THREATS AND WARNINGS

After a month where I could barely get around to refilling my meds, breathing room is in sight. This past weekend I've talked a lot about having to “reconstruct meaning” for myself, which might sound a lot larger than it should. In short I'm having to re-teach myself to write and paint after being endlessly, relentlessly hampered for a while.

“Threats and Warnings” (new-ish one on cardboard) might not be the very LAST painting in the Apocalypse Series but it might be the last major one as I draw the whole thing to a close. Two series will continue----abstracts as part of a current series called “The Random” and a new series called “Hot Garbage”. The Purgatory and Apocalypse series were more based around symbolism and mythmaking----Hot Garbage will largely be figurative art (or my permutation thereof) for its own sake. All or most of the paintings in the series will be titled, “Hot Garbage”. Stay tuned. 

DISASSOCIATION AND THE APOCALYPSE

I've always glommed onto graffiti---I like the look of it---I like the coded history of layers of vandalistic scrawlings. One sure sign that I'm about done with the Ozark Experience is that the Army Corps of Engineers have done the dumbest thing on earth by fencing off the ruins of the hotel at Monte Ne...that, to me, was possibly the last holy or sacred place left in this region. Someone asked us a while ago what we found sacred about that place, and would we find it more sacred if preservationists fixed it up. My answer was more or less “no”. I like Coin Harvey's ruin for what it's become—--a hollowed-out hulk covered with the graffiti of the ages----a witchy mecca which we've celebrated in image and noise....

In the late 50s/early 60s you have this young hood who scrawls “Vic + Shelly” on those sodden walls....15 years later his disgrace of a longhaired son is partying at the same site and maybe he draws a pot leaf and/or some slogan on the wall......a few layers of vandalism have emerged since then---maybe he can see “Vic + Shelly”, maybe he can't. He has no idea that was left by his Dad, who he can't stand.....15 to 20 years down the road our stoner has cut his hair and moved on to a corporate job....his son, who's a wannabe gangsta, has now tagged the wall.....three generations of hooliganism in layers. Boggles the mind, huh?

Being autistic, I'm naturally riveted by this stuff and I can kind of get lost in it. Urban/public art enthralls me, but I have no head for it....these days if you gave me a couple of spraycans and said, “go!” I'd have no idea what to put on a wall or why.

These days, though, a part of my autism that's become more pronounced is just an increasing inability to fit my brain into any kind of linear communication----visual or non-visual. People talk like a bunch of goddamned chattering monkeys, I get tired of hearing them talk and I get tired of hearing myself talk and I just stop talking---don't even know what to say.

That level of disassociation fits pretty beautifully into the ethos of the Apocalypse, though. Mike McAdam and I developed this weird style of sloganeering, lexicon and cartoon art with the Apocalypse Krew---we had an identity forming even before we developed musically. It was an incoherent smear of smiley faces, frowney faces, suicidal dreg figures, recurring images and phrases that would dribble off from militant ravings to primal, screaming nonsense words that mostly were comprised of bunched-together, incompatible consonants. Sometimes I sqwzaaaazzztptgh. That still makes sense to me. It really made sense to me in my early-to-mid 20s when I went around in a state of constant angst and agitation and wanted to put my fist through everything.

That level of primal disassociation makes its way into much of the Apocalypse Series, and this painting as well. The heyday of my vandalism was probably as a teen or a young adult and most of it

  revolved around whatever bands I was listening to, which devolved into arguments (on the walls) about the merits of said bands. Pretty meat-and-potatoes. Basquiats, we were not. Banksy, we were not. We were not Banos, Iz the Wiz, Dondi or Lee.

Stylistically, that's the path I follow, here and elsewhere. As the painting is based around one of our songs, snippets of the song's lyrics appear, buried and obscured in layers and layers, as if some janitor keeps painting over the bad kids' etchings----the bad kids keep building a wall of written or drawn entropy as if to tell the hypothetical janitor, “nice try----paint again, Frank!” There is no concrete crystallization of the lyrical content in the space of the painting---just layers of obscured messages, none of which you'll ever get the entirety of. As we come to the surface, you'll see quotes from the Bible (that bit from Matthew about “render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar”) accompanied by the quote from Vonnegut's fictional “Messiah”, Bokonon (“pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on.”---words to live by!!!)----those are also obscured and marred. No thought completed. Or codified. Or anything.

