After years of service, Arthur departed the material plane today.
He died as he lived—free, high and a-dreaming of love, ‘neath vultures’ terrible gaze.
Thank you, and love to all.
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Mar 13, ’11
11:57 PM
“FOR LEONORA CARRINGTON” BY PETER LAMBORN WILSON (Arthur No. 31, Oct. 2008)
This poem by Peter Lamborn Wilson was published as a letter to the editor in the final issue of Arthur, No. 31 (Oct 2008). It was in response to the piece by Alejandro Jodorowsky in the previous issue, an excerpt from his newly translated memoirs, The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky, detailing his informal apprenticeship to Leonora Carrington in Mexico City in the late ’50s…
FOR LEONORA CARRINGTON
# 1
Mexico City is absolutely.
Or was.
With a claridad that would’ve seemed
glossy as bone except for the fecality
of its plutonian fruit. Especially
Leonora Carrington – the secret hardness
of colonial baroque – its refusal to be
reasonable – its crown of owls
#2
Chocolate is Mexico’s great
contribution to Surrealism.
With unbroken incantations in the
voice of a lion prepare (on wild rocks)
a soup made of half a pink onion, a bit of
perfumed wood, some grains of myrrh, a
large branch of green mint, 3 belladonna pills
covered with white swiss chocolate, a
huge compass rose (plunge in soup for one minute)
Just before serving add Chines “cloud” mushroom
which has snail-like antennae &
grown on owl dung
#3
As modern Hermeticist she ranks with Fulcanelli
a Madame Paracelsa who tells yr
fortune in the sense of buried treasure.
It seems you yourself have psychic gifts
which are only exacerbated by her soups.
Molé as Dalí realized surrealizes all
dishes via its resemblance to excrement
e. g. over boiled lobsters (serve
with pink champagne). Shit you can sculpt.
#4
Like gunpowder which was invented solely
to exorcize demons – a secret passed
along the Silk Road to Roger Bacon
who unfortunately leaked the recipe
to the uninitiated – Carrington
embodies both the siesta & the
anti-siesta. A Madam Adam
with a handcranked gramophone with a horn
lacquered black with gold pinstriping that
plays only beeswax cylinders of Erik Satie
or Gesualdo. Here alone exile
attains an elegance & impassibility known
only to stoned Rosicrucians.
#5
To live absolutely. A tricky trajectory between
clinical dementia & the sloppy lace
curtain Irish kitchen gemütlichkeit that
usually passes (present company excepted
of course) for life outside literature &
even for true love. Or else it’s
the altitude — mushrooms & chocolate — under the
asphalt the bloodsoaked landfill —
cactus cowskulls &
drunken fusillades of flowers.
(NOTE: Soup recipe by L. Carrington; see The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky.)
Peter Lamborn Wilson
New Paltz, New York
Mar 13, ’11
10:56 PM
“HIGH FIVE: Detroit’s visionary MC5 receive a film tribute that aims to rewrite rock history” by Steffie Nelson (Arthur No. 9/March 2004)
Originally published in Arthur Magazine No. 9 (March 2004) (available from The Arthur Store. This film has been held up for commercial release since 2004. There is a Kickstarter campaign to get it cleared for release here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/orchide-detroit/mc5-a-true-testimonial
HIGH FIVE
Detroit’s visionary MC5 receive a film tribute that aims to rewrite rock history
By Steffie Nelson
On New Year’s Eve, 1972, the MC5 took the stage at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, a vast psychedelic venue where they’d held court as the “house band” between 1966 and 1969. Their live shows had been so incendiary, the five band members so arrogant, that even a huge star like Janis Joplin, no slouch in the live department, once refused to go on after them. This gig, their swan song as it were, was sloppy and dispassionate; the ghosts of past glories even more unforgiving than the sparse, cynical crowd. Guitarist Wayne Kramer took off mid-performance to go cop dope, and the MC5 never played again. Kramer and guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith were 22; singer Rob Tyner and drummer Dennis Thompson were 24; bassist Michael Davis was 26. In the end they’d effectively been “pulled apart by the killer forces of capitalism and competition,” which their manager John Sinclair had railed against, perhaps presciently, in the liner notes to their now-legendary debut album Kick Out The Jams.
The MC5 hold a curious place in rock history. Their ascendance represented a moment in America when art and commerce converged, when all that was vital and visceral was also the pinnacle of hip. As the flamboyant and badass musical mouthpiece of the White Panther Party, the MC5 did embody the soul of the late ‘60s counterculture: one foot in the optimistic past and the other in the disillusioned, deadly future; one hand holding a guitar, the other a shotgun. It’s an irresistible image, one which was unappetizingly co-opted by Levis last spring for a series of T-shirts. A promotional performance in London by the three surviving Five (Rob Tyner suffered a fatal heart attack in 1991; Fred Smith died of heart failure in 1994) was seen by detractors as a final, sad sellout.
The question of whether or not the MC5 failed at the end of the day is much debated in the riveting feature-length documentary MC5: A True Testimonial, directed by David Thomas and produced by Laurel Legler. All parties agree, however, that for a fleeting, incandescent moment the MC5 were “at the center of the yin-yang,” as Michael Davis philosophizes in the film, “and it was our job to keep it going in a positive direction.”
But the proverbial yin-yang was already spinning into darkness, and it took the MC5 with it. Like fireworks on the fourth of July, they rose with a bright, beautiful bang and, as far as mainstream America was concerned, disappeared with a puff of smoke into the night. They were, ultimately, sacrificial – the artistic entity that was the MC5 didn’t survive more than seven years—but their legacy has continually inspired legions of punks, rockers, artists and freaks, who got turned on to their music through word-of-mouth, or more than likely though the persistent echo of a call to arms that rings with timeless resonance: “kick out the jams, motherfucker.”
As David Thomas says, “The people who know, know. The other people don’t get it.” The Chicago-based Thomas and his wife Laurel Legler began working on MC5: A True Testimonial in 1995, spurred on through financial troubles and licensing hassles by sheer love and respect and the determination to do justice to these American legends. As Legler points out, few bands have received this sort of filmic treatment, and if they have their way MC5: A True Testimonial will revise rock history. On the eve of a limited theatrical release and the worldwide release of a nearly four-hour DVD edition of the film (including deleted scenes, complete live performances, interview outtakes and fan testimonials), David Thomas and Laurel Legler are ready to testify.
ARTHUR: What was your initial personal attraction to the story?
LAUREL: The impetus for my even looking into this was a close friend of mine who was a rock ‘n’ roll journalist had made some MC5 compilation tapes for me, and he said, ‘Someday before I die, man, I’d like to see a movie about those guys.’ And I thought, I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. And I started looking into it, and it’s like, there’s nothing written about these guys, I got nothin’ here, what’s the deal? And of course that was what piqued my interest—what happened? These guys looked fabulous! They’re fabulous and scary and incredible and their music was astonishing. So it started out with a sense of mystery…And the first thing we had to do was contact some of these folks to find out if they were even interested in having a film made. We didn’t presume anything. We didn’t step into this and say, ‘We’re going to make this movie and here we are, deal with us.’ It was quite the opposite. And everybody said yes. So once everyone was on board it gave us both the permission to pursue the dream and also the responsibility.
DAVID: We really worked with everybody on this. We couldn’t have done it without their cooperation. It was really a labor of love, not just from us, but from all the people involved. It actually became something of a healing process because obviously there was a lot of bad blood and a lot of broken dreams.
How do you hope that will impact on the audience? What do you think the film’s ‘message’ is?
DAVID: My feeling about this film is that yes, it’s the story of a particular group, a particular time and place in American history, but ultimately it’s the story of individuals who are chasing their dream. And they make some mistakes, and they do some good things and some not so good things. In some ways it’s almost like the MC5 story is the archetypal story of artists, creative people who band against the establishment or whatever you want to call it, and the beauty that wells up from their art in spite of all that resistance. It’s a little bit about that real human drama that happens to everybody in their own lives. Which was why we worked so closely with all the people, to try to get some sense of their personal loss and their personal accomplishment because those are the things that we all strive for. These guys are, on some level, just like you and I.
Considering the state of our nation, is the MC5 story more relevant than ever, or is it more like some quaint vestige of a bygone era called ‘the sixties’?
DAVID: I think it is more relevant than ever. We couldn’t have foreseen what’s happening in Iraq when we started the project in 1995, but I think that not unlike what’s said in our film: it’s all a circle. History is cyclical, and here we are again: embroiled in a war that has divided people in terms of their opinion about it, which could largely be seen as an unpopular war.
LAUREL: Has the country been this polarized since Vietnam? I can’t really remember a time that it was, over issues as important as this. The country really was divided, it says in our film there was a war not only in Vietnam but in the streets here. Unfortunately we don’t have a war in the streets here, I wish we did. I talk to people all the time, ‘Why aren’t we in the streets marching?’ ‘I don’t know, can’t get a permit.’ It’s just ridiculous! …When we started the film we really thought there would be some elements of it that would be kind of unbelievable to younger people—you know, National Guard troops on the streets in their town—and then suddenly 9/11 happened and we were seeing that for ourselves.
DAVID: Who would have thought, a year ago, that the Dixie Chicks were gonna be ostracized for their political views by the very media that brought them to that popularity? I mean it’s not as if the Dixie Chicks are saying ‘kick out the jams motherfuckers,’ but y’know…
Can there ever be a legitimately revolutionary band again? Can there ever be another youth revolution? In a way it’s almost like it’s been set up by the media and the culture so that it can’t ever happen.
DAVID: I think that’s very true, in fact, and that’s one of the things that’s really interesting about the MC5 story. The story happens at a point when the record companies and the media are all trying to get their arms around this thing which is still kicking pretty wildly. There’s no containing it yet, and the MC5 phenomenon occurs before people are aware of the ramifications. I mean, who thought that the Vietnam War would result in Napalm falling out of the sky on villagers, soldiers disabled by chemicals; these are almost futuristic, science fiction kind of ideas. Whereas now, as a culture we’ve had those kinds of experiences, and there’s this continued effort to keep the voice of dissent stifled. The powers of the media and marketing and pop mass culture conglomerations are not the least bit interested in a message that rocks the boat, that bites the hand that feeds it.
What happened with Elektra Records? Danny Fields signs the MC5 and The Stooges at this big ‘signing party,’ and then they were dropped six months later. What do you think the label expected from them when they signed them?
DAVID: When Elektra Records signed the band in the fall of 1968 we were just beginning to hear the first rumblings of what came to be called ‘the revolution.’ And Danny Fields has told us that Jac Holzman and Elektra Records really saw this revolution as a money-making thing. Here was this group that was the ‘band of the revolution’ and for a brief period all the record companies were really jumping on that bandwagon. I remember there was a Columbia Records print ad at the time that had a picture of a protester inside a jail cell and the caption to it was: ‘But the Man can’t take away our music.’ And it was really this whole idea of packaging the revolution. What happened, though, as John Sinclair tells us in the film, ‘We were being the people that we said we were.’ They meant it. The total assault on the culture: rock ‘n’ roll, dope, and fucking in the streets—they meant it. And I think that was a little too hot for Elektra to handle.
