This Parade of Appearances

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 7 March 2015.



Most of my recent thinking is the contemporary "Concert for Iceland": the attempt to give Arthur closure on this final chapter in his pre-turbulent reversals life. After that moment, any linear notions like "chapters" are no longer applicable. This is the contemporary Arthur who lives in the psychiatric hospital and is turning into a stylite.

I think Brand New Life is going to be a lot more of your music, like "Selling My Gold," "Helen of Troy," "Retire the Empire," "We Won't Give Up the Fight," and others of yours that I want to start working on after Concert for Iceland is "in the books" (whatever that means). I think I'm going to allow myself to be Billy Pilgrim about the whole thing, because I don't know where one era starts and the other finishes. As you know, I've found some freedom in the idea that this is what post-turbulent reversals life is like.

I also like the idea that, even once we start doing those more chronologically based shows, the project will always have an overriding sense that "time is out of joint." After all, we could be working on a Will and the 5 Wits project 15 years from now as 56 year olds! The actual passing of time plays a critical role in the project's views on time and memory. How potentially poignant to be exploring Arthur's happy early days of marriage in our late 60's! Incidentally, think it might be neat to allow ourselves to age but to continually get young actors and actresses who are not "out of joint." Or is it they that are out of joint? We interact with an "eternal" memory that never grows old, even as we ourselves age.

Of course in our case, it's not memory, it's fantasy. It's that dream of rock 'n' roll stardom that was never real but that hung there in the ether, haunting us. These songs that come from some vaguely earlier era, these young bodies and faces that populate our stages...these are all a shadow's shadow. These dreams, which live on eternally to shame us, have beggared us in this life. And this is a very Death of a Salesman conception of the American Dream in general. We invest everything in our fantasy world--buying it new stockings while the real world grows frayed and threadbare from neglect.

From this standpoint, we could even go one step further than allowing ourselves to age while continuing to have young actors and actresses. Have me (and potentially you) dress "normally" and have everyone else dress era-appropriate. That might help the audience better comprehend this idea of fantasy. In Death of a Salesman, it's the older Willy, dressed as he is in his current life, that interacts with The Woman, who is considerably younger.

The problem becomes what is that "actual" identity? How close does it come to my actual identity? And what is my actual identity?

Because ultimately, the play is about you and I interacting with this Gen-X fantasy, where we collectively lived in this idealized Back to the Future of the 60's and 70's until maybe Nevermind. But even after that point, many of us continued to prefer that culture and music to any of our own generation's offerings. One problem is that there isn't really any uniform that would be recognized as "default" for a person of our generation. I could maybe wear my "casual Friday" attire, but even that has gone from parachute pants to skinny jeans over the span of 10 years.

That's why I think the straitjacket and maybe the thrift-store hodgepodge underneath (nothing cool) might express the idea best.

Instead of being a blank slate, be the parti-colored motley of the Russian Sailor. Maybe I've got on a pair of Bugle Boy jeans, a Cosby Sweater, a basketball jersey, Docksiders. Having one or more of these things not fit well just drives home the point further. Our generation, and perhaps every generation since, has failed or refused to define itself, preferring instead to rehash and remix an idealized past. Even rap, arguably our generation's most novel musical offering, involves the curation and celebration of earlier music through sampling.

It is from this standpoint of not knowing ourselves that we seek answers from an earlier generation's experience, willfully ignorant of the fact that this past led directly to the confused present--that this past was once itself the confused present. And in this we become just another member of the audience. We feel the weight of dramatic irony because we know how it played out, but we still want to replay it all over again rather than live out our own tragedies and comedies, sing our own songs, etc.

Maybe the turbulent reversals began when commercial culture overtook and fully appropriated counterculture.

Maybe at that point it became nearly impossible for the apparel to "proclaim the man." Do we have "that within that passeth show"? Or are we but a "painting of sorrow, a face without a heart?" And maybe it's a good thing that we need to confront these questions.

Maybe the questions were always there and we just didn't know it, distracted by this parade of appearances.

