howward zinn, russell means, me, and a telephone.

response to a teacher

this teacher is concerned of his students rampant support for america as an empire, stating they believe that if not us then russia or china will take over the world. this is my response.


the issue of an american empire is not a political issue, concerning governmental power and assertion of control over foreign peoples. the issue at hand, in truth, is a corporate empire. we live in world not run by politics but by commerce. politics is merely the stumbling blocks which corporate tyrants trip over and inevitably buy out or eliminate. this can be shown in hundreds of instances, ranging from the strangling of economies, both at home and abroad, to the brutal treatment to citizens of allied regimes to maintain control, using mercenary force, often times being the military complex itself.

american corporations are definitely major players in the global empire, however we must look further than that. i would suggest having your students research the g-8 committee and the economic policies that spring forth from the eight richest nations in the world, affecting the world over. it is obvious that these nations wish only to profit and doing so will use any measure.

i do not believe that america can sustain ourselves in this climate as we stretch ourselves too thin with military debts to corporations whose major share holders are foreign governments. yes, governments can and do invest, as corporate entities on the global market. for instance, the u.s. invested heavily in the aircraft industry in post WWI america, assuring the profits with the inevitable coming of great wars, such as korea, cambodia, laos, vietnam, and iraq. also look at saudi interests in investing in american oil companies, and the following oil wars in iraq, despite the fact that a number of the terrorists responsible for the attack on the u.s. were saudi in origin. this is proof of an economic empire that goes beyond american borders, but is not mutually exclusive from american foreign policy.

any student that denies the existence of the empire is to be told they are short changed in the information they receive. any student in support of american empires needs to be reminded that empires serve the purposes of the wealthy elite that can only grow smaller in size in a free market, expanding the number of poor, which will lead to mass suffering and revolt. remind your students who they are and who they are not, and let there be no mistaking the two. debt is not wealth.

a short bit on russell means

This posting is in response to a list serve of anthropology professors and students to a stream of remarks surrounding the Republic of Lakota, and the announcement made by Russell Means that they are withdrawing from treaties made 150 years ago with the U.S. These are treaties that have never been kept.
This event, which is historic and a major one in it's implications for the peoples of the Lakota nation, has been, for the most part, kept out of main stream media. You can learn more at: www.republicoflakota.com

I will be interviewing Russell Means on Friday January 25th, immediately following an interview i am also conducting with Howard Zinn. The evening is an event I am producing called, The Crowded Fire. Here is the response to the anthropologists...


I am not a professor or student, but I am concerned that the same old action is beginning to take place within the intellectual community. That would be the action of in-action. I can listen to the great debate of diplomacy and "working within tribal council" versus direct action and support there-of, for only so long. The greatest downfall of the intellectual community is there inevitable breach of trust with the world. The world today looks to this community for direction, for historical reference. Unfortunately, it rarely delivers, rather spends time debating over small details, while ignoring the stark truths that are before them.

Truth: tribal governments that are not showing solidarity with the peoples of the nation are in breach of natural law. This is not unheard of, as most governmental conglomerates rarely represent the most disenfranchised of their own constituency.

Truth: Russell Means has a rich history of dissidence, which should be recognized as courageous and not written off as a publicity stunt or everyday rabble rousing. This man has put his person in the line of fire in the name of freedom for most of his life. We herald the memory of Che, or support the efforts of Marcos, but marginalize and write off the revolutions of our own people. This is most likely due to our own embarrassment of letting people be treated as poorly as we have allowed our system to treat the Indians of America(s).

Truth: Without wide scale support and multiple voices speaking out about this matter, we will see a quiet genocide. People are asking why there is no media coverage as if they have never known about media compliance with business as usual. They will quietly murder as many Indians as they feel fit if the cameras are not on. Granted they will most likely pull a "Waco" distortion of truth if they are seen, but with a large number of voices in the intellectual community speaking in support, there is more of a chance that these people will have some level of safeguard.

Truth: While we debate safely from our offices, homes, and cafe's, 97% of the Pine Ridge Valley lives below the poverty line, without clean water, ample food, heat and housing. If that is not reason enough to revolt, then I do not know what is. I am forced to also make a comparison to Nazi behavior. The Warsaw ghetto. The thought is hard to conceptualize, Holocaust slums in modern US, but then I am reminded of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and feel that there is hope here.

Bottom line is, solidarity amongst all poor people's is the last revolution, and the one that the feeble control structure fears. I do not call it a power structure, as true power needs to assert no control, and the vast numbers of the poor will tell of our power, as a people.

here is a documentary concerning an incident with the FBI and their war on the freedom fighters known as A.I.M. the american indian movement.
part 1.

part 2

imigre! imigre!

immigration is on the top of the debate list for every major candidate, and for that matter, or due to that matter, rather, on the top of the list for most americans. the continuing media war on the poor has found a new face, and it is a lighter shade of brown this time. the use of our borders as a possible threat of terrorism is the cause championed by nearly all right wing media and candidates. the threat of losing work to illegal mexican immigrants has every white american working class citizen on the full defensive. i have seen otherwise intelligent, thinking individuals, turn into neo-conic fascists, with a direct result of racist intention, and self instituted ignorance to the real issue.

MEXICANS ARE NOT STEALING YOUR JOBS! THE CEO'S ARE GIVING THEM AWAY! and they are all to happy to do this. the use of undocumented workers in this country is simply a tool used by companies to avoid labor laws, environmental policy, taxation and of course, alleviates them from providing health care, all at a fraction of what they would have to pay american laborers. it is a way for the rich to remain rich, and at the same time, offer an enemy to the working class, so as not to have them focus on the real danger.

enemies are necessary for power to remain in power. they have convinced the working class americans that the bosses are needed, that they have our interest at heart, when history and even a little inspection into present matters show us quite the opposite. power and control are synonymous. therefore, when the power remains in the hands of the elite, the wealthy few, who are not the workers, then control is dictated by this power and asserted over the dominated working population. when power, which could be obtained through information, the realization of the truth, is asserted by the people, the elite class have few other options than to strangle the economy until the poor are subservient to their needs.

a powerful tool in this process of control is to separate the poor into warring classes, used historically through racism. at the turn of the century, the ghettos in our largest cities were swelling with poor, multiracial, communities. the communities, for reasons of preservation and security, segregated out into neighborhoods, each neighborhood being populated by immigrants of similar origin. irish neighborhoods, italian neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, etc. if these populations were to unite, in a struggle against the wealthy dominating class, there is no question as to the outcome. the sheer numbers alone tell us that the wealthy elite would have had their asses on a platter in time for dinner. this, however, has not occurred, not on a large scale anyway. white anglo puritans, or mayflower whites, were encouraged to fear the italians and the irish, that they might take their jobs, steal food from the mouths of their children, and eventually destroy their culture by inseminating it with hedonistic ideologies. then, when a great war, WWI, comes along, the first people enlisted to go defend out freedoms, was of course, the poor irish, italian and black populations.

