Ben Okri, the Master Artist

 

Remember the first time you watched Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire?”

Damiel finally embraces his acrobat. Cassiel continues to contemplate his fall from angel to human. And the old man walks toward the Berlin Wall, and presumably his death. Perhaps, the old man will break through his boundary before Cassiel but we won’t know. Fade to a eery drone track… what happens next?

Name me the men, women, and children...

who will look for me...

me, their storyteller...

their spokesman...

for they need me...

more than anything in the world.

We have embarked!

Remember that moment when you were not sure if you just finished a film, a book or if you just awoke from a dream. Either way, you felt the urge to sit with it, before re-entering whatever reality you thought you were occupying. That grey zone between sleep and awake, or the hypnopompic state. Perhaps it is a borderland to navigate. But the more you reach for it, the more it slips away. As your rational brain tries to make sense of it, it fades and all you are left with, if you’re lucky, are some left-over emotions, feelings.

What about those moments of synchronicity and other messages from the universe? One too many coincidences, the right song at the right time, light and wind through the leaves talking to you. Acknowledgement of a shift. 

I doubt many people can explain this shit without sounding saccharine. I certainly can’t. Ben Okri can. He walks the line, but he can.

I say it often but in a perfect world there would be no need for art. Our natural state required very few symbols, very few words, if any. Life was art, could be art. But we have over-complicated things. So much to untangle. Stories are told to make sense of it all but most fall short, trapped by the limitations of their form. I think Okri might be one of the few who can take you into the borderlands, the hypnopompic state, and beyond the borders and confines or our limited understanding of ‘reality.’ 

“The Last Gift of the Master Artists” is according to Okri a book about “a world on the brink of catastrophe” (Africa, just before the Atlantic slave trade). In this light, is it any wonder that he went 30 years without being published in the US? But what timing. And what a time to wake up. Maybe, Okri the master artist can guide some of us through this dream, this nightmare, these borderlands. Look for him in the trees. 

 

Screenshots from Dean's Dream

 

 

 

Review: Often in the Right Place: The Education of an Anarchist by John Zerzan

 

                    *

I think the ideas of John Zerzan are about to undergo an imminent resurgence of appeal. There are stories abound of recent college graduates booing commencement speakers who are keen to champion AI. A recent NYT headline noted that Anthropic ‘secretly’ called for a halt in all AI research as a ““brake pedal” was needed to protect humanity from self-improving models.” We have set sail on a course very few of us asked for or had any say in. We are on death ship sailing toward a flat-earth horizon. 

AI aside, we continue to pollute the planet, deplete natural resources, isolate ourselves from each other, make the rich richer, and fund endless wars, all because we cannot see beyond this absolutely ludicrous socio-economic arrangement. Resistance is largely muted, drowning in infighting and lack of creative vision. Our imaginations have been hijacked by basic survival, the daily grind, consumer desires and endless meaningless distractions. But I think that is about to change.

A growing sense that we are living in end times is now not all that radical of a thought. Thinkers from many different political viewpoints echo this sentiment but most still fail to offer a root understanding of how we got here and what life has looked like for most of our existence as a species.

Marx got a sense of it as did the early anarchists who split from the First International, arguing an anti-authoritarian  transition from Capitalism to Communism was needed immediately. The anarchists posited that not only the economic system be dismantled out but also the State. By the mid to late Twenty century some anarchists were looking to move beyond the limits of Leftist politics all together and finally some post-Left anarchists arrived at the conclusion that what was really needed was a criticism of mass-society itself. Civilization. And finally, some of them began looking at what human existence looked like before the beginnings of mass-society, pre-domestication i.e. Gatherer-Hunter nomadic tribes. Anarchy in its natural and most familiar form that is still within us.

One fascinating question Zerzan poses time and time again and throughout this book is, why is it that other radical thinkers get so closer to actual critiques of civilization but then always seem to fall short. Just as we wonder why we domesticated in the first place? Its worth asking why we often can’t see beyond (or going back to) the wild once again?

Zerzan’s autobiography traces his own political evolution from conservative small Oregon town to Bay Area counter culture, to radical union organizing to anarchism to post-Leftism and finally to Green Anarchy. Now more than ever, the well-being and survival of the planet and its inhabitants need to think beyond the voting booth, beyond reforming the economy and the state and take a total look at the horror we are in. It’s hard for people to imagine rejecting civilization at this point but it is even harder to see how this death ship can reset course to somewhere even remotely sustainable. 

My only criticism of the book is a couple of chapters that go into a bit too much whimsical detail of some of his speaking tours. These tours do seem necessary to mention but I would rather have heard a bit more about debates and discussions and the exchange of ideas that were had.

All in all, Zerzan’s ideas are worth a revisit. Get your hands on any of his essay collections or the "Against Civilization" compilation he edited and then come back to this memoir to see how he got here. 

(*I don’t know why but I believe Feral House was supposed to originally publish this memoir. They had a far better book cover than the one that ended up being used IMO, so I used it for this blog post.)

 

 

I don’t think it is an under-estimate to say that right now 90% of my social interactions outside of work and home are mediated through technology and social media. And I know I am not the only one. Never so easy to stay in touch. Never so alone.

I had a very vivid dream the other night. I was sitting in a parked car on a dreary British high street. When I saw my dead friend  and university flat-mate, Mark making his way into a newsagent. Mark died a few years ago from cancer of the esophagus. I called out to him, “Mark, Mark.” I did not or could not get out of the car but I leaned out the window repeatedly calling his name until he heard me. Strangely, the desperation of that call, in that dream, is still sitting with me.

He finally heard me and walked up to the car. His face, emotionless, perhaps even a tad confused.

Relieved. “Mark.” I was a bit out of breath from calling his name. “Mark, thank you for being my friend.” Was all I could muster up and say. 

Again, without emotion he looked at me, and reached out his hand. We exchanged a solid hand shake and then he walked away without having said anything and entered the shop he was originally heading into.  

millions now singing are already silent

i read the news today

oh boy

trump's army had just won the war

and though the news was rather sad

i just had to laugh

a european reader of the new york times

in response said,

"i can no longer listen to jazz. 

america is dead."

cat named dog

toad named frog

oh a boy

named girl

its all a whirl

peace named war

are we sure?

cat named dog

toad named frog

peace named war

can we be sure?

woke up 

fell out of bed

dragged a comb across my head

you're dead, you're dead

you're already dead, you're already dead

and out of this world

a crowd of people turned away

norma*, john**, john*** and john**** 

please stay, please stay, please stay, please stay

you're out of this world

millions now silent will never sing

millions now living are already dead

_______

*Norma Tanega

**John Lennon

***John Ratter aka Penny Rimbaud

****John Herndon (Tortoise)

week one

 

modern warfare

little men with White Nationalist tattoos

talk new pull up standards for the military

while the reality is

gender neutral drones will be fighting gender neutral drones guided by Asinine Intelligence

with lots of collateral damage.

 Perhaps life is little more than a cycle of building tension and occasional cathartic release. 

Sacred Hole In The Ground

 

These lamp posts have opinions

 

"Microphones in the trees Cameras in the sky Antennas in the canyon 

And the lobby's full of spies 

For us who are like bulldozers Sleeping in the sun 

For us who are like lightning 

Buried in the mud

 Don't! Give! Up! 

Don't! Give! In! 

Our time will come 

'Cause we are the flood 

So grab my hand 

Lets set some fires" 

-A Silver Mt Zion