The Magnifesto of the New Movment

So, it's been over 2 years now and I feel myself with the time, disappointment, creativity, and slight motivation to see if I can revive this thing again. And what better way than to publish the rough draft of the manifesto I recently penned for the Art Movement/Art Collective I'm trying to found. So, if anyone anywhere still cares, have a look at what's been scratched out so far by myself, with an appendix of notation from a fellow literast...

THE MAGNIFESTO OF THE NEW MOVEMENT

PREAMBLE

IN THE NORTHLANDS, the prophet sat, shimmering in the shade when the people approached him. They implored him in the name of the sun, sky, earth, and sea to save them.

"Our children sit in laxness waiting for something they will never know... They wonder at shadows and pierce the vagueness with the sharpness of plastic safety scissors... They form nothing that hasn't been formed and have forgotten the alchemist's ways..."

The wise sage looked out upon them with eyes that had seen the geniuses rise and give gifts, but had, of late, watched gruesome plagiaristic "art." He looked upon them for a while and then bade himself speak...

"It is with unrivaled heaviness that I must tell you these things. Your children have faltered because they have seized upon the accidents of souls rather than the essences that drive them. You have allowed them to see only colors and representations, when the wonderment lay only scanty minutes away! They see Van Gogh's sunflowers and wheat and see only 'impressive use of yellow and gold.' They have no feeling put into them at the level of soul. Even the strains of great musicians past inspire them to recreate the accidental noise rather than channel the ever available spirits that inspired them."

"But how shall we remedy this bereaving soul-stripping?"

"Well, I propose you birth them into a new conciousness... Take them from the uncertainty that veils the truth from them and appeal to the inner wonder of things. Bid them sit in darkness and listen to absurd cyclic rhythms. Then, when the first crack of light invades the room, they shall be ideally filled with the wonder the father and the mother felt at the first sunrise! Bid them look at all things anew, with a desire to see the beauty in all, but, most especially, themselves."

---

The human experience writ large across time and space with all of its beautiful failings and triumphs is our ethic.

There is almost a veil or facade of duality in our human nature that has so often fooled poets, philosophers, priests, and kings... One of our purposes (for there are both many and few) is to draw together as some sort of magickal stitching and blending the highs and lows of humanness... As if the moans of suffering and the strains of elation intertwine in a celestial melody that truly raises us above the mundane music of nature and into the level of that Divine Harmony which exists above all...

For these reasons, our work may be both disturbing and beautiful and offensive and sacred in one glance... Like the Venus de Milo with a hairy moustache... There is an imagism that permeates it all, along with expressionism and a fauvist sensibility... For we seek to represent things clearly, but the entire concept of the thing... Not merely its physical attributes, but its spiritual, philosophical, and psychological accidents... For example, when I see a book, it can merely be a musty, thick, slightly authoritative looking text, but it really carries more with it... Without knowing its contents, my previous dispositions come in to play and that book becomes an enemy and a friend... A foe that needs to be conquered in order to become an asset to me... In this, again, we see a perceived duality... But is there really such a duality in this tree offal? Is it really both of these?

The world has a new friend that dresses in furs and laughs at death while contemplating his/her own precarious dramatized existence... On his shoulders he/she carries the shame and glory of his/her race... Nothing less will do and she's worthy of nothing more... Hands that enslaved and hands that freed... Eyes that glared and eyes that softened... Hearts that opened with sweet nectar notes of love and snapped shut with oh so many growls of hatred...

Do we mean any harm? Well that depends on whose flag you cower under for safety... Have you been mindemancipated yet? Do you think with a mind that knows the light and indulges the dark? Prance like a rhythmic gymnast in nomansland? Then you belong to the bullforce of men and women creating from the ashes of decency and pretension a Temple of Obscene Revelations...a Palace of Profane Sanctity... But there is no malice intended towards our sheepened brethren and sistren... They will be part of the newness and exposition that will engulf our world of newness.

May it never be corrupted by the hands of man and never manipulated in such a way that it shall become perverse, misused, and profane... All is sacred but not to an illegitimate flagrant extension of sanctity... No, all things are sacred in that they are parts of our extra-mental reality, a reality populated by tools and schemes and patterns, and beauty... There is only that ugliness which we create with our minds... A fish is a fish until he/she is poisoned by man's laziness... A wonderment to all until the few corrupt the experience of the many... Our movement shall concern itself with preserving the beauty of creation through extensive use of recycled things and stuffs for our artworks... A small move, but one to be sure that has already been implemented with much success by the likes of Tyree Guyton... A glorywork this is not, but merely an attempt to glorify the grander gloryact of recycling...