It's a way of life. It's a way of life for more people than will probably admit to it.

MAKING IT WITCHY

Why use the Manson family as Icons?

Without condoning any of their crimes, the chaos of what they brought to the world is a deeply ingrained part of the geography of my youth. Think of them less as Icons or people to be admired---more as signposts. This is the kind of ride you're in for. It'll get ugly----it'll get bloody. There will be taboos----there will be loud, gibbering, scary madness.

Flashback to 1998 or so: My roommate and I are at a Rave. Mostly we're there to hawk our hallucinogenic videos to a DJ (which winds up being a fruitless endeavor) but we're also ripped and trying to have a good time. I had dreadlocks at the time-----some raver kid walks up to us and starts asking us, “are you peaceful hippies, or are you the other kind?” I think we were taken aback by the question----what the hell did that mean? We tried to assure him that we were “peaceful”----I don't know---maybe he was intimidated and thinking we were redneck bikers who were going to kick his ecstasy-gobbling ass. But a part of me kind of enjoys the fact that we might have been the “Other” kind of Hippie. And his worst nightmare.

At another time several of us went out on a Sunday (early evening) to a Chinese Buffet that we used to frequent back in the day....I think it was one of those lost weekends where we all got pretty blasted. We were probably all pretty bedraggled----again, I had the dreads, which were probably down to my knees by this time---one friend of mine was wearing a tie-dyed shirt, a pair of really gnarly sunglasses and a pentagram necklace---and no, I don't mean a pentacle----I mean A PENTAGRAM----upside down, evil, Satan, yadda yadda yadda. Stoner Metal bands like Queens of the Stone Age, Acid King, Fu Manchu and Monster Magnet were burgeoning at the time and it all kind of made sense to me.

The late church crowd was probably in effect (Sunday in the Ozarks, after all) but I'll tell you this: At least one table in our general vicinity cleared----they asked to be seated elsewhere. The population cleared FAST.

That turned me on.....it still kind of does, to be honest.

Our public access show, “The Abbey of the Lemur”, really played into the same impulse, of course. Dark Counterculture. Think the MC5 and the White Panthers----that was us. In the late 90s/early 2000s.

I was never a Peace, Love and Flowers guy. I mean, I am----ultimately that's what I want for everyone----flowers optional----but I've known people over the years who were of the school of “you can't get mad...anger is WRONG! Anger is BAD!” Thing about a lot of those people is, I watched them go crazy. BAD crazy. MEAN crazy. HARMFUL TO THOSE AROUND THEM crazy. And the most sanctimonious people I knew became the most horrible people I ever met.

Anger's fine....anger helps bring about justice. Anger is an energy. You want to be able to work past that anger and get yourself to a healthy, sane place....but anger, in and of itself, is a good thing to stay in touch with. Anger helps you get shit done. 

Anyway, the Apocalypse Series has about run its course. By the time our album comes out I probably will have moved past it to something new.....things will get different but the piss and vinegar remains.

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

ANTHRAX-Among the Living

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED-First Issue

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED-Second Edition/Metal Box

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND-White Light/White Heat

copyright 2016 Molotov Editions

THE SHRILL

I enter the Crash Zone as if it's some sort of garden party, which is to say uninvited but accepted nonetheless----the whole process very democratic in nature. Quotas have become difficult to maintain and they are willing to spill anyone they can into their wastebasket.

It's a siren night and the sky is as ever endless pitch black yawning over downtown like doom. Neon wails hell in pink, blue, yellow and red, most of all red, and I hear my mother's voice.....

