
   Radio Sermonettes

The Moorish Orthodox
Radio Crusade Collective

Published by
The Libertarian Book Club
New York City, 1992

Anti-Copyright 1992

May be freely pirated & used -- however, please inform us:

        M.O.R.C.
        c/o L.B.C.
        339 Lafayette St., Room 202
        NYC, NY 10012

   The M.O.R.C. Collective: Peter Lamborn Wilson, The Army of Smiths
   (Dave, Sidney, Max), Hakim Bey, Jake Rabinowitz, Thom Metzger (The
   Moorish Science Monitor), Dave Mandl (design and typography), James
   Koehnline (front cover). Special thanx & a tip of the fez to WBAI-FM,
   Pacifica Radio, the Semiotext(e)/Autonomedia Collective
   (``Vernissage''), and the Libertarian Book Club (who would like to
   note that the word ``libertarian'' here does not refer to
   ``LibertarianISM'' or the Libertarian Party; the L.B.C. was founded in
   1949 when ``libertarian'' meant ANARCHIST, & we refuse to give up the
   word).
   
     _________________________________________________________________

   
                                  IMMEDIATISM
                                       
   i.
   
   All experience is mediated--by the mechanisms of sense perception,
   mentation, language, etc.--& certainly all art consists of some
   further mediation of experience.
   
   ii.
   
   However, mediation takes place by degrees. Some experiences (smell,
   taste, sexual pleasure, etc.) are less mediated than others (reading a
   book, looking through a telescope, listening to a record). Some media,
   especially ``live'' arts such as dance, theater, musical or bardic
   performance, are less mediated than others such as TV, CDs, Virtual
   Reality. Even among the media usually called ``media,'' some are more
   & others are less mediated, according to the intensity of imaginative
   participation they demand. Print & radio demand more of the
   imagination, film less, TV even less, VR the least of all--so far.
   
   iii.
   
   For art, the intervention of Capital always signals a further degree
   of mediation. To say that art is commodified is to say that a
   mediation, or standing-in-between, has occurred, & that this
   betweenness amounts to a split, & that this split amounts to
   ``alienation.'' Improv music played by friends at home is less
   ``alienated'' than music played ``live'' at the Met, or music played
   through media (whether PBS or MTV or Walkman). In fact, an argument
   could be made that music distributed fr ee or at cost on cassette via
   mail is LESS alienated than live music played at some huge We Are The
   World spectacle or Las Vegas niteclub, even though the latter is live
   music played to a live audience (or at least so it appears), while the
   former is recor ded music consumed by distant & even anonymous
   listeners.
   
   iv.
   
   The tendency of Hi Tech, & the tendency of Late Capitalism, both impel
   the arts farther & farther into extreme forms of mediation. Both widen
   the gulf between the production & consumption of art , with a
   corresponding increase in ``alienation.''
   
   v.
   
   With the disappearance of a ``mainstream'' & therefore of an
   ``avant-garde'' in the arts, it has been noticed that all the more
   advanced & intense art-experiences have been recuperable almost
   instantly by the media, & thus are rendered into trash like all other
   trash in the ghostly world of commodities. ``Trash, '' as the term was
   redefined in, let's say, Baltimore in the 1970s, can be good fun--as
   an ironic take on a sort of inadvertent folkultur that surrounds &
   pervades the more unconscious regions of ``popular''
   sensibility--which in turn is produced in part by the Spectacle.
   ``Trash'' was once a fresh concept, with radical potential. By now,
   however, amidst the ruins of Post-Modernism, it has finally begun to
   stink. Ironic frivolity finally becomes disgusting. Is it possible now
   to BE SERIOUS BUT NOT SOBER? (Note: The New Sobriety is or course
   simply the flipside of the New Frivolity. Chic neo-puritanism carries
   the taint of Reaction, in just the same way that postm odernist
   philosophical irony & despair lead to Reaction. The Purge Society is
   the same as the Binge Society. After the ``12 steps'' of trendy
   renunciation in the ' 90s, all that remains is the 13th step of the
   gallows. Irony may have become boring, but self-mutilation was never
   more than an abyss. Down with frivolity--Down with sobriety.)
   
   Everything delicate & beautiful, from Surrealism to Break-dancing,
   ends up as fodder for McDeath's ads; 15 minutes later all the magic
   has been sucked out, & the art itself d ead as a dried locust. The
   media-wizards, who are nothing if not postmodernists, have even begun
   to feed on the vitality of ``Trash,'' like vultures regurgitating &
   re-consuming the same carrion, in an obscene ecstasy of
   self-referentiality. Which way to the Egress?
   
   vi.
   
   Real art is play, & play is one of the most immediate of all
   experiences. Those who have cultivated the pleasure of play cannot be
   expected to give it up simply to make a political point (as in an
   ``Art Strike, '' or ``the suppression without the realization'' of
   art, etc.). Art will go on, in somewhat the same sense that breathing,
   eating, or fucking will go on.
   
   vii.
   
   Nevertheless, we are repelled by the extreme alienation of the arts,
   especially in ``the media,'' in commercial publishing & galleries, in
   the recording ``industry,'' etc. And we sometimes worry even about the
   extent to which our very involvement in such arts as writing,
   painting, or music implicates us in a nasty abstraction, a removal
   from immediate experience. We miss the directness of p lay (our
   original kick in doing art in the first place); we miss smell, taste,
   touch, the feel of bodies in motion.
   
   viii.
   
   Computers, video, radio, printing presses, synthesizers, fax machines,
   tape recorders, photocopiers--these things make good toys, but
   terrible addictions. Finally we realize we cannot `` reach out and
   touch someone'' who is not present in the flesh. These media may be
   useful to our art--but they must not possess us, nor must they stand
   between, mediate, or separate us from our animal/animate selves. We
   want to control our media, not be Controlled by them. And we should
   like to remember a certain psychic martial art which stresses the
   realization that the body itself is the least mediated of all media.
   
   ix.
   
   Therefore, as artists & ``cultural workers'' who have no intention of
   giving up activity in our chosen media, we nevertheless demand of
   ourselves an extreme awareness of immediacy , as well as the mastery
   of some direct means of implementing this awareness as play,
   immediately (at once) & immediately (without mediation).
   
   x.
   
   Fully realizing that any art ``manifesto'' written today can only
   stink of the same bitter irony it seeks to oppose, we nevertheless
   declare without hesitation (without too much thought) the founding of
   a ``movement,'' IMMEDIATISM. We feel free to do so becaus e we intend
   to practice Immediatism in secret, in order to avoid any contamination
   of mediation. Publicly we'll continue our work in publishing, radio,
   printing, music, etc., but privately we will create something else,
   someth ing to be shared freely but never consumed passively,
   something which can be discussed openly but never understood by the
   agents of alienation, something with no commercial potential yet
   valuable beyond price, something occult yet woven completely into the
   fabric of our everyday lives.
   
   xi.
   
   Immediatism is not a movement in the sense of an aesthetic program. It
   depends on situation, not style or content, message or School. It may
   take the form of any kind of creative play which can be performed by
   two or more people, by & for themselves, face-to-face & together. In
   this sense it is like a game, & therefore certain ``rules '' may
   apply.
   
   xii.
   
   All spectators must also be performers. All expenses are to be shared,
   & all products which may result from the play are also to be shared by
   the participants only (who may keep them or bestow them as gifts, but
   should not sell them). The best games will m ake little or no use of
   obvious forms of mediation such as photography, recording, printing,
   etc., but will tend toward immediate techniques involving physical
   presence, direct communication, & the senses.
   
   xiii.
   
   An obvious matrix for Immediatism is the party. Thus a good meal could
   be an Immediatist art project, especially if everyone present cooked
   as well as ate. Ancient Chinese & Japanese on misty autumn days would
   hold odor parties, where each guest would brin g a homemade incense or
   perfume. At linked-verse parties a faulty couplet would entail the
   penalty of a glass of wine. Quilting bees, tableaux vivants, exquisite
   corpses, rituals of conviviality like Fourier's ``Museum Orgy''
   (erotic costumes, poses, & skits), live music & dance--the past can be
   ransacked for appropriate forms, & imagination will supply more.
   
   xiv.
   
   The difference between a 19th century quilting bee, for example, & an
   Immediatist quilting bee would lie in our awareness of the practice of
   Immediatism as a response to the sorrows of alienation & the `` death
   of art.''
   
   xv.
   
   The mail art of the '70s & the zine scene of the '80s were attempts to
   go beyond the mediatio n of art-as-commodity, & may be considered
   ancestors of Immediatism. However, they preserved the mediated
   structures of postal communication & xerography, & thus failed to
   overcome the isolation of the players, who remained quite literally
   out of touch. We wish to take the motives & discoveries of these
   earlier movements to their logical conclusion in an art which banishes
   all mediation & alienation, at least to the extent that the human
   condition allows.
   
   xvi.
   
   Moreover, Immediatism is not condemned to powerlessness in the world,
   simply because it avoids the publicity of the marketplace. ``Poetic
   Terrorism'' and ``Art Sabotage'' are quite logical manifestations of
   Immediatism.
   
   xvii.
   
   Finally, we expect that the practice of Immediatism will release
   within us vast storehouses of forgotten power, which will not only
   transform our lives through the secret realization of unmediated play,
   but will also inescapably well up & burst out & perme ate the other
   art we create, the more public & mediated art.
   
   And we hope that the two will grow closer & closer, & eventually
   perhaps become one.
   
                                   THE TONG
   
   The mandarins draw their power from the law; the people, from the
   secret societies. (Chinese saying)
   
   Last winter I read a book on the Chinese Tongs (Primitive
   Revolutionaries of China: A Study of Secret Societies in the Late
   Nineteenth Century, Fei-Ling Davis; Honolulu, 1971-77):-- maybe the
   first ever written by someone who wasn't a British Secret Service
   agent!--(in fact, she was a Chinese socialist who died young--this was
   her only book)--& for the first time I realized why I' ve always been
   attracted to the Tong: not just for the romanticism, the elegant
   decadent chinoiserie decor, as it were--but also for the form, the
   structure, the very essence of the thing.
   
   Some time later in an excellent interview with William Burroughs in
   Homocore magazine I discovered that he too has become fascinated
   with Tongs & suggests the form as a perfect mode of organization for
   queers, particularly in this present era of shitheel moralism &
   hysteria. I'd agree, & extend the recommendation to all marginal
   groups, especially ones whose jouissance involves illegalism
   (potheads, sex heretics, insurrectionists) or extreme eccentricity
   (nudists, pagans, post-avant-garde artists, etc., etc.).
   
   A Tong can perhaps be defined as a mutual benefit society for people
   with a common interest which is illegal or dangerously
   marginal--hence, the necessary secrecy. Many Chinese Tongs revolved
   around smuggling & tax-evasion, or clandestine self-control of certain
   trades (in opposition to State control), or insurrectionary political
   or religious aims (overthrow of the Manchus for example-- several
   tongs collaborated with the Anarchists in the 1911 Revolution).
   
   A common purpose of the tongs was to collect & invest membership dues
   & initiation fees in insurance funds for the indigent, unemployed,
   widows & orphans of deceased members, funeral expenses, etc. In an era
   like ours when the poor are caught between the c ancerous Scylla of
   the Insurance Industry & the fast-evaporating Charybdi s of welfare &
   public health services, this purpose of the Secret Society might well
   regain its appeal. (Masonic lodges were organized on this basis, as
   were the early & illegal trade unions & ``chivalric orders'' for
   laborers & artisans.) Another universal purpose for such societies was
   of course conviviality, especially banqueting-- but even this
   apparently innocuous pastime can acquire insurrectionary implications.
   In the various French revolutions, for example, dining clubs
   frequently took on the role of radical organizations when all other
   forms of public meeting were banned.
   
   Recently I talked about tongs with ``P.M.,'' author of bolo'bolo
   (Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series). I argued that secret societies
   are once again a valid possibility for groups seeking autonomy &
   individual realization. He disagreed, but not (as I expected) because
   of the ``elitist'' connotations of secrecy. He felt that such
   organizational forms work best for already-close-knit groups with
   strong economic, ethnic/regional, or religious ties--conditions which
   do not exist (or exist only embryonically) in today' s marginal scene.
   He proposed instead the establishment of multi-purpose neighborhood
   centers, with expenses to be shared by various special-interest groups
   & small-entrepreneurial c oncerns (craftspeople, coffeehouses,
   performance spaces, etc.). Such large centers would require official
   status (State recognition), but would obviously become foci for all
   sorts of non-official activity--black markets, temporary organization
   for ``protest'' or insurrectionary action, uncontrolled ``leisure'' &
   unmonitored conviviality, etc.
   
   In response to ``P.M.''' s critique I have not abandoned but rather
   modified my concept of what a modern Tong might be. The intensely
   hierarchical structure of the traditional tong would obviously not
   work, although some of the forms could be saved & used in the same way
   titles & honors are used in our ``free religions'' (or ``weird''
   religions, ``joke'' religions, anarcho-neo-pagan cults, etc.).
   Non-hierarchic organization appeals t o us, but so too does ritual,
   incense, the delightful bombast of occult orders--``Tong Aesthetics''
   you might call it--so why shouldn't we have our cake & eat it
   too?--(especially if it's Moroccan majoun or baba au
   absinthe--something a bit forbidden!). Among other things, the Tong
   should be a work of art.
   
   The strict traditional rule of secrecy also needs modification.
   Nowadays anything which evades the idiot gaze of publicity is already
   virtually secret. Most modern people seem unable to believe in the
   reality of something they never see on television --therefore to
   escape being televisualized is already to be quasi-invisible.
   Moreover, that which is seen through the mediation of the media
   becomes somehow unreal, & loses its power (I won' t bother to defend
   this thesis but simply refer the reader to a train of thought which
   leads from Nietzsche to Benjamin to Bataille to Barthes to Foucault to
   Baudrillard). By contrast, perhaps that which is unseen retains its
   reality, its rootedness in everyday life & therefore in the
   possibility of the marvelous.
   
   So the modern Tong cannot be elitist--but there's no reason it can't
   be choosy. Many non-authoritarian organizations have foundered on the
   dubious principle of open membership, which frequently leads to a
   preponderance of assholes, yahoos, spoilers, whining neurotics, &
   police agents. If a Tong is organized around a special interest
   (especially an illegal or risky or marginal interest) it certainly has
   the right to compose itself according to the ``affinity group''
   principle. If secrecy means (a) avoiding publicity & (b) vetting
   possible members, the `` secret society'' can scarcely be accused of
   violating anarchist principles. In fact, such societies have a long &
   honorable history in the anti-authoritarian movement, from Proudhon's
   dream of re-animating the Holy Vehm as a kind of ``People's Justice,''
   to Bakunin's various schemes, to Durutti's ``Wanderers.'' We ought not
   to allow marxist historians to convince us that such expedients are
   ``primitive'' & have therefore been left behind by ``History.'' The
   absoluteness of ``History'' is at best a dubious proposition. We are
   not interested in a return to the primitive, but in a return OF the
   primitive, inasmuch as the primitive is the ``repressed.''
   
   In the old days secret societies would appear in times & spaces
   forbidden by the State, i.e. where & when people are kept apart by
   law. In our times people are usually not kept apart by law but by
   mediation & alienation (see Part 1, ``Immediatism''). Secrecy
   therefore becomes an avoidance of mediation, while conviviality
   changes from a secondary to a primary purpose of the ``secret
   society.'' Simply to meet together face-to-face is already an action
   against the forces which oppress us by isolation, by loneliness, by
   the trance of media.
   
   In a society which enforces a schizoid split between Work & Leisure,
   we have all experienced the trivialization of our ``free time,'' time
   which is organized neither as work nor as leisure. (``Vacation '' once
   meant ``empty'' time--now it signifies time which is organized &
   filled by the industry of leisure.) The ``secret'' purpose of
   conviviality in the secret society then becomes the self-structuring &
   auto-valorization of free time. Most parties are devoted only to loud
   music & too much booze, not because we enjoy them but because t he
   Empire of Work has imbued us with the feeling that empty time is
   wasted time. The idea of throwing a party to, say, make a quilt or
   sing madrigals together, seems hopelessly outdated. But the modern
   Tong will find it both necessary & enjoyable to seize back free time
   from the commodity world & devote it to shared creation, to play.
   
   I know of several societies organized along these lines already, but
   I'm certainly not going to blow their secrecy by discussing them in
   print. There are some people who do not need fifteen seconds on the
   Evening News to validate their existence. Of course, the marginal
   press and radio (the only media in which this sermonette will appear)
   are practically invisible anyway-- certainly still quite opaque to the
   gaze of Control. Nevertheless, there's the principle of the thing:
   secrets should be respected. Not everyone needs to know everything!
   What the 20th century lacks most--& needs most--is tact. We wish to
   replace democratic epistemology with ``dada epistemology''
   (Feyerabend). Either you're on the bus or you're not on the bus.
   
   Some will call this an elitist attitude, but it is not--at least not
   in the C. Wright Mills sense of the word: that is, a small group which
   exercises power over non-insiders for its own aggrandizement.
   Immediati sm does not concern itself with power-relations;-- it
   desires neither to be ruled nor to rule. The contemporary Tong
   therefore finds no pleasure in the degeneration of institutions into
   conspiracies. It wants power for its own purposes of mutuality. It is
   a free association of individuals who have chosen each other as the
   subjects of the group's generosity, its ``expansiveness'' (to use a
   sufi term). If this amounts to some kind of ``elitism,'' then so be
   it.
   
   If Immediatism begins with groups of friends trying not just to
   overcome isolation but also to enhance each other's lives, soon it
   will want to take a more complex shape:-- nuclei of
   mutually-self-chosen allies, working (playing) to occupy more & more
   time & space outside all mediated structure & control. Then it will
   want to become a horizontal network of such autonomous groups--then, a
   ``tendency'' --then, a ``movement''--& then, a kinetic web of
   ``temporary autonomous zones.'' At last it will strive to become the
   kernel of a new society, giving birth to itself within t he corrupt
   shell of the old. For all these purposes the secret society promises
   to provide a useful framework of protective clandestinity-- a cloak of
   invisibility that will have to be dropped only in the event of some
   final showdown with the Babylon of Mediation....
   
   Prepare for the Tong Wars!
   
                           IMMEDIATISM VS CAPITALISM
                                       
   Many monsters stand between us & the realization of Immediatist goals.
   For instance our own ingrained unconscious alienation might all too
   easily be mistaken for a virtue, especially when co ntrasted with
   crypto-authoritarian pap passed off as ``community,'' or with various
   upscale versions of ``leisure.'' Isn't it natural to take the dandyism
   noir of curmudgeonly hermits for some kind of heroic Individualism,
   when the only visible contrast is Club Med commodity socialism, or the
   gemutlich masochism of the Victim Cults? To be doomed & cool naturally
   appeals more to noble souls than to be saved & coz y.
   
   Immediatism means to enhance individuals by providing a matrix of
   friendship, not to belittle them by sacrificing their ``ownness'' to
   group-think, leftist self-abnegation, or New Age clone-values. What
   must be overcome is not individuality per se, but rather the addiction
   to bitter loneliness which characterizes consciousness in the 20th
   century (which is by & large not much more than a re-run of the 19th).
   
