Peering Over The Edge

"...an Anglican monarchial aristocratical party has sprung up, whose avowed object is to draw over to us to the substance, as they have already done... It would give you fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies."

Can you name who said this quote? Sound familiar? Thomas Jefferson spoke these words, that feel today a kind of deja vu. He was talking about the Treaty with Britain in 1795 to resolve the Revolutionary War. In an effort to heal wounds and move beyond the conflict many colonists in power chose an act of contrition, creating a treaty with the British that Jefferson found in direct conflict to the essence of the Declaration of Independence. George Washington, whose name I heard evoked hours after Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama on Sunday, was in full agreement with the Treaty. Jefferson's scornful rebuke in the final sentence of this quote refers to Washington himself. Jefferson's narrow win over Burr in the election of 1800 barely avoided a relapse into monarchy or allegiance to it. In 1800, second place in the presidential election earned you the vice presidential seat, an unimagineable option today. One hundred thousand people (a large sum then) filled the streets outside congress in order to pursuade the Federalists on the 36th ballot to confirm Jefferson as president over Burr, breaking the electoral college deadlock.

Jefferson hated the electoral college and rightfully so. We saw Gore loose the election of 2000 by way of fiat thanks to the supreme courts' decision to honor the electoral college. The electoral college is a stiff reminder that in terms of the presidency, which I cast my vote for today, the one-person, one vote scenario, is an inappropriate moniker. I will cross my fingers and toes in the hopes that all the derisive, racist, ignorant, destructive, deceitful attempts by the Republican party will not prevail on November 4 and we will at the very least finally seat a moderate president who with luck will survive in relative modesty in order to make a dent in the tide of reactionary disintegration of this republic toward a corporate-fascist regime.

Despite the electoral college, despite the vote tampering, vote! If you can avoid mail in ballots as they are more easily tampered with. If you can only vote with older machines or machines that provide a paper record (as mine did today) of your vote. I will wait nervously until the time on November 4th that they announce a victory for the Democrats. The day after Obama is innaugerated we can then collectively hold congress and the presidency to the flame so that the republic might be restored.

"The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union."
—Thomas Jefferson

“Nature is never finished.” —Robert Smithson

Our minds are organic landscapes for the unfettered genesis of ideas and requires visual stimulation in support of that. Much of the art visited upon us in the past twenty years is a regurgitation of our own bastardization of our environment. In stark contrast to a bird that nourishes its young by disgorging recently eaten worms, our cultural parroting is contaminated and inbred. Our continual need to revisit the same pop culture diseases mimics an addict believing the next injection will surpass the last, only to realize it was less, more was needed and death is inevitable.

Short of future annihilation, Americans have thus far, retained an ability to reinvent, to find a way out of our own tendencies toward mediocrity and mendacity. Our current presidential election is representative of the dynamics our culture is facing. Will we continue to feed upon our own diseased ideas or break free to develop a new culture of ideas?

My recent return to the American West is a reminder of the possibilities contained within America. I have been deeply disturbed and grown increasingly disenfranchised with the state of our country. In my lifetime this nation has transformed from one of hope, hard work, relative compassion and intellectual prowess to one of celebrated ignorance and intolerance. In stark contrast to this persistent tilting at wind mills, we still have the American West. Despite dams, populating the desert and killing the Bison and the Indians, the landscape remains, stalwart and impenetrable. There is comfort in knowing that the West is unconquerable. The day will come when Las Vegas returns to its original desert state, cleansed of all attempts to mollify the valley. In this idea remains hope for our future. The open landscape can offer an open mind and a humble one which we are sorely lack. Let us look to the West again, not out of unfettered expansion or boundless ego, but in reverence for those things that remain larger than ourselves so that we might do good and take flight from the blind cloning of broken concepts.

“Every day takes figuring out all over again how to fucking live.”

—Calamity Jane, from Deadwood

The Golden Calf of Immortality

And he [Aaron] received them [the golden earrings] at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

-- Exodus 32: 4 (KJV)

I have avoided for some time now any obvious references to mythology, spirituality, religion, politics or history in my work. I have, almost out of instinct, always felt the greatest works of art are both sublime and oblique. Wether the off-key piano riffs of Thelonius Monk, or the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, art strikes you hardest when it uncovers the mysteries of the universe by creating even more mysteries. By emptying any direct content from a work of art, we are left to add our own. The cumulative sum of our collective imaginations is mirrored back to us as an infinite regress. For some witnesses of art this is akin to horror and rejected out of hand. Others are turned away by the expectation of their own examination, as if to reject a request to educate oneself—better to remain ignorant. A few mindful participants leave shaken and energized by these questions.

