One of the things that came out of talking about the street art movie, Exit Through the Giftshop (see my other thread), was what exactly is the difference between illegal vandalism and billboards and other forms of public square advertising.
To me, there isn't much, in terms of defacing public spaces. With very rare exceptions, the least offensive public square advertising is pretty much just corporate "tagging", little different from someone graffiting their tag somewhere. In most cases, it's worse, as it's a deliberate attempt to manipulate people, sometimes with fairly objectionable content.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
A little over 10 years ago here in Vegas there was a billboard for a strip lub here in town that said "No Ifs, Ands, or....", with a picture of six women lined up with their behinds showing. They were wearing g-strings so it wasn't considered pornographic, but it was still obscene.
To be honest I'd rather kids see some mild graffiti or tagging than that garbage.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Tagging culture has evolved to an aura-preferential status in many places. Most cities already depreference 'acceptable' tagging, stenciling, and wheatpaste, get rid of the offensive or 'invasive' stuff, leave the rest. It's why you can flat-out run into ground level banksy and fairey in places like Harvard Square.
Billboards, on the other hand, are nearly universally an aura scourge and consistently devalue property. They aren't even allowed in my city. I love it when you leave Colorado's aura-conscious highways and hit Wyoming's state border, and are immediately assaulted by scores of billboards for Jesus and strippers.
Gee, tagging or billboards. I know which one I'll take.
Posted by Pegasus (Member # 10464) on :
They were outlawed here in Maine back in the 70's. I'm glad too, even though our family business is making signs.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
Wait... so there's no difference between someone putting a sign on their own property and someone defacing someone else's property?
In what moral universe?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
"vandal |ˈvandl| noun 1 a person who deliberately destroys or damages public or private property : the rear window of the car was smashed by vandals."
I think there's the obvious difference in detail, but Lisa, you need to apply the standard that others are applying here in order to catch on to what is being said. Billboards are not a crime in some places, but they are not necessarily acceptable morally, just as though graffiti may be illegal in some places, it may be morally acceptable.
So, for the sake of clarity, imagine a situation in which tagging is, within certain broad limits, acceptable. Suppose a publicly elected council overseas the content and decides what should go and what not, and business owners have their rights respected as well, but are incentivized to allow tagging. Now imagine in this world, that billboards are also legal and have similar restrictions. Which is more morally acceptable now? If we're talking just about the content of the messages, the images, whatever, it's difficult to judge based on the nature of the medium alone. Billboards advertise, often aggressively. People feel annoyed, violated, hemmed in by these signs and want them out- some of them. Some graffiti is the same way, and some is not.
So in that moral universe, I don't see much of a difference.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I think we're talking about which one is more annoying to have to put up with when it is visible in your region. Not which one is a crime.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Right, which is why I wanted to separate "moral" from "crime." I suppose it is immoral to annoy people unnecessarily.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I am responding to lisa. Either way, thank god for county regulations against billboards.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
No I got you were responding to her. And yes, I agree.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
Six bottoms is pretty PG-13. Especially for Vegas. Posted by daventor (Member # 11981) on :
I remember that billboard in Vegas, Geraine! When I was younger, so much younger than today our family would always go pass it while traveling through Vegas to get up to Utah. I don't really have anything to add to this conversation...just random memory trigger.
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
quote: hit Wyoming's state border, and are immediately assaulted by scores of billboards for Jesus and strippers.
In my head, those images meshed for a moment.
We dont really have a problem with bilboards in Arizona, they are in the big cities but along the highway the terrain is too rough for stuff like that. It sounds as if it can be annoying to many of you so Im happy we dont have that problem.
[ June 30, 2010, 12:46 PM: Message edited by: AchillesHeel ]
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Lisa, You may have missed the qualification I put in.
To make it more clear, I'm talking specifically about the degrading and devaluation of public spaces. It's my opinion that public square advertisements are at least as bad as graffiti in this manner.
I'm willing to accept that there are very rare cases where this isn't true, but in the vast majority of cases, public square advertising makes the area surrounding it worse. Much like pure vandalism graffiti, it's a visual equivalent of noise pollution.
In contrast, in a lot of cases, good - but technically illegal - street art is a net positive to the public space that it occurs in.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Wait... so there's no difference between someone putting a sign on their own property and someone defacing someone else's property?
In what moral universe?
In the moral universe where individuals and they stuff they "own" are not little independent islands and where we recognize that we all do impact each other. That one.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
How are we defining "degrading the public space?" Does it include secondary effects, like how safe and secure we feel in our persons and property? Because if that's included I would think Lisa's point is well taken. If instead we just mean, "how pleasant is it for someone to look at this place," I would say the argument isn't cut and dried. For one thing, "corporate tagging" is usually more professional and often more aesthetically pleasing than amateur graffiti. For another, it's more regulated both by a need not to offend people and by actual legal mechanisms.
