something in common with mr. lovecraft

here h.p. lovecraft describes his nature as a tripartite of obscure "loves". these are loves i believe when can both share...

"I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups – (a) Love of the strange and the fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities." (SL 1.110)

on ugliness

on ugliness by umberto eco. if you have not already...go out and get this book right now! meant to be a companion to the history of beauty...both by umberto eco, the famous italian novelist, essayist, and philosopher. i can not describe how great this book is...i let someone else do it for me...

From Publishers Weekly

Italian literary and cultural critic Eco opens this visually dazzling and intellectually provocative companion volume to his History of Beauty (2004) by arguing that ugliness has been defined through the ages only as the opposite of beauty. Eco attempts to go further in this analysis of ugliness—part history, part cultural criticism—which echoes premises from his previous survey: a correspondence between the public's tastes and artists' sensibilities must be assumed, and cultural and historical contexts determine how both beauty and ugliness are portrayed and received. Each chapter juxtaposes images with brief excerpts from texts through the centuries, and Eco's choices are superb: a discussion of industrial ugliness includes excerpts from Baudelaire, DeLillo and the Eiffel Tower's originally negative reception; the delightful chapter on kitsch includes Hermann Broch and Eco's own hilarious description of California's Madonna Inn. Eco's thoughts on ugliness in contemporary culture are the most interesting: in an age of goth and cyborg aesthetics, the boundaries between beauty and ugliness are perhaps permanently blurred. This unusual and eclectic study will appeal to cultural and art historians as well as to the general reader with an interest in a rarely examined topic. 300 color illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Review

ON UGLINESS edited by Umberto Eco (Rizzoli, 455 pages; $45). Beauty may be attractive, but ugliness is more fun, or so it will seem to the peruser of this fascinating volume edited by Umberto Eco and translated by Alastair McEwen. "On Ugliness" does not present a deep theory of repulsion, but what it lacks in depth it makes up for in encyclopedic, vividly illustrated breadth. Interspersing brief passages of historical and philosophical commentary among hundreds of examples of ugliness found in Western art and literature, the book offers a whirlwind tour of its subject from ancient Greece to the popular and avant-garde cultures of today. You will be hard pressed to find a facet of ugliness that does not rear up in some hilarious, obscene, disgusting or terrifying form. KEN JOHNSON -- New York Times 12/7/2007

new books

i just got several new books of insurmountable importance. while i don't always share the books i'm currently reading. these are just so damned special...

1) on ugliness by umberto eco

2) faust---the norton critical edition, 2nd printing, translated by walter aendt-- by goethe

3) the divine comedy by dante---really nice, leather bound.

4) the seven basic plots by christopher booker---indespensible!

5) daphnis and chloe by marc chagall---one of my absolute favorite painters...illustrates this famous myth with lithographs

6) the necronomicon by h p lovecraft---what can i say...the bible of horror literature.

7) the unknown hieronymus bosch by kurt falk---my favorite artist, right now.

some vain renderings of the artist himself

inner voice/ inner cosby



werewolf's ritual raw embarssment

the high priestess of astarte...maw maw elaine

hi my name is justin...you might know me as tv's "the disintrested redeemer jobe cruel". well, shoot, where do i begin...

you may have read, skimed through, or most liklely...completly ignored...an ealier posst called..."maw maw elaine and the inevitable pink magic destiny of the cruel redeemer". is a legendary account of my real life grandmothers life, as well as her beautiful cycle of destruction and creation, life and death, the ebb and the tide that she commands just as the moon does her waves.while there is no real proof that any of this is real and or happened. the truth is that i have no historical evidence on any of the events unfolded durring this metaphorical, folk manifesto, this tome her heriditary brilliance. this spell book is both the key and gate, the watchmen and the watched, the disappearing noose that blames the hanged for hanging.

here is an actual rare archival depiction of early "pink magic" maw maw...at that timethe word pink magic was cleverly disguised as "pink collar." this of course was a unified front to destract away from the natural magic, power, and beauty of an incrediblly loving and strong female.





my own maw maw's influence on the great minds of her time is unavoidable. she herself invokes burroughs himself, along with pan and numerous other fairy beast and homosexuals. she calls upon burroughs, pan, and the gods of old to deliver us this invocation...that has ben passed down through my family. every thanksgiving, durring our bloodletting we chant..."

