IS AYN RAND STILL RELEVANT?

Orginally published on December 3, 1997

Jack and I bickered on and off which culminated in a ridiculous fight on Sunday. I was upset like I've never seen before; sobbing, vomiting. Of course, he says mean things and then ends discussion. Jack is more willing to sever ties with his closest relations than to admit he's "wrong." What he doesn't realize is that in any relationship (friendship, love, whatever) right and wrong don't mean much. It's all compromise and forgiveness and humility. I think I've finally come to terms with this. There is no way to fix it. He is malfunctioned. It still hurts me like no tomorrow. No sign that it bothers Jack. I don't think he really cares.

Ho hum. Yes, it "appears" Jack really doesn't care. He buzzes to a strong inner core that allows him to survive the petty trivialities of life like truth, honesty, genuine compassion for others outside the projection of his own gutteral desire and whimsy.

I realize that you've had to hear this crap for nearly two years. I realize that you may still think I'm singing the wolf song. Maybe. But, I've got a piece of space with a lesbian coworker and a straight simoan babe (who's into bondage/leather shit—your kinda woman). It sounds great. Low cost of rent which includes maid service. Great neighborhood. No lease. No credit check. I can get on my feet and hopefully have my own place within six months. I may even just take over the house eventually.

I haven't minded being there for you Landry. You have helped me by proxy in my struggle to regain what was lost in the floods of dead consciousness I'd embraced in the likes of that whole rock scene plus a heavy dose of messianic complex I in high confusion told myself I was influencing here in Washington DC. You helped me clarify the issues by holding a mirror to the exploitative flames I had finally resolved to escape after long being too weak with misplaced sympathy and unfocussed id gratification in the form of self-loathing to snuff out once and for all, and Jack's self-imposed exile helped accelerate just such an initiative for me to clean house, such were the powerful corrosions of these rather reluctant friendships and epiphanies. It took bold strokes of error-thwarting cross-examination over long agonizing months to reconstruct enough of that previous, more contented, abundant self I knew myself to be, was born to be and would die to recover, after being completely sucked dry of soul and self-respect by those who would call themselves my friends with their lies and their mayhem as I became in my public image the polar opposite of the original. These past two years have been a steady scratching at the blackboard of independence as I have sought a return to the finer intelligence of my youth, my own strong and moral twenties, an intelligence I carved up into tiny pieces and flung to the winds of aggressive discord and poisonous irresponsibility in my thirties as I lived through the dark storms of personality presenting themselves to me as cool, hip, and aimless reaction when in fact I had been fooled into living FOR others, and not FOR myself, and have as a result drunk and eaten myself into the cloaked miseries of poor health and civil oblivion. Jack however has mastered selfishness, perhaps is even hardwired for it, but instead of using this mastery of self for good he seeks the evil path and manipulates others less savvy with the methods of selfishness to prop himself up in all his own imaginary glory. Allow me to quote from Ayn Rand:

"You think the world is essentially a mixture of good and evil, and one must compromise with the evil, and you're sick of that, so you're giving up the world? Nonsense. Evil, by definition (if we have made the right definition), is the impotent, the impractical, the powerless, that which does not work. So it is no threat to us, it cannot stand in our way - unless we permit it and help it to do so. It cannot poison the world for us - unless we carry the poison and spread it. The parasites cannot exploit us or rule us - unless we voluntarily agree to be exploited and hand them the tools with which to rule us.

"Let us withdraw the tools. . .

"We permit it, and we have suffered this long, for one essential reason: the generosity of the creator. It is our nature that we wish to give, prodigally, recklessly, because we know the source - our creative energy - is inexhaustible. Being self-sufficient, we cannot conceive of dependence, so we are modest in relation to others, we never think we are indispensible to them or superior, because we do not consider THEM indispensible or superior to us. We act as equals toward equals - and an exchange between equals is a proper, natural activity. We are glad to give because our creation is a discovery or embodiment of truth and when others respond to truth we welcome their response, we are happy - not because of the good that it does THEM, not because their approval gives us pleasure or is of any importance to us - but because their response is a victory for truth, that what we welcome is their entrance into OUR world, into that world we know to be good and true.

"We see no danger in giving - we think we're giving to men as rich as we are; we think of it as gifts not alms. And whenever we come up against an inferior - that he is an inferior is the hardest thing for us to believe; we see the evidence and we think it is a misunderstanding or a temporary misfortune that has affected the man; then we throw ourselves to the rescue, we give, we help, we let him lean on us and bleed us, we carry him - 'why not?' - we say, we are so strong, we have so much to spare. We are incapable of conceiving of the parasite's mind, so we can never understand him. We are incapable of hatred or malice. We will not accuse or reason - and we can't find the cause, since we can't understand him. So we become helpless and bewildered before him. We never accuse him, no matter what he does to us. He yells that we are selfish, cruel, tyrannical by reason of the very abundance and magnificence of our talents. And we almost come to believe this. 'Almost' - because no power on earth can really make us believe this; we are men of truth, we cannot fall that far into lying; and since our talents, our creative energies, are our sacred possessions, the source of our joy for living, we cannot permit so great a sacrilege against them."

"We allow ourselves to become torn. In a vague, unstated, indefinable way, we begin to feel we must atone for something, make amends to someone, pay someonefor something in some manner. What? We don't know. We can never know. We refuse to admit to ourselves the truth in a clear statement: that we are being damned for the best within us, and that the creature making the accusation is small, inferior, and truly evil. We are generous, and do not pronounce such a judgement upon a fellow human being. Hatred and anger are unnatural to us; contempt for a human being is totally unnatural to us, perhaps impossible - because we think and act as if we were dealing with men, and it is not proper to despise men, we are worshippers of man, because WE are men and this is the logical implication of our self-reverence. One's opinion of mankind comes from one's opinion of oneself, which is the only first-hand knowledge of man one can have. The man who respects himself, will carry the respect to his species, to others. The man who despises himself, with good reason, carries the contempt, the malice, the hatred, the suspicion to all humanity. We, the creators, cannot conceive of this. We are bewildered by the parasite's malice - we do not even recognize it as malice, because we don't really know malice.

"But so long as, for any reason, we do not recognize the truth - we are bound to fail and to suffer in the whole sphere and in all our actions where we have left this truth unrecognized. Our generosity is a good motive? NOTHING is good if it motivates lying, falsehood, or evasion. There is no morality except in an unbending, absolute recognition of the truth, in relation to everything; an absolute will to find, face, and grasp the truth, to the utmost of our capacity, then to act upon it. Nothing is moral but this cold, ruthless, rational pursuit. But we have not faced or recognized the truth about the parasites - so we fail, we're helpless, we're disarmed, and they've got us. Did they win over us? No, we won the battle for them. They rule the world? No, we handed it over to them. The guilt is ours, but not in the way they think; in the exact opposite way. The guilt is that we refused to see the truth about ourselves and about them."

The preceding few paragraphs are fetched from THE JOURNALS OF AYN RAND (Dutton, 1997) pages 399-401. While Rand is often a bit too pretentiously black and white, she offers a wide berth of gray as her lengthy journal characterizations of personalities from her two major novels, THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED attest. She admits imperfection, her superman is a cold human being, a product of severe intellect and resolve, but worldly success is hardly the criteria for recognizing this true man. She is unabashedly anti-collectivism and opposed to such mundane concepts as self-sacrifice and herd instinct, of course, having been sharpened by the catastrophic blades of Soviet Russia in its rush toward dialectic materialism, escaping to America in 1926.

Writing in 1946, Rand continues to plot her book, suggesting that the great minds, the individual genius, the prime movers should go on strike:

"This last form of striking always happens when gifted men find themselves in a morally corrupt society. And such a society is always collectivist, or on its way to collectivism, because morality and individualism are inseparable. The degree of individualism in a society determines its degree of morality. In effect, the gifted men find themselves dealing with men and conditions THEY DO NOT WISH TO DEAL WITH. So they do one of three things: (1) they do not function at all and become drifting, aimless bums; (2) they function in some field other than their peoper one, and produce only enough for their own sustenance, refusing to let the world benefit from their surplus energy; or (3) they function in their proper field but produce less than one-tenth of their actual capacity - it is a strained, unhappy, forced effort for them with their disgust against the conditions under which their energy has to function."

As you can see she, like all fingerpointers and none of us can claim to be otherwise, muddies the puddle of clear passionate labels soon enough. It's like the biblical metaphor that JC will return as an avenging lion, while at the same time, we are informed that archrival Lucifer not only presents himself as an angel of light as if he were some passive lamb or man of peace but that he too, is a roaring lion out to ruin men's best intentions. How in damnation are WE MERE MORTALS supposed to figger out who is playing what field and when?

