afh blog

30.

[TEST II]

1. GOD PROTECTS DRUNKS AND CHILDREN
2. JUST SAY NO
3. FIVE IN TIME SAVES NINE
4. FIVE TO ONE
5. HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY
6. WHERE’S THE BEEF?
7. BEST DEAL IN TOWN
8. SAVE YOUR PENNIES
9. EAT AT JOE’S
10. KILROY WAS HERE
11. WE THE PEOPLE
12. I LIKE IKE
13. GROOVY
14. HASTE MAKES WASTE
15. YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
16. CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC
17. THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER
18. PASS THE BUCK
19. THE BUCK STOPS HERE
20. HE’D GIVE YOU THE SHIRT OFF HIS BACK
21. RACK’M UP
22. NUTS!
23. PUT UP OR SHUT UP
24. REMEMBER THE ALAMO
25. THE BRITISH ARE COMING
26. BUY AMERICAN
27. I LOVE NEW YORK
28. BABY ON BOARD
29. WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS
30. A STITCH IN TIME SAVES NINE
31. DON’T PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET
32. NO NUKES
33. HELL-BENT FOR LEATHER
34. KING OF THE HIGHWAY
35. ROCK’N'ROLL!
36. LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP
37. DOES A BEAR SHIT IN THE WOODS?
38. MERRY XMAS
39. I DID IT MY WAY

A - Strongly agree
B - Agree
C - Disagree
D - Strongly disagree
E - No opinion

SCORING
0-50 = ARTIFICIAL
51-100 = NATURAL

***

He searched for a soul-satisfying belief system. He wanted to love and be loved. He wanted to belong.

***

>>

There’s two things a body wants to hear, all the time, over and over, in good times and bad, but especially in bad. It’s all gonna be alright, is one. The other is, “You’re okay.” You’re just fine. I love you just the way you are.

<<

***

[Things he thinks of, when he thinks of New Mexico]

***

He hoped living “in the material world” responsibly would relieve him of his spiritual restlessness [American].

***

When he was a boy in West Virginia, his junior high school football team practiced on a softball field with no grass, that everyone called “the dust bowl.” In the evenings, guys would sit in the dugouts and throw empty beer bottles onto the practice field and break them. If you got tackled on the hard-packed gritty dirt - more like sand, as in sandlot - of the dust bowl, you ended up with little pieces of glass embedded in your wounds. For years, he was still picking bits of beer bottle out of his elbows, hands and knees. They had drills like “bull in the ring,” and another where the coach would place a one-by-twelve on the ground, and the kids would break into two groups. When it was your turn, you’d get in a three-point stance at one end of the board, and on the whistle, blast off into the other guy. One afternoon he - what did they call it? - speared the other guy, one of the Maxwells, maybe, a friend, a black kid - and blacked out. He came to with a huddle of coaches and players staring down at him. “Keep your face up, Red,” the coach said, after asking if he were alright. He said, “Yeh, yeh.” “I can’t see anything.” The Maxwell kid obviously felt bad. They let him sit out for a few minutes. That Maxwell got stabbed to death a few years later, he thinks he heard someone say. He remembered Maxwell getting in a fight in the basketball gym, after picking on a new kid. The new kid whupped him, but good. It was a good fight. The new kid had respect after that. Now, the dust bowl has sod on it. In high school the coach called a tackling drill. You were supposed to go maybe half-speed or three-quarters, max. The arrangement was kind of random. The drill was meant to focus on and improve technique. When it was his turn, the other guy was the team’s star linebacker, an all-stater. He took off, and for some reason, maybe because he was relaxed, the hit was perfect, and he laid the big backer out. The coach and team went nuts. The star, a good guy but brutal competitor, made sure he got to be his drill-mate for the next round. This time the big backer ran clean over him. The coach told him to get up and try again. He did, and got the same result. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. And again. Finally, the coach, feeling bad for him, he could tell - he was close to tears at the futility of it - gave him a pat on the pads and sent him to another drill. The backer made a point of telling him “good job.” He knew the guys felt bad for him. The backer outweighed him by 100 pounds. Everybody knew he had heart. Even the coach’s son, a friend since grade school and the neighborhood, came over after he took a knee. “You okay, Red?” He was crushed. Something about the whole thing. He and Joey had fought on the playground and in the street many times. For years Joey won, until one day. After that the gang thing started, and Joey offered to help him, but for some reason, he said no. The two shared something that’s hard to explain or understand. In a word, it’s respect. He was really grateful Joey had come over. “I just couldn’t get him, Joey. I tried and tried.” Joey told him it was OK. Joey ended up in the army for a while and did really well. He was an all-stater, too. …The summer two-a-days were always hot. A few times it got to him.

