Art in America OR "16 ways to karate chop a robot" OR more on our lost generation

"Too many colors deaden the eye"

I think it says that in the Tao te Ching.

Now, I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good. Oh, uh... and I do wear glasses, so I think the "dead eye" thing is relevant here.

Now everytime I go to buy a new pair of glasses I think: "cool, I get to express myself with some sweet new shades." I always want to get some really funky gothic looking specs like my neighbor Bill has-- you know those cool black framed glasses like Clark Kent used to wear... or maybe some of those cool Ben-Franklin-lookin' glasses that were meant to be reading glasses, but look so cool that you wear them all the time anyway. Or possibly those purple cat-rimmed glasses that Grandma used to wear-- now those are some artsy glasses.

But when I get to the optometrist's office, I freeze. There are just SOOO many different frames to choose from. There are 72 different Ben Franklins, 98 different Clark Kents and a full 437 Grandmas on display. What is a guy to do? So everytime, I go for basically the same pair of glasses that I've been wearing for 10 years now.

And maybe that's the reason that in the land of the world's greatest art beers everyone drinks characterless beer-flavored wine coolers like Miller Lite and Budweiser.

I don't know what it's like in other countries these days, but I do know about the state of the arts (and not just the state of the state-of-the-art arts either) in the US of A. And it's not that Americans don't care about art, it's just that they care about money more. And with the internet and libraries and museums and concert halls and that weird guy on the street corner... art is just too... confusing.

Americans do care (at least a little bit) about movies. Not FILMs though. Just movies. And there is a difference. A movie is any picture show with robots or ninjas, or robot-killing ninjas....

Film is more like this:

A film by bob.

Title: man on toilet drinking booze from broken VCR.

Cut to scene 1: Dirty man sits on toilet drinking booze from a broken VCR. Man throws down VCR, smirks, and lights a cigarette.

The End.


So why would any American part with his hard earned cash to support "the arts?" I mean, artists are weird, and they hardly ever karate chop robots. And this is why at one of my last rehearsals, my director cried in front of us, because the "money people" had just told her that Mozart was no longer economically viable in the US...."maybe if there were robots or something...."

About the add on novel below

Please feel free to add to the novel-- write a chapter, paragraph, sentence or word. Please don't feel the need to keep to any sort of style, and don't be too modest-- this is only a fun writing exercise. You can add by posting to the comments for the novel-- I will post the comments to the main page in the order I receive them without any judgement.

Have fun,

written in 6 minutes-- Chapter 1 of the ADD ON novel--

"Darn it! Why can't I move...."

That was my first thought when I learned that I was dead.

At first, when the pictures all stop coming, the thing that gets you is, you know, being dead. But after a while, it's the little things: not breathing, not drinking, not seeing, well not exactly anyway, because it's not like you can use your eyes.

But I guess being dead is the kind of thing you get used to, I mean, you have a long enough time to get used to it...

Being dead is like having all of the fabrics of your life folded up, and placed in the closet. All of the different textures that make up living fade away. There are no more folds, no unclean little nooks-- everything is just sort of evened out. All of the things that consume the living are irrelevant now-- I'll never get the things I want, but I will never fail again either-- I don't even have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. All of that is gone now. And that is what being dead is supposed to be like. But for me it was different. For me, there was this one little thing that wouldn't go away. For a dead person, it really was a very small thing, since nothing really maters anyway....

But, even though it was the littlest thing, just by the fact of it's existence, it became huge to me. With all the colors of life faded away, this little tiny little spot on the canvas began to give me meaning again, it gave me definition again, and so it gave me life again.

It was a small, small thing. If I had a heart to feel with, it might feel like a doubt. And now I need to find out how I died-- not to find out who did it...

but to be sure of who didn't do it.

Chapter 2 submitted by Je Suis

Despite all the inventive slandering and ceaseless shouting, the Muslims hadn't killed me, I was pretty sure about that. They seemed to be a pretty angry bunch, those ones, especially the more radical Muslims, who appeared to have grudge against me for being one, white; two, western; three, breathing. But the various terrorist squads out there had always remained a little outside of my social circle, you know? Ditto the Chinese, Egyptians, Starbucks baristas, Marxists, and people who shopped at Wal-mart. Also, my parents, seeing as they were dead. This, by the same logic, means Mark Twain did not kill me, Francis Ford Coppola had no hand in my death, and no member of the Ghandi clan or the French Revolution ever conspired against me. More's the pity, because if no one famous killed me, that meant my chance of being famous after my death was quickly diminished, possibly beyond all hope of restoration. I would like to be famous, even now, when I’m dead. Curious desire, this. I had never been remarkable for very much outside of my private circle of acquaintances. There was the time I auditioned for the post of weatherman down at the local television station. Those people probably still had my demo tape somewhere, probably filed under W for "We Are Absolutely Never Going To Hire This Idiot". "Looks like rain," I remember declaring confidently on that tape as I stood in the sun-warmed spray of the sprinkler on my neighbour's front lawn while his kids screamed and chased each other around me. "Pervert," their mother had yelled at me as she ran down the steps, and, after I had reasonably replied to her charge, "Yeah, well you can go to hell yourself, Speedos are NOT pants. And get off my property." Well, maybe she killed me. Which would have been unkind of her. I would never have touched her kids. Everybody who knows me – dammit, knew me - knew I only liked either gorgeous women or fat women. And also my cousin. But she was both gorgeous and fat.