I remember a bathroom at an assembly line I worked at as a temp one day. Inside was (in my opinion) an incredibly offensive cartoon of a woman's genitals. I can't think of any billboard advertising that I would have found more destructive of that public space.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Boy, I can. Cigarette ads, beer ads, lottery ads, Walmart ads, fast food ads...
ETA: Assuming it was just a picture. Was there something about it that was particularly destructive?
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
The point is that the degrading of the space is dependent on the content of the "tag", not on whether it's technically legal or not. A bunch of swear words in a bathroom is more degrading than a billboard with a gecko. But stuff like this is not more degrading than a bunch of girls in thongs.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
One of the best things about the evolution of tagging culture is that there's a huge emphasis on art-to-exposure. If it's high public visibility, let a dedicated artist go at it and don't deface that. Do public walls, overpasses, roofs, etc. If you get caught defacing someone's home in a neighborhood, etc., they'll kick the crap out of you.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Boy, I can. Cigarette ads, beer ads, lottery ads, Walmart ads, fast food ads...
ETA: Assuming it was just a picture. Was there something about it that was particularly destructive?
There are obviously subjective aspects to it, but as the person in the bathroom I can say I would much rather have looked at any of the cigarette, beer, lottery, Walmart, or fast food ads that I'm familiar with than that particular graffiti. For what it's worth, it was more than a simple depiction; it was fairly misogynistic.
My point isn't that graffiti can't be more uplifting and edifying than commercial billboards; it obviously can. But I think comparing the sort of art that Samp's linking with inane commercials misses the point. Just as I've occasionally found billboards amusing, informative, and perhaps even artistic (having a hard time coming up with an example of that one), I've also found certain graffiti to be degrading and offensive.
I'm also not sure to what degree muralists acting illegally (which, for me at least, is inherent in the idea of "graffiti") should be treated differently than muralists working legally. The subject matter may be edgier, but the artistic value isn't that different. So if the question is "are street murals less degrading to the public space than billboards" I'd be more likely to say yes, in the same way that non-commecial art is generally more uplifting than advertising. Although even in this case I can think of plenty of counterexamples where, for instance, arsty short films I've seen are significantly less uplifting than well done short-form advertisements.
<edit>Or, to take a different tack, I recall a wall in Enschede center that for the 7 months I was there had graffiti on it saying (in translation) "Make all Jews dead" with a swastika underneath. Perhaps it's unfair to categorize that graffiti with the types Squick and Samp are talking about, but I'm not clear on how to separate the two.</edit>
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
a lot of graffiti is just going to be inane vandalism. like, a lot of it. However, it's got to be taken into consideration that unlike billboards (which can be waved away by city councils), it is an inevitable death-and-taxes phenomenon for any sufficiently large city, so the best thing to do is encourage positive tagging culture rather than going ALL GRAFFITI IS BAD AND WRONG ARGLBLARGL.
Some places have great tag culture (Boston, most of NYC, Denver, etc) and some places have terrible tag culture (Cleveland, Detroit, Maryland, most of Chicago) but then again terrible tag culture is just sort of a byproduct of your city sucking anyway.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Six bottoms is pretty PG-13. Especially for Vegas.
True, but more something you would expect on the strip. This was on the side of the freeway.
I thought it was an awesome billboard when I was 12 or 13. My mother....Not so much.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
I think all graffiti is bad and wrong in the sense that it defaces something that is not yours. That there can be positive aspects to it doesn't change the vectors in which it is bad and wrong. But that's not really the question Squick posed.
From a pragmatic perspective I absolutely agree it would be good to encourage those illegal activities which uplift local communities rather than the ones that degrade them. I'm not sure that changing public opinion from a "that's bad and wrong arglebargl" to a "yes, please grace my store wall with your Shepard Fairey-esqe work of art" is really that likely to increase the one over the other, specifically because I think tagging culture is pretty immune to public approbation. I imagine (and it's nothing more than idle thought) that increased engagement with the less illicit artistic community is a greater determining factor than public approval.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
tagging is a culture which reacts greatly to the attention that it garners, since tagging is done primarily for the attention that the display of art receives.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: tagging is a culture which reacts greatly to the attention that it garners, since tagging is done primarily for the attention that the display of art receives.
Except, I doubt (but could of course be wrong) that attention from the bourgeoisie would have quite the effect one wants. If, for instance, people were to start saying "That Shep Fairey; he's almost as good as Thomas Kinkade. If you're half as good as him you can paint all over my bodega" I don't know that it would have quite the ameliorative effect your imagining. Which is why I suggested that greater integration with the licit local art scene might go further than changing the general population's opinions.
Now, personally I'm a big fan of bourgeoisie values, and maybe capture of the tagging culture really would promulgate the sort of cultural elevation your espousing. But I have my doubts. It seems more likely to morph into something that is not dangerous, not edgy, not illicit, which is what I think gives it the cachet it has today that makes it admirable to you and Squick and others.
<edit>c.f. hip-hop in the early 80s vice hip-hop in the early 90s.</edit>
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I don't think that the values or promulgation of 'bourgeoisie values' is at all how I would deal with trying to culture a more preferable graf culture. Though having some lowbrow/street art demos in your art scene helps.