31.

Jack Good produced an directed an interview with the author and some of the people who appear as characters in this book, under the supervision of a certain Haitian mother of twelve, B___________, an NYC transplant. Trash worked the camera. He had no previous experience as a cameraman and was thoroughly smashed most of the shoot. One can imagine how well that worked, given Good’s vast professional portfolio and [well-known] perfectionism. The set was regularly in an uproar. The following are excerpts from the interview series. Note that the entire cast and crew were typically chemically altered, to varying degrees. “Inside the Actor’s Studio” it was not.

JG: Pablo, talk with the audience about methodology.
PB: Sure, Jack. I guess the book is narrative-driven. The action is descriptive, but not just - it’s dimensional. Most of the stories did actually happen, believe it or not. We were attempting to create a snapshot of American culture, but the structure owes a lot to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist. I know that’s thought of by some people as cliched. F— them. The truth is, either the artist in America is romanticized, a form of dehumanization. Or he’s MIA, because everyone think he or she is an artist in this country, which is a F—— joke. In America, for the lame majority, the artist is really an object of Protestant disdain, an object of derision. I can’t tell you how many times some ass has started a conversation with me with the boring question, “What do you do for a living?” That question presumes a lot. It’s the firm handshake of the Q&A. When I say, “I’m an artist,” the questioner usually gets a smirk on his or her face. Next comes the question, “You actually make a living making art?” If I say, “Yes,” all the sudden the questioner is confused. That’s not supposed to be how the system works, how the narrative is supposed to play out. I’m supposed to tell him or her about how I’m teaching, or working as a waiter, or in construction, or doing whatever s— job to make ends meet. He or she is supposed to get to feel good for a minute at my expense. The whole exchange is supposed to be a casual exercise in Protestant utility as social superiority complex. After the questioner determines his perceived advantage, I’m supposed to listen attentively while he or she tells me how much he or she loves and supports the arts, which kinds, what museum or show he or she visited recently, or what program he or she watched on PBS, or what classes his or her kid is taking in school. If I’m nice about this part, he or she may ask about the mediums I work in, where I show, where I work, as if any of this would mean anything substantial to the questioner. The implication is that he or she might be interested in buying something, which to them would be a big deal. It’s a complex message, and a strange formality. I’ve had the good fortune of doing very well at times, financially, as a working artist. I know what it is to have big shows, be a media figure, to be in demand as a cultural celebrity. The hierarchy this exchange indicates is vertical. It’s property-based. The mode always situates the artist in a subservient, dependent position, from the outset. I reject that. My rejection usually is sincere and solid enough to cause a visceral reflex in the questioner. I have to admit that sometimes I’ve gamed the exchange just to test the questioner’s motives or the mode’s parameters. Such tests are very helpful, especially after one’s done some research into the economics of the arts industry. You realize most questioners are complete frauds. They by and large don’t have the resources to be a serious player anywhere except in a cocktail party conversation, and so they rely on the pantomime for ego-stimulation, which is completely artificial. However, as a caution to the artist, sometimes the questioner will react with humiliation and then anger, if an artist, no matter the reality of their respective social stations, doesn’t play along with the pantomime. Then - and I’ve seen this many times, and it is truly ugly - the questioner will embark on a campaign of character assassination against the artist in the questioner’s immediate social circle. The typical accusation is that this artist “is arrogant,” or “needs to be brought down a notch.” Such a campaign will sometimes have the desired effect. The artist may not even know his career is being targeted by people he’s never met. Depending on the size of the community in which the artist’s working, the artist may never guess why this opportunity or that commission goes to someone else, possibly much less accomplished or skillful. An artist is generally a studio craftsman - at least that was the case before the computer and decades of accumulated critical propaganda stripped the profession of dignity and meaning - and usually, after even a few years of dedicated practice, will develop a strong sense