...to hex chu chan, the dangerous one, to ah pook, the destroyer, to the great old one the star beast, to pan, god of panic, to the nameless gods of dispersal and emptiness, to hassan i sabbah, master of assassins, to hank williams and his lonesome birds, to billie holliday whose strange fruit hung not at the end of the noose but at the tip of a needle, and to anais nin who came alive and was born by the sex of millers words...to all the scribes and artist and practioners of magic through whom these spirits have been manifested......

NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED

these are the very words that run through my vains invoking the spirit of the beast...ART.

more self-absorbed belly-aching in the name of something true

and now without further ado...i will invoke the muse...

to the goddess melpomene, she who is melodious, the one that celebrates with dance and song...the beautiful muse of tragedy. i now invoke melpomene so that she might see fit to adorn me in the cothurnus, the boots of tragic actors, so that i may go forth and share the song of the shadow, and so that she may grant me the ability, as she has for so many before, the gift of creating beautiful phrases.

now good people...i must go forth an profess the word of melpomene.
is not, the heart of hearts, hidden inside the message of melpomene. the one who sings is the one who suffers. the one who celebrates with dance and song...is the one who tragedy serves. how does tragedy serve, beside tormment...through beautiful phrases...tragedy serves through art.

your heart of hearts is tragic. we will visit buddhas words...buddha says that we must embrace our "genuine heart of sorrow". buddha's noble truths, are in fact, the truths of duhka...the truths of suffering.

so what then is the result of embracing the genuine heart of sorrow, of invoking melpomene, of tragic art. the result is...joy, true love, geniune being, transcendent life, rejoicing...redemption, salvation.

so then...what is wrong with being the tragic actor? dancing and singing sad songs of joy for the salvation and redemtion of lost souls.

arson is art: carl jung and jobe of the jungle join forces to bore you and ruin your day

i have been attempting to describe my own idea of what "art" is to me, both in these absurdly unintresting blogs as well as in the act of living itself. in life i have found very little distinction between "making art" and "living life". in fact, i have found that the two are one and the same.
durring my intense studies i came across some excellent back up to my half-assed obsession. here is carl jung, to help me say...in your face....

"...If a work of art is explained in the same way as a neurosis, then either the work of art is a neurosis or a neurosis is a work of art. This explanation is all very well as a play on words, but sound common sense rebels against putting a work of art on the same level as a neurosis. An analyst might, in an extreme case, view neurosis as a work of art through the lens of his professional bias, but it would never occur to an intelligent lay person to mistake a pathological phenomenon foe art, in spite of the undeniable fact that a work of art arises from much the same psychological conditions as a neurosis. This is only natural, because of these conditions are present in every individual and, owing to the relative constancy of the human environment, are constantly the same, whether in the case of a nervous intellectual, a poet, or a normal human being. All have had parents, all have a father- or a mother complex, all know about sex and therefore have a certain common and typical human difficulties. One poet may be influenced more by his relation to his father, another by his mother, while a third shows unmistakable sexual repression in his poetry. Since this can be said equally of not only every neurotic but of every normal human being, nothing specific is gained for the judgement of a work art. At most our knowledge of its psychological antecedents will have broadened and deepened.'

maw maw elaine and the inevitable pink magic destiny of the cruel redeemer

part 1

the "Pink Magic" Rite and the Sacrificial Birth of the Archetypal Plastic Man

here is the woman of whom all women got there name...maw maw elaine. her name rings on the dawn of time like a bell initiating the rite of astarte and thereby resounding the spirit of the venus of willendorf.