We Make Ourselves Godlike

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 28 February 2015.

Victoria's family in 1846 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

I think there's something in the swapping of Virginia (virgin) for Victoria (victory). Both with the morphologically suggestive "V" but the latter implying how that power now vanquishes the phallic. Also with the incognito mode topics of last night, I see it in terms of "Victoria's Secret," which has played a strangely profound role in the American cultural psyche over the last seemingly 25 years.

I'm sure much could be made of the connection to the Queen, but those weren't the first references that came to mind.

Does Steffi rename herself this when she envelops Farthington and moves to California? Interestingly, the Steve Jobs connections may bring us full circle to Conrad's Congo, which has had been exploited nonstop since the days of Leopold, first for ivory, then rubber, then uranium, and now--what Steve Jobs needs most--coltan. In each passing era, the Congo has had the world's largest supply. It might be interesting--maybe too controversial since his beatification process in Western culture is already well underway--to suggest that Steffi (Victoria) caused him to die through coltan poisoning.

I love the L.A. idea. So rich, so much the bizarro counterpoint to Detroit. And you have such a deep appreciation of it, almost on a par with what you have for Detroit.

I love that this could all be part of the turbulent reversals, going from the substantial to the insubstantial:

• The move from industrial giants in Hitsville U.S.A. to the silver screen in Hollywood

• Then, the further transitions from the silver screen to software to "the cloud"

• And yet we make ourselves godlike on the backs of near slave labor around the world--kind of a combination of the Pyramids and the Tower of Babel

It all started with ivory (symbolized by the piano?), rubber (symbolized by the electrical wires?), uranium (symbolized by the bomb?), and coltan (symbolized by the iPhone?).

A Spiritual Survival Story

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 28 February 2015.

Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe's story "Descent into the Maelstrom" by Harry Clarke

Well, let me throw something kind of pedestrian into the mix. I think we should move the power shift between Steffi and Farthington to California for a few reasons. I don't think we can lose the steam tunnels of Ann Arbor and I don't have a vision for how to do this yet, but here's why we should have California in the mix:

Steinbeck: California as both Zion and Egypt.

Apple: I'm specifically thinking of the US festival, which is a really interesting part of the story of rock and roll to me. So many bands got their big breaks there, but there really was no mythology surrounding it until a few years ago. It occupied the same place in the cultural narrative as Monsters of Rock, which only metal heads seem to remember today, and then only if they were there. I don't think it was nearly the cultural event that Lollapalooza was, not to mention Woodstock, but there has been a concerted effort to rewrite the narrative of rock history to make it the Woodstock of the early 80's. It was essentially a branding campaign for Apple computers. If Apple had flopped, the US festival would be a quirky footnote in the annals of rock, maybe like Goose Island in Detroit. It's also interesting to me that California has the tradition of Altamont, the West Coast Woodstock the flower generation had to repress, since it contradicted the message of Woodstock. The Concert for Iceland is perhaps Farthington's Concert for Bangladesh, but Steffi's US Festival. Incidentally, I'd love to have her date Steve Jobs, maybe even be his muse. Also, the phallic/cunnic stuff between Farthington and Steffi makes sense. Farthington is like Father Yod, performing (pardon my language) mind screws on people. That again is a California-ish tradition. Steffi, instead, seeks power by enveloping everything. This quest challenges the traditional associations of the male bring active and the female being passive. Her cunnic powers engulf rather than penetrate; they devour, which explains why Will, in trying to stop her, shoots her in the mouth. It's really not her mouth that he has to fear, though; Farthington is the one with the dangerous mouth. Farthington might be a type of Charybdis at first, but Steffi as Scylla has a bigger Charybdis than Farthington, and he is reduced to one of Scylla's dogs, submarine and all.

Motown: Even Motown had to go to California. Will couldn't make Arthur a star in Detroit. That doesn't mean he could in California, but the music industry in the 70's is mostly about California.

