Whisper its true name: the Documentary

As you may, or may not, remember I had a show at the Anton Art Center (Michigan) in October. Alison, at the center, put enormous amounts of energy into making it a great show and if you weren’t there (as I wasn’t) you really missed something special, don’t you know. But for all of you losers that missed out there is this new-fangled modern invention called photographic reproduction. I won’t go into the details, but it involves exposing a light sensitive material to prescribed amounts of light for prescribed amounts of time. It’s pretty amazing. If you have never heard of it you should look into it. Anyway, through this modern invention we have managed to capture moments in time for posterity. How does this relate to you? Why, it allows you (and me) to see the way the show looked without actually having to have been there! Truly amazing.

Speaking of cats, look what the cat dragged in

If one were to travel northeast from Thursday City into the surrounding Valley of Keene, across the river, deep into the heart of the Back Woods one would eventually arrive at the Dark Prefecture. A magical place filled with wonder and made all the more intriguing by the decades of accumulated folk tales surrounding the area. One would most certainly get there eventually; if one were so inclined. Once there one may or may not encounter Le Gooch the prince of the Dark Prefecture.

Le Gooch is a divine creature, a deviant perversion of divinity perhaps, but divine nonetheless. We do not know whether he protects or terrorizes his territory, possibly both, but regardless he is there. There is no documented evidence of his existence in this realm, but trust me he is there. It is rumored that he has been responsible for devouring men, sacrificing women, and (inexplicably) de-limbing philosophers and heroes. Believe what you will.

Below is a rendering by our resident sketch-artist:

The Boggy Swamp of Swampy Bogginess

The sun goes down. The lightning strikes. But the task remains. Navigating the dreaded Boggy Swamp of Swampy Bogginess requires all the strength, courage, vitality, and vigilance one can muster. And even at peak condition one still needs luck and eudaimonia (good graces) to make it through alive. And even then the reward is death. But we would rather die having lived than live half-dead.

The murky landscape is constantly shifting. A boon one moment becomes an albatross the next. A solid foundation dissolves into a bottomless pit. A beautiful woman is deadly, and a poisonous snake is a friend. One must be light on one’s toes. Dancing like Baryshnikov across pitfall and booby trap with ease, grace, and elegance. Don’t forget to bask in the horrifyingly beautiful surroundings, just don’t succumb to their whispered words of seduction, i.e. destruction.


Percy Hemlock negotiates the Boggy Swamp of Swampy Bogginess atop Gingerboy the Nimble Lion-ape, while scratching his cohort Wesley Junecheeks on the noggin.

Satyricon

It was a translucent purple night. It was as if dawn were in collusion with midnight to create a deep darkness that one could still see through. It must have been around 3 am. I was watching Fellini’s “Satyricon.” Imagine my surprise when one of my sculpture pieces appeared on the screen. It was Balthazar. The revelers at Trimalchio’s banquet were heading down the side of the mountain to enact a mock death ceremony for Trimalchio himself. And suddenly! there he was. Balthazar was standing monumentally above the partygoers/mourners. And later in the movie I spotted another. This time it was Johnnie Sphinxter in the field where Encolpius accompanied the Poet to die. Was this all my imagination? Had I seen this all before and just forgotten? I did watch the first half of “Satyricon” ten years ago, and for some reason never finished. Could I have retained those images and then remade them as part of my own system of archetypes and symbols? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was really late and the slippery limen between over-focused consciousness and mythic unconscious was dissolving? I rubbed my eyes. Everything blurred.

When I woke up the next day I watched the film on my computer. It was no dream. I saw it again. So I took some screen-shots, and here they are. Balthazar and Johnnie Sphinxter as seen in Fellini’s “Satyricon”:

Science and sanity. Oh, the humanity!

It has oft been claimed that one sign of insanity is repeating the same action over and over while expecting a different result. This may well be true, but it’s opposite does not follow. That is, it is not necessarily a sign of sanity to repeat the same action over and over while expecting the same result. That is not sanity it is science. But life/nature is constantly displaying for us a wondrous sense of irony that confounds all expectations. The sun comes up everyday (indeed the sun coming up defines the day), but weather patterns are vastly more unpredictable than we would like to believe. We wake up everyday, but our mood upon waking is oft unpredictable. We walk through life taking our breath for granted, but never knowing when our last breath may come. However, science would have us believe otherwise, wittingly or not. One deeply buried a priori at the heart of science is the concept ceteris paribus, or all things being equal. For the sake of scientific experimentation certain impossible-to-account-for factors must be disqualified in order to trust the results of the experiment, thus ceteris paribus. Any scientist, upon questioning, will readily acknowledge this. But this necessary scientific premise has been, for the most part, buried in our scientific civilization. For centuries now we have conducted a more and more ambitious scientization of culture. But after centuries of this ordinarizing process what if something vital has been lost? In science ceteris paribus may be acceptable and, in fact, often necessary to conduct research, but in life nothing is ever “all equal.”

What is missing in the scientific approach to life and culture is the cultivation of humanity’s glorious divine gift of evaluation. That is the ability to not simply read, but interpret. When King Belshazzar and his partying cohorts saw the writing on the wall, they could read it perfectly well, what they could NOT do was interpret its value. They knew the definitions of the words, but what was their meaning? These words were common terms of technical measurement (they were the names for different monetary units), i.e. scientific, but in order to comprehend their true meaning the prophetic powers of Daniel were necessary. Missing in the scientific equation of life are the natural and intuitive interpretive powers of humanity. And the more wholly scientized we become the more starved and entropic those evaluative energies and dynamics become. Our interpretive powers are only fed and augmented by disciplined and consistent practice. Prophets have always been the men and women who exercised their genius for evaluation more actively than their contemporaries. Science unquestionably has its place and its value, but when you need to interpret the writing on the wall don’t turn to a scientist. Hopefully when that day comes, you will have either found a good prophet, or have been diligently practicing your own prophetic ABCs and 123s.

The sun comes up every day, but every day is not the same.

Whisper its true name

Most ancient cultures grasped intrinsically and imperatively the awful power of language. To utter the true name of a divine being, or even a natural one, meant invoking powers and forces that may very well be beyond one's control. This recognition of the immanent value of words necessitated that one either be a virtuosic master of the subtleties of language, knowledgeable of the sacred incantations, or be a wily poetic artificer, able to tip toe around the subject, or be quiet. We have since learned very well some narrow aspects of the power that language has. The power to exploit, manipulate, intoxicate, and corrode. No culture in history has made language such a well honed precision weapon of mass destruction/deception as ours. If only we had a little of that primitive gnosis that understood you may be able to control a bear by invoking its true name, but you may also wake it from its slumber and be eaten for it. A little awe inspired piety could serve us very well. Maybe we should heed the wise words of Elmer J. Fudd: “Be very very quiet. I'm hunting rabbit.”

“Whisper its true name” is the title of an upcoming exhibition of my work at the Anton Art Center (www.theartcenter.org) in Mount Clemens, Michigan (yes, it was named after the catfish). The show will be up 16Oct07-30Oct07, and there will be an opening reception on 26Oct07. Hopefully someone will be able to make it and tell me how it looks. Below is the poster I just finished for the show, as well as a couple of images that will be displayed.


Ezekiel, the righteous fist of the divine, does battle with Melchior, the gnostic beast of nimble and acerbic wit, on the peak of Mt. Banal

Theodosius contemplates destruction as Frederick whispers sweet redemptive nothings in his ear

Old News

For this inaugural edition of the Thursday City News blog I am going to post some old news.

In March 2007 I conducted a lecture and 3 day workshop at the Centro de Diseño Cine y Televisión in Mexico City (http://www.centro.org.mx/). The students at Centro were all energetic and engaged. We had a marathon first night after a marathon lecture. I intended the lecture to be 1 hour and went on for 2. But everyone stayed awake! And we even worked for 2 1/2 more hours. In excess of the workshop we also went to see some Mexican Wrestling, danced until the morning hours, and generally had a wonderful inspiring time.

Below is the poster announcing the event: