A Distinctly Feminine Attack on History

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 6 June 2015.

La Liberté Guidant le Peuple by Eugène Delacroix

Regarding social media, I agree with everything that you all have said. I'm not so worried about it anymore.

Reminds me a little of that passage from Walden, where he talks about what's the use of a big, fancy house when the inside hasn't been improved. Of course, our project satirizes this exact phenomenon, the fact that--to a greater and greater extent--this is how we all live our lives, especially now in cyberspace. That the great mass of us are red giants with no inner integrity, all ready to collapse at any moment. Something about that goes along with David Brooks's favorite sociological study (cited in his book The Narcissism Epidemic):

In 1950, thousands of teenagers were asked if they considered themselves a "very important person?" Twelve percent said yes.  By 1990, that number had jumped to a whopping 80% who said, “Yes, in fact I am a very important person.”

I might argue that the number has actually come down in the last 5 years, although I don't have the data for that.

The bottom line is, as with all things in the project, it will happen if the Nietzschean dammed-up lake reaches the requisite depth. What I was doing was flowing away to some imagined destination, longing for Camusian suicide.

On a similar note, I continue to be interested by George Eliot's statement that "the growing good of the world is partly dependent on un-historic acts" (cited in "The Female King: Tennyson's Arthurian Apocalypse").

As Eliot L. Gilbert goes on to explain,

Such a conclusion follows inevitably from the idea that history, simply by existing, exhausts possibilities, leaving its readers with a despairing sense of their own belatedness and impotence. And this despair in turn leads to anxious quests for novelty, to hectic avant-gardism, and in the end to an inescapable fin de siecle ennui.

The Female King is a solution to this in that he "triumphs over time by never having entered time" (Rosenberg, "Tennyson and the Passing of Arthur"). His "abdication" of the traditional kingly role, his passivity and emasculation invites and initiates a kind of female misrule, a distinctly feminine "massive and very deliberate attack on history," symbolized most strikingly by Delacroix's bare breasted Liberty, "striding triumphantly over the bodies of half-naked dead men" (Gilbert, 58, 70):

The Dionysian guillotine haunted the imagination of Europe; a mechanical vagina dentata, it produced, with its endless emasculation, an unstoppable blood flow, an unhealing menstual wound curiously like the one suffered by the maimed king in the story of the Grail.

Our project considers this sense of impotence and belatedness, and examines the modern notion that oblivion and un-historical acts (suicide?) might be the best gift we can give to our world. In recent decades this has been the subtle (not so subtle?) message of the environmental movement as well. And yet, our faith tells us that we are ends in ourselves, that God loves us for our own sake. And that, far from winding down or being exhausted, our universe seems to be accelerating, drawing energy from some unidentified and limitless source.

It's interesting to me that Arthur White was conceived at a time when emasculated indie bands were de rigueur, and that, inspired in part by the large-group awareness training organization I was in, I said screw that. And that, in a related development--unlike my kingly namesake--I have sired a veritable quiver-full of children, leaving an unapologetically large patrilineal footprint and singlehandedly melting the country of Iceland.

So I see how Arthur both is a manifestation of this feminizing tendency and its opposite.

The Living Arrow

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 28 May 2015.



I love the idea of Arthur as the "living arrow" in the sisters' quiver.

Probably unrelated, but I picked up The Once and Future King this morning and turned to this exchange between Lancelot and Arthur:

"We don't see many arrows thrilling in people's hearts nowadays," remarked Lancelot one afternoon at the archery butts.

"Thrilling!" exclaimed Arthur. "What a splendid word to describe an arrow vibrating, just after it has hit!" Lancelot said: "I heard it in a ballad." They went away and sat in an arbour, from which they could watch the young people practising their shots.

"It is true," said the King gloomily. "We don't get much of the old fighting in these decadent days."

I also like the arrow verses at the end of Kahlil Gibran's "Your Children":

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I think what you wrote could be a key to the puzzle: "To [the Savage Sisters], this is to have triumphed over society’s corruption of the child.  To them, this is to have slaughtered society at its own game."

ECT, originally intended to make Arthur more shallow and thus more profitable, ended up turning him back into a child. This is God's unlikely triumph and perhaps a model for how a decadent society will not just incrementally improve (i.e. "the pendulum swinging back") but be utterly transformed by grace. And the reason why this victory is so unexpected and definitive is that it utilizes on the enemy's own arsenal. Just as he gloats over Christ crucified, the king of this world doesn't realize that--in crushing humanity's soul--he unwittingly catapulted it into definitive glory.

The Once and Future Child

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group 28 May 2015.

Dan Gilbert

Returning back to Arthur as representation of the children of the world for a moment, I see Arthur as the perfect foil for Farthington. As is perhaps the point.

On one hand, we have Farthington who is a sum of humanity, in a sense. However, he seems to represent the waste of abundance. Having no content of his own, his identity is constructed externally through his reposting, retweeting, and recycling. He's turning other people's intellectual commodities into garbage disguised as a commodity. While he's done no work of his own, he gets all of the worldly gain. Sounds like a lot of people I know.

