The Gospel of Saint Marxx (Censored?)

 “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” 

Niels Bohr, founder of modern physics and co-author of the atomic bomb

Bridge: Particle & Wave, Spottless Marxx, 2012

Greetings chosen one! 

Regardless of politics or religion the vast majority of humanity continue to believe in and experience a realty that was shattered over 100 years ago. Specifically science proved that physical matter, as most of us continue to believe and experience it, is nothing more than an illusion of sorts… but it's a very compelling illusion that’s almost impossible for us to let go of because the underlying phenomena are very, very predictable, reliable and, most of all, comforting to naked apes. Who among us could tolerate a sun that doesn’t come up everyday and flickers when it does? 

Nonetheless, any High School physics teacher (who is honest with themselves) will admit that the idea that ‘matter,’ AKA ‘particles’ are like tiny cannon balls existing in a material universe governed by space, time and gravity is 19th century thinking. It is true that the materialistic, mechanical model has brought us powerful technologies like the steam engine, airplane, computer and smart phone. But that still doesn’t change the inconvenient truth that there are no “particles”. Nothing is solid, there are only wave functions and fields.

I’m here to welcome you to the present! As scary as it may seem, it’s wonderful place to be. A place where real magic is not only possible…. It’s already happening! 

Admittedly, the very language we use to talk about these things evolved in the shadow of… well, the shadow. What I mean by “shadow” is that Plato is perhaps the first person to discuss this subject in detail: what we might call the dichotomy between an ideal reality versus a material (but illusionary) reality. According to him we are prisoners in a cave that have never experienced the world outside or the real objects out there which are casting shadows into our cave. Because it’s all we know, we believe the shadows are reality. The truth, however, is that the shadows represent a very limited & superficial version of the truth… an illusion that pales in comparison to the real thing. By now the “fictional” matrix, holodeck or even our very own virtual reality should be coming to mind. I’m here to tell you that physics, biology and religion are all arriving at the same place you just did. In other-words, we are starting to see the pendulums swinging back (at the furthest edges of knowledge) away from materialism and back to idealism. It’s turning out that our universe isn’t a machine with moving parts but more like an information based hologram. The biggest barriers right now to progress under this paradigm are that it’s even harder to research and test these ideas than it is to talk about them. 

Currently the language being used are ANALOGIES, along the lines of “our reality is LIKE a virtual one generated by a god-like supercomputer.” This is not near as powerful and convincing as a METAPHOR stating that “our universe IS a machine with moving parts” that can be tested scientifically and perfectly matches everything we believe and experience. Perhaps the most powerful “evidence” to come out of this computer generated virtual analogy is the opinion piece published in Scientific American on April 1st, 2021 (lol) by Fouad Khan entitled  Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation. His “proof” is that even the most powerful computers ever made have a maximum processing speed. For us, that maximum processing speed is none other than the speed if light. 

Beyond that, the most accurate thing we can say with our current language and flimsy evidence is that our reality is made up of information (think mathematics), a set of rules for how the information can be accessed and experienced (program/code), and (more on this later) a network of consciousness (aka “players/ users”) to access and experience the information according to the rule set. Something LIKE the Internet but awake with a life and purpose all it’s own! “What is the source of the information, the rules and consciousness itself”  are the updated version of “where did the Universe come from, what existed before the Big Bang, etc.?

Beyond the problems I see with the word “simulation” (which implies that our reality is a model of something else)what these analogies lack for me is the warmth and texture of my existence… when I take the time and focus necessary to really experience it, that is. I’m terrible at math so the idea that this is all a computer program is cold, sterile and overly complicated to me. It’s too technical and lacks… well, magic. We are on the right track though but still haven’t found the metaphors, which will be necessary for us to mentally and emotionally step into and embrace our reality.

Since our limited beliefs and language admittedly keep us from understanding the true nature of our existence, I find myself going back to a time before our faulty language and limiting beliefs. A time before history. Back to (of all places) the CAVES!

Without question the mysterious cave painters exhibited a wide variety of intentions, motives, techniques and styles. The thread that unites them all (and them to you and me here and now) is a desire to both represent the cosmos and find our place in it. Their concerns span from our relationship to nature, community, the spiritual and the afterlife. All concerns that are just as relevant here and now (to you and me) as they were to them then.

Werner Herzog’s incredible must see documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) explains that "We are locked in history and they were not." Unlike us, the mysterious people of this time period were also surrounded by a rich and diverse landscape filled with WILD animals and, as theorized in the film by researcher Jean Clottes:

Paleolithic people “had probably some...two concepts which change our vision of the world.  They're the concept of fluidity and the concept of permeability.

Fluidity means that the categories that we have...man, woman, horse, I don't know, tree, et cetera...can shift.  A tree may speak.  A man can get transformed into an animal and the other way around, given certain circumstances.