A practiced artist is capable of making pretty, perhaps even beautiful works of art at will. This may appear as magic to those outside the art world, but no more so than the inner workings of a computer chip or the engineering behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Human beings (Homo Sapien Sapien) are still intrinsically bound to their reptilian brains and will respond to certain stimuli in predicable ways. The Golden Mean isn’t magic, it’s a realization of this fact. So when I read today that Robert Hughes’ response to the latest Damien Hirst escapade is to say the work is “absurd” and “tacky commodities”, I expect Hughes is responding to the obviousness in Hirst’s work, not any particular aesthetic value.

It is rare that works of art obtain great monetary value in the artist’s lifetime. There was of course the indentured servitude of the Renaissance painters all the way through to the great court painters of the 17th century, but hardly an equivalent to modern commoditizing of art work. Power in 17th century Spain, England and France remained firmly in the grasp of empire and artists merely served their suitors (the Kings and Queens) albeit at a higher pay grade, as the hand maidens did. It wasn’t until the late 1940’s America that great value was placed on modern works of art that living artists became Capitalists. Pollocks’ work served as the first bridge to this new relationship between art and money. Unbeknownst to the New York School painters at the time, money was and still is, functioning as a devise to nullify the quality of the sublime to those who could not obtain it by other means. Ownership at great expense, meant money was equivalent to spiritual awareness. The oblique strategies of art could be commoditized and thereby their knowledge transferred to those who purchased them. It is why Bill Gates owns one of Leonardo’s codexes and corporations spend millions on museums, architecture and public art. Even after Serra’s public art fiasco Tilted Arc manifested itself in the ’70s, he has since risen to a kind of sculptor laureate of America primarily because the corporate elite hope to buy souls (as was done with indemnities and the Roman Catholic Church) born out of the mysteries of corten steel.

There is no surprise then in the rise of Damien Hirst given his acute understanding of this modern paradigm. His career has been built upon leveraging the just-mysterious in a way that precisely attracts the wealthy, like moth to flame. His work, more conceptual than physical despite its outward appearances is a clever conceit against its suitors. Like Warhol and Koons before him he has made the act of capitalism the conceptual product, and the physical works pawns in its production. Unlike his forebears, Hirst has elevated this concept to its logical conclusion—becoming the one who seeks indemnification himself. First with his For the Love of God diamond encrusted skull and now with his own singular Sotheby’s auction, pre-gallery sale he has become what he believes to be the entirety of the art world edified in one human being. He is maker, seller, auctioneer, and buyer. He has melted the golden earrings to make a golden calf, both symbolically and literally. He is a less belligerent version of Donald Trump, in the art world. A more appropriate analogy is Liberace. I am certain that Hirst’s own museum of purely Damien Hirst works is not far off.

The question is not so much one of absurdity as Hughes purports, but one of endgame. Hirst is a soul killer. By leveraging his knowledge of the art world and art history he has sought to immolate art itself. He is perfectly content to consume himself in this exploit because he is exchanging one form of knowledge for what is perceived to be another. In that regard Hirst clearly sees himself as a kind of King or Emperor, retaining knowledge through power and not the other way around. His only idea is the idea of destruction. He is hedging his bets against his own ability to destroy art by making works that are so rarefied in their abject value that he will realize his apocalyptic art vision. Unfortunately, for Mr. Hirst and very fortunate for the rest of us who aim toward the sublime, his tenure will be short lived. Artists create out of a need to extricate the mysteries of life, not to own them. We will create in poverty and in wealth and that creation is at the core of our knowledge. That intangible knowledge is available to all, free of charge. Hirst’s Golden Calf (shown above) is the perfect metaphor for his own career. He has become a symbol of a failed strategy that goes against nature and in the end is trapped within its own strategies, remaining an absurd object, symbol of the obvious.

My Coke for Tibet

"I wish the word terrorist would be erased from our language. All meaning has been pumped out of it by our rulers and their media, who wish to demonize everyone or -thing they dislike starting with Us The People." —Gore Vidal

There is no shortage of irony for me in this years Olympic games being held in Beijing, China. A police state couched in nationalistic pride based on the writings of a sociopathic revolutionary, China is keen to embrace a practice that is ultimately a precursor to war. Jingoism is alive an well in the 21st Century, and China is not alone in its affectionate attraction to the practice. We Americans, the worlds’ only superpower (as we’re so fond of stating despite its absurdity) have fueled China’s fervor and growth since Nixon’s first visit in 1972. I reference this point in history no only for its reference to our corrosive effects on the world, but because of the parallels present to our current government. Although Nixon lacked the faux common-man swagger and feigned ignorance of G. W. Bush, he wrote the first chapters in the book of twentieth century American political dirty tricks. It should be duly noted that Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security advisor was the mastermind behind the China visit and is still consulting with our administration today. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld also served various posts in the Nixon administration. Kissinger realized early on that in order to counter the effects of Russian imperialism in contrast to our own, and to secure key economic and resource advantages (oil & gas in the middle east and cheap labor in China) we would have to embrace the Chinese.

