Historicity Destroys Legend

The following is an email sent from Art to the group on 10 April 2016.

The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon by Edward Burne-Jones

I love aphorisms. Nietzsche is particularly good to read as a collection of isolated aphorisms, most especially at The Nietzsche Family Circus. I also took some inspiration from Liza's cut-outs from The Believer article on the writing style of Roland Barthes. (Wow, that had a lot of subordinate phrases, but that's the reality—frames within frames!)

I've begun to think that it might be fun to do a bunch of aphorisms that are ostensibly taken from a full-fledged text that doesn't exist, such as The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas, or the seemingly more pamphlet-like “What is Knology?” I am especially proud of “Joseph Lazarus is not only the most complete guitarist of his generation, but also the most complete human being,” which is a rip off of Sartre's comments on Che Guevara. How would that have ever come up in the pamphlet (or treatise or interview or feature article) on Knology?

I would love some of the more philosophically trained among you (Allison? Joe?) to start trying to “connect the dots” as to what this philosophy actually is, kind of like what some have tried to do with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, which is to try to systematize aspects of their philosophies after the fact due to the often oblique and evasive styles of writing.

Will, your “tons of likes” statement brings me back to an original strategy for the project. We've talked extensively about the significance and importance of likes, favorites, retweets, reposts, embeds, but, as we well know, we get nearly none of those things. And I understand the reason for that, namely, that the posts are too confusing to inspire anyone to mouse over and give us a thumbs up on anything. Not to say that what all of you have contributed hasn't been incredible—it has—it's just the way we frame it makes it hard to contextualize. Plus, we have so little actual existence in the “real” world.

Still, in accepting any of this as an excuse, we've lost sight of the critical aspect of the project, its fundamental and essential donnée.

The project is supposed to show how in our current age, the frame is more important than its contents, the proscenium is more important than the scenium, the smoke is more important than the fire, the echo is more important than the utterance. In fact, the project attempts to take this to the degree where those former things—the antecedents or referents—no longer exist. So many reasons for this that have been discussed ad nauseam and I don't want to get into it all over again.

Will, in addition to a central contributor to the project, you've been pretty much its only groupie. My main point in this email is that we may need more people willing to be groupies, to be frames, to be echo chambers. And I'm going to argue that this groupie-hood should not be based on any quality inherent in the content. It should be groupie-hood for the sake of groupie-hood. Call it groupidity. This is a central precept of Knology. Gotta get that on an inspirational meme soon.

I'm not saying that this should be any of you by the way. Honestly, I appreciate any likes you can give, but I don't want you to give them unless it makes any kind of sense to you. Perhaps, you have some better ideas of how we can cause this to flourish without attempting to endow any further reality to the original, which should remain shrouded in doubt.

Once this dynamic is established, I believe we begin to harness the power of infinite regress, the infinite series of receding images produced by two facing mirrors. I understand the argument that we should strive to make the primary as meaningful, sincere, relevant, interesting, entertaining, engaging, helpful, good, true, or beautiful as possible. But I also argue that's just what they'll be expecting us to do. More importantly, that's missing the whole point—the whole dynamism of the Female King, the Symbolism of Ophelia, the Wisdom of Silenus, the Tunnels within Tunnels, the Restaurant within a Restaurant, and so many others.

It goes back to the idea hinted at throughout Tennyson's Idylls of the King: that of Arthur and Camelot's nonexistence. It is this absence of historicity that makes Arthur—not Richard the Lionhearted—England's enduring image of king.

In other words, anyone looking for an underlying principle in any of this will be disappointed. There is no principle; there's only what comes after. That's why we're always dodging, refusing to go on record, why every narrator is untrustworthy, etc. We're hinting at an absence, a lack. We're trying to get people to stumble across the event horizon of a black hole.

This isn't to say that I don't love all the ideas. I love Liza's zine idea. (I wish we could somehow mass produce “Cartography of the Mind”!) I love Will's podcast idea. I love Nick's journalistic idea. I love the recording idea. I'd love to do as many of those things as possible. That said, I also love Joe's documentary-footage-on-a-dead-computer idea.

Because historicity destroys legend!

À la recherche du temps perdu

The following is an email sent from Joe to Will and Art on 30 March 2016.