The concept of permeability is that there are no barriers, so to speak, between the world where we are and the world of the spirits.  A wall can talk to us, or a wall can accept us or refuse us.  A shaman, for example, can send his or her spirit to the world of the supernatural or can receive a visit, inside him or her, of supernatural spirits.  If you put those two concepts together, you realize how different life must have been for those people from the way we live now.”

How different is that from: 

“In the world of the very small, where particle and wave aspects of reality are equally significant, things do not behave in any way that we can understand from our experience of the everyday world… all pictures are false, and there is no physical analogy we can make to understand what goes on inside atoms. Atoms behave like atoms, nothing else.”there a time when humans behaved like the inside of atoms? YES THERE WAS!The question before us now is “how do we get back there?”That question leads down two parallel paths; 1) Human Nature and 2) Paranormal / unexplained phenomena.Before going down any paths I have a simple meditation for you. Imagine a billionaire came to you and let you know he had inherited two islands that were set up as a scientific experiment by his tycoon grandfather and he wants to hire you and your family to spend the rest of your lives (all expenses paid… but sight unseen) on one of the two islands and report back how the experiment is going on that island:One hundred years ago, the inhabitants of the first island were, from a young age, taught the laws of the jungle. All life consists of winners and losers. Survival of the fittest. Status and self-worth are directly connected to how much wealth and power one can accumulate which can and should be achieved by any means necessary, including the the amassing and exploitation of limited and scarce resources and of the losers themselves. In fact, the winners demonstrated superiority and strength entitle them, by the will of both God and nature, to have more than the losers. One hundred years ago, the inhabitants of the second island were, from a young age, taught the laws of “all for one and one for all”. Life is an interdependent system where either we all win or we all lose. We should only take out as many natural resources as we sustainably replenish or life will become unbalanced. From each according to their ability and too each according to their need!Sight unseen, what island do you choose?Regardless of your answer, I’ve tried this exercise out on Twitter and the vast majority of participants believe the islands will be the same, often sighting the collapse and tyranny of socialist countries and always sighting “human nature.” As hard as it is for me to admit, this argument isn’t without merits.One of the greatest minds of the 20th Century that nobody’s ever heard of is the rhetorical theorist, poet, essayist, and novelist who gave us powerful tools to both understand and study human knowledge. Those who have heard of him most likely know him as the guy who predicted the Holocaust but nobody would listen. If you want to scare the shit out of yourself, check out his essay The Rhetoric of Hitler's "Battle.” You’ll be shocked and scared by how much it parallels our current moment.For our purposes here, we’re only gonna concern ourselves with his bullseye definition of “man.” Burke's definition of (hu)man states: "Man is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal, inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative), separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order), and rotten with perfection".If I were going to write an instruction manual for this “man” I’d look no further than the now infamous The Prince written during the Renaissance by Niccolò Machiavelli on how to secure and maintain power and the much lesser known, but equally relevant, The Book of the Courtier written by Machiavelli’s neighbor, Baldassare Castiglione, on how to serve those wielding power. I’m sure you’ll have no problem predicting which island you’ll find Burke’s man on. Sadly, a great deal of human social behavior can, to this day, be distilled down to what I call “naked ape Court intrigue”. And this gets down to the central problem of the second island. If this is human nature, how can we possibly escape it?My answer is that we (including you and me) have another, rarely used, but exceptionally powerful and influential gear. This is the gear the likes of Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad and our mysterious cave painting ancestors were in. A gear of magic! A gear of miracles! A gear of radical equality! A gear if love and healing and NOT fear and manipulation! A fluid, permeable existence, grounded in the present moment but reaching deep into our shared cosmic consciousness(s) that both nurture and sustains EVERYTHING! 

 Czech Please! - My fantasy pilgrimage 

As a kid, like millions of children before and after me, my sacred ritual was eating cereal while watching Saturday morning cartoons. Along with this came fantasies of making cartoons myself. As I got older I let go of this dream as I came to understand the labor intensive (and often boring and monotonous) work necessary to make animation and the outrageous cost of going to art school. In other words, I came to realize I was to practical, poor and lazy to make cartoons. 

The Adventures of Flash Gordon, 1979-1982

Fast forward to smart phones and Apps and animation is now literally at the fingertips of anybody who wants to do it. In addition, I’ve been making paper collages since I was watching Saturday morning cartoons and phone App filters, soundtracks and animation templates lend themselves to layering/ collaging across platforms. In addition the pandemic has given me the time, energy and enthusiasm to play with these new toys. I’m happy to report that at the tender age of 52, I’m now an animator with over 1600 followers on Instagram!  

