"Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street," a preface in poetic explanative expiriments.

"Beyond superstition, I was aware, in a manner more forceful than anything my academic research had brought home to me, of the extent to which my identity and the words I utter coincide, the extent to which I want to form my own sentences or to choose for myself those moments in which I will recite someone else's. To be asked, even by an isolated, needy individual to perform lines that were not my own, that violated my sense of my own desires, was intolerable." -Stephen Greenblatt, "The Improvisation of Power (Epilogue)"

Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street, Revisited.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

Full circle…
Riot.
Unexpected situations on a crowded…
Street.
What street?
This street,
That street,
The same

As the space in which we
Make these noises now
Sits a mere block-and-a-half from
That pad we inhabited
When I was a child…
In fact, I can almost see it from our
Grime-encrusted back-window as
I stand now sporting
Straight edge tattoo-work
Chain smoking Specials, sipping
Cloudy Green Fairy and red wine…
Life…
Blood.

To those who think they’ve
Kept tabs on my back-catalogue
So much of this must
Seem a bit strange
So bear with me a bit as I lay myself bare,
I tend to think in some sort of semi-logical trajectory
This makes some semblance of sense,
I swear.

I’ll slit my
{Insert something
Censored here}
For you,
I really will…

This game of performance is a Riot

Leaving faceless idols of divinity hanging
Upside-down from trees,
With banners of perversity
For its own sake,
And so many dead
People from a country that
We all doubted that the song ever
Really had anything to do with…

As the circular nature of this
Riot
Leaves me battling
Myself now,
Pitting what I
Should do against
What I seem to have to…

As after trying to quit
Cold-turkey so many
Times, I pull the
Tourniquet so
Tight again to
Inject “Music”
And “Performance,”
The stuff that seems to
Kill, into my veins with
Rhythmic pulsing pump and
Flow again, banging out
Noise with these people who
Shared the same first ironic
Moronic cult of a “band,”
Performance-art shams,
Devoid of Concept besides
In anachronistic retrospect,
A willing pint we call and
Raise.

As I battle the
Balance of
Sounds I can’t
Seem to cease making
With the words that
Prove my passion,
Squeezing my own
Voice within perversely
Problematic rehashes and
Re-fires of words from the
Past that I put in my
Mouth that weren’t really my
Own,
And try to make them fit
With what I really
Can’t stop needing
To say,
In speech and sounds,
In synthesis.

With this fire,
Raging blue with
Volatile and toxic
Plastic, we
Burn symbolic streets.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

“Cops can’t do nothing’, even though they have those guns,
Youngsters on the sidewalk, glassy eyes turned to the sun.
You stand in amongst the throngs, try to stay alive,
Chantin’ pro-rebellion songs, smothered by the hive.
Ground comes up to meet your head, scattered mates call your name.
You’re gonna be left for dead, playin’ your private/public riot game.”

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

{The preceding is a piece of word-collage poetry that I posted on the Myspace blog for my electro-rock outfit Tipsy Cougar, who recently finally started posting some actual "music" to our site. It's intended to serve as a strange sort of preface to the next piece of noise that we intend to post, a drastically divergent reworking of the long-forgotten Moron Cult/ Pseudophonics song "USOCS". This seemed to be an ironically fitting choice for the outfit, as all three active members of the band were at one point or another at least tenuously part of the older act (in fact, depending on definitional technicalities, and at different junctures, Moron Cult was all three of our "first" band.) Thus, I must give credit where it's due and point out that some segments of the above that appear in quotations were originally written by C. Charles ("xian") Dyer of that outfit (while sitting next to me in driver's ed. class, in fact). Also, references and lyrical fragments are borrowed liberally throughout from many bands that I've contributed to in the past (we could make a game of it, if you like... cookies of some sort should go to those among you that can pick out and identify the most...)... This would probably be as good of a time as any to point out that if you haven't taken a listen to what I'm doing with Tipsy Cougar yet, you should. Conceptually, what I'm attempting there in auditory form is very similar to some terrain tread often within the pages of this blog.}

Dirty, Shiny Shellac; Metro-Grime in Fragmented Pastiche.

I'm working on collecting my thoughts.

The image in my mind is a splattering of acrylic paint, a combination of of drab, dirty colors and the bright, slick, and jarring, across a tattered piece of newsprint, torn and scattered on the shiny floor of a creatively-lit club. I'm scooping up the pieces, spreading some shellac on the wall, and reassembling the fragments into something completely different.

