sexy congress

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.

11/20/15 4:40 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

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Farthington's Voicemail: Dad Mesa center

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.


11/20/15 4:36 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

So I'm thinking about this connection with Willie and connection of lily and chill lazarus, Jr. In that able to call our haunted by the senior like rotten their father what they believed to have been there father the image of their father you know. What's the symbol or sign up their closet which is Android based on much reality and all and in Willy is further haunted by the images, Then didn't pay Pal party out in all definitely on you weren't from find small non, Envy Allen dean. That piece is done, and then just in general but until a couple of the frontier see you. And I think overall bit late. And it really has no reference his face down to Earth insight Call Raj. So I'll plan brush. And all the money that was to be made until after your e L no. L terry question the fall as hot widespread for available that dream actions and blessed people who live here hills areas. But at any rate. It's it's like for real. It's really Brielle. It's beyond real, and it is actually pretty dominate to be mandates. Lily's life and it becomes more real Dan the reality the same as she or the image of the simple as a sign which really has no you know I know or very little faces in reality earliest Dad Mesa center, Eld that is now gone becomes more real fan. Is the Allen? And more compelling Instagram. Practice play compare Fijian cleaning and light

This Dominance of the Hyperreal

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

Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria served as inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle

Max, I personally believe that you are Joe Lazarus Sr.'s clone—so far the only iteration. (By the way, this is all probably Farthington's handiwork, who has a degree in eugenics or something.)

I like the idea that each iteration produces an intellectual diminution, going along with the motif of echoes, radiating proscenia, repost/retweet/embed, etc. Also, going along with the motif of inarticulate, speechless, and/or mouthless characters, I like to think Joseph Lazarus III doesn't say his first word until age 15 or something. We'll need to make it a good one, whatever it was.

This played out during the press conference and concert when your answers were more or less just repeating the question.

Right now this part of the story is just a pathedy, that is to say, the pathetic, more or less innocent victims of Farthington. To make it tragic, the two need to interact. I wouldn't be surprised if our increasingly bewildered Joe Lazarus Jr. ends up killing the clone and running away to Mexico (or...India?).

Why? Well, maybe the clone—in his limited understanding of the situation—wants a relationship with his "son." With little inhibition or impulse control, the clone might encroach on Joe Jr.'s life, stalking him or even climbing into bed with him—all with nothing but the best intentions, acting on what he believes to be appropriate, paternal feelings.

All sorts of paradoxical situations arise here—kind of a disordered "the child is father to the man" type thing. But it works because it's just one more manifestation of the turbulent reversals. Joseph Lazarus III is a perfect picture of the project in that he is a contentless simulacrum, a perfect clone, but gutted of any original essence or meaning.

I know this isn't a perfect application of these theories. But it's this move by which the clone tries to supplant the original that strikes me as particularly Baudrillardian. Obviously, Joseph Lazarus III does have a clear referent: Joe Lazarus Sr. But when you look at Baudrillard's examples—like Disneyland or Chinatown—the hyperreal usually does have some referent. The hyperreal seems to be nothing more than a distortion of a referent that no longer exists, like Bavaria of old or early 20th-century Los Angeles. To the extent that Joseph Lazarus III has been unmoored from his referent and attempts to fill the void left by it, he exemplifies this dominance of the hyperreal.

Actually, take this one step further: Joe Lazarus Sr. isn't real—he's just a character we made up. Joe Lazarus Jr. is based a little bit on our Joe, but Joe Lazarus Sr. has no real referent.

So, Joe Lazarus Jr., who has a referent, confronts Joseph Lazarus III, whose only referent is a made-up character.

Joe, can you explain what I'm talking about here?

The Anti-Joe Lazarus Album

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 16 November 2016.



Although I like the idea of era-specific concerts, I think the fundraiser for the Joe Lazarus album should feature the songs from the Joe Lazarus album. I'm wondering if these songs would, due to their uniqueness of style and their importance to the project, should have been the ones written just before or right after the turbulent reversals, July 4, 1976.

