Sheer Vertiginous Horror

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 1 April 2016.



What is the significance of two?

You need two mirrors to create an infinite regress, an infinite series of receding images produced by two facing mirrors.

This has been an ongoing motif in our project in terms of dialectics and dichotomies; retweet, repost, embed; the proliferation of Joe Lazarus's clones; the multiplication of y's in Rustyy Kryystyylz's name; the postscenium and proscenium with their telescoping arches; tunnels within tunnels means an infinitude of nothing; not to mention more beneficent pairings like being made in the image and likeness of God and the holy rivalry concept.

What am I missing?

Joseph Conrad's obsession with the double, the shadow self, the doppelgänger, Lord Jim's “I--you--I”

One other area that has interested me recently is that of the entrepreneur or inspirational speaker who helps people find their passion or succeed in business. I find this to be so postmodern and Baudrillardian and unacceptable. Is it acceptable that a person's passion would consist in helping other people find their passion? Is it acceptable that a person's successful business is helping people have success in business? Is it acceptable that a person successfully leverages social media to teach others how to successfully leverage social media? To me, that seems “contentless.” To me, that snaps me back to the image of the proscenium with little or no scenium.

My first experience with this was the large-group awareness training organization I joined at the end of the 90's. It was all about living an transformed life, but to do that one needed to not only take the course (and ideally, many subsequent courses), but also to “enroll” people in the fact that you had undergone said transformation.

Going along with Heidegger's “Language is the house of being,” you needed others to “get” your transformation, otherwise the transformation wouldn't have any real meaning or existence. Who you “be” is a function of who you speak yourself to be. Word = world. And for a while at least, this notion of enrollment was collapsed with the act of registering those same people to take the course. Toward the end of my time there, they endeavored to “uncollapse” these two concepts, but the notion persisted, namely, how do you know that you've fully enrolled people in your transformation? They register for the course themselves.

I've already talked about modeling Knology (Farthington's cult or LGAT) after this concept. I've also mentioned Sizzler's “restaurant within a restaurant” idea, which to me captures the sheer vertiginous horror of the 90's.

Twins, doubles, and clones have been favorites of postmodernism because they convey its notions of circularity, self-referentiality, Baudrillard's collapse of polarities and the endless reproducibility of the simulacrum.

An Open Letter to Iceland

Kæru Íslendingar mínir

Í fáfræði mína, takast ég þér, og vona eftir svari. Það er erfitt að lýsa því hvernig þetta byrjaði allt.

Í grundvallaratriðum erum við að búa til goðsögn um 70 er lagasmiður heitir Arthur White, sem var fæddur til að vera dýrlingur en afl með fjölskyldu sinni til að verða Rock Star. Til að gera langa sögu stutta, tónlist feril sinn nam engu. Hann féll undir ráðum Cult leiðtogi, Carlton Farthington, sem sannfærði hann um að leiksvið a endanlega ávinningi tónleika fyrir Ísland, sem á þeim tíma var að gangast undir röð skelfilegar eldgos. Farthington spáðu að þessi gos boðberi komandi "turbulent víxlar", sem myndi þíða risaeðlur og leiða í fullan snúist við inertial lögum. Hann hélt því fram að eina flýja var að fara niður í eldfjöll, framhjá reanimated risaeðlur, niður í innri kjarna jarðar. Tónleikarnir gerðist aldrei. Hvort turbulent umskipti átt sér stað er opin spurning háð mörgum túlkunum.

Þar þá daga, Arthur White hefur tekið Raflostsmeðferð og verið á stofnunum. Á undanförnum dögum, þó hann hafi byrjað að sýna hættulega hegðun, klifra upp á stoðin-eins og hlutir og hvetja aðra til að gera slíkt hið sama. Hann hefur orðið að ólíklegt andlegur leiðtogi, ekki aðeins til að náungi sjúklingum hans, heldur einnig til hjúkrunarfræðinga, orderlies og groundskeepers. Læknar hans hafa komið að trúa því að Arthur æsingur stafar af komandi 40 ára afmæli tónleikunum fyrir Ísland, 4 Júlí 2016, og sem, sviðsetning spotta útgáfa af þessum tónleikum, þeir mega vera fær um að koma Arthur frið.