My animation work is, of course, nothing like Saturday morning cartoons. They range from 15 seconds to one minute and often contain dark and surreal themes and content. My aesthetic has developed intuitively but I have learned the tradition it belongs to is experimental surreal avant-garde animation. Perhaps the most important and influential experimental surreal animator alive today is Jan Švankmajer from the Czech Republic. His signature style is grotesque stop-motion animations of objects reminiscent of the Cabinet of Curiosity’s of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II who returned the court to Prague in 1583, after it had been relocated to Vienna. His animation also draws on the regions rich tradition of puppetry and folklore. 

Sculpture from Jan Švankmajer. The Alchemical Wedding

I spend many hours now doing this art work for no money and very little attention but a quote from Švankmajer keeps me going:

“There's a lot of misunderstanding about surrealism. People still see it through the prism of certain works of art, by Dali for example; they look at it superficially in terms of aesthetics. But there is no surrealist aesthetics; it's a psychology, a view of the world, which poses new questions about freedom, eroticism, the subconscious, and which  attracts a certain sort of people-subversive types. It offers an alternative to the ideology offered by most modern societies, and it's a great adventure; it's tried to return art, which has become representational, aesthetic, commercial, to its origins of magic ritual.” 

The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer 

I’m performing magic rituals! That’s what drew me to animation and made me interested in prehistoric cave painting. The High Priests and Mecca for this art form are in Prague where The Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II once created a culture that seamlessly blended myth, folklore, the occult and true science (he employed over 200 alchemists and Johannes Kepler the astronomer & mathematician best known for discovering the laws of planetary motion). He also amassed the greatest collection of oddities the world has ever known including automaton‘s which were clock like moving mechanical devices intended to imitate life. The first animations? Yes! 

Prague Astonomical Clock

 

Part of what drew me to Los Angeles is that it houses the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I first heard about this unlikely and unusual place when I was living in San Francisco and received the book “Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology” by Lawrence Weschle as a birthday gift. In a way, I have already made a pilgrimage by moving to Los Angeles. 

There is much more I could say about the Czech School of animation (including an epic tale of Walt Disney studios, capitalism run amok, a black and white print of Snow White and The Seven Dwarves stolen from the Nazi’s, and a group of unknown Czech animators who shocked world at the 2nd Cannes Film Festival (really the first because the Nazi’s invaded Poland on the same day the first one was scheduled to begin). 

My ultimate pilgrimage would be to Prague to visit the Czech School of Animation and retrace the steps of animators whom with I have a mysterious connection. Hopefully this pilgrimage will occur soon so I can meet Jan Švankmajer who is now 86 years old. My wife, who has no interest in any of this, has met him. But that’s another story. 

Writing Tips from Silent Mic (aka Spottless Marxx)

I’m 52 and have had quiet a full life. A life that has included many rigorous writing lessons. My first and hardest was from my High School English teacher, Ms. Williams, who flunked me twice before finally giving me a “C-“ so I could graduate. She was the only black teacher in our almost all white public school and one of the few black people in our almost all white town. A town with deep roots in the hippie and, later, new age spiritual movement known for organic health foods, psychedelic drugs and alternative medicine and religions... but not discipline. 

Although I grew up in mostly Latino low income housing projects (another story) she really stood out in this idyllic world filled with beautiful laid back yuppies with perfect tans who were really into fitness and hugs. She was short, fat, grumpy and very disciplined when it came to writing. At the time, I despised her for it. Today I love her for it. 

Beside pummeling us with grammar, Ms. Williams also taught us the basic structure of a five paragraph academic paper: 1) Introduction, 2) Three supporting ideas / paragraphs and 3) Conclusion, with each paragraph being a microcosm of the whole, having a similar five sentence structure. 

What I remember the most, however, were her teachings on emphasis and rhythm. Things I’ve never heard from anybody else, then or now. It was important to her that we knew and understood that we weren’t tasked with faithfully re-creating the actual world we live in with words but, instead, creating a model. We learned the three universal principles of modeling behavior: 1) Deletion 2) Distortion and 3) Generalization. In other words, she taught us “the map is not the terrain.” 

The key to making a good map was being in control of these principles and making conscious decisions about what we manipulated and controlled through emphasis. According to her the most important ideas should go first. The most important sentences are the first and the last. I re-wrote my first sentence of this document when I remembered that lesson. The most important words, according to her, are the words at the end of each sentence. She would highlight the last word of every sentence we wrote and make us rewrite it if the last word was boring. The most important word of all was the very last. I also vividly remember her drilling us to vary our sentence length and use active verbs. The previous sentence said “drilled.” I just changed it to please her ghost. 

As some of you are already aware, around this same time I would have been destroyed from the inside out had I not been rescued by a band of drug dealing hoodlums on skateboards. As a moody poor kid on the outskirts of this pristine and wealthy college town, I was an insecure misfit yearning to belong. I had almost given up trying when I was adopted into the “do it yourself” ethic of punk rock and graffiti. I learned to embrace my informal education gathered bit by bit from thousands of hours of watching TV, reading comic books and experimenting with drugs and alcohol. 