this is no different from today. there have been many instances of an undocumented mexican american, entering a recruiting station, and leaving an american soldier. no one is up in arms over this aspect. "let them die for us! but for god's sake, do not let them live with us."

growing up a child of working class factory workers in the eighties, let me experience firsthand, a thing or to about econo-tics (economics + politics). my mother an father were on strike, repeatedly, causing our family to go on public assistance. this would not have been an issue had my parents not been subject to the great amount of shame associated with the welfare system. it was decided that my mother would go to work with a family of migrant workers that she had befriended, and work the corn fields of indiana and ohio, for two dollars an hour. ten hours a day, she would walk through muddied corn fields, hand picking corn. we could not afford a baby sitter for me, so i had the opportunity to go with my mother.

we would arrive at the house of her friend, lydia, an organizer of pretty much any and everything in the mexican migrant community in area. it would be 4:30 in the morning when lydia would be handing out paper cups of "cafe con leche" and tortillas to about forty men women and children, in her back yard. she gave the younger kids, like myself, pan dulce, sweet bread and juice. after about ten minutes of eating, we would climb into trucks and vans and drive for forty minutes to the fields that they would be working that day. the younger children would play around the trucks and play hide and seek in the corn, while the adults and older children would work, in long lines, walking down the rows of corn taller than themselves, stripping away strands of leaves from the husk. they would break at noon and everyone would come back to the trucks where lydia would pull a grill and a cooler out for lunch.

it was the most amazing thing i had ever seen and affected me deeply. that these people worked tirelessly, six days a week, and for next to nothing, and would come together for lunch and there would be nothing but smiles and laughter. i did not speak spanish, and neither did my mother, but it was not necessary. every person i can remember, would struggle to speak broken english and would try so hard to communicate with us. it was not a matter of "lazy mexicans not anting to learn english" as the status quo would have you believe. these people were kind, hardworking people, and my mother was one of them.

many years later, i lived in the northern california town of big sur. big sur is a small community of wealthy people and working class. the workers tended to the land and whims of the rich, on a very concentrated level. there is no middle class there. we lived in room next a mexican family that lived 5 to room. every day they would cook and share food with us and stories and struggle at english while i struggled at spanish. they were the best neighbors i have ever had.

about forty five miles to the north of us were the cities of monterey and carmel. this is the area of california where strawberries are farmed. just below napa valley. driving through this area, on highway 1, north to san francisco, you will find beautiful landscapes of hills and beaches, wild birds of at least 100 species migrating through, small town shops, still surviving the sprawl of san fran and l.a. you will see great pastures of strawberry fields, and in those fields, you will see lines of hunched over workers. sweating and protecting themselves from the sun with only ball caps, and handkerchiefs. rows of shirtless men, bent to back breaking positions, filling baskets with red strawberries. at the end of the row of migrant workers you will find a man, on a horse, overseeing the operation, wearing a full chemical protection suit, with respirator and hood. this is the place famed for being the home of john steinbeck. author of the grapes of wrath.

these people were working for dollars a day to provide strawberries on the plates of americans, whiteout protection from the chemical spray, or the cancerous sun. these are the people that take the blunt end of our aggression. these are the ones credited with stealing american jobs. these are people i know to be good. they are america, goddammit.

are you fucking kidding me?

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SO FUCKING LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

where have all the good journalists gone dead?

this is an interview with benazir bhutto, shortly before her assassination, where in she explains a letter sent to musharaf, fingering her assassins in the case that she would die by political assassination. she makes an interesting, casual statement about the murder of osama bin laden.



and, just a thought, if we changed the name of french fries to freedom fries when france failed to comply with our demands to enter and support an oil war, why don't we change the name of afghan quilts to freedom blankets? not as sexy but i bet they would sell a shit ton of them! i happen to know a great knitter! here is a beautiful afghan...i mean freedom blanket, she made for us.

thoughts on non-violence as a revelation

there have been many times in my life that i have raised two fingers and uttered vague understanding of peace as gospel. there are also times when i have raised fists and brought about, or participated in activities with violence being the end measure. when called out on my hypocrisy, i would rationalize my violent behavior as being shared aggression, which in no way compares to indiscriminate bombing of villages in the name of a cause, and not actually, then, breaking my belief in peace. i was alright at the art of bullshit.

i thought peace was a reaction to war, a reaction to unwanted aggression. i thought peace was a request, even a demand made of others to cease and desist their grotesque destruction of life on this planet. it is not. peace is what becomes when one creates it, when one lives it. not when one simply suggests it, passively. it is revolutionary. which, by definition, requires change within. a true revolution changes not only society, but first and greater, changes the revolutionary.

ideas grow, and change as the understanding of those ideas increase. people change, circumstances change, therefore ideas must allow change, must in fact demand it. if any idea is to be progressive, neither stagnant or regressive, it must evolve. i have evolved. i am now taking the understanding of myself to be that of non-violence. to be peace. do not confuse this with passive, they are in fact enemies, ideologically. passivity breeds complacency. complacency is the root of injustice. when just people are complacent to unjust acts, a war upon truth has begun.

i read reports of the zapatista army, a group in chiapas, who have been fighting oppression in their southern mexico homeland since 1994. this oppression against indigenous peoples of chiapas, and the world over, is led by militaristic force with support of the u.s. military complex. now, i support the ezln (zapatistas) in all of their resistance. they do however wield guns and use violence in their revolution. their violence is in fact a counter-attack, but it is still violence. how can i support them ethically? i am not sure, but i do know that i do fully support them and the people of chiapas, in their struggle to remain free.

i know that my heart tells me they are right, and just in their cries for freedom. my heart also tells me that i can not join them in battle. i can not, at this time, join any battle with the use of violence. i can offer my support by giving voice to their plight. every voice of justice, according to subcomandante marcos, the leader and spokesperson of the zapatistas, is the voice of the zapatista, as they are too the voice of every person oppressed by injustice. if i figure out the answer to the philosophical question of support of violence in the name of non-violence, i will share it.

i think we must distinguish non-violence from non action. we live in a culture that equates action with violence, because we are a culture of violence. the birth of our civilization is built upon the graves of lives of lesser value. we have given value to lives and are now paying the price with our disease of addiction to blood. we are addicted, as a people, to violence. when the earth is sewn with blood, the bitter flowers of hatred and shame will cover us, and remain with us for eternity. we must uproot violence to its core. this cannot be done through ignorance, but only through sharing of ideas. me must ignite one another, and do so until the flames of understanding engulf us entirely.