Í þessari viðleitni, Arthur White fylgir bróður sínum, fyrirtæki framkvæmdastjóri, og trommara, Will Witkowski; andlega ráðgjafi, bassaleikari / organisti og her Detroit Public sjónvarpsþáttur All Things New, faðir Bernard; og niður-og-út gítarleikari upphaflega ákveða að spila tónleika fyrir Ísland, Rustyy Kryystyylz.

Og viljum við bæta við nokkrum Íslendingum í fjölda okkar.

Þó að það er erfitt að útskýra, teljum við að Detroit, Michigan, er bein framlenging á primordial anda eyju þjóð þína. Annaðhvort að Leif Ericsson raun uppgötvaði Detroit eða að það er einhver neðanjarðar vatnaleiðum milli tveggja staða. Eða bæði. Við teljum að Leif Ericsson getur samt lifa á bökkum þess neðanjarðar ána, veitta ódauðlegur með boltann hans dularfulla steini hann hrifsa frá hjarta forn íslensk eldfjall.

Við viljum gjarnan að finna hljóðfæraleikurum og bakgrunnur vocalists sem deila sækni okkar fyrir 70 s R & B og blá-eyed sál.

Hvað væri að niðurstöður þessarar tónlistar skipti? Ég veit ekki, en ég hef nokkrar hugmyndir. Einn viljum við vinna í "fjarlægð" getu, kannski að taka smá tónlist eða jafnvel sviðsetning alvöru tónleika í Michigan eða Íslands.

Með kveðju,

Arthúr

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.

Very Biblical and American at the Same Time!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 1 January 2015. It should be noted that, since 1 November 2014, all Art's emails have originated from Farthington's account.


"Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, MMA-NYC, 1851" by Emanuel Leutze - The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Bullet points of serendipity suggest rightness.

Absolutely, the Concert has become Arthur's dome in air. This meshes somewhat well with Farthington, although this is not some mythical location in the Far East, but one that is, at least according to our recent exchanges, the essential source and summit of the White American Dream in its inchoate, primordial, inarticulate form.

I agree that this could be a 1976/2016, always/never, show/not-a-show. I do like the Fr. Bernard frame story ("Thank you all for coming in support of Arthur's healing and wholeness," directly addressing the actual audience before the show begins) as our innocent-enough introduction to the larger conceit.

Could we do a series of these concerts leading up to the 40 year anniversary, 2016? Very biblical and American at the same time!

I like the 60's Hamlet idea, but I was, in part, cutting costs with the straightforward approach. I did want reality set up by Fr. Bernard at the beginning to break down in one or more ways, though, so we can go that route.

Other ideas to share:

• I want a cheap program made for the show, with various diegetical/exegetical/fake biographical things included in its pages. One that I have clearly visualized is "Fr. Bernard's Corner" or "Chaplain's Corner" (scrawled in horrible with Blackadder font, perhaps with Comic Sans as the body font) where we let Father write a page of whatever he wants about the show. He obviously has some understanding of the show idea that resonates with him religiously. In some way, his is just one interpretation among many, but I do want to give him a couple spots within the overall experience that give him and his viewpoint some primacy (another one that I'm fantasizing is a closing prayer!). Other things would be a page calling for benefactors, guarantors, volunteers, etc. We could even potentially sell some advertising space to defray the cost. And by "sell," I want us to ideally take the approach of "Could you buy my costume, a straitjacket, a set of related props, scrubs for the orderlies, etc?" remembering that people prefer providing things not money.

• I want to enable a social media explosion, especially from members of the band. At the first meeting (after prayer, of course), I want to have everyone get Twitter, Instagram, and Vine on their phones. Whenever there is a spare moment to tweet (Twitter), to take a picture (Twitter or Instagram), or shoot a video (Instagram or Vine), I want us to do that, whether together or alone. Who knows, maybe it may even get built into the payout algorithm. In the show's program, I want to give people the Twitter hashtag #ConcertforIceland to allow them to do the same. Father Bernard can even make mention of this in his opening monologue: "Photographs with a vintage filter, in particular, will go a long way toward convincing Arthur that this actually happened" (Twitter has actually added a bunch of filters to compete with Instagram).