There is a large electric field which seems to taint everything that flies through it now... A sort of reliance on having things done for and to us rather than shaping our own destinies... No barrier exists except that which OUR CREATOR has erected eternal, and that which we prop up in our mind... Rather than using our mental scaffolds and wires to prop up ourselves and the PEOPLE around us, we have become far too oftenly familiar with supporting the "insurrmountable." If men can climb mountains for no other reason than their existence, how much more weight can we bring to assail those "forces" which we must destroy... For why do we allow Victorianism and Gnosticism and Communism to flourish in an age where we should know better? It is another principled purpose of this movement to empower the poor lost souls around us to exterminate swiftly and strongly the weltgeists that plague us oh so oftenly...

There are words the flow from everywhere and nowhere conclusively... Words that mean things and nothing at the same time... THe key element of this movement is a semblance of that reality... An equivocality that is as beautiful as criminal... A sexiness and repulsiveness standard and esoteric...

There is a grand magnificence to all things, a grand magnificnece to all things, a grand magnificance to all things!!!

---

ELUCIDATION FROM OUR BROTHER TO THE EAST

To the Modelskiality of the New Movement,

I sat in a high place, as is upright and virtuous, beneath the night sky and a ghastly gibbous moon, nestled in the soft, slippery folds between the City and the Trees, to ponder the meaning of the great Magnifesto and the tantalizing ichor of that fleet and kinky serenity, Art. Thought settled upon me, and through it Words, and so I stained my sheets: ink notes toward the pillars of this ancient and newborn Movement.

I have here transcribed faithfully these jottings. Some of the precepts here you have already noted, and I wrote them out for my own elucidation; others are nudgings of babbling Pythia. If I have correctly translated your thought, tell me; if I have traduced, say also. And dwell on those new precepts, and mull them, and stew them with some parsley, sage, rosemary, and paprika, yes stew them and eat them and expel them and study the remains like tea leaves, and let me know what you think. Together we shall chip away at the face beneath the stone, and resolve this Magnifesto to be the supreme articulation of the New Movement.

Yours in Art,

-B

HERE FOLLOWS THE NOTES:

-- Art is fundamentally communicable: no -isms, neo-s, or other obfuscative diphthongs. Even the spelling of diphthong shall be simplified to its archaic and magnanimously simple original form, dipthong.

-- Art is the natural activity of human being, like eating. Art, like eating, ought to be done each according to his own means and kind; the well-to-do can eat steak, and do. The well-to-do can sculpt in marble. The poor can eat Easy Mac, and do. The poor can use crayons. Steak and Easy Mac are both food. Both marble and crayon can be Art.

-- Authentic art comes from authentic experience comes from authentic being; the best art flows from a genuine-positive source.

-- Art is an essentially social activity. Emily Dickenson was an emotional quisling who got lucky.

-- NO MARKETERS. It is the Marketers and their foul Process that kill movements, social growth, and above all, they kill authenticity.

-- Art of the Movement is applicable to all forms of art. However, there is no place in the Movement for performance art as it is traditionally known. There is only life lived through the authentic artistic lens, and should that life produce an object or creation outside or apart from the person living, then it may be considered art of the movement. Art of the Movement is not life lived for show; it is life lived, and truly.

-- Egocentrism is improper to Art of the Movement. Art of the movement is intimate to the artist but selfless in expression.

-- Art of the Movement seeks Transcendence, but merely transcendence from the plastic, the store-bought, and the insincere.

-- Nazi art is the art of the Will to Power. Art of the Movement is the art of Adventure to Awesome.

-- Beauty is a recognized value within the Art of the Movement: the equal and helpmate of Truth. Ugliness too is a recognized value but is subordinate to both Beauty and Truth. Humor is essential to the Art of the Movement, as is the Art of the Pleasant, the Art of the Positive Shock, and the Art of the Selfless Weird.

-- Concepts contrary to the Art of the Movement and values opposed to the Art of the Movement may be criticized, attacked, assaulted, ridiculed, shat upon and relentlessly buggered by mutant sloats with nine-inch razor-cocks -- but never the artists who hold them. The person retains primacy over the concept.