Bad things happened to make it not come out (Concert for Iceland, ECT, etc.). Could the Eagles' Hotel California be the anti-Joe Lazarus album, an album that came out in the psychic void left by the Arthur White/Joe Lazarus collaboration? Interestingly, that was the album when they brought on Joe Walsh. I don't know, that may be a totally unrelated can of worms.

Another concern about the era-specific shows: they run up the bill pretty fast and involve a lot of extra work. I at least feel the need to track down era-specific instruments, costuming, etc. I'm not sure we would make any money whatsoever. What I like about the washed-up "Return of" shows is that they are extremely cheap and easy to do. If we were trying to do a fundraiser to record the unrecorded Joe Lazarus album, I think it makes sense that we would be in 2016, trying to do this in time for the 40th Anniversary of the Turbulent Reversals, that ambiguous event with an even more ambiguous legacy. Instead of Father interviewing us on All Things New, we could have Joe Lazarus, Jr. interviewing us about the album, about his father, about his father's supposed clone, Joseph Lazarus III, who is actually in the current iteration of the band (so awkward!).

Maybe we could have a telethon aspect of the fundraiser, with operators standing by!

I think this could make for some top-rate theater, with Joe Jr. being torn between his passion to record his father's album and being weirded out by his father's clone being in the band!

That would be so awesome with a bank of volunteer operators sitting at a long table off to the side actually answering the phone and talking with donors during songs, plugging their other ears so they can hear. Every now and again, we could pipe in a voice of someone actually calling in, perhaps real people from Arthur's past who couldn't make it to the show. Liza, I love that moment in The Eraserhead Stories, when David Lynch has a long phone conversation with Catherine Coulson in the middle of the interview. I love the idea of Joe Lazarus, Jr. as a vaguely depressed, increasingly bewildered telethon host!

What an amazing dynamic to have him avoid talking to/about his father's clone, who is sitting right there!

The Return of Joe Lazarus Jr.

The following is an excerpt of a 15 November 2016 email exchange. 

Philosopher Charles Taylor teaches on secularization at the University of Tübingen, June 4, 2013.

Will:

Look who's back! 

It's Joe, aka Joe Lazarus, Jr! 

Say hello to the whole crew—Allison, aka The Critic; Liza, aka Leif Erikson's sister; Nick, aka Nick, Art, aka Arthur White and Carlton Farthington, and Max, aka Joe Lazari III-X.

Art:

JOE!!! YAY!!! IT'S JOE!!! HURRAY!!! JOE!!!

Max:

There is no curse after all!!!

Joe:

Damn good to be back. 

From the looks of it, not much has changed on our email thread since I left: careful meta-analyses of our methods and goals interspersed with allusions to abstruse Theorists with a capital T, both real and imagined. And then there's the Will/Plato vs. Art/Aristotle debate. Have the tables turned on that one? Three years ago, I thought Will was more the Aristotelian.   

One thing I frankly can't remember: which Joe Lazarus am I? Am I just Jr? Or Sr., as well? It looks like Max plays every human being I have contributed to producing, either as father, grand father, or great-grand father. Are we that far in the story?   

Also, as I recall, I was very much a lapsed Catholic for the majority of this narrative. At least, I remember the first blog post I wrote was about my anger over the spiritual bankruptcy of both my biological mother and of Holy Mother Church. I was bitter, but I can't recall why. Clearly I have a ton to catch up on. Will and Art, can you forward me some recent threads?   

At any rate, I do remember that my character was caught up in a kind of spiritual malaise, a kind of modern dark night of the soul for which dawn is not necessarily imminent. Did he return to Catholicism with Art? What brought him back, if so?   

I've been reading a ton of Charles Taylor, whose intellectual history of secularization is on point. Will be useful.   

Also, regarding the footage of our concert that you probably think is long gone. Well, it isn't. I told Will this, but I should say to Art and Max: I apologize for falling completely off the grid for a year or two, and taking the footage with me. I hit a few bumps in the road and resigned from life for a while. Interestingly, I did this only after I went East, to India. Didn't Art become reclusive after he went East? Or just insane? 

Anyway, I'm convinced I can salvage the majority of the footage we have from before. My attempt to make a documentary was a failure (after watching it, my film prof, a trusted friend, put her hand on my back and said, "You know, Joe, maybe you should stick with writing." I laughed, then cried a little). Then again, I can see now I really did not have enough material for a coherent narrative. Perhaps we can take up the documentary project again one day, or on and off through the years. 

Anyway, glad to be back on board.

The Paralysis of Perfectionism

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 14 November 2015.

"Edyrn with His Lady and Dwarf Journey to Arthur's Court" by Gustave Doré

As to the project's trajectory, I agree with everything you've said.

Like you, I want to avoid the paralysis of perfectionism. I want to do what we can do. We're doing that now by emailing like this. But we need to do that with music. I don't want to put too many unnecessary obstacles in our path.

The only thing I would add to your "getting the music out to people as quickly as possible" idea is that I want it to be you, Max, and Father hammering it out instrumentally. For several reasons that we've talked about ad nauseam, I want to recede from all instrumentality, defined as "the fact or quality of serving as an instrument or means to an end." John the Baptist's I must decrease, King Arthur and Camelot's implied nonexistence, etc. I really would like Father to take over on keyboards and have him or John Paul play bass.

I want to facilitate that process so Arthur White can just be the voice crying out.

As I've thought about it some more, I'm open to the July 4, 2016 Joe Lazarus album still. But my openness stems from the idea that it will be you, Max, Father and ideally John Paul at the fore, learning, polishing, and recording the songs. I don't think I'm being a diva in saying I think it behooves the project to have Arthur White remain on the fringes of anything instrumental or otherwise project driven.

So, what I'm thinking of doing is creating that same type of linked set list for the Joe Lazarus album. Then ask Father to learn and develop keyboard parts. I'm not sure you can approach John Paul about participating. I'll try to record a non-drum version (click track at beginning) for you since you can't use Garage Band anymore.

Another part of my openness comes from the thematic material of these songs. I think "Selling My Gold" is especially prescient. The other ones likewise seem to be gaining greater prophetic heft by the day.

Finally and most importantly, we need to keep praying.

Protecting American Art from Americans

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to the group on 14 November 2015.

National march in remembrance of Charlie Hebdo attack

I read the attacks as nihilistic, too. I don't see any virtue asserted—maybe just some happiness that people are dead.

Paris has a long history of letting American ideas that Americans can't handle percolate. When Screamin' Jay Hawkins put all that racist and xenophobic stuff into his art, he was exorcising it. To see him in the early 90's when campuses were moving in the PC direction that has led to a culture of censorship in the name of avoiding micro-agressions was very interesting. He showed everyone is buffoonish stereotypes and put everyone on the same field that way—it alienated the left and right equally. France gave him a place to work in a time when America wouldn't give him work. It did the same for the American ex-pat writers in the 20's, James Baldwin, the great jazz artists of the 50's and 60's, etc.

I'm not saying Screamin' Jay Hawkins is the height of Western Culture, but Paris is one of the great protectors of Western Art, and our art is one of the best things we have. I didn't actually hear about Charlie Hebdo until this morning, so I wasn't writing in response to their losses. Charlie Hebdo is/was an obnoxiously offensive magazine, but an argument could be made that it holds a space open for free speech by pushing it's boundaries. In general, I think Paris has been invaluable in helping protecting American art from Americans.

One of my big fears is not the loss of faith in God, but the loss of faith in people.

Something Monstrous

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 14 November 2015.

Martin Luther King

It's awful, yes.

