Obama on a Unicorn

Dan Lacey lives in Minnesota. He likes to paint. He likes to paint pancakes.

He has also entered the brave new world of presidential depiction in art. His approach? To undress the 44th and give him a mythical companion. It caught the attention of the gray lady.

Might it be Art

Might it be art if it inspires some to dance, others to cry and plenty to curse?

Goethe wrote, “A genuine work of art usually displeases at first sight, as it suggests a deficiency in the spectator.” He cannot, and we regret the disclaimer, be an authority despite Faust

Sounds of Silence

Last night I had a dream so clear that it startled me out of a deep sleep. Anticipating meaning from the images of my subconscious, I took pen and wrote the whole thing down, including all the vivid details that are now haunting me.

The dream was preceded by a few ordinary dreams. Those I barely remember. They are like spirits – merely impressions. This one was a dream in high definition.

I was out in the streets of New York shopping for an apple in an extensive fruit-stand festival. I was dissatisfied with the selection and convinced myself that somewhere in the mess of fruit there was a stand with the world renown Mozambique Apple.

This conviction led to a street with less vendors. Soon I realized that I was in the black-market of the fruit-stand festival and that these here salesmen were terrorists. I became paranoid that I would be confused as an illegal-vendor and frantically looked for a way out. At this moment I realized i had a beard (‘have I had it all along?’ thought me, ‘did I not notice?’).

I bolted because I looked like a terrorist.

I open a door that was conveniently propped open. Of course, I entered, forgetting I had placed that trap there for myself.

The Door led to a Staircase which led to a Lobby with an Apartment door and an Elevator Shaft that smelled of Urine and Rats.

I opened the door to the apartment and found an old man, sitting on a chair listening to something, although I could only hear traffic. The old man didn’t move, although it was apparent that he had noticed me come in.

The man had lovely hair for his age. It was long and full and of different tones of gray. It was combed over his head creating a stylish helmet hairdo. Long ears hung below the locks of hair.

Then He Spoke

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking, and talking about his feelings or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic – the sound of traffic, here in sixth avenue for instance – I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting, and I love the activity of sound.

What it does is it gets larger and quieter, and it gets higher and lower, and it gets longer and shorter. It does all those things, which I’m completely satisfied with that i don’t need sound to talk to me .

We don’t see much difference between time and space, we don’t know where one begins and the other one stops (laughs) So that most of the arts we think of as being in time and most of the arts with think of as being in space. Marcell Duchamp – for instance – began thinking of time, I mean thinking of music, as being not a time art but a space art. And he made it a piece called sculpture musical, which means different sounds coming from difference places, and lasting, producing a sculpture which is sonorous and which remains.

People expect listening to be more than listening and so sometimes they speak inter-listening, or the meaning of sound. When I talk about music, it finally comes to people’s minds that I’m talking about sound that doesn’t mean anything. That its not inner, that its just outer, and they say – these people who understand that – finally say ‘you mean its just sounds?’ thinking that for something to just be a sound is to be useless. For as I love sounds, just as they are. And I don’t need for them to be anything more than what they are, and I don’t want them to be psychological, I don’t want a sound to pretend that its a bucket, or that its president, or that its in love with another sound, I just want it to be a sound.

At this point he immaturely squinted his eyes and shriveled his neck so that his face moved forward slightly. He looked over my shoulder to whatever was standing behind me. He opened his mouth and let out a sinister laugh, a dry stained tongue and exposed a row of perfectly straight burnt yellow teeth.

And Im not so stupid either. There was a german philosopher who is very well known , Immanuel Kant, and he said there were two things that don’t have to mean anything. One is music, and the other is laughter (laughs). Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us very deep pleasure.

You know that Don’t you (pets cat)

The sound experience which I prefer to all others is the experience of silence. And the silence almost everywhere in the world now is traffic. If you listen to Beethoven or to Mozart, you see that its always the same, but if you listen to traffic you will see that its always different.

On Reflection: Hall of Mirrors

The walk, although slow, participated in the royal ceremony of the French King. Alone, and slow, he walked among the images of his unrecognizable power. In exercising prudence our king faced the challenge of mirror, after mirror. At either side of the king the two largest members of his passe shielded the paranoid man from the judgement of his own reflection.

Only the French King can enjoy a hall of mirrors that reflect nothing but his empire, his subordinates, and gold that frames the oil of the old and loyal.