   Far more dangerous than any inner monster of (what might be called)
   ``negative selfishness,'' however, is the outward, very real & utterly
   objective monster of too-Late Capitalism. The marxists (R.I.P.) had
   their own version of how this worked, but here we are not concerned
   with abstract/dialectical analyses of labor-value or class structure
   (even though these may still require analysis, & even more so since
   the ``death'' or ``disappearance'' of Communism). Instead we'd like to
   point out specific tactical dangers facing any Immediatist project.
   
   1. Capitalism only supports certain kinds of groups, the nuclear
   family for example, or ``the people I know at my job,'' because such
   groups are already self-alienated & hooked into the Work/Consume/Die
   structure. Other kinds of groups may be allowed, but will lack all
   support from the societal structure, & thus find themselves facing
   grotesque challenges & difficulties which appear under the guise of ``
   bad luck.''
   
   The first & most innocent-seeming obstacle to any Immediatist project
   will be the ``busyness'' or ``need to make a living'' faced by each of
   its associates. However there is no real innocence here--only our
   profound ignorance of the ways in which Capitalism itself is organized
   to prevent all genuine conviviality.
   
   No sooner have a group of friends begun to visualize immediate goals
   realizable only thru solidarity & cooperation, then suddenly one of
   them will be offered a ``good'' job in Cincinnati or teaching English
   in Taiwan--or else have to move back to California to care for a dying
   parent--or else they'll lose the ``good'' job they already have & be
   reduced to a state of misery which precludes their very enjoyment of
   the group's project or goals (i.e. they'll become ``depressed'' ). At
   the most mundane-seeming level, the group will fail to agree on a day
   of the week for meetings because everyone is ``busy.'' But this is not
   mundane. It's sheer cosmic evil. We whip ourselves into froths of
   indignation over ``oppression'' & ``unjust laws'' when in fact these
   abstractions have little impact on our daily lives--while that which
   really makes us miserable goes unnoticed, written off to ``busyness''
   or ``distraction'' or even to the nature of reality itself (``Well, I
   can't live without a job!'').
   
   Yes, perhaps it's true we can't ``live'' without a job--although I
   hope we're grown-up enough to know the difference between life & the
   accumulation of a bunch of fucking gadgets. Still, we must constantly
   remind ourselves (since our culture won't do it for us) that this
   monster called WORK remains the precise & exact target of our
   rebellious wrath, the one single most oppressive reality we face (& we
   must learn also to recognize Work when it's disguised as ``leisure'').
   
   To be ``too busy'' for the Immediatist project is to miss the very
   essence of Immediatism. To struggle to come together every Monday
   night (or whatever), in the teeth of the gale of busyness, or family,
   or invitations to stupid parties--that struggle is already Immediatism
   itself. Succeed in actually physically meeting face-to-face with a
   group which is not your spouse-&-kids, or the ``guys from my job,'' or
   your 12-Step Program--& you have already achieved virtually everything
   Immediatism yearns for. An actual project will arise almost
   spontaneously out of this successful slap-in-the-face of the social
   norm of alienated boredom. Outwardly, of course, the project will seem
   to be the group' s purpose, its motive for coming together--but in
   fact the opposite is true. We're not kidding or indulging in hyperbole
   when we insist that meeting face-to-face is already ``the
   revolution.'' Attain it & the creativity part comes naturally; like
   ``the kingdom of heaven'' it will be added unto you. Of course it will
   be horribly difficult--why else would we have spent the last decade
   trying to construct our ``bohemia in the mail,'' if it were easy to
   have it in some quartier latin or rural commune? The rat-bastard
   Capitalist scum who are telling you to ``reach out and touch someone''
   with a telephone or `` be there!'' (where? alone in front of a goddam
   television??)--these lovecrafty suckers are trying to turn you into a
   scrunched-up blood-drained pathetic crippled little cog in the
   death-machine of the human soul (& let' s not have any theological
   quibbles about what we mean by ``soul''!). Fight them--by meeting with
   friends, not to consume or produce, but to enjoy friendship-- & you
   will have triumphed (at least for a moment) over the most pernicious
   conspiracy in EuroAmerican society today--the conspiracy to turn you
   into a living corpse galvanized by prosthesis & the terror of
   scarcity-- to turn you into a spook haunting your own brain. This is
   not a petty matter! This is a question of failure or triumph!
   
   2. If busyness & fissipation are the first potential failures of
   Immediatism, we cannot say that its triumph should be equated with
   ``success.'' The second major threat to our project can quite simply
   be described as the tragic success of the project itself. Let's say
   we've overcome physical alienation & have actually met, developed our
   project, & created something (a quilt, a banquet, a play, a bit of
   eco-sabotage, etc.). Unless we keep it an absolute secret--which is
   probably impossible & in any case would constitute a somewhat
   poisonous selfishness--other people will hear of it (other people from
   hell, to paraphrase the existentialists)--& among these other people,
   some will be agents (conscious or unconscious, it doesn't matter) of
   too-Late Capitalism. The Spectacle-- or whatever has replaced it since
   1968--is above all empty. It fuels itself by the constant Moloch-like
   gulping-down of everyone's creative powers & ideas. It's more
   desperate for your ``radical subjectivity '' than any vampire or cop
   for your blood. It wants your creativity much more even than you want
   it yourself. It would die unless you desired it, & you will only
   desire it if it seems to offer you the very desires you dreamed, alone
   in your lonely genius, disguised & sold back to you as commodities.
   Ah, the metaphysical shenanigans of objects! (or words to that effect,
   Marx cited by Ben jamin).
   
   Suddenly it will appear to you (as if a demon had whispered it in your
   ear) that the Immediatist art you've created is so good, so fresh, so
   original, so strong compared to all the crap on the ``market'' --so
   pure--that you could water it down & sell it, & make a living at it,
   so you could all knock off WORK, buy a farm in the country, & do art
   together forever after. And perhaps it's true. You could... after all,
   you're geniuses. But it'd be better to fly to Hawaii & throw yourself
   into a live volcano. Sure, you could have success; you could even have
   15 seconds on the Evening News-- or a PBS documentary made on your
   life. Yes indeedy.
   
   3. But this is where the last major monster steps in, crashes thru the
   living room wall, & snuffs you (if Success itself hasn't already
   ``spoiled'' you, that is).
   
   Because in order to succeed you must first be ``seen.'' And if you are
   seen, you will be perceived as wrong, illegal, immoral--different. The
   Spectacle' s main sources of creative energy are all in prison. If
   you're not a nuclear family or a guided tour of the Republican Party,
   then why are you meeting every Monday evening? To do drugs? illicit
   sex? income tax evasion? satanism?
   
   And of course the chances are good that your Immediatist group is
   engaged in something illegal-- since almost everything enjoyable is in
   fact illegal. Babylon hates it when anyone actually enjoys life,
   rather than merely spends money in a vain attempt to buy the illusion
   of enjoyment. Dissipation, gluttony, bulimic overconsumption-- these
   are not only legal but mandatory. If you don't waste yourself on the
   emptiness of commodities you are obviously queer & must by definition
   be breaking some law. True pleasure in this society is more dangerous
   than bank robbery. At least bank robbers share Massa's respect for
   Massa's money. But you, you perverts, clearly deserve to be burned at
   the stake --& here come the peasants with their torches, eager to do
   the State's bidding without even being asked. Now you are the
   monsters, & your little gothic castle of Immediatism is engulfed in
   flames. Suddenly cops are swarming out of the woodwork. Are your
   papers in order? Do you have a permit to exist?
   
   Immediatism is a picnic--but it's not easy. Immediatism is the most
   natural path for free humans imaginable--& therefore the most
   unnatural abomination in the eyes of Capital. Immediatism will
   triumph, but only at the cost of self-organization of power, of
   clandestinity, & of insurrection. Immediatism is our delight,
   Immediatism is dangerous.
   
                                  INVOLUTION
   
   So far we've treated Immediatism as an aesthetic movement rather than
   a political one--but if the ``personal is political'' then certainly
   the aesthetic must be considered even more so. ``Art for art's sake''
   cannot really be said to exist at all, unless it be taken to imply
   that art per se functions as political power, i.e. power capable of
   expressing or even changing the world rather than merely describing
   it.
   
   In fact art always seeks such power, whether the artist remains
   unconscious of the fact & believes in ``pure'' aesthetics, or becomes
   so hyper-conscious of the fact as to produce nothing but agit-prop.
   Consciousness in itself, as Nietzsche pointed out, plays a less
   significant role in life than power. No snappier proof of this could
   be imagined than the continued existence of an ``Art World'' (SoHo,
   57th St., etc.) which still believes in the separate realms of
   political art & aesthetic art. Such failure of consciousness allows
   this ``world'' the luxury of producing art with overt political
   content (to satisfy their liberal customers) as well as art without
   such content, which merely expresses the power of the bourgeois scum &
   bankers who buy it for their investment portfolios.
   
   If art did not possess & wield this power it would not be worth doing
   & nobody would do it. Literal art for art's sake would produce nothing
   but impotence & nullity. Even the fin-de-sicle decadents who invented
   l 'art pour l'art used it politically:--as a weapon against
   bourgeois values of ``utility,'' ``morality'' & so on. The idea that
   art can be voided of political meaning appeals now only to those
   liberal cretins who wish to excuse ``pornography'' or other forbidden
   aesthetic games on the grounds that ``it's only art'' & hence can
   change nothing. (I hate these assholes worse than Jesse Helms; at
   least he still believes that art has power!)
   
