The
Self-Stultification Essay
is
adapted from a conversation with
Daniel
Barrett, Conductor/Composer
visiting
the home of Michael A on July 8th, 1999.
Put
the creator that’s within us in its place.
Put
the creator that’s within us in its place.
Put
the creator that’s within us in its place
Respect
the sanctity of all living things.
Respect
the sanctity of all living things.
Respect
the sanctity of all living things.
Put
the creator that’s within us in its place!
Lest
fancy and delight run away with us.
Like the practitioners of Tantric Yoga,
We can channel our energy.
Yet
even now, I destroy the generative impulse
by
freeing it onto your CREASELESS BROW.
I
stultify myself while you
CRINKLE
YOUR FOREHEAD.
The fire’s out.
The soul has left the body.
A zombie remains.
In
exploring man’s relation to fire, Freud identified a temptation,
to
extinguish its flame with a stream of urine.
Resisting
that temptation, and parceling fire’s energy
(like
parceling out orgasms),
creates
possibilities.
Ordering
our “Key Wests” and “Bermuda
Triangles,”
gives
us their power.
We own fire’s power when we harness and bridle its flames,
Using masturbation like a fire extinguisher
to
cool the sheets and calm the body.
Do
we want firepower,
Or
want what fire gets us?
I
want truth, and what I create and achieve through the mind is art.
All
thought is art.
Art
either liberates or ensnares.
Art-that-liberates is
the philosopher's stone, a specula, a saphire, a lens, purified
for translucence.
We
achieve truth through art, not by becoming art but by using art as a tool, like
a pair of eyeglasses.
Art,
itself, is either opaque or translucent.
In
the movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, a doctor uses his medical art to murder, and his rabbi,
the man responsible for calling God into the universe, loses his eyesight.
Where
is the conflict in the destructive mind of Hannibal Lector or the doctor in Crimes
and Misdemeanors? They have none, because these minds,
though intelligent and charming, are opaque.
Where
art eclipses, it is opiating, and therefore, opaque.
Draw not opaqueness from dead letters, lest you fall into worship of the words they form.
The word is a veil over something underneath.
We
reach truth through words, not by becoming the words.
The
destruction motif of the Frankenstein creation represents an eclipse of
reason.
(In
the Frankenstein movie of 1931, it resembles an epileptic fit.
As the doctor says, “It’s alive!” his colleagues restrain and
subdue him.)
Both the Golden Calf of the escaping Israelites,
And the Golem
Are examples of the creative act made concrete, yet opaque;
How appropriate that the calf's skin is hammered gold.
Worshipping it (a fetishism)
destroys its function,
Which
is to what, to serve as a device of transport, or as a provider of food?
The opaque blocks illumination.
If
it is reflective, it gives back to its observer its version of the illumination it receives.
It
eclipses the illumination behind it.
The
tree of knowledge is known for us to not partake of it.
Like the bomb, beautiful in its destruction, we are not to use it.
The
devouring element of the id eats away at our discipline and accelerates our demise.
Tend
carefully the garden of divinity and thrive.
Adam
Cadman is a man made of letters.
The
Golem is a man made of clay, animated when letters are put into it.
Calypso,
the goddess of the eclipse, hides.
Kryptos
is reason, versus chimera, imagery,
Apocalypse
is a moment in time when maskers remove their masks,
and
literally go away from the mask.
In
the spirit of creativity, Faust's view is that he doesn't have to be
responsible.
Palmer
is the prayer.
Does art clarify or befuddle?
Pornography
is opaque art.
Artist be clear or become like “’Til Eulenspiegel” an oily mirror.
Til
rolls up a mountain a stone until it reaches a peak and rolls down the other
side.
We
must never cease to call God into the universe.
With
my assets well hidden and vandal-proof, I
opiate myself until I need them.
Welcome to The Meantime.
---------------
We
Will Understand -- Ebm
Revised
Lyric: Dizozza/nella
(“You
Talk About Your Woman” – Sonnyboy Williamson)
And
when you go, I don't need to know the reason.
There
are reasons I can think of on my own.
So
turn away, like I turned away from you,
And
ignore the signs that we have always known.
We
have today,
And
the sun is shining brightly and the rain is falling lightly,
It
goes away,
So
we're headed for a distance where the sun is in the mist behind the clouds.
Don't
give me stories, I accept what we've done.
We're
always searching for the one among the many.
No
more “I'm sorry,” it’s a phrase worn with age.
Let's change the story. Turn the
page, for there are many.
Let's
make a vow,
And
hand in hand,
Let's
start right now,
And
we'll understand.
I
go by searching for the reasons for the reasons for….
And
when you go, I don't need to know the reason.
There
are reasons I can think of on my own.
