Making Things Twee

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 5 December 2015.

The gnome-like creature whose pee tastes like ginger ale aged in oaken casks

Making things twee is exactly right. That's the most recent version of emasculation (and I would say defemination). It was even worse in the 90's when indie was dominated by shoe gazing, voice cracking twee men. I don't have any problem with these kinds of twee or elfen men, in fact, I loved a lot of these bands. I also lump the comics of Daniel Clowes in with this whole wonderful era of the subterranean 90's.

Long story short, there is such a thing as an elfen man. I love me a twee elfen man.

So, I shouldn't say it was worse. But there wasn't any place for a more virile expression. And as my voice got progressively lower and my outsized immigrant features began to assert themselves, I realized that I would never be a part of this era of elfen hairlessness.

On to the topic at hand. Will, I think there's no way the sisters would put Woody "in quotes" (I just put that in quotes, fighting fire with fire so to speak). And they would never "let capitalism do the rest." They would never be allied with capitalism in that way.

I see Woody as a robust force of nature just like the Savage Sisters and similarly endangered by the likes of Don Gilber. I think James Vernor locked him in his basement when he went off to fight in the Civil War. Woody probably blundered in there from the subterranean tunnels and fell asleep. As a pharmacist, Vernor spent the entire war dreaming up a concoction that would progressively cause the wild man in his basement to diminish. Upon return, he subjected him to a regimen that resulted in the gnome-like creature whose pee tastes like ginger ale aged in oaken casks.

I say true muliebrity doesn't feel need to ridicule or diminish virility. Of course, being a pagan force of nature means you do all sorts of things—cast spells, dismember, flay, cannibalize, castrate, etc.—but all in good fun. It would have absolutely nothing in common with modern movements that seem to think suppression and belittlement and detribalizing can somehow replace the riotous harmonies of pagan life (see modern concerns about Grimm's Fairy tales). How about acknowledging the awesomeness of forces beyond our comprehension? We can't do that intellectually, only ritually, only symbolically, only poetically, only artistically, only through music. The Protestant/Enlightenment approach doesn't have the necessary scaffolding to wade into those realities. Just like when Adrienne Rich becomes too topical, her poetry starts to suck. No value judgment on her politics, it just sucks poetically. That's problem with the Protestant/Enlightenment approach in a nutshell.

Having mowed down all its hedges, this approach doesn't have any means for channeling the archetypal herds, keeping wolves and monsters at bay, etc.

*    *    *

On a totally different subject, after all these years, that is literally the first ICP song I have ever knowingly heard. I had a roommate in college who had a whole group of friends that were active members of this group, one who was a wrestler in their WWF-style wrestling matches. With hardly any knowledge about the group whatsoever, I have to confess a kind of admiration for them. It fit my expectation that the video you sent has been viewed tens of millions of times and has more thumbs down than thumbs up. But, truly in this case, haters gonna hate. More people love Eminem than hate him. More people love Taylor Swift than hate her. These guys can literally say that more people hate them than love them, but, since that comes from a pool of millions of people, they actually have an extremely large fan base, one that has a cult-like devotion to them and their many spin-off enterprises.

Deliciously Different!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will and the group on 3 December 2015.

Woody has mellowed over the years

That's funny, I didn't realize he was just a gnome. From the beard up, he looks like your traditional wild man of the woods character. If he is a gnome, could it be that he was once a virile wild man—a huge hairy, bearded dude with gnashing molars and thunderous laughter? Perhaps his diminishment is due to that modern process by which we become caricatured, eviscerated, emasculated, defeminated versions of ourselves, suitable only for branding purposes. This could be a kind of Robert Bly, Iron John, men's movement type thing, but not limited to men only. Just the idea that there's no room for that sort of pagan spirit in a Socratic, Alexandrian, rationalistic, deterministic, positivist, empiricist, consumerist, materialist, materialistic society.