Marcel Proust

It's funny you bring up the Myers Briggs, Will. After having accepted my designation as an INFJ for years, I began to realize just recently how significantly I have changed in the past twenty-four months. It's mostly because of my job: I've been required by social and professional and even intellectual necessity to cultivate savoir faire and sociability—to do my job even remotely well, I've had to run with traditionalist conservatives and social conservatives and libertarians and tenderhearted center-leftists and democratic socialists and gender-and-race theorists, as well as hipsters and vegans and young Republicans and every other variety of millennial. I've come not just to like this sort of living, but to derive all my energy from it. So, I decided to take the test a few days ago to see what I've become. Verdict: very pronounced E, pretty pronounced N, only 6% preference for F, and a meager 1% preference for J.

That's a roundabout way of getting at my interest in politics, Will. Not accounting for the interest I developed in political philosophy as an undergraduate, nor for the attraction to political and cultural criticism that I've developed only in the last two to three years, the root of my urge toward the political life is an acquired preoccupation with politics in the Thucydidean sense: not the politics of casting ballots necessarily, but rather the activity of discoursing and debating with other people on every social level—in small communities of thinkers, throughout a university, and in the wide world.

At the same time, I must acknowledge that partisan politics became interesting to me right around the time when I lost my faith, which was about two years ago. There's much to be said about that topic—and frankly, if it does not prove too often to be a non-sequitur in our conversations, I'd like to haggle over and piece through it a bit with you both. I want that mostly because you both knew me when I was at my most, shall we say, faithful: my most Catholic in the spiritual and social senses. You knew me when I felt certain that I would live a devoutly Catholic life, when my main preoccupation was how truly to be Catholic in a secular world. And now you are among the only people in my life who can critique me, who can remind me of faith in ways others just can't (not to re-convert me—I am not asking for that, have no real interest in it—but to remind me). This is admittedly selfish. I hope in return that my agnosticism might be of some use to you and the project. If it's not, I'll stay out of it. But I do remember that my character is an angry, disaffected agnostic. Now that's a character I can play.

Presently, there's something about my agnosticism (let's be honest: functional atheism) that troubles me. Because my agnosticism is so easily incorporated into secular life, especially among academics and the sets toward which I most naturally gravitate, I am not required to contend with the claims and virtues of my old Catholicism. In other words, it would be very easy for me to ditch the former Joe—the one who was devout, the one whose mental horizon was populated with Christ and the Church and Aquinas and Dorothy Day—for the new Joe—the one with new political interests, new moral sensibilities, who can run head-first into the sort of life offered by the 21st century educated cosmopolitan milieu that runs The New York Times, most universities, and with whom I generally feel at home.

Put otherwise, I see something wrong or unwise in the prospect of sliding unthinkingly and comfortably into postmodern secularism and en vogue secular cosmopolitanism. Granted, I already sort of fit into these categories.  There is just something fundamentally unsatisfying about what would be most comfortable: a quick change of worldviews from Catholicism to 21st century secularism, the stripping off of my Catholic clothes and putting on of the ready-to-hand jumpsuit of the liberal secularist, the NPR-listening educated Democrat, the good citizen.

Because I have this ill-defined fear, I head to mass once in a while, usually at a church where I'm anonymous, to try to re-enter the mental space of my old Catholicism—to smell the incense, hear the organ and, à la recherche du temps perdu, be brought vividly back to my old mind and soul. But occasionally these attempts at anonymity fail, and I run into someone I know. Many such people are aware I don't go to church anymore; many also heard rumors about me, circulated among Grand Rapids Catholics a couple years ago and that seem never to go away, which insist that I'm some kind of rank hedonist, or Hitchensian anti-theist, or sexual adventurer. So I'm often looked at with a mixture of hesitance and curiosity and mild, pious concern. Indeed, this very sort of thing happened on Good Friday, when I went to Tenebrae at the Cathedral of St Andrew. The questioner, a Catholic Central grad, asked what brought me to church? I told her it was the aesthetics.

I said that because I think Joyce once said it, and anyway it's true: the aesthetics, the beautiful physicality of the icons and deep sorrow of the chants, stir into life certain old feelings and associations. But their function is nostalgic, and I'm becoming less interested in nostalgia. So why do I still go to church every now and then?Well, that's a question I want to answer. I think talking with the group, being part of this project in some manner, might help me continue to ask the question.

