frenetic license

(Can you just pick this sort of thing right back up and not apologize for absences? Hope so. Catching up is boring and makes me ramble.)

Pomo ain’t boho no’ mo’.

(Sorry about that.)

So guy runs a sex shop and decides one day to take some ratty teenagers and make an ironic shock band out of them to piss on the institution of rock a little, and for about two years the Sex Pistols blister the ear drums of bored youth all over the world. Someone mentions Guy Debord. Someone says revolution. Someone says reggae. Not enough people say Sid was a thug until he kills a girl, and over a decade later Johnny Rotten gets up to this —

You fight that power, Johnny. Way to punk rock.

I’m knocking the Pistols a little, but that’s not really fair. The boys believed, at least. McLaren? He was playing a game, the same game the Situationists played before Paris’ May ‘68, except even they believed more than he did. McLaren for me is the ultimate hipster, in the worst sense of the word — lazy postmodernism masquerading as world-wisdom. He wanted to pay the bills and get famous, and he lied with a straight face about punk transcending music when he KNEW it was always about a quick buck.

Punk eats rock, pop eats punk. Thing about these deconstructive games is that they ultimately fit right into the very machinery they seek to subvert. And there’s a reason it appeals to teenagers — if you’re experienced it’s boring. When is the last time something that was supposed to shock you DIDN’T land somewhere closer to tedious? I look around and see neocons dressed as Che parodies and “detourning” abortion clinics and I think, isn’t it time for something new? Hegel was a Nazi anyway.

Ciro
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“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Good night.”
- Johnny Rotten, 14 January 1978

P.S. Confession — I really love that Leftfield song.

Briefly, I want to impress a lot of people I've never met before.

Ciro
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"The in-dark answered with wind."
- Samuel R. Delaney, Dhalgren

Yesterday I signed my first Director of Photography contract, this one under foreign and international law (hmm yes hmm) with the London Film School, wherein I agree that I will accept 6% of the proceeds from any profit made upon the work I rendered my services to deliver.

Profit, I assure you, will not likely follow.

But, holy crap it's a friggin' contract for my "services"! Somebody buy me a drink!

Ciro

P.S. I may not have finished writing anything decent in years, but just now I'm writing some dialogue that would kick your pants.
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“In our existence in this ‘Star Wars’ civilization, we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. That’s a very dangerous combination.”
- E.O. Wilson

Possibly I will be married by August.

Ciro

The weekend has been very strange, creatively. Saturday saw the culmination of months of planning for a four-minute short film I refer to as my "anti-sex-scene" — an attempt to represent intimacy between characters without resorting to Zalman King tactics. The shoot went shockingly well given the circumstances. Two hours before call time, the female lead phones to tell me she can't do the nudity she agreed to (in fact volunteered for) because she hadn't met the lead male.

In my defense, I had tried several times to get them together, in deference to both of their modesties. He was not an actor, but had extensive professional modeling experience, and as I told her over and over, he was a nice guy. In the end I recast her with the make-up artist, who had done nudity previously and was herself a formidable actor. So, one crisis averted.

I spent 5 hours that evening averting other crises (with the help of valiant friends, whom I need to lampoon into crazy risque indie film projects much more often). Turns out the male had also not planned on full frontal (despite my visions of, like, Ewan McGregor nudity), and it took my insistance and the coaxing (cajoling, actually) of the new female lead to get him to remove his underwear.

Wow, that's a weird story to relate. I found a profoundly, shockingly god-bodied beautiful young model looking for acting experience to play the male lead, and half the people on "set" (my living room converted into a bedroom) and my next door neighbor were gunning for naked time. I wonder if I handled it right.

I won't know until I can edit the footage together if I actually did a good job with this one, but I do know that several talented people broke down all the creative problems into parts and carried their weight, and if it fails it is my fault, not theirs. I hope it doesn't fail.

Which (hah) reminds me of how I capped the weekend — a rejection from Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm not upset. I probably deserved it. Now I wonder how many rejections I should get before I consider a rewrite. A tough call. But I just rearragned the entire layout of my apartment, and it's looking much more studio-bohemian, which makes me feel arty even in the face of a rejection slip.

Hope I don't have to do that too often.

Ciro
--

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

Seed has posted their endorsement of Obama.

Favorite paragraph —

Far more important is this: Science is a way of governing, not just something to be governed. Science offers a methodology and philosophy rooted in evidence, kept in check by persistent inquiry, and bounded by the constraints of a self-critical and rigorous method. Science is a lens through which we can and should visualize and solve complex problems, organize government and multilateral bodies, establish international alliances, inspire national pride, restore positive feelings about America around the globe, embolden democracy, and ultimately, lead the world. More than anything, what this lens offers the next administration is a limitless capacity to handle all that comes its way, no matter how complex or unanticipated.

Indeed.

Ciro
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"For his positions and, even more, for his way of coming to them, we endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States."
- Editors of Seed, "Barak Obama for President"

Today a classmate was surprised to discover I was not an artist living on a residency grant at the Centraltrak Gallery in Expo Park. It's not clear to me how he developed this mistaken impression. As far as I know I've never said the word Centraltrak in his presence. The class we're in is a required undergrad survey for the extremely general Art & Performance program. He has no reason to think that I've had any more success than he has.

I turned into a sobbing, blubbering mess during my performance of the "dead in a box" monologue from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (my feeling was existential angst should be angsty). My acting instructor promptly gave me "the agent talk" and wants me to mentor with someone who trained with Marcel Marceau and teaches in Europe and Japan.

My drawing instructor, who's seen me struggle through some of the most basic assignments, has insisted that I get a photo collection together for gallery submission. Some of the photos she picked for it were taken with a cell phone.

I've been making art steadily for the past few months, with ups and downs (I'm still figuring it out). But the biggest revelation has been the one where I freak out at the thought of ever having to drop it all and go back to wage slavery. The advantage, I've learned, of being completely barred from your dreams is that you don't miss them as much every time you have to give up. You begin to feel like this, this small sphere you occupy, struggling merely to exist from one moment to the next, is enough, is normal, is all anyone can ask for. You have no trouble sustaining this illusion, when you're not pursuing something better.

The smallest drop of recognition is dangerous. Opens the seeds up and forces them to take root. Even if no more is coming.

I just don't want to give up anymore.

Ciro
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"I must rejoice beyond the bounds of time. . . though the world may shudder at my joy, and in its coarseness know not what I mean."
- Ruysbroeck the Admirable

"So many of the arguments that knowledge goods industries make for extending their reach are really naked self-interest and rhetorical tricks."

Ciro

It's true that my mirth can be cruel at times, but I am usually possessed of good intentions. Nonetheless, I say that Chad owes me a great big, "Fuck you!" He in fact is going to be published, is among the bare handful of my writer friends to achieve that honor for fiction.

I think his friends owe him a congratulations.

Ciro
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"I turn the ocean over. . ."
- Soulsavers, "Jesus of Nothing"

. . . about the Firewater show —

1) Tod A. spit in my mouth.

2) Tod A. put my glass to his lips.

3) Tod A. gave me his bourbon.

Whoa.

Ciro
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"So you light a dog-end smoke, and you're laughing as you choke, and you give the wheel of fortune one more spin."
- Firewater, "Bourbon and Division"