Category: The milieu

 

The teeter-tooter, a splintered board creaking up and down: a shallow muddy puddle at each end, innocent muddy children working the ups and the downs.

And so our memories.

One end of memory, “verifiable recollection” goes up as down into the mud hollow goes “useful contrivance as truth”; holding tight with bended knees.  As the “useful contrivance” pushes upward there is a brief neutral moment before “verifiable” fact bottoms into its’ muddy hollow.  For a moment play, poetry and tricks of memory are elevated.

Obviously our reunion is about memories, all coming here have elevated their memories to the factual “verifiable” type.

We invited historical enfants terrible artists, thinking childlike creative ideas will occur with a possible tantrum.  What we have so far is colicky adult expletive spewing infant childish types producing noise.  Some actually brought actual children into this milieu popping with bombs; and so the wee tots learn their culture.   We did not encourage this.  The tent, still awaiting erection, has no means of absolutely protecting youthful innocence.  Explosions, even cultural bombshells, we know to be disturbing to children.

 

Time has been as limited as the budget; and so exhibits concerning penetrating philosophies, politics, and new paradigm breakthroughs were discussed, and not children.  Empowered thought was always discussed in the planning.  But limiting radicality was dismissed, given the memories of censorship.  Yet there was a faint working idea that children may be harmed.

Luckily Yorick exists, it appears that only a medieval jester would remember that sanctuary matters.  So a skeleton unaffected by modernism cordoned off access to the broad prairie sky, some grass and clover, toads, mud, sticks and balls, and bits of colorful refuse.

And so the near-naked savage offspring of anarchists parade  wet noses, bloody knees, and many varieties of tears; but balls get kicked and giggles and laughs animate the children’s area.  As you might guess their memories will also include errant bombs with the fun and games.

We will try edging back to Eden…next Saturday

 

Some bumbling, some standard deviations of any original idea have taken place.  The tent is not habitable and the exhibits, while well conceived, are not approaching materialization.  Meanwhile the emotive reality-tv melodrama artistic attendees have gone over the edge, and not as Artful deviation.  The reunion and the Temporary Museum of enfant terrible Culture as holding memories of useful deviance has spiraled away from its’ intended meaning and value.

For example, by necessity we marked parking spaces, exhibit schedules, and bulletin board postings; positioning enfant terribles into a hierarchical ascendancy.  Placing them in the continuum of critical dialogue importance, historical moment, and various utilitarian matters.  Foolish maybe, but necessary. This begat bombshells hurled from cutting-edge enfant terribles as a consequence of inappropriate placement, at least in their mind.

We are in need of a pause. We are going to take a walk, would you like to join?

Step into the present state of the Illinois prairie.  For we locals this is the place at the edge of the smile of God.  It did not get the big smiling kiss of a mountain, nor an ocean or rushing river.  It is the broad edge where the mouth curves a bit and crinkles the cheeks.  The cheek’s blue blush is humidity, dust and pollen; sfumato for painters, that spills on to the edge of the globe.  Eons of wind whirled those to build the bounteous soil under your feet.  Below soil is gravel, pulverized mountain, the gift of the glaciers.  All of that sits on a bed of limestone, thanks to a primordial ocean.  While some places are eternally declining and falling to some new glory, the prairie is always trying to make something out of nothing; hoping for a glory day.  We thought initiating the reunion and museum would hasten that day.

Foolish maybe, but let’s continue our quick survey.

When this prairie was Eden, a pair of centuries ago, the children of those who crossed and ocean, so as to cross the mountains, and so to arrive at this root-bound fertility; wrote letters and poems.  They gave artful definition to the prairie by comparing it to whatever they remembered.  But they didn’t know that the profuse flowers, layered spots in grassy blades, could be compared to paintings soon to be made.  And that eventually rectangles, industry, and media wires would deviate all attention for artistic concern.

That may be the smiling big kiss: of lesser gods, now a place for our artifice.

 

 

Invitation, a nice word: the sound of a flowing Italian sauce with a delicate touch of garlic.

You are probably okay with receiving an invitation to this serial blog without the touch of a fluid pen, a once ridiculous idea.

The desired reunion participants have held out committing; maybe it is the invitation methods, maybe anticipations of better offers. The prairie location?  Mid-20th century avant-garde types have responded to mailed mimeographs, ancients await parchment, wax-sealed and signet ring embossed.   Finding a telegrapher is impossible, although a phone call to a derelict tavern or wind-swept cafe usually contacts an enfant terrible of a century ago.  Proper invitations are a dilemma in a world without cursive.

Late 20th century types are arriving, a bit early;  strained from the highways into the parking area.  These are the best trained of the avant-garde paradigm types and maintain a stressed but insular community.  Imagining a significance to this reunion and exhibits they have also brought an entourage.  Most of whom were not on the invitation list.

Our unwillingness to invite them was that, gastronomically speaking, they just kept adding garlic to an otherwise flavorful sauce.  Their admiration of earlier avant-garde works, the often acrid taste that certain works of the invited enfant terribles troubled their times with; were simply made indigestible.  Honoring copies, derivatives, or appropriations by many now parking their cars; didn’t seem like what we wanted.  Unfortunately to dis- them now means explaining to agitated artistics: something they won’t believe.  Meanwhile they are holding and unloading bombshells they fully expect to exhibit.

We have this there are other ongoing problems.  The tent is not safely up, there are demands for services, some of these latter day anarchists have set up bomb trading spaces; and there are unexpected children, partners, publicists, and pets.  Many of the spouses are not artist but bring  explosive grudges, attitudes, and an omnidirectional aim.

Remember, you are invited to rejoin this blog…next Saturday.

 

Do you travel without a map just to experience and cogitate your own understanding?  A fellow traveler or a talking satellite spirit often helps mediate our travel anxieties.  Artistic types often go where they don’t think they need an aiding angel and so they are arriving at this reunion of the enfant terribles directed mostly by some inner itch.  They feel no need for guidance or rules, but arrive nonetheless.  This motivation is better understood by the fluttering trajectory of a corn leaf in the dry autumnal wind or the migration myths of wooly bear caterpillars.

We promised you some helpers while attending the events in this blog.  They are comfortable around all the bombs, even yours.  Also, some artistic types will be dragging some rusty old ball-and-chains.  As ball-and-chains can encumber please be attentive.  If you brought your own, and we presume you might always need them close, you are responsible.

Your docent guides, the jitterbugging anarchists you conjured in post #1 are He and She.  You should refer to them as He and She and nothing more.  This is because this reunion was hastily organized and only one rule was firmly agreed upon: no proper names.  No proper names are to be used at the reunion or the museum…for anyone. This rule has one exception, Yorick, a medieval jester’s skeleton who you will meet next week.

It does seem peculiar at an event celebrating the most emphatic practitioners of the Arts, that the only rule is…no names are used.  But there are reasons; memory has faded for many of the attendees and with it name recognition, some artists prefer a brand-name, some have not accomplished the construction of their personae (to mask the character that requires the bomb), and vanity by some is eclipsed by heated and brutish jealousy in others.  Among the enmassed non-conformity and with so many lit fuses and heated egos, name misuse could produce conditions far more serious than grand artistic gestures.  Thus the “no proper names” rule, the only rule for anarchists.

Having said that, wonderful relationships are as common here as centaurs and unicorns.  A lot more centaurs and unicorns materialize here than in our mundane world and, like you and the other folks here, they are sorting out reality and fantasy among a host of bombs and bomb-holders.  It is probably easier on them here as myths are readily accepted.

He and She, caring and well-trained, will be putting you in front of what you may need to sort out…next Saturday…The Jester of Aristocrats