Here we are in the summer of 2008 and the Olympics are being held in Beijing. The Tibetans have been crushed and the Dalai Lama fed lip service. The Indians and Pakistani’s now have nuclear weapons, and Taiwan is making peace with the Chinese. There is a larger imperative at work here which supports a global corporate paradigm. If we recall the true meaning of fascism, then we understand that it is based in Corporatocracy. Corporations love police states because it coincides with their own sociopathic drive to make money, at any human cost. That is why the world can sit idly by and watch the most historically peaceful nation on earth be systematically ethnically cleansed and displaced while simultaneously celebrating the glory of international athletic competition. The word terrorist and terrorism is a device used by nations and people with great power to isolate challenges to that power and marginalize their capacity to change what is imbalanced or wrong. The violence of terrorist acts is thrown around by the corporate media as a tool to keep the citizenry afraid and unwilling to associate themselves with others who are looking to break free from corporate driven bondage. Athletics is a cloak, a device for concealing violence itself. When the games were recreated in Athens in the 19th Century it was because Pierre de Coubertin had witnessed the Prussian demolition of the French and sought a way to invigorate young frenchmen to be more able bodied in time of war through athletic competition.

The next time you take a sip of your Coke think about the thousands in Tibet or Darfur who suffer and die so that Coca-Cola can sell more sugar water in China. Then, stop and think what it really means when we say terrorist and if that word has any real currency anymore.

THX-1138

Earlier this week I watched the remastered version of THX-1138, George Lucas’ first major film, an extension of his original graduate thesis project at USC in 1967. The film, for those of you who may not have seen it or have forgotten it, is a dystopian vision of a future world where all emotions are controlled by drugs, similar to today’s MAOIs, tricyclics, and SSRIs (or antidepressants) in an underground city, monitored by technicians who utilize mirror-faced androids to physically ensure compliance. It is a bleak and compelling vision based loosely on Orwell’s 1984, the writings of D. H. Lawrence and almost certainly (although unverified) Philip K. Dick.

It would be easy for me to sit here in the hills of the Leatherstocking region of New York and dismiss these types of fictional dystopia as fantasy. The 1970’s in America was a stark decade and many films of the period reflected the collective apprehensions and anxieties as a reaction to Vietnam, Nixonian politics, nuclear proliferation, space exploration, and our first dance with oil dependency. It was also an honest decade in terms of artistic expression and THX-1138 was one of many such assertions. What’s important about these ideas from the late ‘60s and throughout most of the ‘70s is not only their prescient message of warning, but the undeniable fact the warnings were ignored.

I have several friends who are excited about the prospects of Barack Obama becoming our next president. Without denigrating them or any other supporter of the Obama camp, I want to point out the level of sophisticated mendacity our political and economic elite have achieved. We are a nation built upon the premise of consumerism which in turn requires a high degree of desire and want in order to drive spending on products we largely don’t need. This mechanism is vast and now extends to every component of our lives. Our government is dependent on wanting the latest in military technology in order to drive congressional district economies, which in turn produce jobs for people who then desire plasma TV’s and new cars in turn supporting the consumer spending model unique to our form of so-called Capitalism. It is a vicious and unsustainable cycle, due mainly to it’s dependency on energy produced millions of years ago by our sun. It is not a conceit or revelatory idea that Mr. Obama receives his support from the citizens whose livelihood depends on this machine and the corporations who perpetuate it. As of today 75 separate corporations have committed to supporting this years’ DNC convention, an event that is nothing but a ceremonial gathering acting as a facade for the already determined outcome of the Democratic primary contests. As Glenn Greenwald reminded us writing in his blog last week, the turnover in our legislative bodies would make the apparatchik of the old Soviet party blush. Once elected our incumbents stay in office as long as it pleases them. Therefore, I want to remind those who blindly adhere or even partially commit to the support of Barack Obama (or any other Washington politician) as a messenger of hope, or a lesser of two evils, that he like anyone who obtains major party support in American is a product of the machine and is there not to re-tool the machine, but rather oil its gears.

We are all party to this system as long as we prefer to see our politicians as polished stars, rather than intellectuals who are truly interested in the well being of every citizen of this country. We will continue to push closer and closer to a world that resembles the one in THX-1138 if we continue to value things over experience. Television, the internet, anti-depressants, credit cards, all began with the best of intentions. As citizens of this country and this planet, we must take stock in our responsibility to them by actively participating. Our collective passive aggressive behavior is an acceptable response to those in power because it holds no currency. The powerful who perpetuate the machine have learned to diminish even demonstrations that once held sway a mere thirty years previously, and that preceeds any discussion on "free speech zones". Now is the time to turn off the television and gather information that will aid us in our true want, a world without suffering or we are all doomed to suffer in silence together, or worse, have our suffering rendered mute through the clever facilitation of video games, drugs, television and whatever future device we invent for our own enslavement.