Author Archives for Jay Babcock

BULL TONGUE by Byron Coley & Thurston Moore from Arthur No. 3

BULL TONGUE
by Byron Coley & Thurston Moore

first published in Arthur No. 3

Surely, Raymond Pettibon is best known as a painter and illustrator (the lines between which can be especially blurry in his case). But one can only suspect that it is a case of public tunnel vision that has consigned him to such a narrow role. Pettibon has made significant public contributions to other fields as well: writing, music, performance, publishing and film. It would, indeed, be well within anyone’s grasp to make a solid case for Pettibon as Southern California’s renaissance man of the fin de siecle period (and beyond). But that is not our assignment today. Right now, right here, we are interested in celebrating Pettibon the filmmaker.

Pettibon’s graspable extant film canon consists of four videos that are all available through Joe Carducci’s Provisional Films. Recently, Raymond has been working on another one, Red Tide Rising, reported to be a saga of the Doors starring Mike Watt as Jim Morrison. There is also a lost film, shot in the early ‘90s, entitled The Holes You Fill, purportedly telling the Beatles’ story the way you’ve always wanted to see it. Carducci reports that these two titles may see the light of day at some point, beyond that there’s little info. But that still leaves a rich tetralogy of films, all of which deal with the transmutation of ‘60s “revolutionary” culture into something commodified and directed by the hands of the media.

Pettibon’s graphic sensibilities are not lush. Just as his art has often been wrought in the most stark visual terms imaginable, so his films are raw, and almost hermetic in terms of their visual vocabulary. The milieus are often defined as much by the actions that take place within them as they are by specific visuals. At times one almost has the sense of watching one of John Cassavetes’ opuses being redone by the Kuchar Brothers, so simultaneously surreal and gritty is their look. And as with much of Pettibon’s art, the visuals are highlighted, annotated and driven by a rich layering of text. As visually compelling as it might be to see the late Joe Cole wearing an insanely huge walrus moustache to round out his role, we are rarely left to quietly ponder the implicit meaning in the images. Pettibon’s writing and visual direction in these films are indivisible. They virtually drip with dialogue. It’s true that you can follow and “get” the basic plots if you watch these vids with the sound off, but the scripts–even when read off wall cards in the most perfunctory manner possible (as they are at times)–add layers of irony, honesty, humor and cutting insight that are entirely separate from the scenes-as-viewed.

The Whole World Is Watching: Weatherman ’69 (122 mins., 1989) is a kind of homage to Emile de Antonio’s Underground, which was a documentary about members of the Weather Underground who were living on the lam in the U.S. Pettibon takes this idea and turns it on its side. For his version, the documentary is being funded by CBS, and the Weathermen exist almost exclusively as a media organization, measuring themselves constantly against other revolutionary groups, and attempting to make their own actions the cultural equivalent of rock concerts. Bernadine Dohrn is portrayed (by Kim Gordon) as a woman whose primary motivation is to use revolutionary zeal as a means to overtake the movie career of Jane Fonda. The rest of the left wing cabal is played by Mike Watt, Joe Cole, Bull Tongue’s own Thurston Moore and various other tangential members of the SST gang, circa 1989. The story here is less linear than it is horizontally episodic. Although Dohrn’s trajectory is forward, the bulk of the movie sprawls in all directions.

There are visits by counter-culture luminaries (Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon, Tome Hayden & Jane Fonda), there are fantastic self-critique sessions (the one in which they judge the revolutionary qualities of their record collection is a stone classic), and there’s tons of great Pettibon dialogue. The text sends up some of the ideas of the era in hilarious fashion (the equation of Communism and sexual satisfaction is particularly great). Pettibon’s turn as the CBC cameraman gives him a certain ability to knock down the fourth wall, but he doesn’t overplay it. In all, it’s a very bodacious place for Raymond to have begun his retelling of underground history.

Judgement Day Theater: the Book of Manson (118mins. 1989) deals with one of the most frequently-present iconic figures in Pettibon’s early artwork, Charles Manson. Like Weatherman ’69, it is also an ensemble piece, but the textual movement in this film is largely carried by Robert Hecker (from the band, Redd Kross), whose portrayal of Manson is riveting. Hecker either actually memorized his lines (something about which Pettibon the director seems ambivalent) or the way he wore his costume allowed him to read the scripts in a way that was very non-obvious. Whatever the truth, Hecker delivers his Manson raps with Castro-like length and strength. It seems at many times as though he’s just rapping off the top of his head, jumping between images with the shaky logical of a master conman, building in Biblical and Beatles references where called for. It’s really a bravura performance, and the heat that Hecker generates coaxes some excellent performances out of others as well.

Joe Cole returns, this time as a memorable Tex Watson–football star turned confused thrill killer–and Shannon Smith is quite amazing as Sexy Sadie. Sadie is the orgone center of the film, and she plays the role with gusto. There are some good cameos as well; Pat Smear (of the Germs) as Hendrix and Pettibon as Roman Polanski are particularly interesting (if fanciful). The violence of the group has a cartoonish quality that some may find a bit repugnant, but it is somewhat mitigated by the way Pettibon constantly drives home the point that violence was both an extension of sex to the group, and also a way for them to generate media attention. Throughout Judgement Day they speak of themselves as creations and prisoners of the media, yearning for rock star status, but unable to understand the actual process by which it could be achieved. The underlying message is that Manson’s group would have never committed any of the acts it did without the existence of a media stage. Whether or not that’s true is certainly open to debate, but it’s an interesting question to ask. And has the weird ring of truth.

Citizen Tanya (87 mins., 1989) deals with the saga of another of Pettibon’s most frequently referenced cultural images: Patty Hearst, and Tanya persona she assumed after her kidnapping at the hands of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Again, Pettibon paints the core group as media junkies. Field Marshall Cinque (Pat Smear), Tenko (Dave Markey) and Tanya (Shannon Smith) are the main characters, but everyone is cooped up for the bulk of the vid, and it is a constant grovel through sex-as-politics, media-as-sex-as-power, class-war-as-power-as-sex and all the implied variations on those themes. Fuelled by plum wine (which tastes as sweet coming up as going down), Cinque creates a completely cock-eyed, scam-centered revolutionary philosophy that seems to suck the others in solely by playing on their racial guilt. Smear is great, as are Smith and Markey. Due to its shorter length, the scenes seem a but more focused than they did on previous go-rounds, with some of the vignettes—Patty’s soliloquy about the communal toothbrush, for instance–being as funny as anything I’ve seen in a while. My personal favorite touch is the enormous (I mean ENORMOUS) moustache that Joe Cole wears as Patty’s former boyfriend, Steven Weed, but that’s a personal bias. I’m sure you’ll formulate your own.

The final part of the extant series is Sir Drone (57 mins., 1989), Pettibon’s take on the early L.A. punk scene and, for me, his magnum opus. Because of his closeness to the actual history (Raymond was, after all, the one who gave Black Flag’s Greg Ginn his first guitar), the details here are absolutely right and they cut to the fucking bone. The story follows two guys from San Pedro, Duane (Mike Watt) and Jinx (artist/musician Mike Kelley), as they try to get a punk band started in Hollywood, in the days of the Masque. It’s amazing. Watt and Kelley are both perfect as wahoos with a dream, constantly bemoaning hippies, poseurs, and anyone else who doesn’t measure up to the rigid aesthetic criteria they are developing on the fly as they evolve. Unbelievably great, there are scenes of ritual razor cuts, hanging in front of the Masque, practice pogoing, and other stuff that will make you keel the hell over if you have any sense of the scene’s history at all. Jinx’s girlfriend, Goo, and the band’s singer, Scooter (nee Gun), will also prove interesting characters to those schooled in Sonic Youth hagiography. But whatever, Sir Drone is a must-see. And I can only hope that Raymond’s other stuff sees the light. Having watched all of these back-to-back twice, I can attest that they are very much worth yr while.

We will try to deal with the rest of the Provisional catalogue next time, as it has the most consistently interesting catalogue in the country. In the meantime, I can also suggest checking out Arthur Doyle Electro-Acoustic Ensemble Live at the Analog Shock Club video (QBICO: http://members.planet.it/frewww/qbic). Shot in Buffalo NY, this documents that crazy Doyle band (with Leslie Q, Dave Cross and Ed Wilcox) that toured the Northeast last year. Anyone who had his or her interest piqued by Kim Gordon’s description of this band in a recent issue of The Wire will get a well-deserved eyeful. Rock? Jazz? Free? Noise? Well, it is all those things and more. There really is no accurate shorthand description for what it is this band was doing on this tour, but it is frighteningly wonderful to watch and hear.

Chris Touchon’s NFJM label released the coolest Deerhoof 7” last year (The Shaggs cover “My Pal Foot Foot”) and has now gone one step beyond with NJFM 019 an amazing 10 band split 7” with very short stabbing trax by Erase Errata, The Sissies, Missing Tooth, Bebe + Serge, Zeek Sheck, M.C. Trachiotomy with XBXRX, Tracy + The Plastics, Panty Raid, Chromatics and Peaches. Each tune is a quick and delightfully deadly tongue dance. The label is promising a new XBXRX video (the first one they issued a couple years back is phenomenal garage noise insania), a final XBXRX 7” and a Quix*o*tic/Orthrelm split 7”. We’re talking good times here folks. (NJFM, 4001 Leandro #8, Oakland, CA 94601-4053 http://www.njfm.org)

Out of Norway comes the most exciting noise LP I’ve heard to date. It’s the pink vinyl Sykubb fra HÊlvete by Fe-mail (TV5#2). The duo consists of Maja Solveig Kjelstrup & Hild Sofie Tajford. These two women romp thru stimulating noise compositions fresh and clean w/ a distinct Scandinavian frost. But there’s always an undercurrent of warm embrace. Sweet and masterful. Maja may be familiar to some of the more in-depth Norwegian experimental music aficionados. She has won numerous kudos in her homeland, such as being the first Norwegian composer to win the Arne Nordheim Prize in 2001, and receiving the Second Prize at the Luigi Russolo competition for her piece “Sinus Seduction (moods two)” for saxophone and electronics, also in 2001. She is a singer/voice user, whistler, keyboard, violin and theremin player as well as a computer assistant and studio engineer; all this, mainly in connection with the contemporary improvisation ensemble Spunk (Hild Sofie Tafjord is also from Spunk). Maja also plays with (x,y,z), an electronic improvisation trio with Risto Holopainen and Asbj¯rn Fl¯. And she is in a duo with accordion player Frode Haltli as well as a solo voice/electronics project with backing from the group Jazzkammer. She has also played with Oslo Industrial Ensemble, Norwegian Noise Orchestra, No Spaghetti Edition with Evan Parker and Rhodrie Davies, Paal Nilssen-Love, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Zbigniew Karkowski, Sachiko M, Gino Robair, Jaap Blonk, Oslo Sinfonietta and Lasse Marhaug. She has performed a chamber opera by Dagfinn Rosnes, especially written for her voice, among many other things such as Icelandic film music by Hjalmar Ragnarsson. She performed her own music for Ibsen’s play “Ghosts” at Northlands festival in 1999. In 2000 she had two performances in Tokyo. So Maja is busy and I suggest you get busy digging her sounds. This LP is a surefire way to dig in head first. (www.notam02.no/~majar/main.ph)