I get home. Jack ignores me. He is playing Nintendo, empty bowls in the sink. His appetite, his life, all unphased. I realize: he doesn't give a fuck. I do the bills in the bedroom, my stomach in knots. I try to talk to him but I am the recipient of grudge silence. Jack would rather sever his arm rather than apologize to it. I think: I have no enemies. I have never stopped talking to somone—not even ex lovers. Jack has turned his back on you, Gabe, and others I'm sure I don't know about with not so much as a sniff. Less than two years in SF and he already has a list of people he does not talk to. This is wrong. I don't understand it.

It's unfair to characterize Jack as a thoroughbred parasite. But let's not mince words or hide behind veils of superficial morality. Let's call a liar a liar. Jack certainly fails the truth and honesty test when it comes to pure genius, preferring to mindfuck and aggravate his closest friends while sucking up to the famed and the fortuned as an extension of his own greater self, a role I too embraced in those awful years of socially incompatible boredom unleashed upon the worthless rock scene of noise pebbles and strutting egos. But I differ from Jack. He hides behind the facade or the appearance of not needing others, proud in his aloof aloneness but he truly can't survive without the social contact of the scene. I meanwhile parade around in a foul attempt to need everybody when really I am quite uncomfortable with people of any scene (with the possible exception of my wife), and prefer my aloneness, and feel self-worth only when alone, an escape from the weariness of conflict inevitable with the approach of the smug and the self-satisfied.

Oftentimes the philosophical canvas of well-mapped minds seems painted in pure black and pure white rhetorically-enhanced pigments, but Rand is quite robust in flushing out the multitudes of gray failures in her vibrant palette of undisguised potential. She writes of the trickle down "theory of greatness in practice" long before the writers for Herr Reagan took up the mantle, using these words:

"On the basis of this beginning, the story proceeds like this: The prime movers say to the world, in effect: "You hate us. You don't want us. You put every obstacle in our way. Very well - we'll stop. We won't fight you or bother you. We'll merely stop functioning. We'll stop doing the things you martyr us for. AND SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT. The complete statement of the strike's objective is this: We have had enough of your exploitation, persecution, insults, stealing, and expropriation. Go ahead and try to exists without us. We will not come back until you recognize and acknowledge the truth of the matter. Until you admit what we are, give us full credit for what we do, and give us full freedom from your chains, orders, restrictions, and encroachments - physical, spiritual, political, and moral. Until you accept a philosophy that will leave us alone to function as we please. Until you take your hands off us - and keep them off. We ak nothing but the freedom to work and live as we please. You will get gifts and benefits from us such as you can never imagine. But you will not get them until you leave us alone . . ."

I'm kind of afraid of his recent behavior. I feel that if left untreated, it could turn into physical abuse. I feel that he is trying to alienate me from other people. The first step in physically abusive relationships. However, I don't think Jack is the kind of person to hit women. You would have told me that if so, I think. I think he's too lazy for that. I do not like the person he's made me become. It sucks. It hurts. It's no fun. It's pathetic. I am not me. I hate him. I never thought anyone could be so, so selfish. He doesn't seem human to me. How sad for him to be so gripped in the terror of not winning; of being wrong to be willing to toss aside EVERYONE. It really creeps me out. I look at him and think, he really doesn't get it. It's so very sad.

I'm not sure where this leads us in the matter at hand, Lynn. Most of us tend to see ourselves in the best possible light, or the worst. More typically, we flipflop on a rather consistent basis. This is our weakness. Nobody MAKES us flipflop. In our laziness and our weakness we think in terms of whatever suits our purposes of the moment, and adopt circular tautologies which reassure us that our past has no relationship to our present, unless of course we can glorify or punish ourselves as a helpless nonsensical victim of our past. That is the great lie we tell ourselves. Even Ayn Rand overestimates the ability to succinctly reverse the biological powers of entrenched thinking. We train ourselves to be weak and useless by referring to our decent motivations as signs of our goodness, of our moral strength, of our willingness to sacrifice. Piffle, irrelevant associations of the assaulted mind, useless in the arena of real activity. This trench warfare of oscillating between momentary truths rather than relying upon rational convictions is where we continually make our mistakes. And these mistakes, like firebrand molecules of self-destruction attach themselves to other mistakes, and we are rendered more weak and more useless than we were a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. Each detail of our psychology and our intellect, each philosophical concept and practical action must be analyzed on an individual basis, just as we wish to be anlayzed on an individual and not a collective, herdlike, stereotypical basis.

No doubt you still cling to Jack for the very same traits which inspired you in the first place. But you are not the same person anymore. You have been stripped of something precious, now replaced by the revolting chaos of petty lies, failed opportunities, and habitual belittlement slopping over from the other, as you struggle to bring order to that collectivism which is a relationship. It is probably a one-sided trade because of the competing natures involved. Because you are a doer, and not a mere parasite, you have inherited only the foreign, the unbridled unashamed chaos of the other. The excitement, the expansive thrill, and most importantly, even the quiet joy of living, you already possessed. The other would not, or could not add to that in any estimable portion. The basic problem with Jack, discounting his intrinsic dishonesty, is that he does not progress in the world of life and liveliness past the old thrills of adolescence. He remains a stagnated nullifying personality. Rather than change his life he changes the people in his life so that his fringe perspective can be dished out afresh, as progress is gained only in the turnover of faces and places, and he can tell himself and these new ears all the stories his multitude of "friends" and "locales" have helped him build in a world of illusive success in the eyes of others. It is these traits that keep Jack from dwelling at the far ends of the spectrum and deep into the gray of the mundane world as his genius is wasted on his desire to remain a "pampered" child, a desire I simply cannot fully comprehend, since responsibility and harsh realities were rudely thrust upon me and my organizational mind at a very early age.

This remains your call, Landry. Few of us are pure evil. Jack is not that much fun beneath the surface, but he's not pure evil either. However, let me acquaint you with the idea that the brain, the organ of the mind is indeed as valid in terms of physical flesh as the face or the arm, and is quite capable of being physically abused. A face wound might heal in a few days. A brain wound may never be healed if the thinking process is cajoled into repeated faulty reasoning while in mortal combat with an opponent who will stop at nothing to cloud the issue and win at any cost to truth and integrity.

I am the most dispicable of all creatures because I have lived through every evil of ethics and cvility in both postulate and axiomatic form. I have skinned every thought, and boiled every skin. I have been prowled when I had no chance to win. I transformed myself into a preditor when I had no opportunity to lose. I have always known the difference between the two, but nobody I have ever known has possessed the power to listen beyond the first few syllables, and so I've even had to admit for the sake of the herd, that I am indeed nothing but a mute with a speech impediment.

GT

HIT THE ROAD, JACK

Originally published on February 12, 1997

Susanne was a pretentious whiny mess, but I tell you what, Jack always finds a way to look really stupid and callous in the way he treats his relationships. But then again, this is me talking, and after 40 years of loving everybody with a howdy doo I now seem to find everybody a miserable waste of life force, especially those who go by the name of friend. Kerouac debatably wrote the first great modern friendship story. I must be writing the story of what a gross clusterfuck friendship can really turn out to be...

Sorry Jack didn't work out. He simply doesn't care beyond the next energy burst. He's always just an upbeat away from another potential friend, that easy touch. Having nothing and doing nothing seems to present him with that advantage. I think Jesus said something to that effect. But Jack rides the great dragon of lies. He tells an outrageous lie when a simple truth would get him closer to his mark than the fiction ever could, but, hey, that's Jack's security blanket it seems. Lie until it hurts, and then make up new ones. I've known him a decade now, and oh well...

Been working with Photoshop Actions batching routines today. WOW! What a wonderful feature. I can convert whole folders of say, a hundred TIFF grayscale graphics into JPGs, add a tint, resize, blur to smooth out edges, and save at a certain resolution, ALL BY FIRST HAVING PHOTOSHOP RECORD MY ACTIONS DURING ONE, and then executing for all the others. To watch one's computer open up files, add tints, resize, save into specified folder, close, and then open the next one is simply what power computing is all about!!! Then I simply grab that folder, and drop it onto a namechanging shareware program I recently picked up and it will standardize all the filenames—operations that I used to spend hours, days, even weeks hardclicking now accomplished in minutes. Sweet Macintosh!

GT

LOVE SHAFTS AND DEBAITED MARBLES

Originally published on February 5, 1997

Hate Jack if you gotta (you'll have to stand in line, as I've noted I was there first), but a world without relationships, or a world without men, ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Despite all my clamor, and the recent dismissal of two of my supposedly closest friends after what was to be a very happy holiday turned to mud, I have always and will always yearn for the trusting, giving, mutually satisfying relationship, on either level, friendshipping or loveresque. I've always desired what I've understood as the near perfect union of Will and Ariel Durant, authors of that multivolumed set of THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION.

Won't burden you with the details here as you may already know the tale, but they really set the standard for all time. The other (one I'm seriously considering) is the 12th love tragedy of Abélard and Heloise. Yes, I'm thinking of castration, end of lust, fixation on the feminine, more energies my own to simply work out the philosophies I know the world needs to hear JUST ONE MORE TIME (claim to fame?)

Glad to hear you're back in the saddle (the workplace, not Jack's cockadoodledoo). I was beginning to worry about you.

GT

LANDRY'S FROZEN HOLIDAY

Landry, "I turn 32 in fucking Minneapolis. Think I'll get laid?"

Just don't lick a frozen pole...

Lounged on the sofa ALL DAY today hoping to kick this mess, but here it is half past five and the congestion is rolling in like a Candlestick fog. My throat from coughing and my ears from ringing hurt the way a whore hoarse on frozen poles might hurt. Snot and phlegm bug me still, and the type is fuzzy on the screen, so my eyes have conspired as well, but I had to finally get up and move around.

Have fun in the tundra, girl. I've heard second only to SF, Minneapolis is the the capital city among the pink and the proud. And happy birthday. Age is a good thing when youth gets lost in its own reflection...

NUMBER THEORY

Originally published pn January 14, 1997

Thanks Landry for the personal update. Been swamped with Bracken's biography of Guy Debord, that Situationist International revolutionary Frenchy fellow I've namedropped a few times in your direction. A decent book I must say, if only because it is the first so-called biography in ANY language of this rather famous dialectician, according to its author, although Greil Marcus writes about him extensively in LIPSTICK TRACES, a book with which I believe you are somewhat familiar.

Still haven't even begun to compose the New Year's Day, the Day After Massacre tale of Tim, Julianna, Steve and all the 1980s throwbacks, but it's right there waiting for me when I get my breath back from Bracken. Ninety-nine photos have been scanned, 400 pages of text converted from Windows to Mac, and all laid carefully into PageMaker.

Currently busy proofreading with an interested eye; although I loathe the man's politics, his philosophical insights are pure poetry. Beaucoup typos, misspellings, missing words, et cetera, so gotta keep my eye on the ball. I also designed the cover. Bracken's hip to it, so all things are hunky dorey. Will get paid (underpaid but satisfied) and appropriate acknowledgements.The publisher is Feral Books, currently of Portland, Oregon soon to be moving to sunny LA. Whew! Be glad when all this REAL WORK is behind me...

GT

PING PING PING

Orginally published on February 26, 1997

Yes, it's official! Actually sometime early last week I got my rejection notice from City Paper stating both the editing and design jobs had been filled but please try again in the future.

By the way, I really appreciated your comments the other day about the Dollhouse Fevers serial. That rather dry response I muscled out did not really indicate the true boost to my spirits your encouraging words sparked. To the point, I've noticed an ample loss in energy that obviously relates to your comments...

"boy, I am really enjoying this. I know it is the telling of a true trauma tale of friendship gained and lost, but as a piece of writing it is absolutely wonderful. I await Day 3."

...in that after writing on the topic I collapse, physically drained, numb in body and spirit. Surely a strong indication of the intensely personal nature of the writing, knowing that those persons being profiled no doubt will read the very words which could only drive the wedge between us even deeper than the events discussed.

Trust things are have gelled on the homefront. While visiting with Steve this weekend at his local watering hole in Philadelphia, he blurted out that he had been carrying on this secret E-mail campaign with you. I suspected as much. That was as far as the revelation went, but it followed on the heels of his patented rata-tat-tat speedwhiz monologue which on this occasion was employed to explain that he wasn't addicted to alcohol, oh no, but that he was addicted to irresponsibility.

Ping ping ping—the roll call of topics zing past faster than even a sober mind can retain—without rhyme or reason—ping ping ping—life has a way of explaining itself under the influences of irresponsibility. But enough of all that. While writing this I've been watching Ricki Lake gushing at the surprise baby shower thrown in her honor, hosted by Joan Lunden. John Waters was there, gifts and videoconferenced goo goo...


