Glorious Revolutions Series

READ: The Whole Series To Present In Its "Glory" (reverse order)

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I still remember when the Wall fell. November 9, 1989. If you were alive, you remember.
A newscaster on the television, his image warped and tattered by static around the edges, was talking about the end of nuclear threat. It was a revolution of culture, some said. Then President Reagan appeared, and took credit for the fall of Communism.
Revolutions leave an indelible stamp on those lived through them. But how did a falling wall end the Cold War, let alone stanch the tide of violent revolution? This is the kind of rhetoric we are fed. We’re given the pieces to this puzzle, but never told what image they’re supposed to make.
If it wasn’t already painfully obvious in 1986, it certainly is now. No one should have thought that violent uprising was a thing of the past. The legacy of globalization has generally been more revolutions, not fewer. It’s as if, with every generation, we forget the lessons learned by those that came before. This “nightmare of history,” to refer to Joyce’s famous quote, calls to mind several essential questions. Are revolutionaries incapable of hearing the ghosts of the past? Is this forgetting itself the nature of revolutions? Finally, how can we keep others from using our own hopes and ideas against us? These questions are hard to answer, and any analysis is likely to sound irrelevant to those that have lived through the mute horror of violent conflict.
Still, we must wrestle with this legacy if we are to have any hope of freeing ourselves from it. The cycle of loss and vengeance itself is a crucible for revolutionary ideology.

Read The Series

Outsider Artist Gonzomentary Free Movie

The free movie length version of "the world's first Gonzomentary" has been released! (Rough cut).

“Gonzomentary” is an ongoing web series project which began as a gonzomentary “reality” show surrounding the struggles of an independent artist who influences change in the art underground with his phallic art.

Get out the popcorn and crack pipes, and share it round.



[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

Unlearning Reality : Afragility, Twitter, and Embodying Myth as Incunabula

I personally don't suffer with the problem that Hunter S. Thompson did, the problem which he elucidated in the 1978 BBC documentary, and James recalled in his post on Living and Embracing Ego:

I'm never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict — most often, as a matter of fact. ...I'm leading a normal life and right along side me there is this myth, and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be.

There is no conflict between the myth and reality for me. The Roman numerals which make up VI are as much a signifier of my self-hood as the name I was given at birth. Gonzo is the insertion of self into the narrative - the breaking of the notion of objectivity. The author goes native, becoming a native of the text or medium.

Native has its roots in natal, relating inextricably to birth and innateness. There is only a conflict if you were ever born somewhere else; the ontological and cultural tensions induce a kind of schizoid existence.

A double life, like Clark Kent and Superman or Bruce Wayne and Batman. We've all read enough comics or seen enough of the films and other media to realise that this tension is manufactured by the environment we're in.

Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne are masks. Batman and Superman are the faces behind those masks. Those faces are the real identities, and they are made of myth, born of it. In Immanence of Myth James and I talk a great deal about the body, the corpus of myth as living flesh.

Whether it be the twilight world of cannibalism, butchery, or simply eating fucking and dying, the reasons for such discussions are horrifically simple:

Our bodies, these flesh and blood machines; by their creaking, groaning, pounding and pulsing they are our method of experiencing the universe, and they are the only one we will ever have.

Going native, becoming part of the narrative; this requires that you become myth. It is in a sense, a second birth, a second Nativity - to become the 'rough beast that slouches toward Bethlehem to be born'.

The body becomes the text, the medium. That is when you have become a native, when your very flesh has been juiced with myth, suffused with and marinaded in it.

It may sound insane, to aim to become a living being composed solely of myth; a thing of dream and nebuluous, quixotic creative potential. After all, if there is no dividing line between fiction and reality, one is insane, no?

Except, there's things like this, where fictional characters tweet supportive messages to the people of Japan:

In the light of last week’s events in Japan, a twitter account has recently surfaced with encouraging comments from previous heroes on tokusatsu shows such as Ultraman, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider.

Tokusatsu means 'special filming'. Of the like seen in, y'know, Godzilla movies or Power Rangers for those of us not up on Japanese culture. Miraculous effects.

