An Unrivaled Fulfillment

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

For the sake of brevity (that's my favorite joke), I'm limiting the scope of this reply to your e-mails preceding December 2nd. The rest I'll take on tomorrow.

At a glance: engulfing tidal waves, Detroit as a microcosm for every city everywhere, burying harsh realities under static isolation and willful ignorance, childhood innocence and purity, the mechanicalization of human life, the stigmatization of creativity, creation’s destruction, the paving of Black Bottom, retribalization, the global village, power absorption, silenced horrors, the lodestone, irreverence toward the natural world, Edenic exile, Gluck’s "Daisies," Gibran’s "On Children," Don Gilber, Detroit trash, human sacrifice, the Most Authentic Detroiter ever, etc.

Anyhow, thanks for the accidental introduction, Will. I look forward to reading more of Gustafson's word-magic, as well as finding a way to integrate all of my new, mostly dead friends' words and images into my classroom. What was Gustafson’s funeral like? I hope there was a jukebox, with quarters clanging in every pocket.

Art, thanks for the clarification! This may have been referenced or elucidated in previous correspondences, but my understanding is still partially clouded.

A few questions:

1. Does the Benefactor's creation story have any roots in Luke 22:24-27? 
2. Is he, in part, an incarnation of the authoritative pagan kings who exploited their power by placing self-interest over public-interest?  
3. More specifically, was the Benefactor’s character inspired by Ptolemy III Euergetes?  
4. THEREON BE FACT? Or BE THERE NO FACT?

While brainstorming my previous round of Benefactor related questions, I began scribbling a series of short, mostly cryptic anagrammatic poems wherein each line is composed of the reorganized letters found in “The Benefactor.” I did something similar when I last sat down to sketch the Sea Devil, but stopped once I became so absorbed in the letters that I began to feel crazy. It’s a maddening process, yet I still find an unrivaled fulfillment in making do with what little you have; in discovering the many hidden potentials that lurk beneath the surface.  

The Vernor's Dude

The following is an excerpt of a 3 December 2015 email exchange between Will, Art, and the group.

Woody the Gnome

Will:

I'm also up for the traveling notebook and the zine. 

Also, I think the Savage Sisters of Shakespeare should be our project's version of two other Detroit staples: GLOW (the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) and Juggalos. By our version, I mean probably not much like those things at all. But Faygo should be involved. 

Also, somehow I thought the Benefactor morphed into Leif Erickson's sister....that the Benefactor was the Lodestone keeper. For Art, he's the person who ruins the project by funding it, either in real life or in the story. For me, he or she ruined America by funding it with the lodestone's power. 

I think besides Victoria Woolf's being a Freudian slip on my part, she is in my eyes what Steffi becomes when she absorbs the power of the lodestone and the life force of Leif Erikson's sister, who may or may not be The Benefactor or both. 

Also, I think we've got the postmodern revival of the allegory of the cave going on here, with the return to paganism and the arches within arches. And of course, the actual cave.

Art:

How about the Vernor's dude? Could be a new character. Some kind of archetypal figure from Detroit's version of the Schwarzwald. I see him being some sort of pagan figure who gets dismembered or eats children, but is sanitized and repurposed as Vernor's logo.

Will:

I love it. I think a Rumpelstiltskin-type approach would work. I think that any Icelandic magical creatures who end up in the salt mines with Leif Erikson's sister should be refugees from the patriarchical structure of Germanic myth. That means this gnome has somehow fled to be nestled in the lap of a very powerful and wise gynocracy (which was just autocorrected into "gyro crazy," which means we must be talking about the caves under Greektown). 

So I'm thinking his story has to be a strange permutation of the traditional child eater/mischief maker/imp thing. What sort of gnome would the SSS keep for a lapdog, and how would the story morph into bringing the gift of Vernor's to Detroit? What is an Icelandic Pan who enjoys subservience to women all about? Is he the Mordred of the Arthur White universe? 

Also, how much of this salt mine world does he see? Does he see it in dreams? Can he ever distinguish any of it from mystical visions? And as a fairy tale percolates under the city, how does it shape Childe Arthur?

Cartography of the Mind (Part 9 of 17)

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

addressing darkness & light through inquiry & reflection

I felt that
I had
stepped
through a
door that had
been usu-
ally left open
to discover trem
endous treasures
there these
treasures terrified
me I told myself
that I could turn aro
und and go. And then I
walked on.

I am wondering...

1. Have the Benefactor and Leif Erikson's Sister become one character?
2. If not, what is their relationship to one another? To the Savage Sisters or Shakespeare (= the Icelandic Wyrd Sisters?)? To Victoria Woolf?
3. Are each of the above ultimately a different name for the same thing?
4. If so, is that thing Paganism (aka Christianity's sister religion)?
5. What is the overarching role of (myth+) paganism's resurgence within the context of this project?* (My deductions on #5 to follow my questioning...)

