Alright, here's my secret: everything I've done here did not form during a magical moment of inspiration I was blessed with. Analyzing it will not reveal the secret path to salvation, or dispense coins of truth you can throw into a fountain for good luck. Unless, of course, that's what you decide to do with it. I decided to funnel some forms of great Others through my own literary, art, and website apparati, and what you see is what came out of it. My Other Modernism class filled my funnel to the brim, and applied enough pressure to create new pathways.
I based this website's design and wording loosely on that of the SubGenius. I used the different word fonts, sizes, and placements to help the reader pay attention, for I, like the SubGenius, am indeed trying to help the reader. Despite appearances, this is not just some rant I want you to praise me for (though I certainly wouldn't mind). I want the discouraged to identify with this rebellious attitude and give up the standard format for the one of the future--their own. Once they realize their control over the situation, they can become warriors in the Culture War, instead of passively giving money and energy to someone to order them around in simulations. What better format to present my imitations that a website? Where people can leave or link at any time, read at any speed, and digest what they will. A new format for a new mode of thought, for an Other mode.
To reach "1008
Beatitudes
to 1 Dragee", I adopted the Oulipo's n+7 formula and applied it to
an excerpt
of Tuli Kupferberg's "1001 Ways to Beat the Draft." A more accurate
name for
the particular formula I used is: nva-more-or-less-+7. That is, I took
every
noun, verb, adjective, almost every word, and replaces it with the 7th
word
after it in the dictionary.I started out with a great work, Tuli's
poem, and
transformed it into another one. According to Oulipo theory, there is a
big
difference between them, and it isn't that one was written by a famous
Beat
author. Tuli's poem wasn't his original genius. His thought patterns,
like everyone's,
are already structured to spout out ideas--formed not by genius, but by
compilation--so
whatever he writes is limited by that pattern. Since I applied a
(pretty much)
mathematical model to that pattern, it was able to escape some of that
culture
barrier by creating juxtapositions no one would have thought of
logically, or
to our limits of illogicity.
Vocabulary considerations aside (looking up the meaning of every fourth
word
interrupts the juxtapositions' jolt), this form worked just like the
Oulipo
say it does. I never would have come up with those metaphors on my own,
if only
because I didn't know many of the words I came up with (sgraffito,
chiliasm,
and who knows Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins?!). Yet the transformed
poem is
ripe and ready for interpretation. It works.
I borrowed the form for "America" from dear
Uncle Allen's
poem of the same name (you know, Allen Ginsberg). Like his poem, mine
responded
to frustration at the culture; mine at its numbing, consuming
technolization,
his at its "insane demands" and insane war on Communism and other
dissidents.
I followed his form of using "I", "America", and "you" or "your" as the
subject
of each sentence to develop a conversation with the reader while tieing
the
reader to his/her role in America. The batch of questions push the
reader to
think about that role.
I think it's a successful form. Allen was more successful than I at
having the
reader identify with the speaker, but my poem is still passionate and
riling.
That kangaroo Surrealism taught me the trick of automatic writing.
Bouncing
here and everywhere from my mind burst, this is what I ended up
with.
I tried to keep on the move, not letting punctuation hold me back, nor
going
back to correct spelling. Wonderfully fun and free, this writing
produced at
least one sparkling description; a "shoelaceless wonder of a sock"
greets readers
towards the end of the run-on. Had I kept writing surely more jewels
would have
surfaced.
But I see automatic writing as only a beginning, as a rejuvenating
bouncing
off point for more spontaneous writing and living all the time.
The Oulipo
may think that spontaneity is still bound by culture programming, but
it's not
what everyone else is watching plus it's public access.
And now what you've been waiting for: an exploration of the often
mentioned
but never viewed (except by the current possessor) collage. This comes
straight
out of Dadaist photomontages. By using pre-existing elements, the
pictures from
magazines in this case, I acknowledge the limits and culture lies of
originality.
Through random yet careful selecting, sorting, and placement, I
arranged violent
juxtapositions (there's that word again) to startle the viewer out of
the violent
order imposed on his/her life by the mainstream.
You can see the masses heaped in the bottom corner of the red,
pretending there's
an order to life since there is someone that preaches one. In case you
were
thinking of taking a closer look, one zombie warns,"Don't look,"
another covers
her mouth and yet another (and this one's familiar!) has his head stuck
in a
book. There is a newborn baby screaming because he hasn't yet been
acculturated
to this madness, while adults sleep right next to him.
The child next door doesn't identify with his fellow youth's pain;
instead
he smiles because someone's thoughtfully written a visitor's guide to
the Hell
that surrounds them. Next to that, you can see a man walking with his
back turned,
dangling none other than a culturally-suited, smiling you. In
the culture
heap, we're puppets dancing to the same tune. The heavy metal music
plays below
so we know where to go. But the people there look scared; they realize
the effect
of the tune but are too afraid to escape.
But then, look! A clarinet player (nod to jazz for the Beats) gives
rise to
Ralph Nadar's head, whose fight for consumer rights gives that brave
woman the
push she needs to make the jump to Dada. The back of her mind wonders
"What's
going on?" but she continues anyway, with you ("u") in
hand.
She's giving birth in this transformation, to the possibility of Dada,
to your
possibilities. She lands on a shocked South Park (shocking
cartoon)
character, saying "she broke the rules herself. It
happens."
Now on the relative safe side of the collage, which has more order
than the
"civilized" culture side, the Dadaists provide her with some
tools
of the trade for guidelines such as "think outside the box"
and "why
wait for change when you can make it yourself?" Up top we can see
some
people making change. At right there some women suffragists proclaiming
that
"Money can't buy mayhem," so there's making it themselves. At
left
is Julia Butterfly Hill, a woman who's been living in an old-growth
redwood
tree for over a year to save its life. These people are living
their
dreams, made possible by the aim of Dada.
Not forgetting her roots, Julia points at the screaming baby as if to
say "wake
up! listen to what that child has to say! it's important!" and at
the bottom
Dada is shooting out of it's bounds to support the jazz players and
Ralph Naders
still in the other realm. It's escaping its own white box in the
collage, but
the collage itself is still a box. A box whose title encourages viewers
to "think
outside the box." Look beyond the physical collage to the ideas it
represents,
those I've shown you here and those you see all your own. Take control
over
the artwork, and use it as a tool, not as something to merely to look
at.
Which gets us to the thread connecting all these buttons I've laid before you: the emphasis on personal action. Yes, I've written a few poems, created a couple artworks here, but that's not all they are. They are tools not only to explore life, but to prompt you to do the same, or do different; just do something that jars you out of the ordinary so you can see things you couldn't have seen before. And you needn't be alone in this task. The rest of the human race is either waiting for you to join them or waiting for you to prompt and help them. Some new paths are laid before you, and some shovels, too. So these pieces ask, what are you waiting for?
questions, comments, manifestos? email me: fizz@vt.edu