so then, how does it work. well, i believe that if non-violence is your stance, then it must also mean that you are not only speaking when being YOU are being threatened but also hen others are in the path of violence. we must stand between violence and it's victims and stop it. howard zinn says that to use war to fight tyranny, you kill the victims of the tyranny itself. this is taken in stark truths in vietnam, WWI & II, and currently in iraq. we who believe in peace, not as an idea but as a truth, have committed treason against our own integrity, and the cost has been in the countless victims of this war. not only the dead, but those who are dead and breathing still. those whose life is tragically taken in trade for memories of massive destruction and violence. those who lost limbs can show scars but those who lost the core of their morality in the name of war are also dying. they are suffering a death of the soul, of the spirit. wwhen a life is taken, it takes with it the life that surrounded it.

amazing book deal

four great books for one great price from seven stories.

http://www.sevenstories.com/book/?GCOI=58322100796970

the end is near.

we are closing in on Bush's final year in office, but ding dong the witch is not yet dead. democrats and liberals the world over are beginning to celebrate, quite prematurely, this lame-duck president's departure, with countdown calendars that proclaim the end of an era that most of amerika will inevitably deny existed or claim ignorance to it's force upon the world. much like the the reagan administration and their great gift of apathy towards the aids epidemic and the introduction of crack cocaine into our ghettos. now the man has a postage stamp and the consideration for a dollar nomination bearing his resemblance. why not a pablo escobar day as well?

what we are doing in these last moments is forgetting just how potentially dangerous this administration has shown themselves to be. this final year for g-dub could bring about our greatest fears and be his most damaging year to date.

"I'm going to work hard to the finish. I'm going to sprint," Bush said in October. and with his historical track record, he seals our doom in this short sentence alone. with the passing of the patriot act, being in and of itself the introduction to american homeland fascism, and the more recent assault on civil liberties, the military commissions act, bush has shown us that he means business and business is mean.

so far, by most accounts, including statements from whitehouse correspondents, bush plans to spend his final year as most lame-ducks do, traveling the world in the name of foreign policy. this would show the world that bush is striving towards peace keeping efforts and the maintaining of good business practices. this also seems to say that he has no great plans for the passing of legislation in his final year, being that he is opposed by a majority of dems in congress, it seems that he would be useless at home. however, according to jake siewert, the final white house press secretary for clinton, "There is certainly a fair amount of planning that goes on into the last year. "

this most conniving of administrations has not put their agenda on the back burner, that is to be noted. however, according to the white house, they have achieved so little in his second term. quote: "Mr. Bush now enters the final year of his presidency without major legislation passed in his second term. He still hopes to revive Middle East peace talks and build on signs of progress in Iraq, all the while resisting suggestions that he is increasingly irrelevant."
White House Correspondent Scott Stearns
stearns seems to ignore the passing of the military commisions act on october 17, 2006. this was indeed in his second term and probably the most significant law enacted by a u.s. president in the last 40 years. if this is not considered major legislation by the white house, then i fear what is to come.

meanwhile, back in tv world, we are focusing on the next election. hilary's aging face and obama's comic ears, versus guiliani's lisp and fred thompson's maid. this is exactly the distraction needed to indeed get away with murder, which is precisely what g w and his crew have been doing for years.

"I've never felt more engaged and more capable of helping people recognize - American people recognize that there's a lot of unfinished business," said Mr. Bush. an idea which i can only interpret as, there are still a few liberties remaining unfettered. but if you still believe that bush is relaxing in his last year, just ask karl rove, the man credited as bush's brain in the first term of his occupation.

"He is a bold leader who is going to be milking every single moment that he has got in this office," he said. "He knows the powers of the office. He knows the levers that he has got. He didn't come here simply to occupy it. He came here to do things. And he is going to keep doing things right up to the moment that he leaves January 20, 2009." rove stated about his former boss.

this year will provide us with further attacks in the middle east, that is to be assured, both in iraq and also in the newly appointed arbiter of wmd's, iran. we are picking fights before finishing ones we have started. bin laden ring a bell? and now with iraq in total disarray, we have provided the perfect fodder for hatred and attack of american people, not to mention the thousands of iraqi people who will also be suffering the onslaught of military occupation and resistance this year.

keep in mind that, when speaking of nuclear weapons, the us is a crucial member of the group of eight committee. Four of the G8 members United Kingdom, United States of America, France and Russia together account for 96-99% of the world's nuclear weapons. also, in use of the great scare tactic used to destroy civil liberties, terrorism, The G8 officials also agreed to pool data on terrorism. terrorism has reached new and broader definitions with the passing of the patriot act and the military commissions act, as being those that may pose a threat to homeland security by standing in the way of military action or opposing military force. all peaceful people of the world, who oppose war on principal, are then terrorists and will make the list for the G8, since 2005.

by thew way, in his final year, bush plans to attend the G8 committee meeting in japan, and why not, it is held at a spa/resort and all of this dutiful work against americans and citizens of the world really can put stress on a man. he needs a massage. and if you think the G8 is about producing a foreign policy that ill help to more evenly spread the wealth of the world and open new lines of communication, think again. The eight countries making up the G8 represent about 14% of the world population, but they account for 60% of the world's economic output. that is a number that has a lot of leg-room.

all of this is ahead of us this year and i expect many many surprises by this administration, none of them being favorable to any thinking, feeling, rational, peaceful human being.

good night and good luck.

something to think about- brought to you by hitler and the such

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
Adolf Hitler

so the lesson was learned, and enacted in purpose:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
- Dick Cheney, speech to VFW National Convention, Aug. 26, 2002

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
- George W. Bush, speech to UN General Assembly, Sept. 12, 2002

No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
- Donald Rumsfeld, testimony to Congress, Sept. 19, 2002

The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq.
- George W. Bush, Nov. 23, 2002

If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.
- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, press briefing, Dec. 2, 2002

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, press briefing, Jan. 9, 2003

What we know from UN inspectors over the course of the last decade is that Saddam Hussein possesses thousands of chemical warheads, that he possesses hundreds of liters of very dangerous toxins that can kill millions of people.
- White House spokesman Dan Bartlett, CNN interview, Jan. 26, 2003

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent…. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
- George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.
- Colin Powell, remarks to UN Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003

We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
- George W. Bush, radio address, Feb. 8, 2003

If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since [UN Resolution] 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us.
- Colin Powell, interview with Radio France International, Feb. 28, 2003

So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad?….I think our judgment has to be clearly not.
- Colin Powell, remarks to UN Security Council, March 7, 2003

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
- George W. Bush, address to the U.S., March 17, 2003

The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.
- George W. Bush, address to U.S., March 19, 2003

Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly…..All this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.
- White House spokesman Ari Fleisher, press briefing, March 21, 2003