GT

THE APPLE, THE WORM, THE DRIP

Hey Landry,

Jack was the one we all suspected was going to fly high, but somehow it always broke down with him. I don't know why specifically, although a major contributing factor in my mind is that crack thing he's got. A consistant need to pound drugs is obviously bad news for most gonzos. And like most gonzos Jack feels immune to these special dangers, and always feels like he can rise above any problems just in the nick of time. But time is merciless, and all I'm saying is I hope Jack steers clear of most of that garbage out there in his new start.

Yes, we had a little run in about that shit. He hasn't done it very often and I blew up so bad the last time to the point where he was obviously ashamed. If it happens again, I doubt I will give him a second chance. I just think it is throwing your money away in addition to being a waste of time. I am at a stage in my life where I just don't want to deal with that crap no how any which way, zero tolerance, no more turning the cheek in allowing lurkers to run roughshod.

Suzy and I are hopping the Amtrak up New York City this weekend to make the rounds with an old friend, Julianna Nope. Jack knows her at a distance. Up close, who knows anyone? We are each mere fractals of our true self.

Working on her doctorate in social anthropology—Jules just got notice of acceptance to Cornell—so she will be moving to Ithaca in upper state within a few weeks. The past two years at the New School have left at the freezeline of parental support, but this Cornell package carries with it an $8K annual stipend, so she’s set for pocket flash, but observes the town of Ithaca as an eerie hovel, full of strange hippy looking people, no strip malls, no 7-11s, nothing but a few docile streets, a couple of schools, and hills to kill for if one happened to be a skate punk. She’s not, however, and without a car, is already sweating the cold icy strides up and down those inclines, fretting she'll hate it, if she survives it.

Julianna is still rather gothic in appearance and outlook, can’t squelch the hipsterific riot grrrl stirring inside her, although she’s embraced an academic mindset, is quite the scholar, dean’s list et al, and seething to escape the stranglehold of her past. This weekend should be fantastic now that the heat wave in which we suffered 95-100 degree weather for three days straight has pissed off and new highs in the low 70s are expected. Her lower Lex Ave walk-up of course is slack on AC, and I suppose you don't have one either. I understand there are few of them on the SF Bay. But here at the Dollhouse climate control is ALWAYS a cool calculation.

Well, gotta go start some dinner. I’m blackening some salmon steaks tonight, although Tim is chewing top sirloin because he avoids seafood. The lad pays us a flat rate per as a dinner guest, so if living here boosts Tim's self-esteem and his sense of responsibility a notch or two as he claims and keeps him off heroin as he says it is doing, then I suppose we can all feel grateful that this particular opportunity knocked. His extra money helps keep us on monthly budget and out of hock, so it seems to be working all around, although of course I've had to stand firm on a few principles Tim would conveniently fail to understand, but I should brag in his name that these moments have been few thus far. I guess he's been here eight weeks on Friday. Jack only lasted three days when he returned from Germany, frying my patience before he bolted up to Diane and Adrian’s to squander his small forture with them.

Such are the crass ironies of a well-circulated life, eh Landry? Hope all this psychodrip suits you. It's what I do when I write, and when I am alone wrestling with my thoughts, or wife. My style often takes the form of a complaint. But in all honesty, I am that I am...

GT

PARSING THE CRITERIA OF GREAT ART

Originally published on September 17, 1996

Landry wrote:
This reminds me of an argument I had with my friend Brad who is a painter. He said that painting is art and writing is craft. What do you think?

Someone should kick poor mad William Blake up out of the grave. He called Jesus and his disciples the greatest ARTISTS the world has ever seen about the same time his friend Thomas Paine was facing the wrath of the English & American church leaders with his AGE OF REASON. Uh, now THAT reminds me of that intrigue Tom Wolfe's THE PAINTED WORD invoked with his fictional world reknown artist (this was a book about the NY painting scene where one's greatness as an artist is inseparable from the superior qualities of the particular THEORY of the art, brownie points for the thinker, nee writer once again, it seems) who while sitting in an unremarkable bar in an unremarkable mood suddenly had a great idea. He had only a glass of water and a paper napkin at his disposal. He quickly dipped and began etching, but just as suddenly as the idea had dawned in his mind's eye the world famous artist collapsed on his barstool and expired. Obviously his etching evaporated, but the question remained in Wolfe's assessment, was the idea that the now dead artist had expressed ever so briefly been that artist's, and therefore, perhaps the world's greatest work of art?