LAUREL: They weren’t good little soldiers for the record company, and as we all know, if you’re going to be successful with your record company the record company has to like you. And they would show up at the offices and they would smoke pot and they would be loud and all these things were happening. They were just getting signed and the CIA office in Ann Arbor is bombed [an act that was widely attributed to the Trans Love House]…
DAVID: …And they’re playing the ’68 Democratic Convention [Abbie Hoffman’s Festival of Life protest in Chicago], and the FBI is all over them. Even before the record is released, this is a band that has FBI files. People really did see them as a dangerous entity, because on a cultural level they do represent the nexus, the coming together of a white, long-haired, counterculture, anti-war movement and an increasingly militant, revolutionary, armed, black power movement. Obviously, if there had been a true coalition of say, SDS and Black Panther, there really could have been revolution in America at that time.
LAUREL: We would be completely remiss as the people who made the documentary about the MC5 if we were to attempt to say to people that the MC5’s revolution was strictly a political revolution. It wasn’t. It was a revolution of the mind. Rob Tyner was interested in the mind, he was interested in how culture can change, how individuals can change, and how that collective mind can change the world around you, what energy can do when it’s combined with other energy. So in that sense a revolution is always possible but it seems like it really has to start at home, with the individual making a decision to turn the television off, to stop buying the motherfucking SUVs and to discover something new, take a stand, go to a political meeting, something. But if I were to go to downtown Chicago right now with a megaphone and call for revolution, my ass is going to jail. Like Michael says, ‘We didn’t wanna have a shoot-out with the FBI.’ But he did want to get up on stage and bend minds, he wanted to go out as far as he possibly could with his music and the images and the whole package, the sound, the lights, the music, and change the way people think.
DAVID: Ultimately that’s the responsibility of the artist, isn’t it? To make people think, to make people question their world. Isn’t that the goal of art?
LAUREL: Was it David Cronenberg, who when asked if the artist has any social responsibility, said that’s where the paradox is: that it’s really an artist’s responsibility to be irresponsible. His exact line was something like, when you talk about social or political responsibility then you’re amputating the best limbs an artist has, you’re plugging into the system already.
DAVID: You know, it’s not as if these artists don’t exist and that there aren’t artists who are taking some kind of a stand.
LAUREL: It’s a two-edged sword: you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You go out on this tour and you decide to do press conferences and discuss the situation and then people call you a sanctimonious asshole and tell you to shut up and just play music.
DAVID: It’s not unlike what John Sinclair said in our film: On the one hand they tell you it’s a hype, on the other they throw you in jail.
Let’s talk about the White Panthers. I feel like their history is full of contradictions. Some people say, ‘Oh, it was just a joke, it was the MC5 fan club,’ yet Wayne Kramer denies this. Even the name of the organization – is it true that there was a guy named Panther White?
LAUREL: Yes, there was. He was sort of a con man. ‘Panther White wasn’t the chairman of a chair!’, as John Sinclair would tell us.
DAVID: In a certain sense it’s a con, but there’s a sincerity to it as well – an idealism, a revolutionary spirit. It’s like a carnival barker: ‘Step right this way, you’ve got five seconds of decision. Step right up, brothers and sisters.’ It’s a jive, it’s a come-on, but it’s not what the media perceived as a hype, because on a certain level they do mean it.
LAUREL: Wayne still carries with him the political importance of what the band was trying to do. I think he felt that the White Panther party was important because it was in solidarity with the Black Panthers, that for all their pot smoking, acid-taking and cracked ideas, they did mean it. He says in our film, ‘We were ready,’ and then you see some of the other members of the band and they say, ‘What do I care if they vote for Republicans or live in a commune? I don’t give a shit.’ There was even that sort of division at the time within the band.
DAVID: And even that is a reflection of the culture as a whole. You had people like Martin Luther King saying that peaceful resistance was the way to go, but you also had people like the Weather Underground that were blowing shit up.
LAUREL: John Sinclair will say things like ‘We were fearless, we were righteous, we were connected to the universe.’ In the sense of a revolution of the mind, a cultural revolution, I think it did have an impact and it meant something. But they were nuts. [laughs] They would stay up all night and chew drugs and get up in the morning and try and act out the ideas they thought of the night before.
DAVID: But John was quite serious about the formation of the White Panther Party. [Maybe some of it] was fueled by his legal troubles, because he was looking at going to jail before the White Panther Party was formed–you know, his reaction to the establishment coming down was to become increasingly radicalized and increasingly militant.
Do you think that they needed John Sinclair to survive?
DAVID: What John brought to the band I think was really important. If John hadn’t become their manager, would the MC5 just have remained another American garage band? Perhaps. I don’t know for sure. But I think that he brought something very special to the group; he gave them a purpose, a direction, a program, for whatever it’s worth. But at the same time, the thing that he brought to the equation is the same thing that sowed the seeds of their destruction.
LAUREL: At the point when John Sinclair and the MC5 part ways, they no longer needed John Sinclair. It clearly wasn’t working, from a professional or personal standpoint.
DAVID: At the same time they had changed record labels, this guy Jon Landau had come in, and Sinclair had already been convicted, he just hadn’t been sentenced yet. He was waiting to go to jail. As Michael says in the film, ‘Here’s our manager. How’s he gonna manage our business if he’s in jail?’ It was pretty ludicrous. And there were people from Atlantic records that were saying, ‘This whole Trans Love Energy thing, this White Panther thing, this shit ain’t working. Fellas, half your money is going to support all these hippies that are living in this commune. You gotta split from this.’ And that Back In The USA record is a reflection of that change in their aesthetic. John Sinclair’s assessment of that record is that it’s complete crap. But he made the arrangement that brought in Jon Landau in the first place. He sows the seeds of what the band would continue to be at that point. It’s interesting, it’s full of contradictions. That ultimately is why we could spend seven years on this film, because the deeper we got into it, the more interesting it became.
LAUREL: I think that we continue to be intrigued and surprised by the complexity of these people, individually and collectively. There was something truly magical that happened when these five guys came together, it’s undeniable. I think they tapped into energies, I think they did tap into the universe. I think that had the equation been different it never would have been the same. I just continue to fall in love with their complexity and their intelligence and their mystical side and their magical side, and they’re all still like that today.
You named your film production company Future/Now Films, which is the name of an MC5 song. What do you think they were plugged into 30 years ago that we weren’t ready for?
DAVID: ‘Future/Now’ is a Rob Tyner-composed song and those are Rob’s lyrics, and specifically, the line from the song that we had in mind when we named the company was, ‘The future’s yours right now, if you rule your own destiny.’ And that was the idea we were coming from with this thing, even before we could get funding, that we had to do this. I don’t think this was a case where we just said, ‘Hey, let’s do this groovy movie about the MC5!’ It didn’t really work like that. There was a whole series of synchronistic events, the witnessing of occurrences, everything in our lives had led us to this weird crossroads where we could take five seconds of decision and decide either that we were gonna make this MC5 movie or we were not…My favorite part is the very last line of the song, and Rob Tyner goes, ‘the key to the mystery…’ [thinking the phone has been disconnected] Hello? Yeah, that’s it. Ya get it? Fill in the blank, it’s up to you. It’s all here for ya, I’m givin’ it to you. I think he’s really amazing. I think that he was a shaman, and I think that he was a magically inspired person. On the liner notes of the first album, Rob Tyner is quoted as calling the MC5 ‘a working model of the paleocybernetic culture in action.’ Right? 1968. What the fuck does that mean? Except that now we are, arguably, paleocybernetic.
What do you think he meant by that?
DAVID: I think that he saw the MC5 and the process that the MC5 was going through as a model for the types of processes that we might actually be going through in the future. For instance an artist could work with other musicians in a tribal and/or communal setting, cut off from the influences of mainstream culture, and develop their individual ideas—compose, record, and actually get their music out to the masses, separate from the corporate power structure.
Do you think that there’s something about what happened in Detroit and with Trans Love Energies before they recorded Kick Out The Jams—like it was this self-contained universe or laboratory where all this stuff could happen, and then once they took it outside of that environment it lost…
DAVID: …the energy is dissipated? Perhaps. I mean, I think that there are a lot of really deep and interesting ideas that percolate throughout this whole MC5 thing. There are ideas of music and art as shamanistic and/or magical processes, by which one opens the gates, so to speak, by which one perhaps communicates with other levels of consciousness or being, other energy forms. There are interviews with Rob Tyner from as early as 1967 where he’s talking about music and sound’s ability to alter the molecular structure of the human body, and in fact we know that to be true now. These theories are confirmed, that if you play tones at the proper level, you can get people to perspire or feel anxious or feel calm. You can in fact affect their consciousness and their physicality. Rob used to refer to it, ‘They have to get the music in their meat.’
That’s very William Burroughs.
DAVID: Exactly. And he was a great fan and reader of Burroughs. It’s like that Parliament/Funkadelic thing, ‘Free your ass and your mind will follow.’ These ideas are all in there. There were ideas within the MC5 performance—not always conscious—which were drawing upon whole realms of ritual performance, like that whole JC Crawford ‘Brothers and Sisters’ speech at the beginning. That was all part and parcel of the shamanistic thing they were trying to do; they were trying to create this orgiastic, ecstatic union with the audience, whereby they could transcend their earthbound consciousness.
What else might have inspired this? I know they considered Sun Ra a mentor…
DAVID: You know what? Can I tell you something? Sun Ra laid his hands on me, about twenty years ago. It was in the early 1980s, I had just come back from England and my girlfriend at the time and I went to see Sun Ra. It was the first time I’d ever seen him and he was playing at the Jazz Showcase here in Chicago at the old Bismarck Hotel. I happened to be sitting on a corner chair on the two aisles, and at some point he did the processional around the room, and as he passed, twice, he laid his hands on my shoulders. And I looked up into his eyes and they were doing ‘Space Is The Place,’ and I will never forget the feel of the touch of his hands on my shoulders. It was not as if he pressed down on my body, but when he laid his hands upon my shoulders it was like they weighed a million tons. It was the heaviest physical touch, and it was the most profound physical touch that I have ever felt.
Wow.
DAVID: Yeah. And a couple years ago I was relaying that story to Michael Davis when we were in Arizona with him. We were talking about Sun Ra and I said, ‘Michael, you know Sun Ra laid hands on me.’ And after I told him the story Michael looked at me with a very sort of piercing look and he said, ‘You know, maybe that’s when this all started.’