of traditional proximity. I’m describing his motivations and relationships here. The studio artist’s experience is fundamentally different from the experience of an individual who subsumes his or her identity to an artificial persons, and learns to function by HR protocols in any organization big enough to compartmentalize its laborers. In the latter setting, one has the option of developing skills for personal advancement at others’ expense. This is encouraged in most corporations, and rewarded. By such means the corporation weakens ties and simultaneously a humane collective impulse that generally threatens any vertical hierarchy. Of course the new mode, the Drucker-based schema, poo-poos the vertical for the “flat” organization, in the interest of improving “knowledge worker” productivity, while abolishing the relevance of experience in middle management. This is primarily a function of gaming the corporate tax system, so that the upper levels of corporate personnel, or the leadership sector, gain the vast sums of pay and prestige, while everyone else in the organization is deprived of stability and identity. The whole arrangement is designed as a big f— you to government and the community outside the walls of the corporate office. Short-term shareholders are the biggest winners, except for maybe the financial sector. The program naturally leads to a disconnect between local [real] and multinational, or abstract, artificial interests. The business world has evolved by this formula into a huge parasitic monster, feeding on nearly everything it can’t buy off, and identifying everything other than itself as a “consumer.” Meanwhile, the corporation is nothing, if not a greedy, voracious consumer of everything humane or natural. Of course the artist is an enemy to this system. As such, he must be deprived of all social standing, but for the crumbs. He has to be made completely dependent or contingent on the corporate complex and its prime beneficiaries. The important theorists and corporate advocates have long-since realized that, short of genocide, there is no way to completely destroy art and artist in society, or civilization, without destroying civilization. Since civilization is the main course of the corporation, the corporation senses - out of one of its only true drives [self-preservation] that other means must be brought to bear on the artist to - if not exterminate him - then at least to completely deprive him of agency, outside acceptable parameters. Market share is the best tool of the corporation in this campaign. The other is the maintenance of social arrangements, praxis or memes that ensure the artist is never permitted to effectively oppose corporate domination and the artificial, destructive agendas that enable that corporate dominance. The dimensional artist is I suppose an adaptation to the corporations’ predation. At any rate, the artist and the corporation are mortal enemies. What makes it most difficult for the artist is that the corporation must rely on proxies, or human shields, to do its dirty work. The artist must appeal to the humanity of anyone he encounters. To develop appropriate responses to dimensional corporate assaults becomes a primary function of the studio artist. Unfortunately, the artist and society derive mutual benefit when the artist is committed solely to a positive program of social and perceptual enhancements. It’s too bad we have to spend so much energy fending off artificial attacks from the very people we are programmed to serve. Finally, the artist needs to be thinking about the future of humanity, of the eternal. The corporation would have us concerned only about its perpetual life.
JB: How does autobiography figure into your text? I mean, the Reality TV genre has come to the forefront of American culture. This has to impact the society’s response to self-direction. If the Reality TV category is typified by anything, it’s the irony that now connects with the lead character’s view of himself. Isn’t one of central premises of Reality TV that the audience is going to have a laugh at the oddball reality star’s bizarre identity confusion? Isn’t the whole idea to make an anti-star out of a former screen or stage performer, or elevate a talentless, unpracticed amateur to same status previously assigned only to box office standouts? America, since Ronald Reagan has been a B-movie society, at least at one level in the politics game.
