For the Birds

Flute thrashes time, 
miseries expounded,
frustrations extended
Earth a fabric distended

A muddle of marks exposed, 
Unspoken vision of calamity asserted 
By the mere fact that no one can hear––

I make my way along the beach 
where nothing grows, 
I see cormorants carve air currents in
shriek of triage, I leave my splintered mark

Would you ever want what you heard
plastered across the wind
If there were not some declarative power
that turned realities upside down,
dangled roots in blue
And reclaimed space as
beyond borrowed-time continuum?

Bring in the donkeys, the brayers, the (re)mixers,
cut and paste soothsayers, who know not what they Google––
what we used to call fixtures. 

[This was March, 2015. Out of nowhere my old college roommate, who I may have turned to a path of music and infinite frustration, reappears in the digital realm]
​
Steve Perry: If your flute thrashes time, I recommend a metronome 

Me: I am completely against the metronome, when did anything except that timed to destruct the earth need a regulated beat not coordinated with planting, celebration, ceremony? 

Flute playing, cormorants flying, looking at a sky & branches upside down––gaining a new perspective on life each day, or just being heard. Hearing yourself over the din of competing voices and logic. Wilding blend.

Therefore, introduction of metronome is a great idea (Kashup has nothing on this logic, I believe.)
​
Steve: going hiking you were like "the forest is 3-D and the trail winds one way..." and then I tried to rush ahead and got more lost than ever have in my life....

Me (channeling Dante): 
​
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

In the middle part of my life
I found myself in a dark forest
where the direct way was lost.

Steve: Oh yes, now it all comes back to me. I remember the very class. Sitting in Purgatorio!?? Shit.
​
Damon: Professor Brose and the sweet new style. That line of Dante's always stuck with me though... I'm just starting to understand it.

Steve: That was a good text. I'm reading the Anthology of English Literature right now, got through Beowoulf. On to Chaucer, which is like trying to read in Spanish. 

Damon: Chaucer is awesome... Boccaccio's Decameron was preferred tho...

Steve: Who was the fem fatal in Dante?

Damon: The fem fatale was that dame Sam Spade almost fell for... Eve. man, I think I just finished writing a classic my friend (Arisugawa Park, now A Beautiful Case of the Blues. Eve, now Evena.)

Steve: yeah?

And now for something completely different.

[11/19 - Five years later I return and find that this is no alternate beginning, but a prologue. There is no reason why this can’t fit the same narrative as the Playa episode at Darknur's. The question now is do I need or want to write this… probably fifth on my “list of books to do,” considering that I don’t exactly have many bullets left. Oh yeah, and coincidentally we are back to two bullets. This is no subtle "half is glass empty" shift, it just sounds more dramatic. And less work, considering that each bullet probably deserves a section.]

3/15 - Prose created without a net––here is what I forged in today's workshop. A second potential beginning to Two Bullets Left. Again, far from the version that will make the book––and probably more original for that.

Las Vegas Strip 3:45 am

The Strip never quite sleeps––even at that moment when movement wanes and those tipsy sorts not enclosed in all-night wombs have departed in cabs, the neon lights and video towers flicker out ultra-luxe lifestyles at a bargain. The bridges that crisscross an otherwise pedestrian-hostile desert are empty except for the odd vagrant too out of his mind to make it to the shelter of darker rock and scrub––the vacant expanses that hint at hard times only minutes from the glitter. The plexiglass on the overpasses, designed to halt the fall of brawlers and losers on the felt flicker a hundred fuck-me colors––stimulating aural intimations that one has come to a place where money spent is just a colorform, unfocused, without limit. 
​
6:15 am

The sky lightened incrementally, the form that sprawled against the plexiglass in a half-upright posture exactly mimicking the sort of gone person who would continue to sit in that position, staring epically at the sun, until the midmorning pavement baked. His skin was burnt leather, in a month or two he would be broke, if not dead. Leaving Las Vegas a vacant myth for his type in this car drowned city.

It was not until the sun ran across the steel-ribbed rooftop of the Aria, radiating onto the bridge’s metal railing and creating a vaporous orange taffy reflection, that the municipal services employee noticed him. An older Asian woman with soapy bucket, she had been avoiding the man’s slumped, sure-to-be-smelly form for some time, assiduously wiping down the rails opposite, scrubbing plexiglass into some semblance of transparency. 

There was no avoiding it, she was going to have to rouse him at some point. A sudden reflection of sunlight off the Paris hot air balloon, as thin, pointed, and powerful as that which guided hobbits into Smaug’s dread mountain lair, etched a frozen turbulence, a moment of impact––when the blood trickled from the cranium faster than the body sank and smeared a crimson wash down the smooth surface behind his shoulders. She took a single step forward, enough to get a glimpse the unending night in his eyes, and screamed. 

7:10am

“Thank god for barriers,” the junior officer thought, angling a toothpick between teeth. The height and pattern of the blood spatter on the plexiglass indicated that the body would have otherwise fallen off the overpass onto the Las Vegas Strip, pancaked on a 2 am asphalt crawling with taxis. Instead, the body had been framed for four or five hours. It was in good enough condition––forensics would blast through it in half a day, the junior officer thought. He almost recognized what remained of the face––had maybe sat with him at a late-night table once or twice, at the Orleans or the Nugget. 

