The Artist of Moloch: Creativity and Capitalism in the New West

“Moloch in whom I dream angels...Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!” from Ginsberg’s Howl, Part II

What is it to be an independent in thought and action, to be an artist of heart and mind, and, most radically, to live within one's means in the New West? I live in a city where my next door neighbour makes over a billion dollars a month. I, personally, don't make money. Or, more accurately, my profits are nearly zero. Yet, I live life fully and exuberantly. On a whim I could splurge on an evening of luxury fine dining with my wife, or rent a car and go to the mountains, or even purchase a new musical instrument and the latest computer hardware. I am not in debt. In fact, the one and only stipulation to entering higher education, was that I not get into debt. I save, and live within my means, although I don't exactly see my money growing as the incessant growth models of Western capitalism would encourage. 

Nonetheless, as a city dweller, and especially in the city wherein I live, considered a global oil capital, the mean streets of capitalism are hawk-eyed and omnipotent on every corner. As an artist, the very ground under my feet is funded by the turning soil of the most destructive earthquake in human history known as the fossil fuel industry. Living the majority of the time through physical self-propulsion as a primary means of transportation balances one's perspective as an outsider of marginal and radical import to the status quo. Energy and economy, in their most fundamental and basic meanings, derive from the physique in relation to the sources of life in the ground (energy) and the way of relating to living exchanges through reciprocity and foresight (economy). Happiness is learned when expense is measured in sweat, growth in a smile and dividends in generosity. 

Daily the innocence of play in the mind of art, creativity and community is buried under the debris of an open-pit mine with lightning swift efficiency. Once aware of the mounting genocidal ecocide inherent in the dominant global energy policy, how can one go on knowing that at the end of the day the artists of the world become mere charade, trick and distraction for the bowling force of industrial belligerence? One of the greatest pearls of wisdom that my grandfather shared with me was what he had learned among his Greek family of early immigrants to Lower East Side Manhattan, New York. "We were poor, but we were happy, because we were together," he repeats like a charm against the malevolent truth of Western life: family separates. So, often, I feel, as a communitarian-individualist independent-ecologist artist-worker radical-traditionalist of the 21st century and of eternity, that my life is the epitome of what Ginsberg describes above, as in Moloch, and dreaming of angels. 

In the next weeks, I will be transitioning the SoJourn(al) site as a supplement to a new web-source exhibiting an ongoing creative non-fiction work that gives breath and voice to original knowledge. Oral storytelling, family tradition, and cultural literacy are waves of realization that have revealed a sliver of moonlight over the oil-dark sea. I see a way, and directed by intuition, the art of living further breathes a channel of oceanic action towards as yet unseen, inner prosperity. Philo of Alexandria, an ancient who fused Jewish and Greek philosophy at the beginning of the first millennium of the common era, is quoted: "Households, cities, countries, and nations have enjoyed great happiness when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful. Such people not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind." 

______________

away up

passive aggressive

play waste

science silenced

weary night

______________

The track, "Columbian Map" is derived from the written piece, "Phantom Pages of a Medieval Columbian Map" from the district.Columbia collection of experimental writing. The meaning of the title refers to Columbia, the goddess myth of precolonial America, the ubiquitous feminine divinity of the land itself as seen and heard through Western European eyes. The "Phantom Pages" open an understanding of the land that transcends European representation through the cartographic delusions of "discovery", colonization and settlement.

A narrative art sounding is embedded between guitar and shakuhachi music. The introductory guitar melodies on the track are resonant of Indian Sitar music, yet also merge into influences from West African blues and Middle Eastern Oud playing techniques. The shakuhachi, through its abject dissonance and airy ambience, bridges two instruments from opposite ends of the globe, that through harmony and chaos move the voice to speak, as middle ground, as the remoteness of truth between directional extremes. My approach to the guitar (a quintessential Western instrument) as the embodiment of non-Western sonic influence further melds with my approach to the shakuhachi without any classical training, thus playing it with a Western ear. And so, western instrument with an eastern ear, and eastern instrument with a western ear redirect the two-dimensional cartographic reality of discovery into the 4th dimension of time through sound as narrative, voice and, more, a pure medium of truth.

A collection of five works from the penultimate chapbook from district.Columbia, "Changing our PERSPECTIVE" includes such works as "An Unknown Pleasure of Respect" and "Phantom Pages from a Medieval Columbian Map". With an ahistorical to contemporary thought in light of the current need to shift from an industrial to ecological society, this chapbook addresses that first perspective, or where we stand is the crucial point of change. Perspective, is also history. Until we transcend the dualistic norms of media consumption and direct experience, there is no way to begin again from a new point in history. The junction of the present and the past affix humanity at a crossroads of time. 

Before ascending into the next era of humanity on Earth and traversing the crossroads ahead, each and every last individual will be asked, Who are you and where have you come from? Anishinaabe Elder Dave Courchene wisely advises all people to return to creation, to return to the very beginning of our nature whenever unsure, whenever inundated with a sense of ignorance, confusion, loss. On the path to inner knowledge, light blinds, and the shadows reveal the road home

Changing our PERSPECTIVE

The Madman Within: Valery and the Personal Energy Crisis

Paul Valery par Jullien

"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up."

 
"Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph." 

"To enter into your own mind you need to be armed to the teeth." 

"At the end of the mind, the body. But at the end of the body, the mind." 

"A man who is of 'sound mind' is one who keeps his inner madman under lock and key." 

Paul Valery

Here, I continue on the themes of an essay regarding a theory of sleep cycles, and the natural course of the human experience of time as espoused in my previous post, Metaphors in the Art of Goya: A Theory of Unconscious Development. Beyond the bounds of the twenty-four hour time bomb, the seer lives to posit the cyclical nature of time in the natural course of creativity as it rises and falls based on the "internal clock" or "the internal orbit" as I will more aptly describe it. Leading through to an experience of time in the twenty-four hour day as much like the seasons, at different stages of life, or the year, we will be naturally disposed to certain times of the day. 

To keep a fixed schedule of waking and sleep throughout one’s life is unnatural and unhealthy, leading to an incomplete understanding of one’s self in relation to the ecological rhythms of the earth, and one’s own nature. Put more concisely, the mad genius intellect of Paul Valery writes, "A man who is of 'sound mind' is one who keeps his inner madman under lock and key." So, continuing on this theme, I would say that, a great foreshadowing to the resolution in thought from the prose essay writings on SoJourn(al) can culminate in formulating a creative practice so that any person can discover the certain time of day that best suits their activity and temperament. 

When allowed to our own devices, we naturally settle into a certain time of day based on the kind of activity with which we are engaged as our primary focus in life. For example, if one is studying texts, the predawn hours may be optimal in terms of the energetic rhythms and ecological harmony involved in the practice and the setting in which one lives. This could potentially lead to invaluable developments as a repertoire of useful information for employers seeking to offer work-life balance and optimal efficiency and motivation based on the kind of work in which they are engaged. 

All of this, in both theory and practice, is based on variables of ecological distinction (the character of a place), individual temperament (how one relates to a certain time of day), and the focused activity (one’s primary work or occupation). Regardless of the person or type of work, with the application of guiding principles, one can find a harmonious relationship with time and productivity through attention to details of place (ecological awareness), energy (sleep cycles), and activity (work medium). 

__________

He is silent and still as stone. His face a petrified grey, staring blankly into an off-white wall. His mind has long gone, and yet his body remains. 

The Battle between Carnival and Lent (detail) by Peter Bruegel the Elder

A rodent gnaws into its raw skin. Dirt falls from its brittle hair. The animal dies before my eyes. I was happy and excited to see what once meant my life, and now...

________

As the tired groaning of racist America brews a proud glory of personal despair,
more,
An interpersonal contemplation on the theme of color:
Hair,
Eyes,
Fingers,
Pubis,
Nose,
And Shape,
Body of form,
And the formless desire

White against the all-escaping cloud of solar obscurity,
Who rushed civilization into the neighborhood of the absent & poor

Breaking the long arduous fast
with an unwelcoming community,
founded not on Love,
only on a hope to pray
before the Cyclops’ rise
over the crossed horizon
...

Stretching beyond the bounds of individual reaction,
To choice.

excerpts from "The socialist epoch"

Tristan and Isolde: A Meeting of Musician-Lovers

Yseult la blonde by Gaston Bussiere

Isolde

"...Half dreaming melt into the elements,
When they seem most alive and beautiful :
To fade into the purple of the west."

Brangaena

"...Bad dreams are said to augur opposites,
And bring us joys in weeds of sorrow draped."
Tristan and Isolde: A Tragedy. Louis K. Anspacher. Brentano. NY. (1904). Act II

I first became aware of the special importance of the Tristan and Isolde legend reading Joseph Campbell. The first known literary attribution to the tale is by Gottfried von Strassburg. The incredible mark that this story has made on Western civilization and truly world history is based on the central theme in the tale: Love. It is love, outside of Christian wedlock, which motivates the principal characters towards dissolution. For the first time in history, the cast of collectivism imposed over individuality was broken by a spell of love. Suddenly, the individual appeared at the fore of socio-cultural continuity for the first time and proclaimed an as yet unknown impact on the founding institution of social cohesion. Not only did love surmount the apex of all human relationship, the creative life, which sparks and endures love, became attainable, enabling the sacrificial character of a new individuality of self-knowledge and self-development in the art of life on Earth. 

See my previous post: From Genius Mind to Genius Heart: Wagner, Liszt and Dream's End

_________

a strong wind blows, and night falls, penetratingly raw, I pick up my face and screw it to the side of a cabin, changing my ways before the all-consuming blush of my red wife, gently winnowing my insides into the decadence of a youthful love story, she is my only one, and we decide to attend a party, by invitation to perform music, she is diligent in her work

Female Musician by Unknown

and in this response, a mystery hangs breathless with the unprofessional glint of our new friend’s weakened sigh, and stammering over the frozen concrete mold of a battering casino avenue, the wading head of sky simmers in an uncooked pit of flesh as we enter a home riddled with the divorce of youth from the useable head, dark rooms of sexual witnessing, of strange rumors, and fatherless groans, cruel mothers bedecked with the sorrow of an empty need

Monday Morning by Hans Baluschek

old children sit silently staring at a naked couple, motionless and bearing nothing but their side skin in two separate rooms of frightening disarray, and back in the foreground, the entrance hall, two young men sport a frantic jam session with homemade instrumentation, wood and stone chopped in a dizzying fray of wires and bone, strung together for a wish-fulfilled greed of rhythmic sounding, which stuns and climbs atop the phantom noose of age with momentous fleeting tones

The Savoyard by Alfred Jacob Miller

in that moment, the hostess of our strange inkling of a human party hands us a small envelope, and in it a card, reading the names of my wife and I, and best wishes in our move to new york city

_______ 

A space for listening, to cleanse the air with sacred voice,
An incensed feeling,
Touching on lost beauty within and under the strongly pressed clothing
Worn like skin that drops sadly over her neck of virulent sorrow
As a shapeless feature in the energy of her following
...
Passing through a foreign box
Crafted with a tongue for sensuous musical fruition,
To meld in the sorrow and aftermath of prehistoric eyes
Dreaming around the enshrined doorway
Through our billions in pain

Excerpt from "To Play the Chord of Humanity beyond Taoist Shamanic Heights" 

In Defense of the Dreamer as Individual

“The great events of world history are, at bottom, profoundly unimportant. In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual.

This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations first take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately spring as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources.

In our most private and most subjective lives we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers. We make our own epoch.

C.G. Jung, 1934"

________

We climb the old-fashioned narrow wooden staircase to the humble apartment where my grandfather was born in Lower East Side Manhattan, 1915, into a family of Greek immigrants. The colors of the neglected wood panes and creaking floorboards radiate with a rustic golden aura. The internal structures are mostly charcoal etched, as a black and white drawing, pockmarked with rough patches of oblique pitch darkness. I am accompanied by my Iranian friend who peeks in abandoned night table drawers. Searchingly, he endeavors to reach through a pile of handwritten pages and small books. He begins talking to me about Eduardo Galeano, all the while correcting my Spanish pronunciation in conversing over the dense terminology. At that, he leaves with a few leaves in his coat jacket. I stand amid the bare walls, as the airless womb of my ancestral birth in this country is revealed. I sit at a gothic typewriter. Copious thoughts string in a massive upheaval of soundless striving through the mind of a creational writing that ceases only with pure death, and at once, below me are the distracted lives of my parents. Their televisions blare mindlessly with brainwashed floundering. I empty a nearby drawer, seeking madly for a worthy object, a true talisman, to invigorate my standards of inspiration before this all-consuming pyre of human intentionality, transmogrified by the immense distance of a screen and its subjects never felt by palm or breath. Does their lower meandering mirror my own creative origins on lettered key before the abstract maw of my own typographic lore?   

________

Typewriter

"To see a typewriter in  your dream indicates that you need to open the lines of communication with someone in your life." (iDream)

________

“from the mountains' worshippd gaze

I am estranged as a foodbank flourishing madly

in a churlish booth-fountain

spurning liminal trespassers in a just tirade

isolating occupied human vats”

- excerpt from "Spare my Spit"

Uninhabited Island of a Friendship's Whispering

On the Volga by Abram Efimovich Arkhipov

My friend shared a dream with me last night:

He said he could hear my voice in the subtle ambiance of a clear Caribbean sky. My friend had returned from the Caribbean only recently in his conscious life. In his dream, he said I encouraged him to move towards an uninhabited island.

You see, he is with the girl who introduced me to my wife. My wife is about his age, and his girlfriend is about my age, my friend and I are both of European ancestry and our better halves are both from Asia. There is an interesting mirror-like quality to our gatherings which resonates with crystalline friendship and mutual love. My friend is almost finished with school, and in the summer will travel with his girlfriend to Europe and China before they live together. This is very much how the relationship grew for my loving wife and I. After finishing school, we sacrificed our living arrangements to travel together to Mexico and return with the intention of living together. In my friend's dream, he hears my footsteps above him, beckoning him forward, to fearlessly transition into a new form of intimacy and trust within his enduring relationship and our circle of friendship.

The uninhabited island is, I think, a symbol for the unknown, a fate of complete originality, a calling to live, without regret, a life of authentic individuality. In his dream, he moves toward it, however awkwardly, with rubber scuba flippers, peddling a small boat over the foreign water. He is almost there.