What you DO do is have the city essentially abandon parts of the city's industrial/infrastructural fronts to unmolested graffiti production, then play broken-windows theory where you absolutely DO NOT want graffiti.
"encouraging" it is the wrong word. It's going to happen whether you want it or not. The strategy is to direct it.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: "encouraging" it is the wrong word. It's going to happen whether you want it or not. The strategy is to direct it.
I guess I was misunderstainding you; I had envisioned the mayor standing up and saying "let's hand it to our taggers!" and everyone clapping because they were doing such a great job of making our city beautiful. That sort of approach doesn't seem to provide the sorts of incentives that would work toward making the sort of graffiti art that is being made today.
Your suggestion seems a bit like European red light districts, or urban ghettos of the 70s and 80s. I don't know that ceding territory to the activity necessarily directs it in a good way; it seems to have worked well with skate parks, from what I've seen (or, rather, not seen), but it didn't seem to work well with drugs (based on my brief experiences in Rotterdam and Amsterdam). But maybe that's because the broken windows policies weren't followed with sufficient force, or because drugs are just so much more seductive than tagging.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Drugs are the counterexample? we're busy ceding 'lost ground' on that front in our country right now, and it's actively for the better.
Really with tagging, by directing it, you are advancing ground by allowing your city the limited ability to cull tagging largely from the areas where you really do not want it.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
My point was "directing it" hasn't worked well for drugs in Europe because they have the habit of not staying where you've directed them.
My point was not that "eliminating it" has worked well here in the US. I agree that it hasn't, although I think the "actively for the better" is a bit blithe and insufficiently nuanced.
<edit>Meaning "eliminating it" with regards to drugs. Also, note that I'm undecided whether graffiti is more like drugs (which, in my experience, aren't particularly direct-able) or more like street skating (which I mention seems to have been directed by creating skate parks). If I had to make a guess, I'd choose the latter, which I guess means I agree somewhat with your recommendation. But I'm just not that familiar with the culture.</edit>
[ July 01, 2010, 10:19 AM: Message edited by: SenojRetep ]
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Graffiti is trying to say something against the powerful--in the cracks--through the cracks--while there are cracks left.
Once the powerful let you tag up, you're playing another game, within the system that legitmizes the power, the one that also wants to wear its cultural sensitivity like a jewel to the gallery opening. Most 'graffiti' has been channeled into a commodity form, whether as a vector for viral marketing, as 'real-life' fashion backdrop, as nostalgia.
Billboards, at least, suffer less from bad faith. They reflect with more integrity who we are, what we've become, what we care about. The only reason to hide them is because we prefer the illusion it isn't true, especially on the way to the cottage. The average low-income, inner city (or worse those nightmareish burbs that have taken the socio-economic place of the 'inner-city')is festooned with ads on every square inch, right down to the sponsored lunchs at the schools.
Once they let you start write the graffiti, it's not graffiti -- it's management.
Grab a spraycan and hit a bank. Write in Spanish. Find out what graffiti means: they hunt you down.
[ July 06, 2010, 12:45 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Six bottoms is pretty PG-13. Especially for Vegas.
Isn't Six Bottoms a Vegas-based amusement park chain?
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
On a barely related note -- how would someone go about getting in touch with the type of graffiti artist samp is posting about if you wanted to hire them to create a mural on private property? I was thinking a craigslist ad, but that can't be the best way, and I'm not even sure what catagory I'd put it in.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
First check if they're on artsconnect. You might end up wanting to use craigslist.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Actually, nevermind that. If you are in/near a metropolitan area, let me know which one. I will probably be able to forward some relevant contact info.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
Minneapolis, MN. My email is LizaJae at gmail, if you'd like to send it that way. Thanks!
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jake:
quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Six bottoms is pretty PG-13. Especially for Vegas.
Isn't Six Bottoms a Vegas-based amusement park chain?
Maybe in Pahrump. (about an hour outside of Vegas) Prostitution is not legal here in Vegas, though I wish they would legalize it so we could get some tax revenue.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
Hmmm, I just realized that Intermedia Arts would probably actually be a good place to start. And it looks like they have a graffiti mentoring program, what do you know.
If you happen to have any information, samp, I'd still appreciate it, but at least now I have a local starting point if you don't.
Posted by T:man (Member # 11614) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Some places have great tag culture (Boston, most of NYC, Denver, etc) and some places have terrible tag culture (Cleveland, Detroit, Maryland, most of Chicago) but then again terrible tag culture is just sort of a byproduct of your city sucking anyway.
Hey! The city doesn't suck!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
No, it has The Tick
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
I'm of mixed minds. I've seen a fair number of billboards that were irritating, invasive and even distracting to drivers who really ought to be watching the road. Likewise I've seen some graffiti sufficiently artistic that it actually improved the overall visual quality of the area.
But I've also seen graffiti that was the equivalent of feral dogs marking their territory. Given a choice between an advertisement and something that makes people feel less safe to walk the streets, I'll take the ad.
