New Kind of Meaning For Sale

Like anyone with eyeballs and ears and the smallest sense of awareness, I find the culture of mass consumption, where all things are promised and emptiness is delivered, to be frightening and sick...and in need of destruction.

I subscribe to the notion that most people attached to consumer pop culture are sleeping an uneasy sleep, cut off from both internal and external realities, awaiting the next pellet of purchased hope, with vague uneasiness and bruised bank accounts. With eyes half closed they willingly cede their mental and spiritual landscape to the agents of fear and sell.

And IT is everywhere and IT is where most of us want to be. Where the action is. In the know.

To turn away from crass commercialism and constructed reality, is to turn away from civilization, to be cut off, alone in a cruel landscape where wrinkles and allergies and sexlessness await.

Thank God for culture jammers like Adbuster Magazine...where you can purchase an anti-purchasing awareness kit:

A radical new aesthetic vision by Adbusters editor-in-chief Kalle Lasn. Equal parts memoir, manifesto, scrapbook, and revolutionary design manual, this book is an urgent call for artists, designers, architects and communicators to re-engage with the world.
Richly illustrated with highlights from 15 years of Adbusters design activism (and featuring the work of Banksy, Andy Goldworthy, Jeff Wall, Edward Burtynsky, Ryan McGinness, Andre Serrano, Dah Len, Robert Mapplethorpe, John Goto, Mark Tansey, Gregory Crewdson among others), Design Anarchy probes the historical roots of commercial design culture, the cultural impact of the post-modern sensibility and the problem of aesthetic recuperation. Along the way, it proposes two revolutionary new schools of design philosophy and practice: True Cost Design and Psycho Design.
In the battle for a new kind of meaning, Design Anarchy is 400 pages without precedent.
THE AUTHOR
Kalle Lasn is the founder and editor-in-chief of Adbusters magazine. He has been a key figure in international activism for well over a decade. He was the prime author and driving force behind the First Things First 2000 Manifesto.
SCRAPBOOK EDITION
A different take on Design Anarchy, one that achieves a richer expression of the anarchic ideal. Includes an array of handcrafted ephemera, doodles, clippings, transparencies, leaves, sandpaper, stickers . . . plus the Production of Meaning DVD.
NOTE: The scrapbook edition is not eligible for the student/teacher discount.
SHIPPING:USA and Canada: about 10 daysUK, Europe: about 2 weeks

You can't buy "a new kind of meaning" but you can sell an above- it -all aesthetic to those looking for a way out of the sickness.

Unfortunately it's not that easy.

Great Americans

Recently, a man in Pennsylvania pulled a gun on his 7 year old son's football coach because he wasn't getting enough playing time. The 40 year old was arrested after the un-named coach filed a complaint.

I want to know about the son. Is he a capable football player, overlooked by an insensitive buffoon of a coach? Or does he lack miniaturized blood lust; a passion for inflicting pain on other 1st grade savages.

We can gauge the gun fixated father's level of dementia if we know more about the son's ability to tackle, block and run. If the son can't finish a designed play, or shies aways from bone jarring hits (like most normal humans), the coach is only doing his job by limiting the boy's exposure to an unpleasant, and potentially dangerous situation, and the father is completely insane, off his nut...delusional.

If the boy loves smashing others and can follow plays, but is being ignored by the coach, the father is not, according to American sensitivities, insane, but John Wayne like...saving his boy from a horse thieving coach, a bandit out to rustle away juniors playing time.

And it must be black and white! Nuance is un-American, contemplation is UNAMERICAN!

Thoughtful deliberation is......

Matt Hutton R.I.P

Years ago, back at the Jefferson house, Matt Hutton was a champion of all things inebriate, and a damn good blues harp player.

I would walk through the front door after another day of wage slaving to find Matt in our kitchen with three or four bags of groceries, a bottle of Jack and a bag of weed. "Hey man, I was wondrin' if yall might want to have a barbecue?" I would laugh...because I wasn't sure how he got in the house...and because he had spent most every night during that time in our kitchen.

Matt was very kind and open to anyone who wanted to kick back and "smoke a tater", or have a drink and talk about music. He had curly blond hair and a cherub face. His Southern charm would disarm, and his penchant for telling tall tales, especially to new friends, was a constant source of bewildered entertainment. I fell victim when we first met. I can't remember the tale, but he got me.

At Christmas, Matt would arrive with ceramic jugs full of what he called "cherry cordial", a liqueur his family made from the cherries they grew.

I remember Matt patiently enduring jam sessions in which the rest of us wanted to freak out, gonzo style, without musical structure of any kind....for hours. During breaks Matt would chime in, "How 'bout a blues man?"

Before I left town I ran into Matt. He looked twenty years older than the last time I'd found him in our kitchen. I'd been told he was having some problems, that he was getting into some things that were sure to hurt him. I knew he lost someone he loved...

I remember Matt telling me one time that he felt he had nothing to live for, that life had no purpose and that he needed to find something to believe in. I wasn't shocked because I felt the sadness in him, but I was a little surprised by his revelation. He said he'd lost faith in music because the business is all bullshit and talent means less than fads and networking.

So have a drink and think of Matt Hutton...even if you never knew him. He was a kind and gentle soul.

GFR Radio

Between 1997 and 2003 I was a member of Trip 20, Bronze Age Idols and Free Range Human. Each project fell apart for various reasons, but during that span of time, there was one constant...a loose collective of mad improvisers known as Grass Family Reunion. GFR was born one night in 1998 when Sherry Lucas offered us a last minute gig at the Way Out Club.

There would be no structure... no planned songs...for better or worse.

That night was special. For some reason our ragged meanderings fell in line and a living organism seemed to enter the room. Someone asked who we were and it was decided our drummer, Steve Grass, was responsible for the mayhem, and the name followed. Perhaps it was his idea to pull our pants down in public (I don't remember).

From that night until I left Saint Louis I had the pleasure to jam with a wide variety of amazing players, in a relaxed, "anything (and I mean anything!) goes" atmosphere, including Steve Grass, Terry Goetz, Dan MacQue, Don Cole, Matt Hutton, Jerry Green, Buzzy, Dave Colin, Henry Horning, John Goddard, Dan Stuvland and the infamous B-Flat. Many other faces passed through our door but I don't remember, or never learned their names.

I am in the process of editing the countless recordings made during this period and will be creating a website where tracks will be posted.

FEET!

According to the Transportation Research Board, the number of Americans spending an hour or more commuting to work has grown more than 50% in the last ten years. I spent two years working construction and fighting the morning and evening rush hour mayhem. I found driving on four lane highways at five to ten mph annoying and dangerous...but necessary.

Now I work within walking distance of home and quite enjoy being car-less. For thirty minutes I stroll, collecting my thoughts and watching people make coffee, scratch themselves as they retrieve the morning paper, walk their dogs...as I pass coffee shops and bakeries, wonderful aromas fill my nose. I have a favorite tree. He or she is an enormous big leaf maple that stands next to the baseball and soccer park a few blocks from my house. He or she spreads a magnificent canopy over both the street and part of the ball field, playing with the morning light. I say hello on the days I pass. I take a different route every day for the sake of new things to look at...and just because.

Walking wakes you up.

There's no one to get mad at.

You're not at the mercy of the Traffic God who blocks intersections, causes other drivers to go insane, makes lights conspire against you etc...

Use your feet!