On the other hand, we have Arthur. Similar to Farthington, Arthur too is merely a sum of all that is around him.  However, he seems to represent the abundance of waste.  Perhaps, as with all children, Arthur is even more moldable and bendable than Farthington. The difference between the two men is that Farthington externalizes the world around him with closed eyes while Arthur internalizes this world with the wide-eyes of a child.

I guess this makes him Arthur White: The Once and Future Child.

Just as Gilbert and other anti-democratic bullies want to exploit the children, Gilbert has plans to exploit Arthur whom he views as small, unimportant, and vulnerable. To Gilbert, Arthur has a purity that must be taken advantage of; he has a trust of fellow man that must be manipulated. So, of course, it only makes sense that the savage sisters, with their fierce motherly instincts, take Arthur in and protect him as though their own child. Seeing no threat in such a small and gentle being, Gilbert's doubt in Arthur is the catalyst for the crumbling of his empire.

Too bad for him. So it goes, Don Gilbert.

Or perhaps in exiting the inner-world and immersing himself once again into the outer-world, Arthur chalks his vision up to a hallucinatory side-effect of some pills some doctor makes him take to make him less crazy. Or, better yet, in telling his vision to his brother and Farthington, they force him to undergo more ECT. Though he sometimes has dreamlike flashbacks of his visit to this inner-world, the majority of his time there is shocked from his brain.

So it goes, Arthur White.

Frolicsome Fawn-Like Movements

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 28 May 2015.

Ophelia by John Everett Millais

On the relationship between the savage sisters and Arthur White:

I agree--it seems an effective plot point for the sisters to take Arthur under their pixie sprite wings. Perhaps they interpret his ignorance of Farthington’s evil scheming as an innocence and purity seldom seen in man. To them, this is to have triumphed over society’s corruption of the child.

To them, this is to have slaughtered society at its own game.

Picture, if you will: the savage siren sisters lure Arthur in with their song. As with all invasive species to their natural habitat, the sisters’ intent is to destroy him before he, like his fellow outer-world inhabitants, desecrates the sanctity of their enchanted inner-world. Little do they know at this point, Arthur is not like his fellow man. Yet still, the sisters gleefully watch him disappear into the murky depths of their river.

While all who fell before him had ferociously struggled against the river’s current, however, Arthur neither flails nor flops. Instead, he placidly sinks to the bottom of the water, as though inanimate. There is no fight at all. Bewildered, one of the sister instinctively dives into the river to rescue this enigmatic creature from nature’s grasp. Perhaps, in this moment, she sees Arthur’s innate ability to remain calm amidst the struggle as a trait worthy of protecting from the looming dangers beneath the river’s surface. Or perhaps she sees Arthur’s lack of basic survival instincts as childlike and innocent. Though she herself is not immune to these dangers, like any mother would, she places the safety of this man-child over the safety of herself.

Such a scene reminds me of that moment in Grahame Greene's The Quiet American when Fowler says of Pyle, "That was my first instinct--to protect him. It never occurred to me to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."

Arthur, though, is far from dumb. Though deemed insane in the outer-world, this reflects more on the type of society that interprets his childlike wonder as craziness than it does on Arthur. Far from dumb themselves, the sisters are able to interpret this wonder of Arthur's as brilliance and therefore worthy of redemption. They see the woundedness in his wide, blank stare and are dazzled by it. Maybe they even see parts of themselves in Arthur, whose every action in this strange land radiates with the saintly glow of his mother. Maybe in the sisters' gaze Arthur sees parts of his mother reflected back at him (and therefore parts of himself).

Upon pulling a calm Arthur from the torrential waters, the sisters soon discover that, much like themselves, Arthur has no fear of the depths. Instead, his (and the sisters') deepest fear is of shallow living.

Or perhaps after pulling Arthur out of the river, the sisters also discover that he was not lured by their song after all. A song that until this moment no man has been immune to. Like Farthington's evil deeds, Arthur was oblivious to their seduction. In this scenario, maybe he instead fell into the water while bending down to bask in the marvelous fragrance of the flowers growing along the shore. Maybe the flowers are the same flowers from that Hamtramck garden, the flowers that he once tended to with great care alongside his mother. Or perhaps they remind him of the flowers he used to pick to adorn the Virgin Mary statue outside of his childhood church. Whatever the case, Arthur feels like he's made his way back home, to the world he inhabited as a child. Though this childlike awe is the source of much of Arthur’s woes in the outer-world, in this inner-world it is this exact wonder that protects him from all potential dangers.

Another possible scenario is that Arthur doesn’t fall into the water at all. Maybe, instead, the sisters draw back their bows because of his reverence toward their world, his delicate demeanor, his frolicsome fawn-like movements. Perhaps, while standing alongside the riverside admiring the beauty, a band of misfit animals gather around him mistaking Arthur as one of their own. Catching a reflection of their world’s natural beauty through Arthur’s eyes, the sisters become certain that his intent is pure and his heart is full.

It is in this moment, perhaps, when the sisters realize that Arthur is the living arrow they've been searching for. He is the ultimate ammunition in their war versus man, in their ongoing battle with Gilbert. If this be so, then the sisters themselves are the weapons--they are the bows. (Take that, societal objectification of women's bodies for pleasure and enjoyment!) If Arthur as the arrow is the sisters' greatest hope for humanity, the sisters then are not only the bow that holds him but also the shield that guards him. They are his protection against humanity.