[ July 15, 2010, 12:37 AM: Message edited by: Sterling ]
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
quote:Originally posted by ElJay: On a barely related note -- how would someone go about getting in touch with the type of graffiti artist samp is posting about if you wanted to hire them to create a mural on private property? I was thinking a craigslist ad, but that can't be the best way, and I'm not even sure what catagory I'd put it in.
Look. At the risk of patronizing such a rebellious character as yourself...I have a daring suggestion! An inspiring suggestion!...OK...here it is: Buy yourself some spray paint and do it yourself! Find out what you really think of the house! that lifestyle! those promises! Let it happen for real....OK...OK...Details..We all need details:
Step 1: acquire mind altering substance/activity (this ranges the full spectrum of things and well beyond the cliched but perfectly acceptable bottle of tequila. e.g. meditation, staring into space...anger...fear...sadness...dancing...etc.)
Step 2: Buy the paint cans...
Step 3: Locate appropriate music (this may include and probably should be pure, adrenalin fueled silence...or, if you live close to downtown, merely open windows and the sounf od the city after midnight).
Step 4: Choose the right night. One of those nights. You know what I mean.
Step 5: Gather the stuff together and at the right time with the right noise walk into that room and do it.
Step 6: Note - you may need a mask, depending on the ventilation available...or risk suffering the inscrpition of an irreversible mental graffiti...
Step 33: Holy Shit.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
*patpat*
That's nice, deerpark. I've painted with spray paint before. You know what? I'm fairly decent at it. But I've done enough artistic stuff to know that I'm competent but not inspired, so this is not a case where practice makes perfect.
I consider graffiti an art form like any other. Some of the stuff is inspired and beautiful. I don't live close to downtown, I live downtown, and I have a walled patio with a 20' x 8' block wall that's painted beige. I would happily let a group of 16 year old taggers go at it for an afternoon, and that would be better than how it looks now, but if I can find someone who this is their art form and will do something beautiful with it? Even better. And I would much rather have that than some half-assed imitation I tried to do myself without developing the necessary skills to do it right.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Step 126: In daylight it might look a little raw but,
Step 127: it's only trauma, you'll get used to it!
Step 128: Having a shower and scrubbing off the little bits of colour, watching the greenish water swirl down the drain, you feel releived.
Step 129: Except, the room's still out there.
Step 135: Primer.
Step 201: A first good night's sleep and the prospects of bacon and eggs send you to the washroom where you see yourself in the mirror and notice a faint splotch of fluoresent orange on your temple. It happened.
Step 359: Somehow, with time, it's faded into background, the experience (that is)but, every once and a while, staring fetchingly over the top of your cocktail glass at a friend sitting on the sofa, you catch a bubble of colour or half a word squirting out from behind a picture frame.
edited to add (Wow we cross posted!): But, I can't let you discount inspiration (yours) so casually! I merely take it for granted!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I want whatever Deerpark's tripping on.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
How about this, deerpark: If you're ever in Minneapolis we can paint it together. I'll supply the paint and the tequila.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
MAYBE this is your guy. How's his rates?
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
I like his stuff. Can't find the rates, but that's easy enough to ask about. Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Look. Do this: -Get a projector that you can attach a PC to. -Fire up HR or SR on a thread that's engaging -Project it onto your wall, your self etc. -Write your replies on the wall (and yourself) -If you feel like it, video the proceedings and post via U-Tuberoonie. A testimonial of sorts.
The cliched but nevertheless beautiful conflict of materialities will provoke something inspired and unexpected.
Unfortunately, I can't be in Minnesota for this--but, from my canoe in Wabakimi park--approximately 400 miles north, I'll be rooting for you!
(Note: the exquisite and I think market driven conflation of the 'out there' and the 'in here' renders this space..in the beam of light and on your body/wall both public and private, and, I think, provides the material locus of graffiti...consider the tattoo as symptomatic, or, as pointing in this direction...)
It will be beautiful 20 years from now, when it matters (to you)...
Regards, th
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Light. What it lands on. What it keeps us from knowing.
Inspired, I in fact got my projector and turned it on in my freshly painted and perfectly white room. No way to attach a PC, but, the effect is quite distracting (to say the least). There is a pile of empty coconut juice cans in the corner with the inevitable cloud of fruit flies hovering above it. Caught in the properly adjusted beam of light, their magnified but sharply figured shadows are projected onto the walls. The simple allusive weight of Drosophlia, what with all the genetic discoveries hinging on this creature's set of chromosomes leads me to speculate that they have a great future as part of a contemporary video art exhibition. Think of the images as the reverse of the now popular pinhole camera effects...instead of the outside world naturally projected upside down on the wall of a darkened room (Camera Obscura)...we have (with proper prompts) something posited as an index of the genome project floating in the raw, artificial light of an empty white room
It's perfect. Even fruit flies.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
OK. So, I didn't. Still, consider the impossibilities.
This reminds me of an old joke.