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And….as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.
- Gen. Tommy Franks, press conference, March 22, 2003

I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.
- Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman, The Washington Post, March 23, 2003

One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.
- Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clark, press briefing, March 22, 2003

We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.
- Donald Rumsfeld, ABC interview, March 30, 2003

Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find - and there will be plenty.
- Robert Kagan, The Washington Post, April 9, 2003

But make no mistake - as I said earlier - we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.
- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, press briefing, April 10, 2003

We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.
- George W. Bush, NBC interview, April 24, 2003

There are people who in large measure have information that we need….so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.
- Donald Rumsfeld, press briefing, April 25, 2003

We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.
- George W. Bush, remarks to reporters, May 3, 2003

I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.
- Colin Powell, remarks to reporters, May 4, 2003

I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein – because he had a weapons program.
- George W. Bush, remarks to reporters, May 6, 2003

We said what we said because we meant it…..We continue to have confidence that WMD will be found.
- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, press briefing, May 7, 2003

Before the war, there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.
- Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps, interview with reporters, May 21, 2003

Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction.
- Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, NBC Today Show interview, May 26, 2003

Do I think we're going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do, because I think there's a lot of information out there."
- Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, Defense Intelligence Agency, press conference, May 30, 2003

You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons....They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two [the labs were later judged to not contain any such weapons, that they most likely were used for weather balloons]. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on, But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them.
- George W. Bush, remarks to reporters, May 31, 2003


It is not truth that matters, but victory.
Adolf Hitler

Mission Accomplished!
G W Bush

bread and circus

tonight i watched a documentary, as often nights i do. this particular film was titled "manufacturing dissent" and billed as the film michael moore does not want you to see. it begins as a sweet, fan based bio pic on moore, showcasing his history as a journalist of sorts, writing and editing an indie paper in the eighties called the flint voice, and moving on to edit the internationally distributed and loudly controversial, mother jones. a job from which he was relieved after only four months. slowly the focus turns from his achievements to his indiscretions as a film maker.

now, i would like to make two things perfectly clear here, the first being that i am a fan of michael moore's work. while i have witnessed his muck-raking tactics first hand, and was not particularly impressed with them, i still believe that he is, and this will lead to my second point, a highly entertaining man, with a knack for pushing buttons not often pushed by mass media. that brings me to my second point of interest...
HE IS AN ENTERTAINER! period.

joining the ranks of moore are other highly entertaining, politically focused entertainers, john stewart and steven colbert. both of which contend that they are not news sources, rather satirists and comedic commentators on the news infrastructure that has both embraced and condemned these three men, and also mangaed to severely betray the american public, time and again, in their haphazard and slanted reporting of distracting and irrelevant "news". almost a true, and rare, definition of irony is boiling up here. we go to our "news" sources, cbs, abc, nbc, cnn and the dreaded fox news network and find reports on the happenings of hollywood's drunken starlets, and go to our hollywood comedians, stewart, colbert, lewis black, michael moore, to get the scoop on our political affairs. this is a sad commentary in and of itself, worthy of interrogation and ridicule by the men in question.

do we hold a higher moral standard to our entertainers than we do to our elected officials, or to those whose job it is to report, truthfully and unbiased, on the actions of our elected officials? what could this possibly say for our collective intelligence?

i watch michael moore because i want to laugh, the same reason i religiously watch programs such as the office. granted, i am aligned for the greater part with the views expressed by moore, but i am also aligned with the views expressed by the family guy. do i need to fact check the sarcasm and snide remarks on society made by the family guy to enjoy it? will it change the way i vote? no.

there is a fourth orwellian truth that needs to be added to big brother's campaign, "distraction is education". we seem to crave distraction from the harsh realities of our world so much so that we have decided to call these distractions informative.

every time i see a bold headline, indicting a hollywood star with capital fraud, or discovering a cum covered blue dress, i race to page fourteen to find out what third world country we bombed that morning. fox news offers us bill o'reilly, an editorialist with a professed agenda not of truthfulness but of thwarting the efforts of the so-called liberal media, and let's us believe that this man is somehow reporting to us, the american public, accurate and true news. meanwhile, on comedy central, through the guise of comedy, we are discovering that even more illegal arms deals by our government in the 60's to israel could be fodder for the supposed terrorist attacks in our own country. now, here it comes.

did he say supposed terrorist attacks? yes, and here is why. this is not a conspiracy theory. if, in fact, we were attacked by nineteen saudi's on that famous date so often repeated by the bush administration, then it is clear that it is not a terrorist attack, rather a declaration of war. the only terrorists that i can see are john ashcroft, dick cheney, g w bush and every major news organization in america. for the last six years we have been force fed the idea that we are most certainly in harms way. terrorists have move din next door and powder our krispy kremes with anthrax. the only true safe escape is a vacation to florida, to disney world, where we can sun bathe our blues away.

we are now told of those evil illegal aliens who get drunk and drive through our peaceful cities, running down our children and clocking in at our jobs in the morning. the welfare moms sucking off the teat of the good old american taxpayers. they are the new commies, the new russians, the new japs, the new resistance to our way of life.

according to news sources, we need our military here, and now, armed and firing at our neighbors. we are so scared of one another that we forget the bogey men behind the curtains of corporate america. i know, i know, why would the media lie? who stands to profit? good question, in which lies the answer.

those media conglomerates, at one time, survived on advertising money. they needed to fulfill a certain agreement to sell ideas to consumers in order to provide the people the programs they wanted. not so much anymore, as clear channel takes over most air waves and all media outlets are controlled and monitored by a small group of corporate hustlers. these same hustlers also own stock and or sit on boards of major military contractors and big oil. hmmm. these same board members sit in office and dictate who gets bombed and why. hmmmm. then telling the american people to get behind it or "shut the hell up" as bill o'reilly so eloquently put it on his show when addressing the american public about the war effort.

get behind it or shut up!

now, do you think it is at all possible that, if bill o'reilly can say that to us, the consumer, that someone can say that to fox news? hmmmm. interesting. it is also interesting that very very little was reported on the Military Commissions Act, a clearly unconstitutional bill that strikes down upon dissenters of this corrupt administration as war criminals. this is beyond the wettest dreams of on senator joe mccarthy, who could only have hoped that someday the american people would all be on trial for thoughts against the american system. thought crime? there goes that orwellian bell again.

i am tired for now, and will touch on this a lot more but for any further inquiry, check out keith olbermann. he is right on. here he is discussing the MCA.

left without leaving

i haven't written because, well, i haven't really been working in the garage. being that this blog is supposed to be about the daily life of an american artist, i felt i needed to post as i progressed in my work. i realize now that it is about the breath too.