And now for something completely different. This fabric video seems to have Las Vegas all over it.

[11/19: Testcut feels dated in the sense that I would never, ever, post anything on Twitter now. (I post on its erudite cousin Medium with great reservation). Hashtag will have to go through a few cycles of disuse, misuse, before it is cool again. Like holy jeans. 

Even if bots, trolls, and lurkers were not the issue. 

Yet the hashtag novel is a kind of cool idea. A little cut and paste. A little curry. Accessible in real time. I hear Burroughs did this, but I don’t go near Burroughs. Cold Fish. Let’s just call it a cloud novel, with all the trimmings. I have lots of cloud novels up.

Testcut. This was originally one of the titles considered for Arisugawa Park (now A Beautiful Case of the Blues), relating to the ancient art of tameshigiri. That’s an egg parenting program for device, in case you are wondering. You feed it worms and clean the virtual nest, hoping a vulture does not swoop down.]

Original Post 3/15:

#testcut is not Banksy, not quite. It is the notion that a novel will be hashtagged to the reading public in real time, as it is created.* The equivalent of that David Hockney piece recorded stroke by stroke on his iPad until it was complete. (This was one of my favorite pieces in the De Young's A Bigger Exhibition). The idea that we can watch the act of creation and revision, again and again, in its entirety.** 

#testcut is immediacy in writing beyond anything possible until recently. If Dickens released his work in installments and Andy Weir (the Martian) in blogposts - Keroac on an onionskin loop -  this is something even more haiku flowing… Each 10 tweets a unit, like movie cuts, but taken from throughout a novel that has not yet been mapped. Subconscious meanderings that eventually thicken, cohere. Or not - high-wire writing, without a net.  Here, for clarity, the gestation phase:

TESTCUT 1.1

First there were skirmishes, then there were wars. Then an uneasy peace pervaded the place. Only the place had ceased to exist.

To a place where time, if not exactly still, is very nearly silent.

When procrastination is not an option, empty your mind & begin without aim. Themes will sort themselves out.

One to admire, one to cast aside. One for the road. 

Faced with a decision, circumspect. Timed release, I'll be out of the room by the time you––

Amiable, egalitarian, her hair glinted in a certain light. Foggy.

Truth twisted with a hint of rye. I took the news straight.

Circumstances dictate that I write this on this on toilet paper, in lemon ink. You will know why when I escape. #hethought

You will never know the ways I tried to find a place that we two could share. Hopeless. #shethought

Crisp, her eyes shone in the light. How do we stay afloat?

When the world catches up, it is time to move on.

* If the literary forensics research is correct, Twitter novels have been in existence since 2011, taking form 140 words at a time. Micro novels are particularly popular in Japan, presumably written on crowded commute trains where there is just room to maneuver a cell phone (a phenomenon I knew well). 

And now for something completely different:

CONTAINER SPACE

I peeked under tightly pulled sheets,
to see what items lay there for my acceptance, removal. 
The contents were the same, no matter how many 
layers I peeled. 

Then I opened my eyes and everything changed. 

The single viewpoint is not certain––
the multitude are waiting to be uncovered.
Push against the idea that an algorithm
will decide who goes forward.

Burn brightly in self-made domain,
contain, contain.

Sense of smell came later and was intoxicating,
Four walls, inert, unless you push 
with unceasing labor 
and work your way out 

Touch, the most far reaching of the senses––
intimations of birth and death.

I heard the gurgling of voices, laughter,
I sensed the grandness of what lay beyond,
I wept and wept when I heard that song 
and it still did not hear me. 

And finally the hills gained ears,
They were trolls,
Bent on separating self from soul.

Life and forgotten breath. 
With listening comes––
Acceptance.

**Art can be purchased at damonarvid.com. Get it before it gets you.

An oldie but goodie, all the way from April, 2019. Published on Medium to zero views and zero claps. Which in this topsy-turvy world means I have avoided the algorithm-loop-feed trap. 

I will not do anything algorithmically unfathomable and my output will be wiped, should I stray from what the bot gods want expressed. Distractified, sealed, and delivered.

The skin* is my master, delivering views requires running through skin hoops, as set forth in appendix C––monetize or die.

I will not discuss pantheons, anthropoids, metamorphs, or sucubus, in that order, because to do so would incite awakened instinct that all is not right, and virtue is vice. Make nice? No, I will not make nice.

My online future is foreordained, because the feed has so decreed, and in return I will receive x allotment for each day I put x content into the engine. Obey or be cancelled. [App.XXII, Sec. 2i]**

Original work of merit shall be kept off the grid until my demise, when the value will be harvested in weekly increments to feed people who do the opposite of that to which I ascribe. (Yet the word shall live).

Into the donut shop.

Are you ready? Sign with your right retina. Two blinks and a wink.

*Wikipedia: “In computing, a skin (also known as visual styles in Windows XP) is a custom graphical appearance preset package achieved by the use of a graphical user interface (GUI) that can be applied to specific computer software, operating system, and websites to suit the purpose, topic, or tastes of different users.”

**Grease fire, slick, burn baby burn. (Divine luck, who gives a ---).

And now for something completely different: (1. Divine Luck 2. Into the Donut Shop)

[11/19 - A couple weeks into my first extended stay in Mexico, I was still in that heady rush of having gained that agent, vindication of whatever I had put myself through to get there. 

Advice from people who never had time to read what I wrote was plentiful, including that I start some sort of travel blog.  So I tried this. And realized right after posting that if I had wanted to go into journalism I would have years ago.  As Johnny Rotten put it, It's no fun.

Or should I say, it is semi-embarrassing. Writing about real people makes me cringe in ways that fiction rarely does. Even when people think a fictional character is about them, it almost never is––characters take on a life beyond any specific person. With real people... yeah, just cringe and apologize, if necessary.]

​CHILE'S NEXT CRAFT BEER INNOVATOR?
2/21/2015

Four days into a stay at the 3-B Hostal in Playa del Carmen, south of Cancun. A former fishing town that was discovered by Italian vacationers decades ago, transformed into a backpacker's paradise and then despoiled, with the usual mixture of commerce (cheep trinket shops) and decay. A mini-Cancun that thankfully  lacks the all inclusive puke-to-party vibe.

The main street, Avenida 5, is full of invitations to spend, from hand-rolled cigars and Argentinian steaks and live salsa bands. Mexican seaside vacationing with a European flair. It grows on you as you explore the nooks and crannies, try the church-run restaurant where you get 10 hot tortillas and the day's beany soup and rice for 32 pesos. Not a bad place to finish Arisugawa Park [now A Beautiful Case of the Blues], play flute with the rooftop DJs, and do the usual freelance assignments. [It was hard not to sound smug at the time, very triggering in retrospect.]

A typical night at the hostel. A Chilean dorm neighbor of the past several days makes a salad in the common area on his last night in Playa. A recent college graduate, he shares a semi-private double bed with his girlfriend. Since they arrived, I have not exchanged more than a few nods and smiles with this perfect tribe of two. Munching midnight greens, Vicente Espinoza Ashton and I fall into the sort of easy conversation that hostels are made for. The random connections that sometimes compensate for complete lack of privacy.

SON OF SUN

From the municipality of Huelquen in the Andean foothills south of Santiago, Vicente has a vision of bringing craft beer to Chile. Something of a beer connoisseur (whose tastes have inexplicably drifted toward the crisp and quenching), I am intrigued. 

As Vicente describes it, his father is a well known hippy vintner who operates the Antiyal winery and is a purveyor of biodynamic vintages. Antiyal means “son of the sun” in the local Mapuche dialect and has an ethos of growing vines with as little irrigation as possible. Organic composts are used to fertilize and grapes matured holistically. Though the yield is lower, the resulting wines are imbued with a distinct sense of place––the essence of the Alto Maipo, with its dry climate and alluvial gravel that has washed down over the centuries from the high Andes. 

With his family well established in the wine world, I ask Vicente why beer? He explains that Chile does not have any decent beers, only conglomerate products such as Heineken and watered down national brews. He feels motivated create the country’s first true craft beer, taking inspiration from Stroud in England, where he completed an internship in 2012. I am not exactly familiar with that brewery but a quick Internet perusal reveals it as a British cousin to those U.S. craft brewers who take pride in organic, locally produced ingredients and unique (over-hopped) taste profiles. 

I ask Vicente when he plans to roll out this brewery and a couple lines appear on his brow ––with his father renowned as a wine producer, Vicente wants to make it on his own terms. He is young but there is a compelling business case to be made––for one, wine is on a different timeline from beer. You have to wait more than one year after harvest and bottling to sell wine. With beer, you can produce and sell quickly, in quantities that exactly meet demand. Basically then it is a matter of gaining financial backing.

Vicente graduated university in December and would ideally like to learn as his father did, training in locales as diverse as California, Australia, and South Africa. He has however not been given that option. Unlike his brother, who is currently learning advanced irrigation practices in Napa Valley (Chile's Alto Maipo is in the midst of a protracted drought), Vicente must find a way to expand his repertoire beyond the family business. Moreover there is pride. As Vicente puts it “I want to make something different because my father makes wine really good. If I am just doing the same, I’m always going to be the son of Alvaro." That certainly doesn't amount to much, when you are rightfully son of the sun. [I have since realized that Alvaro and sun are manifestations of the same]

I ask if Chile produces quality hops and barley and he tells me no, to his knowledge there is only inferior product available. He will need to import the raw ingredients at first as he experiments with small home batches. He then foresees a couple years of intensive training with international breweries. I recommend finding one in Czech or Northern California and he mentions that his family lived in Hopland, Mendocino, when he was very young. This geographical pedigree suggests that his father may have indeed been a true hippy (a quality prized, or at least not mocked, in Latin America, where rightist dictators and leftist imbeciles have brought a yearning for free-spirited righteousness.

I mention my passing familiarity with Mendocino and we have a moment of recognition––as if over the puff of a joint or first sip of a very good beer. Alcohol-laced reveries of consequence follow, the vision a new craft brewing reality in a land that has no such tradition. I ask Vicente what name he has chosen for this prospective beer company and he mentions Quadreros, the Chilean for bandit. His mountain community is historically known for its outlaw presence––I imagine bad men in creased black hats and improbable mustaches, holed up in some  precipitous ravine that lawmen dare not traverse. [Not far from the mark, as a lengthy article about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's time in South America attests.]

As conversation peters out,  Vincente's face grows long. Sadly, he will likely need to take a job in the corporate world and brewing beer will be relegated to the sideline.

Conversation turns to my so-called endurance writing and how I have sacrificed family and traditional markers of success for a dream. At age 40 there is finally hope, just––that I may be on a path to success––although I have never equated success with money.
​
SON OF THE BEACH

Talk shifts to Jesus. Another money-adverse model of delayed gratification. Vicente is most interested in the historicity of Christ. He has received one version of Jesus, via a lifetime of Catholic school learning, and is not convinced that Our Savior is a Superhero. He sees the evidence pointing toward Jesus as the son of a king (David), who was a potent political force against an occupying Roman force. He is looking toward a possibility that, as Leonard Cohen put it, Jesus was “just the man.” [I believe I put all this in poor Vincente's mouth, when it was my own train of sudden reasoning that he somehow agreed with in a fit of generosity. Sorry Vincente, hope I did not get you excommunicado.]

I, who have never put much thought into Jesus’ historicity, peruse an online article by Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, a professor of Greek philology and Indo-European linguistics at the Complutense University of Madrid. The author suggests that “Jesus of Nazareth and his followers were in fundamental sympathy with the principles of the members of the anti-Roman resistance groups, the use of violence not excepted on principle.” In other words, they carried daggers, switchblades, and knives.

Suddenly everything clicks–– the time was ripe, during a time of colonial overlordship, for a  figure who represented a still strong cooperative of Jewish tribes to emerge. (No simple seditionist, he was also naturally a moral force who preached a unifying message). To the early Christians of the Mediterranean, I imagine Jesus was emblematic of successful resistance to the overwhelming, exploitative, force of  the Romans. I could be Jesus, you could be Jesus, if the timing was right.  Gospel of––still searching for the son of the beach.....

With this hazy realization, it is time to bid goodnight to Vicente Espinoza Ashton, leaving him to an early rise for travel to Cancun mañana.

And now for something completely different:

This article was initially posted on Medium*on April 29. It took the mainstream media about six months to catch up with the core ideas. Just saying.

The Uninhabitable Earth directly lays out the cost of doing nothing, which is better than doing something, if something is dredging up more fossil matter and its evil byproduct plastic.
​
Apian and avian distress, great duress in the too hot to live equatorial band. We are trained by algorithms and factories with orders to deliver yesterday to participate in our own demise.

Nothing can convince someone who has nothing and wasn’t invited to participate, not to facilitate the great delivery spree that those who consume too much foist on them. Starve so I can live triple, quadruple, what is sustainable. Sustain me.

I fly, you fly, everyone needs to get into this or that bag and pull the zipper up to completely immerse in the tragedy of lack of biodiversity, which many associate with predictability and personal comfort. Four blank walls. Monoculture of great minds. Great when you can’t breathe.

It’s not hidden, it’s out in the open. We love bad things to death. That is how evolution works, as those who somehow avoid flying into the sticky tape, getting mind blown by the incandescent bulb, attest.
​
We learn by paying cosmic consequence, which is no way of learning at all when you think of the stress that near death scenarios embody. We learn through playing the laughing bones, rolling the dice.

Paris accords of 2015, sheer hypocricy when there are no teeth. Teeth? Fascism, if we don’t change our ways when we tell others to pull the belt tighter, hang on for the ride, get off the planet. Gunboat diplomacy? No more sustainable than the rest.

50 year futures on coal, uranium, and competing minion power sources… how do we solve the unsolvable? How do we tell a cartel they backed the wrong horse?

Money launderers and insurance companies are already familiar with the concepts of planned equity depreciation, profitable loss. The loss can always be made up elsewhere, as long as there is a standard and a price point we all agree on. A pain point somewhere south of extinction.

Wanted: an entirely new system that does not do away with capitalism but brings it from the late 18th to the 21st century. That values the not-taking-out-of-the-resource (if not at a rate equal to the original investment, at more than pennies to the dollar). Wealth redistribution using the immense power of the Internet to inform, listen, curate, and reward. Call it fabric, Knowledge Infill (KI), call it what you will.

*Where good writing goes to die.

And now for something completely different:

[11/19 - Earning a prize (of sorts) at the Book Passage Mystery Writer’s Conference and gaining an agent for the novel Arisugawa Park [now A Beautiful Case of the Blues]  gave me the briefly held idea that I could be a mystery writer. Genres are fluid, I’ve always believed....

Speaking of which, the lesbian daughter angle was one suggested (as usual) by a conversation I had at a hostel in Miami Beach. I realize now it's beyond my abilities to sustain such a character over the course of an entire novel. I am no Rita Mae Brown, or even a Franzen, and I don't want to cheapen anything I don't own through personal experience. Call it "Fear of Getting Cancelled." 

What about the title? Besides the obvious Nick Drake reference, "bullets" is a term used when entering poker tournaments with rebuys––it’s how many more attempts you have at the glory. Or mere survival.* I still like the title, though I think I’ll change it to four bullets. That gives more of a fighting chance.

The protagonist was originally named Dagmar, but as my mom noted, that's a Viking woman's name. So Darknur... came to me recently in a dream.

As for the content? I have shaved a few sentences, tightened a few phrases, but it still stands as the fertile imagination of a confirmed dreamer––nothing more, nothing less. Definitely not based on anyone I have ever met. 