• A good money-making side thing might be a Concert for Iceland t-shirt drive. There are a lot of these sites out there nowadays, and it seems like a much better alternative to your usual Kickstarter. I was thinking black t-shirts with text like "Who is Arthur White?" or "Will is the finisher" or "Carlton Farthington died in the tunnels" or "Tough as Kryystyylzz" with an appropriate stylized photo. On the back, Concert for Iceland tour dates (which would be primarily locations in Iceland, I suppose, maybe kicking off in Tokyo, hitting Rome, Oslo, Detroit--the biggies). Do we have anyone who we could talk to about design? I have a pretty clear idea of the look.

Here's a couple of ideas I had for the show itself:

After Father's explanatory intro, orderlies wheel me in, shaved head, unshaven beard in a straitjacket. As I get closer, I dive onto the stage, roll around, get up, trying to free myself. Orderlies tackle me, lift me up and place me before the microphone à la this iconic moment with David Bowie and Klaus Nomi on Saturday Night Live (by the way, check out some more Klaus Nomi if you haven't). Start undoing the shackles as I sing. They first of all tighten some ridiculously loose pants. I've got some other things that make me a patchwork of mismatched motley particolored patterns (I guess identifying me as high jester or Lord of Misrule). They put a ridiculous winter hat on my head, which I promptly take off and throw at you (hat motif: Will's attempts to comfort, confine Arthur's mind; rationalism in general, etc.).

At some point after that first song, I realize that it's really Rustyy Kryystyylzz over at the other microphone. I edge over there and have a loud, funny, whispered conversation with him into the microphone with an excessive amount of heavy breathing, plosive pops, and saliva. "Where'd they pick you up?" "You look perfect." "Why'd they dress me like this?" "Why are the band members dressed like orderlies?" Until someone says, "We can hear you! You're talking into the microphone!" I want a very West African/postmodern aesthetic that always seeks to make the listener aware of the instrument (as opposed to the European aesthetic, which tries to make as little of it as possible).

With the Farthington encounter, much later in the show, I want whoever that is to wander in and have a conversation with Arthur, either as the band members pretend to play on silently or go into some strange interlude. I would like someone to actually do the live text-to-voice typing and have that conversation be somewhat scripted but improvised. Essentially, we need to communicate some of what has happened to Farthington since the failed Concert for Iceland. Perhaps there is a shifting of text-to-voice personas until Farthington settles on a female voice and reveals herself as Steffi. I think this would be a good time for the obligatory Arthur leaving the building moment, walking out hand in hand with the Sea Demon.

This may be near the end, and as Arthur climbs up on the nearest pillar-type thing. Perhaps this is when Fr. Bernard does his closing prayer. Then, we can all run back in for a smashing finale (a reprise of the end of "Agniezscka's Song" or "The Ladder"?).

One last thought re: multiple shows. Were we to have them, I think we should build in some variations that would occur from show to show. Perhaps we could have more than one Rustyy Kryystyylzz (e.g. Russ and your cousin). Perhaps we could play a slightly different list of songs, swapping out 2 or 3 each time from a total of about 15. We could also identify a few other areas that could easily be shifted from show to show. Especially if there are plot elements that we disagree about, would these be opportunities for having multiple story lines?

As for practicing, we'll have to identify the personnel. Maybe the band can plan a big vacation weekend up at your place in early summer!

This Ongoing Dream of Art-in-Itself

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 1 January 2015. It should be noted that, since 1 November 2014, all Art's emails have originated from Farthington's account.

Ron Asheton with Niagara

Okay, that last one was not something that a Will would like to hear from an Art.

I have this ongoing dream of art-in-itself, and any radiation would be a mere byproduct of ever-increasing inward-looking artness.

You are the finisher! I shouldn't have to do this!

Well, I am just getting over the flu and I should take a quick moment to say Happy New Year! I have been spending the last few days in bed, which is why I am finally coming to at 2 a.m. feeling vaguely queasy but beginning to think about the project (not to mention the planning and pile of papers I still have to finish by Monday).

What about another show?

I really think the one I mapped out where Arthur's doctors have recommended this as a way to bring him closure and hopefully getting him to stop climbing up on pillars was feasible. I think July 4th weekend might make the most sense, since that was when it was originally supposed to be held in 1976. The other option is around Christmas, since many of the songs are thematically tied to that season. I know that is when a lot of students are gone too, so I would be open to another option (May again?).