   Even if an art without political content can--for the moment--be
   admitted to exist (altho this remains exceedingly problematic), then
   the political meaning of art can still be sought in the means of its
   production & consumption. The art of 57th St. remains bourgeois no
   matter how radical its content may appear, as Warhol proved by
   painting Che Guevara; in fact Valerie Solanis revealed herself far
   more radical than Warhol-- by shooting him--(& perhaps even more
   radical than Che, that Rudolf Valentino of Red Fascism).
   
   In fact we're not terribly concerned with the content of Immediatist
   art. Immediatism remains for us more game than ``movement'' ; as such,
   the game might result in Brechtian didacticism or Poetic Terrorism,
   but it might equally well leave behind no content at all (as in a
   banquet), or else one with no obvious political message (such as a
   quilt). The radical quality of Immediatism expresses itself rather in
   its mode of production & consumption.
   
   That is, it is produced by a group of friends either for itself alone
   or for a larger circle of friends; it is not produced for sale, nor is
   it sold, nor (ideally) is it allowed to slip out of the control of its
   producers in any way. If it is meant for consumption outside the
   circle then it must be made in such a way as to remain impervious to
   cooptation & commodifica tion. For example, if one of our quilts
   escaped us & ended up sold as ``art'' to some capitalist or museum, we
   should consider it a disaster. Quilts must remain in our hands or be
   given to those who will appreciate them & keep them. As for our
   agitprop, it must resist commodification by its very form;--we don't
   want our posters sold twenty years later as ``art,'' like Myakovsky
   (or Brecht, for that matter). The best Immediatist agitprop will leave
   no trace at all, except in the souls of those who are changed by it.
   
   Let us repeat here that participation in Immediatism does not preclude
   the production/consumption of art in other ways by the individuals
   making up the group. We are not ideol ogues, & this is not Jonestown.
   This is a game, not a movement; it has rules of play, but no laws.
   Immediatism would love it if everyone were an artist, but our goal is
   not mass conversion. The game' s pay-off lies in its ability to escape
   the paradoxes & c ontradictions of the commercial art world (including
   literature, etc.), in which all liberatory gestures seem to end up as
   mere representations & hence betrayals of themselves. We offer the
   chance for art which is immediately present by virtue of the fact that
   it can exist only in our presence. Some of us may still write novels
   or paint pictures, either to ``make a living'' or to seek out ways to
   redeem these forms from recuperation. But Immediatism sidesteps both
   these problems. Thus it is ``privileged,'' like all games.
   
   But we cannot for this reason alone call it involuted, turned in on
   itself, closed, hermetic, elitist, art for art's sake. In Immediatism
   art is produced & consumed in a certain way, & this modus operandi is
   already ``political'' in a very specific sense. In order to grasp this
   sense, however, we must first explore ``involution'' more closely.
   
   It's become a truism to say that society no longer expresses a
   consensus (whether reactionary or liberatory), but that a false
   consensus is expressed for society; let's call this false consensus ``
   the Totality.'' The Totality is produced thru mediation & alienation,
   which attempt to subsume or absorb all creative energies for the
   Totality. Myakovsky killed himself when he realized this; perhaps
   we're made of ster ner stuff, perhaps not. But for the sake of
   argument, let us assume that suicide is not a ``solution.''
   
   The Totality isolates individuals & renders them powerless by offering
   only illusory modes of social expression, modes which seem to promise
   liberation or self-fulfillment but in fact end by producing yet more
   mediation & alienation. This complex can be vi ewed clearly at the
   level of ``commodity fetishism,'' in which the most rebellious or
   avant-garde forms in art can be turned into fodder for PBS or MTV or
   ads for jeans or perfume.
   
   On a subtler level, however, the Totality can absorb & re-direct any
   power whatsoever simply by re-contextualizing & re-presenting it. For
   instance, the liberatory power of a painting can be neutralized or
   even absorbed simply by placing it in the context of a gallery or
   museum, where it will automatically become a mere representation of
   liberatory power. The insurrectionary gesture of a madman or criminal
   is not negated only by locking up the perpetrator, but even more by
   allowing the gesture to be represented--by a psychiatrist or by some
   brainless Kop-show on channel 5 or even by a coffee-table book on Art
   Brut. This has been called ``Spectacular recuperation'' ; however, the
   Totality can go even farther than this simply by simulating that which
   it formerly sought to recuperate. That is, the artist & madman are no
   longer necessary even as sources of appropriation or ``mechanical
   reproduction, '' as Benjamin called it. Simulation cannot reproduce
   the faint reflection of ``aura'' which Benjamin allowed even to
   commodity-trash, its ``utopian trace.'' Simulation cannot in fact
   reproduce or produce anything except desolation & misery. But since
   the Totality thrives on our misery, simulation suits its purpose quite
   admirably.
   
   All these effects can be tracked most obviously & crudely in the area
   generally called ``the Media'' (altho we contend that mediation has a
   much wider range than even the term broad-cast could ever describe or
   indicate). The role of the Media in the recent Nintendo War--in fact
   the Media's one-to-one identification with that war--provides a
   perfect & exemplary scenario. All over America millions of people
   possessed at least enough ``enlightenment'' to condemn this hideous
   parody of morality enforced by that murderous crack-dealing spy in the
   White House. The Media however produced (i.e. simulated) the
   impression that virtually no opposition to Bush's war existed or could
   exist ; that (to quote Bush) ``there is no Peace Movement.'' And in
   fact there was no Peace Movement--only millions of people whose desire
   for peace had been negated by the Totality, wiped out, ``disappeared
   '' like victims of Peruvian death squads; people separated from each
   other by the brutal alienation of TV, news management, infotainment &
   sheer disinformation; people made to feel isolated, alienated, weird,
   queer, wrong, finally no n-existent; people without voices; people
   without power.
   
   This process of fragmentation has reached near-universal completion in
   our society, at least in the area of social discourse. Each person
   engages in a ``relation of involution'' with the spectacular
   simulation of Media. That is, our ``relation'' with Media is
   essentially empty & illusory, so that even when we seem to reach out &
   perceive reality in Media, we are in fact merely driven back in upo n
   ourselves, alienated, isolated, & impotent. America is full to
   overflowing with people who feel that no matter what they say or do,
   no difference will be made; that no one is listening; that there is no
   one to listen. This feeling is the triumph of the Media. ``They''
   speak, you listen--& therefore turn in upon yourself in a spiral of
   loneliness, distraction, depression, & spiritual death.
   
   This process affects not only individuals but also such groups as
   still exist outside the Consensus Matrix of nuke-family, school,
   church, job, army, political party, etc. Each group of artists or
   peace activists or whatever is also made to feel that no contact with
   other groups is possible. Each ``life-style'' group buys the
   simulation of rivalry & enmity with other such gro ups of consumers.
   Each class & race is assured of its ungulfable existential alienation
   from all other classes & races (as in Lifestyles of the Rich &
   Famous).
   
   The concept of ``networking'' began as a revolutionary strategy to
   bypass & overcome the Totality by setting up horizontal connections
   (unmed iated by authority) among individuals & groups. In the 1980s we
   discovered that networking could also be mediated & in fact had to be
   mediated--by telephone, computers, the post office, etc.--& thus was
   doomed to f ail us in our struggle against alienation. Communication
   technology may still prove to offer useful tools in this struggle, but
   by now it has become clear that CommTech is not a goal in itself. And
   in fact our distrust of seemingly `` democratic'' tech like PCs &
   phones increase with every revolutionary failure to hold control of
   the means of production. Frankly we do not wish to be forced to make
   up our minds whether or not any new tech will be or must be either
   liberatory or counter-liberatory. ``After the revolution'' such
   questions would answer themselves in the context of a `` politics of
   desire.'' For the time being, however, we have discovered (not
   invented) Immediatism as a means of direct production & presentation
   of creative, liberatory & ludic energies, c arried out without
   recourse to mediation of any mechanistic or alienated structures
   whatsoever...or at least so we hope.
   
   In other words, whether or not any given technology or form of
   mediation can be used to overcome the Totality, we have decided to
   play a game that uses no such tech & hence does not need to question
   it-- at least, not within the borders of the game. We reserve our
   challenge, our question, for the total Totality, not for any one
   ``issue'' with which it seeks to distract us.
   
   And this brings us back to the ``political form'' of Immediatism.
   Face-to-face, body-to-body, breath-to breath (literally a
   conspiracy)--the game of Immediatism simply cannot be played on any
   level accessible to the false Consensus. It does not represent
   ``everyday life''--it cannot BE other than ``everyday life,'' although
   it positions itself for the penetration of the marvelous,'' for the
   illumination of the real by the wonderful. Like a secret society, the
   networking it does must be slow (infinitely more slow than the ``pure
   speed'' of CommTech, media & war), & it must be corporeal rather than
   abstract, fleshless, mediated by machine or by authority or by
   simulation.
   
   In this sense we say that Immediatism is a picnic (a con-viviality)
   but is not easy--that it is most natural for free spirits but that it
   is dangerous. Content has nothing to do with it. The sheer existence
   of Immediatism is already an insurrection.
   
                                  IMAGINATION
   
   There is a time for the theatre.--If a people's imagination grows weak
   there arises in it the inclination to have its legends presented to
   it on the stage: it can now endure these crude substitutes for
   imagination. But for those ages to which the epic rhapsodist belongs,
   the theatre and the actor disguised as a hero is a hindrance to
   imagination rather than a means of giving it wings: too close, too
   definite, too heavy, too little in it of dream and bird-flight.
   (Nietzsche)
   
   But of course the rhapsodist, who here appears only one step removed
   from the shaman (``...dream and bird-flight'') must also be called a
   kind of medium or bridge standing between ``a people'' and its
   imagination. (Note: we'll use the word ``imagination'' sometimes in
   Wm. Blake's sense & sometimes in Gaston Bachelard's sense without
   opting for either a ``spiritual '' or an ``aesthetic'' determination,
   & without recourse to metaphysics.) A bridge carries across
   (``translate,'' ``metaphor'' ) but is not the original. And to
   translate is to betray. Even the rhapsodist provides a little poison
   for the imagination.
   