In denying reflection, or supposing his might superior to common cognition, the King did live in fear of confrontation. Most of his resources now went to a staff of plenty that upheld the delusion for the pleasure of the king. Men were killed on a regular basis if they stumbled drunk within the city walls. Women who would look at the French King could also be put to death if he disliked their demeanor or pose. Women who would avoid making contact with the King’s eyes were also murdered in the name of France.

Of all the mirrors that the king collected (because on top of despising his reflection he was compulsive about hoarding the best mirrors produced around the world), only one reflected an image that he dared accept. This mirror, brought from China, was large and the frame was thin and dark, made from wood that had been aged and slightly smoked. The French King had ordered his serfs to place this wonder above his bed. There the King of France would watch himself dose off at night, in silk pajamas, to a quartet that played his favorite tunes until he gently snored.

Let Me Be Your Cubist

In considering the realms of experience the metaphysical reigns superior for matters of passion. Constructing the appropriate circumstances to enact fantasies and ideals proves futile. Hesitance is the delusion of the poet.

Certain situations require certain execution. Action directed to destruction. A blade that is sharpened poses a threat and therefore exists more immediately than the child that wasn’t. Let me be your cubist, honey, don’t mind me walking away. Let me be the role that does more than pretend from a distance. The wound that incites and separates has a global parallel; the treacherous nile, the flooding amazon, the weeping mississippi. Take me north and let us all sit and silently stare at each other’s self-absorption intensely.

Let me be the deconstructionist in this fallacy. I command the chaos and thrive on the other side of rationality. Yes, admittedly, passion drives away the conductor of fugues. Let me be the man that drives convictions out of sight and drowns beneath responsibility.

Let me be your cubist, I proclaim, to the foggy mirror.

On Retraction: I understand the implications of my actions

DISCUSSED IN THIS APOLOGY

* the aphorisms of a broken man * retrospective anger * denial * recognition * cognitive recognition of denial * redundancy * helplessness * guilt * guilt * guilt * contradictions * the aphorisms of an angry man * telekinesis * theology * atheism – a theory for *

I understand the implications of my previous post.

The grammar is poor and the effort was laced with lazy.

There was no conviction to adorn the narrative.

I put my head down, take the blame for your anger.

We take to the better artistic medium, the public forum, to further blend the lines of fiction and reality.

What to say.

‘Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.’

I hope your revenge comes soon and when it does, I wish magnificent fireworks accompany it. A spectacle worthy of your person.

A feigned love sprout; and you pull it?

Forgive me for out-smarting you. Your pragmatism was always the highest point of my distant adoration.

Now, recall the night (there were plenty) when we took to the country in the early evening. The sun was down. We parked the car on the street across the street from the massive plantation with full grown corn.

We walked down the gravel road, between the corn that rattled with the wind, toward an abandoned farm house.

Isn’t that the moment of our contradiction?

BETWEEN THE LINES

A distorted reality is inevitable in the age of broadband. The addressed is not the intended reader, not directly. There are rivers, state borders, freeways and thousands of lunatics between our beings. This illusion of togetherness was craved in war time, when war was the prestige of a young patriot. Methods change and truth is static. The Mississippi is in my way.

I can’t save you. Have you no faith?

I want to save you. Can you believe me?

I admit I am concerned with branding… “relationship”?

I live in my head too. Isn’t that the place of our contradiction?

What concerns you, possession? solitude?

The pedestal of the snake in the room with the dimmed lights an the fake vines?

It would be less delusional to role play. Rich old man and mail order wife.

Are you Ukrainian?

My photo album has the pink tones of that evening by the wind farms. The setting although ideal, was right because it was an empty field. The sun, which was setting again, and the car hidden behind the silos, and your silence, and your frown.

You are What You Drink

you get thirsty, you reach for a cup, you fill it with water, and then you proceed to dose up on the bi-products of burnt coal.

mercury, arsenic. not what you would expect from your clear fluid, that precious H2O we need to live. except we need the H2O and not the elusive stuff that doesn’t show to the eye, the stuff our energy companies have been deliberately putting in our drinking water, for the sake of cleaner air?

the EPA failed on this. check out this crazy map.

No fines, just reports of violations. the legacy of president w bush. makes you question progress, this dilemma does. more energy, more production, more people with inexplicable tumors and dysfunctional organs, because they drank a little water.

it’s telling of the human condition. see no evil, please, no evil. call it a Peace Crime, and bring the coal burning energy companies into court, with the EPA. have them explain what happened. invite the SEC and Madoff’s wife too. regulators and abusers in bed, always, with a heavy drink and a joint to celebrate. Michael Duvall spanking two Sacramento lobbyists with no self respect. everyone apologizes and it’s over, just like that. sorry we never meant to make you drink arsenic. sorry about the billions that we stole. sorry that we forgot to investigate corruption, we were busy getting laid.