Whenever you have something as indiscriminate as last night, it's hard to derive many messages from it. Unlike Al-Queda, who at least tries to avoid areas where innocent Muslim women and children might be, ISIS just loads up and lets the bullets fly. We're in for an effed-up several decades, if not The End of the World.

ISIS's approach makes it difficult to sort through the carnage and wreckage from an ideological perspective. Perhaps they have a clear passage in the Quran they reference as justification, but to me it seems like nihilism. I hate to say it, but some would say religion is nihilism, in that it denies or at least devalues the present life. So "mortifying the flesh" and "going on a killing spree" are two sides of the same coin. It's interesting how this form of religion has become the most galvanizing. You would think it would create an uptick in attendance at your local ultra-liberal Protestant church, but it doesn't. Those places are dying out. People are angry, but they don't go flocking to their own, less fundamentalist places of worship.

With all due respect to the people of Paris, I don't think that the targets have been representative of the "best parts of Western Culture." Charlie Hebdo and Screamin' Jay Hawkins mocking various ethnicities seems like free speech run amuck. I agree that free speech is important, but I don't think freedom of speech—or even just freedom—is as salient or galvanizing as what we're up against. Anyone who checks in on Miley Cyrus's annual "scandalizing" performance at the VMAs knows that what we are defending is often profane, sexist, racist, consumeristic—not to mention downright boring.

None of this, of course, means anyone deserved to die.

What we are discovering as we are confronted by this clear ideological force is that we no longer know what our own principles are. We tweet #JeSuisCharlie, but I hazard to say we don't even know exactly what that means. What this onslaught exposes is the unsuitability of freedom as a principle, and by that I mean as a first or foundational principle (redundant because that's what "principle" means). Freedom is vouchsafed by values that are higher on the hierarchy of values, like the inviolable dignity of the human person. Martin Luther King Jr. and the past generation of Civil Rights leaders understood this, but since then there's been a steady decline in this critical understanding of freedom's source and foundation.

Here's what I'm terrified of: in the absence of principles, we will seek and find not the bedrock principles I'm alluding to, but our own pre-Christian psychic substratum. We've kept our noses relatively clean for a several decades now, not regularly murdering millions of noncombatants (uh...never mind, that's not true), but Europe—and America by extension—has the most murderous subconscious the world has ever seen (possibly with the exception of the Chinese/Mongolian subconscious). I don't know what exactly happened in the Schwarzwald of Germany, but it forged something monstrous.

At some point, our civilized mask will crack and this monster will be unleashed on the world. ISIS will be summarily wiped out, their wives and children rounded up, tortured, killed, or stuffed in ovens. In short, I fully believe that our subconscious can go toe-to-toe with any in the world. But that's not the ideal endgame.

So what is the ideal? It definitely involves Christ, who saved, uplifted, and purified paganism.

Le Banane!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 14 November 2015.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins performs in Switzerland

I haven't been to Paris since the early 90's, but my one trip there had quite an impact on me.

I saw Screamin' Jay Hawkins with my parents at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Club, which was simultaneously glorious and awkward. My parents were trying to take me out for a cultural evening because they knew how much I loved jazz, and instead we got Screamin' Jay Hawkins in a tie-dyed tuxedo belting Constipation Blues. He put a bone in his nose and sang, "It's hard being a man/Being all alone/I ain't got a woman/But I got a bone!" Then he did an extended version of "I Love Paris" that included unflattering impersonations of every ethnicity in the world. One of his kids was on drums. The French treated him like a hero.

I loved the Louvre and the Pompidou Centre. Outside of the Pompidou Centre, I saw a guy play a surrealist drum set made out of a back rack, a bunch of junk, and a banana hanging from a string. He'd hit the banana like a crash cymbal and yell, "Le Banane!" That guy was a huge influence on me. Paris is a city of international creativity, and the idea of terrorists going after the fans of soccer, a game that creates international goodwill through mostly friendly rivalry, and the fans of American music, which has always been valued in Paris, frequently when America itself has dismissed it, just intensifies the death toll in my heart.