   Ethnography, however, allows us to assert the possibility of societies
   where shamans are not specialists of the imagination, but where
   everyone is a special sort of shaman. In these societies, all members
   (except the psychically handicapped) act as shamans & bards for
   themselves as well as for their peo ple. For example: certain
   Amerindian tribes of the Great Plains developed the most complex of
   all hunter/gatherer societies quite late in their history (perhaps
   partly thanks to the gun & horse, technologies adopted from European
   culture). Each person acqu ired complete identity & full membership in
   ``the People'' only thru the Vision Quest, & its artistic enactment
   for the tribe. Thus each person became an ``epic rhapsodist'' in
   sharing this individuality with the collectivity.
   
   The Pygmies, among the most ``primitive'' cultures, neither produce
   nor consume their music, but become en masse ``the Voice of the
   Forest.'' At the other end of the scale, among complex agricultural
   societies, like Bali on the verge of the 20th century, ``everyone is
   an artist'' (& in 1980 a Javanese mystic told me, ``Everyone must be
   an artist!'').
   
   The goals of Immediatism lie somewhere along the trajectory described
   roughly by these three points (Pygmies, Plains Indians, Balinese),
   which have all been linked to the anthropological concept of
   ``democratic shamanism. '' Creative acts, themselves the outer results
   of the inwardness of imagination, are not mediated & alienated (in the
   sense we've been using those terms) when they are carried out BY
   everyone FOR everyone-- when they are produced but not
   reproduced--when they are shared but not fetishized. Of course these
   acts are achieved thru mediation of some sort & to some extent, as are
   all acts-- but they have not yet become forces of extreme alienation
   between some Expert/Priest/Producer on the one hand & some hapless
   ``layperson'' or consumer on the other.
   
   Different media therefore exhibit different degrees of mediation--&
   perhaps they can even be ranked on that basis. Here everything depends
   on reciprocity, on a more-or-less equal exchange of what may be called
   `` quanta of imagination.'' In the case of the epic rhapsodist who
   mediates vision for the tribe, a great deal of work--or active
   dreaming-- still remains to be done by the hearers. They must
   participate imaginatively in the act of telling/hearing, & must call
   up images from their own stores of creative power to complete the
   rhapsodist's act.
   
   In the case of Pygmy music the reciprocity becomes nearly as complete
   as possible, since the entire tribe mediates vision only & precisely
   for the entire tribe;-- while for the Balinese, reciprocity assumes a
   more complex economy in which specialization is highly articulated, in
   which ``the artist is not a special kind of person, but each person is
   a special kind of artist.''
   
   In the ``ritual theater'' of Voodoo & Santeria, everyone present must
   participate by visualizing the loas or orishas (imaginal archetypes),
   & by calling upon them (with ``signature'' chants & rhythms) to
   manifest. Anyone present may become a ``horse'' or medium for one of
   these santos, whose words & actions then assume for all celebrants the
   aspect of the presence of the spirit (i.e. the possessed person does
   not represent but presents). This structure, which also underlies
   Indonesian ritual theater, may be taken as exemplary for the cr eative
   production of ``democratic shamanism.'' In order to construct our
   scale of imagination for all media, we may start by comparing this
   ``voodoo theater'' with the 18th century European theater described by
   Nietzsche.
   
   In the latter, nothing of the original vision (or ``spirit'') is
   actually present. The actors merely re-present--they are
   ``disguised.'' It is not expected that any member of troupe or
   audience will suddenly become possessed (or even ``inspired'' to any
   great extent) by the playwright's images. The actors are specialists o
   r experts of representation, while the audience are ``laypeople'' to
   whom various images are being transferred. The audience is passive,
   too much is being done for the audience, who are indeed locked in
   place in darkness & silence, immobilized by the money they've paid for
   this vicarious experience.
   
   Artaud, who realized this, attempted to revive ritual voodoo theater
   (banished from Western Culture by Aristotle)--but he carried out the
   attempt within the very structure (actor/audience) of aristotelian
   theater; he tried to destroy or mutate it from the inside out. He
   failed & went insane, setting off a whole series of experiments which
   culminated in the Living Theater' s assault on the actor/audience
   barrier, a literal assault which tried to force audience members to
   ``participate'' in the ritual. These experiments produced some great
   theater, but all failed in their deepest purpose. None managed to
   overcome the alienation Nietzsche & Artaud had criticized.
   
   Even so, Theater occupies a much higher place on the Imagina l Scale
   than other & later media such as film. At least in theater actors &
   audience are physically present in the same space together, allowing
   for the creation of what Peter Brook calls the ``invisible golden
   chain'' of attention & fellow-feeling between actors & audience--the
   well-known ``magic'' of theater. With film, however, this chain is
   broken. Now the audience sits alone in the dark with nothing to do,
   while the absent actors are represented by gigantic icons. Always the
   same no matter how many times it is ``shown,'' made to be reproduced
   mechanically, devoid of all ``aura,'' film actually forbids its
   audience to ``participate''--film has no need of the audience' s
   imagination. Of course, film does need the audience's money, & money
   is a kind of concretized imaginal residue, after all.
   
   Eisenstein would point out that montage establishes a dialectic
   tension in film which engages the viewer's mind--intellect &
   imagination-- & Disney might add (if he were capable of ideology) that
   animation increases this effect because animation is, in effect,
   completely made up of montage. Film too has its ``magic.'' Granted.
   But from the point of view of structure we have come a long way from
   voodoo theater & democratic shamanism-- we have come perilously close
   to the commodification of the imagination, & to the alienation of
   commodity-relations. We have almost resigned our power of flight, even
   of dream-flight.
   
   Books? Books as media transmit only words--no sounds, sights, smells
   or feels, all of which are left up to the reader's imagination.
   Fine...But there's nothing ``democratic'' about books. The
   author/publisher produces, you consume. Books appeal to
   ``imaginative'' people, perhaps, but all their imaginal activity
   really amounts to passivity, sitting alone with a book, letting
   someone else tell the story. The magic of books has something sinister
   about it, as in Borges's Library. The Church's idea of a list of
   damnable books probably didn't go far enough--for in a sense, all
   books are damned. The eros of the text is a perversion--albeit,
   nevertheless, one to which we are addicted, & in no hurry to kick.
   
   As for radio, it is clearly a medium of absence--like the book only
   more so, since books leave you alone in the light, radio alone in the
   dark. The more exacerbated passivity of the ``listener'' is revealed
   by the fact that advertisers pay for spots on radio, not in books (or
   not very much). Nevertheless radio leaves a great deal more
   imaginative ``work'' for the listener than, say, television for the
   viewer. The magic of radio: one can use it to listen to sunspot
   radiation, storms on Jupiter, the whizz of comets. Radio is
   old-fashioned; therein lies its seductiveness. Radio preachers say, ``
   Put your haaands on the Radio, brothers & sisters, & feel the
   heeeeaaaling power of the Word!'' Voodoo Radio?
   
   (Note: A similar analysis of recorded music might be made: i.e., that
   it is alienating but not yet alienated. Records replaced family
   amateur music-making. Recorded music is too ubiquitous, too easy--
   that which is not present is not rare. And yet there's a lot to be
   said for scratchy old 78s played over distant radio stations late at
   night-- a flash of illumination which seems to spark across all the
   levels of mediation & achieve a paradoxical presence.)
   
   It's in this sense that we might perhaps give some credence to the
   otherwise dubious proposition that ``radio is good--television evil!''
   For television occupies the bottom rung of the scale of imagination in
   media. No, that's not true. ``Virtual Reality'' is even lower. But TV
   is the medium the Situationists meant when they referred to ``the
   Spectacle. '' Television is the medium which Immediatism most wants to
   overcome. Books, theater, film & radio all retain what Benjamin called
   ``the utopian trace'' (at least in potentia)-- the last vestige of an
   impulse against alienation, the last perfume of the imagination. TV
   however began by erasing even that trace. No wonder the first
   broadcasters of video were the Nazis. TV is to the imagination what
   virus is to the DNA. The end. Beyond TV there lies only the
   infra-media realm of no-space/no-time, the instantaneity & ecstasis of
   CommTech, pure speed, the downloading of consciousness into the
   machine, into the program--in other words, hell.
   
   Does this mean that Immediatism wants to ``abolish television''? No,
   certainly not-- for Immediatism wants to be a game, not a political
   movement, & certainly not a revolution with the power to abolish any
   medium. The goals of Immediatism must be positive, not negative. We
   feel no calling to eliminate any ``means of production '' (or even
   re-production) which might after all some day fall into the hands of
   ``a people.''
   
   We have analyzed media by asking how much imagination is involved in
   each, & how much reciprocity, solely in order to implement for
   ourselves the most effective means of solving the problem outlined by
   Nietzsche & felt so painfully by Artaud, the problem o f alienation.
   For this task we need a rough hierarchy of media, a means of measuring
   their potential for our uses. Roughly, then, the more imagination is
   liberated & shared, the more useful the medium.
   
   Perhaps we can no longer call up spirits to possess us, or visit their
   realms as the shamans did. Perhaps no such spirits exist, or perhaps
   we are too ``civilized'' to recognize them. Or perhaps not. The
   creative imagination, however, remains for us a reality--& one which
   we must explore, even in the vain hope of our salvation.
   
                                    LASCAUX
                                       
   Every culture (or anyway every major urban/agricultural culture)
   cherishes two myths which apparently contradict each other: the myth
   of Degeneration & the myth of Progress. Rene Guenon & the
   neo-traditionalists like to pretend that no ancient culture ever
   believed in Progress, but of course they all did.
   
   One version of the myth of Degeneration in Indo-European culture
   centers around the image of metals: gold, silver, bronze, iron. But
   what of the myth wherein Kronos & the Titans are destroyed to make way
   for Zeus & the Olympians?-- a story which parallels that of Tiamat &
   Marduk, or Leviathan & Jah. In these ``Progress'' myths, an earlier
   chthonic chaotic earthbound (or watery) ``feminine'' pantheon is
   replaced (overthrown) by a later spiritualized orderly heavenly
   ``male'' pantheon. Is this not a step forward in Time? And have not
   Buddhism, Christianity, & Islam all claimed to be better than
   paganism?
   
   In truth of course both myths--Degeneration as well as Progress--
   serve the purpose of Control & the Society of Control. Both admit that
   before the present state of affairs something else existed, a
   different form of the Social. In both cases we appear to be seeing a
   ``race-memory'' vision of the Paleolithic, the great long unchanging
   pre-history of the human. In one case that era is seen as a nastily
   brutish vast disorder; the 18th century did not discover this
   viewpoint, but found it already expressed in Classical & Christian
   culture. In the other case, the primordial is viewed as precious,
   innocent, happier, & easier than the present, more numinous than the
   present--but irrevocably vanished, impossible to recover except
   through death.
   
   Thus for all loyal & enthusiastic devotees of Order, Order presents
   itself as immeasurably more perfect than any original Chaos; while for
   the disaffected potential enemies of Order, Order presents itself as
   cruel & oppressive ( ``iron'') but utterly & fatally unavoidable--in
   fact, omnipotent.
   
   In neither case will the mythopoets of Order admit that ``Chaos'' or
   ``the Golden Age'' could still exist in the present, or that they do
   exist in the present, here & now in fact-- but repressed by the
   illusory totality of the Society of Order. We however believe that
   ``the paleolithic'' (which is neither more nor less a myth than
   ``chaos'' or ``golden age'' ) does exist even now as a kind of
   unconscious within the social. We also believe that as the Industrial
   Age comes to an end, & with it the last of the Neolithic
   ``agricultural revolution,'' & with it the decay of the last religions
   of Order, that this ``repressed material'' will once again be
   uncovered. What else could we mean when we speak of ``psychic
   nomadism'' or `` the disappearance of the Social''?
   
   The end of the Modern does not mean a return TO the Paleolithic, but a
   return OF the Paleolithic.
   
   Post-classical (or post-academic) anthropology has prepared us for
   this return of the repressed, for only very recently have we come to
   understand & sympathize with hunter/gatherer societies. The caves of
   Lascaux were rediscovered precisely when they neede d to be
   rediscovered, for no ancient Roman nor medieval Christian nor 18th
   century rationalist could have ever have found them beautiful or
   significant. In these caves (symbols of an archaeolo gy of
   consciousness) we found the artists who created them; we discovered
   them as ancestors, & also as ourselves, alive & present.
   
   Paul Goodman once defined anarchism as ``neolithic conservatism.''
   Witty, but no longer accurate. Anarchism (or Ontological Anarchism, at
   least) no longer sympathizes with peasant agriculturalists, but with
   the non-authoritarian social structures & pre-surpl us-value economics
   of the hunter/gatherers. Moreover we cannot describe this sympathy as
   ``conservative.'' A better term would be ``radical,'' since we have
   found our roots in the Old Stone Age, a kind of eternal present. We do
   not wish to return to a material technology of the past (we have no
   desire to bomb ourselves back to the Stone Age), but rather for the
   return of a psychic technology which we forgot we possessed.
   
   The fact that we find Lascaux beautiful means that Babylon has at last
   begun to fall. Anarchism is probably more a symptom than a cause of
   this melting away. Despite our utopian imaginations we do not know
   what to ex pect. But we, at least, are prepared for the drift into the
   unknown. For us it is an adventure, not the End of the World. We have
   welcomed the return of Chaos, for along with the danger comes--at
   last--a chance to create.
   
                                  VERNISSAGE
   
   What's so funny about Art?
   
   Was Art laughed to death by dada? Or perhaps this sardonicide took
   place even earlier, with the first performance of Ubu Roi? Or with
   Baudelaire' s sarcastic phantom-of-the-opera laughter, which so
   disturbed his good bourgeois friends?
   
   What's funny about Art (though it' s more funny-peculiar than
   funny-ha-ha) is the sight of the corpse that refuses to lie down, this
   zombie jamboree, this charnel puppetshow with all the strings attached
   to Capital (bloated Diego Rivera-style plutocrat), this moribund
   simula crum jerking frenetically around, pretending to be the one
   single most truly alive thing in the universe.
   
   In the face of an irony like this, a doubleness so extreme it amounts
   to an impassable abyss, any healing power of laughter-in-art can only
   be rendere d suspect, the illusory property of a self-appointed elite
   or pseudo-avant-garde. To have a genuine avant-garde, Art must be
   going somewhere, and this has long since ceased to be the case. We
   mentioned Rivera; surely no more genuinely funny political artist has
   painted in our century--but in aid of what? Trotskyism! The deadest
   dead-end of twentieth-century politics! No healing power here--only
   the hollow sound of powerless mockery, echoing over the abyss.
   
   To heal, one first destroys--and political art which fails to destroy
   the target of its laughter ends by strengthening the very forces it
   sought to attack. ``What doesn't kill me makes me stronger,'' sneers
   the porcine figure in its shiny top hat (mocking Nietzsche, or course,
   poor Nietzsche, who tried to laugh the whole nineteenth century to
   death, but ended up a living corpse, whose sister tied strings to his
   limbs to make him dance for fascists).
   
   There's nothing particularly mysterious or metaphysical about the
   process. Circumstance, poverty, once forced Rivera to accept a
   commission to come to the USA and paint a mural--for Rockefeller!--
   the very archetypal Wall Street porker himself! Rivera made his work a
   blatant piece of Commie agitprop--and then Rockefeller had it
   obliterated. As if this weren' t funny enough, the real joke is that
   Rockefeller could have savored victory even more sweetly by not
   destroying the work, but by paying for it and displaying it, turning
   it into Art, that toothless parasite of the interior decorator, that
   joke.
   
   The dream of Romanticism : that the reality-world of bourgeois values
   could somehow be persuaded to consume, to take into itself, an art
   which at first seemed like all other art (books to read, paintings to
   hang on the wall, etc.), but which would secretly infect that reality
   with something else, which would change the way it saw itself,
   overturn it, replace it with the revolutionary values of art.
   
   This was also the dream surrealism dreamed. Even dada, despite its
   outward show of cynicism, still dared to hope. From Romanticism to
   Situ ationism, from Blake to 1968, the dream of each succeeding
   yesterday became the parlor decor of every tomorrow-- bought, chewed,
   reproduced, sold, consigned to museums, libraries, universities, and
   other mausolea, forgotten, lost, resurrected, turned into
   nostalgia-craze, reproduced, sold, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
   
   In order to understand how thoroughly Cruikshank or Daumier or
   Grandville or Rivera or Tzara or Duchamp destroyed the bourgeois
   worldview of their time, one must bury oneself in a blizzard of
   historical references and hallucinate-- for in fact the
   destruction-by-laughter was a theoretical success but an actual
   flop--the dead weight of illusion failed to budge even an inch in the
   gales of laughter, the attack of laughter. It wasn' t bourgeois
   society which collapsed after all, it was art.
   
   In the light of the trick which has been played on us, it appears to
   us as if the contemporary artist were faced with two choices (since
   suicide is not a solution): one, to go on launching attack after
   attack, movemen t after movement, in the hope that one day (soon)
   ``the thing'' will have grown so weak, so empty, that it will
   evaporate and leave us suddenly alone in the field; or, two, to begin
   right now immediately to live as if the battle were already won, as
   if today the artist were no longer a special kind of person, but each
   person a special sort of artist. (This is what the Situationists
   called ``the suppression and realization of art'' ).
   
   Both of these options are so ``impossible'' that to act on either of
   them would be a joke. We wouldn't have to make ``funny'' art because
   just making art would be funny enough to bust a gut. But at least it
   would be our joke. (Who can say for certain that we would fail? ``I
   love not knowing the future.''-- Nietzsche) In order to begin to
   play this game, however, we shall probably have to set certain rules
   for ourselves:
   
   1. There are no issues. There is no such thing as sexism, fascism,
   speciesism, looksism, or any other ``franchise issue'' which can be
   separated out from the social complex and treated with `` discourse''
   as a ``problem.'' There exists only the totality which subsumes all
   these illusory ``issues'' into the complete falsity of its discourse,
   thus rendering all opinions, pro and con, into mere
   thought-commodities to be bought and sold. And this totality is itself
   an illusion, an evil nightmare from which we are trying (through art,
   or humor, or by any other means) to awaken.
   
   2. As much as possible whatever we do must be done outside the
   psychic/economic structure set up by the totality as the permissible
   space for the game of art. How, you ask, are we to make a living
   without galleries, agents, museums, commercial publishing, the NEA,
   and other welfare agencies of the arts? Oh well, one need not ask for
   the improbable. But one must indeed demand the ``impossible''--or else
   why the fuck is one an artist?! It's not enough to occupy a special
   holy catbird seat called Art from which to mock at the stupidity and
   injustice of the ``square'' world. Art is part of the problem. The Art
   World has its head up its ass, and it has become necessary to
   disengage--or else live in a landscape full of shit.
   
   3. Of course one must go on ``making a living'' somehow-- but the
   essential thing is to make a life. Whatever we do, whichever option we
   choose (perhaps all of them), or however badly we compromise, we
   should pray never to mistake art for life: Art is brief, L ife is
   long. We should try to be prepared to drift, to nomadize, to slip out
   of all nets, to never settle down, to live through many arts, to make
   our lives better than our art, to make art our boast rather than our
   excuse.
   
   4. The healing laugh (as opposed to the poisonous and corrosive laugh)
   can only arise from an art which is serious--serious, but not sober.
   Pointless morbidity, cynical nihilism, trendy postmodern frivolity,
   whining/bitching/moaning (the liberal cult of the ``victim''),
   exhaustion, Baudrillardian ironic hyperconformity--none of these
   options is serious enough, and at the same time none is intoxicated
   enough to suit our purposes, much less elicit our laughter.
   
                                ``RAW VISION''
   
   The categories of naive art, art brut, and insane or eccentric art,
   which shade into various & further categories of neo-primitive or
   urban-primitive art-- all these ways of categorizing & labelling art
   remain senseless:-- that is, not only ultimately useless but also
   essentially unsensual, unconnected to body & desire. What really
   characterizes all these art forms? Not their marginality in relation
   to a mainstream of art/discourse...for heaven's sake, what
   mainstream?! what discourse?! If we were to say that there's a
   ``post-modernist'' discourse currently going on, then the concept
   ``margin'' no longer holds any meaning. Post-post-modernism, however,
   will not even admit the existence of any discourse of any sort. Art
   has fallen silent. There are no more categories, much less maps of
   ``center'' & ``margin. '' We are free of all that shit, right?
   
   Wrong. Because one category survives: Capital. Too-Late Capitalism.
   The Spectacle, the Simulation, Babylon, whatever you want to call it.
   All art can be positioned or labelled in relation to this
   ``discourse.'' And it is precisely & only in relation to this
   ``metaphysical'' commodity-spectacle that ``outsider'' art can be seen
   as marginal. If this spectacle can be considered as a para-medium (in
   all its sinuous complexity), then ``outsider'' art must be called
   im-mediate. It does not pass thru the paramedium of the spectacle.
   It is meant only for the artist & the artist's ``immediate entourage''
   (friends, family, neighbors, tribe); & it participates only in a
   ``gift'' economy of positive reciprocity. Only this non-category of
   ``immediatism'' can therefore approach an adequate understanding &
   defense of the bodily aspects of ``outsider'' art, its connection to
   the senses & to desire, & its avoidance or even ignorance of the
   mediation/alienation inherent in spectacular recuperation &
   re-production. Mind you, this has nothing to do with the content of
   any outsider genre, nor for that matter does it concern the form or
   the intention of the work, nor the navite or knowingness of the artist
   or recipients of the art. Its ``immediatism'' lies solely in its means
   of imaginal production. It communicates or is ``given'' from person to
   person, ``breast-to-breast'' as the sufis say, without passing thru
   the distortion-mechanism of the spectacular paramedium.
   
   When Yugoslavian or Haitian or NYC-grafitti art was ``discovered'' &
   commodified, the results failed to satisfy on several points:--(1) In
   terms of the pseudo-discourse of the ``Art World, '' all so-called
   ``naivite'' is doomed to remain quaint, even campy, & decidedly
   marginal--even when it commands high prices (for a year or two). The
   forced entrance of outsider art into the commodity spectacle is a
   humiliation. (2) Recuperation as commodity engages the artist in
   ``negative reciprocity''--i.e., where first the artist ``received
   inspiration'' as a free gift, and then ``made a donation'' directly to
   other people, who might or might not ``give back'' their
   understanding, or mystification, or a turkey & a keg of beer (positive
   reciprocity), the artist now first creates for money & receives money,
   while any aspects of ``gift'' exchange recede into secondary levels of
   meaning & finally begin to fade (negative reciprocity). Finally we
   have tourist art, & the condescending amusement, & then the
   condescending boredom, of those who will no longer pay for the
   ``inauthentic.'' (3) Or else the Art World vampirizes the energy of
   the outsider, sucks everything out & then passes on the corpse to the
   advertising world or the world of ``popular'' entertainment. By this
   re-production the art finally loses its ``aura'' & shrivels & dies.
   True, the ``utopian trace'' may remain, but in essence the art has
   been betrayed.
   
   The unfairness of such terms as ``insane'' or ``neo-primitive'' art
   lies in the fact that this art is not produced only by the mad or
   innocent, but by all those who evade the alienation of the paramedium.
   Its true appeal lies in the intense aura it acquires thru immediate
   imaginal presence, not only in its ``visionary'' style or content, but
   most importantly by its mere present-ness (i.e., it is ``here'' and it
   is a ``gift''). In this sense it is more, not less, noble than
   ``mainstream '' art of the post-modern era--which is precisely the art
   of an absence rather than a presence.
   
   The only fair way (or ``beauty way,'' as the Hopi say) to treat
   ``outsider'' art would seem to be to keep it ``secret''--to refuse to
   define it--to pass it on as a secret, person-to-person,
   breast-to-breast--rather than pass it thru the paramedium (slick
   journals, quarterlies, galleries, museums, coffee-table books, MTV,
   etc.). Or even better:--to become ``mad'' & ``innocent''
   ourselves--for so Babylon will label us when we neither worship nor
   criticize it anymore--when we have forgotten it (but not ``forgiven''
   it!), & remembered our own prophetic selves, our bodies, our ``true
   will.''
   
                            AN IMMEDIATIST POTLATCH
   
   i.
   
   Any number can play but the number must be pre-determined. Six to
   twenty-five seems about right.
   
   ii.
   
   The basic structure is a banquet or picnic. Each player must bring a
   dish or bottle, etc., of sufficient quantity that e veryone gets at
   least a serving. Dishes can be prepared or finished on the spot, but
   nothing should be bought ready-made (except wine & beer, although
   these could ideally be home-made). The more elaborate the dishes the
   better. Attempt to be memorable . The menu need not be left to
   surprise (although this is an option)-- some groups may want to
   coordinate the banquets so as to avoid duplications or clashes.
   Perhaps the banquet could have a theme & each player could be
   responsible for a given course (appetizer, soup, fish, vegetables,
   meat, salad, dessert, ices, cheeses, etc.). Suggested themes:
   Fourier's Gastrosophy--Surrealism--Native American--Black & Red (all
   food black or red in honor of anarchy)--etc.
   
   iii.
   
   The banquet should be carried out with a certain degree of formality:
   toasts, for example. Maybe ``dress for dinner'' in some way? (Imagine
   for example that the banquet theme were ``Surrealism ''; the concept
   ``dress for dinner'' takes on a certain meaning). Live music at the
   banquet would be fine, providing some of the players were content to
   perform for the others as their ``gift,'' & eat later. (Recorded music
   is not appropriate.)
   
   iv.
   
   The main purpose of the potlatch is of course gift-giving. Every
   player should arrive with one or more gifts & leave with one or more
   different gifts. This could be accomplished in a number of ways: (a)
   Each player brings one gift & passes it to the person seated next to
   them at table (or some similar arrangement); (b) Everyone brings a
   gift for every other guest. The choice may depend on the number of
   players, with (a) better for larger groups & (b) for smaller
   gatherings. If the choice is (b), you may want to decide beforehand
   whether the gifts should be the same or different. For example, if I
   am playing with five other people, do I b ring (say) five hand-painted
   neckties, or five totally different gifts? And will the gifts be given
   specifically to certain individuals (in which case they might be
   crafted to suit the recipient's personality), or will they be
   distributed by lot?
   
   v.
   
   The gifts must be made by the players, not ready-made. This is vital.
   Pre-manufactured elements can go into the making of the gifts, but
   each gift must be an individual work of art in its own right. If for
   instance I bring five hand painted neckties, I must paint each one
   myself, either with the same or with different designs, although I may
   be allowed to buy ready-made ties to work on.
   
   vi.
   
   Gifts need not be physical objects. One player's gift might be live
   music during dinner, another's might be a performance. H owever, it
   should be recalled that in the Amerindian potlatches the gifts were
   supposed to be superb & even ruinous for the givers. In my opinion
   physical objects are best, & they should be as good as possible-- not
   necessarily costly to make, but really impressive. Traditional
   potlatches involved prestige-winning. Players should feel a
   competitive spirit of giving, a determination to make gifts of real
   splendor or value. Groups may wish to set rules beforehand a bout
   this--some may wish to insist on physical objects, in which case music
   or performance would simply become extra acts of generosity, but hors
   de potlatch, so to speak.
   
   vii.
   
   Our potlatch is non-traditional, however, in that theoretically all
   players win--everyone gives & receives equally. There' s no denying
   however that a dull or stingy player will lose prestige, while an
   imaginative &/or generous player will gain ``face.'' In a really
   successful potlatch each player will be equally generous, so that all
   pl ayers will be equally pleased. The uncertainty of outcome adds a
   zest of randomness to the event.
   
   viii.
   
   The host, who supplies the place, will of course be put to extra
   trouble & expense, so that an ideal potlatch would be part of a series
   in which each player takes a turn as host. In this case another
   competition for prestige would transpire in the course o f the
   series:--who will provide the most memorable hospitality? Some groups
   may want to set rules limiting the host's duties, while others may
   wish to leave hosts free to knock themselves out; however, in the
   latter case, there should really be a complete series of events, so
   that no one need feel cheated, or superior, in relation to the other
   players. But in some areas & for some groups the entire series may
   simply not be feasible. In New York for exam ple not everyone has
   enough room to host even a small party. In this case the hosts will
   inevitably win some extra prestige. And why not?
   
   ix.
   