Blake did it all in a sense, yet he called Jesus the GREATEST ARTIST. This same Jesus who never wrote or painted a damned thing except some line in the sand, and there are those biblical scholars who amazingly even claim this was an apocryphal tale (now famous as the "he who is without sin, please please cast the first stone" scene) inserted by later scribes. This viewpoint leads of course to the idea that ideas are the guts of art, NOT shapes, lines, colors. Paintings may certainly express an idea, or several, but one is never exactly sure what that idea is unless the artist is part of that Clementine Greenberg (the NYC art don) regime boasting an idea per brushstroke...

I tend to agree with Blake, but then, can paintings lie, cheat, and steal the way words do?

GT

TWO GUYS AND A BOWL OF FUZZY SNITS

Originally published on September 18, 1996

Thanks Landry for appreciating. Just what this discussion was originally supposed to be about is still up for debate! Go figure!

Derrida & Schrodinger's cat, not chickens, somebody else piped in, but for my money I don't know why these people think a topic can't or won't stray a few fuzzy threads away from the barrowness of whatever it is they think THEY are ranting on about. After all, these snits aren't even in charge of the group. I simply jumped in where I had something to say after being bombarded with a bunch of notes yesterday from a this Derrida group I guess I joined a few weeks ago because I haven't joined one recently...

How's it going? My back between my shoulder blades has been bothering me the past few days. Tonight Sue & I are traipsing out past Bailey's Crossroads to Borders to catch the Guy Kawasaki booksigning. Guy is the official MacEvangelist, again working for Apple. Hope to get a snapshot of the Mac Guy & yours truly. Later we'll stop for dinner, then cruise back into town for one of Guy Debord's Situationist International flicks, from the 1960s, I would suppose. Len Bracken issued the invite. Tonight in the WPA artspace...whoopee! He breathed his signature Bracken's breath over the phone with a hint of desperation at Gabriel's indifference, "Uh, nine o'clock's probably a little too late for you, right?" But I said that this time he was in luck. We were going to be out, and would certainly try to swing by to catch his idol philosopher in action.

And yes I noticed that this would be a two Guy (actually a GYE & a GUEE, but who's counting these days?) evening...

GT

"Create like a God, Command like a King, and Work like a Slave..."
—Brancusi

PISSING AT THE PEEPHOLE

Originally published on September 16, 1999

Arthur - I have no burning desire to cull the herd of genuine interested parties, far from it, and I certainly appreciated your first response a while back, and now again, when pressed, it seems you have indeed brightened my day just in hearing from you. Smells like loneliness, doesn't it? Not really. It's just that sometimes my own sense of failure and frustration in building an active community where different voices can be counted upon to seed the common causes and indeed foster that notion of belonging to a focussed group greater than oneself, gets the best of me, and I plot yet another "situation" to stir the soup.

I mean, one does get tired of groveling for input. But I've had a rough year myself since this list was founded last November, and certainly do not crave the ax just to exercise some phony sense of authority. The names you mention: Matt, Kubhlai, Michael, and Gabriel, none of us have met in the flesh. But Len Bracken, Steve Taylor, and Lynn Landry all have met me, and have each pleaded cases of personal friendship with the GT, but something is drastically lacking in these friends who hardly have a word to share with this project. Friends indeed, I say to myself. In full-bodied candor, their absence is my strongest resentment of the moment.

Rebunk down in Australia, well, I dunno where he's floated off to, and there is only one other new name (to respond to Matt's query) on the subscription list, but this person has NEVER piped in with a word, not once in the several months since signing on. This person has a UK address, but has remained mum. Again, there is no criminal breech of etiquette in this behavior, but I do interpret a slight rudeness I think for a list this small already.

To me, this present anxiety is not a matter of seeping paranoia over the content or stylings of these conversations, uh, falling into the wrong hands or some utter nonsense like that; as incendiary cant they barely make muster, but there is a pinching personal disappointment fueled by a periodic suspicion that perhaps the SWILL is indeed nothing more than a crass waste of time since there are many other lists out there which seem to attract all sorts of opinionmaking noise, of the feverish sort or the mundane, but here, uh, well you know what I mean.

And I really despise the fact that I am whingeing over this.

WHY I AM LOUD

Daily I sing camp songs to a cast of thousands
Boldly I recline in the pit of this orchestra
A spring peach in a night gown grown
Justly proud of my fleshy fevered cleavage
Jumping up and down until
They look at me,
And I become the scene.