history has the ability to condense itself. by this, i mean the way we perceive history in context of artifacts versus chronology. we can look in a room of thirty some odd paintings and believe we can see the life of the artist. we believe wholly in the struggle and the romance of the paint laden lips of a van gogh and forget that time is the factor unseen in between the canvases. some artists, myself included, work in great and sudden orgasm. we lay dormant for months, sometimes years, and then it just clicks. i have been known to stay awake, without drugs, for three to four days working it all out. the chore of living seems to have reward in the sheer amount of production in a short time, and it is all so natural, unfettered with forethought and post thought. pure. and in it's ugly simplicity, the long breath without pause, page-length paragraph and sincerest of memories in full color, i find truth. i find repose. my brain stops humming and my body falls out. that is the greatness, the sunflower days, the blue period. but really, it is impossible to sustain this current of energy and have output of pure work.

this is the art of non-creation. to know that you have a purpose, but to know that you cannot manifest this purpose, is by far the hardest failure to accept. but it is in these meditations that challenge the ego in it's need to produce, that the art truly begins. it is hard, though, to convince yourself that it is okay to do nothing for a while, to be nothing. we spend the first years of our lives building in relative silence. our bodies create movement, our minds create relations, our mouths create words, and once this starts, it seems we never return to the silence of creation without a sense of loss in hand. this is the struggle. this is the trial.

new saul williams w/trent reznor FREE or CHEAP!

the pre-cursor to the BAMN manifesto, yet to be disclosed

BOB KAUFMAN

ABOMUNIST MANIFESTO

ABOMUNISTS JOIN NOTHING BUT THEIR HANDS OR LEGS,
OR OTHER SAME.

ABOMUNIST SPIT ANTI-POETRY FOR POETIC REASONS
AND FRINK.

ABOMUNISTS DO NOT LOOK AT PICUTRES PAINTED
BY PRESIDENTS AND UNEMPLOYD PRIME MINISTERS.

IN TIMES OF NATIONAL PERIL, ABOMUNISTS, AS REALITY
AMERICANS, STAND READY TO DRINK THEMSELVES
TO DEATH FOR THEIR COUNTRY.

ABOMUNISTS DO NOT FEEL PAIN, NO MATTER HOW MUCH
IT HURTS.

ABOMUNISTS DO NOT USE THE WORD SQUARE EXCEPT WHEN
TALKING TO SQUARES.

ABOMUNISTS READ NEWSPAPERS ONLY TO ASCERTAIN THEIR
ABOMINUBILITY.

ABOMUNISTS NEVER CARRY MORE THAN FIFTY DOLLARS
IN DEBTS ON THEM.

ABOMUNISTS BELIEVE THAT THE SOLUTION OF PROBLEMS
OF RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY IS TO HAVE A CATHOLIC
CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT AND PROTESTANT
CANDIDATE FOR POPE.

ABOMUNISTS DO NOT WRITE FOR MONEY; THEY WRITE
THE MONEY ITSELF.

ABOMUNISTS BELIEVE ONLY WHAT THEY DREAM ONLY
AFTER IT COMES TRUE.

ABOMUNISTS CHILDREN MUST BE REARED ABOMUNIBLY.

ABOMUNIST POETS, CONFIDENT THAT THE NEW LITERARY
FORM "FOOT-PRINTISM' HAS FREED THE ARTIST
OF OUTMODED RESTRICTIONS, SUCH AS: THE ABILITY TO
READ AND WRITE, OR THE DESIRE TO COMMUNICATE,
MUST BE PREPARED TO READ THEIR WORK AT DENTAL
COLLEGES, EMBALMING SCHOOLS, HOMES FOR UNWED
MOTHERS, HOMES FOR WED MOTHERS, INSANE ASYLUMS,
USO CANTEENS, KINDERGARTENS, AND COUNTY JAILS.
ABOMUNISTS NEVER COMPROMISE THEIR REJECTIONARY
PHILOSOPHY.

ABOMUNISTS REJECT EVERYTHING EXCEPT SNOWMEN.

[1959]

Kaufman, Bob, Abominist Manifesto (broadside), San Francisco, City Lights, 1959.

guest book - please use this

i have noticed a lot of people are logging onto my blog from all over the world. i am curious about how and why and who they are. here is a guestbook to tell me what you think and who you are. simply use the "back talker" feature under the post to sign the book. if you are not a blogger user, then please put your name and a link to your blog, site, myspace. i would love some discourse here.

winghaven beginnings

this is the start of the tour de winghaven series. it's about 5 ft x 4 ft.

god save the queen

"fuck you, i just buy what you sell me."

burning monk made from oreo cookies by artist phil hansen

after a seven year break, rage against the machine return to the stage, just in time to catch the bush administration in their last, and potentially most dangerous year. zack de la rocha, while playing a headlining spot at coachella music festival, called for the trial, hanging, and shooting of every member of the bush regime. scary stuff considering the number of people who have faced prosecution since the passing of the patriot act for saying much less in regards to the most evil corporation on the planet. still though, rage is under contract with EMI, through a series of conglomerations. EMI, besides producing a large portion of the music you and i hear on clear channel stations, also makes a few bombs on the side. hmmm. actually they are one of the largest producers of war materials. their product was the preferred weaponry used in the decimation of central american revolutionary armies in the late seventies and early eighties. see chomsky's "culture of terrorism".

so what is to be said about this? is rage a tool of the power structure, used to instill a sense of anger in youth that is poorly directed? to tell you the truth, i think zack, and tom morello, rage's guitarist, are well aware of their corporate parentage, but see also the benefit of selling 14 million albums world-wide. i was 13 when i first heard the band, and it changed the way i lived, forever. i was a growing up in a sheltered, whitewashed town of greenville, ohio. steelworker father, nurse mother, went to church, smoked a little pot, felt a little out of place. the year before i had read the autobiography of malcolm x, and soul on ice, by eldridge cleaver. i was a precocious little fuck, but reading these books only informed a sense of injustice, the music of rage validated it.

i began to research the books they talked about, learned about noam chomsky, and then howard zinn. saw zach wearing a los crudos shirt in the video and found their music. i was then introduced into a world of underground music and politics that literally covered my entire body. i began to think more critically. i was vegan, then straightedge. i did anything i could to become a more effective revolutionary. ironically, i even sore off corporate music, such as rage against the machine, and opted for the fringe. seeing 30 frat boys, on date rape detail, sing along at a party on the campus of the university of arizona, repeating "fuck you, i won't do what you tell me!" and then quickly directing their aggression to the suspect fag (yours truly) at the party, was enough for me to call it over. the revolution had been homogenized. you could see the seal in every hot topic across the nation. when a che guevara shirt is commonly mistaken as a rage against the machine logo, i question the effectiveness of their campaign strategy.