The "That Felt Good, Did It Feel Good to You"
Show
Bastille Day, July 14th, 11:00 P.M. - Midnight, CB's
Gallery
Original Songs:
Instrumental: The
Worry Dolls
1. Golden Age -- Gb
2. Come Out!
3. You Gotta Have Freedom
4. "Gather in the parks, lets join our hands in
Peaceful Revelry" -- A
5. You Gotta Believe in Love (nella Revised) G
6. Hell Hole
7. I've Come to Know Them – F#m to Ebm/Db
Only love her = Ab Gb Ebm Ab/Gb
8. We Will Understand! (Aronella revised) -- Ebm
9. Let Me Be
10. Until We
Meet In Space
1. I Get Around (Tupac Shakur with my own rap)
2. Point of No Return (by Goffin & King, sung by Gene
McDaniels)
3. Past the Point of No Return (Webber, From Phantom of
the Opera)
4. When I look In Your Eyes (Leslie Bricusse, Dr.
Dolittle)
5. into original song "Almond Eyes"
The zombie had a worried crease in his brow and a fissure
in his brain.
He moved to the sound of a dumbek.
I Walked with a Zombie.
He’s my old friend, the burn-out.
I brought him to a medium. She said he lost his soul.
She suggested I take him on a road tour.
I set aside 30 vacation days, loaded up the family
vehicle
and away we went, getting through life
even when the point for getting through life was gone.
He awakened gradually.
As we rode, he seemed drawn to the prisons, Danbury,
Folsom, ultimately to Alcatraz.
One night, while gambling, he had an out of body
experience and blurted out, “Free Me!”
“Where are you? Where’s
your soul?” I asked, finally perhaps penetrating through his imperturbable
wall.
“I’m in prison.
My zombie shell is here but my soul is walled within the Bastille.”
Of course. It was Bastille Day. July 14th, 1999. The revolution had come at last, and after the peasants stormed the prison, the punished souls within escaped, including my friend. His was an especially spirited soul, safely locked in Pandora’s box. When it opened, he became both intentional and agreeable to the seductions of one too young to be capable of seduction.
That night in the motel room, after having his
way, he said,
“That felt good to me.
Did it feel good to you?”
After silence I said, “The boy left five
minutes ago.”
“Who are you?” He asked without
a hint of recognition.
“I’m nobody.”
“Great.”
He raged, “Imprison my soul
for the zombie Holocaust. I will
kill them all.”
I called the police to “Deactivate this man!”
The officers taking him away agreed, he was too spirited, like a
spirit possessed.
THEME PARK OF RENEGADE SOULS
I visited the theme park in which they incarcerated him.
There he sadistically tortured zombies,
Until such time as another sadist arose from the group,
At which time my friend returned to his zombie
state.
“There’s nothing for you to do about it, sir but
drive through and keep your windows closed.
This environment is climatically controlled for these rascals.
Don't get out of your vehicle. Can’t have you running loose in a theme park.
Not where the theme is renegade souls.
Let them knock themselves out, as the spirit stirs them.”
The sunset drive through the Grand Canyon was beautiful.
My friend the zombie slept through it.
I dropped him off at Alcatraz, a converted prison theme
park, and
drove East to New York.
------
Two zombies, a man and a woman, met in the reeds.
She took him to a lakefront residential community.
“This is our house,” she said. No one contradicted her.
A song followed, interpreted with ecstatic dances by whirling
dervishes.
CHARACTERS
The Zombie, oh you of the creased forehead with the
crinkled brow,
“My soul is imprisoned in Alcatraz!”
Frozen facial features complete with indents and facial lines.
Me
The Medium
I
always wanted to leave my home,
Whenever
someone else called it home.
We
live in our private lairs
Until
somebody else calls them theirs!
Where
do we go for love?
And you gotta believe in love.
What
I’m looking for is nowhere in my mind,
And
I feel as though I might as well be blind.
And
now I’m opening up my eyes.
It’s too familiar to recognize.
I’m
tired of keeping my love inside,
But
I only know how to hide.
Where
do I go for love?
And you gotta believe in love.
I
thought that there was no place to begin,
And
now I listen to the love within.
Where
do we go for love?
And you gotta believe in love.
I
thought that there was no place to begin,
And
now I listen to the love within.
Lyric
written with Michael nella
Afraid
of seeing who you are.
Easy to hide.
I
don’t know if I can give love. The
pursuit is all.
Wanting
to be alone and needing love.
You
can’t be afraid. You’ve got to
give it to yourself.
Direct from Channel 5's
New York
Minute
on
July 5th singing the
1918
hit "Over There!" It’s
Performing
his new Millenial Anthem:
&
other new songs at
11P.M.
– Midnight
Admittance:
5$
The Fort at Sidewalk
August 22nd, 1999
Sunday, 9:00 P.M.
94 Avenue A
at the Corner of East 6th Street