6. I'm a bit confused about the Benefactor's intentions...Is the Benefactor a Redeemer, a Destroyer, or both? Initially, I thought the horror raps had been written to illuminate the world's darkness, so to speak as though by carving the hallowed history into Detroit's original and unchanging rock, (s)he was ultimately giving a voice to the oppression and corruption that plagued the Benefactor's remembered world since conception. So, in the context of the story, I categorized the Benefactor as the Storyteller: (S)he's survived through many lifetimes. Outlasted history and embraced as an ageless androgynous (turn page) elder who's etched our story out into the stone for us, perhaps as a warning. In a sense, I viewed the cave as the axis mundi; as people's tunnel to Christ by way of Pagan myth. Of course a story demands an audience, but it was my assumption that despite the Benefactor's use of the Lodestone to lure people to the underworld to hear of the redemptive horrors, we were complacent in our world; we had no desire to be stirred out of this complacency, no desire to confront harsh truths, no yearning to grow deep like roots. In yet another sense, I viewed the Benefactor as Will views the French: as a protector of America's pieces we'd rather dispose of until the moment we're finally ready to grasp their value. From my current understanding, however, the Benefactor is, in fact, "nefarious"; (s)he is destroying our history through total inaccessibility to it. To revisit Will's message on storytelling, the Benefactor is ultimately rendering his/her survival meaningless—and in turn ours—by forgoing creation a total destructive collapse of all history. Though allowing us access into the cave would "make us what we are," his/her selfish isolation makes us what we were never intended to be: greedy, gluttonous, selfish, alienated, miserable, the most dangerous city in America for the third year in a row, and ultimately doomed. Am I getting warm? If the Benefactor is "nefarious," it would seem that my interpretation of paganism's role in this project is incorrect, or partially at least. My most recent deductions, from piecing together bits and pieces from past e-mails and blog posts are that this project both embraces paganism as a bridge to the "myth become fact" aka Christianity and discredits paganism for leading us to Christianity through a vehicle other than Christ. In the context of the e-mails, the Benefactor = Graham Greene's lieutenant, in that any potential triumphs will be empty failures; any truth the Benefactor arrives at without Christ is not truth at all, but mere shadows of shadows of shadows. Further, the Benefactor is not evangelizing. While (s)he may know better than anyone the limits of our physical world ("The Most Authentic Critiquers"), (s)he does not draw others toward the beauty of God. Instead (s)he, quite literally, repels people from it. AM I GETTING WARMER?

The Lodestone

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 9 November 2015.

I've been trying to deal with how inordinately white our story of Detroit is, and I think I gained some insight into the Lodestone. Reading Beowulf again has helped.

In the days of Scandinavian warriors, the tribes believed in the same gods and the same code. They sang of each other in their songs. Still, they were at war. Why? It would be easy to point to blood feuds and what not, but I say the Lodestone.

The Lodestone tribalizes people, makes life us vs. them. At the end of Beowulf, Beowulf has to fight a monster who is guilty of the worst abuses of warrior culture—it marauds mercilessly in the dark, it exacts too harsh a price in vengeance, it obliterates, it hoards, and it honors no loyalties.

In fighting the dragon, Beowulf dies in a sense for the sins of his culture. I can see Leif's sister on a similar quest. She understands that the Lodestone pits tribe against tribe and risks her own life trying to bury it deep within the earth's core, surpassing Beowulf in bravery by fighting furry dinosaurs along the way. Somewhere along the journey, though, she goes from being like the tribeless man who buried the treasure that the dragon made his nest to the dragon itself. She hoards the Lodestone in the caves of Detroit, disturbed only every few decades by people drawn to the stone's power.

The tribalistic effect of the stone accelerates the American myths of The Law of the Jungle and Social Darwinism. The Lodestone makes Henry Ford create Inkster for black workers and Dearborn for white workers—it tribalizes and spurs conflict and misunderstanding. This lodestone causes uneasy alliances that break into wars, like union conflict and Ford's horizontal monopoly approach to business, so that even peace fuels conflict.

The result on the Witkowskis is that even though they see themselves as enemies of racism and feel solidarity with those who suffer or yearn for better lives, they also "class off." Stan's exposure to the Lodestone causes the Chrysler and the Lodge, which is an unknowing act of tribal warfare. His view of himself as a self-made man makes him like Scyld Scyfing and his descendants like Hrothgars.

Will lacks the empathy skills to put human beings above the acquisition of wealth, power, and fame, and Arthur seeks out a cult to compensate for his inability to break past his princely obligations to the Witkowski tribe. He yearns for a universal brotherhood and sisterhood that the Lodestone works to prevent, and the misexpression of that desire is the cult membership.

There is a motif of very long delays in the fulfillment of quests in our story. The longest of these delays is the Benefactor's.

Geographically Confused

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

Chinatown

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

Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown

Art:

What a great movie. I'd never seen it before and I was interested in it because Baudrillard was interested in it. But I started watching it from the standpoint of some of the things we've discussed in the project.  

What I liked about it was how J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is such the epitome of that cocky, rigidly white male tragic hero/philosophical subject, and how the vaguely exotic "Chinatown"—though never visited until the final scene—plays the stereotypical role of the inarticulate, fathomless backdrop against which he suffers.  

Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is a modern Ophelia of sorts, one who has fully plumbed the depths of the formless horror, demonstrated by the fact that she has multiple Chinese servants and a daughter through an apparently consensual act of incest with her father. 

Interestingly, she also has a Oedipal hole in her iris (later, through her eye). Gittes' memories of his own time in Chinatown suggest that he witnessed something—both within and without—that he has since tried to forget. Gittes has tried to "uncollapse" that experience; Evelyn lives within that collapse. 

In short, it's another Nietzschean/Baudrillardian tragedy. And J.J. Gittes reminds me a lot of Will Witkowski.

Will:

Crazy! I just started watching it on Netflix for the first time the other day! Unfortunately, I put it on at 3:30 a.m. and fell asleep while watching it. Time to watch it again! 

Come to think of it, from what I saw, there is also a parallel in the backdrop of at least the beginning, which is that a major metropolis will face total collapse (lack of water). You know, it's San Francisco instead of Detroit, so the crisis is more direct and less interesting than Detroit's looming threat (the lodestone), but still. 

You are right that young Will must have been like Gittes. I wonder what failure after failure would turn Gittes into. 

I think about the idea that the Witkowski family is so vastly important, and that all human beings are so vastly important that Jesus dies for all of us. But then we get all this Horatio Algerian rah-rah pablum all the time about following our dreams and being anything we want and determine your own fate and be a self-made man B.S. and we see ourselves as important for all the wrong reasons and abandon our rightful posts as agents of God's light and wander off into Palookaville with our bindles like we're hot stuff and think we're so important when we're just Goofy slipping on a banana peel. 

And meanwhile, God is still working with us where we're at and we're still so important, even though we're Billy Madison coming down late for dinner after getting into a fight with shampoo and conditioner bottles in the bathtub.

Buddy Holly

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



Speaking of commercials, have you seen the Honda commercial in which the family in the minivan has a singalong to "Buddy Holly" by Weezer?

It encapsulates more than anything I've ever seen, I think, what I hate about being a white person. I've been thinking about race in our story a lot, and it has an undead nature to it, as well. Is it possible that the most effective way for our story to confront problems of white privilege and racism is to keep the discussion muted and in the fringes of the story? I think that's the way whiteness tends to operate, and it seems to be the story of suburban Detroit and Henry Ford's urban planning.

I think white people tend to win a false victory over their feelings of racism by carefully controlling their exposure to non-white people and culture. That way, the white person gets to have all sorts of feelings of love and admiration for people and cultural artifacts that aren't white while never having to engage, at least for very long, in any personally challenging interpersonal or social experience.

I can listen to NWA and side with Ice Cube without having to deal with 90's Compton, for instance. I think of how metro-Detroit hipsterism works. If you are from Birmingham, you become cooler by moving to Royal Oak, but Ferndale trumps Royal Oak, Hamtramck trumps Ferndale, Corktown trumps Hamtramck, and the Cass Corridor trumps Corktown.

But at some point, you're less of a poseur if you are just an ignorant yokel from Wyandotte who just stays in Wyandotte.

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...

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. 

Introducing Liza!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 17 April 2015.

Hello Allison, Arthur, Carlton, Will, Will, and any of the others hiding amongst us,

What a full room we have here!

Here I am, at long last. Here I have been all along.

As you will soon see, my presence in this project will be much like that of a fly on the wall. Even in the long intervals that are likely to pass by without any buzzing on my end, know that I am watching, reading, interpreting, and reflecting on your messages. Once I've digested them as best I can, I will swoop in, impose my character(s)' rationality on what Art has called the “primordial wildness of [your collective] scribbles," and fly off once more. Never mistake my silence for disinterest. On the contrary, understand that it is only through the emptiness of the silence that I discover the joy of the noise. Though Allison is light-years ahead of me on her journey through The Sweet World, I’d like to think the degrees of our excitement are equally matched.