I don't think the Savage Sisters would have done this to Woody. No one so clearly secure in their own identity/muliebrity would do this to another. I don't know, maybe they would, but in a spirit of mischief, not malice. Of course, part of the reason they don't rain arrows down on Arthur is his feminine qualities (see "A Distinctly Feminine Attack on History" and "Frolicsome Fawn-Like Movements"). But more than anything else, Arthur is childlike, not unmanly. He's just a different kind of spirit—not the wild man type, but some other unadulterated expression. I would think that the Savage Sisters would recognize that same essence in Woody, even while keeping a safe distance and even battling with him from time to time. Of course, they might turn him into a gnome, but that's just par-for-the-course paganism. Even dismembering him wouldn't be that big of a deal. He'd probably be laughing and bellowing through the whole thing. Like them, he is unhistorical. This isn't Don Gilber.

Probably James Vernor did this to him, trying to sanitize and sell wild man urine!

The Homogenized Urban Society

The following is an excerpt from an email sent from Art to Will on 10 November 2015.

Henry Ford with 1921 Model T

My information on McLuhan's view is from an interview: "Print centralizes socially and fragments psychically, whereas the electric media bring man together in a tribal village that is a rich and creative mix, where there is actually more room for creative diversity than within the homogenized mass urban society of Western man."

Maybe this is what you're talking about regarding greater conflict:

The tribe, you see, is not conformist just because it’s inclusive; after all, there is far more diversity and less conformity within a family group than there is within an urban conglomerate housing thousands of families. It’s in the village where eccentricity lingers, in the big city where uniformity and impersonality are the milieu. The global-village conditions being forged by the electric technology stimulate more discontinuity and diversity and division than the old mechanical, standardized society; in fact, the global village makes maximum disagreement and creative dialog inevitable. Uniformity and tranquillity are not hallmarks of the global village; far more likely are conflict and discord as well as love and harmony—the customary life mode of any tribal people.

In other words, he likens the inevitable conflict to that which occurs in a family. Fragmentation and militarism—another kind of conflict—is the kind driven by alphabetic literacy. Arguably, the latter kind of conflict has been the more brutal of the two. Henry Ford's (Don Gilber's?) ambitions seem to fit the "urban conglomerate housing thousands of family" description better.

Here's another awesome one:

Literate mechanical society separated the individual from the group in space, engendering privacy; in thought, engendering point of view; and in work, engendering specialism—thus forging all the values associated with individualism. But at the same time, print technology has homogenized man, creating mass militarism, mass mind and mass uniformity; print gave man private habits of individualism and a public role of absolute conformity. That is why the young today welcome their retribalization, however dimly they perceive it, as a release from the uniformity, alienation and dehumanization of literate society. [italics are mine]

What the Lord Hath Made Crooked (Part 4 of 10)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group. As usual, we publish typed excerpts of these illuminated texts along with the original photo. The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it in its illuminated form.