Mar 13, ’11
1:58 PM
“The abyss is something to be looked into, but not the only thing”: Artist FRANK HAINES, in conversation with Eliza Swann
On the Winter Solstice, Eliza Swann met with Frank Haines (above) in his studio to discuss his work for the show “Under the Shadow of the Wing of the Thing,” up now through March 27 at Lisa Cooley Gallery. Their conversations revolved around the subjects of art, philosophy, form and concept as seen through the lens of darkness…
Eliza Swann [E.S.]: Since we’ve been talking about the properties of darkness, let’s begin at the beginning. Darkness represents the Absolute Unmanifest. In mythology this is often represented by primordial waters and the formlessness that precedes form. How does the concept of the Unmanifest figure into your art practice? What catalyzes your urge to make forms? How do you reconcile form and formlessness in your practice?
Frank Haines [F.H.]: BLACK! Darkness, before the big bang, all that was before. All potential. A contemporary metal band, Watain, named their recent album Lawless Darkness. The way they explained it, light is an impulse of restriction and definition. Darkness represents an absence of such restrictions. The dark is the primordial wellspring. While I definitely do not feel aligned with the path the Watain brain is on (satanism), I appreciate and relate with the sophistication of this articulation of the black. Of the absence of light. Of the unmanifest, it is the color of all potential. Light exists inside of the all that is darkness. It is the all pervasive background from which to return to. Look how good any color looks next to black. The black that surrounds the stage of a theater. Maybe there was/is a first cause. But what of the black that preceded it. Is the brain even able of thinking on such things?
E. S.: Restriction and definition are necessary for the act of creation to occur out of primordial ooze. Your work with grids hints at a Platonic geometric conceptualization of matter—a way to use limitation and restriction to understand the living world.
F.H.: Much of the sculptural work I have done has referenced the main Egyptian creation myth: “In the beginning all was only the swirling watery chaos that was called Nu. Out of this rose the primordial mound, of Atum.” This mound of earth rising out of the primordial waters. Something rising out of a bigger something. Such fertility and expansion is a major reason why I have used the color teal for so long.
A grid is a modern invention, a symbol in which to map out and contemplate the manifest. I can’t get away from the grid. It is a short step from a grid to the spider’s web, and then to consider what sits in the middle of that web. Like the super massive black hole, Sagittarius A which sits at the center of our swirling Milky Way galaxy. From manifest back to unmanifest.
I titled my last solo show “Form is the Graveyard of Consciousness.” This was a direct quote from Manly P Hall in his book Lectures on the Ancient Philosophy: ‘Throughout the inferior creation consciousness lies buried in form. Form is the confusing, resisting, limiting, inhibiting, and imprisoning part of existence. Nothing in whose nature even a trace of form remains is capable of absolute consciousness. Form is the graveyard of consciousness.”
Hall’s talk immediately reminds me of the genius of Yves Klein and “La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l’état matière première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée, Le Vide” (The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void), where he exhibited an empty gallery. I’m not sure if it is for this specific show, but Linda Montano told me Klein once energized an empty room by doing a lot of Judo in it, then allowing people to come in.
E. S.: Looking around your studio there is an abundance of demonic imagery which immediately makes me think of the Greek origin of the word demon—daimon. Originally this word referred to a guide which was somewhere between human and god, and carried neither negative or positive connotations. Socrates credits much of his work to his daimon or guide. Christianity gave an unsavory character to demons to ensure that no one would find guidance outside of the church. How do demons figure into your work and your inspiration?
F.H.: 2010 was a really intense year for me. Year of the tiger. I did find it to be ferocious and at times devastating. Elements that were joined together were suddenly and painfully ripped apart. I did not welcome this energy. It was the type of thing best represented in the Tarot card of the Tower. Sudden dramatic upheaval. Like a tiger stalking it’d prey in the grass.
I bring this up because it goes to the root of the idea of demons or the devil. The word devil comes from the greek word Diabolos which literally means to tear apart. This diabolic is the antonym of “symbolic” which comes from the root sym-bollein which means to throw together, or to unite.
Such bringing together and tearing apart seem like the polar energies of this universe as we know it. Matter is eternal, the compounds of matter fleeting. I can resist it and hate it as much as I want, or I can ride this universe wave and see where it takes me. Such a response is best articulated for me in the Tarot card of the Hanging Man. The paradox of an individual enlightened through powerlessness.
E. S.: I wouldn’t say “powerlessness” as much as “surrender” in the case of The Hanged Man. There is a great deal of power in surrender – the trust in the “bringing together” even when you are in the “tearing apart” space. Jesus, one of our more famous Hanged Men, at the end of the crucifixion scene said “Into thy hands I commend my spirit”, words of surrender.
F.H.: I agree with you, but sometimes your hand gets forced. And you find yourself in this place of having to be the yielding branch. While the Jesus man did say those words, prior to saying them he asked his dad why he had forsaken him.
I was bullied into Christianity as a youth. I say bullied because I had no choice and there weren’t any other options. I also say bullied because it is a belief system largely guided by the unsustainable and unproductive tenets of fear, suppression and guilt. In such a system was planted seeds of fear about those things outside the church which were labeled demonic. Life forces such as sexual desires are labeled as evil and shameful as opposed to being sublimated.
While I definitely like to ponder that which is the demonic (as one of many books on the shelf), I don’t fuck with it. Whether that energy is something that a high magician can conjure into a triangle from the protection of his magic circle, or whether it is something deep rooted in one’s subconscious, I’d rather leave that potential energy alone. I state this out of respect, not fear. Josephine McCarthy, a contemporary consecrator and exorcist, is a real forward thinking author on this subject.
E. S.: Exorcism! Absolutely! I had always approached that subject in a Jungian, metaphorical, psychological (disbelieving) way until I began working with intense energy healers who did a lot of very literal exorcisms. I just watched a beautiful documentary by Margaret Mead from the 1930s called “Trance and Dance in Bali”. The dancers enact the struggle between “fear of death” and “the living” and become possessed by spirits during their frenzy – they begin to plunge daggers into their chests without leaving a scratch.
E. S.: In Jung’s opinion the first step toward individuation, or self-realization, is confronting the shadow aspect of the self. In his opinion the key to surviving the descent into darkness, repressed areas of the psyche, and unconsciousness is to remain aware of the shadow without identifying with it. He also saw the shadow self as the seat of creativity. In what way does your shadow self figure into your practice at this moment?
F.H.: I feel like most, if not all, occult or metaphysical practices are best done in tandem with some kind of psychological therapy. They really compliment one another. In this way I think one can best maintain sanity and see that which is above as that which is below.
The abyss is something to be looked into, but not the only thing. Some of the most bitter people do yoga every day (as do some of the happiest). Facing, accepting and shaking hands with one’s darkness is a major step to evolving as a human. Because that darkness is there, always has been, always will be. Whether it is recognized or forces its way out in a terribly awkward way, there it is. Hello. You can do tons of drugs or any other type of medicating but it will still be there until it is faced. I go to therapy. I had to deal with this. The only way out is through.
The multitude of stories in all mythologies are guiding lights, roadmaps to such experiences. They also serve as reminders to how universal that life template is. Facing that dark night of the soul. Thinking you will find an abomination only to find a god.
David Foster Wallace did such a good long form analysis of personal darkness (and so many other things in Infinite Jest). Two passages stand out:
“Time in the shadow of the wing of the thing, too big to see, rising” (pg 651)
and
“As the two vibrations [exhaust fan and violin] combined, it was as if a large dark billowing shape came billowing out of some corner in my mind. I can be no more precise than to say large, dark, shape, and billowing, what came flapping out of some backwater of my psyche I had not had the slightest inkling was there.” (pg 649)
E. S.:I completely agree with you about the occult/psychology nexus . People often ask me how to learn the Tarot – I usually direct them to M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Travelled” and Annie Besant’s “Man and His Bodies” – basically two psychology textbooks. In any “occult” study the “key” or “philosopher’s stone” appears from within – not from an external study of symbology. Meditation is also a phenomenal tool for understanding – in every aspect.
E.S.: In some of your recent performances and photographs, there is an abundance of liquid, pouring, and paint ooze baptisms happening. Water is often associated with darkness and unconsciousness and floods figure heavily in mythologies surrounding cleansing and purging – as in the great flood which destroys the face of the earth and the recedes, leaving one pure human being. What is being transformed during these pigment baptisms?
F.H.: Those color baptisms are a direct homage to the Vienna actionists and most specifically to Otto Meuhl, my favorite of that pack. They were a volcano that keeps giving. I wish more eruptions like those of the actionists would happen today. I have also considered a Tom Marioni piece from 1969, one second sculpture, where he threw a coil of metal tape into the air. Those actions have existed for a very short period of time, becoming these grotesque action painting sculptures that sometimes live on in photographs.
While I think a lot about water, those works seems more like some fucked up mess. They feel closer to blood sacrifice than a baptism. Baptism is a water grave that one is re-birthed from. It must have looked amazing on those mayan pyramids when they were cutting all those hearts out of people and the blood ran down the steps. Tragic, of course, but then we get led into territory of the terror of the sublime. In a recent Wire interview William Bennett of Whitehouse mentioned that his intent was “taking people to places that are completely unfamiliar to them. Basically dragging people into the woods.” He put it so succinctly, as being dragged into the woods sounds at once so sinister yet also transcendent. While the performance work has a long list of identifiable influences, I’ve always wanted it to have a ritualistic framework yet at the same time be short and entertaining! The word entertaining has always been a important criteria, because so much, dare I say most, work that defines itself as performance work in murderously boring and usually embarrassing.
E. S.: I am so glad you mentioned the “terror/sublime” dance – I love the quote by Edmund Burke “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime.” While I definitely thought of you upon seeing Hermann Nitsch’s “60. Painting Action//60. Malaktion,” your drips and pouring also remind me of my Kundalini studies in India. I was warned before beginning that the work could lead to madness if not handled properly – in a sense being “dragged into the woods.” After a day of intense and difficult meditation a common symptom was the sensation of nectar dripping down the top of the head into the spinal cord. In your performance at P.S. 1 when you dropped to your knees to have paint poured over the crown of your head I thought “A- HA.” The sublime.
F.H.: We live in an age where we have so much to inherit. That is a thing to celebrate. We have generations of experiments in music and the visual arts to work from. There are many things in the past that do not need to be repeated, but inevitably are. Why not quote Kandinsky’s opening remarks in The Spiritual in Art:
“Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born. It is impossible for us to live and feel as did the ancient Greeks. In the same way those who strive to follow the Greek method of sculpture achieve only a similarity of form, the work remaining soulless for all time. Such imitation is mere aping. Externally the monkey completely resembles a human being; he will sit holding a book in front of his nose, and turn over the pages with a thoughtful aspect, but his actions have for him no real meaning.”
E. S.: Since we are largely talking about the properties of darkness tell me about “Noiry” from your performance duo “Blanko and Noiry.” I am also curious about the addition of “gray.” The dynamic seemed to shift from Father and Son to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
F.H.: There needed to be three. If you have two things there is always the relationship between them, in essence the third. That needed to exist on the stage, the visual triangle, the Osiris. It is such an instinctive template. It really felt that simple.