Fiction project

I'm thinking of starting an ADD ON style fiction project where people can submit chapters of a novel....

I think that it would be a good way to take the ego out of being creative. And perhaps the sum will be greater than the parts...

If anyone has a good 1st chapter, feel free to submit it to the comments, and I will post it....

A Lost Generation

Well, "lost generation," at least that's something, right.

I mean, they're "lost" right? That at least put them on the map, it gave them something to hang on to....

Our generation? We got nothing. We're lost alright, adrift amongst new creative technologies that only our grandchildren will finally put into perspective, but we can't even call ourselves lost-- that's SOOO 19X6.

Where are the arts now? What the heck do people care about?

Bloggy Fiction-- Chapter 1 (more to come!)

Greetings dear reader,

Thank you for reading this book. It means more to me than you could possibly know.

So that you can understand this better, I would like to share some things with you, before we really get started. Firstly, I feel that I should tell you what my therapist said is the reason that I wrote this book:

Because I want you to like me.

I am going to share with you some thoughts about what the meaning of this book is, but you should probably keep that one thing in mind, that I want you to like me. It hadn't actualy occurred to me that way until my thereapist told me so, but more and more, I suspect that she might be right!

Secondly, dear reader, I have to admit that in this book, I will pretend to be many different things, a sociologist, a biologist, a physicist, a musician, magician, scholar and author. I also pretend to be technically saavy. I should warn you in advance that I am none of these things. Because this book is so important to me, I feel that I need to be honest with you up front, I am nothing more than a high-school custodian at my own alma matter- a job which I enjoy, but which I've often had problems feeling pride in. But, I'm still young, i'm still young....

And yes, this novel is largely autobiographical, in a strange way, and you're invited to live almost all of the interesting things that have ever happened to me, and love all of the people that I have loved, vicariously through my characters.

And so I must also admit that in this way I pretend that I am handsome, charming and well-read, at least much more so than in real life. Perhaps if I could hold back the blush, I'd say that these characters look from the outside the way I look on the inside.

Why am I being so honest? A few months ago, I found by accident a private blog that a high-school classmate keeps as an online journal. I'm fairly confident that she has no idea that the blog is public and that other people can read it. She writes things that no person would ever write publicly-- for example, about her relationship with her new husband and why she has already been unfaithful only a month after her wedding. In other words, she is completely open, and I am completely addicted to this guilty little pleasure. If you're lucky, I may even share a few of her posts with you.

And so reader, because I want you to like me, I am willing to make this little Faustian bargain: I too will try to be completely open, you naughty little voyeur, you.

But you should also know this, though I may indulge in a little private blog reading, I otherwise seem to care very little about people. My therapist tells me this is because I see other people as mindless automotons. This is true. When I look at people, I'm prone to imagining that I can see exactly what they looked like at every other point in the whole of their lives-- when their lovers left them, when they masterbate, deficate, urinate and pontificate-- I see it all right now. And when I consider their actions I can't separate their most recent action from the fabric of their entire life. And if I went back in time and changed just one little thing, I can see that they would be a completely different person. So I care about the ideas that motivate people, The things that wound them up in the first place, that make them bounce around so commically in this plinko board of life.

So this may be less a novel than a history. It is the story about forces much larger than a single person, battling eachother for global domination like two giant monsters hand-trapping over Tokyo. It is a story about the conflict between people and these forces. But I don't want to give away the end too early....

And then again, as I think about the words of my Therapist, it's a story about you liking me. Yes, this may very well be a story about me, and my relationship to a world that I don't understand. Oh and if that's true, then this is a mystery too! But I wouldn't want to give too much of that away just yet either....

Romanace

Director Kurt Wimmer has said that action is how men express romance.

I think that is probably true, but I'll also add that ideas are how some men show romance.