this is my grandmother. here is her job. a job in which she milked crisp five dollar bills daily, for my burning young pockets. durring this age a pocket of jobe only held money, in five dollar format. there yon treasured bill would sit, for a season of hibernation until the rainy rites of spring, that's when the money would stand on it's own. the bill of elaine would emerge from its sarcophagus, answering the call of the cash register. the buzz of the recipt machine crying in ecstasy like the insects swarms of warm weather poverty. From son-so-grand to grand-mother so called, unto the moaning witches of the kmart check-out. the currency bears it's name like teeth before death, gnashing, and biting in the dark. a current finally sacraficed, finally banished, exiled along with a few extra pennies to seal the alchemical rite. unburdened of use, our banknote is let loose with copper sacrament, to join the divide and banish the restlessnes of empty souls.

the magnus opus of this rite of "pink magic" is a plastic man of many archetypes. there are many faces of the universal heartbreaker and saviour, the maytr of suffering through release. the archtypes, of this kind, available to childhood wonder, were given life; he-man, skeletor, beast-man, trap jaw, man-at-arms, teela, stratos, zodiac (oddly my favorite at this age, in hindsight, is probably the gayest one. it's a wonder that i made it out of early childhood alive. flaunting flamboyant and eccentric action figures of a subversive religous and sexual nature, as i was).


part two

pink collar of the she-devil who weaves subterfuge unto daily love

maw maw elaine, after giving birth to my mother and the world at large, ritualisticly gave birth to my he-man collection via pink magic. my childhood, the childhood of one possesed of the great snake, was protected by this society of symbolic men. these plastic men were all in the image of my fathers and rightfully instilled my dutiful sense of violence, destruction, anarchy, and...art.

my maw maw herself the grand preistess, worldmother; sister to ix tab, patroness to all who hang themselves; aunt of itzamna, spirt of early morning mists; her brother humwawa the dark angel of death, lord of decay, lord of the future who rides on whispering wind of the south; the devine cousin to ix chel the-spider-web-that-catches-the-dew-of-the-morning; and finally her lover hassan i sabbah, old man of the mountain, master of assassins and direct genetic, magical, numerlogical blood spirit that drives the small black heart of the pink judas, the cruel redemeer jobe de dedesesperación.

she was born on the left hand side, an immaculate conception. the powers that be covered up her birth, erased her existence, and destroyed her identity, one of noble and ancient blood. she was forced into obscurity and coerced into meanial labor. she took mortal work, the sickest of all, she became a liaison between dead animal souls and the mortal entrails. she delivered flesh and blood, food straight to the hole in our faces. she did this for capitol, but more so, she was taking on the motherly duty of divining emptiness from daily chores for the greater good. the greater good, that is the seed, the brood, the coven...her children, who represent her love on earth. her children who will travel into the future on their pink collar wings, where the only task bestowed on future men...is to sing the songs that immortalize all great movements. to sing her history backwards, from death to birth...

to be continued...

step right up and see jobe the dancing bear, a real-life judas.

tickets are free...what do you have to lose? jobe we'll be on display in a dirty cage on any day of the week. there he will lie starving in his tutu. you may ask questions, taunt, throw rocks...but he will not dance. jobe does not dance in his tutu nor does he regale you with his tales of heartbreak and betrayal...untill the sun goes down, the cover is draped over his cage, and he is alone. then you may overhear his feet shuffle the tearful dance of judas.

how to become a wifebeating childhater in eight easy steps.

1) write a poem in invisible ink.

2) mail it to your landlord in lieu of rent.

3) wait for rejection.

4) explain to landlord that you believe an invisible poem to be infinitely more valuable than money...or blood for that matter.

5) wait for rejection.

6) absorb rejection.

7) you have learned the voice of the invisible poem.