It's all nightscream manic beating delirium as usual on the weekend and the sights and sounds ring immortal...the Stagnant Brothers are on their day in day out shit the overalls rage in the punies' faces bender having raised their routine hell by the Soup Kitchen for supper and now they pursue their bully act by the railroad tracks—I saw them bashing---they had Johnny the Owl Boy trapped in their brutal circle and now he's screwed because he has no friends at his back----the Stags kick the piss out of him and once he's a ragged, unconscious moppet he's just no damn fun to 'em anymore and so they leave him there as if he were naught but discarded furniture---Old Ben and the Preach come along and hoist him vomiting and spitting teeth he is carried his poor sorry beaten carcass home and at one point they're literally having to peel his face away from the pavement-----

The bell in the faraway tower factory industrial clock bongs ten ominously the bloody scenes segue in and out an off-duty traffic cop appears, admonishes the lot of them drunkenly and then vanishes; I feel my wretched hands cramp up and icy pain inches up my wrists. The wigged-out Mariah in her funeral lace her hair flung wildly as she shrieks in terror---I watch her face redden, burn, then crumble like an overcooked, failed ceramic object----

Misbegotten and used up on the corner of Main and Atrocity there is a sexually abused childrens' choir all bruised and in mourning---they weep spring showers and a random co will pause every rotation to shake his club at them...their tears shower and river into the gutter into the sewer and tiny streams traverse the complex body-work of pipes around the underside of the city....the tears spill out amongst the piss and shit and bleach and waste of the whole population, curse the waste, damn the waste---tears flow down the solemn, violated river intermingle with the sewage and out east toward forever...

Meanwhile, topside, all lights blazing in storefronts flicker a tiny second and my eyes and my nerves explode. Broken glass flies and dances—my hair instantaneously goes gray and peels exitedly from my scalp and temples like porcupine quills of fable and all is a careening negative lightning image----

A child is running sideways and reckless up the street, pointing, “the angels are dying,” she yells, “the angels are dying!” I believe her. She and several hundred little friends charge up the street in careless flocks.

The whole street seems to tip diagonally and tons of garbage and paper and debris sail off along the axis to oblivion----cars smash left, right and sideways----

The huge crystal angel sculpture in the center of town explodes and sends itself everywhere in fragments---some several green bystanders are decapitated. Couples and stray dogs fuck and defecate wildly on park benches---quote one witness to the action, “it got real hard to tell the humans from the animals. All had shit all over 'em, but that was, like, beside the point.”

The great titanic angel figure shatters with a great noise and rains its silvery, ragged spore all a kaleidoscopic apocalypse where is my angel? Where is the cataclysm blizzard from whence it came? There is snow in the gutter and the cripple sleeps crutches by his side in an eerie, singing brick and snow revelation wonderland dream silent yet wailing out in the towering, menacing black----

I hear the choirs singing and buzzing off into nothing like transistorized flies emitting telepathic deathscreams. I can't stop any of it. Worlds, entire worlds snuff out under my eyelids and it is all too crowded too much-----in the oriental bazaar rope bridges collapse sending hundreds of hapless consumers plunging to their deaths the flimsy, ornate paper pagoda lamps floating down the ugly stream dampening and shorting out, the only sign that anyone had ever been there to begin with.

Everything's dying in a mournful, contorted collision---my head involuntarily draws on an old playground rhyme cartoon fairytale slice of imagery the stately loving angel I kneel before reaches over and draws a circle on my forehead....

Neon blasts and sparks and the black claims another mechanical victim and the fairytale sprites follow the angels all exploding into falling crystalline ash----

The bald woman yelps like a dog and tears down the street Olympic and hypermotivated because her ass is on fire. Her pillbox hat flies off and tumbles in the opposite direction.

Cletus storms past looking hatefully through everything. He kicks a child and spits at nothing in particular—up the street towards certain oblivion he goes surly in his muscle shirt and looking for a war. Good luck, Cletus---I'm sure you'll find a few.

I'm crawling the sidewalk, now, so low I can taste the ghosts of the whole town's shoes. If there's anything Christ alive in this place where is it? Can I touch something that won't draw blood? I grasp and clutch at singed air...I think my thumb is broken and there's a sharp pain in my stomach that makes me frightened to look down there. I gotta puke....

Ambulances and fire engines and cruisers scream by in a blaring cacophony—I can see the woman over there doubled over grieving---she's belting gospel lugubrious agony like a tortured Mahalia Jackson black armband shatter mercy poster child of woe----she screams in synchronization with every siren shrilling in this shit city---my mother often told me the sound of sirens distressed her; she said it always reminded her of the pain someone somewhere was going through and I know what she meant---the shrill makes me shiver in the strange, dark warmcold and I wish I could hide. My mother said, “God, how those sirens disturb me. They sound like people crying.”