Has anyone heard the tapeworm joke? (with the now infamous Dr. Puplicher variation?)
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
There was this guy named Blair. He didn't have any friends except for his cat, and his cat was a loner. Blair had learned to fill up his days with little rituals. Some arose out of the paying of too much attention to the banal details of daily living, like making sure he flipped his toothbrush in the air three times before catching it by the handle and putting on the toothpaste; others would seem, to an outsider, to be more sinister in nature and had, in the main, evolved from reading too much.
[ July 17, 2010, 05:12 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
This is a level beyond subject drift. You can call it subject drift II
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
I'n not sure it counts as thread drift when one insane person walks into a conversation and starts chatting with the invisible unicorn that lives in his nose Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
One day Blair went to the bathroom, as usual, after his double expresso and toasted baguette with a little virgin olive oil drizzled on top, followed by a slight grinding of sea salt, having skimmed the headlines of his local paper and double checked the familiar presence of his neighbour's 1966 Dodge Monaco in its spot below and wondered, again, about the extent of its owner's tattoos which, to date, he had only glimpsed flickering above the waistband of her pyjamas when she went for her morning smoke; so, into the bathroom for a ritual bowel movement that never failed to satisfy, at least in the way it sketched out the negative space of some future disability from whose perspective today, that is this shit, would seem a blessing from heaven, you know, things only get worse...well, just then, wiping up with the somewhat frustrating single ply toilet paper which, once he'd finished the 67 remaining rolls, he would never buy again since you needed about 20 feet to handle even a minor bowel movement...just then, he looked into the bowl, as we all do, to admire his excrescence, when he noticed what he thought, at first, was an onion ring.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Imagine a spanish onion. You chop it up, let's say you're making spagetti sauce, an amatriciana to be precise and you know those thick slices near the end of the onion? The ones that are hard to slice any thinner without risking your fingertips because of the onion's decreasing radius, the ones which therfore remain on the cutting board and seem too thick to add to the soffritto? One of those onion rings was in there, except Blair hadn't eaten any onions.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
It was, of course, a tapeworm. More precisely the tail segement of such a beast which had, in the course of digestive events, become entangled in some passing roughage, probably those celery stalks he'd been chewing on the previous evening while watching his cat watch whatever it is that rustles between the walls.
Blair's worst fear was that there was a snake in between the walls. His upstairs neighbour, whom he had only met two times in seven years, most recently upon answering a violent knocking on the door just after Easter, had lost his snake and seen it heading down through a hole in the floor where there had once been an electrical plug box.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I tried like three times to read the entirety of either of those posts, but it's like my brain has a filter that clicks off my cognizant awareness of the later half of the text once it's determined the total effort-reward calculation.
Like I do the same thing with Family Circus. After a while it's like it doesn't really exist on the page.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
They aren't random gibberish or something; in and of themselves, they're coherent. I'm finding them pretty entertaining, actually.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Far be it for me to dither on about the mind's passage from apprehension to comprehension. Sickness is, after all, the imaginary friend one always finds in the loneliest corner of the playgorund.
Blair raised his eyebrow, coughed and flushed. To his horror, he then watched the onion ring unfurl to an astonishing length as the vortex attempted to swallow it down. It even appeared to wiggle before vanishing, as if trying to swim against the current.
He stood there in the bathroom watching the bowl water calm then listening to the toilet reservoir refill up to that choking cadenza which introduced a sublime but anxious silence.
Was it gone?
Yes, it was.
For now.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Somewhere, beyond the old walls of Blair's tiny apartment, a large grey heron rose from the reeds and began its illogical flight.
The bird's shadow would later slide across the lowered blinds of Blair's living room and seem, to him, a response to an unvoiced question.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
In the land of the dead, a king from a black castle spoke only with the wise woman of the marsh. He sometimes wore the bones of his enemies as trophies, and when he spoke, long story short, deerpark is a nutter.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
At the not exactly local, polyvalent Drop-in clinic cum pharmacy, sitting on a plastic chair, trying to discern the psychiatric out-patients from the run of the mill cold catchers, Blair waited while his worm curled into a warm thick wall of his large intestine.
He thought he could feel it moving, slithering, laying eggs, or whatever else a tapeworm does when it's not sleeping.
Eventually, he hears his name called in that clinically perfected intonation that seems to both affirm his adminstrative existance while denying any part his life may have hoped to play in the events about to transpire.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
I'm in failing health, both psychic and buccal--I'm not sure I can go on and on and on much longer. First, there is the question concerning the scratching noises, then the inevitable sunrise, and added to this is the surprising distraction of proposition 8, cities emptied in fatal sorties into the void, and the stunning failure of Adorno to close the gap.