The improbable and insane state of Texas has challenged music convention consistently through the ages. Not only in its roster artists, but by the craziness of the record labels themselves–from the world of International Artists in the 60s (13th Floor Elevators, Red Krayola, et al) to the wild academia of Innova (composer Jerry Hunt, David Dunn) to the ongoing experimentalism of the N D label (John Watermann, Voice of Eye). Idea Records out of San Antonio is one of the more recent entrepreneurs of quality soundworks. Nothing they’ve released is specifically Texas-bred, but it is music that has come to Texas from far regions of the globe, all of it outside any margins of easy assimilance. Some of the artists may be familiar to those interested in post-post-Throbbing Gristle form extensions (!), but heard from within the context of a deep-in-Texas label, the work begins to take on an indefatigable and uniquely blended spice. One such release is a new split 7” by Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heeman who work in typically blithe compliment to each other. Here they involve themselves in the sincere, simple exercise of remixing music from the Idea CD Casia Fistula by Brendan Walls–itself a remarkable, out-of-nowhere (well, Sydney Australia actually) homemade machine sound collage mindblower. Both sides of the 7” exist as om-motion morsels of drone beauty. What gives them especially spectral distinction is their gasping brevity in a field where slo-eyed expansion is the norm. I suggest perusing Idea’s catalog. (Idea; http://www.idearecords.com/); Innova: http://innova.mu/); (N D: http://www.desk.nl/~northam/).

Ian Nagoski has been an interesting presence on the eastern seaboard the last few years. Primarily a sound artist involved with maxim-drone evocations, he is one of those cats who spent almost every waking hour of his youth pummeling minimalist stooge chord rock art in various rec-rooms. Along with pal Chris Rice, who edits the pretty jake new music mag Halana (fifth issue due this year), Ian let the heavy chording take him into the contemporary activity of unlimited beyond-genre improvising. It brought him to an exclusively solo performance situation, which has produced astounding experiences. From Philadelphia he’s relocated to Baltimore where he’s been active with the radical vibe-hang the Red Room and has been music writing for Halana and Wire. There’ve been a few CDs released (some in very limited editions as lathe-cut CDs), a video on Halana and just recently a one-sided Czech-pressed pic-disc LP called Violets for Your Furs (edition…xxi). The LP is remarkable as it enters the time-space with a wonderfully slow emission of minute and hyper-layered sound. Gaze at Daniel Conrad’s “rotating illusion” imprinted on the disc’s face and you got yrself a pretty cool time. (Ian Nagoski: http://www.redroom.org/individuals/nagoski); (Redroom: http://www.redroom.org); (edition…xxi: http://editionellipsis.hypermart.net); (Halana: http://www.halana.com)

The early/mid 1970s punk rock scene in NYC was a surreal miasma of slut trash glitter and starving art school inspiration. An elemental dose of its annunciation came from the underground poetry scene situated around the St. Mark’s Poetry Project from whence Richard Hell, Tom Verlaine and Patti Smith had been sniffing. The specific swagger of such writers as Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Larry Fagin, Bernadette Mayer, Lewis Warsh, Ron Padgett and even (still) Allen Ginsberg duly informed the style of proto-punk. It is an actuality never lost by Hell, Verlaine and Smith to this day. And it has always been a distinctive thread through the intervening years at the Poetry Project even after the giant passings of Berrigan and Ginsberg. So it was an utter mindblowing amazement to see and hear the young poet Anselm Berrigan (Ted’s son) incinerate St. Marks Church recently with a wholly contempo continuance of the language and street rock vocabulary that punk rock walked out from, fists rubbing eyes. The take on generational experience both shared and personal and the laughs from the backroom were remarkably acute and loaded. And delightfully inspired in form. The cool thing is Anselm ain’t alone here. I suggest Googling young Berrigan and fall into the lake of tongues you’ll find. “I sit down calmly in someone else’s recliner/Wearing someone else’s shirt, pants, shoes and socks/Though I’ve torn my own holes into all of them.”- Anselm Berrigan. A good troika of Berrigan’s writing (They Beat Me Over the Head with a Sack, Integrity & Dramatic Life, Zero Star Hotel) can be had from the Aerial/Edge. (www.aerialedge.com/edgebooks.htm)

Good mag action this time from a couple of rock ‘zines that appear less often than perhaps they ought, but manage to pack in pounds of good reading. The first is issue #6 of Bob Bert’s bb gun (www.bbgun.org), which has gone from being something like an excuse for Bob to print pics of his favorite garage rock gals, to something quite substantial. This one has juicy interviews with Michael Gira, Vinnie Gallo, Mick Collins, Rowalnd S. Howard, Jim O’Rourke, Mick Farren, James Chance and plenty more. The writing staff is fucking choice as well, so do yourself a favor. If you actually still like rock-qua-rock, pick the thing up. The Broken Face (http://brokenface.fupp.net) is pretty much a rock mag as well. Edited by the other Mats Gustafson, they just got out issue 15, and it’s a hot compendium of psych & experimental underground whatsis, that operates almost as a codicile to Ptolemaic Terrascope. Included are pieces on Nagisa Ni Te, Parson Sound, Fursaxa, Arco Flute Foundation, and a truly useful review section, among other things. Either of these mags will make time spent on the toilet infinitely more rewarding, so give them a try. Then flush.

Another nice word batch is an anthology called the long march of cleveland (Green Panda Press, 14314 Superior Ave., Cleveland Heights, OH 44118). Edited by an Ohioan named Bree, this volume was assembled in honor of the visionary Cleveland poet, d.a. levy, who would have turned 60 last year, had he not blown his brains out in 1968. Levy was a fascinating guy, a wonderful poet and artist, and a prolific publisher and editor. There have been a few good books about him, and if you have any interest in underground culture of the post-WWII period, you’d be doing yrself a favor to do some reading up on him. That said, this anthology is pretty nice. Not sure that everything is exactly as related to levy as all that, and there’s a distinct lack of CONCRETE, but there is plenty of good visual and written work, much of it indebted to Cleveland, the city that levy was connected to at both ends.
Let me end this subjective review scene with a letter re: last issue’s Bull Tongue:

David Newgarden from Ocean Grove, NJ writes:

“Hey–if Jean Francois Pauvros is “40-ish” than I’m 12-ish still listening to Chicago IX and Frampton Comes Alive. Also–Gilbert Artman was in Catalogue. It was Artman, not Pauvros, who was in Lard Free and in Urban Sax (a dozen parachuting saxophonists).