This isn't some mystical 'becoming-myth'. No, it's an attempt to help people parse the enormity of a catastrophe. This is an attempt to give people hope.

And it's happening right now, in a so-called 'rational' age. Seriously, am I the only one seeing the connections here? As I said in my last post, albeit obliquely - Godzilla and fellow mythic monsters serve a need that goes way beyond rationality.

EPISODE TWO: STILL BI WINNING!

Thus continues the descent of Rusty Shackleford. This is the most recent installment I received from him. He's becoming increasingly... Well. See for yourselves. -JC


NOTES ON "MY" FRIEND DONALD:
My Friend Donald just left. "I" "think"(?) He *IS* permanently scarred after watching "me" "write" "shit like this" for like "six"

(an "arbitrary" "unit" ov "measurement",)

"HOURS",

(which *IS* another "arbitrary" "unit" ov "measurement" that relates to
another "illusion", that which *IS* called "Time" and "IMAGINED" as a "FOURTH DIMENSION" by "SOME CREDIBLE SCIENTIFIC ASSHOLE CALLED 'EINSTEIN'"(TM!),

[who incidentally also happened to be called "retarded" by his "teachers" at a young age...]

and which does not "Really" "Exist" in any sense other than "being" "imaginary" (?).... And iT's "too late" [or "early", depending upon how "YOU" "see" iT, for thee "writer" to get into trying to "talk" about that anyway])....

[NOTE thee "BROAD FUCKING FINGER QUOTATION MARKS" USED to denote concepts as "inauthentic" (like this blog "RUSTY SHACKLEFORD"(TM!) *IS* "writing", if "you, thee reader" can call this "WRITING".... ) or "imaginary constructs" & "made out of words" and thus BULLSHIT/beLIEf systems (BS).]

How to Become a "BI-WINNER" (TM)

Several nights ago, I started receiving rather incoherent text messages from Bradley the Buyer. Except he told me he wasn't Bradly The Buyer anymore, now he was "Rusty." 

"Ok...Rusty," I said, "What's going on, and are you ready to start writing for Modern Mythology?"

"Yes. I am living it."

"Um. What's the piece?"

"It is Fully Retarded in practical terms. This will be a success story and cautionary tale!" 

"We're already dead anyhow," I said. And I know this because I have the logs, not because I actually remember. "Time is like an optical illusion."

"I mean really, who injects bath salts, without even knowing what it is is? Who is already manic? THIS GUY. But really the downside is an illusion, while we are on the subject of illusion, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom and I have become stronger through living hell I am a walking Encyclopedia of pharmacological data. Say what you will about Hunter Thompson but he was clearly Bi-winning!"

And thus began what was supposed to be a story for this blog, but which became something altogether different. Well. That was around midnight. I'm not making any of this up, by the way.

At 1am he told me he was writing for me. Again. Ok, I said. Must be operating in BenzoDiazaVision, some kind of infinite loop. Maybe he would provide an article of subcultural analysis, maybe highlighting the myths of--

At 2am, I was his editor. He was rambling about shooting "bath salts." I thought, "they aren't paying me enough to do this. Wait. They aren't paying me anything, anymore." Things were getting ugly, on the other end. We had to wait this out. I was too sober to follow his thoughts. Bath salts? Why does he keep talking about bath salts? 

At 3am, I was listening to Dirt for the 10th time and the opiates kicked in. I thought, maybe Rusty has really tapped a cultural vein. Maybe he's onto something. I'd best actually read the 100 text messages and pages of seeming gibberish that were clogging all my digital devices. I also finally googled "bath salts + drugs" and...was horrified. There's a news story that begins about a guy who did this shit and carved up his face with a knife "...but not everyone is so lucky." LUCKY? What the fuck happened to the other people?

I don't know what to tell you folks. I was wrong. I don't know how to spin this. It's like a theater with one actor on stage playing all the roles - badly - and there's just a couple in the audience, fingering each other under the seats, and a guy passed out and possibly dead on smack. (Tito?) And you. Staring in slack-jawed confusion. 

Here are the transcripts. (PDF) In full, though he claims that this is "Only the Preface." Make of them what you will.

Note: Here is the Porcupine Tree video, to which this document refers.