Lifestyle: "California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom." - Don DeLillo, White Noise

L.A.: We took a family trip to California two years ago, and I was really struck by how creepy L.A. is. You strip away everything Hollywood makes us think it is and it's just a gross, overpopulated, lame version of Detroit, but with palm trees. It's really the bizarro world version of Detroit, and like New York, nobody is really from there.  They just siphon talent from the Midwest, which fits the cunnic themes of Steffi.

So Victoria Woolf is the result of my straining to answer an email amid a terrible fever, and I'm sure Victoria came from Victorianism, but who is she to you?  A false name for Steffi?

"It's Adam and Eve, not Apple and Steve" is awesome.  It's reversible, too...it might be more disturbing as "It's Apple and Steve, not Adam and Eve."

So now we are fully immersed in McLuhan's tradition of puns, which anchors us in his tradition, which is that of the Catholic trying to navigate the Maelstrom of contemporary culture. Poe's Maelstrom was central to his vision of finding a survival strategy for mankind. As a guy in a boat watches the whirlpool rise around him, he recognizes by watching the pattern of the whirlpool that he must jump out of his boat and hold onto a small trunk if he is to survive getting smashed to death. When he makes it to shore and tells his friends, nobody believes him.

So here again is Charybdis, and our legend is about pattern recognition as a spiritual survival story.

It's Adam and Eve, not Steve and Eve!

The following is an excerpt of a 28 February 2015 email exchange between Art and Will.

Art:

Does Steffi introduce all this to Carlton? That makes sense if we go the Eve route. 

I originally thought Carlton introduced it--along with his other doctrines--and expected the same result as with his other adherents. But maybe Carlton, like a lot of teachers, was a little behind the curve with technology, and Steffi, like so many students, helped her teacher to understand the possibilities of digitalization for more fully realizing his goals. Actually, I like that. That happens to me all the time! 

I love the wordplay with StEve Jobs and the Apple! 

But I also like how you complicate the evil or fallen woman figure with that of Judith who in some sense decapitates Farthington. At that point, she would be almost like an Oedipus figure who saves the people, but then descends (unknowingly?) into depravity, bringing an even greater plague on the people she saves. Is this the point where she descends into the tunnels and becomes the beast they seek? Is this the point where she disappears into Farthington's beach house, ultimately entering the waters as a primordial sea devil?

The redo and undo the open apple is like this. We cannot return them to their "pendulous state of grace."

I suppose any "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" references would be generally frowned upon.

 Maybe we should make up placards and go to demonstrations: "It's Steve and Eve, not Adam and Eve!"

 Or "It's Adam and Eve, not Steve and Eve!"

Will:

You should post "It's Apple and Steve, not Adam and Eve" on Farthington's page.

A Postmodern Judith

The following is an excerpt of a 28 February 2015 email exchange between Will and Art.

Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio

Will:

Okay, so we've already got the apocalyptic vision of Steffi and Carlton. 

What I think we might be developing now is also an Old Testament-informed vision of the cult as electronic-age chosen people. We've got the Tower of Babel going on with Farthington's mode of language vs. Steffi's. Maybe Farthington is a Global Village Solomon.  

Maybe Steffi is a postmodern Judith.   

Nobody ever thinks of the idea that modern secular, digital culture is a widespread belief system with its own codes of behaviors, rites, rituals, creeds, prayers, initiations, liturgies, dress, etc. Maybe we help people see what is so obvious that nobody notices it--that's what McLuhan says artists are supposed to do. Steffi and Farthington can't just be antagonists to Arthur and Will; they are protagonists of digital ascendency. 

We should have a moment of horror when we realize we all worship Steffi's god, not the true God of Arthur.

Art:

Or, as I think we've suggested before, Carlton disappears into Steffi. Maybe at the most basic level he confronts her with the power of his Kurtzian realization, that, in seeing the impotence of imperialism ("pop would go the six-inch guns"), he had discovered the cunnic/yonic power of the jungle, he had transformed himself into a minor monster, enough so as to take a "high seat among the devils of the land."  

But he's no match for a Charybdis, a Leviathan, a Tiamat, a Lady Lazarus, who "eats men like air." His approach is the opposite of God's, who first separated the waters above the vault from the waters below, or Marduk, who split Tiamat in twain; in both cases, the masculine masters the feminine.  

But something new happens when Christ goes down into the waters of baptism. Carlton thinks he has arrived at the new, unassailable solution. And indeed he is well positioned to capitalize on this turbulent reversal where frames trump content. But in Steffi he meets one who surpasses him in this same power, just as Kurtz does in his mistress. 

Long story short, what happens when a black hole meets a bigger black hole? 

This is what happens when he meets Steffi Humboldt (Or Shakespeare's Sister? Or Victoria Woolf?) 

⌘Y ⌘Z

The following is an excerpt of a 27 February 2015 email exchange between Art and Will.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN

Art:

I should also give you a thumbnail of the movie Street Heat at some point. Actually, why not now? 

Your basic Oedipal crime story...no incest or patricide, though. 

Investigating a crime, finding out that it goes all the way to the top, and, yes, the old cliché, all the clues start pointing back to...guess who...you. 

The original octave bassline motif for the film, which still surfaces in songs like "Arthur White's Theme" and "The Mirror," alternately supports and struggles against a theme of self-identity--that most false, most beguiling, most seductive of all quests. That ideal that causes individuals, ethnic groups, whole cities to collapse in upon themselves. 

Thus the juxtaposition: "Farthing-Ton"
Thus the equation: "High-Man" = "Hymen"
Thus the binary impossibility of "standby": a 0 and a 1 simultaneously 

Self-identity = is is = ISIS? 

Or CERN? Cultural equivalent of a large hadron collider... 

Bedtime!

Will:

All of this computer keyboard numerology stuff--does Steffi introduce it to Farthington and it drives him mad even though she has total control of it? Is this the source of the power exchange, which in some ways is the analog cult becoming digital, a loss of innocence to the cult, Eve's eating of StEve Jobs' Apple? 

Are the additional Y's and Z's Farthington keeps adding to Rustyy's name a cry for help (redo and undo open apple)? 

Going back to the idea of Farthington as the nothingness of Hell, maybe as he preys on Steffi, he ingests something he can't handle. It seems like I've seen that in vampire movies--someone takes poison and the vampire drinks the poisoned blood and dies.

Shakespeare's Sister, Biyaches!

The following is an excerpt of a 27 February 2015 email exchange between Will and Art.

Charlotte Cushman as Meg Merrilees

Will:

I love the idea! 

I am so sick today...just out of nowhere! 

I've been running ideas by musicians. 

Also, Allison and Liza are both in. Have you read any of Liza's responses yet? They are pretty cool. I like the possibility of a Leif Erickson's sister idea, kind of like Victoria Woolf's Shakespeare's Sister, except more of a badass.

Art:

Hope you feel better, Will! Virginia Woolf, I assume, although I think Victoria Woolf is hilarious (probably for some politically incorrect reasons, though). I just like the Glasnost that is happening. Breaking down this iron curtain of inscrutability, this wall of wiliness. Do we need a Ronald Reagan? "Mr. Witkowski, tear down this wall!" No, I think we need more people like Victoria Woolf's sister! 

I have read her responses and I'm enjoying them. I'll have to chime in soon, but I wanted you two to do your thing for a while. From the way she talks, I wonder if she is Steffi Humboldt. That's basically the same thing as Victoria (never going to stop using that, by the way ) Woolf or Shakespeare sister. 

We floated the possibility that Steffi was a little more familiar with the tunnels than expected. That hers is the hand that holds the apple. A fact that Farthington may have found out too late. A fact that Will realizes as he descends into the tunnel looking to dispatch Farthington.  

There are no apple orchards in Burma. Farthington is nothing more than Steffi's mouthpiece. 

And now, thanks to Will, Steffi has no mouth..."not that a mouth can ever be taken away." Farthington may or may not be dead. 

"Farthing" suggests that Farthington never was much to begin with. Or at least that he came to nothing...or next to nothing. Cult leaders are a dime a dozen, so to speak...nod to Lewis's The Great Divorce, Arthur Miller's Willy, Eliot's Hollow Men, Conrad's Kurtz. 

I'm not against Liza being Leif Erickson's sister, but she seems so right for the role of Steffi Humboldt. 

Maybe when she comes into her power, when she reveals herself she becomes Victoria Woolf: Shakespeare's Sister, biyaches! 

Leif Erickson's sister, Victoria's Secret, Virginia Woolf, The Anti-Virgin, Shakespeare's Sister, Primordial Sea Devil, and Steffi Humboldt all rolled into one.  

Eve is remembered in all of those names (primordial pronunciations?):

Leif Erickson → eif

Victoria Woolf → v or ia W

Sea Devil → ev

Or, alternatively, the word evil:

eif Er

ia Wool

evil

I'm not sure if any of what I'm saying even makes sense.

The Hyacinth Girl (Part 3 of 3)

The following is an excerpt of a Facebook message sent from Liza to Will on 25 February 2015.

Who: The one with the flashing eyes, the floating hair!
What: A fragment(ed reply). Or, a vision in a dream.
When: Time simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all bugs in amber.
Where: That dome in air, that sunny dome! Those caves of ice!
Why: There is no why.

This is Just to Say

I have organized
the thoughts
that are in
my brain-box

and which
I was probably
craving
to have sent already.

Forgive me (for their delay)
they are seditious
so Geat
and so bold.

As soon as I finish writing a paper, grading some papers, lesson-planning, and matting my students' artwork for Friday's exhibition, I'll make sense of my thoughts and send 'em your way. I, too, move in geological time.

Patience is a virtue or whatever.

In a vision once you saw,
A damsel with a dulcimer

The Hyacinth Girl (Part 2 of 3)

The following is an excerpt of a Facebook message sent from Liza to Will on 25 February 2015.



How I long to step my feet
Upon these waters that have lured
Me down a certain half-deserted street,
but my vision is obscured...

How then shall I begin?
In a minute is there time
For my answer deep within
To manifest in rhyme?

To the entrance of the cave she comes and goes
Whether she’ll go in, she does not yet know.

So, be my guide - unmask
my eyes from iced obstruction -
So, I may gauge the task
Of Icelandic poetry construction.

(But first I must digress
From this route to understanding,
For I’ll burst if I repress
the fallacy of TB’s poetic branding:

While,
Yes, the cool all dwell in graves,
And Fishbones has fallen from its hill;
Yes, I too prefer the caves,
And killing dinosaurs for the thrill.
Still,
I simply can’t digest
With every single salty grain,
That rhyming ain’t the best
Despite TB’s strong disdain.

For rhyming is a fine device
That knocks down walls once girdled round;
It lures us deep into those caves of ice,
Making us tenants again on holy ground.

Excluding no ages, rhyming accepts all men;
Protruding the pages marked up in pen
Floats beauty disguised in an appealing casing,
(which is why my tone)
denotes snooty surprise upon such rhyme-debasing.)

With feet hovering like the Fool,
I consider the plunge
Yet I’m afraid that grad school
My free time’s expunged -
I oughtn’t take on new tasks,
When I’ve hardly time to inhale,
Which is why I now ask,
What will my duties entail?

To the water she comes and goes
Coming closer and closer to dipping her toes.

Let’s speak hypothetically:
“I’M DOWN,” in all caps
“to broadcast, poetically,
These scrawled horror-raps.
For still the time it sometimes comes
In which I’m free to write,
And I’d give a tithe of all their sums
To the Sweet World of Arthur White.

So tell me more, I’m nearly baited,
Will it be worth it, after all?
Answer me this: Am I the one fated
To read the writings on the wall?

The Hyacinth Girl (Part 1 of 3)

The following is an excerpt of a Facebook message sent from Liza to Will on 22 February 2015.



My reply, at last.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, my apologies for the lag in response time. “Busy, busy, busy,” is what we Bokonists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

This has been my mantra lately as I adjust to life as both a full-time graduate student and a full-time inner-city school teacher. The remainder of my mental and physical energies are exerted (should read: exhausted) in my daily efforts to dismantle the current public school system. I’ve been working closely with the Detroit Federation of Teachers, which has at least alleviated some of the loneliness in the struggle.

