OCCUPY TRUTH-FORCE

LOU REED, LAURIE ANDERSON, PHILIP GLASS AND SCORES OF PROTESTERS OCCUPY LINCOLN SQUARE, NYC

Tonight was my first encounter with the OCCUPY movement. Tonight I had a chance to contribute my voice along side the likes of Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, and scores of other concerned peaceful protesters. The general assemble of the OWS had placed a call for the peacefull occupation of Lincoln Center to coincide with the closing performance of Satyagraha, an opera about the life of Gandhi and detailing the very causes of what the OCCUPY movement has come to represent. Upon arrival at the square I am immediately confronted with police barricades and officers cordoning off access to the square from the street. The irony here is somewhat infuriating for the crowd, as what was hours ago a public space, is now an offensive police strategy to disenfranchise, intimidate, and even taunt protesters. As the crowed gathered momentum there was a visible tension between the police and the crowd, which makes its intention of PEACEFUL PROTEST quite clear.

What happened next was nothing short of what could be called the 'miracle' of the manifestation of intention. Even though we were physically barred from entering the square protesters call out to the steady stream of Opera goers now exiting the center to join our cause. To the astonishment of some patrons of the Opera, they are met with resistance by the police as they attempt to cross the plaza to where the protesters are gathered. I witnessed a few confrontations with very angry, shocked and surprised patrons and the police. One man actually laid down on the ground in blatant defiance (mind you these are up to $400 a seat ticket holders - the spectacle was beautiful!). During this time Philip Glass the composer (on our side of the line) begins to address the crowd - and this is where the 'miracle' kicks in - in a kind of critical mass Opera goers just overwhelm a-sort-of scattered and confused police presence (on their side) and flock to the barricade - where they join us on the other side.

At this moment Lincoln Square had been peacefully occupied by two separate bodies of people each on opposite sides of a police barricad! For about two and a-half hours the mass huddled. People took turns speaking in the cold, of which I was one. The validation of what this idea is about becomes ever-clearer.

TRUTH-FORCE!

this from the perspective of an exiting audience member of Satyagraha!

the bicameral mind Pt. 2

Monday night August 1st, 1997 I had a bizarre dream. The imagery and dialog was so vivid and remained so intact in my memory that after awakening I remember feeling somewhat displaced in a somewhat disturbing yet very euphoric state of remembering. This dream's unrelenting visual narrative prompted me to seek pen and paper. The manuscript is written on 10 pages of of white lined paper in a spiral bound notebook. I can visualize these pages in my indecipherable  handwriting as they exist somewhere collected in the debris of my life. This moment is more poignantly remembered as a time I spent in late summer with my lover, David Ford, in a small summer cabin in the backwoods of Thetford, Vermont. A few days later I learned William S Burroughs had died on the morning of August 2, 1997. I cannot explain why, but the idea that I would travel to Lawrence, Kansas upon notice of the death of WSB had been a priority on my mind for several years. Likewise, I cannot reveal the exact rational that kept me from fulfilling this quest, yet I suspect it was influenced by the practical inflammatory need of acquiring non-tangible capital.  A secondary and most troubling concern was the manuscript that was written in haste days before. At the time, my compounded unease was not the statistical improbability of interpersonal knowledge, far from it. I had received some remnant, some last fluctuation of a holy enlightened  mind's bicameral function. I have never uttered or expressed these words before, and i cannot recall the exact impetus today, compelling me to write this.

Details Around the Crash

A Comparative Study: Chaos and De-construction

David Fairbanks Ford's dealings with the aftermath of the destruction of hurricane Irene and Mark Ezra Merrill's avoidance of the initiating the construction. Conclusion: Nature reigns supreme.   

Jodorowsky Tarot

message in the falling leaves

The Perfect Day (Views of my Neighborhood)

Cops and Moon (shimmers of my reality)

discipline and the daily discourse

which text is this? O, right, not that one. the importance of being ernest someone once said to me. this all began believe it or not by a bee buzzing about a pomegranate. don't go back n spell check. screw that. leave all those words underlined in red. yea, break those memes mem. look-up the word later. find a better pseudonym sometime else. breathe deep inhale. listen. wait.  

the bicameral mind

"Heavy hung the canopy of blue

Shade my eyes and I can see you

White is the light that shines through the dress that you wore

She lay in the shadow of a wave

Hazy were the visions of her playing

Sunlight on her eyes but moonshine made her blind every time

Green is the colour of her kind

Quickness of the eye deceives the mind

Envy is the bond between the hopeful and the damned"

I am self aware as I understand self-awareness to be.

However there is something oddly troubling about this statement. I may also say I am conscious as I understand consciousness to be. Yet it has occurred to me self-awareness is only an aspect of consciousness, and perhaps to a lesser degree than I might wish. William Burroughs facilitating a classroom lectur on creative reading at the Naropa Institute in 1979 references the writings of Julian Jaynes speculating on the shape of an early consciousness Jaynes describes as the bicameral mind (which I mistakenly refer to as the 'precambrian' mind in the previous post). Understanding such a concept requires negotiating the same aspects which we use to identify self-awairness as well as consciousness itself.