Once in the spotlight I cannot relinquish
Long after I quicken empty of words
I am she might and muscle as I he conjures noises
Public displays of bodily function
Aiming to keep an audience captured
To watch
To listen
To me

Once I was pinched to the cold lost wall
An ugly frazzled flower always tripping
In gold glossed high school halls
Over long legs of boys, over long legs of boys
The grip of the cold lost wall was fierce
But refusing to take root or suffer this load
I made my escape in a green gray Chevy
Up an unshouldered bayou road.

That's why I am loud.

The more books I open the more I read
The less shy I pretend I am
I ask the world to touch me with delicate fingers
Desiring open spaces of mountain and sky
No walls but canyons and oceans for me

Where I cannot be held by
Walls that grope
Or am forced to hang out
In dingy coops
with the chickens.
______________________________________

This poem, written in 1997, is a collaboration with a SF poet named Landry. Although I only offered a few changes which she said she liked, she didn't think it was her poem anymore. Well, I liked her root images immensely, and despite the tightening chances I offer it here...

BABYHEAD ANGST

Originally published on June 3, 1996

So, what's new at the Dollhouse, you ask?

Nothing new. Your name came up more times than Jesus Christ this weekend, but nearly always was answered with an I dunno, or a muffled uhmmm...

Yeah, Lynn is cool. I just don't know what to write her in response to the Babyhead show. It was an event worth noting if only for a few days. Frankly I hate critiquing others' work, especially in a genre where I haven't mustered up much myself in the way of surpassing or suppressing it. I liked the shows, but I was glad when the last one was over. I was nearly ready to bolt, already drunk, smoked, and tired from yet another long day saith the old man in dungarees. Tom Howell slopped over earlier in the day with a photography project he needed me to pull off, uh, taking a picture of a fat shiny tow chain he knew I had.

It was to be a typical Howell BIG PRODUCTION with bogus color-reflective transparency drag, but he pocketed a roll of film, and we staggered off to the Babyhead Festival together. Tim met Gigi on his bike. Tom already knew most of the actors, directors, and producers of the show. Safe to say, Lynn was about the only person he didn't know, yet I'm thinking he probably did meet her at Buck Downs place this past New Year's Day. Remember? We'd planned to walk the couple of blocks there after we left Wayne Curtin's absolutely weird houseblessing that evening, but I passed out instead, having had little sleep for several days prior...

Tom was struggling to comment on her work as we were waiting for food at this Sheesh Kabob place in Georgetown after tiring of the reception at the Clark Gallery following the f-fest. Noticing he didn't want to slam her, I filled in the blanks with a typical GT gust of hot air...

"Uh Lynn is an attractive and very intelligent woman, but her acting skills are certainly not ready for prime time..." Tom interrupted with a quick sigh of relief, nodded his head furiously and said, "Yes, precisely!" Tom thought Buck was a natural, however.

I could say, "Oh I liked this." Or, "I liked that." But let's just leave it the way Tom put it: It's not like everybody in the audience would be back next week to watch these flicks again. Oh well, you know me; at the time I couldn't leave it at that. I countered his remark with a perspective-kissing, "Well, I don't think too many people there would line up to see A Few Good Men again a week later either. Tom was in gear high with his Talleyrand tongue, suggesting that the Vampires Suck video we did in 1985 had measured up to the standards we saw upon the screen this night, signalling a been there, done that attitude which I guess summed it all up for both of us. Sue of course didn't have much of anything to say on the subject. Thank God. I might have begged to differ.

The artsy-bosomed women at the Clark Gallery reception however were well worth the price of staring. I knew I had to escape that place soon before I got the urge to touch. This was the same gallery which showed our pal Scott Farnum's little pieces of fame portraits last spring. And by the way, since I am forwarding this to Lynn, there is news Jack might be interested in: Dave Weist and Marcie Dewey, less than a year after marrying each other have split. Marcie has moved to California, uh, where I dunno, but that's the latest via the Quag...

Thanks Lynn for the performance. I did enjoy the night as my awkward nights tend to go. It's just pretty acolades don't roll off my tongue or my keystroke finger as easily as bad beer slips down the ole gullet. And yes I checked out the City Paper blurbs and your picture (which I barely recognize as you), but unless no one else sends you the CP, I won't. Your fans will surely not let you down, buck or no buck.

GT