“Back somewhere in the ‘80s, while touring with Haitian voudou combo Boukman
Eksperyans, I met blind Tex-Mex accordion recluse Steve “El Parche” Jordan on the streets of Rennes, dragged him to ‘see’ a Catalogue/Silverfish double-bill (Jac Berrocal and Lezley, I swear, had the exact same stage moves) and picked up non-english-speaking mini-skirted coeds in a biker bar and puked french fries/mayonaise and red wine on the clean cobblestone streets of Brittany. At some point in the night, I think Esteban & I almost got into a fight with ‘El Vez’ but my memory is a little hazy.

“Following week, saw Rhys Chatham and 100 guitars in weird deserted Paris suburbs, got stranded by late nite bus schedule, and Pauvros hooked me up with a ride back to Pigalle–coincidentally I was staying in apt. building where Catalogue’s manager lived. (somewhere, out of alphabetical order, in my rusting, overstuffed rolodex is a Jac B. business card, more treasured even than the one Charles Gayle handed me in Milford’s back yard).”

Floating World Animation Fest presents DMTV – Feb. 19th at Show Cave in Los Angeles

Floating World Animation Fest returns with a new name and trippier mission. We’ve dug even deeper into the vaults of psychedelic animation to curate a heroic dose of visionary video art for this year’s animation fest.

For our fourth annual animation fest it was time to focus on what we liked best from previous shows and continue to seek out films that really embrace the infinite mysteries that resonate with us. The result is DMTV, a program that goes further into experimental realms of video art and abstract visuals.

Remixed, remastered and featuring new films by King Terry, Amy Lockhart and more!

DMTV trailer – Floating World Animation Fest, Show Cave, Feb. 19th 2011 from Floating World Comics on Vimeo.

LISTING INFORMATION:

WHO: Films by: Barry Doupe, Michael Robinson, Jesus Rivera, Jacob Ciocci, King Terry, Dash Shaw, Kihachiro Kawamoto, Amy Lockhart, Milton Croissant,  QS Vore Guy, James Mercer, David O’Reilly, Eurico Coelho, Yoshi Sodeoka

WHAT: FWC’s 4th annual animation fest

WHEN: Saturday, February 19th, 8pm – midnight

WHERE: Show Cave, 3501 Eagle Rock Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

COST: $5, 21+

Highlights of this year’s program include:

Travel, aka The Trip (1973) – Kihachiro Kawamoto studied puppet animation in Prague in 1963 before going on to create his own haunting puppet and cut-out animations drawing from his own Japanese heritage. Travel depicts the journey of a young girl into the Dali-esque landscape of her own psyche.

Apeiron (1996) – Eurico Coelho depicts a modern technological labyrinth where society has surrendered to the cold lamps of their computer screens. The entirety of this ten minute film was animated on a Commodore Amiga 4000, giving the film a completely fresh aesthetic that has outlived the technology with which it was created.

The Peace Tape (2008) – With a title hearkening back to the analog era, The Peace Tape is a frenetic remix of old and new “found” video. Culling his sources from thrift stores (countless straight-to-VHS childrens’ programs), the Internet (a single YouTube clip featuring “dog in a dog costume”), and his own designs (flash animation of eyes and mouths, subliminal flickers of text), Ciocci concentrates hours of light entertainment into a dense, four-minute block. Saved from total sensory overload by the musical logic of Extreme Animals’ “A Better Way,” The Peace Tape is cryptic, hypnotic (and above all), empathetic. “Culture is out of control,” Ciocci explains, “but it is ok.”

The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D (2009) – This original animated web series is based on graphic novelist and comic book artist Dash Shaw’s latest book of the same title. Shaw’s animation has been widely praised for its eclectic style, innovative design and emotional depth.

ARTHUR'S ASTROLOGY by Ian Svenonius (Arthur 8/Jan 2004)

ARTHUR’S ASTROLOGY
by Ian Svenonius

first published in Arthur No. 8 (Jan. 2004)

Predestination; a concept older than free will and borne out by recent scientific elucidations on historical dialectics, genetics and chemical psychology. Each of us is caught in a tangled labyrinth of circumstance and cosmic programming, acting out our grotesque fate in an awful, ignorant manner.

The restless contractions of the astral bodies affect us in a profound way; each offhand movement of a planet can have enormous repercussions for humanity and our various client species, via magnetic fields, space dust and thoughtless lunar alignment. The moon can likewise be an irresponsible entity, tumbling through the sky carelessly, without regard to the tidal waves it may or may not cause. A correlation could be drawn to our own unthinking rearrangement of ant life or microscopic organism culture. This column is a transmission then, not only to the Arthur readers (who have star signs), but to the stars as well, an attempt to get them to understand that even their nonchalant actions have repercussions…

Capricorn
Your good taste and “attention to detail” is your cachet. Recently however, everyone seems to have good taste. It’s a veritable “Age of Capricorn” with the whole of society engaged in conspicuous collecting of obscurant minutiae. These poseurs are like a race of mushrooms who’ve blossomed overnight, and they’ve seemingly rendered you redundant. Or maybe not. Legend has it that there’s still a backwater region, somewhere in New Guinea, where no one knows about the particular labels and sub-trends which are your passion. Go there now and take your rightful place as their inscrutable aesthete.

Aquarius
You’re tired of the simplistic astrological characterization which has dogged you ever since the hippiexploitation musical Hair. You dug all the attention at the time, but now you’d like to dissociate yourself from those fabulous furry freaks of yesteryear. You’ve found yourself pigeonholed; you find it hard getting jobs as a butcher or a Pentagon military contractor, for example. It’s time for everyone to know that Aquarians aren’t just well-meaning free-thinkers living in schoolbuses and teepees. That nazis like Ronald Reagan and slaveowners like George Washington were Aquarians too. That Aquarians are tough mothers like Rollins and rabble rousers like John “Rotten.” And that if this millennium is indeed the “Age of Aquarius,” it’s a bloody epoch featuring war and nuclear proliferation; not just food co-ops. Your work in expanding social consciousness about Aquarius’ versatility is absolutely crucial for the people of your sign.