14. Onward to my next miscommunication. I did NOT in fact interpret "devil" to mean "enemy." Not by any means. I understand the demons of which you speak. I was merely trying to outline the preliminary steps in combating them: recognizability of their pervasiveness, perspective, patience, and love. Step 1, as I mentioned, is to recognize them in others. In recognizing them, my suggestion was to love these people nonetheless. The implication in my last letter was not that our enemies are the demons; I rather meant to imply the fluidity spectrum of ethical existence, as well as to bring light to the inherent connection weaving its way beneath us, above us, and through us on a constant loop. It's through this understanding that I AM HE AS YOU ARE HE AS YOU ARE ME AND WE ARE ALL TOGETHER that we're able to humanize and love even the most corrupt and brutally inhumane. It's through this understanding that we take collective responsibility over our actions and our brothers'/sisters' actions with equal investment. Whether young or old, moral or immoral, beautiful or ugly, kind or cruel, intelligent or vapid, we must not only recognize the divine in our earthy brothers and sisters, but it's paramount that our simultaneous gaze is on the demonic and mortal within them, as well. This, of course, extends to ourselves, too. (Note: back to Ubuntuism). EVERY ATOM BELONGING TO OURSELVES AS GOOD, AS BAD BELONGS TO ALL OF US. THE HAND OF GOD IS THE PROMISE OF OUR OWN. THE SPIRIT OF GOD IS THE SPIRIT OF OUR OWN. ALL THE MEN EVER BORN ARE ALSO MY BROTHERS, AND THE WOMEN MY SISTERS AND LOVERS. AND THAT IS KELSON OF CREATION IS LOVE.
15. It's through Whitman's lens that our eyes may reveal to our hearts the understanding not only to guide us back toward our path but to become agents of guidance ourselves for the least of our brothers and sisters who mistook the earthly path we've paved ourselves with gold for the heavenly path that's been paved through the dirt for us from above.
16. Art, you mentioned in your last e-mail that the souls of Trump and Gilber are still in play, though you were referencing actual demons. The point I was attempting to make in my last letter and am now attempting to clarify in this letter is that these two, to me, are interchangeable; their souls have been darkened by this irredeemable devil you've referenced. Gilbert (so all of us) darkness, for instance, is personified by the presence of this inner-demon. Whether he surrendered the battle long ago from exhaustion, or whether he's been oblivious of its presence from the beginning, it's clear that Gilber does not have control over his demonic side. Rather, he is controlled by it. It's my understanding that we all have some sort of negative spirit or demon within us. (Side note: Have any of you read Martin Buber's On Hasidism and/or seen My Dinner with Andre? There's this point in the dinner conversation when Wally's just described acting alongside a Czech in a previous play. He explains the reverence with which this actor viewed the performance, as if it were a sacred event. This reverence extended past his individual role in the play, extending itself in the form of respect to each of his fellow actors. Andre, Wally's sole dinner companion, interjects and lays on the Buber: He relates this Czech man's personhood to the Hasidic idea that every moment is to be sacramentalized. You see, the Hasidics believe that there are spirits chained in everything. In you, in me, in the inanimate objects surrounding us. The act of praying, Buber writes (and Andre says), is how we liberate these spirits. This, Andre suggests, is why every action of ours ought to be lived as a prayer, a joyful sacrament. Andre opines this is an uncommon way of living because abstaining from such mindfulness is how we cope with our realities in the world, he says and I agree, that were most of us to confront our actions, we'd find our existences far too nauseating to endure.)

Geographically Confused

The following is an attachment sent from Liza to the group on 4 September 2015.

Call Me By My True Names

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Liza and the group on 18 August 2015.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Continuing on to some of your other letters, I see that you interpreted my question--"to what extent does reflecting 'the devil we are possessed by' necessitate identifying with that devil?"--with "devil" meaning enemy, as in Donald Trump or Dan Gilbert. And indeed, the tendency in our polarized time is to demonize anyone who is not on my side. The spiritual practice you recommend is a good one, akin to metta, or loving-kindness, meditation practiced in Theravada Buddhism.

So I agree. But we also have an obligation to stop people who, for whatever reason, think they have a right to kill other people--starting with the weakest and most innocent and working our way up from there. Otherwise any commitment to loving-kindness becomes incoherent.

I should clarify that what I meant was identifying with actual, damned, irredeemable devils. The souls of Donald Trump and Dan Gilbert are still "in play." But maybe what you and I are talking about is a distinction without a difference.

My point is that the artist and mystic, following in the footsteps of Christ, operates in a much more "collapsed" reality than do other crusaders.

In some mysterious sense, he identifies his own sin as fundamental, as constitutive of the world's problems. So if babies are being dismembered, it is because I am in some sense a dismemberer of babies. I am Pharaoh, I am Herod. I am so unwilling to allow Moses or Christ into this world that I kill everything that resembles him within myself and others. This sentiment is not unlike the one expressed in Thich Nhat Hanh's poem, "Call Me By My True Names":

Call Me by My True Names 

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive. 