I have so much that I want to say in giant brush-strokes of sticky, shiny goop. This entry will be a bit messy. I know that you like it that way.


The term Metro-Grime has become the new catch-all. It began as a tongue-in-cheek mock-gimmick label for a music-genre. Then we realized that it could be applied to so much more. It's a way of seeing things. Something slightly less than a "lifestyle," but pretty close. It has to do with the combination of the dirty and the fashionable, where the juxtaposition itself is essential to any conception of either. The beauty itself is derived from the decay and disorder, and the individuals who embody the movement are acutely aware of this and thrive off of it. This is how many of us have lived for years. Metro-Grime embodies an unabashed love and embrace of the pretty dirty things. Manchester, New Hampshire, for instance, IS a Metro-Grime city, and serves as home to healthy numbers of such individuals... but is merely a single example, the most pertinent to my present analysis, of a nearly endless list of just those grimy/ gorgeous neighborhoods, cities, and districts that I know well enough to pull merely off the top of my head.

Manchester is my city, and always will be, no matter how much I may enjoy a span of time elsewhere. I love the city, its quirks, its dirt, its problem... and these things are among what makes it a beautiful and creatively pertinent place. Thus, as a cultural critic-at-large based in this dirty/ pretty city whose life-blood could use to be documented, I'm prepared to call the flaws as I see them, as part of the creation of an ongoing aesthetically important documentation of a place that deserves one.

So bear with me as I drag you through the dirt and glitter. I'll start in with some specifics tomorrow.

Asbjorn Updates... Ongoing and Evolving Projects..

Since my last post (part 1 of 2 in the "reluctant beat-freak" series) has yet to incite the sort of argument or "lively debate" that I was hoping and assuming that it would, I think I'm going to put off the second installment a bit further, hoping that some of you speak up in the meantime. For now, I'll give you guitar-music/ rock'n'roll aficionados all the benefit of the doubt that you're waiting to see how I defend my stance before throttling me for it.

Plus, I'm a bit overdue for posting my quasi-monthly updates about what's new from the various and scattered members of the Asbjorn Arts Collective. So this would probably be as good of a time to do that as any.

I wish that I have more to report this time around... but as I don't, this will be a relatively short entry. If you're an artist even loosely associated with Asbjorn (if you don't know what that means, email me and I'll let you know whether you are or not, and what it would entail) with new work that I left out of this update, or if you want to be sure that your project gets included the next time around, by all means, let me know.

Dandy Apparel is releasing a limited-edition first run of its 2008 t-shirt line this week, and they've already begun to take orders for the eight initial designs in the catalog (follow the link above).



I recently added a new track to my acoustic profile on myspace. It's called "Strange Sutures," and the recording that's up right now is a REALLY rough demo that I recorded the night (or morning, more literally) that I wrote it. I hope to have a better recording of the more refined version of the song that it's now evolved into up soon.



In other Asbjorn music... I've been working with a couple other Asbjorn wackos/ conceptualists on a new indie-dance-rock project called "The Immaculate Conceptions." We're in the song-writing stages as of now, getting a solid set together and preparing a demo EP called "Tipsy Cougar." Keep your eyes and ears open; I PROMISE that we'll be in-your-face about it, forcing you to notice, soon enough.

On that note... I was prompted recently to contemplate the perpetually problematic "separation" and subsequent confusion of "artist" and "character" from whose perspective he speaks when someone brought it to my attention that, if casually reading the lyrics to the new project, without the context of the music and the show, scribbled and tacked to the walls in the room where we write our songs, I sound like an arrogant creep. Really, I swear, songs like "The Thrill of the Chase" make sense within the context of the project. But with the written words alone, understanding the nature of the character that I'm presenting in the overall art-statement of The Immaculate Conceptions is impossible. So, if you happen to stop by the downtown pad where guitarist Mac Ming and I live and make our art, take the scribbles around the room with a grain of salt. You'll eventually understand why the cockiness of the words is relevant.



As for the progress of on-going projects, Miss Chloe Claustrophobia (the ever-evolving concept-art project referred to and explained in quite a few past entries, most recently here) has taken another unexpected turn, which is once again perversely appropriate to the concept that she is intended to address. The mannequin, in its physical form, is now across the country from me, may very well never be modified in the ways that I had intended, has no new image-renderings available to me, and is apparently (to my great aesthetic displeasure) dressed as a belly-dancer. This is all so very far from the future that I had envisioned for her (that's always the way, isn't it?), but that fact in itself is almost sickeningly and ironically appropriate to her intended concept. Expect to find "her" popping up as the female subject of several songs by The Immaculate Conceptions in the very near future. See the reference already? "The Thrill of the Chase"? Eh?