Pisces
You are the sign of the fish. Fish travel in large groups, called “schools,” but you hate school, which makes you an unusual fish; a romantic, loner, James Dean-style fish. Part of a new “me generation” in the fish world, wary of social conventions—such as egg laying and gill use—and intent on individual freedom. It’s a very American outlook and one which many in the fish world resent. They see your insistent individuality as selfish and bad for the survival of the species, especially if you represent a turning point in evolution. You on the other hand, see them as conformist drones, bound by stifling tradition. Make a civic gesture toward them to allay their fear; tell them you haven’t given up on school altogether, you’re just taking a year off to find yourself.

Continue reading →

NEW MUSIC: Bishop Manning and the Manning Family

Download: “I Wanna Thank You Jesus”—Bishop Manning and the Manning Family (mp3)

Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/18-I-Wanna-Thank-You-Jesus-B.L.M.-41393.mp3%5D

Here’s some proper Sunday morning message music from North Carolina’s Bishop Manning and The Manning Family, sourced off the recently released “Converted Mind – The Early Recordings,” a fantastic new collection of their recordings. “Converted Mind” features 28 cuts, recorded mostly from the 1970s, with extensive liner notes by Alan Young, vintage photos and 7-inch label shots. Highly recommended for believers and non-believers alike. Available on CD for $13 direct from the Fat Possum Records affiliate, Big Legal Mess Records of Oxford, Mississippi.

[Sunday Lecture] "Forgetting and Remembering the Instructions of the Land" by Freeman House

“Freeman House is a former commercial salmon fisher who has been involved with a community-based watershed restoration effort in northern California for more than 25 years. He is a co-founder of the Mattole Salmon Group and the Mattole Restoration Council. His book, Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species received the best nonfiction award from the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for quality of prose. He lives with his family in northern California.”

That’s the biographical note for Freeman House on the Lannan Foundation website. We would add that earlier in his life, Freeman edited Innerspace, a mid-1960s independent press magazine for the nascent psychedelic community; married Abbie and Anita Hoffman at Central Park on June 10, 1967; and was a member of both New York City’s Group Image and the San Francisco Diggers.

This piece was delivered as the Rufus Putnam Lecture at the Ohio University, April 24, 1996. Parts of this lecture have been published in Martha’s Journal and in Raise the Stakes.

Forgetting and Remembering the Instructions of the Land:
The Survival of Places, Peoples, and the More-than-human

by Freeman House

I: Forgetting

Maps are magical icons. We think of them as pictures of reality, but they are actually talismans that twist our psyche in one direction or another. Maps create the situation they describe. We use them hoping for help in finding our way around unknown territory, hoping they will take us in the right direction. We are hardly aware that they are proscribing the way we think of ourselves, that they are defining large portions of our personal identities. With a world map in our hands, we become citizens of nations. We become Americans, Japanese, Sri Lankans. With a national map in front of us, we locate ourselves in our home state; we become Ohioans or Californians. Unfolding the road map on the car seat beside us, we become encapsulated dreamers hurtling across a blurred landscape toward the next center of human concentration. Even with a topographical map, the map closest to being a picture of the landscape, we are encouraged to describe our location by township, range, and section—more precise, more scientific, we are told, than describing where we are in terms of a river valley or mountain range.

When Rufus Putnam’s Ohio Company acquired its part of the Northwest Territories, the first thing General Putnam did, perhaps before he had even seen all of it, was to draw squares on a map—townships, quarter-sections, long sections. Putnam was, after all, a surveyor and a land developer. Those blue lines on maps that are now yellow with age set in motion a process of systematic forgetfulness which may just now be reaching its culmination. As precisely as if he were using a scalpel, the general was separating the new human inhabitants from the sensual experience of their habitat. The new lines brought with them a quality of perception, one that randomly separated waterways from their sources. They fragmented the great forests before a single tree was cut.

If the landscape was a radio, in 1787 the volume began to be turned down on the channel that had carried the messages of the other creatures and the plants and the winds and waters full blast for thousands of years of ’round-the-clock broadcasting. People had been living in southern Ohio for millennia before the good general arrived, and there is every indication they were able to hear what the landscape was telling them. They experienced themselves as a part of the landscape that lay between themselves and the horizon. The landscape and the other creatures in it had a voice within their hearts and minds. Their maps were in the form of stories that carried down through the generations information about where and when the food plants were at their best, information about the seasonal migration routes of other species — species that might be important for either food or communion. The stories told of seasonal cycles — planting times, flood years, birth control. But as far as we know, no maps. And most certainly no maps with straight lines on them.

President Jefferson would soon instruct his surveyors the length and breadth of the enormous Louisiana Purchase to do the same thing—and with the best of intentions. Map it; divide it up by township, range, and section. It was a management problem. Breaking up the nearly unimaginable breadth of the newly acquired lands into tidy grids would make possible their orderly occupation by the yeoman farmer democrats who resided at the heart of Jefferson’s vision for the new world. This was the first step into bringing order to a sprawling wilderness, spreading its use peacefully among a rapidly encroaching population in a society where the engine of order was commerce. Political thinking of the time (as it still is) was driven by John Locke’s idea that the primary function of government is the protection of property. If the government was to have something to govern, it needed to turn all that land into property.

The technique had its benefits. Smaller grids provided for the establishment of instant towns and villages, centers of commerce and transportation. The larger grids, for sale at a dollar an acre, provided space for pioneer trappers and farmers to provide the amenities necessary for the growth of a new society. American civilization established itself with startling efficiency and rapidity. The previous inhabitants were startled right out of a culture that had evolved for thousands of years in equilibrium with the life processes surrounding. Too often, they were startled right out of their skins.