E. S.: Tell me about your musical selections for Blanko and Noiry and how you came to work with Chris Kachulis.
F.H.: Chris was good friends with Bruce Haack and did a majority of the vocals for the Haack’s Electric Lucifer. Electric Lucifer became an instant favorite of mine. It has all these forward thinking ideas about light immersed in warm electronic tones. I loved that they were claiming Lucifer in a tone that wasn’t entirely dark or sinister.
I saw Philip Anagnos’ documentary on Haacke (which I want to say for the record really falls short of being a complete film on such a visionary). On it, Chris sang a few numbers from a still unreleased record he and Haack did together (Electric Lucifer 3). Chris seemed like such a weird old tripper, I wanted to know more about him. I contacted the website and they put me in touch with him. I went to meet him at his old job of 40 years, ABC TV near Lincoln Square. I had just started performing by myself a few times. It just sort of evolved from reworkings of midi files I had been messing around with in Garageband. From those templates, we started doing really damaged versions of numbers from the American Songbook. Chris’ brain is an immense database of popular music. Chris has a grasp on most music that was produced in the 20th century and often an anecdote to go with it.
As I said, I had performed before, but they were always super-ceremonial, and based on an equinox or solstice. People were asking me to perform, but I felt like what I was doing was too sensitive to timing and place. It felt like Blanko and Noiry could be the secular outlet for performing. But slowly, the ritualistic elements creeped in and now it exists as a merger of the two. This was further accelerated by the addition of the transitional third entity, the grey one, Reuben Lorch Miller.
Chris is a really special man and we plan to record really soon. I also have some videos planned with him as the star. I really want to commit his performed database to media and not just memory.
E. S.: How does your performance art relate to ritual magic, and what other popular modes of performance do you draw from?
F.H.: HMMM. All the pictures and descriptions of operations of the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn are huge inspirations. I feel like their aesthetics and ideas still have yet to be tapped by anyone in a public way.
But there is such a huge amount of influence, a Nurse with Wound list array and magnitude of life influences. From Jodorowsky to Al Jolson to the Roxy Music pic of Brian Eno to old pictures of the Victoria de Los Angeles to Robert Blake in Lost Highway to Process Church to the long shadow cast by the genius of Genesis P Orridge to Linda Montano to all those actionist trippers in Vienna to Whitehouse to Kevin Drumm to Camus and Absurdism to Beckett trips to Bruce Haack to Sissel Kardel to Flipper to Manson music to Church times to Father Yod to Neil Hamburger to the white man married to the black woman who was a neighbor to the Jeffersons to Waylon Jennings to all the different incarnations of Faust to Kardinal to fucked up energies in Vienna to the Banana Splits to The Theosophy Library on 53rd and 3rd to mineral worship to GG Allin to Marlene Dietrich to Chris Johansen to that weird millisecond after you burn yourself to warm and cold showers to Biff Rose to Israel Regardie to Tarot times to BOTA times to Mason aesthetics to being stoned and alone with the sun out to night walks to Christopher Garrett to lessons from and in Love.
The main point is to make it yours. To quote Linda Montano “Now it’s your turn”.
E. S.: St. John of the Cross wrote “The Dark Night of the Soul” describing the despair that occurs at many stages along the spiritual path – does this figure in to your investigations right now?
F.H.: Most definitely. When does that part end?
E. S.: That’s a good unanswerable question! The poem “Dark Night of the Soul” ends with the lines:
I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
It seems to end in an ego death into mystical love for St. John.
Death is shrouded in darkness because it is a step in to the unknown. There is that amazing scene in the 7th Seal when Antonius asks Death what he knows and he says “I AM UNKNOWING”. What aspects of death both physical and metaphorical figure in to your work right now?
F.H.: It just keeps happening. I feel that work that starts and ends with the intention of being didactic usually ends up being terribly boring and failing in it’s intent. I believe in what can happen through relational expansion.
There is so much to be gained in a misread. Reading meaning into a work that the artist did not consciously intend, that action creates new roads to new destinations. This is one reason why I hardly ever title pieces. I wouldn’t want to guide people in that fashion.
E. S.: One of the primary functions of a shaman is the passage through underworlds and shadow realms to obtain knowledge and healing for people. One could argue that heavy metal bands perform this same function. Can the artist also heal in this way?
F.H.: For the first part of that I’d like to refer to an interview my friend Pat Delaney did with the SF band Saviours. I will let this interview speak to that:
“How do you define Saviours’ brand of Satanism?
I just write about shit going on in my mind and the references to Satanic shit is about my approach to life. Most of our songs are just about our journey; partying, fucking, and having a killer time. No fucking rules. If it feels good, do it – raw animal lust.
Do the members of the group participate in the “”Satanic Alchemy” mentioned in the lyrics? If so in what way?
Yes. Being stoked, doing whatever the fuck you want, and living outside the world.”
I don’t know if I believe an artist can heal, at least through artwork itself. Our mutual friend the artist Linda Montano is most definitely a healer. But she has always worked towards making a merger of her life and her art, to a degree that is largely unprecedented with artists. So she is an exception to that. I don’t want to discourage anyone from trying. I think art can work as one of the best therapeutic and meditative exercises. But whether that exercise needs to be shared with a public is another thing. I am really willing to learn more and more from life and experience about this very thing.
E. S.: The philosopher Gurdijieff breaks art into subjective and objective. Subjective art is compared to vomiting – the artist feels better after relieving himself of nausea, and the audience is left to look at the vomit. Objective art illuminates “the peak and the valley both”, and encompasses the breadth of human experience objectively. I think artists can certainly be curative for the collective psyche. The ideas of Yves Klein, Linda Mary Montano, Jack Smith, and on and on and on have certainly changed my approach to living for the better. Genesis Breyer P. Orridge’s Pandrogyny work is moving culture to a broader place of understanding. As for objects themselves having healing power—I guess that depends on how you view physical matter and the space in between. Having seen a great Sphinx rising out of the sand in Giza I am lead to believe that they can.
F.H.: That’s one reason why I am glad we are friends, Eliza.
Frank Haines lives and works in New York. He has shown extensively in the US and internationally, most recently he has been featured in group exhibitions at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York, Krinzinger Galerie in Vienna, and B Gallery in Tokyo. In addition, Haines stages intense, mystical performances that are frequently timed to co-inside with celestial events, most recently at MoMA/PS1 and Performa09. He also performs music with Chris Kachulis as the duo Blanko and Noiry.
Eliza Swann is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York who has shown her work in the US and internationally – most recently at Guest Projects in the UK. She is currently the co-director of the Heliopolis Project, a storefront in Brooklyn dedicated to experimental art and literature, and a tarot counselor.
Mar 13, ’11
1:10 PM
EDDIE DEAN: Recently Discovered Musical and Sundry Delights (Arthur No. 30/July 2008)
Originally published in Arthur No. 30
Recently Discovered Musical and Sundry Delights
By Eddie Dean
Chango Spasiuk, free concert at the Millennium Stage, Kennedy Center
“I refuse to look like an old woman knitting,” said tango great Astor Piazolla, who broke tradition by always playing his bandoneon while standing. And here’s Chango Spasiuk, another Argentinian bandoneon master, sitting in a chair onstage with his instrument slinking over his knees draped with—a QUILT. But the wild-eyed, long-haired son of Ukrainian immigrants by way of Misiones province looks more like Rasputin than a knitter, like he’s ready to ambush the black-tie Bushcovites gathering down the red-carpeted Hall of Nations at another gala benefit for the masters of war. This isn’t the city music of Piazzolla. This is chamame, a down-home country music like the kind you’d hear at a backwoods wedding in northern Argentina when everybody’s had too much vino tinto and a summer storm’s brewing and the bride and groom have fled the scene. Spasiuk’s chamame has his own touches, a Marc Chagall-fiddler and “cajon peruano” percussionist. His bandoneon is a magic box that breathes, stirring the stilted, conditioned air inside the Kennedy Center, as the chandeliers weep and even the ushers prick up their ears, while outside the Potomac River turns into the coffee-hued, snaking Rio Parana. After the show, Spasiuk talks about his influences: “My father was a carpenter and musician who played at local dances and parties, and my uncle was a singer. I grew up listening to the music from the region of the rivers, the folk music, the polkas and the shotis, and chamame is the strongest color of this mestizo music. I didn’t become a musician after I saw or heard music being played on TV or in a movie or on a stage. Music was everywhere, in every social situation. My music is an utterly happy music but at the same time melancholic and sad.” His favorite musician, he says, is Beethoven.
Magnificent Fiend, Howlin Rain (Birdman/American, 2008)
The Black Crowes have been trying to make a record this good for 20 years, and these young bucks nail it right out of the shoot. Horns of plenty, and heaping helpings from the bottomless well of deep groove. As Greg Allman sang, “The road goes on forever.”
Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost by Tony Russell (Oxford Press, 2007)
You’ve already heard about Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, now meet their kinfolk, the thousand-and-one tongues of pre-Nash Trash hillbilly music: Seven Foot Dill and his Dill Pickles, South Georgia Highballers, Bascam Lamar Lunsford, Red Fox Chasers, Dr. Smith’s Champion Hoss Hair Pullers. They’re all here looking alive as you and me. Old-time music fiend Tony Russell came from England to travel the dusty backroads and knock on many a screen door to find the stories behind the mysterious names emblazoned on the old 78s. The meaty bios are salted with rare photos and period illustrations, such as a Depression-Era newspaper ad for a $3.85 Disston Hand Saw (“Mirror polish, striped back, beautifully etched, Applewood handle, fully carved”) of the sort played by Highballer Albert Eldridge, whose expert bowing “produced a sweet otherworldly humming that anticipates the oscillating electronic sounds of the Theremin.” Seems like it’s always Brits like Russell and Dickens and D.H. Lawrence with the keenest insights into the old, weird America.
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (Vintage, 1990)
Before Sam Peckinpah and Cormac McCarthy, the Spanish-American Southwest had Willa Cather to make an epic of its bleak and beautiful landscape. Instead of horse rustlers and outlaws, the male-bonding celebrated in this novel is the friendship between a pair of French Catholic priests out to save souls in mid-19th-century New Mexico. They’re not just packing Bibles and rosary beads, though, they’re packing heat: “‘You dare go into my stable, you [blank] priest.’ The Bishop drew his pistol: ‘No profanity, Senor. We want nothing from you but to get away from your uncivil tongue.’” Gimme that old-time religion, it’s good enough for me.
The U.S. Navy Band Brass Quartet show at Rockville Town Center
Good to hear the tuba out in the open. A century ago, it was the original Miami Bass, and it can still get to the bottom like nothing else. Except Bootsy.