What little free time I’m left with is lost in the haze of daydreams; daydreams of an America in which there is free healthcare for all, one where inner-city schools are more than just breeding grounds for prisoners. How are my students to see anything but the shadows on the cave’s wall if they are never allowed to move their heads? I find it meaningful that you have unknowingly asked me to free The Benefactor’s horror-raps from the cave walls at a time in my life devoted to guiding my own beloved cave-dwellers out of the cave, toward the sunlight, and into the Truth.

Having been blessed with the understanding that these are the days that must happen to us, though, I am able to get through most moments with the Kerouacian acceptance that while the flesh may be bugged, the circumstances of existence are still pretty damn glorious.

With life’s current chaos explained, I’m not quite sure I’ll be a valuable asset to your project. Though I’m more than intrigued by the possible journeys of The Benefactor, I’d hate to commit to something knowing that most of my mental powers and daily sources of creativity will be blown by the point in the day I’d finally get around to working on the translations.

This being said, I scrawled down my own cave-ramblings in response to your message while sitting in the back corner of class. Some things never change.

Message me back with answers to the question(s), and then we’ll get to talking on possible future developments.

They called me,
The Hyacinth Girl

1976

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 26 February 2015.



More thoughts.

What is this "turbulent reversals" thing?

Bear with me. Your idea has sparked an earlier idea in me. At one point we talked about the "universal destination of music." That conversation opened the door to putting our un-copyrighted music out there gratuitously for anyone to listen to or steal.

 "Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give" (Mt. 10:8).

What about this idea: "Arthur White says he will play with anyone." I see it as an open letter to our fans (mostly imagined ones, of course). If a group of people down in Akron wants to put together a backing band and learn all the songs, I will travel there and maybe take the kids to a children's museum during the day. Now Akron is probably not going to be happening for a long time, but I can see Detroit, what with my uncle's interest in these songs. Not to mention that you have lots of friends all around the country. Instead of coordinating some kind of grueling cross-country collaboration, why not this? Put a band together, find us a place to crash, and we'll come visit. I've got my cousins in Bradenton, Florida, who I haven't seen in years.

I feel that a backing band needs to be able to practice. So it makes sense that they are close geographically. You, of course, remain co-writer, manager, bandleader, etc. Whatever money is made--even from gigs where you aren't playing--we'd figure out some kind of algorithm to split it. This may be totally crazy, but this is the sketchbook, right?

Is this what happens in 1976?

A concert becomes dislodged in time, in place, in personnel, etc. Music, with its primordial origin, finds its universal destination. Letting music be music. Letting water be water. "Hotel California," the subject of Henley's litigious wrath, came out in February 1977. He probably was recording it in 1976.

If you look at all the philosophical principles we've been hammering out for the last 3 years, this makes total sense. Ultimately, we've said that this music is the property of the community. It still has a long way to go to live up to that declaration.

Could this be a way forward that accords with our philosophical principles?

That Ineffable, Inarticulate Source

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 26 February 2015.

Lake Sils, Upper Engadine valley, Grisons, Switzerland

Home again today, resting up.

Quite honestly, "my heart leaps up" when you say "I could grab a couple locals guys out here and put the songs together, book a Saturday gig, and then you could come up Saturday morning, we could play through the songs, play Saturday night, and you could head home Sunday."

That feels right, not just from a logistical but from a philosophical perspective. I think we are necessarily doing something very interesting with the whole concept of "band." With so many bands out there and us being way past our prime, there's no way we can afford not to be original to the extreme. The anachronistic costuming and performance dimension by itself is just a gimmick.