But the system had unanticipated side effects which we are only beginning to understand in the last 30 years, as we have discovered something called the environment. The same practical necessities which brought pioneer farmers to an intimate familiarity with the soils, micro-climates, and wildlife within their own fence lines allowed them to forget the continuity of life processes beyond the boundaries registered on plat maps—the parameters of life we now call ecosystems and watersheds. The parcels could be bought and sold, in the process acquiring an abstract identity separated from their function in the landscape. The wealth of diversity and particularity that is the very definition of any piece of ground in the natural world is forgotten, subsumed by its description in terms of commercial value.

Continue reading →

ARTHUR’S ASTROLOGY by Ian Svenonius (Arthur, Nov. 2003)

first published in Arthur No. 7 (Nov. 2003)

ARTHUR’S ASTROLOGY
by Ian Svenonius

Predestination; a concept older than free will and borne out by recent scientific elucidations on historical dialectics, genetics and chemical psychology. Each of us is caught in a tangled labyrinth of circumstance and cosmic programming, acting out our grotesque fate in an awful, ignorant manner. The restless contractions of the astral bodies affect us in a profound way; each offhand movement of a planet can have enormous repercussions for humanity and our various client species, via magnetic fields, space dust and thoughtless lunar alignment. The moon can likewise be an irresponsible entity, tumbling through the sky carelessly, without regard to the tidal waves it may or may not cause. A correlation could be drawn to our own unthinking rearrangement of ant life or microscopic organism culture. This column is a transmission then, not only to the Arthur readers (who have star signs), but to the stars as well, an attempt to get them to understand that even their nonchalant actions have repercussions…

Libra
You are armed with scales in the one hand, and a sword of justice in the other. Also, you’re blindfolded. Everyone you meet is weighed and then sliced accordingly. You often slice the wrong portion because of this strange voluntary eye impairment. As with many handicapped people though, your other senses have become hyper-attuned. This means that, while justice is blind, it can smell and hear very well. According to Marshall McLuhan, this puts you at odds with society because, since the introduction of the Guttenberg press, people are much more sight-reliant now than in previous historical epochs. Due to your alienation from the hegemonic eye-based world, you enact harsher sentences than you normally would. But that’s okay; they deserve it. Keep on slicin’!

Scorpio
You’re proud of your designation as the cosmological fornicator; and you are good…maybe too good. People are starting to resent you. Didn’t you know that God hates sex? This month take a self-imposed dry spell; go to your pal the Dalai Lama’s house and mow the lawn or read a book. You’re starting to smell the place up.

Sagittarius
You like to give people rides on your stout equestrian torso. Recently though you’ve been fined for defecating on the sidewalk. The double standard is clear; while the mounted police are allowed to spread feces everywhere, you and your beast man brethren are fined and flogged. Though this oppression is maddening, remember that these modern day chevaliers are mere jealous pretenders while you, Sagittarius, are the real thing. They attempt animal fusion through fancy gear but at the end of the day (in the words of Conway Twitty) “it’s only make believe.” Otherwise they would understand the difficulty of straddling a toilet with an ungainly horse bottom.

Capricorn
Recently you’ve taken time off from fondling your impeccable record collection and turned your gaze outward. Like fellow sea goats Nixon, Stalin and Mao, you’re compelled to commit mass murder in the name of some political theory. The same idealism unites the two seemingly disparate urges of course; perfectionism can be a harsh taskmaster. Remember: just as you should allow that late-era Fleetwood Mac album to sit in your bin without fear of a purge, so you must forgive humankind of their foibles and let them live.

Aquarius
You’re angry and rightly so. What’s the use of being the water bearer when everyone has their own personal bottles of the substance these days? In fact, aspersions have been cast as to the quality of your particular stock. Apparently it’s not from a “reputable enough” source. Don’t worry though, this poseur shit will die and you’ll be there with the water when no one else has it anymore. And they won’t miss you til that well runs dry. But in the meantime it seems important to expand your repertoire. Perhaps it’s time to bear something else for awhile, like pizza or insulin.

Pisces
You are a fish or a pair of fish swimming toward one another. The fish bowl is a drag for the likes of you, the fishbowl inhabitant. The redundancy of the route and the ammonia levels in the water are getting you down. Plus the fact that you eat those flakes made of ground-up fish entrails and worse. That’s pretty degrading. In the old days, before fish food, people just fed their fish leftovers, such as the crust of a peanut butter sandwich or an old lasagna. Due to the bogus animal food industry though, you have this sicko soilent green food factory crap. You’ve gotta break out of that bowl and go get a fish filet.

Aries
You’ve sliced through the enemy shield wall and you’re covered with their chopped up arms and legs. Now it’s time to burn the church and take all the precious items back home to your cold and brutal kingdom. But you’re tired of this life of conflict. You want to settle down and maybe colonize this burned up battleground. Do it! Follow that dream! These people can be your new subjects. But don’t betray Odin to the Christian gods or he’ll turn his wrath on you.

Taurus
You’re feeling smug. As though you’d figured it all out. But as usual you’ve turned a blind eye to the exploitation which has befallen your archetype/namesake. Did you know that in thousands of cowboy bars across America the bull’s backside’s likeness has been reproduced in mechanical form for riding in a latently erotic display? That grinning, self satisfied cow people are using your facsimile as an enormous crypto-vibrator? Isn’t that disgusting?

Gemini
This month, strangle your twin in his sleep. she/he’s holding you back! You’re the real star and they’re not pulling their weight. Aren’t you sick of dragging that idiot around with you, while every good deed turns to naught due to their constant nagging and naysaying? Their doubt has wreaked enough havoc on your life! At least have him /her clean out their desk and leave the premises. And don’t listen to the tears; it hurts you as much as it hurts them.

Cancer
Your big claw isn’t very good for doing fine tuned tasks such as drawing or splinter removal. Meanwhile your small claw isn’t good for scaring away predators. You’ve got a bad case of dyslexia and you keep getting confused with which claw to use. Also, people think you’re coy since you inadvertently walk sideways when they approach you.