Before becoming a punk, I had dreams of becoming a world class filmmaker. The more I learned about that path, however, the more I realized a poor kid like me had almost no chance of making it to the top. Living in Hollywood for the last 10 years has only reinforced this early impression. I’ve come to experience first hand that the film industry is not only dominated by white men, many have gone to expensive film schools and started off as interns with long hours and low (or no) pay. Their wealthy parents have had to subsidize their near mandatory apprenticeships / initiations. What I also figured out during my punk days was the accessibly and affordability of words and paper. I discovered zines! Since most punks couldn’t afford merchandise and magazines (we saved our meager funds for vinyl albums distributed out of the back of the vans of our music idols) we made our own “do it yourself” hand painted t-shirts and xeroxed publications. 

Although I’ve done much writing on a professional level since then, I am still to this day, more proud of my zines than any of my “professional” writing. They defined me as both a writer and a person! 

My next big lesson in writing was as a radio journalist. In short (beyond what I already learned about emphasis from Ms. Williams) journalism is all about efficiency. Although I worked in the realm of non-corporate community radio I was constantly being encouraged to produce what was described to me as a clear, natural and professional sounding news product. What that meant was hours and hours of editing interviews, removing any and all “umms”, pauses, interruptions, awkward phrasing and, most importantly, “cutting to the chase." In other words, eliminating all tangential information and making people sound concise and articulate even if they didn’t actually speak that way. It still fascinates me that nearly every person I interviewed believed that is how they actually spoke. Pro editing tips I constantly struggled with also included the unofficial requirement that no single soundbite exceed nine to fifteen seconds (much shorter today). Anything longer than that was considered indulgent and distracting. If you haven't seen the movie ROMA I highly recommend it. When I hear people criticize the extraordinary long shots in that graceful film it reminds me of the criticism I used to take in the newsroom. This process of making things “professional” was one of the reasons I got out of journalism. It was particularly painful when I was interviewing nuns who were organizing labor in the unholy maquiladora factories in Latin America that NAFTA gave birth too. These strong but peace loving women were receiving government sanctioned death threats as a reward for addressing toxic working conditions, extremely low pay and violent union busting. Meanwhile I’m being forced to censor them to make sure they sound “clear and natural” to respect my audiences short attention spans.  I'm not saying this is wrong. I appreciate journalists more than ever now that they are being demonized & attacked by elected officials, arrested by dictators and even killed. One of my favorite protest signs I've been noticing says "Then they came for the journalists and after that... we don't know what happened." Nonetheless, you've probably already guessed that I'm the wrong person for making complex realities bite sized and digestible.  

A few years after leaving radio, Blogger was created and it was all the rage but had many critics warning of the "Vanity Press.”  Back then I didn’t think too hard about what "vanity press" actually meant but certainly agreed it was tasteless... and probably something I should be doing. Years later Blogger has gone the way of AOL and MySpace but maybe it's only problem is that it was ahead of it's time? I currently spend many hours watching strangers from all around the world on my phone talk about their menstrual cycle, do their laundry, draw a picture, rant, rave, dance, feed their bird and pet their cat. And I’m not alone. A literal army of  virtual peeping toms are doing the same thing. Why? I think it’s because we crave all that vain, overindulgent, tangential and awkward information that has ended up on the cutting room floor without our knowledge or permission. We’re tired of being force fed rehearsed and hollow talking points coming from corrupt politicians and corporations. We’re not interested in “clear, natural and professional” ... we want the awkward, ugly and often boring truth!

Happy Birthday To Me

ABOUT ME:

Today is my birthday. I have nowhere to go and nothing to do. The pandemic has made Los Angeles feel so small to me right now. I feel like a rat in a cage. Instead of celebrating I’ve been reflecting on my life’s journey and trying to say something about myself and my art that is honest and sincere. This is what I came up with. Most of it is cut and paste from other posts below: 

I would have been destroyed from the inside out as a kid had I not been rescued by a band of drug dealing hoodlums on skateboards. Growing up as a moody poor kid on the outskirts of a pristine and wealthy college town, I was an insecure misfit yearning to belong. I had almost given up trying when I was adopted into the “do it yourself” ethic of punk rock and graffiti. I learned to embrace my informal education gathered bit by bit from thousands of hours of watching TV, reading comic books and science fiction and experimenting with drugs and alcohol.

As I figured out how to cope and adapt to poverty and loneliness in a yuppie paradise, I also became concerned with the social and political cause of other underdogs. Today I’m the reluctant champion to the bitches, freaks, psychotics, bums, thugs and junkies of the world. This focus has exposed me to many of the deep rooted contradictions and injustices imbedded in our corporate capitalist culture. Believing in the promise of technology to level the playing field, I’ve immersed myself in every digital craze to come along since the arrival of desktop computers. My latest quest is to master Phone Apps & filters in what I call “at a glance” cinema.This, combined with the opportunity offered to me by the pandemic to work at home, I’m currently 50 cards into a life long dream of making an animated, experiential, Tarot Deck. 