years later, i am living as a father of two, chainsmoking, meat eating, socialist, fat fuck, and i decide i want to hear some rage. i heard they got back together and starting looking up videos of recent performances. it is great stuff, really. after a decade of learning about humans and their ability to somehow always disappoint, especially when thinking is involved, i have learned to empathize with groups like rage against the machine. can they be blamed for the fucked up mental state of millions of their fans. they did their job, and did it well. who else, in the media at least, was telling millions of teenage americans about zapata, and subcomandante marcos? who else listed noam chomsky, howard zinn, and mumia abu jamal, as key literary influences, and still managed to go platinum. they are messengers, not leaders.

i was nothing more than a pissed of kid when rage taught me the center of my anger. showed me the proponents of greed and fascist thought. taught me how to focus my rage and who to focus it on. now, as i sit in my studio, sometimes at three in the morning, i reach over and turn up the music when i start to hear, fuck you, i won't do what you tell me. i sit back, light a smoke, and rejoice in the gospel of dissidence.

i recommend using isohunt or some other bittorrent search for rage's discografia, and stealing that shit today. i read an interview where tom morello speaks out against pirating, but hey i also read a book where abbie hoffman reminds us that even christ said in the kingdom of heaven, all things are provided and the kingdom of heaven is now. speaking of abbie hoffman, watch "steal this movie". it is fucking great and vincent d'onofrio plays hoffman.

sink or swim

for the past three weeks, my personal output of art has been nill. i have been working on commissioned works and just have not had any ideas for my own pieces. money has been short which of course leads to stress. then there are days like today.

angela and i went to st. louis to sell some of her bags to a local green store, home eco. on the way to the city, we stopped at our local cafe for a quick coffee. while there, the cafe received a phone call from a person who had met me there nearly two years ago, inquiring about my contact info. strange, since i haven't worked there for so long, but she knew that i still frequent the shop and was using some investigative skills to track me down. i just happened to be there when she called so they just gave me the phone. this person, moira, has always seemed to take an interest in my art, ever since my first show at picasso's two years ago. she had invited me to participate in a contest that i dropped the ball on, and so i assumed she thought i was flaky. which i guess i am sometimes, so no feelings hurt. then, nearly two years later, i am talking to her about an upcoming bike race, tour de winghaven.

she is offering me the opportunity to design the poster for the event. this may not sound like much, but it is huge. she wants me to paint a picture that will then be used for promotions for this race, which is on it's way to becoming quite a large event, entering into the arena of international cycling events. posters, wine labels, print ads are just part of what this image will be used for. on top of that, i get paid for the job and am allowed to keep the original. this is amazing. now, i am not a cyclist, so why the excitement?

well, it is simple. every person i know that is a cycle enthusiast claims to feel a transcendental experience at one time or another on a bike. it is a form of meditation. in fact, everyone i know who cycles seems to become some sort of junkie for it. which is something i know a little about. so, on this level i can connect to cycling. it is much like painting. a solo effort that challenges not just the body but the mind and spirit of a person. at any rate i am excited for this job. i already started working on a large scale piece that will develop into something that i will consider for the job.

the other great thing about this is, i get to have a sort of art show in conjunction with the race. there will be literally thousands of people at this event and it's surrounding events, most of whom will be interested to see what the artist who designed the poster is up to. this is a great chance to introduce my work to a whole different group of people than have ever seen what i do.

i also met a great opportunity while in the city. across the street from home eco, in south city saint louis, there is a great corner building that is for rent. the location and size is perfect for a gallery. so i ent to an ajjoining italian imports grocery store that is ran by the same man who owns the space. i spoke to him briefly about the possibility of a gallery and he seemed sincerely interested. he also makes the best meatball sandwich i have ever had from any restaurant. turns out he is the president of the neighborhood business association and they are looking for artists to bring into the neighborhood. it is nice to know that people are starting to see the benefits of having local artists. we bring business and a sense of self, of culture, wherever we are.

historically speaking, anytime a large group of artists move into an affordable area, the neighborhood is quickly transformed into a hotspot. look at the bowery in new york, chelsea, lower east side, northeast portland. all of these areas were once rundown and thus affordable for artists to live and work. no they are some of the most prized real estate in the country. well, apparently people are getting the hint that art is a necessary and vital part of life, and not just for artists. so i am going to work hard at making this work out and this time next year i may be running my own gallery.

i also scored one more commission for some coffee bag paintings for a local minister. what a strange day. here is an example of a coffee bag painting. painted on recycled burlap coffee bags. this one is a portrait of a dear friend, kevin francis xavier callahan.

margaret kilgallen

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
-gilda radner



i came across an, apparently old, episode of art:21 tonight. this was a clip on two artists whom i had never heard of and decided to watch. barry mcgee and margaret kilgallen, two san francisco based artists, who i later learned were married. both have a sense of folk art, and claim this to be their greatest influence, though from two different times. margaret is heavily moved by traditional folk art. art that doesn't know itself as such. hand painted signs, typography, advertisements. barry is a graffiti artist. the modern folk art. i call it folk art because it serves the purpose of public viewing. sure, it is seen as an eyesore to most people, and is illegal in all fifty states, but it is still the most vibrant art form alive today. there is no payment for it's work, there are stiff penalties for it's implication, and modern ad agencies exploit the shit out of it as a way to reach the youth of today.

entrepreneur

criminal



so to the point of this spillage of thought: margaret kilgallen.
she is brilliant in the video, skilled with ingenuity. she is clearly going to become a great artist someday. she is dead. she died a couple of weeks after the birth of her daughter, from complications of breast cancer. this fucked me up.

now, death is something i have come to know intimately in my life. a lot of my friends and family have died, some of "natural" deaths and some of drug overdoses or violence. i accept death and in fact herald it as a beautiful part of life. i usually don't mourn in the traditional since but celebrate the life. then i read that a woman i do not even know, would never have known, died so young and it fucked me up. she just seemed so alive in the video. so maybe the thing fucking me up is that she is so vibrant, and now dead, and there are so many who are alive and will be alive for a very long time that never grace upon that level of living. i question myself and my own life. am i living it.

here i am at 2 am, typing a fucking blog entry with a studio full of paint and canvas and i am here, typing. not that this isn't somehow a creative endeavor, but seriously, i am staring at pixels, watching a life on youtube, and there goes another rubber tree plant.

concerning the spiritual in art - kandinsky

kandinsky's respondeo ut the world of art, in his time, to the past, and for the future of art is widely considered one of the greatest documents on art by an artist. sure, i'll accept that. however, i believe this is more of an assault on the condition of the human spirit than a treatise on the state of art.

