This is especially special for those who are not so amused...oh, you will be, you certainly will be.
Part one:
Preface (the face before the face, the face before the fist of the manifesto)
((or possibly manifishto, mishto with the fish))
(((it's already too surrealistic, too dadaistic)))
but oh, we need dada now more than ever, dada, where did you go? and dada replies, kaboom kaboom jajaja boomboom baby i never left, i held u while u were walking on that beach, poking the dead fish with the stick, like all the little boys do when they're learning about life by studying death...
theorum #1: it is stupid to use one clear, well-constructed phrase when twenty-seven will serve much better.
(this is not a good theorum, because there is no proof, except for the blood of all the wars of the 21st century, lining up to make rooms to count the dead, but the rooms are not cleanly demarcated, because the wars were never clearly marked, because they were impossible to end)
I apologize that the manifesto took such a sudden and dramatic and even tragic turn, one filled with the melancholy of the times, that melancholy we all wish to throw off our backs like a sack filled with dead fish. We all know that feeling of inevitable gravity, and even I am having a little trouble staying awake, and I am more manic than most of my dear compatriots, the one who hold these things dear and so self-evident, but we sold the evidence, and it still didn't help us to get our houses back, but at least we had good sandwiches, on many different kinds of bread, four more kinds than our parents could ever have dreamed of, and if that's not cartesian success, than I don't know what is. (and three different kinds of pickled peppers).
Pre-fish (cont'd, from above, never really started): It is obvious that there are those who do seem to really believe that socialized medicine is the same thing as terrorism, and because of that very face of the fact, we have to assume that the entire world is turning completely stupid (which is impossible, or at least too hopeless to engage with), or else language has lost its sense and meaning.
I do realize that this lacanian lack is not so absolutely modern to make any waves, but we should only note that at some point language was being used as a tool, then it became a virus, and now the signs and signifiers are lost to something altogether other (and not the good kind, not the kind that makes for the poetic erotics that makes the world spin on the woman's hips) ((why does it have to be a woman? oh...it's a song, look it up, it's fun and bouncy))...the world has lost its voice, and the only acceptable form of communication from this point forward is the art of the moan...not a lost art, at all, but not very loud until recently, but recently...
Part One: La Verdadera Parte Por Fin:
But first, a personal anecdote:
I was certainly pre-occupied. There were these golden threads left on the sage bushes on the side of the freeways of the world that came from the silk underwear of so many lost loves, and I was busy making plans with Oshun to enchant and bring these threads back to their owners, but Oshun is always slight of hand, and my Oshun's path is the one without hands, so who knows what the hell she is up to, she is the goddess of Love, and because she is Love, she is crazy. And I was crazy, wondering why I couldn't leave this city, losing so many things that I didn't need, the naive part of my heart, the end of my thumb, a house somewhere in there, and other gracious spaces where my friends let me hide for awhile...and I was wondering about my daughter, how she would get by, how she would grow up in this world of gender situations that are always under re-construction, in a place particularly unhospitable to any other others (the proof was in the blood on the chins, arms, and legs of lovers who were only looking for a place to rest, like any of us, or rather, like me) ((since the proof was sold to buy oranges, I had to replace whatever anger was there with forgiveness, but that's another story that makes so much less sense than this entirely personal and revealing anecdote))...the meat, then, in this vegetarian story is the moment that I saw the image of the man in the Vendetta mask (how do I know it was a man? I don't, really, but he sounded like a man when he shouted at me, but I know full well that men are not the owners of the shout, this goes back to the moan, the shout is the cousin of the moan, and we all can get along in this noisy house)...I saw this mask and realized that I was pre-occupied, but woke up inside of a very sexy kind of revolution.
This takes us to:
Part Seven (por fin)...
acabamos de llegar a nuestra tercera punto de vista...no es simplemente k todos somos marcos, por k siempre esta asi, pero mas, y masa, por cada revolucion sin masa, no hay corazones de lata, and if we admitted that this is about corn, or bread, or cornbread, then it would be easier to argue, but I am suddenly over 40, and this is disconcerting, because when I turn blue in the face, it means I have to exfoliate, and that has not happened yet, and that might be the real tragedy of our time, that time moves forward, and we get older all the time, unless we learn how to breathe...breath connects to the drumbeat, the originary boom boom in illus tempore, eternally returning to love, it always comes back to that...and arguing might be useful, but it requires so much discourse, and I don't even believe myself when it gets into that, and discourse is blue, and it wrinkles, and this is about aging backwards.
(please allow me a slight tangent here: I age backwards, like Merlin, it's true, but it's a secret, and that's why I would never say it in public, and write it in a blog, which this is not)...in the course of our recent revolutions, the 60s counterculture, and the 80s movements for fighting hunger and stopping the United Fruit company from uniting what they wanted to unite, the best tool of the oppressor was found in discourse, to ask the participants to name their cause, their griefs, and their goals, and while we thought this was a good idea, they were finding ways of breaking us into groups, separating us each according to hisher own goals, and the game was suddenly not a game, but lost all the same.