While I may draw inspiration from the per-historic cave painters, alchemists and even real shaman and mystics living today, the harsh reality is that most of my creative energy & enthusiasm has been tapped from working full-time since I was a teenager just to keep a roof over the head of my wife (who I met when I was 18 and she was 17) and I and food on our plates. I barely know who I am.  I don't have a cave, a tribe or artifacts to inform and define me. So, with the precious energy I have kept for myself, I create my own. The Internet is my fountain, computer my archive and the smart phone my tool and the local copy store my laboratory.

Spottless Marxx

2020 HINDSIGHT

... '

Custom Portrait Illustration by 

Tomás @Piqself on

. 

As I write this, I’m heading into what seems (at least right now)to be a very important year, 2020. While there are many things worth reflecting on, both in my neighborhood and the world at large, I have chosen (as usual) to discuss myself! More specifically my art.

Artistically speaking, I head into 2020 focused on what I have come to call “At A Glance”. I once had ambitious fantasies of being a world-class storyteller, filmmaker, painter and sculptor but somewhere along the way I noticed that nobody wanted to look at my art or hear my stories. All people wanted to do was look deep into their smart phones. Not just in the privacy of their own home but at work, cafés, grocery stores, galleries, museums and even the movies. As I tried to figure out what all the fuss was about, I too fell under the spell of my phone screen as I discovered memes, GIFS and Apps.

If you follow me on social media, you may have noticed that I have founded the “At A Glance Film Society”. As of now, I am not only the founder, I am the sole member. The objective of the AAGiFS (I haven’t decided what the “I” stands for yet… suggestions are welcome) is to recognize and promote 15 second cinema. In case you were wondering, this is not a medium I ever consciously chose to work in, or even once dreamed about mastering, but is the one that seems to have chosen me. It’s an uneasy place to be. Let me explain:

One of my most vivid popular culture moments growing up was watching Bevis and Butthead on MTV back in the hay-day of music videos. They were mocking a video exclaiming in disgust “this video tells a story. Stories suck!” I agreed with them in previous episodes that “work”, “manners,” “customers” and of course “hell’ all sucked. But "stories" gave me pause. It felt wrong. Very wrong. I probably remember this moment so vividly not only because I was one of those “tell me a story” kids growing up, I was (at that exact moment) also learning about scholars like Joseph Campbell and Claude Lévi-Strauss who have made a strong case that stories are not just escapist entertainment but the very fabric of human civilization. 

I can also still remember, though, that I understood what Beavis and Butthead were saying. I too disliked music videos with a storyline. As I sat there with my bleached blond hair, dangling inverted cross earring, black eyeliner and leather jacket I painted myself with a bold Anarchy symbol on the back and the band name “Sucicidal Tendencies” (not a typo… that's how I wrote it and I learned the hard way that Punks, unlike me, take spelling very seriously) I wondered if we were on the verge of civilization, as I knew it, unraveling.

High School Self-Portrait 

For those of you who are terrified of a shallow, short attention span world driven by jingles, slogans… and now 15 second cinema, I share your concern. 

That said, one of my goals for the At A Glance Film Society is to write a pamphlet that will be mailed out to new members describing the history and rational for this art form. You may be comforted to hear that my story starts in Ancient Greece. Homer was the first purveyor of brief and catchy messaging and Aristotle offered the first theory of them. He called them maxims. Maxims employed mnemonic techniques of poetry and song verse including rhyme and antithesis executed brilliantly 100's of years later by the world famous Muhammad Ali quote “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” 

Maxim’s were designed to be easy to consume in the moment but also unforgettable. Ultimately, the point was for the question of ownership to disappear, allowing them to spread like wild fire. Frequently they became part of the commonly spoken language and culture while circulating across vast distances of time and space. Plato, for instance, used a maxim to warn you and me about the high stakes of being clueless and shallow: “Ignorance is the root and stem of all evil.”  

But let us not forget the usefulness, fun and pleasure of recognition, or as Aristotle called it, “easy learning.” I believe we should at least consider the possibility that these ancient viral memes are as responsible for crafting of our common culture as stories and myth?  But even I, a wannabe meme-lord, can't deny the Beavis and Butthead problem. Especially combined with the World Wide Web and a supercomputer in every human-being's pocket. Maxims on steroids. 