In order to sense the frame work of the bicameral mind one must first deconstruct and then transcend the constructs of language. Yet this proves not to be an easy task, as the thought process is integral to constructs of self and awareness. The abandoning of the 'word' runs counter intuitive to and is in fact the antisisis of the thought process as it understood. Our contemporary understanding of experience, meaning, and progress is residual effects of an unspoken consensus lingering within a collective unconscious. Without the construct of I and without the linear limiting structure of ego, the function of the 'word' within language seems obscure or even unknowable.

Bicameral man was perhaps more conscious than is our construct of a modern self-aware self, as the limitations of his 'word' although generated from cultural mandates were ultimately dictated by the cyclical forces of nature. It is impossible to know what these experiences were, as we are not able to experience this modality of mind in the same fashion or timespace as bicameral man of pre-history did. It is not to assume the bicameral mind remains inactive or unused, however, the function of this aspect of mind I must believe, while similar in mechanism, will now take on a completely different purpose.

Today, a functioning bicameral man would not exist without his or her tribulations. In fact more completely one delves into this non-egotistical automation of mind, it seems the more one is separated or vanquished from the larger general population society. While the basic biological need remain equal (ie the need of food, shelter, and embrace) the every day to day skills of rationalization of the ordinary man in the street are here the just the tip of the ice-burg. Without ego there is no filtration of self. The distinction between 'my' voice and every other voice in the known or unknown universe seems now indistinct.

Here, to borrow a phrase, there is no recovery. Once the bio-chemical connection is made to the far reaches of a non-verbal prehistoric pictorial mind, one must reorient his or her position in the context of the perception of reality. As rite of passage, this experience is one of premature enlightenment. The elasticity of the mind, mostly controlled through cultural conditioning reshapes perception enough to regain its baseline the center of which however measurably relocated. The prolonged pull and sway of these divergent aspects of mind, I theorize, creates a permanent dislocation or mutability of its center ultimately acting a cross contaminator or interference feedback loop resulting in the distortion ones ability to effectively locate his or her position in timespace.

To be continued.

William S. Burroughs class on creative reading (August 10, 1979)

(discussion of Julian Jaynes begins halfway through the recording)

MEM

in anticipation of his master design

My thoughts are like that. Sometimes there're just lost. Or was it something I dreamt or read on facebook? That's surrealism for you, Baby! In the scheme of things it hardly matters. It's here and then it's gone. And after all what's the real difference between something and nothing anyway? Riddle me this! So, yea I had something - some matter of fact - to sit down and blog about. As my near and dear friend Jon Appleton would say, "Dog ass me, Cow shit I know!?" Sometimes it all comes back like I'm recalling a dream from the night before and it's like "O, yea that was it... transcribe, transcribe, transcribe..." So now what are my options? (please note I do, dear reader, hold the treasure of your interest, pleasure, and stimulation paramount in this pursuit) Let's see there's that discussion of what Burroughs calls the 'precambrian' mind I've been meaning to explore, my new paintings (see above), then there's that little thing with Steve K and I, hey did you know I'm actually seeing a Dentist? Finally gonna get that cracked tooth fixed! What else? I could access a thousand ideas along the curve of timespace. Explain the past by looking into the present. Predict the future. Complain about my failures. Allude to my accomplishments. Talk about the Weather. Cropcircles. Drug reference. Pontificate. Enunciate. Recall dreams from years past. Speculate on a variable Speed of Light. Converse with the Noosphere. Detail a Singularity. Supersymmetry isn't that Queer? Parallel Park in a Universe of Past Lives - or - Just publish the pic. Forget Everything. Come Back Later. My minds a blank. O well.

MEM

- Posted by mem using BlogPress from iPhone

Life Story: Abridged

I am born into the pagan rites of spring. Family goes fundamentalist wacko. Yet I can never help ponder the mysteries. I blow my cousin at 16. I fall in love at 21. I'm heart broken at 22. I move to the Frisco coast. I drop acid. Lovely Bohemia. Then at 27 I've got a habit. I kick and move back east. I fall in love again. I find an ego. I build a career. And it's really something now isn't it? I build another auxiliary career. I buy a real fixer upper. Both careers stacked firmly against the other tumble like playing cards. I struggle for an identity. I pick up the pieces.  

MEM

...And there's more to that story

One For the Time Being

For the Time Being, I'll do whatever I can do...

That night, I don't know if you knew.

I finish a few deep inhales on a joint...

Drifting in I hear this melody.

Peering into a darkened room...

Donna sitting on a cranberry-settee watching MTV.

It's the first time I see you...

I'm in the balcony at the ORPHEUM.

I sense the displeasure of the goths...

Next I'm up-front at the WARFIELD without any shoes.

Dosed on Peyote Buttons I travel 3 days... 

Much later I'm there at MAMA KIN'S another face in the crowd.

I throw a paisley shirt on stage which you promptly kick off...  

At the KNITTING ROOM I never said hello.

My brother and I stand in the background of that photograph...

On route to BOWERY BALLROOM I'm stranded by the side of the highway.

That night you weren't there...

I send a small black-n-white booklet of etchings to S.W. EDEN.

We're standing around chit-chatting at the PARADISE... 

At the IRVING PLAZA I find my way backstage.

At the 'after party' I feel so fucking lost...  

Outside the TUPELO you're legs are getting badly bitten by mosquitoes.

I travel east towards the ocean...

At the ARMORY I'm such a fucking mess.

  

I see the half-moon shining behind your silhouette...

We toke on another joint at the JUPITER LOUNGE.

And then drive a long way home...

MEM