Leo
You’re interested in changing your title. King/Queen of the jungle doesn’t speak to you, jungle inhabitants don’t pay taxes and besides, you’ve never even seen a jungle! Maybe you should rule a tony stretch of Manhattan or a monied subdivision in Maclean. You could be: “Queen of Central Park West” or “God of Fondlewood Court.”

Virgo
You’re treating your inborn repression as a license to work with some unsavory elements like Opus Dei, The Vatican Bank and CIA-mafia types. If you don’t get with it, Jesus won’t give you a golden cookie when you die.

PEEKING INTO HEAVEN: A conversation with Jason Spaceman – text by Jay Babcock, photos by Stacy Kranitz (Arthur, 2008)

Peeking Into Heaven

How a brush with death, a haunted guitar and filmmaker Harmony Korine helped Spiritualized’s Jason Spaceman wrestle a new album of narcotic gospel music into being.

Text: Jay Babcock
Photography: Stacy Kranitz

Art direction: Yasmin Khan and Michael Worthington

Originally published in Arthur No. 30 (July 2008)

There are some humans who seem specially equipped to not just interact with consciousness-altering drugs, but to thrive from their persistent use. For two decades, English musician Jason Pierce, aka J. Spaceman, seemed to be one of these special specimens. His first band, the succinctly named Spacemen 3, was a triumph of drugs, sound and stubborness—”Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to,” “Fucked up inside,” and “For all the fucked up children of the world,” were bandied-about slogans/mottos; Playing With Fire and The Perfect Prescription were album titles; and a serious, incandescent reconciliation of drone, blues, rock n roll, junkie metaphor and primitive psychedelic sound effects was what they achieved. Formed in 1982 with Pete Kember aka Sonic Boom, with whom, astonishingly, Jason shared a birthdate and birthplace hospital, Spacemen 3 burned both ends brightly (if distantly—they never made it to America, and relatively few people saw them in England) before disintegrating in 1991 after a series of truly despicable actions by Kember.

As Spacemen 3 fell to earth, Pierce launched Spiritualized, releasing a series of studio albums in the ’90s combining an ever-broadening musical palate with an audiophile’s attention to detail and a continuing lyrical preoccupation with the idea of Need—need for companionship, for drugs, for hope, for relief from suffering. 1997’s woozy Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space, a breakup/lament album of epic musical scope incorporating gospel, noise and sublime bliss-outs, caught the public’s attention unlike any other album Pierce has made before or since, but it should be understood that ALL OF THEM ARE GREAT. Pierce has stuck to his themes, to his minimalist-maximalist vision, and each album—from the coldstar beauty of 1995’s Pure Phase to the orchestral grandeur of 2001’s Let It Come Down to the raw, stoic ache of 2003’s Amazing Grace—offers a variation on that single approach, or to use his metaphor, a single mainline. Live, Spiritualized tend toward the overwhelming; I’ve seen people black out, weep openly, mount each other in joy at shows through the years—if that isn’t evidence of being in the presence of transcendence, I don’t know what is.

When word leaked out in July 2005 that Pierce was in hospital nearing death, most of us assumed that the OD catastrophe (to quote an early Spacemen 3 song) had finally happened. The truth was in some ways scarier—Pierce was down to 110 pounds and taking half-second breaths, with his wife undergoing grief counseling in preparation for the seeming imminent departure—because he had contracted double pneumonia, and a doctor had somehow failed to detect it in an earlier visit.

Almost three years later, on the eve of the release of the new Spiritualized album (punningly titled Songs in A & E—“A & E” is British shorthand for the “Accidents & Emergency” department of a hospital), Arthur meets up with Jason in Williamsburg. Wearing white pants, a white Roky Erickson t-shirt and silver sneakers, Pierce is in good spirits, and with the sunglasses and hair, he seems ageless: it could be 1988, 1998 or 2008. It’s all the same, and yet things have changed. It’s not yet dusk, so Jason insists on Coca-Cola rather than something harder. As we head through the bar to the backyard pebble garden, we pass a large medical poster displaying two human lungs. I gasp. Jason laughs. He’s lived to play with fire another day.

Continue reading →

VENUS AND MARS: Ian Svenonius talks astrology

ARTHUR ASTROLOGY: VENUS AND MARS
By Ian Svenonius

first published in Arthur No. 6 (Sept. 2003)

Predestination: a concept older than free will and borne out by recent scientific elucidations on historical dialectics, genetics and chemical psychology. Each of us is caught in a tangled labyrinth of circumstance and cosmic programming, acting out our grotesque fate in an awful, ignorant manner.

The restless contractions of the astral bodies affect us in a profound way; each offhand movement of a planet can have enormous repercussions for humanity and our various client species, via magnetic fields, space dust and thoughtless lunar alignment. The moon can likewise be an irresponsible entity, tumbling through the sky carelessly, without regard to the tidal waves it may or may not cause. A correlation could be drawn to our own unthinking rearrangement of ant life or microscopic organism culture. This column is a transmission then, not only to the Arthur readers (who have star signs), but to the stars as well, an attempt to get them to understand that even their nonchalant actions have repercussions…

Dear VIRGO,
Your sign has been seen by you as a prison cell, a life sentence, an inhabited hell on earth. At birth (or was it conception?) you mourned your fate, sensing destiny’s cruel joke on you. A quick survey confirmed that indeed, you were superior to everyone; you had no peers. You attempt to help the sheep with their painful inadequacy. Still, the burden of being an almost-alien talent/beauty/intellect is poignant, and typically leads to self-induced disfigurement (Michael Jackson) and/or willful mental retardation (Gene Simmons, Bruce Springsteen, Chrissie Hynde) so as to mollify the resentment of the flock.