While on the subject of Allison – hello! Though we’ve never been in direct communication with one another, I already feel, in some sense, like I know you. Instead of filing my taxes last night, I spent my evening bouncing back and forth between Civilization and its Discontents, Leaves of Grass, and your thesis. I’m yet to make a significant dent in it, but I can already tell that every atom belonging to me as “legend” also belongs to you.

To all of you, really. What great company I’ve stumbled my way into.

I’m tempted to call you members of what Vonnegut’s Books of Bokonon would describe as my karass, but I won’t. Whereas Bokonists derive their life's meaning from foma - shameless untruths - I attribute the entanglement of our lives to our mutual interest in deriving life's meaning from transcendent Truth. A force exists in our communication that is far beyond us; there is a deeper meaning in it than any of us can perhaps currently fathom.

I dig this idea of understanding the meaning through the medium. As we discuss our potential roles in this project, I've been thinking a great deal about how the indefinite process of contextualizing the essence of these roles in turn enlightens our existence both inside and outside the Sweet World. Through this lens, it’s interesting to consider the dialectic of the Apollonian and the Dionysian - this sense that we clarify our confusion in the journey through the interplay of these oppositional forces.

In response to a message I sent to Will last night regarding my own bewildering journey to restore order to the chaos that saturates our public education system, he sent me a passage from Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday that further highlights this unifying duality. What I’ve ultimately deduced from all of it is that the meaning of each of our respective roles in this project and beyond has been distorted by what Chesterton calls “an engine of torture."

The purpose of the Sweet World - from my own understanding at least - is to provide us a space in which to translate this meaning not despite this distortion but through this distortion. If the lodestone that Art mentioned confuses our identities, then it is really the most clarifying force there is in our route to understanding our identities.

When I wrote last night's message to Will, I had not yet read through the entirety of this e-mail thread. Now that I have, the line between my purpose in life and my purpose in this project has been reduced to a dash. It is through my daily struggles to contextualize my transcendent purpose amongst grave misfortune that I’ve discovered an inherently meaningful connection to the contextualization of my role in this project.

After writing said message, it dawned on me that I didn’t so much write it as I did sit down at my typewriter and bleed it into being. Though most writers seem to disagree on the attribution of this paraphrased quote, they (maybe) unanimously agree on its merits.To write in such a way, we must abandon our mortal vulnerability  by ripping open our wounds. To look upon these wounds with rapture instead of lamentation is to have paved a clearer channel between the earthly and the divine. It is to, as Coleridge says, "build that dome in air."

I often think Detroit could be one of our earthly channels into the divine. Whenever I hear someone refer to it as a "blank canvas," I want to shake my fist at the sky in horror that they don't see it for what it really is: the Sistine Chapel of the Midwest.

Though Nietzsche uses this blood-writing metaphor to promote earthly elevation of the Übermensch over the Untermensch, I’ve decontextualized parts of it below in order to support the above idea:

“Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood and thou wilt find that blood is spirit."

"He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart.”

My decontextualization of this is that our willingness to suffer into Truth is not for worldly pleasure - that of the head - but rather to satiate our yearning for the divinely transcendent - that of the heart.

The text concludes: “Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself. Now there danceth a God in me.”

So, in a sense, this is how we define ourselves in opposition with ourselves: we can either give into the temptations of man, exalting ourselves to übermensch, or we can remain steadfast in our rejection of these temptations, isolating ourselves as the untermensch.

As the fly on the wall, it seems apparent that Art and Will are not writing The Sweet World into existence, but rather bleeding it into existence. In my decontextualization of Nietzsche, this is indicative that God is dancing through you.

With this dance as my aim, I prioritize the process over the purpose. Through a certain lens, this process is our purpose. The difficulty then lies not in understanding, but in discovering the courage through our confusion to present our woundedness to the world as Jesus did. Though this will inevitably yield more wounds in the short term, the moment we fixate our gaze on the gore despite our worldly instinct to avert our eyes is the moment we will see Beauty and know Truth. As Rumi says, “The wound is the place where the light enters [us].”

In keeping our veins open, we will come to see the light that will guide us into the caves. It is this light that will not only illuminate The Benefactor's horror-raps etched on the crumbling walls, but that will keep our eyes steady on them despite all impulse to look away. Though this is all lofty idealism at best, I have trouble envisioning a better alternative than this in combusting “the engine of torture."

On that note, it appears as though I’ve rambled my way to the edge once more. Perhaps the edge of the cliffs is where the Sweet World exists. After all, if you're an outlier of the world, you're an inhabitant of the Sweet World.

As my favorite secular-humanist once said,

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over.  Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

Until my next swoop,

Liza