To borrow from Kahlil Gibran's poem "On Children,"

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. 

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

This could eventually tie into Steffi shooting Farthington in the tunnels. Is Steffi a direct descendant of the sisters? Are they the ones who taught her to shoot?  In her angsty teen years did she rebel against their savagery with a savagery all her own? Is she the fallen angel who forms her own kingdom? Or, maybe, Steffi is still one of the sisters. In becoming a follower of Farthington's (and seducing him along the way) she is able to learn all of his secrets and ultimately destroy him. Perhaps this was the initial plan, but maybe somewhere along the way she began believing the lies. She falls under Carlton's spell, seeking his garbage to fill the emptiness symptomatic of life's cruelty outside of the enchanted forest. In doing so, she betrays her sisters by falling victim to mortal temptation.

Or does she? Maybe Arthur is not the ultimate Christ figure in this story.

Maybe Steffi is.

What Kind of Garbage Would That Make?

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 28 May 2015.

And Steffi's hand, too

Where to begin!

I like all of this. I especially like your idea that the more packaged garbage you buy, the closer you are to qualifying for packaged nothingness. Gold-Member/Street-Cred status. Perhaps with the first batch of packaged garbage, the buyer also receives a packaged Frequent Buyer card. Only instead of punching holes in the same card with each subsequent purchase, we just send out a brand new packaged card with an additional punched-hole in it. Eventually, we'll have punched so many holes in the card that the card will be a hole. Or, in other words, packaged nothingness. How gritty! How raw, how sacred, how holey! Blessed are the hungry, for theirs is the kingdom of garbage.

Thou must waste abundantly in order to be-holed this abundance of waste, ye loyal customers. In proliferating, ye shall eradicate!

This all makes perfect sense to me (but don't worry--not too much sense). Over-consumption of trash, after all, fills us fully with an existential emptiness. This is a wasting that is also an abundance.

"For we on garbage-bins hath fed, and shrunk to ilks of nothingness" (Coleridge, kind of).

The more we eat the more we shrink. The more we replenish, the more we diminish.

My thinking is a bit scattered right now from a succession of strange, long days, so I’m going to let Bob Moorehead summarize part of what I’m trying to get at here:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time. 

The quote is quite long, but the following non-sequential excerpts (that I've formatted sequentially--I am a shameful academic) are worthy of mention:

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Relating this oppositional accord that Moorehead's laid out to the gar(b)age sale that we've laid out, the less we feel, the more we buy. The more we buy, the less we value. The less we value, the more we waste. The more we waste, the fuller we are. The fuller we are, the emptier we are. And so it goes forever.

It could also be said that the more Carlton cleans up the garbage, the more of a mess he makes. Isn't this, ultimately, what Gilbert is doing to the city of Detroit, too? (More to come on Gilbert's own cunning methods of displacing the city's "garbage" in a future message.)

So, then, it only makes sense that the charity's top benefactors earn their way to packaged nothingness. They have gorged themselves on the garbage until "(n)othing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck (Detroit?), boundless and bare" (“Ozymandias”--and more Gilbert symbolism).  How commendable! I feel like there should also be packaged plaques. Or maybe once they've cleared the trash from their specific lots and therefore achieved nothingness, they get the honor and glory of sending their own trash to the same curb they helped "clean up." You know, to give someone else the same opportunity. To ritualize the process. Maybe, if they're feeling extra high on charity, they could even sponsor a poor neighborhood kid or something. Carlton Farthington, after all, is fo' the chilrun.

Moving along, this all waywardly circles back to that sketch of Carlton from a few weeks back. Art, perhaps it makes a bit more sense now in both its original context (DeLillo’s Underworld) and my recontextualization of it (White’s Sweet World).

The original quote,

Marian and I saw products as garbage even when they sat gleaming on store shelves, yet unbought. We didn’t say, "What kind of casserole will that make?" We said, "What kind of garbage will that make?"

The recontextualized quote in regards to all of the above:

In the sketch, Carlton doesn’t think about the delicious pie he could make from the apple because he’s too busy thinking about the garbage he will make. And now, as he packages this garbage and sends it off to others, they no longer ask themselves, 'What kind of garbage will this make?' They ask themselves 'What kind of nothingness will this make?' Where once there was garbage, now there is a hole. They see only the absence of the garbage.

Not to probe too much deeper into this, but the sketch could also be interpreted as the way people utilize the gleaming new products that drop from the Apple tree at genetically modified speeds. Though in theory this technology could be used to deepen our connections with others and to engage in the world in innovative ways, we most widely use it to disconnect and disengage. We’ve turned an object with great potential to be an agent of positive social change into an agent of unsocial change. Or, to paraphrase Moorehead, our computers have not taught us how to communicate but rather how to copy. Repost, Retweet, Recycle.

The sexualization of the apple as a women’s body in the sketch also ties into this garbage theme, but I’ll save that for another time.

In the interim, think: degradation, objectification, disposability, the Big Emptiness, womb envy, and on and on.  

Sounds like a riveting segue into my next e-mail regarding my thoughts on the relationship shared between the wild band of savage sisters and Arthur. Hmmm....

All of that, and more, tomorrow!