In a past entry, I mused about my inability to finish a certain painting after putting it down to work on another that was very different in style, mood, and inspiration. I recently realized that, although I finished the work a couple of months ago (and presented it to my mother for Christmas, at least a year after I had intended to do so initially) I had never posted an update on what became of that work. Basically, I ended up having to reinvent it, and the meaning and purpose of the painting became very different than I had initially set out to create with it.

This..


...became this.

"Ill Seen Ill Said In Time, Words, and Decay."

If you can tell me what the new title of the work is a reference to, I'll give you a cookie. If you can venture any sort of theories about the relevance of the reference, I'll give you a whole lot of cookies, or something far better.

In another prior entry, I had mentioned my search for a certain set of books. Thanks to Jenn, who read my post and tracked a first-edition set down to a book-dealer in Texas via the internet (which she is apparently far more savvy with than I am), I was finally able to procure copies of the out-of-print texts. Come to find out, however, the preface of the work, which is the element that my use of the text most directly pivots around, wasn't added until the second(?) edition of the work's publication. So, now I have a couple beautiful copies of limited first edition books, but I'm still searching for what I needed from the perspective of scholarship.





I think that's all for now...So much for this entry being short.

Non Serviam, Shades of Gray

I return, now, to blurring and combining artistic mediums. Thus, as examples today I present two pieces of my own work that rely on one another for conceptual strength.

"Shades of Gray."

As I sit
Meticulously mixing my
Shades of gray
On the patio
Wishing that you
Were across from me,
Spewing beautifully your
Scholarship or
Philosophy that you
Called by another
Name, discussing our
Various shades of
Gray, angles of
So very not binary
Differences in perception,
Of the shades
Of the colors
Of our lives
And views and
Lifestyles, the
Difference in the
Shade of which
Did nothing but
Prove that our
Modes and our
Dispositions (the
Fundamentals of the
Blacks and whites that
Must most intrinsically
Originally make us up)
Most notably and
Startlingly were
(or were to become)
So strikingly similar.

Even the shades
That sometimes must
Strike each others’ eye
As vile or a bit
Jarring at least
Were shades that we
Mixed for ourselves,
Splashed across our
Own palettes, and later
Regretted of ourselves,
Or colored over with
A different shade…
I’m sure that you
Can see this, Darling,
The pigments in each of us
That bother each other
Tend to be the ones that
We suddenly start to
Regret using ourselves.
In short, the tones
That we each
Call the other out on
Makes each of ourselves,
In turn, by reflection,
Better.

Mars Black and
Titanium White sit
Drying on my palette
With very little wet
On the canvas,
As I’m having a hard
Time recovering the
Work that I dropped
To commence the painting
That I did for you.
I’m realizing that work required
A bit of a different style,
A bit of a different set of
Skills than my
Usual, much like
You yourself do, but I’m
Realizing that it
Very well may have
Made me a better
Artist. After
Certain techniques that
I developed to
Mix the greens to
Form the tree that
Includes us, includes the
Cycle of the things that
We arguably must serve,
The blacks and whites and
Shades of gray on
The work that I
Put away for a bit
Seem challengingly
Simplistic, although more
Definitively structured.
My brush keeps
Drifting to the tone of
Surreal that, through
Painting for you, I
Came to realize, more
Thoroughly captures
The gradients of the
Hue of who we are,
Who we are to be and
Paint ourselves as,
But obscures the precision
Of past architectural
Lines. Gobs of dried
Acrylic still sit in the
Divots of my palette
This morning, with very
Little used. I left it
To mix and mold
Our shades and shapes of
Black and white to
Compatible grays together,
The way, I feel,
That we are both best served.


"Non Serviam; The Things That We May and May Not Serve."
(A self-portrait(of sorts) in acrylic paint, oil pastels, and collage-elements that aso appears on my DeviantART profile, and was presented as a gift to Hysteric Noir, the other individual depicted in the work.)


I will analyze the connections between the two in my next entry.

Miss Claustrophobia's future, as it relates to her past and present, as it sculpts her identity.