Why so feasible?

Father already has everything he would need for the show (clerical garb). We would just need each band member to buy scrubs (we could assign a color scheme and tell them where to pick it up; reimburse later?). Russ, as the real Rustyy Kryystyylzz, would be the only one who might need to get some actual duds. I'm thinking along these lines. And you already have some good has-been Will Witkowski duds. I would need a shaved head, maybe a wig, strait jacket, institutional garb, etc.

Beyond that, some cheap props that we could probably find.

Our musicians would not need to look like anyone in particular, since they are just orderlies at the mental institution who happen to play instruments. We don't need vintage equipment. We don't know who the original line up of the Concert for Iceland was supposed to be, but with this story, we wouldn't need to know.

I do have one big-ticket item on the wishlist for that show: a large, life-size mascot costume of Carlton Farthington, but altered in several terrible ways, à la deadmau5, but way more DIY and scary. I'm thinking red, gray, charcoal with x's in place of his eyes--a looming, terrible, demonic mascot that resembles the CFCC one, but does not infringe on copyright (so as to avoid this). I'm going to ask my cousins whether they might be able to do that. Other artists who do that kind of stuff?

If we do this, I'd also like us to set up some version of our payout algorithm mentioned before, to encourage every single band member to play full out in getting every single person they can to attend the show--and to reward the ones who do, at least a little more handsomely.

What do you think? I'm trying. I'm not a finisher!

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.

The Concert for Iceland

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will and Joe on 12 March 2014.

Catastrophic eruptions in Iceland

I want to see if I can help hammer out the Iceland story a bit.  Remember that in our "more commodious" frame, this may just be one story among many, not the least of which being our own story: three guys trying to make rock music past our prime (well, not you Joe).

My hope is that this doesn't sound absolutely, utterly insane.

Here goes:

1. Sometime during his Asian odyssey, Arthur falls in with Carlton Farthington
2. Will, seeing his brother sinking deeper into a dangerous cult, manages to get Arthur home again: disaster averted (for the time being)
3. From America, Arthur begins campaigning to have Farthington brought to the states
4. Farthington, who had never considered the idea, becomes personally interested
5. With his Oxford doctorate, Farthington actually receives permission to run a summer pilot program at a Midwestern university on the topic of "multidimensional learning"
6. Long story short, the program devolves into spending a lot of time down in the university's steam tunnels trying to find an entrance to the underworld
7. Arthur is ecstatic about this development; for the sake of the story, however, he needs to be occupied such that he is unable to be with Farthington that summer
8. Meanwhile, catastrophic eruptions occur in Iceland; Farthington begins talking to his students/followers and Arthur about mounting a humanitarian campaign
9. Plans are made for "The Concert for Iceland"; Rustyy Kryystyylz, famed guitarist of the band Beefoven, is contacted and promptly becomes a cult member (he's a little ditzy)
10. Will, in a last ditch effort to save everything that he has worked for, is able to have Arthur committed to a sanitarium and zapped
11. Around the same time, Farthington's pilot program goes horribly wrong with university officials pulling the plug; Farthington and his handful of students/followers get mangled and/or killed by some unknown beast in the steam tunnels beneath the school
12. Arthur is catatonic; Farthington may or may not be dead (spoiler alert: not)
13. Some years after the fact (circa 2014?) buzz originating from an online source begins circling: the Concert for Iceland will finally happen!
14. But the status of just about every participant in the project is in doubt: Isn't Arthur still catatonic? Wasn't Farthington was among the mangled dead found in the steam tunnels? Isn't Rustyy Kryystyylz just a washed-up has-been? And where is Will Witkowski? (Not like he would have been in the benefit band)
15. As time goes on, clues emerge that the online source is none other than Carlton Farthington; after all, his cult involved a "novitiate" whereby novices would forfeit all identifying information and artifacts about themselves--the online source (a blog) indeed seems to be a "clearinghouse" for this kind of material
16. The blog builds to the point that actualization seems imminent.  Posts reveal increasing focus, productivity, and purpose...

What happens?