8) now that you have gained your voice from nothing...go forth and destroy.

your own lover will murder you: self help advice for thieves and dogs.

or on the "spiritualization of passion"
or "il faut tuer les passions..."
or "le trappe"

latlely, i've been enamored by an artistc concept...maybe a life lesson...i don't know. some of my older pieces deal with "romantic" love...for any and all things and people...specifically the difficulty and complications involved with maintaing it. the weakness, confusion, pain, and exhaustion.

love, like all passions, is beatiful at first, and feels so good...but in the course of all passion...it becomes an addiction. love becomes painful, love becomes fear, and loss.
all "romantic" love is a razor...sharp, intense, and painful...so then, why love? are we daft, confused, stupid? well, yeah...but that does that matter? of course not. are we all "cutters", self mutilators using love to slice us awake? how can we say we are all not users and manipulaters...cutters?

is love more than the spirtualization of passion? more than addiction to suffering? can you divorce yourself from this process? love without nostalgic afterlife? i don't know. but nietzche, who else, might. so here are some words of the rock star himself...

"All passions have a phase when they are merely disastrous, when they drag down their victim with the weight of stupidity — and a later, very much later phase when they wed the spirit, when they "spiritualize" themselves. Formerly, in view of the element of stupidity in passion, war was declared on passion itself, its destruction was plotted; all the old moral monsters are agreed on this: il faut tuer les passions..."

what of those lost in this cycle? never able to see true love...just "the devils"...only bouncing from one experience of "spirtuality for passion" to the next. never seeing it's effect, never feeling it's true edge. these people i have mercy for...

"The same means in the fight against a craving — castration, extirpation — is instinctively chosen by those who are too weak-willed, too degenerate, to be able to impose moderation on themselves; by those who are so constituted that they require La Trappe, to use a figure of speech, or (without any figure of speech) some kind of definitive declaration of hostility, a cleft between themselves and the passion. Radical means are indispensable only for the degenerate; the weakness of the will — or, to speak more definitely, the inability not to respond to a stimulus — is itself merely another form of degeneration. The radical hostility, the deadly hostility against sensuality, is always a symptom to reflect on: it entitles us to suppositions concerning the total state of one who is excessive in this manner.

This hostility, this hatred, by the way, reaches its climax only when such types lack even the firmness for this radical cure, for this renunciation of their "devil." One should survey the whole history of the priests and philosophers, including the artists: the most poisonous things against the senses have been said not by the impotent, nor by ascetics, but by the impossible ascetics, by those who really were in dire need of being ascetics."

is this ""devil" we must renunciate true love? why renunciate true love?
who knows?

all i can say for sure is...i know that i am guilty, more so, a victim... of all forms of love mutation. to me it all goes together and heightens my experience beyond me...just as a chord sings with the dischord. does this make me martyr, a hopeless, a brat? probably.

my goal...is to use expressive means (art, writing, action, fixt fights, arson, and love) to show how these things are not despicable. these feelings, this experience...these victims, martyrs, and lovers... knife-fighters, thieves, liars, manipulators. why is it wrong to be...someone twisted and engaged by passions. is this not someone in the zenith of true love. is not the devil the greatest lover?

is honour among thieves...that honour is love...love of all those who suffer...and bear the cross of the search of true hearts.

finally, why must we become so afraid as we grow older? why do all we guard ourselves from the bad experiences we have had...the hurts, the passions, the pain. we cast out out "devils"...we lose all ablity to love. are we stupid to yearn for that pain? is dumb to believe that it's worth it everytime? to just get up and say "please punch me in the face...again?

if not, are we moving closer to death every day? do we spend all our love to hold on? or should we spend our love to have...or find...something to hold on too. this "something" can not be a single person or thing. surely, it is the result...the creation...of two...love is born...not made.

oh well, you know they say about soap boxes. but what of the man with the tin foil on his head standing in the center of the highway...

i say he is the true lover?

i hope so...

p.s i apologize for being such a brute, so haughty and opionated. huffing gas, drinking laudanum, and sharing you thoughts on "myspace" can be scary...

this is dedicated...

to all the abusers, liars, users, and manipulatiors out there...
in other words...the lovers.

in other, other words...all of us.

ps...i still love you...all.