HOW TO START A COLLECTIVE DURING A RECESSION

strange days

It’s 2AM.

I’m still awake. Take a sip of the red eye; eat a couple of chocolates. Have a smoke. The easel in the kitchen is empty. An hour or two ago, Charlie Rose was interviewing Larry Summers onstage at the Global Economic Forum in Davos on two channels simultaneously. The broadcasts were staggered.

What’s Summers doing there? Rose is such a globalist suck-up, now. He used to have a really juicy good ole boy schtick going. Now, he’s one of the Super Class propagandists, pushing the oldest of the ole boy networks. Did Summers jet to Davos on a bankster dime, or at taxpayer expense? How about Charlie? He’s a public television guy. Did I pay for that, too?

Another storm is going to drench Southern California in a day or two. I thought it never rained here.

The Times and Salon are not lifting the spirits. There was a time, when I didn’t care a lick about the news. I didn’t watch TV or read a paper for about ten years, in one stretch. After listening to some progressive radio around 3PM today, I had this nice visual of projecting a target on the face of the Goldman Sachs building in Manhattan. Is that legal?
I would say it’s an improvement on the kind of antics that used to run like a slasher movie between my ears a decade ago. A decade before that – forget about it. 

Air America is no more. It’s time for the Fairness Doctrine 2.0.

The spin machine on global corporate television is working overtime, to re-order the domain in the aftermath of Obama’s nifty shuffle move to confront the Republicans over lunch today. What’s he up to? It would be great to have a playbook from each party, right about now, to know what the coaches are working with, in terms of options. The margins are pretty thin.

Americans are fed up. We’re slowly percolating into a mob. I caught the end of Vincent Price in The Baron today, and watched most of Elmer Gantry. You put the two scenes together and you have a pretty fair assessment of “the situation on the ground.”

My eyelids are obstructing my view of the monitor. Focus on food. Think about politics.

Revenge… [[A Dish Best Served Cold: One part planned ambush cum uprising with guns and pitchforks [simmer]; one part combustion or spark in a highly flammable environment [broil]; add a burning cross with Christmas lights, lynched swindlers, and a hands-on healer in an ecstatic state for tinder and fuel]] Unfortunately, you’ve got the recipe for a revolutionary flambé heavy on the meat, and, having come of age in an anger-managed USA, I’m not sure what that means. As Bobby Zimmerman used to sing, “The Times, They Are A’changin’…”

I mopped grinds today, but good, on the cheap – relatively. The menu included a pizza from Trader Joe’s for a late lunch, and homemade tasty white pasta for a late dinner. Today [1:27PM], I spiced up the white pasta with red chile, green chile, red peppers, black peppers, salt, jack cheese, and butter. What do I know about French cuisine?

Can you make a real-world guillotine from Parmesan Arregiano and still get the job done? America needs jobs, jobs, and more jobs. Didn’t Larry Summers say something about the middle class? Whose jurisdiction is this? I’m wondering whether President Obama figured out that Summers is functioning in the capacity of WEF Governor of America. Maybe that title’s too clunky. Maybe the shared leadership model being applied in the U.S. of Corporate America governance system would view a title like “Governor” uncouth.

I shouldn’t try to write anything sensible after, oh, 2AM. It’s 2:21. It’s about time to lie down.

Not yet. I realized this morning that “The Procedural” of CopTV Fantasyland is a model for failure, ripped from corporate press headlines. If you use that methodology, the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, any war, really, you’ll never win a war. What if that’s the design concept? J’ever thinkathat? [Not French]

The CAA Art Journal came today [yesterday, in plastic], too, and the really worthy 4D texts inside on time space are contributing to my dislocation. I am totally digging spurge’s TOPOLOGICAL SPACE OF “THINGS” model. I’m working it – actually, a related dimensional variation of my own brand – right now. I’m dealing with “THING,” singularities, relational capacities, events, structures, abilities, complementaries, affordances [those last couple are clever and innovative terms], assemblage [needlessly generic], zones of the possible, zones of potential capacities, negative experience, qualitative multiplicity, and so on. So, we begin to merge into the question of how to form a collective in a recession.

In reality, creating collectives is not really the issue. Human beings by definition are collective creatures. “We” is collective. This is not simply or exclusively a linguistic construct.

Lula calling with wedding plans from Kauai only compounds the narrative. Marriage is a root application of collective human function. Life is generative, to use another recent artsy genre definer. Yesterday was Shane Kandy’s natal birthday! I especially love the circular features of the spurge model. That feature is accurate.

Not to say that the linear aspect is somehow made obsolete by the truth of circularity. Throw in Dane’s Civil War images from Nashville, news that the weekend’s LA art fair has been cancelled, and – also - Richard Tuttle is in town at Gemini G.E.L. for a show of new, recently pulled lithos. At 2AM I’m positively discombobulated. At the moment I’m inspired! Operations in a shared input system are more fun – except when they’re not!