• The Concert for Iceland: The "original" imagined concert (leave it to the audience to decide whether it actually did happen or this is a figment of someone's imagination) OR
• A "Second-Chance" Concert for Iceland: The original never happened; this occurs long after the fact with a bunch of washed-up has-beens seeking redemption OR
• Karaoke Tour of Arthur White and Rustyy Kryystyylz: This may lead to the "Second-Chance" Concert once people realize who these two losers are OR
• Joe Lazarus Jr.'s Crusade: Joe finds Arthur and leads a campaign to win back the rights to Arthur's material à la The Artist Formerly Known As Prince re-recording and re-releasing all the old material (although it wouldn't need to take that exact form)

Other fun facts:

• Carlton Farthington, if he is still alive, is now ensconced in an entirely electronic identity.  He lives through the blog, websites, online voicemail, text-to-speech software, and speech-to-text transcription.  One of the more disturbing developments is Carlton's "spoken" synthetic messages that begin surfacing around this time, leading to two interpretations: (1) Carlton is dead and someone else is creating these transmissions or (2) he was severely mangled, likely losing the parts of his face and mouth used for speaking and now pulling the strings using these electronic tools.  In some ways, it's the old Star Wars theme of how evil makes one less human ("He's more machine now than man"). And, yes, this wholly electronic existence is meant to be a reflection of the plight of modern man in general.
• Carlton Farthington's real reason for wanting to go to Iceland had to do with an arcane theory that melting ice from the volcanic eruptions will cool the lava, opening up caverns that go down to the center of the earth, safe haven from all the "turbulent reversals" he thought imminent. Complicating matters, he believed that live dinosaurs--both frozen in the ice and living in the warm subterranean caves--would be released at precisely this moment (he considered this one of the less dramatic aspects of the "turbulent reversals," which he theorized would ultimately result in a "new physics").  The humanitarian concert was a front for this agenda.

Concert for Iceland Update

The following is an excerpt of a 29 December 2013 email sent from Art to Will and Joe.

I want to start the re-recording process with songs from Concert for Iceland, which I see as Arthur White's last show under his full powers.

Some of the material relates Arthur's marital and mental breakdown, but also some hopeful songs in which he is clearly breaking free from the sham promises of Carlton Farthington.  I'm not sure Arthur even made it to Iceland: this may have been when Will staged his definitive intervention.  Indeed, in the song "Iceland," Arthur seemed to be under the impression that Iceland is made entirely of ice (thus rendering the volcanic explosion even more devastating in his mind).  But he was at least ready to go and not just for the concert.

The true object of the trip is explained in Farthington's Principles of Theory.

The other exciting possibility in this stage is the rediscovery of famed guitarist Rustyy Kryystyylz, who was planning on playing the benefit concert with Arthur.  This was widely seen as a potential new creative collaboration after the dissolution of The Sweet World.

A funny show would be Arthur and Rustyy playing along with a karaoke machine, dramatizing just how both had fallen after the failed benefit.

Icelandia

The following is an excerpt from emails sent from Art to Will on 16 September 2013.

Okay, one more thing: I want the band to be somewhat keyboard heavy.  The organ, a Wurlitzer or Fender Rhodes electric piano, and/or one or more era-appropriate synthesizers are all on the wish list for Apotheosis.

Long story short, I want to achieve some disturbing effects reminiscent of Marvin Gaye's later, commercial flop albums.  Guitar, bass, and drums will still be central of course (sax is fine too), but I really want Apotheosis to have that keyboard-heavy signature.  I might disguise my hobbyist Yamaha keyboard so as to be able to use it.  I've been able to find some of the sounds I want on it.

I'd love for you to keep writing.  Would it be best to get the writing totally done first, so as to be better able to approach people with the full vision?  Maybe I could get the songs written, recorded, and uploaded during that same period.  I think it makes sense to work on this just the two of us until we are ready to bring people in and tell them exactly what to do.  That would mean the songs written, recorded, and uploaded, and the script written.

Does that sound like a good idea?  I think we often got the cart before the horse for the previous show.  It's fun and exciting to jump the gun a little bit and get practicing--building the plane as we're flying it, so to speak--but I think that approach often left us playing catch up and cutting corners.  How many cliches can you use in two sentences?