Nevertheless, the doctor has snapped on his latex gloves and asked the patient to bend over. Blair, gripping the stainless steel foot yokes, spread-eagled face down on the examination table, watches a drop of his own forehead sweat drop and puddle on the green flecked linoleum floor, dissolving what now appears to have been a drop of dried blood left over from the last patient. The Dr. has asked him to "Relax", which has caused his sphincter to tighten into a coiled spring. He hears the Dr. open a drawer and the ensuing scuffle of instruments, including something that sounds heavy and precise (having blocked the idea of 'sharp' from his overfertile imagination.). The Dr. asks, in a more insistant tone, for Blair to "Relax", more warning then suggestion, and, in a valiant attempt to comply, Blair unleashes an involutary but nevertheless tremendous blast of flatulence which shapes a portentous silence in the examination room followed by a lingering and unspeakable odour of Kraft Dinner.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
"I didn't realize you could speak French?" quipped the Doctor, stifling an accute flash of raw hysteria.
Blair lifted his eyes and stared out the little crack between the window sill and the lowered venetian. One floor down, across the road, somebody had spray painted a brick wall.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Five foot tall alternating, dayglo orange and pink letters formed a sentence that ran the length of the windowless side wall of Happy's 24-hour Diner. The wall faced a smallish parking lot and shared the space, near the back, with one of those once hopeful inner city gardens gone beyond seed to a tangle of thistle and blasted milkweed which, along with some parked cars, obscured parts of the author's formulation.
Discerning something like this, the final question mark looking like it was planted in the garden:
"WHRZ...Y C..RR...T.R..?"
Blair felt no less puzzled.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
No. Less. Puzzled. But wait-- Dr. Karl-Heinz Puplicher, choking down the last spasms of his misplaced hilarity, breathing carefully,deeply and unfortunately through his nose, pulled at his latex gloves and then selected from the drawer a lemon tart, a cherry tart, and an Eastwing roofing hammer, all of which he placed carefully and strategically between Blair's knees. In the blink of an eye, the head and neck section of a large tapeworm stretched out from Blair's innards to gobble up the lemon then the cherry tart and idly sniffed at the hammer before glancing up towards the ceiling with a typical wormlike gaze. Dr. Puplicher raised his eyebrows and quietly bounced the five fingertips of his left hand on those of his righthand while Blair wrenched his head around in a pathetic attempt to see what had happened. Puplicher, summoning the remains of his professional demeanour, simply nodded and intoned "Effectivement."
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Which is French, of course, for "Hmmm..."
Bolting into a sitting position on the examiniation table, Blair felt the cold steel hammer grind on his tailbone, the blue rubber handle sticking out inexpressively from beneath his hairless white rear end. Puplicher reached out to snatch the instrument away, in what should have been the 'nick of time', and, miscalculating, caught a rather profound chunk of Blair's right ass cheek in the claws of the hammer.
With some assurance we can now say that the visit entered the realm of trauma.
The Dr. ,immediately conscious of his error, only pulled harder, as if to get it over with more quickly; Blair, impaled on wings of stainless steel, merely screamed as he was yanked off the slippery bench onto the linoleum floor; the tapeworm braced himself for impact.
In the waiting room, the eyes of the insane, the sane, and the receptionist were rivetted on the examination room door.
Outside on the sidewalk a young girl looked up and a car pulled out of the parking lot revealing another letter.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
An "M". "My". It said "Wherz My........"
The Doctor opened the examination room door and stepped out into the corridor, the hammer dangling from his hand along his leg below his knee. He closed the door carefully and then asked the receptionist to call an ambulance. He cast a distracted gaze over the occupants of the waiting room, most of whom were looking beyond the Doctor at the now slowly reopening door of the examination room directly behind him.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Blair has always loved bees and had, in fact, worked as a beekeeper for years before a three week binge in Las Vegas had wiped out his savings and left him with nearly $20,000 of credit card debt, mainly from a quirky little strip club on Fremont. For the rest of his life he would associate Rum&Coke or even just the jangle of ice cubes with the small of Melissa's supple Lithuanean back. How he had managed to spend $19,487 in three nights without ever taking his pants off was still a tantalizing mystery.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
The financial and moral consequences of the Vegas fiasco were magnified through the diamond lens of his collapsing marriage. When he finally made it home, she was gone, this time for good, leaving little to do but read back issues of the Times Literary Supplement while drinking through the gallons of Mead they'd hoped to sell at the Farmer's Market that season. Soon, the bees left too. The collapsing wave finally washed him up onto the beach of his rocking chair, within arms' reach of the telephone which Bell's billing system had miraculously spared disconnecting for another month, a telephone from which, consciousness permitting, he dialed old friends now long lost to families and lives, squeezing the last drops of sweet care from the old days.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
But now everyone was watching except for Puplicher who was attempting to hand the hammer to his receptionist in the fashion of a surgeon returning a scalpel to his attending nurse. To his growing incredulity, this only resulted in a slow rhythmic ondulation of arm and hammer, like a perplexed Golden Retreiver who reaches his paw out again and again for an unforthcoming handshake, as the weight of the hammer inexorably cancelled out any remaining pretense of professional reflex in a corrosive and annihilating dialectic.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Outside. Wait. There wasn't any (outside, that is).