Miss Chloe Claustrophobia, as she appears in the photographs posted in earlier entries of this blog, is not in her completed state. Those photographs are depictions, each an individual completed work of art in-and-of-itself, of a raw-material, prior to its use, for a larger piece of art. Miss Claustrophobia the mannequin is merely a canvas, on which Miss Claustrophobia the piece of art, which is merely a depiction of a single set of facets of Miss Claustrophobia the concept (the larger piece of art), will be rendered. The prior-posted photographs are therefore similar to art photographs of a blank canvas, positioned at particular angles, in order to make a statement.

Is one phase of her existence, one particular medium of art with which her concept is capture or exemplified, more genuinely, therefore, who "Miss Claustrophobia" is or is intended to be than another? Absolutely not. Is the pre-modification mannequin that graciously sat as my model for the photography set less authentic, complete, or representative of the themes that I use her to demonstrate then the form that has been muddled and modified with paints and words and sculptural elements? Absolutely not. Much as an individual at a prior stage of their development is still relevant to understanding their identity, even if their views or dispositions may not agree with the present juncture, each stage of rendering of the identity of Miss Claustrophobia is relevant and crucial to a complete understanding of her conceptual identity. Miss Claustrophobia as a naked, unadorned mannequin, struck and captured into a variety of poses by the click of a camera-shutter, can tell us things about the ideas being expressed that the post-adornment version of the same physical mannequin cannot after the time has been taken to spell out on her the physical ideas that I wish her body to eventually express.

I might be getting ahead of myself a bit. Miss Claustrophobia has yet to actually be modified or adorned.

In fact, she currently sits, still naked, in a corner of my office/ bedroom/ studio, with a ribbon on her neck, placed there on a whim one night and yet to be removed. The ribbon says "Bride to Be," and was worn by my frequent (and oftentimes reluctant) performance-art collaborator Hysteric Noir to a suicide-themed costume-party (get it? social suicide? yeah, ok, hardly anyone else seemed to think it was as funny as we did, so you're not alone...). The whim worked. The "Bride to Be" ribbon, and the reason that it was initially purchased and worn, fits the concept of the project rather well, and is therefore an appropriate adornment for Chloe at this phase of her development.



(I'm betting that the reader is now beginning to think that this sort of description seems a bit over-wrought and superfluous. And I agree. So I will alert you now to a shift in narrative modes. I am now relying on abstraction to illuminate, which I thoroughly believe not to be the non-sequetor it might initially seem.)

Performance art? Yes, this factors into the identity of Miss Claustrophobia as well. Does this mean that as one of the medium facets of the project I have a large scale and conspicuous performance-art exhibition planned? As of now, absolutely not.

However, this project is one which deals with, at its most simplistic level, issues of identity.

It is my firm belief that an artist's creation of his own identity is inherently an act of performance-art.

Therefore, individuals who come into contact with artists who are aware of this act of identity-creation that they are engaged in factor, whether they wish to acknowledge it or not, as collaborators in the demonstration. They are participants, and often even raw-materials, in the piece of art being constructed.

The relation of my anecdote about the suicide-themed party, and the subsequent placement of the ribbon on Chloe's neck, where it accidentally seemed to make sense to me as a facet of the mannequin's current identity, is in-and-of-itself a piece of art (another raw material) that I am utilizing to demonstrate a particular angle on the overarching idea.

This entry itself, therefore, is (hypothetically) merely another piece of art, another aspect of Miss Chloe Claustrophobia's identity. As will, and has been, every other, subsequent and to come.

A bit more on Miss Claustrophobia...

OK, I'm going to try to pick up where I left off in my convoluted attempt at an introductory synopsis of the Miss Chloe Claustrophobia project.

In case you are having a hard time deciphering what I'm saying through my banshee-shreaks in the recording posted in my last entry, I'll begin by posting the lyrics this time around. Yes, they're vague. Yes, they're minimal. Yes, they're nonspecific. Yes, that's part of the point.

She came to me late one night, and she said
'Stay out of the snake pit.'
I don't know what she meant when she said,
'Stay out of the snake pit.'
Miss Claustrophobia's seen all of the men
Fall into the snake pit.
I don't know what she meant when she said,
'Stay out of the snake pit.'

When she appears, and I'm just
Nervous, and shaking,
It seems that she's naked and thinks
I'm looking for advice
But when your illusions have crumbled,
She'll leave you where you are,
In your bed, to sweat.