PB: Look at Sarah Palin. She’s really benefited from what you’re describing. The corporate media are banking on the value on many levels of turning her outlandish life into a political soap opera. It would be hilarious, if the stakes weren’t so high. The integrity of the democracy is at stake. You must realize we’re not talking at all about art, now. We’re talking about the manipulation of perception by very cynical people operating at the behest, and more importantly, financed by artificial persons with a massive, global interest in decimating humanity’s independence. Whether you’re focusing on shoot’em-up B-moviestar Arnold Schwartzenegger, or pro wrestler Jesse Ventura, over the past couple of decades, the little screen has proven to be the litmus test of political viability. It’s not abortion. It’s not political experience or ideology. It’s not any sort of legitimate worthiness that determines ultimately whether a person succeeds or fails in any public endeavor or office. It’s whether one conforms to the medium or excels within its artificial space and by its artificial rules, which are designed primarily to serve the needs of artificial persons. If TV were really programmed to serve the public interest, the shows would focus 90% of the time on civics, emphasizing bottom-to-top, local-to-federal political mechanics. The means exist to make the medium almost completely interactive, when combined with other electronic technologies, such as phone and internet. It is not as though this is impossible to envision! CSPAN proves it on one level every day. Rather than facilitate and empower destructive uses of the medium - such as Reality TV or the corporate-managed bad news - the government is fully within its mandate to regulate TV, phone and internet usage in America to just such uses. The means is simple, and effective, involving the regulation of bandwidth. Before some Friedmanesque free marketer gets up in my face over this, he should admit that these technologies were largely developed into usable social tools with government dollars, which is to  say, taxpayer money, which is to say by the American people. Business interests work all day long trying to steal control of these media, which they only invest in after the people through the democratic government establish the usability of the technology and define generally the user value. Business doesn’t innovate. It steals, then profits. As a content producer, I would much rather work with a democratic agency than a soulless business entity, an artificial person, whose only desires are money, property, power and self-preservation. It should be no surprise to anyone that the corporations use corporate media and public airwaves to disseminate propaganda that points at government and claims democracy does the exact opposite of what it actually does. The corporate media accuses and convicts American democracy everyday of doing exactly what multinational corporations do everyday. As the corporate complex gains more control over the democracy, the difference between legitimate representative government and the artificial, corporate manufactured government ceases to be discernible to all but the most engaged citizens. Even then, there’s so much obfuscation permeating the public arena for free democratic speech, obfuscation originating from corporations and their traitorous proxies, that the task of discerning the truth from the corporate lies gets close to impossible. The corporate operations are dimensional, pervasive, artificial and convincing. More than that, they’re seductive. The corporate message is packaged to appeal to the natural instincts at the base level, using sex, physical hunger, the desire for security, fear of violence and so on. Once a person is hooked, as with any drug, the corporation refines the product as message, building delivery systems optimized for profit. Generally, these involve immediate gratification for the “consumer,” the addicted natural person. The system works dimensionally. With the assistance of shrinks, demographers, psy ops pros - what is commonly called marketing - the corporation devises an entire platform for consumer development. This is what is mistakenly referred to in corporate media and academics or politics today as economics. Don’t be fooled, as we have seen only recently, in the cataclysm of Depression 2.0, there is nothing sound or economical about any of it. The corporate system is incomprehensibly wasteful and destructive. The human toll is beyond fathoming, but the cost is certainly not limited to people. The entire environment is devastated by corporate operations. Whole species are wiped out. Animals - like chickens, for example - are through scientific means and corporate culture mutated to such an extent that they barely exist as living organisms. Who would ever have imagined raising poultry chickens without limbs or heads to feed “chicken pieces” to millions of consumers every day? To step back from it only a little is to realize how disgusting, horrible and insane this is!
JG: What about love?