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. 

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive. 

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly. 

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog. 

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. 

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. 

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp. 

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans. 

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one. 

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

The Fat Lady is Every One of Us (Part 4 of 7)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

Easier (as with most matters that require our patience and daily devotion) said than done. How are we of weary eye and soul to transcend sensory experience, to recognize the divine image in its lowliest form? We begin, I think with step one.

• Step 1: Acknowledge that Seymour Glass' Fat Lady is indeed Christ Himself

• Step 2: Acknowledge that there isn't anyone out there who is not Seymour's Fat Lady

• Step 3: Read aloud the following:
• Carlton Farthington is the Fat Lady.
• Don Gilber is the Fat Lady.
• That student who talks over me every single day in class and blatantly disregards all guidance and direction is the Fat Lady.
• Donald Trump is the Fat Lady.
• That person who perpetuates cruelty to our most vulnerable and oppressed is the Fat Lady.
• Hitler, ISIS, and Stalin are all Fat Ladies.
• My inner demon is the Fat Lady.
• I am the Fat Lady.

• Step 4: Repeat Step 3, but with conviction this time.

• Step 5: Acknowledge that each of the aforementioned is, indeed, Christ Himself. Acknowledge this every day.

• Step 6: For instructions on utilizing this mindfulness to combat our daily human propensity to judge our enemies (demonic as they and we may be) with love and mercy, I invoke at long last the luminous Dorothy Day (from a symposium on "Transcendence," sponsored by the Church Society for College Work, 1968):

God made men and women to be happy...yet how can we be happy today? How can we transcend this misery of ours? How can we believe in a transcendent God when the Immanent God seems so powerless within time, when demonic forces seem to be let loose? Certainly our God is a hidden God. I would say there are evidences of transcendence in the striving for community among the poor and destitute among whom we live in city and country. Men and women have persisted in their hope for happiness. They have hoped against hope though all the evidence seemed to point to the fact that human nature could not be changed. Always they have tried to recover Eden, and the history of our own country shows attempts to found communities where people could live together in that happiness which God seemed to have planned for us. (...) But how to love? That is the question.

We Want Rome, Not Salt Lake City!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 6 August 2015.



One final word.

I wanted to apply some of this thinking to an explanation of "Hey Rome." One of the concepts that has interested me lately is the fact that ours is the only persecuted religion that did not merely find a safe, uninhabited location to set up shop (e.g. Salt Lake City). Instead, Christ was crucified by Rome, then set up his Church in Rome. At the time, Rome had only one principle from which it derived its privilege and prominence, that of brute power. And this is the important thing: Christianity did not engage Rome on the playing field of this principle, the stacked deck of this principle. Christianity, in other words, did not beat Rome at its own game, did not engage its content.

In reading Camus's "Myth of Sisyphus," I've realized that he is almost entirely right, that he takes the questions raised by existentialism and modernity through to their most coherent conclusion. But this intellectual victory takes place inside the stacked deck of a certain line of thinking, the context in which this content is undeniably true. I can't quite describe the parameters of this context, but I know that, in addition its sole axiom being that of humiliated thought, it also is an overwhelmingly white male club.

I'm likening the unassailability of this philosophical position to the political one enjoyed by Rome.

It sometimes seems like we are going to live with this principle of humiliated thought--which sets the stage for the murderous dictatorship of relativism--forever, putting God and creation further and further in our rearview mirror until it altogether disappears.

I'm sure a lot of people felt the same way about Rome.

But could it be that Christ has a similar takeover in mind, one that will use the basic root and branch system established by the prior order? God uses Cyrus, Caiaphas, Rome, etc., why not juggernauts like Planned Parenthood or Dan Gilbert? I have come to believe that this is the mysterious way God operates; it is one of my most compelling reasons for belief right now. So much more definitive of a victory than beating down one's enemy.