When
I will sing a song of garbage,

Liza

The Savage Sisters (Part 2 of 2)

The following is an excerpt from an email sent from Art to the group on 23 May 2015.

Diana, The Huntress by Guillaume Seignac

I like them being friendly with Arthur. Like maybe he stumbled onto their 100s of acres compound in Detroit, which usually means immediate death or disappearance. But just as the Savage Sisters are drawing their bows, Steffi calls them off since Arthur, though himself allied with Farthington at one point, really had no idea what was going on.

Could we have her dispatch some of her Savage Sisters as bodyguards against Dan Gilbert, who sees the catatonic Arthur as his key to claiming the lodestone for himself and his own adopted city, Cleveland (which, as we all know, wishes it were Rock City). All part of the immortal, apocalyptic battle between Michigan (the best state ever) and Ohio (the worst state ever).

I love the idea of a straight-show with the band surrounded by 4 or 5 Savage Sisters looking distrustfully out at the audience for the entire time with bows and arrows at the ready.

In some ways this is looking a lot like the episode from Morte d'Arthur in which Lancelot gets shot in the buttock by the huntress:

...a lady dwelt in that forest, and she was a great huntress, and daily she used to hunt, and ever she bare her bow with her; and no men went never with her, but always women...So it happed this lady the huntress had abated her dog for the bow at a barren hind, and so this barren hind took the flight over hedges and woods.  And ever this lady and part of her women costed the hind, and checked it by the noise of the hounds, to have met with the hind at some water; and so it happed, the hind came to the well whereas Sir Launcelot was sleeping and slumbering.  And so when the hind came to the well, for heat she went to soil, and there she lay a great while; and the dog came after, and umbecast about, for she had lost the very perfect feute of the hind.  Right so came that lady the huntress, that knew by the dog that she had, that the hind was at the soil in that well; and there she came stiffly and found the hind, and she put a broad arrow in her bow, and shot at the hind, and over-shot the hind; and so by misfortune the arrow smote Sir Launcelot in the thick of the buttock, over the barbs.  When Sir Launcelot felt himself so hurt, he hurled up woodly, and saw the lady that had smitten him.  And when he saw she was a woman, he said thus: Lady or damosel, what that thou be, in an evil time bear ye a bow; the devil made you a shooter.

The Savage Sisters (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email from Art to the group sent 22 May 2015.

Wow!

Where to start...! You've laid out some pretty compelling options.

I like all of it, but I think I like the packaged trash idea the most.

And then, once we've got them hooked, take it to the next level: packaged nothingness (I like that my phone knows when I type "packaged" that the next word is "nothingness.")

I think some of the other options are too difficult and distract from the "empty frames" motif that is central to the project.

We could even give the whole thing a bogus charitable pretense too, like so many cults and large-group awareness trainings promote to distract attention away from their brainwashing and/or profiteering activities. Maybe pictures of the place the trash was picked up? Maybe suggesting that you have in some sense "adopted" that spot? Maybe that you can keep buying trash from this one spot in Detroit in order to keep transporting it out of town--with the hilarious aspect being that we create more packaging to do this! Then again, maybe that's too much content. I think the point is to have context without text...or tent without content?

Here are some posts that might provide some insight as to why the empty/trash-filled box makes a LOT of sense:

• Another Arch in the Proscenium - May 21, 2014
• Cataclysmic Changes (Part 2 of 3) - May 31, 2014

Actually, a lot of stuff in the April - May 2014 range deals with nothingness in a box, in a frame, on stage.

Other fun tidbits:

• Can we get people to buy nothingness from Detroit? Like having a little black hole in your living room radiating street cred. Better than a "Detroit vs. Everybody" shirt. Of course, don't get too close to the event horizon of the box. Kind of like tanning.

• I guess I can see the relevance of transporting bat shit and ghosts out of Detroit too. All these things--trash, nothingness, black holes, bat shit, ghosts--seem to fit into the same category.

• Like Henry Ford before him, Dan Gilbert is definitely basking daily in the dark light of the lodestone, listening to The Most Authentic Detroiter Ever speed rap in Old Icelandic.

• Who is making these products? Followers of Farthington? Of Steffi? Of Victoria Woolf or Shakespeare's Sister? It feels like some of the latter-day, post-Farthington people. I like them being members of some kind of female-only version of Yahowa's Savage Sons. The Savage Daughters of Shakespeare's Sister? Sworn enemies of Dan Gilbert, buying up vacant lots in Detroit and fighting his henchmen on the banks of the river beneath a river. I'm not sure if they are friendly, hostile, or indifferent to Arthur White and company. And they live in harmony with the land. So it makes sense that they might sell Poop Paper, Guano Tea, Moisturizers, Dung Masks, Sea Salt Scrubs. Maybe it doesn't make sense that they create more packaging.

Marxism and Form

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 21 May 2015.

Abandoned structure at the corner of Orleans & Wilkins, Eastern Market, Detroit

Ding, ding, ding! Exactly!

To quote Frederic Jameson's Marxism and Form, "The profound vocation of the work of art in a commodity society [is] not to be a commodity, not to be consumed, to be unpleasurable in the commodity sense" (395).

