in that strange space between another stellar band practice and another bout of illness last night, and the stupidity of an argument with my housemate about musical drones and getting turned away from the east liberty health clinic because i looked like i should go to shadyside's clinic (showing that class and race divides are more important to some than actually healing the ill), I had several strange dreams that stayed with me despite being a bit drunk.
in the first there was a street party in a backwards version of my parent's neighborhood, and it had spilled into their house. i went upstairs to find my younger brother devon, who took me outside to show me a frail leaf that when held to the dying sunlight had engraved on it the greek word "thelema" θέλημα, which he wanted me to hold so he could photograph it. in the second, after a small stint rowing around a pirates' treasure cove i was left standing in the rain outside a shakespearean theatre waiting for a my twin to come back with the car keys so i could get home. i was rolling a cigarette when a redheaded girl in a white cape came out of th stage door and gave me a glancing look over before walking off into the rain as if i should follow her. but i didn't.
maybe it's reading all the anais nin, or finally getting back into my subconscious after a year of gut survival, but both these dreams struck me as highly significant. for years i dreamed of that mystery girl, who i thought of as a muse, but really represented all the faeries and crazy women i chased after, and would follow her through the dream time into all sorts of sticky situations. but now i feel no need to follow her, like i can find my own way home thank you very much, and only reaffirms my decision to find my own way through life without needing to subsume myself in love for others that is never really satisfying. most of it was just trying to find some semblance of the closeness my twin and i had growing up anyway.
as for the thelema leaf, thelema means will, purpose, or desire and became a major tenant of aleister crowley's magical philosophy: 'do what thou will,' stating that each person's task is to find their true will, that path of least resistance of action because it is supported by the whole universe and allows them to achieve their dreams on earth. he got this idea from the 16th century fransiscan monk rabelais who said: "because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us." which sounds to sum up my last five years pretty well.
selena and i had been talking about desire a lot recently, being driven by one's own internal starlight, and getting serious about music and writing this year only seems to be opening up so many more doors and being my "path of right action" that i can't help but follow it furiously. even if art and desire are frail and liable to fall apart in our lives the way the leaf my brother held up was doing. he wanted to photograph it as that is his true will, not just photography, but recording the hidden luminous nature of those things that are transient in this world, as all art does.
5.26.2006
5.11.2006
velvetine radicals
up late researching the history of Chezk literature and poetry I stumbled across a fascinating bit of rock and roll history: The Plastic People of the Universe.
Influenced heavily by early Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa, and sounding like a precursor to such modern groups like Guts Pie Earshot, !!!, and most industrial music, the PPU were the driving force of the Chezk underground in the late 60's-80's when the communist regime was pushing their campaign of normalization. Though they didn't have a specifically political agenda, they refused to fit in to the standards for performers and ended up playing underground barn shows for thousands until they were all arrested for disturbing the peace in '76. This is where things get interesting: these arrests are said to have led playwrite Vaclav Havel to pen the Charter 77, the main opposition to communist rule that eventually led to the Velvet Revolution in 89 and the overthrowing of communist power in the Chezk Republic.
Despite not being activists, here is an incredible example of music becoming a force for social change, the name of the revolution itself harking back to the Velvet Underground, who represented to the members of the Plastic People all that was right and unique in rock and roll. Despite the fact that the "underground" in New York in the 70's had nothing to do with political oppression, that spirit of rejecting normalcy and pushing the arts to new edges carried through to the Chezk people and gave them the courage to reject the stifling influence of the communist regime. Of course, once the Iron Curtain was dropped, and the emigre' writer's books were finally sold in their native country again, the anger and intensity that had fueled the arts scene almost completely died out, and in some articles I've read from recent Chezk musicians they almost wished they were living back under communist rule so there would be something to inspire them to create art against.
I also went to see the Dada exhibit at the National Gallery yesterday (odd to see such art up on gallery walls), and was struck that what fueled these artists, besides a desire to be doing their own thing, was the horror and absurdity of World War I. That their art was the only way for them to express their outrage and fear at what was going on in the world around them. The collage, scrap art and military aesthetic of their art later went on to shape the aesthetics of punk, the feminist collages of Hannah Höch being the almost direct precursor of the work of Crass artist Gee Vaucher, Crass being another rock band that had a vast political impact, during their time singing out against the Falklands War and Margaret Thatcher's regime in 80's England, but also (in my opinion) as the main reason anarchism and hard politics got integrated into rock music as a youth movement, making them responsible for the current anti-globalization movement.
The irony being that despite the continuation of the Iraq war and the tightening civil rights at home, most modern american musicians and artists don't seem all that oppressed or horrified by what's going on in the world enough to make a really clear statement against it, or if they do, such messages have been heard so many times before that they don't stand apart from the spectacle to make any sort of real impact on it, and even punk is distancing itself from an explicit political message, as if that was so last century. it's not like anyone's telling them that if they don't confirm they will not be allowed to continue playing.
Influenced heavily by early Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa, and sounding like a precursor to such modern groups like Guts Pie Earshot, !!!, and most industrial music, the PPU were the driving force of the Chezk underground in the late 60's-80's when the communist regime was pushing their campaign of normalization. Though they didn't have a specifically political agenda, they refused to fit in to the standards for performers and ended up playing underground barn shows for thousands until they were all arrested for disturbing the peace in '76. This is where things get interesting: these arrests are said to have led playwrite Vaclav Havel to pen the Charter 77, the main opposition to communist rule that eventually led to the Velvet Revolution in 89 and the overthrowing of communist power in the Chezk Republic.
Despite not being activists, here is an incredible example of music becoming a force for social change, the name of the revolution itself harking back to the Velvet Underground, who represented to the members of the Plastic People all that was right and unique in rock and roll. Despite the fact that the "underground" in New York in the 70's had nothing to do with political oppression, that spirit of rejecting normalcy and pushing the arts to new edges carried through to the Chezk people and gave them the courage to reject the stifling influence of the communist regime. Of course, once the Iron Curtain was dropped, and the emigre' writer's books were finally sold in their native country again, the anger and intensity that had fueled the arts scene almost completely died out, and in some articles I've read from recent Chezk musicians they almost wished they were living back under communist rule so there would be something to inspire them to create art against.
I also went to see the Dada exhibit at the National Gallery yesterday (odd to see such art up on gallery walls), and was struck that what fueled these artists, besides a desire to be doing their own thing, was the horror and absurdity of World War I. That their art was the only way for them to express their outrage and fear at what was going on in the world around them. The collage, scrap art and military aesthetic of their art later went on to shape the aesthetics of punk, the feminist collages of Hannah Höch being the almost direct precursor of the work of Crass artist Gee Vaucher, Crass being another rock band that had a vast political impact, during their time singing out against the Falklands War and Margaret Thatcher's regime in 80's England, but also (in my opinion) as the main reason anarchism and hard politics got integrated into rock music as a youth movement, making them responsible for the current anti-globalization movement.
The irony being that despite the continuation of the Iraq war and the tightening civil rights at home, most modern american musicians and artists don't seem all that oppressed or horrified by what's going on in the world enough to make a really clear statement against it, or if they do, such messages have been heard so many times before that they don't stand apart from the spectacle to make any sort of real impact on it, and even punk is distancing itself from an explicit political message, as if that was so last century. it's not like anyone's telling them that if they don't confirm they will not be allowed to continue playing.
5.01.2006
live the questions
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
-Rainer Maria Rilke
-Rainer Maria Rilke
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