It's funny, it's only been two years since I stopped believing in God—or rather, it's been two years since the moment I noticed that the belief in God had exited me. That's not a long time. But the exit was so dramatic, so complete, that all I felt in its wake was a spiritual vacancy that, after a short while, I regarded with only mild interest and numb concern. That vacancy has filled, in some manner, with other things. I don't sense it anymore, and because I don't sense it, I find it hard to remember what my belief even felt like. Is that because I never believed? Or because I have a short memory? Or because the postmodern malaise is so hegemonic that it not only invades you but blinds you to the possibilities and promises of faith?

Anyway, this project might helping me remember. To what end, who knows? But I prefer the struggle of memory to the blissful ignorance of dementia.

Farthington's Voicemail: through April 1st processed

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

 11/20/15 4:44 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

Hey, so we say that this is one step beyond love lily it's variance. You know maybe the the the Madman the the person is Insane was the prophet of this coming arrow where we are the image of the symbol or the sign would become more real than reality It's Ralph and that the reality which day. So that's the world and let's show Lazarus junior fine since so and then it's it's I mean potentially. Even more just tripping when something. Get out that really shouldn't exist. Cakes for and I'm reminded of the whole creepypasta Slenderman Phenomenon where by you know someone kind of makes this off makes it up, and then I'll just you know it and then kind of through April 1st processed. That that Artist becomes reality and maybe even maybe even a greater kind of reality Tell you know and and I think this is I'm feeling ideal this place and I think a lot of people feel this bye. Just driving around right now and being a flag at half past seems like every single day flag fan, and you we get into wondering. What is the flag at half-mast? And ever since 9:05. I think thank you x x I have finance class started flying at half past all the time or you know fairly often where you don't even know what it is that we just point help of points does flag buying it have passed actually drive whatever the cast your teams and so the black find a half mast and knows why it was. You know lowered. But you know it creates if you pastor free. And so I think that one of the things is dramatize Bye Joe Lazarus junior Confronting his clone Joseph flat surface the 3rd.

sexy congress

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

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

So that's why I see that you will last between your has the in the water for greg. And this predict pen is that's repeated wasn't fact. Dad there are 3rd since there's that he has to deal with that is 10. It's not that is time sensitive perfect clone of his father genetic prospectus. Bye very much give me. And really has no I'll just face reality that was his father. Attack ads you don't even greater chance, Please Joseph last 15 years his primary class in Delhi center reconciliation bye bye 8 King and basically fine good bother you hungry for it's sexy congress. And finish what day does signs at the hotel project that phoning? Please press the current conditions in till back if that's okay until. It's it's very difficult to have this and connor. And serve really truly encounter something I guess what what well he's paying is the reality is very strong, but in part That's because he he's very susceptible to these pigments it is imagination and to finish to eat and Joe lazar Sooners case he actually needs up with a reality he actually confront something hyper real typer real, and that has corper alley the corporate the corporate reality. And substance and being here and and and so he has to deal with that. And so we don't need Joel's asura's junior golf in vain like Willy does in order to accomplish this meeting in this experience at the Hype B. L II actually experiencing.

Farthington's Voicemail: Dad Mesa center

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


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

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

This Dominance of the Hyperreal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Anti-Joe Lazarus Album

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Return of Joe Lazarus Jr.

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

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

Will:

Look who's back! 

It's Joe, aka Joe Lazarus, Jr! 

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

Art:

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

Max:

There is no curse after all!!!

Joe:

Damn good to be back. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, glad to be back on board.

The Paralysis of Perfectionism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally and most importantly, we need to keep praying.

Taking What the Defense Gives You

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Antonin Scalia

The following is an email exchange that occurred between Art, Will, Allison, and the group on 14 September 2015.

Antonin Scalia

Art:

Wow, I was actually contemplating the End of Arthur White what with the insanity of the new year and foreseeable future. So fascinating that whenever I've seriously contemplated that something like this happens. Yes, go for it, by all means. Will, I assume you can coordinate that as it develops, right?