From my experience working as a content writer for an indoor-gardening supplier, labeling something "Made with Cave-Dwelling Bat Dung!" is as effective of a selling point as "Made in Detroit!" Such products, without fail, flew off of our shelves. Whether buying the bullshit I rambled on about in the product descriptions ("Nature's Super-Food!", "Multipurpose Elixir!", "Unmatched Organic Activator!", "Cannot be Duplicated in a Laboratory!") or the literal bat shit, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the people liked it, loved it, had to have it.

While I was (mostly) being fecesious about marketing it for human consumption, there are a multitude of other options. While I don't think they're the right options by any means, they're options nonetheless.

1. Paper. While traveling in Botswana, I learned how to make paper out of elephant dung (rich in fiber!).

• Pros: realistic, simple process, unique product, low production cost.
• Cons: would need a steady supply of elephant dung. The thought of the effort involved in the procurement process alone has already got me mentally pooped.

2. Guano-Tea. As a cost-efficient alternative to working bat guano directly into the topsoil, many of our customers fashioned nylons and old pillowcases into guano-filled tea bags. Similar to compost teas, the steeping process extracts optimal amounts of nitrogen, phosphorous, and "flourishing microbes!" from the guano, increasing both a plant’s and product's life spans (“content writing” at its finest).

• Pros: also realistic, easy, and cheap.
• Cons: limited target audience, small profit window.

3. Guano Moisturizers, Dung Masks, Sea Salt Scrubs ("Go against the grain with these skin-smoothing salt blends!"), or Anti-Aging Serums ("The secret to eternally youthful skin discovered in cave-dwelling bats!"). Of course, there would be no actual guano in any of these products, which would be made clear on the packaging.

• Pros: futile to list because the
• Cons: are way too expansive and expensive.

At this point in the e-mail, I give you all full permission to trash all of the ideas I’ve thrown out thus far in order to make room in your brains for the following schemes. In four words, “Less Work, More Gain!”

1. Upcycled (though this word makes me seethe) Garbage. While this idea is by no means novel, I think it still carries the most potential for success. Every time I go to Eastern Market, Rust Belt, or any local craft fair, it seems like every single booth is simply littered (can’t stop, won’t stop) with these sorts of products (ie: jewelry, clothes, bags, lamps, furniture, frames, uncategorizable tchotchkes, etc.). And they’re expensive. And they sell. Owning a piece of Detroit’s world famous ruins is like owning a piece of the Berlin Wall. It’s the aura made tangible, and people are dazzled by it.

• Pros: minimal production cost, widely marketable, allowance for drastic variation in terms of price, size, practicality, and aesthetic.  
• Cons: some effort required, the word upcycled.

2. DIY Junk Kits. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and repair!” Customers would have three (or more!) options to choose from. One option would include a collection of random trash with no cohesion and no guidance. The tabula rasa of all trash kits. The fate of these specific types of trash boxes would lie completely in the hands of the buyer to make it (or not make it!) into whatever they want it to be. For an up-charge, they’ll even get a map of origin for their box of garbage. The second option would include a partially constructed product. Included in this kit’s box would be the remaining pieces of trash needed to finish the product, if the buyer so desired. For an up-charge, their box will include an instruction booklet to help guide them through the upcycling process. The third option is the Diversity Kit: a mixture of garbage from a variety of trashcans in a variety of neighborhoods. This option offers the full Detroit experience! It also encourages the buyer to mix in some of their own trash, an experience that will help the buyer feel more connected to the garbage’s creators. It will eradicate their loneliness. It will offer them an intimacy like no other. Maybe there’s an app for this option: the Find My Garbage! app. This option will offer transglobal connection like never before. Strangers will connect over what they’ve chosen to destroy. (Cue DeLillo: “America can be saved only by what it’s trying to destroy.”)

• Pros: mostly realistic.
• Cons: slightly unrealistic.

3. Haunted Remains. Relating to the creepypasta trope, we could sell pieces of Detroit's most haunted history. The options would be expansive, but for the sake of visualization, picture, if you will: plastic bottles found in Belle Isle's haunted woods filled with water from Elmwood Cemetery's haunted creek (that, according to folklore, once ran red from the blood of fallen British soldiers during the Battle of Bloody Run). "Two haunts for the price of one! Open at your own risk!"

• Pros: Navigating haunted places at nightfall to collect garbage.
• Cons: Navigating haunted places at nightfall to collect garbage.

4. DIY Dan Gilbert Voodoo Doll Kits. As Dan Gilbert profits off of trashing Detroit’s history, perhaps we could help Detroit profit off of Gilbert's trash.  Hair strands, chewed gum, clothing scraps. Of course, with this scenario we would be morally obligated to donate all proceeds to the poor souls of Gilbertory who have been displaced by his empire and victimized by Quicken Loans’ predatory lending. If this isn’t a Fair Trade, though, I don’t know what is.  Eat yer heart out, Dr. Bronner.

• Pros: iViva la Justicia!
• Cons: Nice knowing you guys. Big Gilbert is watching. Bring on the lawsuits.

Under the spreading chestnut tree,
Liza

Packaged Nothingness

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 21 May 2015.

Supermassive black hole at the center of M60-UCD1 dwarf galaxy (Hubble image)

I also like the idea of selling packaged nothingness. Still with the "Made in Detroit" label.