Even I, the founder of The At A Glance Film Society, must admit that there is something sad about having plenty of time for endless Dos Equis and “The Most Interesting Man is the World” memes but no time for fine wine, painting and poetry. Perhaps we will be the ones who finally forget  Plutarch's lesson: “Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks.” Easy enough for me to predict now, as there’s every reason to believe it’s already true. Hindsight IS the year 2020 in soooo many ways. The exact origin of the expression “hindsight is 2020” (by the way) is unclear , but it probably began sometime around the first arm-chair quarterback in the mid-1900’s.  We may be losing poetry and painting but I won’t be surprised if memes are how we’ll all be remembered. Let’s make them with gusto ⚡️🎬⚡️ 

Welcome Stranger!

           WILLIAM SCOTT, 

Untitled

, 2015, Watercolor and ink on paper

As a poverty stricken teenager I spent hours and hours sifting through thrift stores searching for hidden treasure. My entire wardrobe and half of my belongings were excavated second hand discoveries. It was one of the happiest times of my life. Today I can afford most of the cheap crap I consume and my time is valuable so I don’t go thrifting anymore. I do waste an incredible amount of time on Instagram and Twitter though. If you didn’t end up here from one of my links on those pages you can follow me on Instagram @spottless_marxx or on Twitter @SpottlessMarxx. One of the reasons I’m so addicted to those sites is that I ‘ve found many hidden treasures there from all around world in the form of people. Interesting, happy, social, active, isolated, alienated, scary, lonely, angry, insanely creative people.

Some of them, but not all, have huge followings. In my online life everybody knows who these stars are but in my offline life nobody has ever heard of them. For this reason I have bestowed upon them the name “secret celebrities.” 

My portrait of @fesignkh brilliant University of Tehran art student on Instagram who did the original Francis Bacon Portrait in a hoodie found in the video below. I added background, "The Blues" by Chuck Barry & snow. 

Iranian artist and student @fesignkh  pictured above only has around 3000 followers at this moment. I consider her a secret celebrity, however, because everything she posts gets hundreds of likes. That means she has a captive audience, which includes me. I don’t consider myself a secret celebrity but I do consider myself worthy of YOUR attention, and here’s why:

Years ago I was a radio journalist. Although I worked in the realm of non-corporate community radio I was constantly being encouraged to produce what was described to me as a clear, natural and professional sounding news product. What that meant was hours and hours of editing interviews, removing any and all  “umms”, pauses, interruptions, awkward phrasing and, most importantly, “cutting to the chase." In other words, eliminating all tangential information and making people sound concise and articulate even if they didn’t actually speak that way. It still fascinates me that nearly every person I interviewed believed that is how they actually spoke. The rare exception was when I was accused of taking something out of context to make somebody look bad. Truth be known, those were bad and/or stupid people who said bad and/or stupid things and got busted. But that’s another story. Pro editing tips I constantly struggled with also included the unofficial requirement that no single soundbite exceed nine to fifteen seconds. Anything longer than that was considered indulgent and distracting. If you haven't seen the movie ROMA I highly recommend it. When I hear people criticize the exrodinary long shots in that graceful film it reminds me of the shit I used to take in the newsroom.

Anyhow this process of making things “professional” was one of the reasons I got out of journalism. It was particularly painful when I was interviewing nuns who were organizing labor in the unholy maquiladora factories in Latin America that NAFTA gave birth too. These strong but peace loving women were receiving government sanctioned death threats as a reward for addressing toxic working conditions, extremely low pay and violent union busting. Meanwhile I’m being forced to censor them to make sure they sound “clear and natural” and respect my audiences short attention spans. 

I'm not saying this is wrong. I appreciate journalists more than ever now that they are being demonized & attacked by our President, arrested by dictators and even killed. One of my favorite protest signs I've been noticing says "Then they came for the journalists and after that... we don't know what happend." Nonetheless, you've probalby already guessed that I'm the wrong person for making complex realities bite sized and digestible.  

The reason I’m telling you this is that you are, at this moment, in a dusty, lonely (and I hope) interesting, corner of the Internet. A hidden treasure. As far as I can tell, Blogger is all but dead. They don't even have an App. You are quite the adventurous one to even click on a link with the word “blogspot” in it. When Blogger was created it was all the rage but had many critics warning of the "Vanity Press.” 

Back then I didn’t think too hard about what "vanity press" actually meant but certainly agreed it was tasteless... and probably something I should be doing. Years later Blogger has gone the way of AOL and MySpace but maybe it's only problem is that it was ahead of it's time? I currently spend many hours watching strangers from all around the world on my phone talk about their menstrual cycle, do their laundry, draw a picture, rant, rave, dance, feed their bird and pet their cat. And I’m not alone. A literal army of  virtual peeping toms are doing the same thing. Why? I think it’s because we crave all that vain, overindulgent, tangential and awkward information that has ended up on the cutting room floor without our knowledge or permission. We’re tired of being force fed rehearsed and hollow talking points coming from corrupt politicians and corporations. We’re not interested in “clear, natural and professional” ... we want the awkward, ugly and often boring truth!