Today, I only left the bungalow to get coffee, spin on the stationary bikes, buy smokes and a bag of groceries. The moon is full overhead. Last night I was instructing a young friend, a pitcher, on some of the finer points of dreaming. It’s time to lie down.

Today, I only left the bungalow to get coffee, spin on stationary bikes, buy smokes and a bag of groceries. A variation – an anomaly – disturbed the progression, however. I found a dollar bill in the grass in my front yard! Good fortune has shone herself, in all her luminescence!

[DREAMING]

¬    I am pregnant. There’s just no other way to say it. I thought I was just fat.

> Glenn Goldberg is in the next episode. Again, there’s some strange gender clarification or modulation happening in the interplay of characters. At one point, I am shown a demonstration of 4D prediction in an algorithmic progression, by long equation. The only problem is the proof means diddly to me. Dammit Jim, I’m an artist, not a mathematician!

[Now the narrative morphs into a screenplay-ready scripted novel about a hitman, masquerading as a nebbish, working on a threesome, with the Centennial Park Arts and Craft Fair in Nashville as the setting]

The hardest part of this deal is pretending I’m me, he thought, shuffling through the throngs towards the concession stand.  The heat and humidity of the Tennessee summer were strangling him, and he was jaggedly jostling a path through sweaty, garishly dressed weekenders.  He hated and feared crowds, and castigated himself for agreeing to meet Julie and Cass at the arts and crafts fair. 

It doesn’t matter two bits in the big scheme of things.  We look like ants from four thousand feet up.  He thought.  He was standing at the end of a line of twenty desperately thirsty people like himself whom he set about inventorying and analyzing like gewgaws in a low-end antique mall: 

•    She’d be alright, if she’d just lay off the Ding Dongs and Ben & Jerry’s…and employ a stylist…and spend more than ten bucks on a shampoo and trim.
•    Somebody give that lady Dr. Spock’s book and a switch, and a pamphlet on birth control.
•    This guy must be Church of Christ.  If he were any more clean-cut than he already is, he could get a job in a wax museum.

And so on, in the manner of a red carpet critic, like Joan Rivers. 

By the time he got to the front of the line he was actually enjoying himself, nearly lost in his role as “Eye of Scrutiny”.  He felt a little sheepish and naughty when the pretty young cashier in the Brown’s Diner t-shirt said, “Yes?  Can I take your order?” in a slightly annoyed tone of voice.  He’d just thought of himself leering at her and huskily drawling, “I’d love to try a little sausage in your biscuits,” and his unconscious fear was that she could hear what he was thinking.

He bought a giant Pepsi with his last three dollars and turned away from the concession stand feeling emotionally jittery, though his body was rejoicing after his initial drag on his soft drink left it half-empty.

He wondered where Julie and Cass had gotten off to.  He stood scanning the hordes like a boulder in a rushing spring thaw stream.  He clicked into stalker mode.  He shed himself of himself.  His consciousness became a pinpoint of concentration focused on matching the memories of the girls’ every mannerism, movement, clothing, skin color, vocal range, wandering patterns, preoccupations, and so on—to their physical manifestations, located somewhere in the tides of humanity washing up against him.  He submerged, a submarine diving under the surface of the ocean, so he could attune himself to the frequency of his quarry.  He quieted all of the voices in his mind, but the one asking, “Where would they go?  What would they attract, or to what would they be attracted?  How long until one of them would need to use the porta-potties?  Would they move against the tide, or with it?” and so on.

Meanwhile, his hunting mind called out to Cass and Julie, summoning them, seducing them, crooning to them, cataloging their unique beauty, longing for them…

[Law & Order is a “procedural” police state propaganda vehicle. One of the derivative programs is SVU {Special Victims Unit}. Another is Criminal Intent, which chronicles the operations of the Major Case Squad of the New York City Police Department. From Wikipedia: In the style of the original Law & Order, episodes are often “ripped from the headlines” or loosely based on a real crime that received media attention. There are iterations evolving from the original.]

[Water is the vehicle for dreaming. This is a prayer for clean water. Inspect the molecular structure of water [H2O]. …Earth’s sexiest threesome.]  

It took a few minutes, but he spotted the girls sitting under a massive oak tree, leaning against its trunk.  He knew he was invisible to them, and luxuriated in that knowledge.  In their consciousness he was a blurring feature in the crowd, a shadow, though in his mind they were crystalline.

[Deleuze]

He would wait a little while to approach them.  He knew that if he tried to talk to them now, he would seem strange, a bit off.  The transition back to normal consciousness wouldn’t take long.  He decided to have a seat at a nearby picnic table within earshot of the girls at an angle that made unlikely the chance that one or the other of them would glance in his direction and discover his presence.