Will:

Sure thing..I'll arrange interviews when necessary. Times two on the school year! It's taking a while to get my feet on the ground! I'm sure Liza's struggles are more impressive than ours, and that Allison's potentially lead to higher pay, which makes them more attractive!

I am currently without a school-issued computer, but the recording is a high priority in my life. I'm just dreaming about it more than working on it. For an INTP, dreaming is work. 

Nick is one of Joe's best friends. It's funny how the hole Joe left keeps sucking new people in, and what forms they take, like the clone of Joe Lazarus or the mystery Boston journalist.

Allison:

Indeed, the potential for higher pay makes my struggles incredibly more satisfying. I am keeping up with your emails—though my thoughts are usually full of language that is beyond comprehension for our art. It seems like Farthington writes most law school texts: manifestations of mutual assent? appearance of agency? traditional notions of justice and fair play? antonin scalia? 

I commend all the music making, and think that sharing the process through the blog is such a generous exposure to a process that is usually so full of self-deprecation, or at least, it would be if it be analogously paired with writing. As a person who has zero musical inclination aside from listening to and appreciating a wide variety of music, I hope my lack of contributions recently have allowed the more musical and less philosophical aspects of our art to flourish. 

Balance is something foreign to me except when I'm dancing. 

Law school is treating me justly. There's lots of free food to make up for the pain.

Will:

Free food?!  Nobody told me about the free food when I was picking careers!

2-Year Plan

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

I do think I came up with something for "Old Habits Die Hard." If you can, send me the lyrics again and I should be able to put it together.

My year is shaping up to be quite a bit busier than expected. I wanted to float the following idea: start the recording July 4, 2016. Have someone take high contrast black-and-white photos, film everything. In short, get as many artifacts out of it as possible.

I want our core group to be totally ready to play the songs well at that point. I may want to just use what I've recorded on keyboard as a spine and have you guys record your parts, then me come in and do the vocals.

At any rate, that's not the main point. The main point is that I don't want what we do next year to be the finished product. I want to take that raw recording and meditate on it for the following year. Then, I'd like to find the remaining pieces and return to the studio in summer 2017. At that point, we'd have identified lead guitarists, background vocalists, keyboardists, horn sections, etc. to add the finishing touches.

Now, we could put out whatever we do summer 2016, saying it was the raw unfinished takes from that Joe Lazarus collaboration--the Joe Lazarus tapes. And now, with the permission of the Arthur White estate and/or Joseph Lazarus III, we're trying to fully realize those recordings. Actually, that might facilitate some actual participation via the blog and social media--inviting feedback, suggestions. Would-be collaborators could upload videos of guitar solos, etc.

So I'm liking that 2-year plan, and now that I'm thinking about it, it might be a perfect opportunity to finally allow our audiences to participate in something: the 2016-to-2017 process of working up the songs.

And maybe we could use that as a way to earn some money for that next session. Make it available on Bandcamp for "whatever you want to pay" and by buying the 2016 tracks on Bandcamp, you've preordered your copy of the 2017 album.

Unharvested

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 12 August 2015.



I think you're right on all counts.

As you saw, Max and I practiced all the Joe Lazarus songs, as well as the songs "One and Only" and "Centerstage." My only thought is that those last two really don't fit musically or lyrically. Especially if we're going for a What's Going On kind of dynamic, I almost would like to leave those two out (do your soul a favor and listen to the entire thing right now). What's Going On only clocks in at around 36 minutes, but of course it has that unity that makes it feel like a whole universe opening up every time you listen.

The Joe Lazarus songs, inasmuch as they are the only songs we have written together, have a totally unique character. In fact, I think they are important in that they are an emblem of the project as a whole: the synthesis of Will and Art, will and art, definitude and indefinitude, being and nothingness, Apollo and Dionysus, who knows what else. Perhaps Joe Lazarus, Holy Spirit like, exists in the relationship between us.

Max is on fire by the way. I have this compulsive desire to harness and harvest him in all his youthful enthusiasm. Need to just let the guy flourish in whatever way he wants. Hilariously (okay, sort of dark humor), he wants to start a new documentary. I've informed him of the apparent dangers of such an undertaking. We're basically just getting any and all footage we can. Here's some from last night. Not sure what any of this is for, but I think we again need that Robert Frost "Unharvested" attitude:

Unharvested

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

Vacation Settings

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

St. Jerome Reading in the Countryside by Giovanni Bellini

I'm probably due for an update here. I've been going through a lot of stuff lately as you might have gathered from the vacation settings I placed on the Farthington email account.