Maryland Redbud Tree
A few years ago, at a local Arbor Day celebration cut short due to a thunderstorm, I received a redbud sapling in a soggy plastic bag from a volunteer. “Keep it wet and give it some love,” she said, handing out samples in the downpour. It looked like a dead twig with a defeated tail and I planted it knowing it would never have a chance. It has survived but not exactly thrived, a source of annual disappointment: some plain-jane leaves and an antler of spindly twin branches barely taller than my kids. And what about the vaunted red buds? Then, this spring, as if to spite my lack of faith, the little redbud tree burst forth in a fierce torrent of burning scarlet. Its proud, haughty redness rages on.
Cruising Paradise by Sam Shepard (Vintage, 1995)
Lost my wine-stained copy of Shepard’s Motel Chronicles a few years back, but I can still remember entire passages. Even better is this later collection of road pieces from the man who gives Americana a good name. His specialty is digging into mundane situations when nothing seems to be happening and everything is revealed. The sharpest story, “Colorado is Not a Coward,” has a film crew on location in a remote Mexican backwater, where “Not one child in the whole village is crying.” An old peasant rides his mule right into a scene and stalls a shoot, until he’s finally shooed away like a bothersome fly. Then Shepard finds his moment: “The director suddenly changes his mind and wants the charro back. He thinks it might add something authentic to the background, but it’s too late. The old man has disappeared into a mango grove, and the [assistant director]s can’t find him. He’s completely vanished.”
Popkrazy blog
Some people read The Onion, but it don’t make me laugh, and smirking gets old quick. I like my satire savage and unfiltered, not hammered out by committee. This blog site is the real McCoy, a shrine to pop-culture apocrypha past present and future, torn from pages of tattered issues Mad and Creem and beyond. www.popkrazy.com/pop
Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound by Paul Drummond (Process, 2007)
“Tommy Hall, wasn’t he guy who played the jug?” It’s the sort of flip comment from a rock snob that sets you off, like when some boob says Ringo was a crappy drummer or Dylan can’t sing. It’s time to set the record straight. The Elevators had another visionary besides Roky Erickson, and the proof’s in this astounding tome of garage-rock archeology. Lyricist, conceptualist, and yes, a damn fine jug player, Tommy Hall may have paid an even greater price than Roky did for his excursions into extreme non-recreational psychedelia. On the Halloween ‘66 broadcast of American Bandstand, he sounded the battle cry for the counter-culture when Dick Clark asked, “Who is the head of this group, gentlemen?” and Tommy made his immortal reply, “Well, we’re all heads.” A prophet is without honor in his own country, especially Texas in the mid-‘60s, when mind expansion was low on the list of “things to do.”
A Huey P. Newton Story (2001)
I caught this late night at on a motel TV, and didn’t move until the final credits. It seared my mind. Spike Lee directed this version of the one-man play by Roger Guenveur Smith and he wisely lets Smith steal back his own show with a performance that is breath-taking and heart-breaking. If this isn’t already in classrooms, it should be.
“Rag and Bones” White Stripes (2007)
Not since the classic ‘70s duets of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn has male-female repartee sounded so sweet on record as Jack and Meg do here, milling through a yard sale, trying to score a deal on busted trumpets and toilet seats: “Awwwww, Meg, don’t be rude.”
“Eclectic, Reminiscent, Amused, Fickle, Perverse,” by George W.S. Trow (1978)
My old buddy Calhoun told me this portrait of Atlantic Records’ demiurge Ahmet Ertegun is the greatest musical profile ever written. As usual, he’s right. When someone who at 15 saw Captain Beefheart perform with Ry Cooder makes such a pronouncement, you best pay attention. So I did, and I discovered 30 years late a tour de force of Boswellian reportage and pure style. Trow circles his subject, a hypnotic figure of leonine grace and bearing, with the utmost patience and care, seducing the reader the same way Ertegun seduced everyone around him, from record-biz royalty and hipster sycophants to Ray Charles and the Rolling Stones. With all its nuance and digression and episodic jolts, the piece conveys a very simple point: Once upon a time, in the very heart of the dark dominion of the pop music industry, there was a record mogul who not only loved music but loved and honored the musicians who made the music. The money and power ultimately meant little next to the feeling Ertegun had witnessing Duke Ellington’s band at the Palladium in 1933: “They were such great stars. They were such powerful men. There was this thing, you know?”
Conversations With Eudora Welty (Washington Square Press, 1985)
The second-greatest music profile remains “Powerhouse,” a short story Welty wrote in a white-hot draft after seeing Fats Waller and his band perform at a dance in Jackson, Mississippi in the late 1930s. It’s the closest this supreme Southern writer ever got to stream-of-consciousness, a testament to the incredible force and presence of Waller. In one of the interviews collected here, Welty recalls how high-minded magazine editors took the hatchet to the ending, a predicament every scribe can commiserate with: “They censored my selection of a song that ended the story. It was ‘Hold Tight, I Want Some Seafood, Mama,’ a wonderful record. They wrote me that The Atlantic Monthly cannot publish those lyrics. I had to substitute ‘Somebody Loves You, I Wonder Who,’ which is okay but ‘Hold Tight’ was marvelous. You know the lyrics with Fats singing, ‘fooly racky sacky want some seafood, Mama!’” Hearing Eudora give the low-down, a couple things come to mind: First, you can’t keep a good writer down. Two, I gotta find that record.
Julio Cortazar on yerba mate, from Hopscotch (Random House, 1966)
“He studied the strange behavior of the mate, how the herb would breathe fragrantly as it came up on top of the water, and how it would dive as he sucked, and would cling to itself…its steaming crater, its own little petulant volcano.” And all these years here I’ve been slurping my mate and spouting nonsense and flying blind in the face of an indifferent universe, while Cortazar sees an entire world in a gourd of frothing green muck. By God, I want whatever he was smoking.
Olympic Hi-Fi Stereo Console
My neighbor Ruben dragged over this vintage record-player cabinet he found when he was renovating an old row house last summer. I stored it in the garage barn out back and forgot all about it. When the weather broke this spring, I ran an extension cord from the house and found the Olympic standing patiently on its spindly legs just where I’d left it. I plugged it in and damn if the 16-33-45-78 turntable didn’t fire right up, so I threw on a JJ Johnson album (In Person) that was gathering dust nearby. Both the stereo and the record were made in the late ‘50s, an era when a high-fidelity console was also a fine piece of furniture, and both sound great a half-century later. Especially Nat Adderly’s cornet.
Some books to check out: Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer by Bill Gifford (Harcourt 2007); The Boys from Delores: Fidel Castro’s Classmates from Revolution to Exile by Patrick Symmes (Patheon 2007); Gringos by Charles Portis, (Overlook TP, 2000)
Mar 13, ’11
12:26 AM
C & D: Two guys who will remain pseudonymous reason together about new records, plus Stephen Malkmus talks golf courses, McCain (Arthur No. 28/Mar. 2008)
Originally published in Arthur No. 28 (March 2008)
C & D: Two guys who will remain pseudonymous reason together about new records
C: [While rummaging through the teeming mail bin.] Hey, look at this. It must be from that new guy who’s always lurking around. What’s his dealio anyway? He’s what my gran would call a nosey nelly.
D: I think he’s here to like, streamline shit. [Reading aloud] To Whom It May Concern: “In my private meetings with Arthur staff and contributors, we have received many disturbing reports regarding the personal, professional and spiritual-energetic conduct of C & D, or as they fancy themselves, ‘The Arthur Music Potentate.’
“There is widespread unease amonst Arthur staff about C & D’s taste in mucic, which has been described to us as ‘bewildering,’ ‘psychedelic parochial,’ ‘arguably harmful,’ ‘contrary to the public’s interest,’ ‘more narrow than their trousers’ and ‘frankly vampiric.’ I don’t quite know what all that means but it’s interesting.
“Moving forward, I have been unable to confirm that C & D are receiving payola from 86 record companies and nineteen out of our fair nation’s top twenty coolmaking marketing firms, but verification of such nefarious activity is only a matter of time.
“I am also unable to confirm their membership in the ‘Brownie-Meinhaus gang.’
“However, in my own cross-examination sessions with C & D, in which, I am preparted to testify, we did not waterboard at all 
, I was able to determine that they have indeed ‘lost the keys’—their words—for two of Arthur humor/motorcycle advisor Peter Alberts’ Royal Enfield motorcycles; they have indeed borrowed Arthur contributor Paul Cullum’s all-region DVD player for an ‘increasingly indefinite period’; they confess to doing two cut-and-runs at Sugar Hair Salon in Silver Lake; plainly abused Mandy Kahn’s standing offer to drive them to and from various watering holes of ill repute; and, as you may have surmised, it was indeed they — or them? I can never remember ;-( — who affixed ‘Ex Libris C &/or D’ label-plates to all the reference books in the staff library.
“Furthermore, C & D have charged 38 parking tickets to the Arthur expense account since last June. Woe betide their decision to start chillaxing out in Malibu.
“C & D have presumptuously intercepted others’ mail, especially advance vinyls from the Holy Mountain label. They play the Carbonas self-titled LP at bicuspid-crushing volume everyday before lunch. They crack each other up at staff meetings by prefacing every statement with ‘You must learn, we are the Gods of this magazine!’ They are always ordering curry. Plus they’ve used up all the paperclips, and not, I am saddened to report, in a fashion that paperclips were designed to be used.
“The Editor-in-chief, art directors and even the printer have complained that C & D are always late with their copy, which in turns holds up production of the magazine and inhibits crucial cashflow, all for something that, quoting the Editor, ‘nobody really reads or cares about anyway.’
“In my many years of optimal-sizing firms, I have been forced to make many difficult and even gut-wrenching decisions. This however is not one of them! - C & D should be shown the door, and the sooner the better. We will call it a suspension of enduring duration. Now would really be the time to pull the trigger on this. I know people who can do it.
“JUST SAY THE WORD.”
D: [gulps] Doh!
C: I always told you we would are the men who knew too much. [puzzles] But how did they find out about the brownies? I told you to watch out for those new surveillance cams.
D: I thought they were fake. And chicken tikka is not a curry.
C: Ha! And neither is lamb biryani. Wait a second… Fake surveillance cams? That’s a GREAT idea.
D: I know a guy! Just say the word!
C: [cackling] Okay but first let’s get one more column in, shall we? “They” never read this so we can say whatever we like and they won’t know til it’s at the printer, hahaha! The funny thing is we REALLY ARE the potentate around here. But if our services are no longer required here, we’d like to say one thing:
D: SAYONARA BITCHES!!!
C: Because we are in control of the horizontal. We’re the last people that see this bad boy before it’s sent to the printer…
D: Oh yeah! Heh heh.
C: …which means whatever we type here gets printed.
D: Which means…
The Carbonas
The Carbonas
(Goner)
C: They come from Memphis, they sound like Wire and the Buzzcocks, nine songs in 22 minutes. You know what you have to do.
D: Wire and the Buzzcocks? More like attach a wire to your bollocks! [helpfully] And they have a song called “Assvogel.”
C: That’s not a song, it’s a movement. And I think you know what kinda movement I mean…
D: Ahem. It is on the Goner record label. Which is what we are now. Goners.