I feel like my role should be, first and foremost, songwriter and Dionysian hero. I don't say this out of arrogance. I just mean that, if I'm involved too much in the nuts and bolts, my creativity (anyone's creativity?) will necessarily go downhill. I want to dam myself up, to "boast gladly of my weakness," and see if God/Art rescues me in the midst of that. That's a scary pairing in that last sentence, but it's something that I believe. God is first of all Creator. He is the one who move across the surface of the primordial waters. If there are no Apollonian takers, if there isn't anyone who wants to make something of this music, it just means that I haven't--like Nietzsche's lake--risen high enough (or grown deep enough) to be worthy of notice.

If I want "apostolic fruitfulness," the answer is, paradoxically, to spend more time in contemplation. I feel that God is calling me this Lent to settle into something deeper. It's not even "endeavoring" to become deeper, it's settling into something that is already there. Resting into these Lenten disciplines, damming myself up and not going out to some transcendent horizon of "achievement" or "accomplishment" feels like the right thing right now. A lot of these are already part and parcel of my life: openness to children, times of prayer, recourse to the sacraments. These are all things that I have already, at some point, "signed up for."

They all have those aspects of being preliterate, primitive, primordial, prolific.

I believe that music, perhaps more so than any other artistic genre, participates in this primeval source of creative energies. Singing and playing of instruments and dance. Visual and sculptural art is a distant second. Music and dance are a participation in that ineffable, inarticulate source. Even if dance and music come to nothing, they are the secret source of our regeneration.

To the outside observer, openness to children would seem to have been a great constraint on artistic endeavors. What a surprise to discover almost the exact opposite has been true! First of all, prolificity and/or openness in everything seems to be a precondition for creativity. Secondly, interacting with these irrational, preliterate, primitive beings--although frustrating for my rationalistic, literate, sophisticated self--has worked wonders for my spirit, bringing me closer to that epoch when human beings walked the surface of the earth in wonder.

Religious ritual and devotional practices--especially ones designed for illiterates--fall into the same category.

Okay, so long story short, I want to spend my time deepening this lake of music and contemplation, both through the blog and in the context of life. If you can gather musicians who are willing and able to learn and practice the songs, great! That's a lot better than me trying to coordinate things here. I think the best thing I can do for the project is to dam myself up here and, when and if the lake rises high enough, something may happen.

But, again, that won't be through an ambitious flowing out toward achievement and accomplishment, which impoverishes the life of contemplation, ritual, procreation, creativity, etc.

The Fate of Ophelia

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 25 February 2015.



I'm sick right now, so l'm feeling a little doubtful about how much Apollonian ambition I can muster. A pretentious passage from Nietzsche will suffice:

For we must know that in the rapture of the Dionysian state, with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence, there is a lethargic element, wherein all personal experiences of the past are submerged. It is by this gulf of oblivion that the everyday world and the world of Dionysian reality are separated from each other. But as soon as this everyday reality rises again in consciousness, it is felt as such, and nauseates us; an ascetic will-paralysing mood is the fruit of these states. In this sense the Dionysian man may be said to resemble Hamlet: both have for once seen into the true nature of things,- -they have perceived, but they are loath to act; for their action cannot change the eternal nature of things; they regard it as shameful or ridiculous that one should require of them to set aright the time which is out of joint.   

Knowledge kills action, action requires the veil of illusion. It is this lesson which Hamlet teaches, and not the cheap wisdom of John-a-Dreams who from too much reflection, as it were from a surplus of possibilities, does not arrive at action at all. Not reflection, no! true knowledge, insight into appalling truth, preponderates over all motives inciting to action, in Hamlet as well as in the Dionysian man. No comfort avails any longer ... In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolism in the fate of Ophelia, he now discerns the wisdom of the sylvan god Silenus: and loathing seizes him. 

Here, in this extremest danger of the will, art approaches, as a saving and healing enchantress; she alone is able to transform these nauseating reflections on the awfulness or absurdity of existence into representations wherewith it is possible to live...

I'm seeing the project more and more as Nietzsche's dammed-up lake (from The Gay Science):

There is a lake which one day refused to flow away, and threw up a dam at the place where it had hitherto discharged: since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very renunciation will also furnish us with the strength with which the renunciation itself can be borne; perhaps man will ever rise higher and higher from that point onward...