If you're starting to think of ideas for the show, I need there to be a volcano model that will be used to demonstrate the explosion, spraying lava on at least one member of the band.  I also think there should be persistent misunderstandings about Iceland coming through in the press conference, such as the idea that Iceland is made entirely of ice, making lava an even more catastrophic event!

I also think we need a real graphic artist to design the "CONCERT FOR ICELAND featuring Arthur White and Rustyy Kryystyylz with a Special Appearance by Dr. Carlton Farthington" posters around town (I've already mentioned the close-up with Dr. Farthington cuddling with the orphaned Icelandic toddler).  I think I may need to write a song titled "Icelandia."  

An Interview with Rustyy

I heard an interview with Rustyy in my head this morning:

Interviewer:  How should we pronounce your name?

RK:  What does the voice inside your head tell you?

I:  Rusty Crystals?

RK:  I believe you.

I:  Why the extra Y's?

RK:  They aren't extra.  

I:  So that is the name you were born with?

RK:  We must all play the parts of many names, but in the purest, most eternal sense of your question, yes.  Dr. (Sorry! His name escapes me--Burmese-born, Oxford-educated...) found it for me.

I:  And you trust that he is right?

RK:  Look, man, the only way any of us can know anything about ourselves is to abandon everything we know about ourselves and listen to how others see us.  Other people know.  We don't.

I:  So my interview, in a sense, is pointless. 

RK:  You've got to discover that for yourself.

I Like the Refrain of "Why, Why?"

The following is a September 2013 email exchange between Art and Will touching on the subjects of Rustyy Kryystyylz, The Concert for Iceland, and Carlton Farthington.

Art:

So there's this motif of renaming, suggesting a theme of becoming one's true self (or not).  Will renamed Arthur, Dr. Carlton Farthington renamed Rustyy, not to mention that we are all changing our real names to be part of the band.  I'm pretty sure that Dr. Carlton Farthington is a name he made up or received as well. 

I don't know a lot about Rustyy Kryystyylz but I do think he's part of the cult.  Maybe we can have some sort of Concert for Bangladesh but with a lot less altruism at its core.  A fundraiser that essentially is going right into Dr. Farthington's coffers.  Going along with the Concert for Bangladesh idea, Kryystyylz would definitely be the Leon Russell figure: no offense to the guy, but likely the dumbest one there.  

This would give us another opportunity to talk and have interviews in the context of the show itself.  Of course, we need to track down Dr. Farthington, who I imagine as a somewhat corpulent Indian man (though Burma born).  Maybe the concert is a combination press conference, with actual members of the press out in the audience, some of whom have not drunk the Koolaid.  

Definitely like to have an interview/press conference component.

Will:

Two thoughts. 

One, Will even renamed himself.  Like lots of Detroit Polish people, he doesn't pronounce his name properly, and his real first name isn't Will, it's Witold. 

Two, I like the refrain of "why, why?" in Rustyy's name.

Rustyy Kryystyylz (sp?)

The following is an excerpt from an email sent from Art to Will on 12 September 2013. 

Peter came up with the above name for some reason and I'm envisioning him as some outsider guitarist during Arthur White's divorce period.  I am imagining someone who looks a little like a cross between a young Leon Russell and Kid Rock (isn't that basically who Kid Rock is trying to look like?).  He may be a cult member.  Maybe you (and/or you as Will Witkowski) aren't in the band.  Maybe this is Apotheosis.

The songs for this hypothetical show would be darker than dark.  They would have a semblance of normal chord progressions, but diverge in gut-wrenching ways, sort of like an Emily Dickinson "ballad."  

Some songs would be:

• Tell Me Why (You Took Away My Children)
• The Fall
• Agniesczka's Theme/Steel Driving Man
• Tokyo Nights
• Arthur White Theme
• Rusty Kryystyylz

If we move forward at all in our new situation, I'd like to have a somewhat freewheeling approach to this universe.  One great spin-off would be action figures and, in order to do that, you need to populate the universe with a blinding array of characters and plot lines.

Another dream: I want to have a contemporaneous, "real time" show with Boogie Bob Baldori, whose son I know.  That's probably a long shot, but I like the idea that it's kind of like the 2012 Elton John/Leon Russell album.  Right now, he's traveling around promoting his documentary Boogie Stomp.  It would certainly add credence to the story to have a show like that.