C: Memphis is the one place I’d be interested in moving to. Start the car, I’ll get my duffel. Here’s to life in exile after abdication!
D: [brightens] I’ve been a goner since the beginning.
C: Being a goner is a serious thing. Who do you think is the original goner?
D: Robert Mitchum, no question. Yeah, that’s it, the Carbonas are the Robert Mitchum of rock!
Dead Meadow
Old Growth
(Matador)
C: I’ve been into these guys since before everyone else!
D: Except for me. I invented these guys. I put a bunch of purple pills in a blender along with a soiled Led Zep patch from my older sister’s jean jacket. Shazam!
C: ‘Old Growth’ is on the shortlist for greatest album title ever, and it’s a pretty good description of the music.
D: Here’s a better one: take a grandfather clock made of diamond-cut crystal, fill it with molasses and drop in on your head!
C: I can’t believe they’re firing you, D. You just keep getting better. Woah, this song is some serious blues shufflage. It’s like a beer commercial for really stinky homebrew.
D: There’s something about this guy’s voice that hits me like a arctic wind. Pass me my mittens. And the b-o-n-g. It’s been a bong time since I rock ‘n’ rolled!
Graveyard
Graveyard
(Tee Pee)
D: Graveyard, eh. Must be a Goth band.
C: Actually they’re not Goth. They’re not even American!
D: [listening to first track, ‘Evil ways’] Right away you know that no matter what happens, you’re gonna at least hear good tone guitar. This is far too good to be American.
C: You are correct sir. They are in fact Swedish.
D: The world’s greatest mimcs. The arch-inhabitors.
C: He pitches his vocal a bit Danzig, a little bit Bobby from Pentgaram. A little bit Jim Morrison. A little bit of the mighty John Garcia.
D: And it must be admitted, a little Cornell.
C: A little bit’ll do ya. This is Ween-quality mimicry here! Reminds me of that band Witchcraft in that they’re going further out. [listening to “Lost In Confusion”] That’s basically the Doors, right there.
D: It is like Witchcraft, but this singer has more hair on his chest.
C: … So, what do you think of that drumming?
D: Kinda…jazzy.
C: Well you know, all those old rock drummers used to play jazz drums too: Ginger, Graham…
D: Keith, Charlie…
C: I listened to this album several times without realizing it. Just kept coming back. I keep coming back to the Graveyard, D.
D: That’s where you’re gonna end up. Might as well get there early and check it out.
Harmonia
Live 1974
(Water)
C: Vintage live recording from krautrock greats Harmonia, never-before-released!
D: How is this possible? Harmonia are some of the original electronic goners.
C: If you turn it up loud enough you can hear people talking—
D: I can’t hear anything except analog electronic perfection.
C: Frankly I am perplexed by the liners which talk that like this Harmonia are barely known, even to konfirmed krautrock fans. Says here, these guys exist somewhere out beyond the “how to buy Krautrock section in your local record shop.” Is this guy insane???
D: There is no local record shop!
C: No, I mean I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Krautrock section at a record store that DIDN’T include Harmonia. And there is a local record shop, actually. It’s not final for vinyl just yet, my friend.
Mar 12, ’11
11:17 PM
BLACK HOLE WHITE MAGIC by Chris Ziegler (Arthur No. 25/Winter 2006)
Originally published in Arthur No. 25 (Winter 2006)
White Magic: Meanwhile, outside the city gates…
Black Hole White Magic
By Chris Ziegler
Reviewed:
Sunn O))) & Boris
Altar
(Southern Lord)
White Magic
Dat Rosa Mel Apibus
(Drag City)
I had Altar complete in my head before I ever heard it: Sunn O))) and Boris together to make the heaviest thing ever, an album that would burst cochlear membranes and the confines of three-dimensional spacetime. Modern music’s two most immovable objects: what would happen when they met? Maybe nothing—in fact, hopefully nothing, and Altar would be pure void, a subatomic drone that would go beyond Sunn O))) and Earth and Flood to the low slow B-flat hum NASA heard coming from a black hole around the same time Sunn O)))’s White 1 came out. “A million billion times lower than the lowest sound audible to the human ear!” NASA said, complete with exclamation point. That was the true sound of the universe, and if any humans could play along, well, here they were: two bands with discographies so colossal that you couldn’t deploy anything less than three syllables per adjective without feeling cheap and weak. (Cyclopean? Titanic? Hephaestean?) NASA called this new science “black hole acoustics” and that was the best explanation yet—better than the New York Times’ cutesy ‘heady metal,’ anyway.
But Altar is the un-heaviest. Six or seven minutes into opener “Etna” (played in the spirit of the volcano that will devour Sicily) presents the riff-vs.-drone grappling match the collaboration demanded, and it is satisfactorily hephaestean. Last year’s Black One and Pink anticipate these moments—Pink’s intro “Parting” especially, though Boris drummer Atsuo rarely pushes a straight 4/4 rock beat, instead mating drums to drone with a rush/recede dynamic that must have cheered the Coltrane students in Sunn O))). Black hole acoustics is science for space and gravity and not amplifier athleticism, though, so credit to Boris and Sunn O))) for Altar’s sidewise moves. Sunn O))) provokes orgasm and Boris melts minds—we know that and so do they, so let’s improv something else.
“Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)” is probably the songiest thing to ever bear a Sunn O))) stamp; Internet drones are straight-facedly calling it “folk pop” and while that’s a bit broad, it’s … understandable. Earth’s Hex had passages of twilight-zone quiet and “Sinking Belle” collects them together: reverbed piano that blooms and dissolves like ink into water with Jesse Sykes (singer from Seattle’s Sweet Hereafter) sounding like Nico at her frowniest, or actually sounding a lot like Sybille Baier, another dissipated ‘60s teuton-chanteuse. After that is “Akuma No Kuma,” an all-synth-no-guitar track (with Joe Preston growling through a vocoder) that fits the fire-and-fog Blade Runner opening, and after that the desolate “Fried Eagle Mind,” a wave of tube tone washing over Boris guitarist Wata’s ghost vocals. “Blood Swamp” has to float back home: rumble finally turns to roar as Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil gets a guitar to sound like something that breathes mud—or blood?—to stay alive. A hephaestean finale, sure, but not the truncated concussion both bands favor. There is clear-to-cloudy precedent for everything on Altar in the million billion minutes of discography belonging to Boris and Sunn O))), but it’s softness as much as the UNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNworgworgUNNNNNNNNNN we’ve known and absorbed. Three songs into Altar, the album start to float. Heavy is light.
* * *
I would hate to just bluntly ask White Magic if they actually believe in magic—too obvious, too impolite. But even a lump like me can tell that Mira Billotte’s songs about trees and wine and sun and sea refer to more than just a holiday fit for Fairport Convention. White Magic sings one thing and secretly means another, or several secret other things aligned in symbolic harmony. The band put a labyrinth on the back cover where they could have put a map. So I can’t say I wasn’t warned.
Billotte and a new set of supporters—including partner Douglas Shaw, Jim White from Dirty Three, Tim DeWit from Gang Gang Dance and noted New York percussionist Tim Barnes—built White Magic’s first full-length Dat Rosa Mel Apibus around her famously agile voice and the cascading piano melodies she plays to match Bert Jansch’s precision fingerpicking. Rosa is gentle on solemn guitar-and-voice songs like “Katie Cruel” (also covered by probable White Magic inspiration Karen Dalton) and “What I See,” but spins into psychedelic experiment like the sitar raga on “All The World Went” and the dub/reggae arrangement (and production!) for finale “Song of Solomon,” which is almost an Althea and Donna song until the accordion starts pumping toward climax. That’s a dizzy finish to a record that begins with a single piano note, and a happy release for the ideas half-hatched on 2004’s Through The Sun Door EP.
Billotte’s voice is (as always) a bird in flight, and she writes lyrics in careful camouflage, packing love songs and lonely songs with loaded notions of sleep and night and sun and light. It’s potent imagery that just begs projection from the listener. One verse of “Hold Your Hand In The Dark” and I was convinced we’d read the same Philip K. Dick essay: he said, “Sleepers awake!” and she sings, “You’ve been sleeping well, my friends/sleeping well/but if you wake, it may be too late.” Her tense mention of hands in chains and waiting in secret are from a particular idea Dick had about … well, too much of this might put this review to sleep. Different listeners discover different things.
Maybe that means Billotte is just writing easy absolutes—like everyone else, she loves love and dislikes… chains? But of course not. That seven-petaled rose on the cover is too close a copy of a Rosicrucian engraving; the translated title “the rose gives the bees honey” was a line used by alchemists to distinguish the search for spiritual truth from the search for worldly gain, and on Rosa’s second song Billotte sings, “Gone was our need for the things of this world/all we had was love.” Rosa feels full of these century-to-century connections. Hidden in this post-Pentangle piano-psych record is something ferociously righteous. White Magic believes in good research.
Mar 12, ’11
11:00 PM
C & D: Two guys reason together about some new records (Arthur No. 24/Oct. 2006)
Originally published in Arthur No. 24 (October 2006)
C & D: Two guys reason together about some new records
AKRON/FAMILY
Meek Warrior
(Young God)
C: [Looking at publicity photo of band] I’m surprised these guys haven’t featured in Arthur magazine yet. They appear to meet many if not all of this magazine’s apparent requirements for coverage.
D: What, they have beards?
C: Yes. I think the magazine is pretty clearly a beards-only policy. It’s pretty clearly where the underground beard was re-born. Or should I say, re-grown. Remember Alan Moore on the cover of Arthur No. 4?
D: That was a beard to be reckoned with. No razors and shaving cream in the Moore household!
C: Total ‘Lord of the Beards.’ On the other hand, Alan’s finger armor stylings haven’t caught on yet.
D: I will keep an eye out for the beard as we check out these records today. I assume there will be ladies, too?
C: Yes, of course.
D: Who presumably are not of the bearded variety.
C: One never knows, does one? [arches eyebrow meaningfully] Anyways, Akron/Family not only have some beardage, they have four-part harmonies, great cascading drumflows, sprawling late Trane skronk, and that’s all on the first track! I saw these guys once in L.A., they were like a devotional Animal Collective…
D: [smiling upon hearing the refrain "Gone, gone, gone/gone completely beyond."] Ah yes. Beyond. One of my favorite places.
C: [ignoring, continuing] … in Oshkosh overalls, without the echo delays. Like Lubavitchers gone Sun Ra or Ya Ho Wha—
D: Say wha?
C: [snobbishly] Those who know, know. [continuing] They were awesome, in complete uni-mind synch. The audience made backward-and-forward ocean ripples and sounds at their command: ‘Shhh, shhh.’ It was beautiful.
BEACH HOUSE
Beach House
(Carpark)
C: Lovely—possibly perfect?—debut album from this girl-and-boy lovebird combo who sound like they’re living down by the sea on some magic moonlit beach that stretches from France to Baja to Bali.