Nevertheless,
Somewhere, beyond the walls of the Medical Arts Building, down at street level on the other side of the road, in the slowly emptying parking lot that snuggled up against the long brick sidewall of Happy's 24 hour diner, maybe behind the dried husks of milkweed and chicory--you know, in that deep, greasy shade in the corner where the brick wall of the diner abuts the cool grey cement back wall of some anonymous institute, where there's some unsuspected cranny or vent clogged with the remains of some soiled t-shirt and pieces of wet cardboard now crushed to a paste, the elemental infrastructure of desolation, where if staring you will note a slight deformation of ones ordinary sense of time from the mode of the busy mundane into the fatal everpresent (often accompanied by the aural sensation of a sudden hush)-- well, in there, in that cool deep shade, fluttered the pages of a notebook.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
It is not even clear to me how it got there.
We might make the assumption that the notebook was left behind by the prosaic graffiti artist, the one who did the wall.
Little of these deliberations would make any difference to Blair, who, standing in the doorframe of the examination room like an astronaut in an airlock who's forgotten his helmet, was about to have a sort of fit. Nor had the existence and qualities of the notebook cast even a shadow across the consciousness of Dr. Puplicher, who had now simply dropped the hammer with a muffled thud on the floor and begun to turn back towards his office.
However, the light-blue lined pages of the notebook riffled back and forth in the thrall of some unearthly aeolean tempo, revealing swaths of ballpoint, felt-tip, pencil and painted words, all densely packing the available surface of the pages, some of which appeared to be partially torn and others blackened by burning.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Huddled in the corner, the graffiti artist used the tip of his cigarette to light the top of a dog-eared page and watched a long thin flame rise. Reading out loud, just ahead of the burn line spreading like spilled black ink down the page, "...and the tapeworm, oblivious to the drama unfolding just beyond the thin bladder fascia, coiled himself into a digestive position and wondered whether, in fact, he preferred the cherry to the lemon tart?..." He sighed,took a quick drag on his cigarette and then blew the flame out. It was the wrong page.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
He was looking for the funny part. The graffiti artist was a pretty funny guy, at least, that's what he thought. He was very tall and very skinny, a skeleton living in borrowed skin. He crouched in the classic third-world squat with his knees up around his ears and his toes squirting out from his blasted hightops. He didn't have any shoulders, just arms dangling down into the deeper darkness below his crotch where the notebook now lay. None of this would even draw a glance from a nervous passerby if it weren't for his enormous head. If you were to see him walking back to the Sally Ann in contre-jour, a black silhouette against a bruised pink twilight sky, you would say "Look, that guys carrying a huge watermelon on his shoulder...it looks like it's his head!" And it was. Or "Look, a gaint dwarf!" Some sort of screwed up genetic mutation escaped from the NBA power-forward breeding program in Manchuria. He should of been on a shelf in a large jar of formaldehyde somewhere.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
You know who makes great shoes? Nike. You will be more popular and athletic if you buy them.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Tonight he felt weird, a persistant sense that eyes were watching, from behind or above, and he turned thinking that no one was ever there, not a soul. The city was empty. Sometimes he'd hear the strains of a song seep out from inside the diner when the door opened, and, if they turned left, he'd even see a figure walk out of the warm red neon through a slow strobe of alternating puddles of streetlight and dark, making their way back to wherever they come from. Sometimes a person would suddenly glance right at him, not seeing but feeling he was there. Frozen in place, he counted the footfalls until they were gone and the city was empty again.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Time to write. It was the tart, the incongruity of the tart and the tapeworm. Cherry tarts were the funniest and the most pathetic, they reminded him of Christmas, so he started to whistle "Deck the Halls" and did it, he wrote: Wherz My Cherry Tart? in tall orange and pink letters, befitting his wingspan, on the long brick sidewall of the diner. Shambling back to gain perspective, he immediately regretted the 'Z'. The 'Z' was a lie.
He dropped the cans of spray paint on the pavement and felt his head spin with the exertion and the paint fumes which sweetly whirled inside the hollow corridors and tangled ductwork of his enormous cranium.
He remembered that the tapeworm, as usual, would eventually speak for itself and then get its head splattered by a hammer. After a few Proustian minutes, he shuffled back and picked up his notebook; caring less now about concealment and more about the worm, he approached the brittle spot of streetlight and took a nib of golf pencil from his pocket. He had to pick away at the wood to get a usable pimple of lead exposed and felt the incredibly comforting glide of the soft, greasy rounded tip on the paper. He drew a worm. Below the worm he scribbled "You never can tell with worms." Finally, rest.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
You say rest, but what of it? Sitting in a lawn chair wearing your old fishing hat, the smell of that last Bass permeating the hot, sticky air. The Puplicher variation, troubled as it is by the poorly managed complexities of voice and narrative, peters out in a shuffling and monotonous endgame where, inevitably, the players are forced into perpetual check.
Players? Player.
Blair simply brushes by a petrified Puplicher and walks home, perhaps a little stiffly. Home. The worm and he are home again.