America, you flew to close to the sun. your collective attitude is totalitarian and obsessive. all you want is money america, to get more coke, to make more money. you are lost when your hedge funds dont return millions in profit. you went to bed with the devil america; china made you a Faustian offer too sweet to refuse.

so what do you do when it all becomes caricatured. there is so much grime the bum can handle, before he asks those wearing suits to be respectful of those drinking water from a well.

how much does it take before real populist anger. not the schizophrenic tea-parties or the hollywoodesque town hall meetings. real populist anger, the kind the greeks are good at.

america you poisoned your own water source, self-inflicted terrorism. you are helping the enemy.

Medusa

I spoke with Medusa

behind a canvas fold threaded

with temperance and temptation.

The sound of her voice was sweet poison,

her scent hissing at my inner paranoia.

The eyes fiercely shut the light behind the veil

yet her silhouette showed blended bloody red,

and deep black like blues.

Medusa turned my mind into coal.

My feet regained wings at her presence

as the hair on my face stretched into shapes

like snakes; the sloppy saliva took the

taste and the strength of burnt cinnamon; raw

mercury; fresh fish scales; sweet acid.

Medusa sang me into agony and the

loose feet beneath the lazy legs below the

weeping infant would not rise up and

run.

Thus the joke becomes the

tale of the hero crippled by

intuition and decay,

when shame and time

have done their due.

The Crisis of the Ideologue

Its noble to hold a principle so close to your heart that when – and if – this principle is challenged or disturbed the heart bleeds out. The Ideologue might even die.

Its noble to pick up a hitchhiker with a shady look, a large duffel bag and a giant saber. Its noble to give her a ride even if her sign reads ‘Will ride for Blood.’ Its noble.

Its noble to believe that your belief is static like the earth. What moves, they say, is the sun around the earth, and not the other way around. Its noble to go to war for this belief, to kill a man who opposes and proposes an alternative.

Its noble to pretend that the challenger is a beast with your heart as their target.

“Leave my principle alone you dirty bastard, I ain’t wrong, you are a dick!”

Have you said that before? Have you heard that before? Have you been told that government is after your autonomy? That in China they eat puppies? That drugs only kill those who take them?

Have you been told that Jesus was a man and not a God? Have you heard, that Jesus will return? Has anyone ever told you the best way to dress, the best way to kiss, the best way to write?

Have you told anyone that they are wrong?

If for some reason you have not entertained anyone’s ideology today, why doncha? Take it up against your ideology and try to make a big fat sandwich with it. Hold the onions.

Its noble to attempt expression of one’s convictions, but noble isn’t always right and noble isn’t always easy. Purpose must always be prioritized; and the limits of rhetoric and argument considered; the capital letter of fact is an illusion one must be able to manipulate. Don’t take arms against another’s Scarlett letter without first looking at your chest. Fix your eye, so you can see the pupils of your existential colleagues and their dogs.

Its noble to pretend to care, and its noble to attempt to care.

Yet its also noble to accept that you cant care, not about their principle, not that. Never.

Ode to Autumn

Summer has passed and the wind is blowing a lil colder and the leaves shake a bit, change colors; first to a pale yellow and then to dry brown and the wind will knock them down, the ground will be covered in dead leaves and the trees will stand there naked, day and night, day and night people will be wearing more clothes, will be hiding their nudity because it’s colder, and although its better to be outside, a warm cup of milky joy next to an artificial fire is a good way to initiate the cabin, to prepare it for the fever of the end of winter, because fall is only a winter’s prelude, a reminder of the indifference of nature to the pleasures and experiences of warm-blooded people; people who will use the sun, the wind, the oil of the long dead, the atoms – but not the snow – to create a bit of electricity to warm the toes, to thread the wool into a sweater, to boil the water that will brew the tea that will accompany the solitude of winter, the dehydration of winter, the hay-rides of autumn, the love of summer, the love that bloomed in spring, that grew those sweaty nights, that taunts now that autumn is here, and winter is threatening.

The ineffability of a periodic and familiar sentiment that looks different if equinox or solstice is the chill of ticking time, ticking seconds, ticking minutes, ticking months that are long gone, never to return; except every expected year, same name, different month, different time, different people, different love.  

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies