Why Does Arthur's Marriage Break Up?

The following is an excerpt of a 29 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will wherein Art answers certain questions about Arthur's involvement in Carlton Farthington's cult.

Because it's built on hiding, on inauthenticity.  

In the beginning, his wife believes that he is fully capable of operating within the (high-ish) aesthetic sphere, as many even orthodox Catholics seem to do.  

Fact is, he's totally incompatible with that sphere.  

So, as Jung would say, whenever natural expression is suppressed, it finds its way out eventually--only this time in a neurotic form.  So that could take the form of infidelity, of wanting his wife to be his All-in-All, of trying to live a monastic-type spirituality in the midst of his marriage, or all of the above.  

He would be a pretty intense person to have to live with and that's not exactly what she signed up for.

How Does Arthur Accomplish Anything Without Will?

The following is an excerpt of a 29 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will wherein Art answers certain questions about Arthur's involvement in Carlton Farthington's cult.

That's a good question.  

The songs are quite a bit more aimless.  Think Marvin Gaye's In Our Lifetime? which was written, recorded, arranged, mixed, and produced by Marvin.  

It's gloriously awful and at the same time wonderful.  It has some of my favorite Marvin Gaye moments, all of which are defaced by bad creative choices, stupid lyrics, etc.  

Of course, all the chops are there...beautiful singing, masterful harmonies but totally solipsistic, wrapped up in some mystic baloney in his increasingly addled brain.  

I like to think that Apotheosis ends up being somewhere between In Our Lifetime? and Band of Gypsies:  

An artist gets sick of what he sees as dead weight holding him back from what he truly wants to express and he finally acts on that impulse.  What the artist didn't realize was that the "dead weight" was actually the ballast of the ship, providing it with the needed stability to sail the murky, primordial waters of creativity and not be sucked down into the maelstrom.  

Not surprisingly, the results of these enterprises are usually less than stellar, but, at the same time, so worthwhile to the true enthusiast!  Stevie Wonder is an example of someone who took full control and was able to hold it all together.  But Arthur would fall into the former category.

Obviously, there's got to be some arrangement with the cult here, but that's no problem, because they are completely willing to bend doctrine when it comes to making money.

What Was Arthur's Great Early Sin?

The following is an excerpt of a 29 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will wherein Art answers certain questions about Arthur's involvement in Carlton Farthington's cult.

Arthur's great early sin was simply a deviation from God's will.  

It should be something related to hiding (cf. Genesis 3:8).  My first remembered sin was when I hid the fact that I was wearing shorts when it was below 60 degrees outside, against my parents' wishes.  I literally pressed myself up against my parents bed so my mom wouldn't see.  Arthur's sin could have happened all the way back in childhood, maybe something he and Will did.  

Every sin after that is going to have that character of hiding.  

He's hiding from God in his band, in his love interests, in his marriage, in his family, in the cult, etc.  God can "find" him and redeem him in any one of these situations (maybe besides the cult).  But, whatever life he's in, he gets restless because he can hear "footsteps in the dark."

Those footsteps belong to the Hound of Heaven.

Arthur probably should have joined the Cistercians or some other austere order in the first place.  His "first love" of Catholic mysticism remains an ongoing dalliance throughout all these phases, but, like a lot of people in our modern age, he gets duped into looking elsewhere.  Plus, it's more hiding.

I like the ideas that we threw around about the cult initially.  First of all, I like appropriating your "Fist of Karma" name.  I found a quote of yours from earlier in our discussions where you talked about the "two contradictory extremes that cults offer: the promise of transcendent god-like wisdom and complete self-abnegation."  

That's a very pagan (or Manichaean or Gnostic) approach to mysticism.  

I don't think the doctrine is overly important, but it intersects slightly with our story in that part of its novitiate involves handing all documentation of one's prior existence over to the cult--that would include photos, VHS tapes, report cards...

And--most importantly for the purpose of our story--recorded music and written lyrics.

Aufheben

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 3 January 2013.

As for playing the old material...

There are certainly precedents for not playing it.  For instance, Gerard Manley Hopkins burned all of his pre-priesthood, secular poetry.  

I want to play the old stuff, even during the Brand New Life phase.  I want to because, whether he is lucid about this or not, even the most worldly of these songs originated in an impulse toward intimacy with the other...and, ultimately, with The Other.  

I don't want to get to the point where we are always parsing who "you" is in the various songs.  I love the mystery of Shakespeare's dark lady, of the feminine ideal Barry White is always serenading...  We need to allow a good amount of that to happen "in the dark" without always saying who's who, who did what with whom, etc.  

The bottom line is that Arthur turned his attention from The Other to the other (and more probably, the others).  This happens to a lot of saintly-seeming children when adolescence hits.  But with one is destined to be a mystic, it takes on its own character...in short, it becomes a distortion of the antecedent ideal.  Once the "fall" occurs, one has to go through something of a platonic process to get back to The Other again.  

As in sex, the speaker and spoken-to can get fused together in some seemingly paradoxical ways:  "The Treatment" and "Venetian Blinds" could be seen as Arthur speaking to some shadowy, unnamed woman (namely a certain past girlfriend), but they could also be seen as the words of a jealous God as his bride (namely me) prostitutes herself.  

My point here is that we should play the old material because it has been, in some sense, redeemed and--to use some Hegelian terminology--"sublated" into the comprehensive whole.  Not redeemed in the way that insipid Christian music and poetry tries to redeem itself all the time (thus making it impossible to be modern), but in a way that surpasses human understanding, rationality, or contrivance.  Words that were profane and mundane become pregnant with hidden mystic heft (I first wrote down "meaning," but, again I don't want it to be something to be analyzed or attributed or otherwise "figured out").  

More pragmatically, I think Arthur is past the point of falling back into sin again, broken as he is.  So playing his songs in a loose redemptive framework would not be putting him in any danger at this point.  

I think even our counselor priest would see the psychological/spiritual benefit in playing through the old material, if for no other reason that it has grounded Arthur back with his brother, given him something productive to do, has him going to Mass again, etc.  

But, again, I want that framework of redemption to remain fairly loose...I don't think we should downplay anything thing that was said/done by saying that it was all about The Blessed Virgin Mary or his wife or this or that cult member. 

Hope that helps.  And again, thanks for all your amazing drum work!

I Want to Be the Ghost Inside the House

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 3 January 2012.

Our furnace died last week and we're going to have to throw a lot of money at that.  There do seem to be some free organs out there, but I just haven't been able to follow up much beyond the cursory email.  Some of them are rather big, so chopping might be a good option.  My dad has a lot of tools, so maybe he can help.

I'm a little downcast right now due to wave after wave of school-related stuff with the furnace piled on top.  The band does occupy a lot of my free thoughts, but I feel like I'm having to plow through setback after setback this year.  There are a lot of things I'm grateful for too.  

I'm trying to interpret this all within the band.  

If the band is supposed to reflect our underlying lives, what does this mean...how does this show up?  I was thinking about throwing a hundred or two down on something, but now I'm back to square one (or square zero).

One thought is inside that Nietzschean model, where the formless horror of the Dionysian is somehow glimpsed via the Apollonian stage.  

The point I'm making is that I'm seemingly impoverished in anything related to order, articulation, or concrete expression (an exaggeration, yes, but in the service of truth).  That's the reason this surfeit of fertile imagination has lain feral all these years, never surfacing in any concrete, Apollonian way.  

That, too, could explain why I don't want to be a "load-bearing wall."  I seem relatively incompetent, unhelpful, unresourceful in the "plastic" aspects of this project.  

Perhaps that's why I don't want to be the house; I want to be the ghost inside the house.  Thus, my underlying desire to disappear entirely, to leave the music in the sure hands of Apollo.  I'm not trying to get out of work...I'm just trying to penetrate the mystery of my life through the lens of this project.  

Nonetheless, I am looking forward to Friday!!!

Participatory Theonomy

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 22 January 2012.

As for the story, I like it.  It sounds like it fits with the music.  

One exception is that I'm not sure what beautiful, introspective music I have that doesn't involve a female other.    

We can allude to a simpler, purer period, but the tragedy/morality play finds us in the midst of an all-encompassing (though initially misguided) search for union.  

From a Nietzschean perspective, Will may represent an Apollonian impulse to impose order and clarity.  Arthur more or less represents the Dionysian: the dark, chthonic, mystic impulse.  

Like a classical garden, this predominating aspect of Arthur is the moss-covered fountain of Pan, through which water from the wilderness is brought in to irrigate the well trimmed rows and patterns of the garden.  

Without this influence (literally, flowing in) of untamed wilderness and creativity, the ordered, well-trimmed rows dry out and die--in fact, they fall out of existence entirely.  

Both impulses are necessary to art, but the Dionysian is the more constitutive of the two.

Long story short, the goodness of desire (wrong only in its object) is ultimately affirmed as the autonomous self-interest and heteronomous moral sense are resolved in the Thomistic synthesis of participatory theonomy, allowing him to ascend in a definitive way to a higher level of union.

We Must Behave As If We Are Famous

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 14 January 2014.

I had an interesting fight in my head with an Apple rep the other day that made me think about the Internet vision.

Basically, I was really frustrated that Apple creates devices that permanently alter the notion of what education is, but simultaneously pretend they are creating technology to help us do our jobs better, when really, they are obliterating our jobs as they have existed.  

There was this weird insistence he had that the existing architecture could house the new environment.  He'd talk about the beauty of a girl handing in a Garageband song in place of her history term paper and getting an A on it.  From my perspective, a song is a very different thing than a term paper, and if I were to accept a Garageband song, that should be the assignment itself and I should teach Garageband literacy.  

But the fight got me thinking.  

He was simultaneously criticizing us as teachers for living in the past while trying to assure us that the old ways are as important to the future as ever.  I suggested that new technology creates new forms and obsolesces old ones and that print literacy, the thing I teach and that he wants to help me teach, is the old form obsolesced by digital culture.  The nature of scholarship itself has to shift: if multi-media, hyperlinked presentations are a superior mode of scholarly idea exchange, I need to teach toward that, not the five-paragraph essay.  I couldn't get why he kept validating what I was doing as the right thing while simultaneously calling it backward and out of step with the times.

At any rate, my sister has been very interested in a lecture she heard in which a guy said that film photography is real photography and that we have no idea what digital photography is yet because people have just been using it as an analog for real photography without thinking of its true nature.  That really resonated with the frustrations I was feeling with the Apple rep.  The guy had been thinking about the new technology as being a slight improvement to the old technology without recognizing what it actually was or how it completely shifts the ecology of the academic world, despite the fact that he was trying to extol the virtues of shifting.  

And then I started thinking about our digital adventure.  

McLuhan said that satellite technology recalls the proscenium arch--that it makes all of us feel as though we must behave as if we are famous.  I definitely had my experiments with fame as a medium in college, and the Arthur White project is full of issues of rock-and-roll mythmaking.  It's interesting that the story is grounded in 1970's record production and the 21st century digital quest for the legitimate, the proliferation of new historical approaches, and the disruption of hegemonic cultural narratives.  

Poetry as we've known it is just about dead, the novel is basically dead, film has a couple centuries left tops, but this new digital form doesn't even have a name or much of a tradition yet.  It soaks up all sorts of forms, but it isn't a form itself yet.  We're completely immersed in it but we haven't named many of its tropes yet, can't point back to its geniuses and study their work...there's no Aristotelianism of the form yet.  

We cave into the pressures of the form by denying ourselves any privacy in constructing the world of Arthur White, but we still subvert the form by developing an extended narrative that aims toward truth, beauty, and goodness...to the wonder of God, as we've discussed.  It's a chance to be in our age but not of it, to work within the true form of our day while fighting the sorts of philosophy (or lack of philosophy) the form perpetuates.

So, in short, I like it.

The Swaddled/Crucified Existence Engenders Something Awesome (Part 2 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 9 January 2014.

Okay, the answer to what it would look like is probably going to be somewhat anticlimactic, but I can't sustain anymore high-level thinking.

The first thing is to create a blog.

Yep, there, I said it.  Create a blog in which we tell the story-story, but we also tell the story of trying to tell the story-story, which in turn becomes another (frame) story.  

Yes, we post certain things that are straight story, straight character.  Maybe Joe Lazarus still makes pleas to his audience to help him on his journey of self discovery; in other words, sometimes we submerge ourselves entirely within the medium/media such that the storyteller disappears.  More or less traditional.  

The new frame, however, opens up new opportunities:

• An entry exploring what kind of wig I should get
• A video of me doodling some logos for the band
• Choice passages from of our correspondence 
• Footage from the May 30th show with commentary
• Excerpts from The Principles of Theory 
• A video of me banging out the bridge of a song
• A tour of my pitiful basement "studio"
• Scribbled lyrics like you sometimes see in a CD box set

Additionally, I'd like to be frequently wading into all of the above and making sense of it, letting our intentions be known, asking for help in pursuing the real(?) story of making the story a reality...one that is all those good premodern things: whole, complete, and separate from both artist and audience.  But by this point, the audience is wondering if even that is real and that there isn't some other frame through which these data are more fully and more coherently comprehended.

And though the one show had a surprisingly powerful effect, for some reason I think this blog could be freakishly amazing if done right.  

Why do I say that?  

Because it creates the frame which unleashes an onslaught of everything.  

I don't doubt that somehow "little things" like shows and stories and movies and musicals and documentaries could materialize within this commodious framework.  But when we focus on those objects, those destinations, those end products, it's like everything collapses in around them.

Maybe because it becomes a kind of idolatry.

The Swaddled/Crucified Existence Engenders Something Awesome (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 8 January 2014.

I'm thinking, as usual.  

James threw the Macbook on the floor and now it's making a "death beep."  So recording in my basement man cave is impossible for the time being.  

Also the low D on the piano is sticking.  

I'm meditating on this notion that the swaddled/crucified existence engenders something awesome.

So as to not become despondent, I reject the notion that my many constraints prevent me from creating.  I instead posit the opposite through faith: constraints, suffering, and setback are the fertile ground within which new life explodes.  I'm not sure what's male, what's female, etc. in this fecundity analogy, but I believe this.  I'm willing to stake a lot on this.

I'm going to lay this new idea on you.

It's a subtle change, but it all began when I made a passing reference to post-structuralism in a recent email.  This has been hinted at in various forms since the very beginning: the idea that telling the story is the most interesting story.  What's more, that the people telling the story could be characters (the main characters?) in the story.

Why do I say this now?  

Here's one major reason: I've been going back and marveling at the 248 threads I've saved from our correspondence dating back to July 27, 2012.

That's right--threads, not individual emails.  

And many of these threads include extremely involved exchanges on the creative process, the Catholic artist in the postmodern age, etc.  

Add to this the many other products that have been spawned from this process: scratch tracks, Pinterest boards, photographs, fliers, websites, a radio interview, unedited documentary footage, a pitiful recording studio in my basement, fully- and partially-realized costumes, etc.  

Add to this other artifacts that predated the current project such as the earliest-known Arthur White poster, The Principles of Theory, and the countless stories that revolve around them, and you have a treasure trove of material with which to create a post-structuralist work of art.  

And the only thing preventing us from using this material (and opening the floodgate to future similarly self-referential deluges) is a decidedly premodern insistence on the story being a self-contained object that is whole, complete, and separate from both artist and audience.

Don't get me wrong: the Arthur White story is an amazing story with fairly progressive ideas of what counts for text, etc.  

That said, the story of us--of what we're imagining, trying, and mostly failing to accomplish--is even more amazing.  Why not let all of that "real" material cross-pollinate with the artifice?  Paintings within paintings ad infinitum.

So what would that look like?  I'm going to reply to this email with the answer.

Working on My Frontman Swag!

The following is an excerpt of a 19 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will.

Joe Lazarus intersects with all of this in that he simply sees the makings of a great documentary.  

Maybe he represents the ethical sphere.  He is definitely beyond Will in that he has some social consciousness and wants to draw out some comprehensible message or moral.  Maybe he sees it as a simple triumph-of-the-human-spirit-type story.  

Now that Arthur has been turned into a 2001-type catalyst for existential/religious evolution, however, Joe  is going to get a lot more than he bargained for.  Arthur isn't going to give him anything that can be clearly articulated or comprehended within the ethical sphere.

He'll have to evolve or turn back.

I also see Will's character through the Nietzschean lens, as representing the Apollonian impulse to control, rationalize, and package the formless Dionysian horror that Arthur represents.  If we are to baptize Nietzsche, that formless horror is akin to your Catholic parents' utter horror of mysticism, of the religious sphere, of sainthood, of ecstatic visions, of dark nights, etc.  

This is a good impulse on Will's part, because a lot of people with this disposition tend to stick with things that are easily packaged, or that are already packaged in some sense.  Will recognizes the necessity of the Dionysian and he's going to get as close to the event horizon of the black hole without getting sucked in.  Like Willy Loman, he's going to reach into the darkness and pull out a diamond!

Incidentally, I want to, as Covey puts it, "value the differences" here.

Apollonian and Dionysian are like oil and water.  But without the other they produce nothing.  Pitted against each other they produce the great works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Ibsen, and Wagner.  I don't want to say that you and I represent one more than the other, but I do think some of the creative tension we are experiencing now is a good sign.

Hegel would think so too.

Anyway, I hope that doesn't sound too arrogant and self-centered again.  I am, after all, working on my frontman swag!

What Comes Out is Pure Prophesy

The following is an excerpt of a 19 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will.

I agree with you that the other characters need to be developed, to be protagonists in their own right.

I may have less insight into them because their personas derive (at least in part) from you and Joe.  Also, having written more poetry and songs than fiction, I'm not as adept at juggling multiple characters in a large, expansive plot as you are.

The only thing that I'm trying to represent is my sense of my own character and the songs, many of which I haven't had a chance to play for you yet.  I don't think it's that big of a difference of opinion philosophically.

Actually, it may be less philosophical as it is the organization of events.  

Without getting into super long paragraphs again, I just think that the marriage/children have to come first (toward the end of the Sweet World era) for the progression of songs to make sense.

Then losing the band-->short stint with Apotheosis-->losing wife, kids-->joining a cult, getting out of the cult-->getting electroconvulsed-->getting propped back up by Will to front Brand New Life.  

Brand New Life is ironic because for Will it's just an attempt to do definitively what he has been trying to do all along: whitewash all the mystic mumbo-jumbo and bring Arthur back down to the Kierkegaardian aesthetic sphere where he can be made profitable.  

The irony is that this "final solution" actually does the exact opposite, making Brand New Life a true resurrection of the original Arthur, catapulting him definitively into the religious sphere, never to descend again.  

Now, in spite of (because of?) his destroyed mental state, he speaks prophetic words that cut like a double-edged sword.  He's kind of like Dave Bowman has become by the movie 2010.  Unlike Dave, however, Arthur may be thoroughly broken on a human level--mental anguish can still be occurring.

But when he sings, what comes out is pure prophesy.

The Point of View for My Work as an Author

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will and Joe on 13 August 2013.

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Hope you're both transitioning smoothly into the next phases of your lives.  

I'm up on my annual trip to the UP and reading lots of Kierkegaard.  I just finished reading The Point of View for My Work as an Author and it's blowing my mind how similar our approach was to his.

Here's my favorite quote:

The religious writer must, therefore, first get into touch with men [who Kierkegaard believes live in the aesthetic, or at best, aesthetic/ethical stage].  That is, he must begin with aesthetic achievement...The more brilliant the achievement, the better for him.  Moreover he must be sure of himself, or (and this is the one and only security) he must relate himself to God in fear and trembling, lest the event most opposite to his intentions should come to pass, and instead of setting the others in motion, the others acquire power over him, so that he ends by being bogged in the aesthetic.  Therefore he must have everything in readiness, though without impatience, with a view to bringing forward the religious promptly, as soon as he perceives that he has his readers with him, so that with the momentum gained by devotion to the aesthetic they rush headlong into contact with the religious. 

It is important that religion should not be introduced either too soon or too late.  If too long a time elapses, the illusion gains ground that the aesthetic writer has become older and hence religious [a common interpretation of Kierkegaard's output over time].  If it comes too soon, the effect is not violent enough. Assuming that there is a prodigious illusion in the case of these many men who call themselves Christians and are regarded as Christians, the way of encountering it which is here suggested involves no condemnation or denunciation.  It is a truly Christian invention, which cannot be employed without fear and trembling, or without real self-denial.  The one who is disposed to help bears all the responsibility and makes all the effort.  But for that reason such a line of action possesses intrinsic value.  Generally speaking, a method has value only in relation to the result attained.  Some one condemns and denounces, vociferates and makes a great noise--all this has no intrinsic value, though one counts upon accomplishing much by it.  It is otherwise with the line of action here contemplated.

Who is Arthur White? (Part 2 of 2)

The following was written in January 2007 to introduce potential new band members to the origins and history of the Arthur White concept.

In Arthur White's Brand New Life, several of these aforementioned archetypes have developed further.

On the most superficial level, the name change follows the precedent of Arthur Brown in naming his second band "Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come."  The questions and longings expressed in the Sweet World have found answers, or at least openings.  There is the suggestion that a spiritual journey--albeit shrouded in utter obscurity like most things about Arthur White--has occurred in the intervening "lost" years.  Whereas the former Arthur White used to dress to the nines, the new Arthur White dresses to the nines except that he wears his feet bare or with sandals, sort of like a George Harrison or John McLaughlin.

Arthur White arrives on the scene like I once saw blues guitar legend Son Seals arrive.  His band had played a good 30 minutes, muttering among themselves about his whereabouts between numbers.  To that end, the band needs to be skilled enough to play fairly good blues, R&B, and/or jazz for an entire night if necessary.  In this case, Seals did ultimately arrive, plug in and play.  I see Arthur White arriving to the strains of the "Brand New Life Theme," being introduced by a member of the band and immediately launching into the next number, perhaps "Arthur White's Theme."

This seeming attitude of gracing others with his presence comes from his countless experiences being "center stage under the lights," experiences to which he makes vague but frequent references in his songs.  It's not so much that he is a megalomaniac as that he is uninterested in this kind of attention after an apparently harrowing transformational experience.  So there's a sometimes overt annoyance at the trappings of performance and fame.

Who is Arthur White? (Part 1 of 2)

The following was written in January 2007 to introduce potential new band members to the origins and history of the Arthur White concept.

Arthur White was born in 1997 out of the ashes of a torrid, ill-fated love affair.  The first few songs written in this style were obsessive attempts to rekindle this romance, if only in some poetical sense.  At this time, I was playing organ in Le Triggers [sic] and living in our practice space in the Performance Center (which, I've heard, has since mysteriously burnt to the ground).  No one could make much sense of Arthur White since we were an indie rock band and there were few examples of this style of music in the Ann Arbor-Detroit scene or anywhere else for that matter.

This is not to say, however, that there was an absence of prototypes influencing me.  In fact, a longtime affinity for R&B had been growing and fusing with a newfound love of bossa nova.  Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, The Main Ingredient, The Dells, The Moments, and The Dramatics melded with the likes of Brazil '66, Antonio Carlos Jobim, João and Astrud Gilberto, Stan Getz, and Herbie Mann.

The name Arthur White first came about as shorthand between band members, e.g. "Are we having an Arthur White practice today?" scribbled on a post-it note and affixed to the door of our practice space.  The reference was to an apparent similarity between my voice and Barry White's.  Later, a band member's dad provided us with the name of our first band--"The Sweet World of Arthur White"--taking inspiration from yet another musically complex individual, Arthur Brown, and his band, "The Crazy World of Arthur Brown."

These archetypes intermingle in innumerable ways and are continually contemplated in the mind and music of Arthur White.  As much as anything, Marvin Gaye's album, Here, My Dear--with its achingly beautiful mediation on his marriage and subsequent split up--provides a psychic center and template for many of the songs.  Barry White's metaphysical "you" also finds expression in Arthur White: love songs are deepened to the point of becoming analogical expressions of desire for divine union, as in St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul.

As With Natural Disasters, People Prefer to Give Concrete Things, Not Money

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 15 September 2013 on the subject of funding The Concert for Iceland.

I'm not sure when this show would occur (baby #7 due in November) or if you're even interested in having a hand in this anymore. 

It sounds like we're looking to do Apotheosis with another drummer, but your talents would certainly be welcome as a writer, promoter, actor again.  If we do look into doing this again, I'd like to take a different fiscal approach.

Firstly, I want to address the issue of being resource poor before the show. 

I'd like to have the money up front to purchase things for the show, not hoping that we make enough to recoup our losses.  Here's my idea, one I've expressed before: I'd like to get the personnel and story squared away first.  Then I'd like to brainstorm and price out all all the accoutrements necessary for the show's production and get each member's picture taken with the desired outfits.  Then, fundraise on the front end of things. 

Inside a wedding registry-type paradigm, benefactors could purchase the clothing of one or more characters.  Perhaps we could set something up with your vintage clothes lady.  As with natural disasters, people prefer to give concrete things, not money.  We may want to have some prizes or recognition associated with each level of support.

Secondly, I want us to make money on the show.  Here's an idea for that: at the door, in addition to someone collecting money and/or tickets, there would be someone asking whose guest they are.  This person would tally the number of guests of mine, of yours, etc. etc.  Then, after the show, there would be some agreed-upon algorithm for divvying up the money. 

I like the idea of a little friendly competition between stakeholders, which would doubtless lead to a larger take.  Once everyone has his or her money in hand, we can individually decide if we want to collectively reinvest any of it back into the project.

Icelandia

The following is an excerpt from emails sent from Art to Will on 16 September 2013.

Okay, one more thing: I want the band to be somewhat keyboard heavy.  The organ, a Wurlitzer or Fender Rhodes electric piano, and/or one or more era-appropriate synthesizers are all on the wish list for Apotheosis.

Long story short, I want to achieve some disturbing effects reminiscent of Marvin Gaye's later, commercial flop albums.  Guitar, bass, and drums will still be central of course (sax is fine too), but I really want Apotheosis to have that keyboard-heavy signature.  I might disguise my hobbyist Yamaha keyboard so as to be able to use it.  I've been able to find some of the sounds I want on it.

I'd love for you to keep writing.  Would it be best to get the writing totally done first, so as to be better able to approach people with the full vision?  Maybe I could get the songs written, recorded, and uploaded during that same period.  I think it makes sense to work on this just the two of us until we are ready to bring people in and tell them exactly what to do.  That would mean the songs written, recorded, and uploaded, and the script written.

Does that sound like a good idea?  I think we often got the cart before the horse for the previous show.  It's fun and exciting to jump the gun a little bit and get practicing--building the plane as we're flying it, so to speak--but I think that approach often left us playing catch up and cutting corners.  How many cliches can you use in two sentences?

If you're starting to think of ideas for the show, I need there to be a volcano model that will be used to demonstrate the explosion, spraying lava on at least one member of the band.  I also think there should be persistent misunderstandings about Iceland coming through in the press conference, such as the idea that Iceland is made entirely of ice, making lava an even more catastrophic event!

I also think we need a real graphic artist to design the "CONCERT FOR ICELAND featuring Arthur White and Rustyy Kryystyylz with a Special Appearance by Dr. Carlton Farthington" posters around town (I've already mentioned the close-up with Dr. Farthington cuddling with the orphaned Icelandic toddler).  I think I may need to write a song titled "Icelandia."  

An Interview with Rustyy

I heard an interview with Rustyy in my head this morning:

Interviewer:  How should we pronounce your name?

RK:  What does the voice inside your head tell you?

I:  Rusty Crystals?

RK:  I believe you.

I:  Why the extra Y's?

RK:  They aren't extra.  

I:  So that is the name you were born with?

RK:  We must all play the parts of many names, but in the purest, most eternal sense of your question, yes.  Dr. (Sorry! His name escapes me--Burmese-born, Oxford-educated...) found it for me.

I:  And you trust that he is right?

RK:  Look, man, the only way any of us can know anything about ourselves is to abandon everything we know about ourselves and listen to how others see us.  Other people know.  We don't.

I:  So my interview, in a sense, is pointless. 

RK:  You've got to discover that for yourself.

I Like the Refrain of "Why, Why?"

The following is a September 2013 email exchange between Art and Will touching on the subjects of Rustyy Kryystyylz, The Concert for Iceland, and Carlton Farthington.

Art:

So there's this motif of renaming, suggesting a theme of becoming one's true self (or not).  Will renamed Arthur, Dr. Carlton Farthington renamed Rustyy, not to mention that we are all changing our real names to be part of the band.  I'm pretty sure that Dr. Carlton Farthington is a name he made up or received as well. 

I don't know a lot about Rustyy Kryystyylz but I do think he's part of the cult.  Maybe we can have some sort of Concert for Bangladesh but with a lot less altruism at its core.  A fundraiser that essentially is going right into Dr. Farthington's coffers.  Going along with the Concert for Bangladesh idea, Kryystyylz would definitely be the Leon Russell figure: no offense to the guy, but likely the dumbest one there.  

This would give us another opportunity to talk and have interviews in the context of the show itself.  Of course, we need to track down Dr. Farthington, who I imagine as a somewhat corpulent Indian man (though Burma born).  Maybe the concert is a combination press conference, with actual members of the press out in the audience, some of whom have not drunk the Koolaid.  

Definitely like to have an interview/press conference component.

Will:

Two thoughts. 

One, Will even renamed himself.  Like lots of Detroit Polish people, he doesn't pronounce his name properly, and his real first name isn't Will, it's Witold. 

Two, I like the refrain of "why, why?" in Rustyy's name.

Rustyy Kryystyylz (sp?)

The following is an excerpt from an email sent from Art to Will on 12 September 2013. 

Peter came up with the above name for some reason and I'm envisioning him as some outsider guitarist during Arthur White's divorce period.  I am imagining someone who looks a little like a cross between a young Leon Russell and Kid Rock (isn't that basically who Kid Rock is trying to look like?).  He may be a cult member.  Maybe you (and/or you as Will Witkowski) aren't in the band.  Maybe this is Apotheosis.

The songs for this hypothetical show would be darker than dark.  They would have a semblance of normal chord progressions, but diverge in gut-wrenching ways, sort of like an Emily Dickinson "ballad."  

Some songs would be:

• Tell Me Why (You Took Away My Children)
• The Fall
• Agniesczka's Theme/Steel Driving Man
• Tokyo Nights
• Arthur White Theme
• Rusty Kryystyylz

If we move forward at all in our new situation, I'd like to have a somewhat freewheeling approach to this universe.  One great spin-off would be action figures and, in order to do that, you need to populate the universe with a blinding array of characters and plot lines.

Another dream: I want to have a contemporaneous, "real time" show with Boogie Bob Baldori, whose son I know.  That's probably a long shot, but I like the idea that it's kind of like the 2012 Elton John/Leon Russell album.  Right now, he's traveling around promoting his documentary Boogie Stomp.  It would certainly add credence to the story to have a show like that.

Dinosaurs Return to Raze the Surface of the Earth

The following is an excerpt from a 15 September 2013 email sent from Art to Will regarding the Concert for Iceland.

Not exactly like this, but close.

I think this concert might be a benefit for Iceland after a volcanic explosion.

It'd be hilarious to see the South Asian Dr. Carlton Farthington posing with a little toe-headed Icelandic toddler with soot on his cheeks (my son, James, could easily pull that off).  The connection to The Principles of Theory is that Dr. Farthington was obsessed with the idea that dinosaurs had survived the Ice Age by seeking warmth in volcanic caves, caves he theorized went all the way to the center of the earth.

You'll have to read The Principles more in depth, but the bottom line is that this theory explains his interest in Iceland after the eruptions.  The volcanic eruption was a sign to him that the "turbulent reversals" he had prophesied were soon to begin--that dinosaurs would return to raze the surface of the earth.  Paradoxically, only those (Carlton's followers) who traveled to the center would be immune from these reversals, which go far beyond just the return of the dinosaurs.  He preached that it would culminate in a complete reversal of the laws of physics...doesn't matter, though, it's just the ravings of a lunatic.

I really like the idea of a press conference...maybe the inclusion of songs in the context of that press conference is to promote the concert.  It's not the concert itself, which may never have occurred.  Maybe Farthington just took the money and ran.  Another cool thing about this is that we could potentially do the "press conference" multiple times.

"Burma Born, Oxford Educated"

The following is an excerpt from an email sent from Art to Will on 2 May 2013.

I'm working on Arthur White a little and at least a phase of his character has to involve this charismatic cult figure, who, at this point, bears a lot of resemblance to Dr. Carlton Farthington of The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas fame.

I like the idea that Arthur, disillusioned with touring and the general superficiality of modern life, falls for this "Burma-born, Oxford-educated" guru in Japan.  Something makes me think that Farthington isn't based in Japan though, that he was visiting some followers or having a fundraiser, and that his "compound" or "temple complex" or "institute" is based in Borneo or Laos or some other less-developed nation where these kinds of things can flourish without a lot of outside interference.

An aspiration of Arthur's after meeting Dr. Farthington is to bring him to the United States, to get him a residency at some college/university, or even build him an institute where his teachings can reach the larger audience they "deserve."  This may or may not happen.  Maybe Arthur is able to eventually hit bottom and get out of the whole thing himself.  Alternatively, maybe this is when Will decides it's time to pull the trigger with ECT.  

On the other hand, perhaps Dr. Farthington does make it to America.  If he does, I can cannibalize some of the Principles of Theory material about the interdisciplinary, multidimensional summer pilot program gone horribly wrong, ending in the dismemberment of Dr. Farthington, two Oberlin students, and Officer Morales of the Ann Arbor Police Department.  I think the whole thing is loosely inspired by The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension.

In a potential interview, I can imagine Arthur rambling on about this sort of thing with Will impatiently interjecting, steering the subject back to music, the band, goals, etc.  The cool thing is that it actually wouldn't need to be terribly coherent.

I want to keep the philosophy deliberately inscrutable.  Even the title of the "text" my friend and I were working on was utterly meaningless: Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas.  You can impose exactly nothing and everything onto that title.  So I think we should say little about the actual content except confusing statements (which is basically what's in the book).

Logos, not legos!

There are a couple different ways you can look at this: Symmetry vs. asymmetry.  Rotational symmetry. Peaks and valleys. There is a gaining of oneself in the losing of oneself.  The truncated pyramid fills the abyss.  Logos, not legos!