I'm for truth in advertising, so it would have to be advertised as nothing, but could there be a better symbol for our project? All packaging, no substance; all pro- and postscenium, no scenium. As Farthington puts it, "Tunnels within tunnels means an infinitude of nothing! And that's a good thing."

Maybe it claims to be part of the black hole that is slowly widening around the lodestone.

Also the Schrödinger's cat and many worlds concept. If you want, you can take off the packaging to find out what's inside. Or you can just leave it in its package. And what disposition toward the inscrutibility of life is suggested by your choice? Maybe we could use the old creepypasta trope that by opening this you will unleash something awful on the world. Like whoever is in the Sea Devil suit will come get you. Or a black hole will start opening in your life--literally or figuratively.

Or nothing.

I leave the rest of you to determine how to best interpret a box of nothingness from Detroit.

I'd want a box of nothingness from Detroit. Or a piece of trash.

ALL ONE! ALL ONE! ALL ONE!

The following is an excerpt of a 21 May 2015 email exchange between Liza and Art (and the group).



Liza:

No shame. Those labels make for the best reading material in the shower and beyond. But you're right. TO UNITE MANKIND! ETERNAL FATHER ETERNALLY ONE! 

Farthington should market a product and write his own radical moral ABCs on the label. (Someone else's.) 

He'd either be selling us, 

A. Nothing. There would be no product. Only the labels and advertisements promising a really good product. Since masterfully created advertisements can make consumers buy anything, there'd be lines out the door to buy Farthington's "product." 

B. Some sort of "rejuvenating!" kombucha-like drink that's been brewed with either cave-dwelling bat guano or "repurposed" garbage. "Made with 100% authentic garbage from real life homes in Detroit!" Similar to scenario A, consumers would be lining up for blocks to buy Farthington's $23 bottles of actual feces / trash. I imagine these labels more like Kool-Aid's than Dr. Bronner's. In place of the Kool-Aid mascot's goofy grin staring back at us would be Farthington's demented Sea Devil, of course.

C. Choose your own adventure!

Art:

I love it! 

We could just print the entire text (or excerpts) of The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas on the label! Slap "Made in Detroit" on it and every single person and their mother will buy it! 

I don't think we should try selling feces or even kombucha. That said, if there were a huge public health crisis and scandal, we might be able to capitalize on that notoriety like Sean Parker rose from the ashes of Napster to become a multi-billionaire. So I guess I'm open to feces. 

Really, we could make something like soap or something that people won't get sick on and sue us for. We'd need there to be a huge profit margin to make it worth it, so I think Detroit-area trash is getting very close... 

Who knows, maybe someone would buy Detroit trash. When you think about it, it's three birds with one stone: (1) you get some Detroit trash, adding to your own cache of vicarious street cred/status, (2) you help clean up Detroit by transporting Detroit trash from the streets of Detroit to your home, and (3) you get the immortal words of Carlton Farthington on an easy-to-read, appealing container--a collector's item in and of itself! 

I think we need to do a Kickstarter for this. Would you be able to design a prototype? We might need to start changing the Sea Devil image as it is probably proprietary. 

I guess we could tread that Deadmau5 line a little, just barely accentuating some of the dimensions. 

The Happy Heart is True

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 20 May 2015.

The Virgin Mary from the Ghent Altarpiece, 1432 by Jan van Eyck

Brief, bright new thread...

You're going to like this, you've been waiting for this. With all of that compellingly creepy stuff, how can God possibly win out? How can Christ possibly win out? How can the Blessed Virgin Mary possibly win out?

O, so definitively... So definitive is their victory.

Not going to fully flesh any of this out, but this thought has invigorated me.

We've had this conversation before: surely Christian art will never again have relevance, in part because its reliance on the deus ex machina.

First of all, how non-postmodern to say "never"!

Second of all, our this God isn't in a machine. Our God is the CREATOR OF EVERYTHING. Our God is CREATOR.

Aristotle said the poet should always "seek what is necessary or probable"

so that it is either necessary or probable that a person of such-and-such a sort say or do things of the same sort, and it is either necessary or probable that this incident happen after that one. It is obvious that the solutions of plots too should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance, as in the Medea and in the passage about sailing home in the Iliad. A contrivance must be used for matters outside the drama — either previous events which are beyond human knowledge, or later ones that need to be foretold or announced. For we grant that the gods can see everything. There should be nothing improbable in the incidents; otherwise, it should be outside the tragedy, e.g., that in Sophocles' Oedipus.

And yes, on the human plane that makes sense to a certain degree. But here's the rub: our God is different than the gods of Euripides. And one of the places we see that most clearly is in the gratuitous designation of Mary as Mediatrix.

Check out this section from Lumen Gentium:

III. On the Blessed Virgin and the Church

60. There is but one Mediator as we know from the words of the apostle, "for there is one God and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all".(298) The maternal duty of Mary toward men in no wise obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows His power. For all the salvific influence of the Blessed Virgin on men originates, not from some inner necessity, but from the divine pleasure. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on His mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it. In no way does it impede, but rather does it foster the immediate union of the faithful with Christ.

The italicized portion is mainly what I wanted you all to see, but it's all so beautiful and good I can't bring myself to excerpt. God as CREATOR can't be constrained by "what is necessary or probable"! That italicized phrase, if you can momentarily step outside your cradle Catholic mind, is utterly MIND BLOWING. I think we often think of God as operating from necessity: God would necessarily be one, would necessarily be omnipotent, would necessarily be good, etc. But we sometimes don't realize that there is this peerless CREATOR who moves things, who makes things, who speaks things into being. Not some Plotinian god who helplessly radiates, but a Being who possesses a degree of creative agency utterly unimaginable to us.

And so we go beyond the Sabbath to the Lord's Day
And so we go beyond death and Purgatory and Halloween to All Saints' Day

New wine in new wine skins, son!

And you can see why saints like St. Brigid have been inebriated by this riotous superfluity:

I should like a great lake of beer to give to God.
I should like the angels of Heaven to be tippling there for all eternity.
I should like the men of Heaven to live with me, to dance and sing.
If they wanted I’d put at their disposal vats of suffering
White cups of love I’d give them with a heart and a half.
Sweet pitchers of mercy I’d offer to every man.
I’d make heaven a cheerful spot,
Because the happy heart is true.
I’d make men happy for their own sakes.
I should like Jesus to be there too.
I’d like the people of heaven to gather from all the parishes around.
I’d give a special welcome to the women,
the three Marys of great renown.
I’d sit with the men, the women of God,
There by the great lake of beer
We’d be drinking good health forever,
And every drop would be a prayer.

And God can do creepypasta too. Just read about the Three Secrets of Fatima. Let Slender Man wave his octopus arms around the playground.

Because the happy heart is true.

A Permeating Presence (Part 2 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 20 May 2015.



Relating back to the initiating artist’s presence in the project, I don't think it inhibits its growth.

Contrarily, I think it is this permeation of presence that guarantees its growth. There’s a lot of speculation, which you know if you read the article I sent, that the anonymous Kanye Quest gamer who uploaded the Pastebin was either the game developer or an Ascensionist.

Why? To become part of the story.
Why? To bring awareness to the story.
Why? To only tell part of a story bound to enrapture many with its creepiness, mysteriousness, and incompletion.

(Think Slender Man's blank face, which alone encourages infinite amounts of interpretation. Would the manifestation of the Sea Devil costume ultimately close this channel for open interpretation? Whereas seeing was once believing, in the age of simulacra we only have to believe in something to see it. So, like Slender Man, the more ambiguous Farthington is, the more we believe in his existence. The more we believe in his existence, the more we see him. Simulacrum precedes reality, yes, but it must also remain simulacrum which must remain reality.)

None of the aforementioned speculation comes as a surprise, of course, but what I’m fascinated by is the extension of this speculation from the first Pastebin that was posted "anonymously" to every subsequent article, comment, video, etc. The digital footprint is the same, some claim.  If discovered too early, this can inhibit the story's growth, yes. After a certain point, however, it really doesn’t matter. The story has already become bigger than the storyteller, and is no longer the storyteller’s to tell. It is now ours to do with it what we want, to take it where we want it to go. Eventually it becomes bigger than us even, and goes where it wants to, heedless to our instructions. The initiating artist then not only provided us with road signs leading us to what McLuhan calls the “roads and canals” of modern media ("make happen agents") but our messenger has also become our partial guide through the roads and canals. I think, were the initiating artist to recede too quickly once the others begin to exceed, the others would go wayward and the story’s survivability would be doomed.

This reminds me, have any of you seen The Institute? How about Faults?

I think both personify this notion.

A Permeating Presence (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 20 May 2015.



What an interesting phenomenon that Slender Man is.

Over the past couple of years, many of my students have been inhabitants of the Slenderverse. It was interesting to witness some of their involvement in this world dwindle into nothingness following the Wisconsin tragedy. It was equally as interesting, albeit more horrifying, to witness some of their involvements deepen post-pronouncement.

(Does this validate the Tulpa Theory? Can we kill Slender Man simply by killing our thoughts of him? Or does he operate on some sort of quantum level? Is he still there even when we can't see him? Has the story become bigger than the storyteller(s)?)

It is perhaps more interesting to me now as I sit here and relate all of these stored memories to everything we’ve been talking about.

Art, I'm with you. There’s something very Baudrillardian about Slender Man’s proxies acting out their hyperrealities in "reality," of their human experience not becoming simulated but rather being a simulation of reality. I fear we're treading dangerously close to Baudrillard's fourth stage of the sign-order system. Some would even argue that we’re already living in it. Do you think these girls were just plain maladjusted and therefore were predisposed for "possession," or do you think they were unable to foresee the repercussions that would arise in the transference of their digital fantasies in the realm of reality because their sign "has no relation to reality whatsoever. It is its own pure simulacrum"? Have any of you seen the film Heavenly Creatures? Perhaps the Slenderverse was their Fourth World.

In response to your first message, I partially agree that the knowable presence of a project’s initiating artists can suffocate the project’s aura (and subsequently its survivability). However, I also believe the initiating artist is frequently the one who helps catalyze the progression of the story from the constructed identity of an anonymous observer. Someone relatable, someone detached, someone with similar levels of separation from the project as the rest of us.

So, the initiating artist is there with a permeating presence, (s/)he just chooses (wisely) to stay concealed behind the curtain until the final scene. Sometimes (s/)he never emerges at all. Sometimes we assume the process was organic. Sometimes it was really just an unlabeled Genetically Modified Organism, creating a schism between what we think we are consuming and what we are actually consuming.  

Art, this goes back to the e-mail I sent you in regards to DeLillo and the postmodern propensity toward anti-reality, toward the blind acceptance of artifice as reality. Unless we diligently peel off the layers upon layers of gleaming, plastic packaging we’ll never know what they’re hiding at their core. However, what are we to do when there is no core, only endless layers of more synthetic packaging? Do we bemoan the lack of objectivity or do we embrace the abundance of subjectivity? Is all of this fruitless to even wonder about since there is no fruit, just a representation of the fruit?

Unfriended

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 19 May 2015.



One more thought: What if we had a Kickstarter that we were doing everything in our power to stop? Because we realized (too late) that it would allow this ancient (or brand new) menace to manifest?

Okay, the Kickstarter idea wouldn't quite work as is. My point with that was that we wanted to fund the Farthington mascot costume but then got some premonition that it might be a bad idea (for the reasons I mentioned a couple posts ago). But then it got 100% funded and we had to go through with it.

But I think that isn't quite right. In order to express the true viral horror by which myths become reality, it would need to be out of our hands the minute funding hit 100%. In other words, we'd need a rogue group member who still wanted to go through with it, who took that money and started working, no longer responding to the group's attempts to communicate. And then, of course, the mascot starts showing up and grisly murders start happening.

I guess the big question would be whether the first murder would be the rogue group member, who didn't realize what he/she created. I don't like that route. I think it would be better to at least imply that the rogue group member is the one who has donned the mascot suit and is committing the murders. But then, it seems obvious that at some point, that rogue group member is found murdered but the murders continue. So, then the question is who is inside the mascot suit. At some point, there are no natural explanations left.

I like the creepypasta genre because multiple story lines can be pursued simultaneously without investing any one of them with truth.

A totally different plot line could explore the dynamic of online groups like ours, which also have some terrifying possibilities. One is that an anonymous participant (or someone who was supposed to be dead, like Unfriended) suddenly joins the group and starts saying creepy things. Or alternatively, one group member's identity seems to have become suddenly possessed, evidenced by a sudden shift in tone, a subtle change in avatar, etc. In the avatar example, I could start slowly blacking out my mascot suit's eyes until no white is left. This new movie seems incredibly trashy, but it's a good representation of the trend.

As if this couldn't get any scarier, these characters would not be Carlton Farthington or Steffi Humboldt or Victoria Woolf, but us, the writers of this story. I don't know, I'm kind of scaring myself. Let me know if I should stop.

Honestly, if the Sea Devil costume is ever made, I will feel a slight twinge of horror for the rest of my life.

The Pure Simulation of Farthington

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 19 May 2015.

Jean Baudrillard lecturing at European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Is it at all plausible that this is the kind of existence Carlton Farthington has? I mean, surely someone would have to have met him face to face right? Someone would have verified at least the slightest shred of his existence? Or is this what Steffi discovers?

Now, that doesn't mean that Farthington wouldn't have an effect on his environment, just as Slender Man supposedly led two teen girls to stab their classmate 19 times. This is very Baudrillard, in which simulcra now precedes the reality. So, it's not that Farthington doesn't exist, it's just that he has come to exist through this postmodern mechanism. Perhaps there was the slightest of originals on which Farthington was based. Perhaps this was some actual person who someone met at some point. That person could have died or just disappeared into a normal life somewhere in the world. Or never existed. Or was cobbled together from multiple people. It really doesn't matter.

Regardless, it is the pure simulation of Farthington that now predominates, that grows ever stronger, and that impacts the lives of his followers. Maybe one or more people actually occupy this meme for a time. Maybe an actual demon is summoned by the clearing that is created. It's not implausible that this is what happened in the Slender Man case.

I have been thinking about how much fodder for creepypasta we have!

Doesn't it strike you as the slightest bit strange that on November 1, 2014, I began communicating solely from my carltonfarthington account? And that our first show since then was at All Saints Church?

Don't want to scare anyone, but with 4 people, we do technically have enough for a horror story.

What would be terrifying, Liza, is if you actually went all the way through with creating the Farthington outfit. At that point, someone or something could occupy that space.

That is why The Benefactor is so nefarious. Yes, we'd love to have things funded to the maximum, but what happens when an idea like this starts to exist in space and time? Seems like #1 on a created thing's list is to seek out its creator. To what extent is creating a costume an act of invocation? Do we create that being or just give it a place to manifest? Alternatively, is that being planting this idea in our heads, trying to get us to give it a place to manifest itself? At that point, we will have served our purpose and will likely be summarily dispatched. Or possessed. Or who knows, maybe it will just leave us alone. Or nothing will happen at all.

Another similar move would be to find out where the nearest buried stream is. Is there one that flows through your neighborhood, under your school, under your house? What's the nearest one? Is there a point of access to that underground network somewhere in your basement?

Whatever the case may be don't give out any addresses, don't ever give out your address over email!