People accept other peoples ideas like little love letters-- even bad ideas are often adopted as valantines. This isn't a man/Woman thing, and I don't think it is a class thing either. But I think that it is yet another way of dividing up humans-- those who use ideas like gang signs, and those who would rather get caught with a cheap hooker than even share ideas. And I hope that there is a third group that is aware that humans use solutions as social currency....

Thoughts about the end of empire.

Thoughts about the end of empire.

Basic idea:

As we find out more about what causes the decline and death of single organisms we may find that very similar forces are at work in the decline of civilizations. Look at Rome, look at the great age of China, look at the Indian civilizations and south American, and the golden age of the Islamic Caliphite.... All of these civilizations have eclipsed "western" civilization at one point or another. Actually, it may be that we are too biased in favor of ""western "civilization in some ways. Our reading oh history places the West and Especially the US as the victors in some sort of race for supreamacy. But it really only looks that way from the vantage point of the last 6o years or so. Really, the US wasn't even a competitor until after WW2.

"That's really quite sad."

That's funny I find it hopeful.

"How can you? If you're right, then civilizations run their course, and then they die or decline, right? That means that we will never reach any lasting peace, and that even if we are able to establish an enlightened society in the future, then it too is doomed to eventual death."

Maybe only if we continue to hold on to our current ideas about identity. The very definition of violence seems to be resisting these natural paterns. Who's to say that in the future, as we understand our gods better, that we won't find a way out of this cycle of samsara. It seems to me that an enlightened society might accept these natural rises and falls as we accpet the seasons. Perhaps our future enlightened societies will be cyclic-- they will decline, only to grow green again in the spring. The problems start to beat us down when we can only accept unlimited growth model. The more the US for example tries to exert it's world dominance in the future the more turbulance we cause, and the more violence we cause in the sine wave. But what if instead we accepted this temporary winter, this temporary stagnation or even decline, what would happen?

We invent a new refridgerator. There is a great period of growth. But at some point, everyone owns a refridgerator. We we can blah blah blah.

The Wicca of making a living

"So, what do you do?"

"Whatever the hell I want, what do you do?"


So my first problem is trying to explain exactly what it is that I do. When I say that I am a Factotum, I mean that I am....Hmm. Well here's what I don't do, I don't work for some boss that I hate, I don't beat myself over the head with some ridiculous work schedule, I don't dull my mind with the stupifying monotony of every "day job" I've ever had, and I don't make a lot of money. But I do manage to to feed clothe and house myself.

At one point, I was working for UPS full time and taking college classes, pretty common stuff for early twenties guy. Infact, I've had more than my fair share of miserable day jobs: I've been a secretary and Adminstrative assistant for several companies, worked on the trade floor of a major corporation, worked at carnivals, sold baby clothes, worked in fast food, worked for UPS, and on and on, and I'm not yet 30! But I just wanted to bust out, and become extraordinary, but I had no idea what that even meant. I felt like I was working to make money so that I could keep working so that I could make more money so that I could.... You see where this is going? I started looking at everyone I met, and started asking them questions, and it seemed that only 1 in 100 was happy with their work. Worse off, they were ALL willing to commit what they admit are horrible sins against their fellow man, because they feel so imprisoned by their daily grind that they have no other choice. Through grad school I started invisioning a new way of living. In a way, it was like the alcholics I've met in Flint who can't keep a real job so they get really creative about finding money for their coors light and Marajuana. I'm like that, only smarter, clearer and soberer. Well, usually soberer. I began to imagine that if I didn't keep a day job, I'd get pretty creative about how I paid my rent really fast. But more importantly, I would be an activist. If only I could show people how to be happy with their lives without accepting the same old economic slavery their parents lived in. What if we could all find something to make of our time than money? we really could make a better world.

So, cut to three years later, when will I ever get my dream? I've been scrambling around trying to pay my rent, never sure where my next job is coming from, always with too much work to even know where to begin, and then it struck me-- hey, I MADE this miserable, beautiful existance. My dreams have come true!

Over the last couple of years I have, and continue to make a living as a: professional singer and actor, teaching college classes, designing and teaching classes on musical creativity, giving private voice lessons, mystery shopping and more. What will I be doing come January? I have no idea, but I will find something.


This is a Journal about finding meaning in work. It is a Journal about people getting exactly what they want, and then not wanting it anymore. It's a Journal about throwing away the security of the 9-5 grind, and making work come to you. This is a blog for anyone who wants desperately to be something more than what they see everyone else doing.

Crap

Ach! you piece of crap, why arn't you working.KageasdggAAAHHHHHHGGGG! I'll get you BLOGGER, I'll get you!!!!!