[Things not being where they appear to be ..// Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle - From Wikipedia: In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. This statement has been interpreted in two different ways. According to Heisenberg its meaning is that it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and velocity of an electron or any other particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty. According to others (for instance Ballentine) this is not a statement about the limitations of a researcher’s ability to measure particular quantities of a system, but it is a statement about the nature of the system itself as described by the equations of quantum mechanics.]

He softened his breathing, enjoyed the sun’s heat on his cheek, and the delicious opportunity to eavesdrop on his lover and her friend.

Cass
what a gorgeous day.

Julie        
i wonder where todd is.

Cass
i think we lost him. the last time i saw him he was on his way to the concessions for a soda.

Julie
that reminds me. i’m thirsty.

Cass
he’s in kind of a weird mood today, isn’t he?

Julie
todd? he just got back from detroit. he was there for a few days on business. he usually takes a day or two to readjust. he was going to come over last night for dinner, but he said he was totally fried. i was bummin, but it’s alright. tonight we’ll hang out.

Cass
how does he treat you?

Julie
great. he’s really sensitive and sweet, always doing the little things. when he goes away on business…

Cass
what’s he do?

Julie
he’s a consultant for an investment firm.

Cass
he looks more like a thug than a suit to me.

Julie
(laughs) that’s what turned me on about him at first. he’s been into martial arts since he was a kid.

Cass
really? that’s scary.

Julie
i like it. i feel safe walking down the street with todd.

Cass
is he rough in bed?

Julie
only when i want him to be. (they both giggle)
are you still dating whatsisname?

Cass
that asshole.

Julie
o god. what happened this time?

Cass
no spice. meat and three every third night. you know me, jules. i can only take that for so long. missionary sex is as appealing to me as a tractor pull. (they laugh) don’t get me wrong. andrew is okay. he’s got a good job. he wouldn’t hurt a fly. he’s very attentive in his own way. i think a golden lab would suit him better than a tart like me. (julie convulses with laughter) he never even asked me what my high heels and leather teddy in the closet were for. i know he looked. i know he noticed. one night we went out to dinner and i didn’t wear any knickers, and when we got home and he figured it out, i swear to you i thought the poor bastard would shit himself.  he was so flabbergasted he couldn’t even get it up.

Julie
omigod.

Cass
he never got over it.  i dumped him a week later.  i never got off once with him. i was practically ordering brown-paper-wrapped parcels every other day. bad sex is expensive. the upside of all this is my sex-toy collection has expanded exponentially. i barely have time the energy to go to work. my favorite is this strap-on vibrating thing about six inches long and two in diameter. my cat is truly fearful. he hides in the corner with his hair up and claws out hissing while i kneel on the four-poster whispering, here pussy, c’mere pussy…

Julie
stop…i’m going to wet my pants.

[Artificial personhood: A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly or as incidental to its very existence. These are such as are supposed best calculated to effect the object for which it was created. Among the most important are immortality, and, if the expression may be allowed, individuality; properties by which a perpetual succession of many persons are considered as the same, and may act as a single individual. They enable a corporation to manage its own affairs and to hold property without the perplexing intricacies, the hazardous and endless necessity of perpetual conveyances for the purpose of transmitting it from hand to hand. It is chiefly for the purpose of clothing bodies of men, in succession, with these qualities and capacities that corporations were invented and are in use.

By these means, a perpetual succession of individuals are capable of acting for the promotion of the particular object, like one immortal being. But this being does not share in the civil government of the country, unless that be the purpose for which it was created. Its immortality no more confers on it political power, or a political character, than immortality would confer such power or character on a natural person. It is no more a state instrument than a natural person exercising the same powers would be.]

His ears were ringing with voyeuristic lust. Jesus. He thought. This Cass was downright randy. The noise from the hordes had faded to a distant hum in his mind, the way the city’s or the jungle’s cacophony is moderated by one’s familiarity with it. Or rather, the way the world is hushed when one inches closer to the void…

[Marshall McLuhan {classroomwowalls.pbworks.com}: The violence that all electric media inflict in their users is that they are instantly invaded and deprived of their physical bodies and are merged in a network of extensions of their own nervous systems. As if this were not sufficient violence or invasion of individual rights, the elimination of the physical bodies of the electric media users also deprives them of the means of relating the program experience of their private, individual selves, even as instant involvement suppresses private identity.

The loss of individual and personal meaning via the electronic media ensures a corresponding and reciprocal violence from those so deprived of their identities; for violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.

“Violence of the Media”, Canadian Forum, 1976

>

In the eighties, as we transfer our whole being to the data bank, privacy will become a ghost or echo of its former self and what remains of community will disappear.