-- Art of the Movement may be sold, but an artist may never put a price on his or her work. Only a buyer may name a price, and an Artist of the Movement may choose to sell or to not sell.

-- Communes and artists' retreats are encouraged, but no Artist of the Movement may take without giving and cannot stay in such a situation for more than a span of eleven months, save only in circumstances most extreme, and love doesn't count.

-- Sex is to be respected and treated as an art of the most holy and organically liturgical nature. Kink, that favorite of artists, must flow from the sensibilities of the Art of the Movement and must be imbued with the most scrupulous selflessness. Gender is recognized by the Movement as a subject of particular and necessarily distinct dignity, and may never be squandered for cheap (or expensive) tricks.

-- The use of drugs must never be confused with a lifestyle choice or artistic authenticity.

-- THERE IS A GRAND MAGNIFICENCE TO ALL THINGS!

Rights v. Taste

Now, I know in this post-60s revolutionary iconoclastic world we live in today eschews any mention of the principle of "taste," but I feel, in light of recent events, that it is best to revisit this oft-forgotten concept. Taste is generally a very hard concept to define. First of all we have the knee-jerk reaction to negotiate it with the sensory process of gustation. However, I speak here of something more obscure.
Taste, as it applies to....hmmm...let's say the "social realm" generally involves some sort of list of likes and dislikes held in common with most of those around us. Some might call these "social mores" but it all comes back to an element of taste. What do we like or dislike?
The other concept mentioned in the Title may have somewhat of a more concrete meaning than taste. For us Americans, when we think of rights we generally refer to the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and pertinent court cases. These sources outline what we can and cannot do while still abiding by the governing document of this nation. Some people also refer to innate "human rights." Although some definitions differ in the particulars, they can generally be summed up as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" courtesy of Tom Jefferson. These are our rights that should not be violated by our government or any of its officials, lest we cease, in essence, to be the United States of America.
Now, how the two concepts (rights and taste) complement one another is an entirely different matter. Rights are the basis of our republic (as I mentioned above), but what of taste? Is it merely a funny remnant of the Dark Ages? I move that it is not. Taste, rather, is the natural counterweight to rights.
Take, for example, the Westboro Baptist Church. This organization did at one point in time (not aware of their current status) protest funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming that the deaths were God's punishment for homosexuality in the U.S. Now, I am still angered at these actions and wouldn't mind taking a 2x4 to a few myself. The question remains, though, were these actions illegal or distasteful? The First Amendment seems to only flimsily state - "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." This broad and vague definition has been twisted by citizens and government officials to suit their purposes as the U.S. evolved. For example, the FCC regulates what can be said on the airwaves and Nazis can have marches. It works both ways. The question then comes to why is there such a gut reaction to a Nazi parade that makes us feel as if the sight of hatemongers in tan goosestepping down Main St. should be illegal. Clearly our 200 year old governing document says they have the right to "Heil Hitler!" 'til the cows come home, so why are we still offended? The answer lies in taste.
Taste tells us that Hitler junkies should not be proudly proclaiming their affiliation with the Nazi Party, nor should they be allowed to believe and promote such offensive ideologies in our towns and cities. In this way, I feel that a rebirth of taste will lead us to a more complete and true practice of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I know the historical angle is a bit overplayed, but I feel it is necessary to recall that the Founding Fathers fought for the Bill of Rights so that a true republic, clothed in liberty (sounds a little histrionic, but I'll go with it), could blossom forth. Freedom of speech was meant to defend patriots speaking out against corruption and tyrrany, not a snot-nosed kid flipping the bird to a police officer. But, without taste, that brat is equal to any Patrick Henry or Samuel Adams. It is for this reason that I earnestly hope for the return of taste to American society.

Vampires, Freud, and Apple Pie

Well, as usual I'm up late and kind of in tune with my thought processes so I thought I;d blog before I lose the cognitions in the light of day. I happened to catch a documentary on the History Channel about vampirism, that's right, vampires. Although the legends and modern science debunkings were pretty nifty (a forensic biologist went through debunking all of the tell-tale vampire signs, including the disease known as prophyria, which can cause a craving for vblood.....anyway, I regress). However, I was pretty shocked by the discussion of modern-day "vampires." Basically they feed off of other people's "life forces" or, occassionally, blood (although the "Vampiric Code of Ethics" discourages this). Anyway, it was pretty weird.