Puplicher tells his receptionist that he's taking the rest of the day off, to the releif of some of the waiting patients.
Their egress from the Medical Arts building, seperated by approximately 15 minutes, is remarked upon by a flock of pigeons aligned along the faux-Corinthian trimwork of the edifice, 8 storeys up.
Both the Doctor and Blair remark, in passing Happy's Diner, the "Wherz my Cherry Tart?" spray-painted on the wall. Blair repeats the phrase quietly to himself, a walking mantra, each footfall landing on the corresponding stressed syllable (in a trochaic scansion...). The Doctor, who has unconsciously remarked the phrase over the last months in his many comings and goings, for the first time halts and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his long nose. What he might have thought is interrupted by a flock of pigeons swooping down for a perfect landing just in front of him. Stupid pigeons.
The graffiti artist, long gone -- the letters had faded substantially since that night, now over two years ago -- would turn out to have died, under somewhat inexplicable circumstances, in the middle of nowhere. That is, in the middle of the forest, in the low scrub just off a washboard rutted dirt road, where it rose to cross a ramshackle jerry-rigged bridge that one imagines had once permitted 4-wheelers to ford the swampy black stream that ondulated beneath. A pair of large horns had been, somehow, tied or glued to his head and appeared, by local accounts, to be literally fused into his skull. He was discovered by two local fishermen, one of whom claimed he was still breathing although autopsy results confirmed that the body, in late stages of decay, had been there for at least a month. The investigation by Police forensic teams was impeded by severe weather, including a small tornado which may have touched down near the site.
The great blue heron landed on a deadhead. Moonrise.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
These horns growing out of his head have continued to bug me.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Two young men have skipped work to go fishing on Big Fish Lake. They have parked their old car in the tall grass off the dead-end turnaround of a very raw dirt road; they’ve taken their canoe from the roof and nosed it into a creek spanned by a rickety bridge which can only be crossed by foot. They are fiddling with their rods and paraphernalia near the car, in preparation for disembarking.
--O F***. I broke it ++You broke it? --Yeah, I twisted it right off; you’re just supposed to pull it out. Look. (Waving broken handle of fishing reel.) ++Holy shit! Can't you just stick it in the other side? --No, it’s totally f***ed. It's so stupid, I just kept on twisting…but, you just have to pull it out. ++You can use mine. --Shit. I don’t believe it. I’m so f***ing stupid. I twisted the bloody handle right off... anyway, it’s probably too windy for both of us to fish. I get to paddle you around. ++Look how fast the water’s going beneath the bridge. --It’s pretty windy. This is garbage.(Places broken reel on top of car) ++Something smells rotten. Man, can you smell it? --Someone probably cleaned their fish and threw the guts into the bush. ++No. Look at all the flies. Something’s dead. --Christ, that’s a leg, that’s someone’s leg… ++No, it’s a dead cow or something. It’s a baby cow. Look, there’s its head. --It’s got f***ing huge horns. It’s not a cow. There’s no eyes or mouth. (Pointing.) What…is… that? ++(Poking with fishing rod.) I don’t know… --Jesus, it’s a head. That’s the back of someone’s head! There’s horns coming out… ++Can you hear that? It’s like bells ringing. --It's all the flies. ++You know who that is?
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Predictably, "++" was thinking that it was Satan, minus the red suit and pointy tail.
Unpredictably, the rhetorical invocation of the beast under such odd circumstances had far reaching consequences.
"--" had already begun to believe. As subsequent events would underscore, context and feedback play critical roles in the literal incarnation of efil...err...evil.
Of course, neither "++" nor "--" knew who or what lay there. Both, however, were deeply unsettled by the feeling that it was not really dead.
Posted by the_worm (Member # 3964) on :
No, more of a crash landing. Broke my damned nose. However, lying here, waiting for something to happen, fly blown, my immortal mind turned to a joke I once heard... Eyewoncerd Aywuncered
Posted by monteverdi (Member # 2896) on :
Ponyhead.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
I always hated it when you called me that, but I'm glad you remember. Those were the days! The hum of the water chillers! The raised floors! The removable DASD! Remember the first RISC instruction set? There were words for everything. You forsaw this, didn't you? The iterative looping, the simple accretion, the infernal logic and you got away, before the collapse into pure surfaces. I can't say I understand what's happened. The light's changed. My left eye is swollen. You were the math guy, the category theorist, the topologist, and I was just the space filling curve.
[ November 23, 2010, 04:31 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Putting in time, here in the epitaph factory.
What was I saying? Something about the horns? The eyeballs? The olde vile jellies!
Listen. Better to listen or use the fingers.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
What do you mean?
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
That you've got to consider the possibilities:
a) the fishermen are dreaming; b) the fishermen are fictitious; c) the figure of the Devil is allegorical: d) one of the two will fall down, and e) the other will run to the car; but, f) it was too late g) to stop the narrative from h) exploring another fetid curl-- i) don't know how to say it i)n the large i)ntestine i)f you know what I) mean i)t.
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