kandinsky reiterates, many times, his disgust for the broad acceptance of and reverence towards "stagnate art". as an artist himself, he is quite aware of the vast differences between what the critics and buyers are going in for, and what the artists are doing. he lays out, quite brutally, his own foundation of the future of art. making claims that, the future will hold an art that is un-seeable to the eye, but glaring to the soul. it will have to consist then, of images from within, not without the human field of perception. he is calling for the abandonment of the recognizable, often cliche materialism that academic art of his time heralded as high.

there is nothing lower than a bland reproduction of a bland person in a bland setting. according to kandinsky. this was 191o, and was thus the manual for abstraction that would spawn an art movement that has shaken everything the art world made for thousands of years before it, to it's very core.


kandinsky battles the dominant paradigm of art theory that art should reflect nature, thereby being a discourse with our natural life and thus the voice of divinity. he argues that only true art, free from external form, can be divined and relate to the world, in fact more than that, help the world to progress into a truly spiritual world. he sites many contemporary poets, painters and philosophers, including mme. blavastky philosophy, though she merely developed an idea based upon , credited by hitler as the mother of the aryanhindu teachings she picked while in india. kandisnky is clearly a very well educated and passionate man, albeit angry as all hell.

he seems to, at times, get lost in his own poetic symbolism and dive off of cliffs that are too hard to climb back to. (how was that for poetic irony) he has a chapter called the movement of the triangle, in which he forms a triangle based upon levels of spiritual growth. what is it with metaphysical writers that makes them use obscure geometric charts to illustrate an idea. see ken wilbur if you are not sure what i mean. the chapter wraps up nicely and he makes some very clear points, but the beginning is very slow going and clogged with imagery too complex for his simple implication. he seems to focus on the art that is not spiritual, trying to show by absence the art that is. he sites many styles and trends in art at the time that seem to portray stillborn representations of human life. art, in his and my eye, is to relate the human condition to the future generations that they may understand where we lived. this book is just shy of one hundred years old, and still it is valid in modern conversation.


where wassily had impressionists, we have pop, where he had vase on table with fruit, we have a fucking dead tiger shark in formaldehyde. does the art of today really reflect our universal subconscious. will a fifty million dollar, diamond encrusted skull save the soul of anyone tomorrow, or today for that matter, and still this is what we know as our contemporaries. sure we have our jenny savilles,who is a mind staggering painter, and let us not overlook them, god forbid we let another van gogh slip away. but the damien hirsts are killing me. now, just today i hear about marla olmstead, the four year old abstract expressionist prodigy, whose work is compared to pollock, and dekooning.

marla is all the buzz right now. a four year old whose father is paints, has the spotlight as genius of painting. is this art? is it commodity? nit sch? what do i know. i do know some of the stuff of hers is very cool, and most likely, if seen by unwitting eyes, would be hailed as great work by one who truly suffered and now understands life with color. not sure what i think about that, just an interesting topic right now. what would wassily say? i am sure a part of him would see the beauty and innocence and then the spiritual side of her pictures. but the purist in him would denounce her "work" as simply the play thing of a child, which it is.


all in all, the book really is refreshing in that is a statement of sincerity about art. it is rare that we read a book about art theory that as actually written by an artist. most are like parenting books written by childless doctors. this, however is the real deal. kandinsky is one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, also one of the most prolific writers on art. the book is not finely tuned, but it's rawness is it's energy.

farbstudie quadrate - wassily kandinsky
note kandisnky's influence on contemporaries such as chuck close, who is famed for super-realism, or photo-realism, which completely disembarks from the course set by kandinsky himself. oh the ways we dig our graves and how we praise the soil!



side-note: i will not link damien hirst's name in my blog. if you are curious what his work is like, go to a shopping mall and ask an old woman to kick you in the genitals, you will get more out of that experience, i am sure of this.

zeitgeist

one of the most important, informative and horrific films i have ever seen. go to www.zeitgeistmovie.com for more information.

the sky position - tom blood

"Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality."
james joyce


I received this book by Tom Blood, former portland poetic comrade of mine, about a year ago, for the purpose of doing a review. Okay, I realize that a year seems like a long time, especially considering the size of the book, coming in at 80 pages in quarter-book size. So I must apologize to Marriage Records, and ask that they take a moment to hear my case.

I first heard Tom Blood read in portland at a reading that I hosted called the subterranean beat revival. it was a basement bar reading, clouded with smoke and the poets were mostly ex slam gone beat poets, performing with the backing of live jazz. it was not an any way predictable, but after it's honeymoon, it was just another reading, with just some more poets. then Tom Blood came in.

he took the stage in an awkward manner, spoke in stuttered phrasing, moved in a robotic fashion, stepping around the stage as if in some sort of line dance induced haze and spouted the most provocative and surreal poetry that i have ever heard. he was captivating, from all points. performance, voice, and he was reading what i can only describe as true poetry. no pandering. no cliche. just simple, fucked up truth. i was amazed, and still am to this day. i asked Tom for a book, and he gave me a short stack of papers clipped together with an industrial paper clip. the cover had two green velvet dots on it. no words. i asked him what the title was and he looked at me sincerely and said..."two dots". okay.

the book was passed from friend to friend for months and every person exclaimed the founding of a portland genius. then tom seemingly disappeared. i never heard much from him. then, about two years later i find that tom blood has a new book, the sky position, published by marriage records. there is a call for reviews so i contact marriage, with much excitement, in hopes of reviewing this book. they send me a copy of the book with it's cdr companion, and this is where a journey began. here it is in short:

i began reading dylan thomas when i was roughly 12 years old. the film dead poets society was my introduction and the darkness of do not go gentle into that good night grabbed my chubby ass like priest during lent. beyond that poem, though, thomas left me lost, clamoring for understanding in a sea of thick metaphor. of course i would quote him and pretend i knew what poetry was, but truly i only knew the words. then, 15 years later, i am reading through a collected thomas edition, and it clicks. i stand up and grab angela exclaiming, "I GET IT, I GET DYLAN THOMAS!" here is a lifetime worth of work, why then it would take me any less than 16 years to get it. james joyce said of finnegan's wake, "it took me twelve years to write it, it should take you twelve years to read it." exactly jimmy. so now here i am holding tom blood's new book. an expert on dylan thomas, wink wink, i should understand any poetry at first read.

no.

again, no no no.

this book has plagued me for a year now, looming over my bookshelf as a constant reminder of my poetic inadequacies. it is my raven, repeating "you're a moron" in lieu of "nevermore". i had tried to listen to the cd, in my home, alone, no distractions, and still nothing. a lot of people would have written it off and moved on, but i am not a lot of people, no, i am a compulsive asshole who will not be bullied by any literature. bring it on "the cantos of ezra pound", you wordy prick, i am ready for you!