God bless those who do, but I'm not one for sniffing my armpits and spilling my guts to strangers on the Internet. I'm pretty comfortable sharing myself with the few restless, curious and driven voyeurs (aka you) who are willing to go out of your way to click on an obscure link to Blogger. This is sorta the closest thing I have to a diary. If you decide to read more you will learn quite a bit about me. If you stick around you may learn a lot more. If you leave a comment, I'll be thrilled to find out I'm not alone and I'll be more than interested in checking out your neck of the woods, if your into that sort of thing.

Bee...ing Real

Copyright © 2018 Mind Honey Clothing

Many years ago in a land far far away (San Francisco) I had a vivid nightmare that is now becoming a reality. I dreamed that I worked for a corporation that discovered that it's main product, cell phones, were killing off bees. Bees are pollinators. This may not seem important until you find out that one third of all food humans consume will disappear without them. Immediately my corporate bosses realized that the loss of bees would threaten life on Earth as we know it. Instead of solving the potentially catastrophic problem, however, we decided to cover it up. It was my job to invent a replacement for bees before anybody found out the truth. 

For well over a decade I've been taking college classes to avoid defaulting on my student loans. At the time of this dream I was taking a late night City College class in contemporary art history located in a tiny, hot and cramped  theater on the upper floors of a generic downtown high-rise. We were studying the scholarly article by Jean Baudrillard "Simulacra and Simulation" that is at the heart of Postmodernism. According to Baudrillard we are moving into a reality where simulated versions of our experience are becoming more "real" than the original. In fact, many of us have long forgotten the original. According to Baudrillard, we don't visit Disneyland anymore. We eat, breath, shit and live in Disneyland. 

While I was taking this class the public was becoming aware for the first time of the troubling phenomenon that bee colony’s all around the world were abruptly disappearing for no apparent reason. Many were speculating that cell phones were the cause. I remember this because a survey came out of cell phone use among teens howling that many of our youth would rather die than give up their cell phones. Deep down I thought we were all going to die with our cell phones firmly in hand.

Today the bees are still dying in mass. While I don't hear any blame going to cell phones anymore, it's still an urgent and complicated problem with the billion dollar pesticide industry pumping out fake "studies" not unlike those funded by the global warming deniers who are obvious puppets of their fossil fuel overlords.   



In the meantime, scientists are working on the task right out of my nightmare. Developing a robot replacement for the bees. Obviously there are colossal  challenges to pulling this off but we already have models and scientists are  supposedly optimistic about the chances of eventual success. Given our capacity for greed and the lack of political will to save the bees, it's no exaggeration to say we have a lot riding on this particular simulacra. 

 
Right after awaking from this nightmare, I laid in bed wondering what will happen to the last of the real bees once we have replaced them. Perhaps they would become isolated and confused, performing some cryptic and obscure version of their original rituals and function. Then I began to wonder if we have similar lost souls among us today. We know that traditional seers and healers became "Witch Doctors" & later the more politically correct "Shaman" in the skeptical eyes of Western science and medicine.  These individuals and their ways are still holding on and seem to have growing influence among those of us who are looking for new ways of understanding and coping with what appears on the surface to be a growing mess on an epic scale. A wise man recently asked me how many diseases Native Americans inflicted on the white invaders. I don't know enough history to honestly answer that question (and I don't want to be accused of romanticizing the past) but I can say this, I understand what he was trying to say. Black Elk... I for one, am listening.




One of my favorite definitions of art is that it is the religion for those who don't have a religion. For me there has always been something profound but a little "off" about art and the people who make it. Myself included. 

Bees took evolution millions of years to perfect. Now human life may depend on humans developing an effective but flimsy (in comparison) replacement in a few decades. Perhaps we artists are the last of the real bees who have had our real work and identity hijacked from us by some shallow impersonator? While I may draw inspiration from the per-historic cave painters, alchemists and even the shaman living today, I don't have a cave, a tribe or artifacts to inform and define me. So I create my own. The Internet is my fountain, computer my archive and the smart phone my tool and the local copy store my laboratory.

It's been four years since my last entry. I wish I could say I was busy getting my life together and moved on from this silly blog. Instead I've been living in denial. I just turned 50 today, July 4th. I now have high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, no kids and more cats than I care to admit. All of this in the wake of growing fascism (thinly veiled as populism) around the world with the center of gravity being right here in the good O'l US of A with the election of Donald Trump.  

Baudrillard has never made more sense to me. 

Making art has never made more sense to me.

Still Doing It Myself

I would have been destroyed from the inside out as a kid had I not been rescued by a band of drug dealing hoodlums on skateboards. Growing up as a moody poor kid on the outskirts of a pristine and wealthy college town, I was an insecure misfit yearning to belong. I had almost given up trying when I was adopted into the “do it yourself” ethic of punk rock and graffiti. I learned to embrace my informal education gathered bit by bit from thousands of hours of watching TV, reading comic books and science fiction and experimenting with drugs and alcohol.