D: [looks at biographical notes and photo] Actually they live in Baltimore. And there is no beard.
C: Waiter, get this man a beard, se vous plais.
D: [ignoring] But Victoria Legrand—
C: Is that a real name???
D: —is definitely a lady. A lady who knows how to wear an aqua dress.
C: [looking at the photo] And a big gold amulet as well.
D: I would say this is late summer music, recorded at the beach house after everybody else has gone back to the city.
C: It’s kind of minimal naturalismo—organ, drum machine, gorgeous female voice: Stereolab, minus le krautrock propulsion. Midway between Brightblack slow-to-stillness, Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” melancholism and Air and another Carpark artist, Casino vs. Japan. Also, what the heck, I’ll throw in that first Bjorn Olson record on Omplatten [Instrumentalmusik: Instrumental Music...to Submerge in...and Disappear Through, 1999]. Nordic beaches. As you can see, D, it’s a very particular, yet universal, mood. I see soundtracks in their near-future. [picks up phone] “Hello, Beach House? This is Sofia…”
D: Her voice reminds me a bit of Sigur Ros. Hey, whatever happened to those guys? It’s like they evaporated.
C: She can really SING, when it’s called for, which is in creamy middle of the album on the song “Auburn and Ivory.”
D: Is Auburn the new Ebony?
C: All the songs have some sophisto pop songwriting going on: bridges, key changes, et cetera. And the sounds… when the organ comes in on “House on the Hill,” it’s like Captain Nemo down in the Nautilus playing pipe organ for the octopi. Whew! Can you imagine these guys with a big budget…?
D: Ahoy! Captain Nemo: ANOTHER famous bearded musician.
MICK BARR & ZACH HILL
Earthship
(5RC)
C: New summit album by underground instrumental speed kings: guitarist Mick Barr of Ocrilim, and drummer Zach Hill of Hella. It’ll tighten yer wig!
D: Well, I won’t need coffee for the next five months.
C: They’re going in for the kill like two old ladies speed-crocheting. Mind the wheedlework.
D: They are the speed criminals who no doubt are under surveillance by the authorities of rock. There’s a NEW MOTHER IN THE TEMPLE if you know what I mean!
C: It does have that High Rise/Mainliner/Musica Transonic thing going a bit. Ah, Japan. Some people may also be put in mind of the Peter Brotzman Octet classic assault album, Machine Gun.
D: That’s a ripping title, “Earthship.” [considers] If you lived there, you’d be home by now.
C: Sometimes they’re against each other, sometimes they unify.
D: I must ask: is there a beard?
C: [looks at publicity photo] Have beard, will rock.These guys are the opposite of Sunn o))): they do as many notes and beats as possible per hour. It’s anti-void music, filling everything with sound.
D: Without the benefit of riffage.
C: There ARE riffs—you just need to adjust your attention to catch them. It’s condensed free rock. Like the instruments are too hot to handle. Except for this one song I keep coming back to… [plays "Closed Coffins and Curtains."]
D: Whoa! What…is…THAT???
C: It’s like some super-processed symphonic tri-guitar. Like what that weird Godley & Creme instrument was supposed to sound like, remember that? The Gizmo. They made a whole triple-album with it, and Peter Cook too. Bonkers stuff.
D: [playing the 30-second track again] I am totally spooked. [musing] Perhaps if Mr. Ocrilim slowed down and contemplated like this occasionally, he’d get to somewhere really rewarding.
C: Rewarding to you.
D: [laughs] Of course, me! Who else matters?
THE HORRORS
The Horrors ep
(Stolen Transmission)
D: [Reading song titles] They have a song called “Sheena Was a Parasite”? I worship them already.
C: Frantic organ and guitar-driven psychobilly freakbeat rock’n'roll by five sharply dressed’n'coiffed Dickensian Brits from the belfry.
D: They look like they live in chimneys and spend all day drinking red wine and listening to The Cramps, Tav Falco & Panther Burns…probably the Hives too, and the Birthday Party and Screaming Jay Hawkins (who they cover here) and Screaming Lord Sutch and of course the right honorable Arthur Brown. I think they like bourbon and some pretty nasty stuff.
C: [listening to “Excellent Choice”] They’ve got a good look and a good sound and they seem up for a good party. They’ll come to your town and help you burn it down. And then dance in the ashes.
PRIMAL SCREAM
Riot City Blues
(Capitol)
C: They’re been around approximately forever. And this is their once-a-decade “rock n roll is dumb fun” concept record, apparently.
[C & D cringe for 15 minutes]
C: Talk about the horrors.
D: Where’s the pooper scooper?
C: Rock n roll should be fun, it can be stoopid, but it should never, ever be tedious. One hates to witness someone failing at slumming. It’s embarrassing to all involved. Does [Primal Scream singer] Bobby Gillespie seriously think this band can boogie? Ha ha ha. Poor Mani…
D: [thoughtful] Every once in a while an object is mysteriously withdrawn from stores by its manufacturer shortly after its introduction. That kind of decisive action may be appropriate here.
THEUSAISAMONSTER
Sunset at the End of the Industrial Age
(Load)
C: You will recall that both members of THEUSAISAMONSTER are members of Black Elf Speaks, which is one of the great band names ever.
D: What did Black Elf have to say?
C: I don’t know, it was this kind of gibberish? But it seemed important. [sadly, as if narration] ‘And Black Elf spoke, but no one could understand what he said.’
D: [helpfully] Maybe he had something in his mouth.
C: ….
D: Or, he might have a speech impediment.
C: …
D: [looking at album cover] Naturally I am wondering, what kind of monster?
C: Probably some kind of troll. On PCP.
D: That’s pretty negative. … Um…. Idiocracy got you down again?
C: Yeah… Between seeing that and re-reading Chris Hedges’s War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning last week, I guess I’m feeling more bleh about human life than ever. The idiots don’t know when to stop. And there’s more and more of them. They want war and fast food and spectacle. They’re bad at learning. We’re outnumbered, and it’s only getting worse because the herd never gets culled, since we lack exterior predators.
D: [considers] No more trolls.
C: What are we gonna do? I don’t see a way out. Ah, hell. Maybe that’s why the industrial age is going to end, as it says here on the album cover. [reading from the press sheet] “Of course The USA Is A Monster wants to turn the tide and prepare us for the time after the lights go dim on Western Civilization’s exhaust pipe party.” Sounds good to me! Let’s engage. [starts “The Greatest Mystery”]
D: YEARGH!!! THUNDERAMA!
C: Whoa. [45 minutes later…]Whoa.
D: A shining path indeed! Was that all one song?
C: Unbelievable, just ridiculous. The Who, Bruford-era Kid Crimson, Oneida, minutemen, Lightning Bolt, Liars, Rush. Homeopathic progrock with a lot of heavy spiritual-political truths and theories (“We are only holograms”) and jokes and accusations (“You’re a liar! And a CROOK!”) and digs (“My favorite subject is…me!”). That last song, the three-section “The Spirit of Revenge”…
D: What a giant marching groover that one is! These guys must be super-fit. I’m guessing it’s a lentil and walnut-heavy diet.
WOLF EYES
Human Animal
(Sub Pop)
D: [listening to “A Million Years”] This makes me insanely happy but I can’t put my finger on why exactly.
Mar 12, ’11
10:32 PM
“SEASONED GREETINGS: Deck the blahs with boughs of holly” by Molly Frances (Arthur No. 25/Winter 2006)
Originally published in Arthur No. 25 (Winter 2006)
THE NEW HERBALIST
By Molly Frances
The holiday commonly called Christmas brings with it general feelings of dread and depression, as well as the intrusion of traffic, crowds, family, chocolate-covered everythings, large rectangular boxes, turtlenecks, and relatives with weird hair giving even weirder gifts. Well friends, I’m here to tell you: It has nothing to do with that!
Whichever winter holiday you choose to celebrate, from the Winter Solstice on down to Kwanzaa, I think we can do it better. We can make new rituals and traditions to define what these holidays are really supposed to reflect: faith, love, and rebirth.
The recently published Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling (Inner Traditions Press) is a fascinating resource to explore the origins and varieties of our holiday traditions. If you thought Christmas was a time to lay low the libido and close your heart for the season, this book begs you to reconsider. Resist the mood-killing family gatherings and neutering woolen sweaters and breathe in the seductive aroma of the ages. The very spices, plants, and incense that make us cringe when encountered in uncomfortable holiday environments have been used for hundreds of years to invoke fertility, love, and magic during the winter “feast of love.” Nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, anise, saffron, ginger and vanilla were used in ancient Roman kitchens in baking and beverages, and many of these spices were considered to be aphrodisiacs. The authors instruct that “in medieval times festive meals were sprinkled to the thickness of a finger with spice powder, most often pepper, nutmeg, and cloves.” So gather the freshest ingredients you can find and get to work on those gingerbread houses, cookies, and spiced ciders to rekindle ye olde ancient holiday magic.
The greatest burden of the holiday season is of course the madness surrounding the selection of gifts, but it needn’t be this way. Why not offer your friends a bowl of steamed kale greens garnished with olive oil, lemon juice and a festive toss of dried cranberries? Tell them you offer this bowl of nutrient-rich greens to open their heart chakras. They will be so overcome by your gesture of goodwill and caring that that marshmallow santa will be thrown to the ground in favor of real nourishment. Give your beloved a pomegranate, the symbol of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. This deeply romantic gift will sweep away all previous longing for that iPod or riding lawnmower they were expecting. Traditional and modest gifts of candles, plants, and incense are often the most potent and symbolically rich. Frankincense is described in the book as stimulating feelings of intense sensual joy and, due to its THC content, can create “pharmacological effects.”
When we decorate and give gifts of green plants and flowers we are maintaining an ancient connection to faith and the hopeful message that winter will pass into spring. This is a time to celebrate the cycles of life, the light that we know will follow the dark winter days. Pagan Christmas reminds us that the Christmas tradition contains many holdovers of pagan rituals that were adopted by Christianity due to their undying presence in the popular mind. The disconnected presence of the living room tree can bounce back to a joyous significance when you consider that “pines are a symbol of immortality and resurrection. The idea that lucky children could find treasure hidden under them may come from the tree’s long history as an object of pagan worship. Like fir and spruce, the perfume of the pine needles and pine resin was considered forest incense.” The beauty of nature can thrive even in the dead of winter—or the suburban horror of Uncle Frank’s den.