so today i decide to break from my studio and take a walk to the cafe. cafes make me think of portland so i go to grab a poetry book, because poetry also makes me think of portland, and there it is, louder than ever "YOU'RE A MORON, YOU'RE A MORON!" tom blood's sky position is challenging me. so i grab it and decide too to take the cd in my walkman. i step out and press play and begin the best walk i have taken in years.

this is true poetry, and i get it. my "short passage through the mechanical universe" is in motion. blood, a traveller, frequent pedestrian, is really just taking notes as he moves through the day. it makes sense now. i swear, it made me feel that i have been walking with my eyes closed for a very long time when i heard him reading these words. i used to see like this daily. it used to be my life, to observe, and beyond observe, test the waters of daily life. take note of the telephone poles and their obesity. so i reread the book in a very short time when i got to the cafe. the poems are powerful in that they assume no authority, the assume no power over life. it is simply tom's way of saying, "i am watching, and fucking closely, and i am telling everyone, world!"

i would recommend to any lover of poetry and/or challenges, to order a copy today. order two and gift one to somebody in need of a reminder that the world exists outside of text messages and myspace. tom blood has put together a grand mystery and i have unriddled his tongue. you can order a copy here.

bob dylan: iconoclast h. christ

so i went to pearly gates and found the bolts rusted. seeing bob dylan is an experience, sure, but i am not sure what was learned. let me put this into context.
a friend of angela and myself gave us two tickets to see elvis costello and bob dylan at the fox theater in st. louis on monday night. fucking rad! i wanted to see this show but the tickets were a little pricey and the show sold out very quickly. but, the cosmos looked out and gave us admission. great. so we arrive at the theater, which is breathtakingly gorgeous, about ten minutes before the show starts which allowed for a cigarette and a little people watching. i was curious who would be there and if you could see a split in the fan base. not that costello and dylan have vast differences in fan population, but i was looking out for the mods there for elvis, and the poli-lits there for dylan. it was strange, the crowd was overwhelmingly normal looking. like christmas shoppers, or people at an airport. kids, parents, grandparents. all there for the same thing. granted it was a pretty caucasian audience, but this is middle america right? what can i expect.

we find our seats, with help from a geriatric usher who looks as if they could have built this fucking theater, and squeeze in to our seats. amos lee was on stage and i as happy to see he was opening because i had never heard him before but had heard good things. his group was phenomenal. folk, blues, soul, country, it was all there being lead by this jeff buckley meets curtis mayfield in a fistfight with joe cocker. it was perfect. he played for about 45 minutes and i was very impressed. very. then the stage was cleared and out comes a rack of five acoustic guitars and a small practice amp. seriously the amp was maybe 100 watts. i turn to angela and ask where the piano is. no piano. expecting elvis costello, solo, to be mostly balladeerish renditions of his pop catalogue, and possibly some of his jazz songs he recorded a few years back, actually he topped the jazz charts, the pop charts and the indie charts at the same time that year, a feat not achieved since miles davis. but here it was, just guitars. okay. then the man walked out. classic black suit, and the signature buddy hollies. it was on. he was placing solo, on an acoustic, but i swear he had an invisible british soul band behind him and he was wailing a gretsch. pure rock and roll energy. you could tell he truly loved being there that night. he loves music, the crowd loves music, he loves the crowd. it was a good performance, full of bows and jokes and political commentary. people seem to forget or overlook just how much politics is masked within his music. it seems like snotty pop rock but the lyrics are angry and desperate. he reminded me of that fact. then with a gracious bow and wave, he was gone.
then comes dylan. full band, three guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, and more leather than a gay bar in 77. the first song rocks into a slightly recognizable riff, but it is a little off. the sound is bad and the musicians aren't tight. who cares though, it's dylan. then he begins to sing...well, let me rephrase, he speaks the lyrics over the music. the problem was, you couldn't understand a thing he said. the reason i love dylan is the lyrics, and they are gone, fallen into the mash of bad country music. so if the lyrics are gone, and the music is bad, why are people cheering?

it is simple. dylan is an icon, says the man next to me. well, sure, but an icon of music, and this is horrible. it just seems like he doesn't care. if not, then why do it. he doesn't need the money. is he trying to kill his image. possibly, but these people won't let it die. they clap like fucking seals for fish after every song. he is either laughing to himself or crying. i can't decide.

will work to avoid working

push play on this video and listen while you read this post

ding dong the wac is dead. yes, after exactly one year of being in the "warehouse" i am now moved out. in fact, all of us are moved out. thursday night, we received notice that we had 24 hours to vacate the premises, everything that remained would be thrown into dumpsters. this was at 9 pm and quite unexpected, being that i had not been to the warehouse in a few weeks. it was just dumb luck that i was there that night, working on a show smithey and i are collaborating on this week.
apparently, the lease holder of the warehouse had notice for months to be out of the space, and being the case, decided to no longer pay rent, nor inform the artists whose belongings took up about 3000 sq ft, and still he remained, his belongings untouched. either defiant or apathetic, he takes the cake in the realm of poor business ethics.

we, the wac artists, came together though, in a rough and tumble night, not so different from any other night at the wac when an event is at hand, and pulled together to "save the good silverware" if you will. it was nice to be in the warehouse with a majority of the artists at one time again. we had moments of nostalgia, fueled by the adrenaline of the imposing hand of doom that periodically spanked our melancholic asses into gear. we shared a lot in that space, as artists, as friends, as people. i found it quite apropos that we started with a fury and ended in similar fashion. maybe this is what artists really need today, a sense of urgency.

we need to feel that pressing force around us, telling us it cannot work, and we need vindication. we are a group of odd kids, most whose childhood was not so full of innocent endeavors, and this art world is a world that heralds the innocence of color. the joy that centers itself around the playful tendencies of creation. we bask in that glow and we are suddenly okay. we seem to forget that, i think. at least i do. i forget when i am puzzling over brush size and metaphor that i am simply fucking painting. i am doing what third graders do every day between recess and show and tell. i am allowed to play here. that is why i don't clock in. that is why i no longer carry a resume around with me. it is because i can play. and i am damn good at playing when i want to be. it is not always this way though.

most days i sit in my studio, chain smoke marlboro 27's, listen to curtis mayfield or the refused, and ask myself if anyone gives a shit, or if they should. my only consolation is that i give a shit, and my family gives a shit, and my daughter says it is "bootifull daddy" and if that is the case then there must be others out there who feel that too. right? if it is sincere, then people will connect. in fact, i would wager that the only time people can truly connect is when they find the sincerity. it is tough to be sincere when you feel that your voice is a forgery, but you have to know sometimes it doesn't feel that way, and that is what i do this for. because sometimes, i am dancing in that studio and i am singing out loud, and sometimes it just feels right.