Pythia

see what the waters have to say

pomo art

"If the painter and novelist do not want to be, in their turn, apologists for what exists (and minor ones at that), they must renounce such therapeutic occupations. They must question the rules of the art of painting and narration as learned and received from their predecessors. They soon find that such rules are so many methods of deception, seduction, and reassurance that make it impossible to be "truthful." An unprecedented split occurs in both painting and literature. Those who refuse to reexamine the rules of art will make careers in mass conformism, using "correct rules" to bring the endemic desire for reality into communication with objects and situations capable of satisfying it ... As for artists and writers who agree to question the rules of the plastic and narrative arts and perhaps share their suspicions by distributing their work - they are destined to lack credibility in the eyes of the devoted adherents of reality and identity, to find themselves without a guaranteed audience."

-Jean-François Lyotard

(meet me at the back of the blue bus)

we’re all trying to break out of Laodicea - we’re trying to be faithful to walk in the Spirit, not be complacent and lazy and just wait around for death while fooling around lasciviously with things like money and food – we’re trying to forsake that sweet non-sequiter where we say we believe in God but act like we’re meager and inconsequential beings circling pointlessly and aimlessly about the universe toward final sleep and then non-existence – ah the American church and its woefully complacent eyes – I am guilty –

"Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generation"

by Jack Kerouac, Esquire magazine March 1958

"The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word 'beat' spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in the postwar France of Sartre and Genet and what's more we knew about it--But as to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was really just an idea in our minds--We'd stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee, playing record after record of Wardell Gray, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson, Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -We'd write stories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goatee hitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message of blowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter the Penniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroes and wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating the new 'angels' of the American underground--In actuality there was only a handful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightily swiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of the universalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnet's 'peace' officers) but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity, the generation itself was shortlived and small in number."

not worth reading, or,

ON THE SEPTEMBER NIGHT, THE START OF THE SONG—DARK—

oh, sprite, siren, get yerself out and get down, get out and get down, find yerself where yu can’t go any farther, or sing any more, and sometimes the strings you wrap around your waist and the coat you pull tight around your shoulders they keep you from breathing, they stop your breath from working, they make it all broken –

o she can’t hear me

NEAR THE OAK TREE BY THE HILL, ROCKS IN THE DIRT

I went out on the porch there, and I took my guitar and I took my drink, and I played and sang timidly, you could hear it for miles I’m sure, the ants and the crickets and cockroaches all listened, the dogs and the horses heard, they all looked at me with their shining eyes, the porch light above me was dull but the moon up there was full in the sky, it’s like the man said, ISIS AND THE MOON SHINE ON ME.

happy thoughts

along the course of the conversation we gradually separated, she was the dock on the sea and I was the boat that lost its tether and floated away into the ocean, encroaching on the edge of the world there in the unknown -

the wall that no-one knows

I love this picture, that dude is pure artistic force

make of it what you will

"HE WAS SHOT IN THA NECK? HE COULD BE DEAD ALREADY. IMAGINE HES DEAD AND WERE JUST SITTIN HERE CHILLIN."

"DONT TALK LIKE THAT FOO MY HOMIE AINT DEAD. HES ALIVE. HES OKAY."

"BUT THATS REALITY."

just some stiff words

saw a woman sitting, dressed in black with long black hair like lightless fire, sitting in a shop drowning her coffee in whiskey and tears

obomba

OBOMBA SAYS: "abandon all hope." And mc' is quick to add: "ye who enter here." - Abandoned Bz up.

down and in circles

downcast man

free canvases are the best canvases

my autobiography

While I was playing Mario Kart the other day, I determined the name for my autobiography:

"How To Never Win - At Anything".

included will be a chapter on how to have fun while losing. Pretend you don't even play their game: drive the course backwards! Mock the flashing "reverse" sign! Look at your friends with condescension when they, bewildered, comment on your zany antics, and laugh all the way to the nuthouse.

(p.s. - lost 5 straight rounds of pool volleyball today. Keeping the streak alive!)

and foot

the bus driver

The edge of the summer is around the corner - I can tell cause people are getting tired of the sun, and once we cross that threshold there's a good chance of everything turning down and falling like a brick, not a leaf, and breaking apart onto the (now hopeless) indecision of fall's hard ground...

The bus driver, grasping at the wheel and wringing his hands up and down around it, turned his head half-way back and spoke to me: "Nothing ever turns out the way anyone plans. Hell you try and try and get your schemes together in your mind, but ultimately it ain't up to you. I mean, you want ta predict the future, look in the opposite direction of where you're going, that's where you're really headed, yeah sir, every time."