*As I put it at the time... "bullets are buy-ins in poker lingo - the inference being that our protagonist is running perilously short on life - money - mojo."

2/15 - What does a novel look like when first setting pen to paper?  This was penned in Playa, shortly before Tulum, where the fabric music project first came into focus.

Synopsis: 

"Two Bullets Left" will begin with a washed up poker pro semi-retired in Mayan Mexico, Honduras, or Belize. His old partner is killed at night on one of those transparent pedestrian overpasses on the Las Vegas Strip. His estranged (or never met) daughter has recently taken residence in Sin City and found a girlfriend. A high stakes poker team is formed that takes on a corrupt/ruthless poker conglomerate. Meanwhile, father-daughter relations are complex, to say the least. Action shifts to Macau after a big fizzle in the Vegas games. A billion dollar game is set up on a crocodile infested island in the Philippines. X––– (from Ari Park) shows up representing the anonymous, highly guarded Asian high rollers. He certainly appears evil... is he? 

CHAPTER ONE

Darknur had arranged the usual game at his property by the sea, a small neglected corner of Playa not far from the master-planned all inclusives, several worlds removed. This still had a character distinctly Yucatan, with hammocks and porch fans the predominate vibe.  The players were a “check your identity at the door” bunch; a retired mid-tier government official who financed his gambling habit through consulting ––an unofficial addendum to years of profits laundered through a Mexicali construction firm. Souvenir shop entrepreneurs who were actually high-level narco trafficantes. They had worked their way through the ranks and taken bullets so that they could retire on the beach in guarded  luxury by age 50. There were a few expats who had been in the community for years and become fixtures. Gutted businessmen with such a mixture of accents that it was not immediately clear from which country, or planet, they came.

Participants of the $50,000 minimum buy-in gathering enjoyed the camaraderie as much as anything, trusting that Darknur would keep everything running in a dependable manner. Collusion was not tolerated among the regulars, who had instinct honed over long years  when things were not exactly right––naturally, all gentleman's agreements were off in the feeding frenzy that ensued when the whales arrived, seasonal Playa residents with money to splurge on the "chic and cheap" Mayan Riviera ––the French import/exporter who wore wraparound sunglasses and smoked Gitanes with nervous fingers; the Argentinian fashion magnate with a predilection (so the bartender at El DIablo said) for those who exuded machismo—-

Darknur set the whisky in the rolling glass tumbler on the weathered porch and looked out to sea as the fan spun lazy circles, just enough with the aid of coastal breezes to keep the skin cool. Just warm enough to feel at moments––caught off guard––that you were in paradise. The sound of chips clacking brought him to the here and now. He glanced inside at the high roller who had just been taken down from $100,000 to $25,000 in 30 minutes. The regulars' voices amiable and pleasant, with the surgical precision of trained killers who had accomplished their hit and agreed––by unspoken signal––to give a little back. 

I. Beyond Ironic
​
​In 2019, it is beyond ironic that the last gasp for method, setting-focused ensemble work on a cape-and-CG dominated cinematic stage is within the superhero tentpole. “Beyond” because irony barely has a pulse when the insidious meme has mulched thesis and antithesis into ADHD-riddled snark.*

As a musician (and come to think of it, writer) who carefully assembles improvised riffs and elements, I identify more than a little with the way that Joker, as a movie — as a character — creates narrative. Riff, rift, repeat.

“The last day of shooting we did a scene with seven wildly different takes. That was the last thing we shot. So [up until the end] we were still thinking of ideas, what could we do differently.”

2. Lean, Mean, and Non-CG

With many bloated exceptions, comedy is a form of entertainment that thrives within non-CG parameters — two ferns and a baby is stretching it. A lone microphone, the phantom smoke of unlit cigarette, proves ample stand-in for an apartment room, an airport waiting lounge, a food truck, a flute-haunted beach.

While not exactly low budget, the Joker is that rare film (I’m also thinking of another Joaquin Phoenix vehicle, the Master) in which the director spent the money on the types of things that matter. Props, actors with real lines, scenes with individuality and vernacular. No erasure of age through CG, whether for purposes of plot line, novelty, or stupid vanity.
In its assured narrative form, Joker hearkens back to what the Raging Bull renegades let loose in the old studio china shop, striking blows against artificiality through sheer purpose and stagecraft, at a time when there was a coherently informed audience (read: stoned?) to impress.

What strikes me is that — unlike many contemporary movies set in the pre-digital past, Joker is not afraid of its shadow, the specter of device and beat — the looming, unalterable presence of technology in the wings. Maybe this is because the director and actor have assumed responsibility, flame or fail — there is no burden of the “crossover” to nail it to a superhero cross.** The film’s makers, if not its funders, are not losing sleep over whether it will sell tickets in Bangor, Rio, Moscow, or Beijing.

And if it bombs? Cancel culture says it never happened. No crossover, no proba, brada.

“The reason why I choose movies is the filmmaker. I thought that Todd had a really unique understanding of this world and the character, and great sensibilities. I knew that he liked to work in a loose way at times, and there was also this really solid script.”