Is our lake rising higher and higher as we refuse to discharge ourselves into activity? Could discharging ourselves into activities other than contemplation (and any other activities that eschew a transcendent horizon besides Heaven) be the very thing that has prevented us from achieving greatness? This is not an un-Christian concept. And it is different than quietism; the darkness of this state presupposes that we are constrained to act and make choices in spite of the darkness. Other texts like Dark Night of the Soul have observed that, in the depths of perplexity, our actions paradoxically participate in the omnipotence of God. It is only after going out over the dark, primordial waters that Hamlet is able to return and almost inadvertently purify the kingdom.

And it doesn't mean that a show will never happen, but I'm beginning to see the power in our passivity.

Here's St. Paul (2 Corinthians 12:8-10):

Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

I've shared this one before (again from The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music):

In the Oedipus at Colonus we find the same cheerfulness, elevated, however, to an infinite transfiguration: in contrast to the aged king, subjected to an excess of misery, and exposed solely as a sufferer to all that befalls him, we have here a supermundane cheerfulness, which descends from a divine sphere and intimates to us that in his purely passive attitude the hero attains his highest activity, the influence of which extends far beyond his life, while his earlier conscious musing and striving led him only to passivity.

Probably more than you were bargaining for...!

I AM THE ⌘⇧MAN! (Part 2 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of a 27 February 2015 email exchange between Art and Will.

Art:

Not to mention H⇧M and ⌘⇧M! Or h⇧m and ⌘⇧m! 

I AM THE H⇧GH MAN! 

iN I AM + he =
⌘⇧MAN! 

F4+⌘

Will:

I love this stuff...very McLuhanesque.  Ctrl+ on is my fave, as it resonates with Timothy Leary's famous line that he stole from McLuhan. 

Check this out.

It seems we could mine this for Steffi, and that there is some interesting resonance with our (or at least my) quest to make medieval art in the postmodern age.

Art:

iN I AM + he =
the ⌘⇧MAN!

I AM THE ⌘⇧MAN! (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 27 February 2015.

I happened upon an old draft that seemed serendipitous.

It was addressed to Carlton's original collaborator on The Principles of Theory, [NAME REDACTED].

Here's the original text:

I see we are moving up in the world... dinosaurs are real, [NAME REDACTED]. Don't forget that. 

The Return of Arthur White

CArl+0n

For a while, I couldn't make out what I had keyed in as the signature. I finally realized it was "Carlton."

For a while, I thought it was Ctrl+on, as in some kind of shortcut command. But I've never heard of Control "on" or even know how I would do it.

Playing around with it a bit McLuhan-style produced:

ctrl+on
ctrl+n

As it turns out, Control + N is "create a new page or document," which seems about right.

A little more digging produced this: Control + Shift + N is incognito mode: the mode that opens a new browser window that won't track history.

For that reason, Control Shif N (pronounced Control Shiffin') is slang for masturbating.

What I'm mostly interested in, though, is the incognito idea, the notion of prowling through the shadows of the Internet, like trolling the service drives in some bizarre post-apocalyptic dreamworld.

So, Carlton's identity disappears into these two ideas: (1) content-less potentiality and (2) sleazy anonymity.

Which of the following do you like best and why?

• Ctrl+"Standby" (the last character is not yet available in Unicode, but a lot of people want it!)
• Ctrl+1 ("1" is actually the true "on" in binary; the previous "standby" symbol is a combination of "1" and "0" meaning on and off)
• Ctrl+N
• Ctrl+S+N
• CTRL+⇧+N
• Ctrl+⇧+N
• Ctrl+on
• CONTROL + ON
• ctrl⇧n
• ⌘⇧n
• ⌘⇧N
• H I M
• HYMN
• ⌘⇧MN
• ⌘⇧MEN
• ⇧MEN
• AMEN
• HE-MAN
• HI MEN
• HYMEN
• HYMAN
• H⇧MEN
• HI MAN
• H⇧GH MAN
• H⇧GH + MAN
• H⇧GH + MEN

Ar+