I was running on empty somewhat with the project. I really feed off you guys ("the image of the cannibal"?) and wasn't getting a lot of interplay for a long while there. Then, my spirit got kind of broken by all this Planned Parenthood stuff. I haven't fully discerned the spirits that are at work there, but it's having a big effect on me. I'm reading a chapter from the book Saintly Solutions on anger. I guess the good news is that I am in good company; the bad news is that my anger is probably the front runner in the quest to utterly destroy me. The sheer horror of it all has sent me fleeing back to the Church after a good amount of time spent kicking aimlessly around town. I need to see nuns and hosts and crucifixes and children and anything else to exorcise these demons, to remind me that God wins.

I'm sorry for the message. It was my immature way of despairing of the project entirely. I still am living with some of that confusion. I'm at a Manley Hopkins-type moment of wanting to throw all my pre-conversion writing in the burn barrel.

In the midst of all this, Max reached out to me as soon as he got home from New Orleans wanting to work on the project as soon as and as much as possible. That enthusiasm was contagious and we worked together a couple nights ago, going through the Joe Lazarus material together. It is an interesting selection of songs, not exactly palatable to a wide audience. I think all of those songs, with the exception of "Hey Rome," need transposing and/or arranging. So Max and I are going to do some work on those and see if they come out playable/listenable.

I could use your perspective on things at this point, your thinking on the direction of the project as a whole and your role in it. I'm full of doubts about everything.

Creepypasta

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

Let the children... by Victor-Surge on DeviantArt

Incidentally, our story has a lot of potentially creepypasta fare embedded in it. The whole summer pilot program venturing down into the steam tunnels, reading drafts of Yeats's "Second Coming," catching glimpses the terrible beast Farthington had warned about,

sometimes swaggering in the distance up ahead of us in the dim intermittent rays of our flashlights, sometimes turning around suddenly to face us, its human physiognomy smiling to reveal a terrifying array of lion's teeth.

See the original post here.

Also, the idea of Carlton/Steffi inside the Sea Devil suit. Jawless or not?

As with creepypasta in general, I'd love for our story to eventually encourage the type of underground fan fiction, fanart, and cosplay that tend to proliferate around these threadbare stories. I don't know how all that starts, but it's almost like too much involvement by the initiating artist can actually inhibit its growth. This, of course, is the open source paradigm in a nutshell. Also that of King Arthur, whose legend grows as his reality recedes from view.

I just remembered and looked up the Slender Man meme, which was started as a thread on the Something Awful Internet forum, namely, a contest to doctor everyday photos to look terrifying. It relies on the exact same dynamism as our project.

As the author of the linked article states,

Slenderman highlights the strength and weaknesses of the Internet simultaneously...Of course when Victor Surge first created him, he was just a creepy picture with minimal back story. Now he is a cultural phenomenon and terrorises the dreams and thoughts of many.  What makes Slenderman a fascinating study is that he is the the personification of how modern myths work. At the core of Slenderman, most of us know he is created. You can trace back his history to specific posts and websites. The Internet ruins the myth but at the same time, the Internet gives it an authenticity and connectivity that continually builds upon it. 

The strength of this meme comes from its ambiguity, which has been part of the reason why I have been so reluctant to go on record with a lot of specific details we sketch out on the blog. At times, this kind of clarifying impulse seems to trespass on the minds of would-be co-creators. Interestingly, I've always seen our performances as running a similar risk, especially when characters lose their indefinitude. I don't think it needs to be that way; our attempts to justify our invariably less than ideal configurations (e.g. like Friday, making an inexplicably young J.J. Lazarus into Joseph Lazarus III) allows us to avoid painting ourselves into an ontological corner.

So-Called Feminine Approaches to Dominance

The following are excerpts of emails sent from Will and Art to Liza and Allison on 12 April 2015.

Circe Invidiosa by John William Waterhouse

Will:

Feel free to take on more than one character, or one, or none. I generally take the lead on Will and Art generally takes the lead on Arthur and Farthington, but we both kind of write all the other characters (or at least have debates about them) while assuming someone else will play them at some point. Art has written Will stuff and I've written Arthur stuff. Also, whether people are antagonists or protagonists keeps changing. At one point, Joe Lazarus, Jr., was the focal point of the story in my eyes, and Will was the antagonist. Then Farthington outdid Will. Then Steffi outdid Farthington. Then we added the Benefactor, who is still smaller than the beasts from air, sea, and land. And really, God is at the center of the story.  

Anyway, Liza, I get what Art is saying with you and Allison both playing sides of Steffi, but I see you as also being The Benefactor and yourself as the discoverer of The Benefactor, as you confront both Detroit and the silliness of Detroit authenticity issues on a daily basis. 

One last thing...I at least don't trust myself to write female characters and neither does Art, I'm guessing, but we're both U of M grads, so we wouldn't be satisfied with the story if the female characters didn't kick butt. Personally, I believe in the superiority of women to men, and I think that idea is playing out more and more in the story. Of course, I worry about sexism. On the one hand, Leif Erikson's sister The Benefactor is way more of a badass than Leif ever was. On the one hand, Leif Erikson's sister The Benefactor is way more of a badass than Leif ever was. On the other hand, I can't tell if Steffi's overthrowing the masculine approach of Farthington's mind...um...penetrations by becoming the digital environment through which she...um...engulfs all of humanity is really feminist or sexist.  At any rate, I think Art and I would both benefit by letting go of our hold on Steffi and The Benefactor for a while and seeing what you do with them.

Thanks for playing along!

Art:

Right. The one thing I would change is that Farthington's is a "feminine" approach, in that, as we've said, he "has no content of his own" but instead seeks to control the context. That's stereotypically feminine, yes, but what other than a stereotypical approach would Farthington choose? It's all about appropriation, whether that be blue-eyed soul or so-called feminine approaches to dominance. It's just that he eventually gets outdone in this regard. 

This is the counterintuition of John the Baptist, Mary, and Jesus--the idea of being humbled as the sure path to exaltation (not that they thought of it in those terms!). This same counterintuition is seen in distorted form in Farthington and Humboldt. 

As you said, it turns out engulfing is more powerful than penetrating (a là rock, paper, maybe even scissors).  

Farthington figured this out, forming a cult with no doctrine, merely creating a clearing in which he exists as "next to nothing." And then coopts, echoes, embeds, reposts, retweets, reframes, repeats, resounds, and otherwise lives parasitically off others' content. 

I realize this has to sound a little weird coming from Farthington's email! Okay, we'll shut up!!! 

White Guys Playing Black Music (Part 5 of 5)

The following is an excerpt of a 20 January 2015 email from Will to Art.


"Langston Hughes" by Original uploader was Alsop1 at fr.wikipedia - Transferred from fr.wikipedia. 
Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

I guess there's a fifth type, which would maybe be when there's a mostly black band with a white sideman or two, but Arthur White isn't a sideman, so I've left that option out.

I've also left out all commentary because I'm more interested in yours.

The racial politics vary in all of these groups, of course. I'm wondering where you see Arthur's bands fitting in these continuities. It would make sense that The Sweet World would be an integrated group if Will sought out the best players in Detroit--it was a thriving time for rock, soul, and jazz.

I tend to imagine it as an integrated group, but also imagine that Arthur barely knows anybody in the band besides Will. It could be a breeding ground for racial tensions. We could go with an exploitative Will deliberately choosing all black musicians. It also could make a ton of sense that Will is just doesn't spend much time with black people and has more of a rock background and only hires white people. My hunch is that an integrated but very tense band makes the most sense.

Brand New Life is probably all white if we keep it down to a four-piece, just because Joe Lazarus and Fr Bernard are white, so that's math. There are still racial issues to explore. Arthur may be oblivious to them all, but Will might see a black sound as a commodity. Who knows. It seems like there has always been in America a controversy over whether white people who play music in a black style are paying a loving tribute that binds the whole country closer together or exploiting and robbing black people.

It seems like a tension we have to explore as we look at Farthington as a non-white Kurtz and maybe Steffi Humboldt as a female Marlowe who outdoes Kurtz. I guess Arthur is one part boat pilot and one part Russian sailor. Will is the office manager. Most of the musicians are the natives.

We are appropriating a ton of texts here, but I think a good guidebook as we throw Heart of Darkness in a blender is Langston Hughes' The Ways of White Folks, which really takes an alternatingly comical and sardonic look at the white attraction to the misguided white perception of blackness.

A Few Scattered Thoughts

A few scattered thoughts:

• I love your ideas for the show.

• I get the low budget thing, and I'm seeing low budget as well. A slight clue that the show is happening in Arthur's present-day mind would be the low-budget presentation. A ballet, if it happens, could be done with video, but I'm fine with it not happening.

• I taught some kids whose mom owned a costume shop in Lansing. They might have something mascoty for us. Did you ever see the Viking mascot on Freaks and Geeks?  

• It occurs to me that Farthington, Steffi, and Rusty all ascend in this story as the Joe Lazarus figure descends. They are the strange fruits that have overtaken the garden in the absence of a gardener figure.

• I like The Benefactor figure.

• I read Kubla Khan as the greatest of all Romantic poems about the beauty that can result from the unattainability of the unattainable. That is one reason I like thinking of this performance in light of Coleridge. Really, we've got a metanarrative--glimpses of what we'd really like to share with the world. It's the story of our impossible attempt to give the world Arthur White as much as it is about Arthur White's struggles to save Iceland, whatever Iceland represents to him.

• My love of morality plays reemerges as well, although in a postmodern way. All of the formal features of the Iceland struggle have some sort of symbolic significance to Arthur that he attempts to solve by assembling versions of the concert in his mind, but we can't quite call any of the figures allegorical because who knows what they mean. In my mind, I feel an intuitive connection between 70's cults and contemporary digital culture and it informs my understanding if Farthington v. Humboldt, but I can't spell it out enough to cry allegory. Still, even just something that teases an audience toward allegorical thought carried in a frame of amateur public performance satisfies the part of me that wants to carry the torch of Catholic performance art by nodding toward morality plays.

Will's Canon of Influences Countdown - #5

I was just thinking that a nice entry or series of entries for the blog might be a list of some of the records that have inspired the project directly or indirectly. Maybe we could each do a top ten!

5.  Illuminations by Alice Coltrane and Carlos Santana

I could see either Joe Lazarus and Arthur White making an album this beautiful, but with words as well and of course more Catholic, or I could see Rysty Kryystyylz making a terrible bizarro world version of this album with Arthur, full of just awful Night Ranger-ish guitar solos and completely stupid, uninspired stuff that is credited to Arthur but that mostly isn't his.

Roll Over, Beefoven

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 10 September 2014.

"Chuck Berry 1971" by Universal Attractions (management) - eBay item photo front photo back. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Bystanders playing roles, cover songs, digital auditions to join the group, possibly secretly authorized by Steffi Humboldt as Dr. Farthington...that could be pretty funny.

It actually might be a way to have a contemporary Concert for Iceland. Maybe it all appears to be arranged by the Arthur White camp. Maybe we could bring back the idea of Augustine White. Maybe he, some web winners, and the angry remnants of the original Sweet World use a new Concert for Iceland as revenge against Arthur.

I've also been thinking about the lost storyline of the original Sweet World trapped in Japan, Arthur's kids, and Rystyy Kryyztyylz (sic).

We have some generational juxtaposition going on with Carlton vs. Steffi (the 70's cult becomes the Internet) and the two generations of Joe Lazari.

But it would be fun since we have the Witkowskis as the problematic American nuclear family to deal with the Whites as the deconstructed postmodern family. (There might also be an opportunity to contrast musicians "back when music meant something" to the technicians of today).

Anyway, I'm into this notion that the original Sweet World lives to spite Arthur but isn't quite bright enough or resourceful enough to do so, and that Augustine is basically bent on revenge, too, which leads to Concert for Iceland II featuring A. White and the Original Sweet World. I also like the idea that two members of The Sweet World form Beefoven with Rystyy Kryyztyylz and later change their appearances to join the cult and the band Apotheosis, not out of love for Farthington but to plot revenge against Arthur. Perhaps Arthur never even knew their names in The Sweet World.

Also, I'd be really happy if Beefoven's album were called Roll Over.