So (suddenly this is so personal) I am walking toward the protest, with my daughter, carrying a sign that says, "This is my favorite revolution so far :D" and we pass by two women in a truck who are selling clothes and american flags, and they start shouting at us, "What are you protesting, what are you protesting, HUH?" and we don't answer, because this might be the first tactic, before the seventh:
A clear cut rule of non-engagement.
And now the seventh:
Stay vague.
This last is the advice of my father (anti-oedipus to his bones even though he may not know it yet), who, after having been through a military regime that punished him for his intelligence, and unwillingness to sell it to the highest bidder, civil rights marches and a life of watching the world come unspun like a rubber band on a freshly-opened baseball, has learned some things about how this might work.
Dad, you are Dada, and they never gave you credit. Until now, that is.
There is nothing naive about a generation that grew up watching eyes traded for eyes, and all the dead fish of the world lie on the beach, so far from the sea, we all just wanted to get to the beach for the afternoon, in this revolution, what we want is to go to the beach. Hell yes.
There is nothing naive about a generation who sees that there is a terrible dividing line, the executioners and those who refuse that, born in a very real sense on the last breath of Troy Davis. Those who feel responsible for his death, and those who do not. A terrible dividing line, and it should give us a headache, but we can't sleep, and we shouldn't sleep any more. We'll trade catnaps and keep the world from burning, Vendetta masks slung on our backs, and wondering how the pot heads feel when the cows walk by.
The Real Point (El Ombligo del Angel de la Historia):
This is the time of the year when the dead start to walk the earth, confusing the twilight with the sunrise, and entering into all the backrooms when no one is looking. They look a little bit like lost Goddesses and Gods, and they might as well be, and we might as well start lighting the halloween candles and praying to them, because the dead know things, and when our prayers take forms like song, we are enchanted, so very enchanted, perdido en el canto, and the boomboom of a revolution in progress might start to match meter with the rhythm of the beating of the hearts of the dead, and that's a dance of death. Enough to make the world spin on its axis again, enough to wake the living, enough to wake up a muse, and from where I sit, incense cigar burning and lightning in my missing thumbtip, it looks very clear to me here that she clearly wants to play.
Preoccupation becomes occupation, and the post is written on the soles of the living, dancing with the dead.
Part one:
Preface (the face before the face, the face before the fist of the manifesto)
((or possibly manifishto, mishto with the fish))
(((it's already too surrealistic, too dadaistic)))
but oh, we need dada now more than ever, dada, where did you go? and dada replies, kaboom kaboom jajaja boomboom baby i never left, i held u while u were walking on that beach, poking the dead fish with the stick, like all the little boys do when they're learning about life by studying death...
theorum #1: it is stupid to use one clear, well-constructed phrase when twenty-seven will serve much better.
(this is not a good theorum, because there is no proof, except for the blood of all the wars of the 21st century, lining up to make rooms to count the dead, but the rooms are not cleanly demarcated, because the wars were never clearly marked, because they were impossible to end)
I apologize that the manifesto took such a sudden and dramatic and even tragic turn, one filled with the melancholy of the times, that melancholy we all wish to throw off our backs like a sack filled with dead fish. We all know that feeling of inevitable gravity, and even I am having a little trouble staying awake, and I am more manic than most of my dear compatriots, the one who hold these things dear and so self-evident, but we sold the evidence, and it still didn't help us to get our houses back, but at least we had good sandwiches, on many different kinds of bread, four more kinds than our parents could ever have dreamed of, and if that's not cartesian success, than I don't know what is. (and three different kinds of pickled peppers).
Pre-fish (cont'd, from above, never really started): It is obvious that there are those who do seem to really believe that socialized medicine is the same thing as terrorism, and because of that very face of the fact, we have to assume that the entire world is turning completely stupid (which is impossible, or at least too hopeless to engage with), or else language has lost its sense and meaning.
I do realize that this lacanian lack is not so absolutely modern to make any waves, but we should only note that at some point language was being used as a tool, then it became a virus, and now the signs and signifiers are lost to something altogether other (and not the good kind, not the kind that makes for the poetic erotics that makes the world spin on the woman's hips) ((why does it have to be a woman? oh...it's a song, look it up, it's fun and bouncy))...the world has lost its voice, and the only acceptable form of communication from this point forward is the art of the moan...not a lost art, at all, but not very loud until recently, but recently...
Part One: La Verdadera Parte Por Fin:
But first, a personal anecdote:
I was certainly pre-occupied. There were these golden threads left on the sage bushes on the side of the freeways of the world that came from the silk underwear of so many lost loves, and I was busy making plans with Oshun to enchant and bring these threads back to their owners, but Oshun is always slight of hand, and my Oshun's path is the one without hands, so who knows what the hell she is up to, she is the goddess of Love, and because she is Love, she is crazy. And I was crazy, wondering why I couldn't leave this city, losing so many things that I didn't need, the naive part of my heart, the end of my thumb, a house somewhere in there, and other gracious spaces where my friends let me hide for awhile...and I was wondering about my daughter, how she would get by, how she would grow up in this world of gender situations that are always under re-construction, in a place particularly unhospitable to any other others (the proof was in the blood on the chins, arms, and legs of lovers who were only looking for a place to rest, like any of us, or rather, like me) ((since the proof was sold to buy oranges, I had to replace whatever anger was there with forgiveness, but that's another story that makes so much less sense than this entirely personal and revealing anecdote))...the meat, then, in this vegetarian story is the moment that I saw the image of the man in the Vendetta mask (how do I know it was a man? I don't, really, but he sounded like a man when he shouted at me, but I know full well that men are not the owners of the shout, this goes back to the moan, the shout is the cousin of the moan, and we all can get along in this noisy house)...I saw this mask and realized that I was pre-occupied, but woke up inside of a very sexy kind of revolution.
This takes us to:
Part Seven (por fin)...
acabamos de llegar a nuestra tercera punto de vista...no es simplemente k todos somos marcos, por k siempre esta asi, pero mas, y masa, por cada revolucion sin masa, no hay corazones de lata, and if we admitted that this is about corn, or bread, or cornbread, then it would be easier to argue, but I am suddenly over 40, and this is disconcerting, because when I turn blue in the face, it means I have to exfoliate, and that has not happened yet, and that might be the real tragedy of our time, that time moves forward, and we get older all the time, unless we learn how to breathe...breath connects to the drumbeat, the originary boom boom in illus tempore, eternally returning to love, it always comes back to that...and arguing might be useful, but it requires so much discourse, and I don't even believe myself when it gets into that, and discourse is blue, and it wrinkles, and this is about aging backwards.
(please allow me a slight tangent here: I age backwards, like Merlin, it's true, but it's a secret, and that's why I would never say it in public, and write it in a blog, which this is not)...in the course of our recent revolutions, the 60s counterculture, and the 80s movements for fighting hunger and stopping the United Fruit company from uniting what they wanted to unite, the best tool of the oppressor was found in discourse, to ask the participants to name their cause, their griefs, and their goals, and while we thought this was a good idea, they were finding ways of breaking us into groups, separating us each according to hisher own goals, and the game was suddenly not a game, but lost all the same.
So (suddenly this is so personal) I am walking toward the protest, with my daughter, carrying a sign that says, "This is my favorite revolution so far :D" and we pass by two women in a truck who are selling clothes and american flags, and they start shouting at us, "What are you protesting, what are you protesting, HUH?" and we don't answer, because this might be the first tactic, before the seventh:
A clear cut rule of non-engagement.
And now the seventh:
Stay vague.
This last is the advice of my father (anti-oedipus to his bones even though he may not know it yet), who, after having been through a military regime that punished him for his intelligence, and unwillingness to sell it to the highest bidder, civil rights marches and a life of watching the world come unspun like a rubber band on a freshly-opened baseball, has learned some things about how this might work.
Dad, you are Dada, and they never gave you credit. Until now, that is.
There is nothing naive about a generation that grew up watching eyes traded for eyes, and all the dead fish of the world lie on the beach, so far from the sea, we all just wanted to get to the beach for the afternoon, in this revolution, what we want is to go to the beach. Hell yes.
There is nothing naive about a generation who sees that there is a terrible dividing line, the executioners and those who refuse that, born in a very real sense on the last breath of Troy Davis. Those who feel responsible for his death, and those who do not. A terrible dividing line, and it should give us a headache, but we can't sleep, and we shouldn't sleep any more. We'll trade catnaps and keep the world from burning, Vendetta masks slung on our backs, and wondering how the pot heads feel when the cows walk by.
The Real Point (El Ombligo del Angel de la Historia):
This is the time of the year when the dead start to walk the earth, confusing the twilight with the sunrise, and entering into all the backrooms when no one is looking. They look a little bit like lost Goddesses and Gods, and they might as well be, and we might as well start lighting the halloween candles and praying to them, because the dead know things, and when our prayers take forms like song, we are enchanted, so very enchanted, perdido en el canto, and the boomboom of a revolution in progress might start to match meter with the rhythm of the beating of the hearts of the dead, and that's a dance of death. Enough to make the world spin on its axis again, enough to wake the living, enough to wake up a muse, and from where I sit, incense cigar burning and lightning in my missing thumbtip, it looks very clear to me here that she clearly wants to play.
Preoccupation becomes occupation, and the post is written on the soles of the living, dancing with the dead.
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