PB: Freud said all that mattered was work and love, didn’t he? Well, everything that man claimed amounts to a sin of omission. All that matters is work, love, art, food, human dignity, kindness, a healthy relationship with one’s natural environment and more. Until people recognize that success in the employ of - or worse, AS an - artificial person means the proportional failure of one’s natural personhood, things will continue to degrade in our world. On an intuitive level, real people know this. That’s why people like yourself wake up one day and abandon their artificial successes, praying there’s still time to experience some redemption as a natural person. It’s the opposite of what we used to think of as retirement, when a geezer who’d served his community and family all his life kicked back and enjoyed the natural life, close to family, enjoying his community, hanging out with old friends. Now you get these 30-, 40-, 50 year-olds, who’ve spent their adult lives laying waste to everything and everyone around them at some corporate hack job that pays extravagantly for that “service.” These artificial retirees use their severance packages to pursue often twisted fantasies, artificial dreams - of being an artist, a fine lover, a family man or woman, a do-gooder, whatever. What they end up doing for the most part amounts to artificially claiming value for a life lived poorly. These artificial retirees deprive the few natural persons with real integrity of the opportunity to finally enjoy the fruits of their labors, outside the corporate domain. The differences between the natural person and the artificial retiree are profound. The artificial artist for instance demands to be recognized as a real artist. I won’t go deeply into it, because any community artist has had the unfortunate experience of encountering one of these pretenders. The natural artists, the few that survive the corporate dimensional onslaughts, have worked all their lives - sacrificed, scrimped and saved: to enjoy the payoff they earned. In comes this corporate fruit loop - a talentless lawyer, a chirpy but wrinkled marketing expert, a well-dressed manager in casual Friday gear - obsessed with establishing a second career as an artist, for their later, productive years. Often, in the distorted and sick corporate-affected arts marketplace, they actually succeed on their fool’s errand. The artificial artsy dons blinders, and proceeds to smashmouth a resume together. These bad jokes fail always to discern that their “opportunities” largely derive from the systemic starvation of the sector perpetrated by the harmful dimensional activities of the corporations they used to serve. What these artificial artists generally produce, in the manner of Jeff Koons, is amateur schlock fabricated by real craftsmen at top-dollar wages. The whole movement is an abomination. It’s no wonder these goons go around telling anyone who’ll listen that everything is art and everyone’s an artist. The poor art critics attend the artificial artists’ fancy dinners and cocktail parties and can’t help but be seduced. The corporate person is often excellent at entertaining and networking. Gaming the system is exactly what they did for 10-30 years. All that experience comes in handy, when a rich artificial artsy decides one day to begin climbing the cultural or social ladder as a community artsy. The progress usually comes easy and fast, since everyone in the local art business is being starved by corporate market share, and the privatization [demolition] of democratic arts systems.
JG: Anything you’d like to add, before we wrap up this part of the interview, Mr. Bruto? How do you feel about this book?
PB: FIREFLIES scares me. I almost died a dozen times at least, while I was writing it. Drinking with Nam vets, cowboys, Indians and mobsters, fending off wild animals and insane women, the truck wrecks, the Court system, bullets, knives, banks… F—. I should’ve gone into some safer profession, like bomb disposal. The truth is, that’s why all these soft-handed corporate types love to dream of being artsy. They want the respect a natural artist earns for living a life worth making a painting about, or a movie or a book. They just don’t want to have to do anything that hurts, makes you sweat or bleed or cry. In other words, they want the unmanageable life, only they want it to be completely manageable, absent risk, a sure thing - but the artificial artist, the artsy still wants, feels entitled to- and even demands all the perks. F— them. You can’t learn any of the good s— in a book, or a classroom or a cubicle, or from a TV program. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with those things. In fact in a natural democratic system, those culture vehicles can be incredibly helpful in maintaining or promoting the real value of life and art. The artsy, the faker, though, knows that he or she can’t embrace a normal or natural life, a collective democratic, civilized life, informed by tribal and perceptual truth, and still bear allegiance to the artificial life, the corporate life, and the strange and twisted realities and people behind them. F— them. Twice. I apologize for cussing so much.
JG: Don’t mind. We’ll bleep and redact it in edits.

[Transcript ends.]