   Gifts should not be ``useful.'' They should appeal to the senses. Some
   groups may prefer works of art, others might like home-made preserves
   & relishes, or gold frankincense & myrrh, or even sexual acts. Some
   ground rules should be agreed on. No mediation should be involved in
   the gift-- no videotapes, tape recordings, printed material, etc. All
   gifts should be present at the potlatch ``ceremony''-- i.e. no tickets
   to other events, no promises, no postponements. Remember that the
   purpose of the game, as well as its most basic rule, is to avoid all
   mediation & even representation--to be ``present,'' to give ``
   presents.''
   
                                    SILENCE
   
   The problem is not that too much has been revealed, but that every
   revelation finds its sponsor, its CEO, its monthly slick, its clone
   Judases & replacement people.
   
   You can't get sick from too much knowledge--but we can suffer from the
   virtualization of knowledge, its alienation from us & its replacement
   by a weird dull changeling or simulacrum-- the same ``data,'' yes, but
   now dead--like supermarket vegetables; no ``aura.''
   
   Our malaise (January 1, 1992) arises from this: we hear not the
   language but the echo, or rat her the reproduction ad infinitum of the
   language, its reflection upon a reflection-series of itself, even more
   self-referential & corrupt. The vertiginous perspectives of this VR
   datascape nauseate us because they contain no hidden spaces, no
   privileged o pacities.
   
   Infinite access to knowledge that simply fails to interact with the
   body or with the imagination--in fact the manichean ideal of fleshless
   soulless thought-- modern media/politics as pure gnostic mentation,
   the anaesthetic ruminations of Archons & Aeons, suicide of the
   Elect...
   
   The organic is secretive--it secretes secrecy like sap. The inorganic
   is a demonic democracy-- everything equal, but equally valueless. No
   gifts, only commodities. The Manichaeans invented usury. Knowledge can
   act as a kind of poison, as Nietzsche pointed out.
   
   Within the organic (``Nature,'' ``everyday life'') is embedded a kind
   of silence which is not just dumbness, an opacity which is not mere
   ignorance--a secrecy which is also an affirmation-- a tact which knows
   how to act, how to change things, how to breathe into them.
   
   Not a ``cloud of unknowing''--not ``mysticism''--we have no desire to
   deliver ourselves up again to that obscurantist sad excuse for
   fascism-- nevertheless we might invoke a sort of taoist sense of
   ``suchness-of-things''--''a flower does not talk,'' & it's certainly
   not the genitals which endow us with logos. (On second thought,
   perhaps this is not quite true; after all, myth offers us the
   archetype of Priapus, a talking penis.) An occultist would ask how to
   ``work'' this silence--but we' d rather ask how to play it, like
   musicians, or like the playful boy of Heraclitus.
   
   A bad mood in which every day is the same. When are a few lumps going
   to appear in this smooth time? Hard to believe in the return of
   Carnival, of Saturnalia. Perhaps time has stopped here in the Pleroma,
   here in the Gnostic dreamworld where our bodies are rotting but our
   ``minds'' are downloaded into eternity. We know so much--how can we
   not know the answer to this most vexing of questions?
   
   Because the answer (as in Odilon Redon's ``Harpocrates'') isn't
   answered in the language of reproduction but in that of gesture,
   touch, odor, the hunt. Finally virtu is impassable-- eating & drinking
   is eating & drinking--the lazy yokel plows a crooked furrow. The
   Wonderful World of Knowledge has turned into some kind of PBS Special
   from Hell. I demand real mud in my stream, real watercress. Why, the
   natives are not only sullen, they're taciturn--downright
   incommunicative. Right, gringo, we're tired of your steenking surveys,
   tests & questionnaires. There are some things bureaucrats were not
   meant to know-- & so there are some things which even artists should
   keep secret. This is not self-censorship nor self-ignorance. It is
   cosmic tact. It is our homage to the organic, its uneven flow, its
   backcurrents & eddies, its swamps & hideouts. If art is `` work'' then
   it will become knowledge & eventually lose its redemptive power & even
   its taste. But if art is ``play'' then it will both preserve secrets &
   tell secrets which will remain secrets. Secrets are for sharing, like
   all of Nature's secretions.
   
   Is knowledge evil? We're no mirror-image Manichees here--we're
   counting on dialectics to break a few bricks. Some knowledge is
   dadata, some is commodata. Some knowledge is wisdom-- some simply an
   excuse for doing nothing, desiring nothing. Mere academic knowledge,
   for example, or the knowingness of the nihilist post-mods, shades off
   into realms of the UnDead--& the UnBorn. Some knowledge breathes--
   some knowledge suffocates. What we know & how we know it must have a
   basis in the flesh--the whole flesh, not just a brain in a jar of
   formaldehyde. The knowledge we want is neither utilitarian nor
   ``pure'' but celebratory. Anything else is a totentanz of data-ghosts,
   the ``beckoning fair ones'' of the media, the Cargo Cult of too-Late
   Capitalist epistemology.
   
   If I could escape this bad mood of course I'd do so, & take you with
   me. What we need is a plan. Jail break? tunnel? a gun carved of soap,
   a sharpened spoon, a file in a cake? a new religion?
   
   Let me be your wandering bishop. We' ll play with the silence & make
   it ours. Soon as Spring comes. A rock in the stream, bifurcating its
   turbulence. Visualize it: mossy, wet, viridescent as rainy jadefaded
   copper struck by lightning. A great toad like a living emerald, like
   Mayday. The strength of the bios, like the strength of the bow or
   lyre, lies in the bending back.
   
                           CRITIQUE OF THE LISTENER
   
   To speak too much & not be heard--that's sickening enough. But to
   acquire listeners--that could be worse. Listeners think that to listen
   suffices-- as if their true desire were to hear with someone else's
   ears, see thru someone else's eyes, feel with someone else's skin...
   
   The text (or the broadcast) which will change reality:-- Rimbaud
   dreamed of that, & then gave up in disgust. But he entertained too
   subtle an idea about magic. The crude truth is perhaps that texts can
   only change reality when they inspire readers to see & act, rather
   than merely see. Scripture once did this--but Scripture has become an
   idol. To see thru its eyes would be to possess (in the Voodoo sense) a
   statue--or a corpse.
   
   Seeing, & the literature of seeing, is too easy. Enlightenment is
   easy. ``It's easy to be a sufi,'' a Persian shaykh once told me.
   ``What's difficult is to be human.'' Political enlightenment is even
   easier than spiritual enlightenment--neither one changes the world, or
   even the self. Sufism & Situationism--or shamanism & anarchy--the
   theories I've played with-- are just that: theories, visions, ways of
   seeing. Significantly, the ``practice'' of sufism consists in the
   repetition of words (dhikr). This action itself is a text, & nothing
   but a text. And the ``praxis'' of anarcho-situationism amounts to the
   same: a text, a slogan on a wall. A moment of enlightenment. Well,
   it's not totally valueless--but afterwards what will be different?
   
   We might like to purge our radio of anything which lacks at least the
   chance of precipitating that difference. Just as there exist books
   which have inspired earthshaking crimes, we would like to broadcast
   texts which cause hearers to seize (or at least make a grab for) the
   happiness God denies us. Exhortations to hijack reality. But even more
   we would like to purge our lives of everything which obstructs or
   delays us from setting out--not to sell guns & slaves in Abyssinia--
   not to be either robbers or cops--not to escape the world or to rule
   it--but to open ourselves to difference.
   
   I share with the most reactionary moralists the presumption that art
   can really affect reality in this way, & I despise the liberals who
   say all art should be permitted because--after all--it's only art.
   Thus I 've taken to the practice of those categories of writing &
   radio most hated by conservatives--pornography & agitprop--in the hope
   of stirring up trouble for my readers/hearers & myself. But I accuse
   myself of ineffectualism , even futility. Not enough has changed.
   Perhaps nothing has changed.
   
   Enlightenment is all we have, & even that we've had to rip from the
   grasp of corrupt gurus & bumbling suicidal intellectuals. As for our
   art--what have we accomplished, other than to spil l our blood for the
   ghostworld of fashionable ideas & images?
   
   Writing has taken us to the very edge beyond which writing may be
   impossible. Any texts which could survive the plunge over this
   edge--into whatever abyss or Abyssinia lies beyond-- would have to be
   virtually self-created, like the miraculous hidden-treasure
   Dakini-scrolls of Tibet or the tadpole-script spirit-texts of Taoism--
   & absolutely incandescent, like the last screamed messages of a witch
   or heretic burning at the stake (to paraphrase Artaud).
   
   I can sense these texts trembling just beyond the veil.
   
   What if the mood should strike us to renounce both the mere
   objectivity of art & the mere subjectivity of theory? to risk the
   abyss? What if no one followed? So much the better, perhaps-- we might
   find our equals amongst the Hyperboreans. What if we went mad?
   Well--that's the risk. What if we were bored? Ah...
   
   Already some time ago we placed all our bets on the irruption of the
   marvelous into everyday life--won a few, then lost heavily. Sufism was
   indeed much much easier. Pawn everything then, down to the last
   miserable scrawl? double our stakes? cheat?
   
   It's as if there were angels in the next room beyond thick
   walls--arguing? fucking? One can't make out a single word.
   
   Can we retrain ourselves at this late date to become Finders of hidden
   treasure? And by what technique, seeing that it is precisely technique
   which has betrayed us? Derrangement of the senses, insurrection,
   piety, poetry? Knowing how is a cheap mountebank's trick. But knowing
   what might be like divine self-knowledge--it might create ex nihilo.
   
   Finally, however, it will become necessary to leave this city which
   hovers immobile on the edge of a sterile twilight, like Hamelin after
   all the children were lured away. Perhaps other cities exist,
   occupying the same space & time, but... different. And perhaps there
   exist jungles where mere enlightenment is outshadowed by the black
   light of jaguars. I have no idea--& I'm terrified.
   