3. Joaquin “Charlie” Phoenix​

It helps that Joaquin Phoenix is the closest we get to a modern Chaplin, a kinetic actor whose commitment to becoming a meta/physical embodiment of the character, down to the smallest tics and yeah, brain patterns, transcends the superhero trap. The New York Times’ Gia Kourlas penned a whole article on Phoenix’ dance moves, and yes, that hemming and hawing, in apartment and up and down Insta-ready steps is kinetic. Moreover, it’s human.

Body armor as superhero suit speaks volumes to the era we live in. I don’t know about the average John Q, but I lost interest in the contemporary portrayal of Batman when he started wearing an armor body suit and speaking through a voice modulator.***

I’m pretty sure Batman represents corporate America at this point, if not the modern police state (see the oppressive uniforms on display in Hong Kong). Maybe more realistic than a caped vigilante in tights, but a lot less fun and, one suspects (like Ironman, who at least has the smirk going) on the wrong side of the critical dividing line of our times — the global warming “debate.” At the very least, Batman’s aped-up lambomobile cannot get more than 10 miles per gallon. And what about about the drone-propelled flamethrower and titanium ninja stars with soul trackers?

“You just start going down this road. I started applying the makeup on my own… (in the film, the great makeup artist Nicki Lederman did the makeup). I took pictures at different stages, there’s one that’s just the white paint. And there’s something vey haunting about that look. It seemed almost more scary than the full Joker makeup. And I sent that to Todd and we decided to use that look for a scene in the movie.”

4. The Madness of Great Comedy​

There is a madness angle to all great comedy, from Sophocles to Monty Python. When you take off the mask of the comedian you find the psycho within. This is not a bad thing. Lines may be crossed, feelings hurt, but the ability to vent is a vital safeguard against the ready-made safe spaces of incipient fascism.

If comedy is a mirror that social media has shunned and flamed — as the Hangover director found, when his honorable tradition of the gross-out fizzed among a woke crowd — there is only one place to go. The padded room.
​
In parallel with Joker’s well-documented psychological maladies, director Todd Phillips undoubtedly channeled some of his own pent up comedic angst into the narrative — the inability to get yayas out. Blame the flatness of the feed, in which the terribly cute vies with the garish, the violent, the grouchy, and the debased. Quality is placed side by side with the fake plastic trees, and the algorithm doesn’t know the difference.**** How can you elicit laughs when the non-hacks are not only no longer paid, but forced to cohabit with the insane clown posse?

Then there’s the idea that those who seek to make others laugh are often the most sensitive and empathetic. They defuse the bomb in situations where laughter is a therapeutic alternative to scorn and misery, if not World War Three. The most eviscerating comedy thrives in an environment of free speech and thoughtful acceptance of various perspectives.

Within the context of Joker, hell hath no fury like a comedian scorned. Laughter (at, or with) is Arthur Fleck’s last line of defense. A joke that elicits jeers is at least as good as a joke that falls flat —and if you can’t get the audience to listen, shoot the talk show host.*****

Speaking of which, taxi drivers and comedians have more than a little in common. A “beyond ironic” twist is the way in which Robert DeNiro––whom most now associate with some crotchety uncle in some lame comedy–– embodies in Phillips’ vision the antitheses of Travis Bickle (Arthur Fleck’s spirit animal). Take home: an entire generation has become a parody of itself. A laying on of hands, a slathering of remix devotion, in a world where fame is an analog concept and 15 minutes of feed time is considered 14:45 too long. My take? Ok boomer/ok hipster (Generation X smirk).

Easy to say I know, but a shift has occurred, a hollowing out. Those who emerged in systems where reward was given for hard work, originality, skill, creativity, and other arbiters of worth, find being marginalized by bot n’ troll armies hard to swallow.

When the freedom to spread fake news takes the place of freedom of speech, there is no outlet and bitterness runs to its logical conclusion — fascism that wears new colors, empaths who empathetically turn their fears and phobias into dastardly deeds writ large on the streets. Whether dressed in clown masks or in Guy Fawkes garb, powder-keg vendetta meets the extreme leverage of the flash mob and the world grows more polarized by the nanosecond.******
​
“In terms of how the audience reacts, everybody, including my family… the people I’ve talked with all have a different reaction to the character, whether they sympathize or not. That’s what I like about the movie, it’s not telling you precisely what you should feel or when, and I think that’s rare in movies. Probably the reason I ultimately said yes to the movie was because I wasn’t sure what I felt about him.”

5. Happiness as the Art of Fending off Reality

​At its heart, Joker is about the psychological underpinnings of the bastard, the mistake, the free lunch ticket that never came home. As mother Penny, heavily in denial, describes it, he was always such a happy boy. With a smile signifying, not a state of happiness, but an overcoming of fear through stoicism. But even the most stoic must let it out.

The Joker is a survivor of something that could easily have ended in death, whether in the fetus, or in the moment of abuse as a three-year-old — or later, in one of those moments of intense hopelessness felt by the adult-child who has suffered horrific abuse.

His mother’s story is a particular tragedy of the shell game system. In a traditional society, every member of society would simply consider hard work part and parcel of life, however brutish and short it might be. But when lavish extraneous luxury is not only a possibility but a sought-after goal, the ability to make do with less, to find inner strength in things other than money, is abandoned by all but the very wise and determined.