However, what I found most....interesting, is how this lifestyle is perceived as normal and part of our American culture of diversity. Let's talk straight for a bit and think about it---adults dressing-up in costumes on a daily basis and claiming to "need to feed" off of other people's auras.... Not exactly what I nor most folk call normal, but then again their just outcasts, right? Well, not exactly.

Ideas like this make me hearken back to Freud's declaration of religion as "mass hysteria." Although being a God-fearing man myself, I tend to agree with Freud, but with the modification that most religions can be a form of mass hysteria, and some are outright forms of mass hysteria. What religions you might ask? Well, generally any type of religion that seeks to objectify people is a good start. Cannibals, human sacrifices, vampires, skinheads, et al, are all pretty much out, as they see a need to selfishly sacrifice the other in order that they might survive (in contrast to what might be called the sacrifice of Christ for mankind, something which is regrettable to Christians, but an example of self sacrifice FOR the other). Any religion that seeks to regress what little progress we've made in our...oh....few thousand years as a species...is right out. Religions that promote peace, brotherhood, and virtue are comendable, at least, from a psychological standpoint. Even now, when our brothers and sisters die in remote parts of the globe, or just a few miles away, we can be encouraged by he fact that there are men and women who seek to end senseless violence and embrace peace and brotherhood. Any religion that propogates hate, bigotry, and murder is of no use to man.

Just thought I'd throw in that little reflection on Freud, religion, and "diversity." I love America, and this is why I care. I love a country where the descendant of a serf and the descendant of a lord can work side-by-side for a better country. However, I also fear a world where either works solely for his own benefit...

Neurotheology

Well, stumbling through the Internet I've become aware of a newish sub-division of neurology--neurotheology. This discipline concerns itself with explaining the physiology behind religious experience. There are two different ways to look at this discipline, which are pretty much the ways a lot of physiologically based psychological research can be looked upon--damning or informative.

Damning use of neurotheology tries to use any research to undermine the truth of religion and/or its importance to human beings. This is the way in which the American Humanist Organization considers it, that organization, of course, being atheistic or at least secularist in nature. They see experiments in neurotheology as a means of definitively disproving religion as a mere misfiring of neurons. This same camp also tries to tie religious zeal with a comorbid psychiatric disorder. One of these disorders is a seizure disorder which affects the temporal lobe of the brain. People suffering from this disorder now supposedly show a heightened sense of religious experience, greater use of religious language, etc. Therfore, this camp implies, a sensitivity in the temporal lobe of the brain is that disorder to which we attribute the name of God. Also, hyper-activation of the limbic system of the brain (as happens during LSD intoxication) may also lead to a religious experience. One researcher has even gone so far to build a "God helmet" that activates the temporal lobe using magnetic fields. Most users have reported a religious sort of experience, except those who have no pre-existing religious beliefs (such as Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion). His results have been irreplicable, though, leading some to doubt that the God helmet acts as little more than a placebo.

Informative use of neurotheology seeks to use neurotheology as a means of understanding how religious experience is sensed and processed by the human person. This camp is full of those who are either objective scientists or those theologians and Believers of various faiths who have not condemned the discipline outright. One of the best explanations I've read of what neurothology might mean to this camp is that it might only be discovering an antenna which picks up on the spiritual. Other groups seek to condemn the research outright, but most of these groups are evangelical in nature. Most Evangelical Christianity and most Protestant theology is based on an extremely unscientific approach to God, as whatever humans discover would be more likely to be a deceitful product of our fallen nature than a discovery of God's work in nature.

For myself, I'm pretty interested in the field, being a believer and also being a student of psychology. I think that neurotheology is a bit like exploring the other senses--audition, gustation, touch, olfaction, and sight. The over activity of the limbic system during a religious experience may merely be how the brain processes religious experiences, the same way that neurons fire in other parts of the brain to process other stimuli. Neurotheology may seem a bit atheistic in its nature, and I agree that any in the field may have entered it due to an interest in debunking religious experience. This unscientific/biased attitude is the same attitude Paul Broca entered his infamous brain mass study with. The only problem with cold hard scientific fact is that it's observed and written down by human beings. The same species that took the better part of several 1000 years to discover how the circulatory system works....

An article on neurotheology (interseting if not a bit biased)

Icky Thump!!!