Published 1993 in FAIRY TALES FROM THE URBAN UNDERGROUND (Yorkville Press)

INTERLUDE

New Art Available. Keep an eye peeled on my website----I'll be posting this stuff in the next day or so.
                                                              www.cfrobertsart.com

      A little writing, now, before I haul off to the day job. In the early 90s, my friends Randal Seyler and Shannon X. Caine gave birth to The Micro-Novel, a marginal form I always loved and strive to keep going. Lemme give you guys a Micro Novel:

EXISTENTIALISTS AGAINST NEUROPATHY

A Micro Novel by

C.F. Roberts

Neil tore across the second floor hallway. “Fuck this shit,” he roared, “I’ll take on all comers!!!!” He flung himself headlong down the stairs. It was a good day to be alive.

2010 or thereabouts

     More in a while

Back, Dammit

Well, I'm back-----just went through the usual Holiday madness where I filled in for vacationing co-workers and did the chief editor thing for a couple of weeks and that ate up a lot of my capacity for constructive thought. So I'm back and I'm trying to work on building this furshlugginner thing.
      It's New Year's Day and after two weeks of  me and Dave Johnston killing it in general and attacking news video like a school of TV News Piranha, I'm decompressing and don't wanna hear jack about anyone's news, politics, trending topics, Year End Favorites or anything else.
      I was pleased, in my way out the door, to hear about Air Asia and the discovery of wreckage, bodies, etc. Don't get me wrong----I feel very badly for all those families who lost loved ones----but at least I won't have to hear any weird theories about where the plane is being hidden and who might be behind it.....(yawn)

      So, anybody wanna buy a painting? I've got tons of 'em. This stuff is taking up tons of room in my tiny-ass apartment and you should take it off my hands.
          Hoping you guys are going to have a good 2015. I hope nobody has died. Kick ass, do something that's meaningful to you and keepliving strong.

So I've been working, off and on, on this thing that might be a book-or-at-least-novella-length piece of whatever, tentatively titled DOO-DAH DAYS IN MAMMON. Here's another excerpt. Enjoy.

THE PRETTIEST GAS STATION IN TOWN

Downtown everyone is precious and witty. They throw words like “paradigm” and “dialogue” and “sustainability” around, and everyone refers to everything that happens to them as their “journey”. The pretty embankments cause cars to collide on all corners and in the grip of the car crash derby everyone adores the saplings that have been planted in the middle of the road. Members of City Council take turns scolding smokers and policing their litter. The Mayor even took it upon himself to carp at some slovenly ham-and-egger who left his engine running while parked. All in all a picayune utopia.

There’s little debating that we love our city and that we know we’re something special. Everything’s pretty---even the gas stations are pretty. Not like the old ones---just---you know….pretty. Places where people can gather and shop.

There’s even an ordinance for that now. We hammered that through. We have an ordinance for everything.

The last gas station was a thing of beauty----they knocked down slums for a block and a half and it was gorgeous---you drove past it and the lights were so nice you had to think there was a 24-hour fiesta happening there.

Nobody needed those dirty slums, anyway----that’s what the lower levels, the outer rims, Dogtown, Sherberville, The Holler, Betty Jo, the whole damned Southern Quadrant are for. The property values have already gone up and they’ll be able to put in a whole new row of condos later this year.

The parking lot of the new gas station is always hopping and there’s plenty of room to park, so the investors are already seeing returns. And jobs---yes, jobs---roughly a dozen—all part time, so they don’t have to pay benefits or anything sticky like that—further returns on investment and it keeps the kids off the street, doesn’t it? It’s a win-win.

Did I mention that it’s clean? Not like the old ones. Looks like a museum. The employees are all dressed like museum guards, too---collared shirts, blazers, the whole nine yards----there won’t be any “broken windows” here! No dirt, no scum, no shirt, no shoes, no service…you can buy groceries there, too---not just soda pop and microwave burritos---homemade tabouli. Almond Flour----the good stuff, with Bolivian Orphan Tears. Tahini. Yes, I said Tahini. Pickled Asparagus. Dried red chili peppers. No broken windows here…

There’s no litter or dirt in the parking lot, either. Ever. We have an ordinance for that, you know. Hell. I sat on the committee that wrote it.