The schism between rich and poor — those who receive everything through relatively little effort and those who receive very little, though they struggle mightily every day, is at the core of the Joker origin.
Arthur’s mother I imagine, from her accent and deportment, was depression-hardened into a social striver, launched by destitute parents to latch onto wealth, gain some of that which the family felt it could never make through honest work alone. Hence the elocution lessons, the months and years of training in correct deportment that none of her dockyard brothers received, for that one shot at largesse afforded to the very rich. She took a job as maid in a time well before the “me too” era, when the debased rules of the money system were accepted because people actually had no choice.*******

The type of schizophrenia she experienced was forged through living between two social groupings, classes that no longer see eye to eye. Trying to bridge that which is in essence unbridgeable, the work of spies.

And there in the maelstrom a sensitive boy, unprotected by his mother against the predators who emerged when she was expelled from the gates of Eden — neither welcome at a home with already too many mouths to feed or at the Wayne manor.

And yet young Arthur Fleck was not completely helpless. Joker has the ruthless, driven Wayne genes — he was born to, if not rule, at least survive. He expended much of his life force trying to protect his mother, in a world that was stacked way way against. A world which he instinctively sensed he should have owned, instead of it constantly owning him.

Bottom line: don’t give someone like the Joker meds. Give him therapy, give him unconditional love and support. But if you do give him meds, whatever you do, don’t cut off his supply.
“One of the first things I started to research was the medications [Joker] was on and the side effects of those medications, which made [him] feel isolated from the world. And then on top of that [he] takes these medications and they [cause] these rapid changes in weight. There’s something very tragic about that.

I said we should go with that, we should really have him affected in his weight. I’m lazy, so I suggested we go the heavy route. Because I already was heavy [laughter]…. anyway, once I had lost that weight I was aware of my body in a way that I hadn’t been, I think that allowed me to move in ways that I hadn’t anticipated. [Joker is a] character who never feels satisfied, he’s always in this perpetual state of yearning, of need. And that was built in. I was in a state of hunger.”

6. Superheroes as Shakespearian Substitutes

As one New York Times critic put it, superhero movies are the Shakespearian dramas of the contemporary era, our obsessions writ large. From that perspective, maybe it makes sense that this serious-movie Joker inhabits the Batman tentpole…. To bring method acting to a comic book character is quite a feat. Heath Ledger burned himself out trying to get there and, whatever he was, he was never quite the Joker.
Victim though he may be at times, the Joker does not die through pills or lack of sleep — he finds ways to thrive from his obsessions. He knows all the angles, all the forms of abuse. He punishes those who through micro aggressions remind him of that which has kept him down. And who better to portray that than Joaquin Phoenix, who has clearly had his own experiences adapting to madness––from his family’s early immersion in cult, to his brother’s Viper Room flame out.
If Guy Fawkes is the contemporary archetype, the emblem of all who would rebel, ignite, then give Arthur his place in that firmament. As Joker emerges from the nervous, effeminate, loser into a vision of the shaman carving a smile on his face, he embodies an all-too-common phenomenon in today’s unequal, “winner take all” society. The mass-casualty mirror to our preoccupation with social media smiles and selfie deportment.
My only significant reservation is that Phillips makes the Joker’s transformation into one who “werewolfs in the streets” a little too sexy, the line between diagnosis and prescription becomes a little too blurred. Yet I agree with Joaquin Phoenix that this, if anything subtly introspective, portrayal of a homicidal misanthrope is much less likely to spark copycat actions than those types of mindlessly violent films that leave out the backstory, the consequences, and the regrets.********
“There was a vast increase in these particular types of crimes after 1963. That year was when they started an unprecedented amount of news coverage about these types of crimes. So people who commit these types of crimes, these personality types — they seek personal notoriety, they seek recognition, that is what they thrive on.
I understand the media feels they’re being the responsible ones, but I think that the evidence is to the contrary. So that’s why I’ve remained quiet about the subject (and now you’ve forced me to talk about it). I don’t think that movies influence people in that way, I don’t think they cause homicidal ideation, or thoughts. But the conversation around that can be dangerous.”

Notes:

*Whose not-so-distant cousin is fascism, because when the same memes, jokes, and feed elements are pounded into our collective psyches, mean sameness follows.

** Sidestepping long digression, this is not coincidentally the talking point of a lot of old directors, Scorcese et al. in recent days. Tying into why Once A Time in Hollywood will not play well in China, regardless of Bruce Lee flaps, while just about any Marvel movie will do nicely.

***Arguably, Joker became the most interesting character in the Batman cinematic pantheon with Heath Ledger, although some would argue this happened when Jack Nicholson briefly took the role. Within the context of the comics, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight was the birth of this vision, placing adult goggles on the kiddish amorality.

**** Re: AI––thank god, some would argue. Or as Neil Young put it: So the subtle face… is the loser… this time. Here we are in the years, where the showman shifts the gears, lives become careers, children cry in fear, let us out of here. (exit, ominous piano).

*****A variant of “kill your television.”

******Better hope your leader is sane, your demands measured, and your cause just. Is it better to act fast, in a state of hunger, than to pick battles?

*******Alternatives were grim: flagpole sitting, shoveling coal, come to mind.
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*******We need more introspection, less repression — if it hurts, shocks, and causes revulsion, at least this type of tragicomedy attempts to piece together a narrative forward from the bits left behind by so many men who, alienated and alone, kill to forget.