The new "Icky Thump" Single is out by the White Stripes, a band of deep significance to me (Detroit and Britain have to save rock n roll once again). It is an utterly amazing single to say the least and most. A shear aural attack that leaves you blinking and senseless after a barrage of a narrative (yeah, a hard rock storybook), freakish bagpipes, steady drumming, and facemlters as well as riffs heavier than anything Page ever dreamed of... Looks like they're doing it again. Telling the corporate elite to go off and peddle their own emo wares to the quivering youths while they continue to crank out jams that would smash out any Fall Out Boy groupie's face and revolutionize rock music as we thought it was going to fizzle out into. This, my brothers and sisters, is a gift straight from God to those of us who don't want to whimper and whine but would rather roar and protest with all of our manly might in the face of manly times. This, my friends, is revolution. This, my friends, is revelation. This, my friends, is ROCK AND F-IN' ROLL!!!

Give it a listen on the radio, or buy the single off of iTunes, or just wait for the album to come out.



LA, LA, LA, LA!!!!

A Southern Musical Odyssey, to be Expounded Upon as Time Goes On...

Well, well, well, Happy St. Patrick's Day to all of you out there in internet land.

Your humble so and so is currently working on a review of his phenomenal musical, spiritual, and psychological journey through the South. Of course I'm still in shock as to how wonderful it was including just how genuinely awesome the people I went with were and how much fun I was able to have. I've never really enjoyed myself that much in such a short period of time. Of course, I don't get out much with peers so it's kinda my own fault, but it was pretty much like a week-long weekend with no hard-core debauchery on my group's part (please ignore the brief Ben and Jerry's Extravaganza as well as two trips to the mythical Sonic).

Why am I waiting so ong to provide reflections? I'm trying to get an artsy perspective and all especially since I had the ridiculous fortune to attend a swingin Blues/Soul/Funk/R & B dance club, a legitimate Dixieland Jazz Band Performance on Bourbon Street, and the Grand Ole Opry. Needless to say, and yet I say it, this was a great experience for somebody as steeped in music as myself. I was able to witness roots and branches of that loving mother called American music (eloquently and literally expressed at B.B. King's Blues Club in Nashville, TN). Whether moaning through a well-played slide guitar, whining through a pedal steel guitar, thumping through a persistent bass line, or blasting through a trumpet, she was there. That ever-pervailing sense of quality in artistic representation. That same rhythm our ancestors circled a campfire with in the good ol' primeval days. That same groove that has carried us on from mammoth hunts to dance clubs is still with us and more alive than ever in the hearts of almost all people around the world waiting for a skilled band or performer to draw it into the open, toy with it a bit, then lovingly set it back in place.

The communal experience of the music placed it in an even more interesting context. Today with iPods, Walkmans, headphones, etc. music is turning into an even more personal experience. This is alright, as it allows a more personal exploration of oneself and possibly the musicians as well, but it also robs an essential element from the grooves of yore--communion. In a dancehall with a live band you either groove or get out. No asking for the latest sappy emo hit, just dance or drop out, brothers and sisters. This experience makes young dance alongside old, codgers and children tap their toes, white and black and red and yellow and brown boogie with reckless abandon. Communion is clearly one of the functions of music and even though one can say communion is always had through others listening privately to the same recording a new level is brought to the communal experience when we are together, all present with one another, all united in appreciation of something at the heart of the human existence--rhythm.

Maybe it's just me brothers and sisters, but this Foolish Freudian Rocker feels everyone everywhere can dance or at least wants to dance. Let it ride, brothers and sisters, let it ride and become part of the congregation.

http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/un-urged-to-take-on-asteroid-threat/20070218175909990002?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Well, read the story above and you'll find yet another hilarious doomsday story. Looks as if NASA is afraid an asteroid is gonna kill us all in 2037....
Hmmm.....
Let's see, depending on when theasteroid hits, I'll probably be around...40 when the fateful rock is supposed to hit. I think I'm cool with an asteroid hitting Earth at that time. The thing is that the doomsday clock is continuously ticking and just because someone has a few degrees under his/her belt they're thought to be much more respectable than a preacher.
Signs in the sky, eh? I seem to recall a certain saying about the Apocalypse.....what was it, oh, yes....

"Of that day and hour no one knoweth: no, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone."

Sounds like pretty wise words...