasons for taking the action he did (just like the hijackers were condemned as “evil-doers”). But it’s at our peril that we choose to look away from the truth in the doings of those like Joseph Stack who scream from their windows that they’ve “had enough.” Joseph Stack was a victim and a product of our society. He was the result of thousands of years of gradual blindness. Money is the weapon of power. That power was brought down on Joseph Stack, just like it’s brought down on all of us. Loans for school, hateful jobs, the drudgery of a life we didn’t ask for  - are all the fallout of economic and political war. We are not the collateral damage. We are the targets. We are the enemy. Joseph Stack is a casualty.

Our lesson is to wake the fuck up. To open our eyes. To turn on the light. We are already free. We are not prisoners. What does one do when freedom itself is under lock and key? Break in. Bust it out. Reason can be poison in the wasteland. Sometimes madness is the only answer. Sometimes suicide is the way. Violence against the innocent – even the “mindless minions” Joseph Stack mentions in his letter – is never acceptable in a world we didn’t choose to be born into. More important than everything else, remember your own happiness. Seek the fulfillment of your wishes and respect your wants. Fulfill the wishes of others and remind them of their happiness as well. The price of numbness is tragedy. Catastrophe and the death of spirit reside in resignation. Oppression masks itself in silence.

Joseph Stack was not a hero. He wasn’t a warrior poet. He was only a normal man who, when pushed to extremes, chose to act. I don’t condone his methods. But I do understand. And I do believe he was a revolutionary.

i want to point out my new news archive project. it’s called Command + Shift + 4, and it consists of 1 screen shot of cnn.com per day for…the rest of time, basically. i’m sure i’ll miss days here and there, but hopefully not too many. it’s my virtual version of my parents’ box of historical newspapers from the past thirty years or so. this way someone can look back a year or two or whatever and see what was on the front page that day. pretty cool.

peace out.

oh, and check out “fogged clarity,” an online arts review, at http://foggedclarity.com, because it’s pretty cool. there’s great artwork on it as well as some very good writing. also, i’m getting a story published on it in february. it’s called “the question of the city.” and that makes “fogged clarity” even cooler. all for now.

i’ve been thinking a lot recently about love and what it’s significance is. i’ve been thinking also about life and it’s significance. the problem with love (one of my biggest challenges has been determining what love is anyway. for the purposes of this little post, i’ll consider love as anything intangible and transcendent that a human might imagine and feel viscerally. it could be enlightenment, epiphany, affection, even hate and fear, which are, i believe, the mirrors of their more welcome cousins), is that it only applies to human beings. only a human, as far as it concerns our day to day lives, can imagine love. can feel it, can try to understand, can really feel its effect. animals might feel something like love, but whether they do or not, we don’t know unless we conceive of it. but human beings are, of course, not the center of the universe. we are matter, like everything else, made from technitium, as man or astro-man said. so what’s to say anything a human feels is important?

i’ve decided recently, though, that perhaps those intangible things called love, as defined above, are unique, like gold, but far more precious, because humans do feel them. in other words, they are important because they exist, even if they only exist inside us. the problem is, one has to believe they are beautiful things, or things worth keeping. my feeling is that they are. humans are capable of many ugly things but also of many incredible things. as a human, i understand the incredible things in human terms. in a cold universe none of it matters, right? but i think it’s a shame to see what i determine as rare precious disappear. so i’d rather live, and see those around me live, and believe in love, or at least try to. we are capsules of an infinite resource of creativity, wishes, hopes, affection, sadness – a great, deep reservoir, each one of us – rich with the soul of the universe. and maybe that’s what it is, and maybe that’s where i’ve always been wrong, thinking that good and bad are things created by men and taught to other men. the most fierce feelings, whatever they may be, that determine one’s desires, and lead us to do good, and often to do bad, could be the only moral force in existence. the only thing protecting us and the people we care about. where the compass is, i don’t know. i couldn’t say. but i do think people are inherently good, in the sense that they don’t want to harm others, and only want to be happy, if they can. and that’s worth noting.

bill hicks said something that seems to have something to do with this:

“today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself, subjectively. there is no such thing as death. life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. here’s tom with the weather.”

so what with the bomb scare on the plane to detroit recently and my own work about 9/11 (i’ve been working on a short story that revolves around 9/11 and themes of fate, faith, family, love, death, etc.), and the reading i’ve been doing about these things, i’ve begun to get paranoid that my ‘bomb the economy’ slogan might be taken out of context by some agency somewhere and i’ll get banned from flying or something. i seriously doubt that’ll happen, but because i’m paranoid, i thought i might help myself out by explaining what that slogan means to me, right now, briefly.

first, it is not meant to be taken literally, of course. i don’t want anyone actually bombing anything, at least not in the sense that requires a device that might hurt people. the slogan is metaphorical, really – theoretical, and it’s more of an observation than a call to action. it reflects my own belief that perhaps the economy might have to suffer a bit if americans – and populatoins in any first world country – are to really be free to pursue their own happiness. i’m talking about a slowdown of consumer capitalism rather than destruction. i’m talking about awareness of brands, marketing, what we’re spending our money on, that kind of thing. it’s not necessarily a revolutionary theory. perhaps the only “new” part of the idea is that one that says the economy doesn’t have to be robust or the best in the world in order for americans to be happy – in fact, we might be happier with a slower economy. what may seem like recession might be enlightenment.

so that’s the idea behing ‘bomb the economy.’ it’s all theoretical, has nothing to do with real bombs, and is kind of catchy.

current music: “pot pie” – i want a pot pie right now

I’m beginning to realize more and more that life for us is, indeed, about love.