What would it look like if the Church showed up, not in "the promised desert / wasteland that you set aside for me"--i.e. the postmodern version of Salt Lake City--but rather smack dab in the middle of the postmodern Rome of relativism, hyperreality, or whatever, metastasizing through all its mechanisms and making it entirely its own ("one day I'll make you my home sweet home")?

I think McLuhan had some ideas about the end of the Gutenbergian era with its stacked deck individualism, linear thinking, privacy, repression, detachment, specialization, modern militarism, etc.--all of which put non-Latin, Teutonic Europe in the driver's seat of modern history. McLuhan saw modern media as retribalizing us, and, if we can take his devout Catholicism as a data point in his philosophy, he saw the Church as the best bet for transitioning (back?) into this paradigm. Interestingly, he saw non-white peoples (bye bye northern European Übermensch and all your awful offspring) as being more able to capitalize on the values of this dawning era. Incidentally, he also believed that the new tribal values would ultimately be highly conservative but consensus, as they are in non-alphabetic, tribal societies.

Some I am sure are not finding any of this humorous or thought-provoking anymore. Facebook and Twitter pages have gotten very mirthless. Recent events have made almost everyone (myself included) take sides as drummers or warriors such that we can no longer comprehend one another (cf. Tower of Babel). But I continue to think what we are doing on all fronts is important.

I also hope some of this answers your questions about why we are engaging modernity so much. Although you may not like reading Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, or Baudrillard like I do, you do like Don DeLillo, who work posits similar theses. I don't think that's because these musings "spark my intellect without engaging my soul." Rather, it's because we have the universe's most commodious frame, that we can comprehend everything "according to the whole." And that perhaps this is one small way in which God as "All in All" is made manifest. We want Rome, not Salt Lake City!

The idea is to keep hanging around getting fed to the lions until the emperor has a vision.

Yah Mo Be There

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 27 July 2015.



I have a few more questions that I feel are somewhat final or definitive.

One of the main questions that I've had with the project is whether it is acceptable to introduce yet another rigidly white male tragic hero/philosophical subject to the stage? And, if so, under what conditions is that acceptable or appropriate?

The old struggle against the black backdrop, whether that blackness be oblivion or an actual nonwhite, nonmale cast of thousands. And the recent gambit of "humiliated thought" is a poor excuse for letting another one up on stage. Sartre and Camus were able to get a lot of mileage out of that one (not to mention hooking up with a lot of women way more attractive than they--which may, after all, be the whole point, cf. the whole history of rock and roll).

Is it not rather the case that he should vacate the stage?

He who has supposedly always known his own name and patrilineage, yet has strangely needed to appropriate everyone else's identity as his backdrop and basis.

Have we unconsciously reincarnated this wandering mongrel?

Is this just the old Aristotelian formula that requires the hero to be of a noble or illustrious family, the reason being that it "universalizes" the horror?

Or is this just another aspect of the turbulent reversals? That it isn't appropriate for a hero with no background or basis to be up on stage. In music we've talked about this at length: from Michael McDonald to Justin Timberlake, we've agreed that this is at the very least problematic. We don't need another Oedipus, even if he, like Camus, is able to bear the horror rather than blind himself. We don't need another Hamlet, another Kurtz, another Willy, another Meursault. Screw all of them, myself included.

By seeking to become everything, these figures have become nothing.

I guess a related question would be, do we need to formalize his departure toward Avalon, his disappearance, his entrance into oblivion?

My knee jerk answer is no, he should just leave.

This figure has not built his "castle in the air;" he has built it on the subjugation and objectification of others, on the appropriation of riches--first material, then cultural. Ironically, and as Liza has pointed out somewhere, this has caused him to diminish, to dwindle away to nothing like Kurtz. I would argue that it has paradoxically strengthened the identities of those who have had their cultures subjugated, devalued, usurped, appropriated, and suppressed, such that we are on the cusp of a massive reversal, one which McLuhan (white male--sorry) feared might be violently and overtly suppressed.