The terrorists aren't just killing people—they aiming for some of the best parts of Western Culture.

The Story of Making the Story

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 14 November 2015.

Steview Wonder

In general, I'm all for getting the music out to people as quickly as possible, and I'm less worried about it being flawless as you have been at times. I think of Stevie Wonder's music. Almost all of it is brilliant and beautifully executed, but he still leaves little mistakes and happy accidents in it all the time.

They are hard to notice because he's so fantastic, but Music from My Mind through Songs in the Key of Life all have little problems like sticks hitting microphones, spontaneous laughter, vocal bends into the right note, timing issues on the hi hat or drum fills that are close enough but not on, etc.  I'd also say that he has a mix of timeless songs and songs that are really stuck in their eras (although some of the ones that are stuck make me yearn for the old era—unlike The Secret Life of Plants and In Square Circle, which still are important albums but a little cringeworthy in how fully of their eras they are).

I think through it all, Stevie prioritized getting the songs out over perfecting them. There are all these stories of him telling lyric writers to write a few verses and they'd agonize for months, and then they'd show up in the studio really happy with the lyrics they made and he'd say great! I need a fourth verse in two minutes. A Time to Love and Conversation: Peace are great albums and A Time to Love especially captures some of the 70's magic, but his albums aren't quite as magical when he takes ten years to work on them. Of course, in those periods he tours like crazy and his concerts are fantastic, which supports the idea that it's better to be up and doing than planning and organizing. Don't wait for the all the necessary pieces to align.

One concern with the recording in terms of the storytelling—that is, the only medium we've found for telling the story is the blog, which tells the story of making the story, not the story itself.  I'm wondering about a Will Witkowski podcast that uses a visit from an artist who has been inspired by Arthur White, a song, and a call and/or performance from Arthur White as a counterpoint to the blog.

It still wouldn't tell the story of Arthur White from start to finish, but it could tell a different short story each week from at least three vantage points: the fans', Will's, and Arthur's. Between music, the blog, and the podcast, we'd have three avenues for telling what part of the story we can without the pressure of creating a series of complete, unified texts.

Taking What the Defense Gives You

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 13 November 2015.

Friedrich Nietzsche

As I wake up from my 2-hour nap and confront my ubiquitous pile of papers, I'm having a few thoughts about Arthur White.

Our current idea is to record the Joe Lazarus album. I'm beginning to think this is a bad idea. I just don't think I can hack it.

But I've been thinking that we've gotten away from a central principle in the project. Here's Hello Liza and Allison!: "We believe that, inside the swaddled/crucified existence, whatever utterance you're currently capable of making is the best utterance. Don't wait until come down off the cross—you'll be dead then!"

Well, this is the cross, so to speak, and once again we're imagining utterances that require a huge infusion of money, time, and resources. In other words, Camusian suicide. This is why The Benefactor is such a nefarious figure: he wants to GoFund our suicide.

Here's another good quote, this one from A Polylogic Epistolary Novel:

There are times when I can't play music, times when I can't sit down at the computer, times when something is broken, times when I don't have time, times when I force the issue. Going along with the Nietzschean concept of the eternal return...I've tried to wall myself up in those moments and circumstances and not go out to some transcendent horizon where I will have all the tools at my disposal. I think we try to make whatever utterance we are capable of making, communicating with one another the best we can. Trying to make it as good and coherent as possible, of course, but not waiting for anything like clarity.

And I can't quite wrap my words around what I'm saying here...but with all due reverence...this is how the project can in some way participate in the mystery of the cross.

I'm thinking along the lines of the seven last words of Christ: continuing to speak words of that strive at meaning, recognizing but never acquiescing or capitulating the limits it encounters.

What I'm talking about right now may be as simple as what coaches call "Taking what the defense gives you."