 This week I found time to upload a pair of distinct musical recordings and videos, and therein lies a story.


It’s a story about quality, virality, timestamps, and the inability of the Internet to signify much beyond noise and feed. What may seem a minor gripe to those who have yet to paint their masterpiece, becomes a major issue for artists who have created worthy art and choose not to promote themselves in a viral way––


Yea, art is its own reward. In many ways the very creation of the pieces I present on Utube is an honor. To have a drummer, a bassist, a violinist, a trumpeter, a singer I respect learning what is in my head, without my giving them anything but the equivalent of sign language and ESP.... We get it done. 


How is it that something that connects, when it comes to actual musicians, is lost in translation when it comes to the current medium of conveyance, Internet? (Hint: algorithms and fleet fingers.)


Over the last year I have put up more than a dozen videos, many with an hour’s worth of music, all of it meeting pretty high standards of originality and quality. This has netted:


º nine subscribers
º 2,885 views
º no money or monetization possibilities*


So why am I putting the stuff up? 

1. It’s nice to be able to point people to what I do quickly and efficiently
2. Timestamp

What is a timestamp? 


It is proof that I created and uploaded some original composition at a certain date, in case… and don’t laugh, it happens much more often than you think––someone takes the idea, song, etc., and monetizes it. It is my insurance policy in a world gone at least half mad.


Why is this important? Well, take this song that I recorded as a sketch in Manila, about a year before the hook was incorporated into a song by a boy band that is kind of the antithesis of what I am about. I actually spit out my coffee at the coffee shop when I heard it. The notes, the measures before the stutter refrain "where do we, where do we go" are virtually the same as Why Don't We & Macklemore's I Don't Belong In This Club.

I may have been an unconscious zeitgeist conjurer with my tune, but it seems unlikely. I came up with the song not thinking of pop at all, but of the style of 1960s Czech folk singer Karyl Kryl. Created at a time and place when the message in music mattered. It was definitely not about getting into a club populated by Ferrari-driving ballers before hair has sprouted on one's chin.

When an idea you have come up with on your own appears completely out of context, it's a pretty big wallop to the brain. (this is hardly the first time, but the provenance of wordy ideas is much harder to cookie crumb than music)

How could the song idea have been poached? Easy. Overheard at the hostel where I worked it out for a couple days? Very possible, devices are everywhere, shared in instants. Somehow leaked from the studio sessions where I adlibbed it as part of the usual jam? Also possible. Psychic spies from China try to steal your heart's elation? Bingo.

Sadly, incorporated into a highly infectious pop track, the solemn query as to where we as collective humanity go has become an earworm unpalatable to its creator. 

So that's wind in my sails, in putting original music up faster than my usual snail’s pace. Mona Lisa, Jamming Along is a prime example. Not finished, but finished enough to claim authorship. And original enough. My intuition: bluesy songs that are not simply a variation of what has been done before do not come along every day. Ditto intelligent lyrics. 


Note to myself and to any original artist, especially those who don't work in beats: get that shit timestamped (I have quite a queue, more than 100 song ideas in various stages of completion) and…. find someone with legal knowhow to help nail down song authorship and all the rest. A consultant. Pay them if you have to, a whole lot of free get you ... where we are today.

Back to that timestamp thing...  the voice memo audio recording I made has an iPhone timestamp of 5/16/18. Perhaps that alone is admissible in a court of law, it would depend on precedent and whether the technology forensic witness made a compelling case. Any way you slice it, a public streaming video timestamp seems more powerful. I imagine any claim of authorship woul   have been bolstered by having even a  WIP version up on public platforms well before the pop song  came out.

As an artist who makes nil from his art I shouldn’t have to mention this, but it’s not about greed. I want to share whatever money comes from the  creative process with the musicians who helped me get there, whether they were participating in a paid studio session or not. That is part of the fabric concept. Banish thy ego. Oh yeah, and fund that fabric platform that will (sustainably) rip a hole in Internull reality as we know it. 

​*Youtube does not allow an official channel to be created and monetized  (through more or less intrusive ads) until 1,000 subscribers and some unholy number of looped streaming hours occur. I am never going to vie for that particular  race-to-the-bottom.


**Here’s the little blurb I incorporate in the video: “This is a little fabric video that came about when I was at the Civet Cafe in Cebu and heard Why Don't We & Macklemore's "I Don't Belong in This Club."  Well the rhythm and melody of the chorus is pretty much the same as a fabric song I came up with at a hostel in Makati a year before, as timestamped on iPhone voice memos at the time.  Probably played a couple days, may have also recorded off-the-cuff as I am wont at Strawberry Jams studio session. So I got into a little debate with erstwhile fabric drummer Nils about whether it is possible that they took my song idea. He said he couldn’t identify anything in the song he hadn’t "heard a thousand times before walking past radios. "Well, that said, it was original enough to be marketed as a new song on YouTube and all the rest, which apparently got 16 million views without being identified as a Radiohead, Hollies, Lana Del Rey, Marvin Gaye, Robin Thicke, Led Zeppelin, or Randy California ripoff. 


So lets say it is original and I came up with the hook a year earlier... just saying.... where do we, where do we go? (fabric is a thing, it's powerful. :)”