As I figured out how to cope and adapt to poverty and loneliness in a yuppie paradise, I also became concerned with the social and political cause of other underdogs. Today I’m the reluctant champion to the bitches, freaks, psychotics, bums, thugs and junkies of the world. This focus has exposed me to many of the deep rooted contradictions and injustices imbedded in our culture. Belieiving in the promise of technology to level the playing field, I’ve immersed myself in every digital craze to come along since the arrival of desktop computers. My latest quest is to master what I call “at a glance” cinema.

My current work is the 2-minute epic video The Gunfighters. While gun violence terrorizes our communities, we still lack the political will necessary to change course. Gunshots have ended the lives of my three closest friends, my youngest uncle and, most recently, my 86 year old neighbor. He survived combat in Germany on the battlefields of WWII but his life ended in his own living room with a single shot from an intruder whom he refused to give a cigarette. The Gunfighters was assembled entirely from found bits and pieces from the Internet and explores the visceral experience of staring down the barrel of a gun.

The Gunfighters

Ungodly Glitch Experiment  * Music by Wax Tailor

Another Name For Nothing Left To Loose

I'm reporting to you from the undisputed myth-making capitol of the world... Los Angeles. I'm not in "the business" as they call it. I'm a completely unknown and invisible fine artist. I also run a homeless shelter. Admittedly, I came here with the hope of fulfilling my dreams. The only difference between myself, and the thousands of others who make the same pilgrimage to LA, is my dreams are more like topsy purvey hallucinations. I've never quite understood them and (unlike the majority of waiters and waitress in this town) I'm well aware that they often lead me astray (If you don't believe me, check out the rest of this blog). I will not deny, however, that I'm here along with a literal army of fellow day dreamers, flakes and, yes, a select few hard working geniuses, to fulfill a dream.


Many of my fellow pilgrims are possessed with an idea that seems to have replaced the American Dream; MAKING IT BIG! For some that means a Beverley Hills address, Gucci, Armani, and Lamborghini. Before you judge or scoff, I must point out that these so called materialists are willing to get off their asses and actually move their bodies to achieve this shit. Millions of us share this same fantasy but are not willing to leave our crappy jobs, couches, and mega-super-stores to achieve it. A mere lottery ticket is enough to help many of us roll out of bed in the morning.

True, not all of us are so materialistic. The majority of us will welcome a little style and a few nice things, but what we really want is something much more elusive .. freedom. We don't won't to be told what, when, where and how to do any more. We're fed up with being "cogs".  We want to be self-actualized "humans beings" fulfilling our purpose in life without resistance or criticism. We want to be one of those "people" people thanking god for our "blessed life." For those of you who think these motivations are more "pure" I must point out that there are far more people out here selling this myth than there are selling mansions, Lamborghinis, or even movies.  Many of them are wearing Gucci and Armani.  Chis Rock describes this dichotomy as the "career" versus the "job". He warns that those with "jobs" have way too much time on the planet because their jobs suck so bad while those with "careers" don't have nearly enough time because they are loving life so much they cannot possibly get everything done. Other "Profits" of the highly productive passion driven life include Anthony Robbins, Oprah, and a bunch of other mega rich successful people I'm sure you've heard of.A question that I have never heard asked to one of these super humans is "are you free?" I bring this up because I recently came across the poem "The Strongest Of The Strange" by Charles Bukowski. A line in that poem made me re-think the whole "making it big" thing:


"You won’t see them often for wherever the crowd is they are not. Those odd ones, not many but from them come the few good paintings, the few good symphonies, the few good books and other works... and from the best of the strange ones... perhaps nothing. They are their own paintings their own books their own music their own work." 

And from the best... perhaps nothing. They are their work. Awesome! 

For over a decade I've spent my daylight hours serving junkies, alcoholics, and schizophrenics. Most "respectable" people seem, at best, to feel sorry for them and, at worst, consider them worthless leaches on society. Years ago I came up with this theory that these outcasts were the descendants of the radical individuals that settled this country. Just like the early American pioneers, they live their lives completely on their own terms and no police, judges, jails, psychiatrists, social workers, psyche wards... or even gods are going tell them what to do or not do. Now we're talking freedom. Not abstract flag waving freedom. Real freedom. The problem they have in today's world is not that they need "treatment." They need a new frontier.  Trees to cut down, sod to bust, animals to kill, asses to kick. I'm sure you'll agree, a complicated situation in this day and age.

One of my unofficial slogans has become "no good deed goes unpunished." I've often been asked by those close to me why I do this thankless work. Bukowski gave me my answer. I'm surrounded by masterpieces. Works of pure genius that most people will never get to know. I get to see what freedom actually looks like. To be honest, I'm not sure it's for me. More entertaining to watch than 90% of the movies out there, though.