As the perfect VIRGO, the key to overcoming this self-destructive pitch toward mediocrity is to ponder the twin bromides: “nobody’s perfect” and “practice makes perfect.” Though paradoxical, each venerable maxim is as correct as the other one (a=b). Seen as a simple arithmetic, one concludes from the computation of the two truisms “practice makes perfect” ( x2 = p) and “nobody’s perfect” (n=p) that x squared=n (practice makes nobody) meaning that 2/n=x (nobody divided by 2 equals practice) so x or practice=yob or don, which denote an English commoner and an Italian man of stature respectively and which also = p and so even the commoner is shown to be amongst the perfect, a revolutionary sentiment and a stop order to your own disgusting habit of self-denigration.

Dear LIBRA,
You are the Judge, your bizarre paradox held in the balance of your symbolic scales. A self-righteous gourmet, a fist-shaking hedonist; like an anointed emir whose finger foods and harem are presumed god given, you should be a target of outrage—but somehow, through cosmic arrangement, you’re charming and delightful. Stunning even. And above reproach. Because cosmology appointed your vile hypocrisy, it stands as a beacon to the impossibility of a common standard for all mankind. Therefore, like your astrological brethren, Nietzsche, Bolan, Bardot and Coltrane, you are absolved of a frail and petty nature. Your pious sanctimony actually shines a light toward mutual acceptance and you are encouraged to “keep on keepin’ on.”

Dear SCORPIO,
You are magic when we are alone. The fluid extension of my own thoughts, our communication is as easy and lucid as a fevered dreamscape. But when others intrude, you become strange, distant, perverse and sometimes rude. I grow accustomed to meeting you only in your domain; you rule a dark grotto, the underworld, an interior place through which only two can travel. When circumstances become socialized and introduced into a casual commonality, you rebel, rend and destroy the self-satisfied banter of consensus. This disarming characteristic must now be utilized as a revolutionary weapon to awaken the culture from its fascist monologue. Inject your scorpion’s venom into the one-sided conversation and cause the pundits to wither!

Dear SAGITTARIUS,
You feel lost now; your man beast posture was feted in other eras but now has been deemed irrelevant by the moralistic arbiters who rule us. They have a new consumerist hedonism they are propagating and your animist and thoughtful rutting doesn’t fit their beer commercial scheme. Your philosophical meandering and polymorphous perversity have become marginalized as anti-social factors, leaving you to roam the shrinking forest with the displaced fauna. Don’t run into the road with the other critters though; you’ll end up roadkill like fellow centaurs Jim and Jimi and so many badgers and possums, driven to death by technocratic despotism. Stay in the woods now (remember M-26-7 in the Maestra or the VC; waiting is half the battle).

Dear CAPRICORN,
You have built a wonderful kingdom and yet you are not sated. It is your noble will to attain the highest perch, but when you get there, to the top of grand old Everest, you find it crowded with snowboarders and school groups. You must reconfigure your aims, this banal race is unedifying and already lost. It will lead you to the conclusion: “While you will never be the first to climb Mt. Everest, you could still be the first to explode it with a nuclear device.”

Dear AQUARIUS,
Your revolutionary fervor has always been mediated by an underlying conservatism which makes you popular at dinner parties. The balance is important, so as to ensure proper digestion. It’s time now to reverse the equation and underpin tradition with insurrection; the tradition of violent destruction a la red terror and Robespierre. This splendid flip-flop is what has rewarded Aquarians through history with the mantle of memorability…which is the bedrock of tradition after all.

Dear PISCES,
It’s true the world is against you. Despite your amusing crankiness they want to wipe you out. It’s a stone age urge, to destroy what they can’t conceive of. Like a Confucian on Madison Avenue, you are despised. Tonight should be spent sharpening sticks and covering them in urine.

Dear ARIES,
You are the eternal Warrior. You come from the land of ice and snow…where the hot winds blow. Your life has been tattooed by controversy because of a propensity to spring to arms and vengeance when others would mediate or passively burn. Reared in chainmail diapers, hacking with a rusty sword, the stars allotted you not a home, but a trench, encrusted with barbed wire. Even in victory, you were often feared and shunned. But now you are vindicated, because the sheet is torn off and the world is revealed to be in a constant state of violent struggle; classes, nations, races, genders perverted by the money god and wrapped in a state of vicious tumult. Your particular, unequaled passion is needed now like important Aries’ in the past (V. I. Lenin). You are not the problem, but the solution. You must rise to be… Overlord.

Dear TAURUS,
It’s difficult to be held up to such esteem. The namesake for your archetype; respected, feared and therefore slaughtered by a matador for the amusement of a crowd… A sense of this exploitive, patronizing theatre is what fuels your famous rage at the most mundane circumstance. But a rearrangement of perspective invites your mind to India where the Bull is revered and even sacred, an untouchable agent of harmony. An occasional trip to the sub continent via meditation will keep you balanced as you walk through the “china shop” of life.

Dear GEMINI,
You’ve always identified with the loser. It is the Gemini’s “twin” nature to see through the eyes of the hapless and ennobled sufferer (a la Morrissey and Ray Davies). This has graced you with a sympathetic manner which grants you access to the inner sanctums of the most exclusive backyards and basements. Yet, at a certain point, it’s no longer enough to commiserate with victimization. To identify with the loser predestines loss and you can no longer afford to lose. Losing means Camp X-ray or worse and eventual mass extinction for everything worthwhile. Read Mao’s VI. IMPERIALISM AND ALL REACTIONARIES ARE PAPER TIGERS for “winning” inspiration.

Dear CANCER,
Your sidestepping style is the template for all future endeavors. With our linear mode of thinking discredited by the impending armageddon, we see that lateral movement is really the “way to go.” You must proselytize the fine points of this crustacean manner to those laboring in the illusory “race.”

Dear LEO,
Your mane is looking bedraggled of late as you see your “jungle kingdom” under new governance. Due to the deficit, the International Monetary Fund have been established as interim rulers and they’ve decided a rearrangement of the economy is in order. The jungle will have to be clear-cut so as to establish a “special zone” without labor laws for the textile industry. You can either stay and work on Tommy Hilfiger tank tops for nine cents a day or flee into the hills with your AK-47. I know you’ll make the right choice.

Ian Svenonius: facebook