“Living at the Speed of Light”, Maclean’s magazine, 1980]

Julie was a twenty-five year-old blonde southern beauty, already deeply tanned, though it was barely June.  Her family was wealthy and doted on her prodigiously. She was pursuing her MFA at Columbia when Todd met her six months earlier.  Julie’s favorite medium was ceramics. He had noticed her hands from across the lecture hall, beautiful hands, strong, supple, and alive, the hands of an artist, not yet weathered by her work. He had found himself unable to concentrate on the academic dissertation on Anasazi pottery and its derivatives, and increasingly consumed by those hands. 

[From the Columbia University website: The Visual Arts Program attracts emerging artists of unusual promise from around the world. They join a vigorous community, working alongside an exceptional faculty at a world-renowned research institution in New York City, the center of the art world.

Contemporary art has become increasingly interdisciplinary. To that end, the Visual Arts Program offers an MFA degree in Visual Arts rather than in one specific medium.]

This was unusual for him, almost alarmingly so. His relationships with women had been of necessity limited to superficial albeit [often] dramatic and uproariously intense liaisons over weekends, rarely stretching over a month in duration. 

Todd’s native headset was that of an insecure and hypercritical nerd, set in a honed tool of a body, directed by immense will and sense of duty.  All his confidence came from his experiential applications.  This fact had done nothing to erase the snotty brat that lived between his ears, if nowhere else in his life.

Todd had gently courted Julie, nurturing in the girl a comfortable sense of security, an understanding that he would not hurt her, that he enjoyed her for who she was, that their relationship had no limitations, but for one: she must be satisfied with his vague explanations for his frequent road trips, and his occupation.  He did nothing to encourage her natural curiosity.  On the contrary, he brought home with him reams of technical papers, which to a great extent insured that Julie would develop a sincere pity for him.
They were a spontaneous couple, embarking on romantic getaways in exotic locales several times in the first few months of their mutual infatuation.  Hong Kong. Machu Pinchu. The Caymans.

For him this sort of extravagance was normal, except that with Julie, he had been forced to admit, he enjoyed the girl’s company more every time he saw her.  She constantly surprised him.  Her erotic appetite was bountiful and varied, and there was very little, nothing in fact, that seemed to embarrass her. Todd found this very appealing.

[Heraclitus quotes, from thinkexist.com:

“Everything flows and nothing abides, everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.”

“No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.”

“Greater dooms win greater destinies.”

“The sun is new each day.”

“The chain of wedlock is so heavy that it takes two to carry it - and sometimes three.”]

Julie had been shocked by the sexual antics in one of the exclusive clothing-optional clubs to which he had introduced her in Paris, but she had merrily stripped out of her evening gown within moments after they had arrived. Todd had actually been pleased by her lack of desire to join in the orgiastic convolutions of the party. She preferred his attentions and reveled in their passionate exhibitionist coupling on the red velvet pillows piled in a discreet darkened side room. Julie easily rebuffed, in perfect french, a flushed middle-aged couple who attempted to insert themselves into the menage a deux , but enjoyed it when they stayed to watch…
Today Julie was wearing a floral cotton mini-dress she had bought in Mexico, delicately and colorfully embroidered, snuggly fitted about her well-formed breasts, softly revealing the healthy curves of her taut abdomen and youthful hips.  Her sandals were simple Greek ones, the straps of which wrapped about her ankles and tied a couple of inches below her calf.  No jewelry except a thin gold chain about her neck, and a woven bracelet from Kenya on her wrist.  Her sandy blonde hair, which gracefully danced on her shoulders, blew about her face, turning golden in the sun.  He loved it when those hands swept her bangs behind her ears.

Cass
you must be as kinky as i am, love.

Julie
no. (trying to catch her breath) i mean, i’m going to pee if you don’t stop.

Cass
you’re not even wearing pants, jules. how could you possibly pee them.

Julie
omigod…

Cass relented, giving Julie time to gather herself.  He noticed the admiration in Cass’s attention to Julie. He wondered if they had ever been together.  Julie had told him she had felt the tingle of attraction for her own gender, but had never pursued it. Todd felt the beads of sweat forming above his upper lip.  Cass was certainly beautiful, in a different way. She was a classical dancer turned personal trainer, from Glasgow. Her auburn hair was short, if fashionably styled.  Her body was angular and boyish. She favored tight jeans, cowboy boots, cut-off t-shirts, Ray-Ban Wayfarers and leather jackets. Cass, though brought up in the well-to-do lifestyle provided by her hotelier father, appeared to fancy the wild side of life better.  She had met Julie in New York at a party and the two had become fast friends. They spent weekends together whenever possible, wherever possible, catching shows, dining in the du jour restaurants, mountain biking and hiking…

Julie
where’s todd?

His beeper signaled, sending a barely perceptible vibration into his right hip.

>

He phoned Zeelio.

- Jax. A bomber just vaporized the WEF.

WTF, he thought.