(I should also take this time, before I move on from the musical element of the project, to acknowledge my collaborators in this phase. "The Plea of Miss Claustrophobia was recorded by Wes Hopeless and myself at The Hopeless Estate in El Mirage, Arizona. Wes Hopeless played drums, spoons, various electronic noisemakers, synth, and back-ground screaching on the track, and I contributed the lead vocals, guitar, bass, synth, and tambourine [the bruises and gouges on my right thigh have still yet to completely go away]. In the video, Lady Hysteric Noir is playing bass, and videography was accomplished, with rather extreme constraints of space, by a gentleman named Buddy. The instrumental elements of the song were composed by myself, Wes Hopeless, and Hysteric Noir. As always, I am extremely indebted to and grateful for my collaborators.)

With the ideas of the dream and the conceptual attempt of the song still fresh in my mind and yet to be completely expressed, I began collecting raw materials for a visual facet of the project to further express the concept in mind. The primary find, in this regard, proved to be a mannequin that Chris Castle and I (yes, the notorious nihilist sculptor and performance artist Chris Castle) jokingly began referring to as "Chloe" (no, I don't remember why that name seemed appropriate. Ask Mr. Castle, he might...)

The first phase of artistic creation into which Chloe (it soon became obvious that the themes that Chloe was procured with the intention of expressing rendered her and "Miss Claustrophobia" the same symbolic individual, thus "Miss Chloe Claustrophobia") factored was a set of photographs, using her in her pre-modified form as the physical subject.

This is an image from that set of photographs, titled "Stubborn and Swank."


In my next entry, I will post other images from the set of my photography featuring Chloe, as well as discuss, from a critical perspective, how these photographs factor into the overal project.

An Introduction to Miss Chloe Claustrophobia.

One of my primary intentions with this blog involves the construction of a centralized location from which to synthesize and blur the lines between art-genres as they weave in and out of each other as the multiple mediums that I work with engage in the same projects from multiple simultaneous angles in attempts to more thoroughly adress the same concepts.

Whew, that was a mouthful. Basically, this blog is a place for me to put it all together, to place in the appropriate context {the piece of music} that needs {the fiction sketch} that needs {the visual image} that was rendered in response to {the critial review} in order to fully make sense or create the sensation or idea that it is intended to. (obviously all {brackets} in the foregoing statement are examples interchangeable with countless other variables. I think you get the point.)

This catch-all idea is also intended to afford me the oportunity to address other topics that enthrall me, using my own work as examples, such as the lack of binary and objective certainty in matters of creativity, such as ambiguities as to the "source" or "credibility" of artistic creation (see my prior post about windchimes), and similar ambiguities about artistic "end-results," questions of which stage in the artistic process constitutes the "artistic product." It is this last question that I wish to adress by introducing my readers to a multi-faceted project that I'm engaged in. That project is, loosely, the construction of the artistic identity of an otherwise non-entity that I call "Miss Chloe Claustrophobia."

Miss Claustrophobia, as a project, is currently still in the nascent stages. I am by no means currently exibiting a completed work, as the "completed work" of the project will involve many elements and may never completely exist, although many of the elements leading up to the hypothetical "completion" of the project will be exibited in "completed" forms. Many "completed" pieces of work will therefore be exhibited as components and raw-materials for a larger work-in-progress. In theory.

This project is not a puzzle. If you watch the updates on the project that I leave in this blog waiting for some sort of thorough-going "answer" as the project gets closer to "completion," you will be sorely disappointed. I don't believe in binary "answers" to artisitc questions, or "statements" made by art that can be "cracked" so definitively that they hit you like the punchline to a bad joke. Much of the concept itself has to do with the necesity for conceptual subtlety and the lack of finite answers to questions of statement, purpose, and intent.

Miss Claustrophobia began as a dream. A very vague dream that I remember almost nothing of, at that. But a dream that left me with a very definite impression of a better understanding of latent human (and personal) phobias, obsessions, and insecurities upon waking. The day after waking from this dream, I wrote a song with my Doom-Rock band The Green Sea called "The Plea of Miss Claustrophobia" that captured the concepts of the dream as they seemed in my mind at the time, in an appropriately vague, elusive, and frantic manner.

This is the song that therefore began the project-


This is a video of The Green Sea performing that song while writing it the day after the dream that inspired it-
Snake pitt

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I will continue this explanation, with some of the images and ideas that followed, as well as future plans for the project, most likely tomorow.

Until then, stay out of the snake pit.