We have to look at what we're doing here. Will, you've said you want us to sharpen the clichés and I think it's safe to say that we've not only sharpened them, but also narrowed the field of clichés down to the most essential ones. That's why we're arriving at King Arthur, at Detroit and Iceland, at Dan Gilbert and the Savage Sisters, at the Underachieving Detroit Hipster Guy. That's why our gaze has been drawn inexorably toward black holes, lodestones, hearts of whiteness.

We are brewing up something that should soon be recognizably apocalyptic. We're slouching toward Bethlehem, straining toward Armageddon.

Straining to be worthy of some summit or summative statement: Is is what's being? But is that straining toward summation, that need to unify and universalize all the data of existence, itself the weapon with which Western man has used to subjugate the whole world?

Or is this all just, as Baudrillard might say, the final strategy, that of effacing oneself before the other in order to resuscitate and universalize one's own moribund, degenerate principles (in this case, those of liberalism)?

Bait on the Hook

The following is an email sent from Art to Liza and the group on 26 July 2015.

Detail from Quicken Ye Loa(dsto)n(e)s While Ye May, Mr. Gilber by Liza Polaskey

Quick(en) comment due to shortage of time.

I wanted to reiterate the awesomeness of this drawing by the way. I am continuing to work through it and it involves a lot of documentary watching.

I want this tshirt!!!

I love this guy's posts!!!

so my friend don gilber got his team in the basketball championship so i just wanna say good luck to lejohn jame and i hope he bring don gilber a trophy or your fired
Posted by Underachieving Detroit Hipster Guy on Sunday, June 7, 2015

I love all your suggestions for movies. I've worked through most of Kate Levy's videos, especially the shocking "Gilbertville." Just looking at some preview materials for The Institute and The Eraserhead Stories, I can see how they are required viewing for the project.

And I appreciate your heartening words (riffing off David Lynch's concept that "unrelated thoughts" are our bait on the hook): "the more we dangle, the greater the likelihood we have a catching a HUGE fish."

And of course the drawing!

I have so many other thoughts which will eventually be forthcoming, but thanks for this, tomodachi.

Characters Replaced by Chyrons

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



Wow!!!

I'm working my way through Kate Levy's videos. And I worked my way all the way through your incredible "handwritten response." I think you should use this for the Detroit Public Library commission.

Will, I guess I'm just talking about what you and I (Will and Art) have done in developing these characters. Back inside the story, yes, Arthur White is somehow graced with the power to stop this insanity. But it's just the way that I've hollowed myself out and created a third-order simulation that was

• first, a reflection of a profound reality (myself--everyone at first is a profound reality)
• second, a masking or denaturing of that profound reality
• and third, a masking of the absence of any remaining profound reality

I do think there's a possibility of moving into the fourth stage--that of the image having no relationship to reality whatsoever, of the simulcrum preceding reality--even in our project. I guess that might be the scenario if some real killer started dressing like Carlton Farthington in the mascot suit (cf. the Slender Man murders), but I'm not sure it will ever involve my identity per se. Arthur White is unmoored from the profound reality that was me (that I embalmed and keep in the glass coffin), but it is based on something. It is not (and will never be?) its own pure simulacrum.

But I see the ways in which a lot of us in this age manage to hollow ourselves out and then create a Disney version of ourselves, one that is easier to find Facebook profile pictures for. So, now, instead of seeing some 20-year-old kid sobbing through the night at a Vipassana meditation retreat, I can instead get some sleep, and show up as this character Arthur White, who can levitate! Instead of dealing with actual pirates, we have Pirates of the Caribbean! Instead of Detroit, we have--well, yes, Gilbertville--but also (sorry if this sounds too harsh) a resuscitation of the moribund principles of the Left, "simulation of scandal for regenerative ends":

Watergate is not a scandal, this is what must be said at all costs, because it is what everyone is busy concealing, this dissimulation masking a strengthening of morality, of a moral panic as one approaches the primitive (mise en) scène of capital: its instantaneous cruelty, its incomprehensible ferocity, its fundamental immorality--that is what is scandalous, unacceptable to the system of moral and economic equivalence that is the axiom of leftist thought, from the theories of the Enlightenment up to Communism. One imputes this thinking the contract of capital, but it doesn't give a damn--it is a monstrous unprincipled enterprise, nothing more. It is "enlightened" thought that seeks to control it by imposing rules on it. And all the recrimination that replaces revolutionary thought today comes back to incriminate capital for not following the rules of the game. "Power is unjust, its justice is a class justice, capital exploits us, etc."--as if capital were linked by a contract to the society it rules. It is the Left that holds out the mirror of equivalence to capital hoping that it will comply, comply with this phantasmagoria of the social contract and fulfill its obligations to the whole of society (by the same token, no need for revolution: it suffice that capital accommodate itself to the rational formula of exchange).

The irony may be that, to the extent that our characters succeed, our own transition into the posthumous existence characterizing third-order simulation will be complete. We will be like the screaming characters near the end of Too Many Cooks who have been replaced by their chyrons. But our point is that this happens to everyone nowadays.

I know this isn't the story story, but by naming our characters after ourselves we almost guaranteed this problem would be a central one. The Baudrillardian collapse, implosion, short circuiting of "the old polar schema that always maintained a minimal distance between cause and effect, between subject and object" and, I would add, between artist and art.

...and between actor and character. Is this loss of perspectival space what Plato feared, McLuhan welcomed, Baudrillard lamented?

Gilbertsville

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 23 July 2015.

For explanation on Dan Gilbert as anti-democratic bully, check out this documentary by Detroit videographer Kate Levy. If you've only the time/patience/interest for one, Scene 4 has my vote:

Quicken Ye Loa(dsto)n(e)s While Ye May, Mr. Gilber

The following is an excerpt of a 23 June 2015 exchange between Art, Liza, and the group.

I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"

Quicken Ye Loa(dsto)n(e)s While Ye May, Mr. Gilber by Liza Polaskey

Art:

I'm wondering if the thousands of blog views on July 20 is a fluke and not Dan Gilbert's henchmen and web crawlers. 

Liza, are you in trouble with this guy? Are we in trouble with this guy? 

You said you were going to explain what the deal was with him and his "anti-democratic bullies." Given that probably half our readership is rabid Spartans who probably would like to believe in their richest, most powerful alumnus of all time, we should be ready to state our case, which I know little or nothing about. Of course, Gilbert's devotion to Cleveland and Draymond Green being a Golden State Warrior probably complicates the matter somewhat. 

Still, I'm wondering if we've triggered something like the Tulpa Theory here and, if so, are you and your sisters ready with your bows and arrows?

Liza:

Interesting. I may be mostly silent in the days preceding Saturday on account of an intensive Detroit Public Library commission, but I'll ponder the above as I work this evening. I'll also set aside some time to (way belatedly) scan my handwritten response to a foregone thread that slightly touches on Gilbert's personification of anti-democratic tendencies. If I've not sent it by 11 this evening, feel free to badger me and remind me of my promise. When I'm working in the flow, my temporal experience is greatly distorted and I lose grips on most everything else (including but by no means limited to: promises, time, space, basic human necessities and interactions). A simple, "Yoo-hoo, Liza, come back to earth..." shall probably suffice.  

I use personify in place of another word as I'm fairly convinced Gilbert is not a real human, but rather some sort of evolved virtual embryo with an advanced sensory connection to our reality. Somewhere along the way, however, he lost all contact to this reality due mostly in part to his immersive business model. His representation therefore not only precedes his reality, but it also produces his reality. Dun dun duuuun! 

Welcome to the third order of simulation, Detroit.  

Coming soon to a city near you...

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