Let’s not allow the manufactured and cynical distractions of the winter season to bully the magic from our thoughts. Creativity and passion can inspire us to cultivate new ideas about sharing time and and gifts with the people we love most. The authors of Pagan Christmas point out that even normally bummed-out Nietzsche would perk up in anticipation of Christmas approaching. Instead of dredging your defeated soul to the mall, pay a visit to your local farmers market and browse the bounty of the fall harvest. Spread nature’s sweetest gifts of tangerines or bags of pecans. Plant a tree in someone’s name (http://www.americanforests.org/planttrees) to celebrate the proliferation of nature. Break out of your Jello mold and create a spicy new holiday dish. And If you find yourself alone this winter, as all of us do one time or another, why not adopt a cat or dog? They will keep you warm, and if you feed them they will love you forever. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
Mar 12, ’11
10:23 PM
“Wise Walnut” by Molly Frances (Arthur No. 23/Sept. 2006)
Originally published in Arthur No. 24 (September 2006)
THE NEW HERBALIST
By Molly Frances
“Wise Walnut”
Fall is here. Embrace the wisdom of the squirrel and gather up your nuts. We need them more than they do.
One of the most ancient of foods, walnut fossils have been found dating from the Neolithic period over 8,000 years ago. Rumors of the walnut groves in the hanging gardens of Babylon have been circulating for some time, and King Solomon is said to have often strolled among his walnut trees “into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley” (Song of Solomon 6:11).
In the Middle Ages, the “Persian” walnut became known as the “English” walnut as colonial-minded English sailors carted off loads of the nutty bounty and spread them about Europe, and eventually the “new world.”
Jupiter’s royal acorns, as the ancient Romans liked to call them, bear a suspicious resemblance to the human brain. That makes walnuts brain food in every sense of the word. They’re loaded with Omega 3 essential fatty acids, vitamin E, and minerals necessary for mental and heart health. It’s no coincidence that as our intake of omega 3s have decreased drastically, depression and heart disease have risen. Get this, slim jim: Your brain is 60% fat, and cell membranes will build themselves out of whatever fats are available. Omega 3s are the optimum choice, but most people fill up on omega 6s, found in polyunsaturated vegetable oils and animal products. An imbalance skewed towards Omega 6 fats are associated with inflamation, degenerative diseases, and mental disorders of all kinds, including increased violent activity. Sound like anyone you know?
Dr. Andrew Weil believes that the lack of Omega-3s in our diet is “the most serious nutritional deficiency we have in this country.” This deficiency is believed to be responsible for a wide range of diseases such as alzheimer’s, arthritis, ADD, diabetes, heart disease, PMS, and severe and manic depression. Omega 3 oils are found in oily fish, walnuts, flaxseeds, hemp seeds, and sea greens such as hijiki and kombu. They are essential for retinal function and vision, immunity, promoting good cholesterol, and cancer prevention.
Got the blues? Skip the sundae and go right to the nuts. Omega 3s stabilize moods and increase energy levels. They are also beauty oils, keeping skin youthful and glowing and hair soft and shiny. Get healthy and happy by replacing some of those 6s with 3s. How about a handful of walnuts as a snack or on a salad? How about some ground-up flax seeds? Why not? Let’s all learn how to cook up some delicious sea greens like Hijiki; it’s fun to say and more fun to eat.
Make certain to store shelled walnuts in the refrigerator (up to six months) to keep the oils from going rancid, as they can become carcinogenic. Chopped and ground nuts go bad more quickly than whole raw nuts. You can tell a bad bag of nuts by the smell – if they have the aroma of oil paint throw them away.
Enjoy a bag of organic raw walnuts or whole fresh walnuts from your local farmer’s market. Nothing says “I have arrived” like a big bowl of walnuts on your table and a nutcracker placed just so. You’ll have a potential moneymaker on your hands as well, playing the shell game with your friends. The increased walnut-fueled brain power is sure to benefit your sleight of hand.
Mar 12, ’11
10:17 PM
“A Better Way to Cool Off” by Molly Frances (Arthur No. 23/July 2006)
Originally published in Arthur No. 23 (July 2006)
The New Herbalist
By Molly Frances
“A Better Way to Cool Off”
As spring fever’s eager blossoming inevitably withers into the summertime blues, we seek quick relief among the abundance of icy blended concoctions that our advanced civilization offers us. Unfortunately, though that iced coffee provides a momentary respite on a balmy day, it will also quickly return you to a state of dehydration and turn up the heat of your internal thermostat.
The ingredient for the most soothing and refreshing of summer drinks is probably already growing in your garden. For a deeply cooling drink, brew up a tasty pot of mint tea.
A handful of the fresh herb plucked from your garden and tossed into a carafe of hot water will have you living the good life in no time at all. Be sure to include the stems of the plant. This tea may be served cold as well, but resist the temptation of pulling out your blender. Frozen drinks and ice cream will hold heat in your body and freeze digestion. To really keep extra cool this summer, avoid your freezer and enjoy your summer beverages without ice.
For a truly sublime experience, serve your friends a pot of Atay bi Na’na’. Made from boiling water, fresh mint, a small amount of green tea and honey to taste, Morocco’s most popular drink is consumed all day long. Usually served in ornate silver pots and small decorated glasses, it is customary for three servings to be offered by the host, who pours the tea from a distance of up to several feet above to aerate the brew and show off his skills. Practice this before the guests arrive.
In addition to its cooling properties, Mint tea settles the stomach and digestive disorders, eases migraines, and helps draw out infection upon first signs of a sore throat. The powerful antiviral properties of peppermint are due to its main active ingredient, menthol oil, which opens and heals sinuses, bronchial tubes, and vocal chords. It is also said to create a mentally stimulating and relaxing vibration that reduces stress and anxiety.
So what have we done to deserve this magical leaf? As the legend goes, Hades, god of the underworld, was busted by his wife Persephone in mid-frolic with a hot young wood nymph named Mintha. Persephone, who had been somewhat rudely snatched down to the underworld by Hades in the first place, was in no mood to overlook this infidelity and stomped the little nymph underfoot, transforming her into the plant we know today as Mint. In a gesture of atonement to Mintha, Hades would endow the plant with its sweet and unmistakable aroma.
Persephone may have extinguished Mintha in the flesh, but her spirit has lived on in this most promiscuous of plants. There are few lands that the wildly propagating mint has not traveled to, and few cultures that she has not seduced. As 16th century herbalist John Gerard declared, “The smelle rejoiceth the heart of man.” From Egyptian temples to Roman baths, Mint has been used for all varieties of healing and pleasure. The Pharisees even paid their taxes with it, as revealed by this scolding from Jesus: “Woe to you, Pharisees! You tithe mint and rue and every edible herb but disregard justice and the love of God.” Ouch!
While perhaps more prized for its pleasure-inducing than medicinal properties, the mint julep has been the preferred drink of the Southern Aristocracy. Accept nothing less than fresh mint, water, sugar, and Kentucky bourbon. As one of its key proponents, S.B. Buckner, Jr. warned in 1937: “A mint julep…is a ceremony… a rite that must not be entrusted to a novice, a statistician, nor a Yankee.” He instructs, “Go to a spring where cool, crystal-clear water bubbles from under a bank of dew-washed ferns. In a consecrated vessel, dip up a little water at the source. Follow the stream through its banks of green moss and wildflowers until it broadens and trickles through beds of mint growing in aromatic profusion and waving softly in the summer breezes. Gather the sweetest and tenderest shoots and gently carry them home.”
As Mintha clearly gets around, she has crossbred into hundreds of varieties including chocolate mint, basil mint, ginger mint, Persian mint, Corsican mint and Pineapple mint. All this intermingling frustrated one ninth-century monk, who declared, ” I would rather count the sparks in Vulcan’s furnace than count the varieties of mint.” The most popular forms are spearmint and peppermint, the former most often used in cooking but the latter more medicinally potent.
As Buckner proclaimed, “bury your nose in the mint, inhale a deep breath of its fragrance and sip the nectar of the gods.”
Mar 12, ’11
9:40 PM
BAD GUYS: JOHN PATTERSON on “The Road to Guantanamo” (Arthur No. 23/July 2006)
Originally published in Arthur No. 23 (July 2006)
Bad Guys
The Road to Guantanamo is a thoroughgoing demolition of the lies and unlimited incompetence of Powell, Bush and Rumsfeld says John Patterson
“We are Americans. We don’t abuse people who are in our care.” Thus spake Gen. Colin Powell in reference to the United States’ grotesque and immoral confinement of “unlawful combatants” at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Those remarks would have been news to the prisoners who committed suicide there recently, but also to the three kidnapped and incarcerated young Britons of Pakistani descent known as the Tipton Three—if they’d had access to news of any sort at Gitmo. It turns out that, having also been deprived of access to lawyers, the Red Cross or even their own families, the Tipton Three knew as little of the outside world for two-and-a-half years as the outside world knew of the goings-on inside Guantanamo’s gruesome Camp Delta.
Not any more. Thanks to co-directors Michael Winterbottom (24-Hour Party People, In This World) and Mat Whitecross, the Guantanamo genie is forever out of its bottle. Using interviews with the three men, who were finally released from Gitmo in March 2004, interspliced with harrowingly persuasive recreations of their journey to Guantanamo via Pakistan and Afghanistan, and of their terrifying experiences in US military custody, The Road To Guantanamo constitutes the first corroborated witness account of America’s Gulag to stand a chance of being widely seen in the United States, whose populace has hitherto seemed disturbingly content to snore its way through the progressive dismantling of its Constitution.
The shattering experiences of Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rusal – which included being abducted by Afghanistan˙s Northern Alliance and sold to US Forces as Taliban members (for a cool $10,000-per-head bounty—this is where our money is going?), solitary confinement, torture, 5-on-1 beatings, hoods, shackles, blinders, sensory deprivation and being witness to extrajudicial murders—make for a thoroughgoing demolition of the lies of Powell, Bush and Rumsfeld. American viewers, long accustomed to our child president˙s characterization of Gitmo inmates as “bad guys,” may find themselves asking how their own military could be so fascistic, so cruel and, most dispiriting of all, so fucking stupid.
Named for the West Midlands town where they grew up, the three young men flew to Pakistan, the home of their parents, to attend the wedding of one of their number, but also to enjoy a holiday in their land of origin, in the aftermath of 9/11. Foolishly, they took a side-trip into Afghanistan, where they were caught up in the US bombing of Taliban bases and cities, and then captured in the confused retreat from Kunduz.
Accused of consorting with Bin Laden and the Taliban, the Three in fact had watertight, easily verified alibis. Two of them were—and how hard is it to check this out?—on police probation in Tipton for petty criminal acts, the other had a full-time job. That wasn’t enough for their captors, gut-wrenching proof that American military xenophobia extends not merely to hated enemies, but also to valued allies. Unlawful combatants: meet unlimited incompetence.
The imagery confronting us in The Road to Guantanamo suggests that the United States has abandoned its sanctimoniously proclaimed fealty to such secular gods as Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton, only to replace them with Orwell, Kafka and Koestler. Two years of nonstop torture, interrogation and physical abuse—stress-holds, strobelights, earsplitting death-metal, enforced silence, isolation cells —strongly recall Gestapo or KGB information-gathering techniques, Room 101, Darkness at Noon. All that is lacking are electrodes, waterboards and clocks striking 13. And Big Brother? He’s already here. Learn to love Him.