romantic/absurd – Anachronistic Anarchist by Herb Eaton

#42…considering “back in the day…”…

Published on November 19, 2016November 19, 2016 by herbeaton

Frost has sharped the chord of these days at the end of the middle season, stacked hierarchal: frost, some warmth, chilled darkness. The sun is now low, mellow, dropping over the horizon with the settling purple mist; putting the tent and crib in a minor key. Back in the day circus-bands filled our tent, now being reused for our reunion. Outdoors the winds have returned and so we are seeking to use this space more fully, even if the audience is largely a chilled mural painted warm.

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We are trying to take notes, hand-writen on 3×5 cards, in order to record the dialogue here at the reunion. Our notes (meant for dialogue in short plays to be produced during this reunion) include a significant number of expressions beginning with, “Back in the day…” to which is added some proof-of-knowing utterance. “Back-in-the-day”… plus the ideal life as it should have been (or worse than it ever was). Enfant terribles and anarchists are apt to gesture widely about some unendurable disgrace “Back-In-The-Day!…”; remembering why they have those emotion bombs. Emotive’s convoluting sentences, history, logic structures, and interchanging superstitions, dramatized into whatever that “day” was. This seems like stuff for theater!

From the out-set (back in the day) we have been trying for a feeling of bon homme gentility, so that all can benefit while sharing this grand theater. , “back in the day…” expressions have introduced script ideas by generic geniuses from both sides of the grave, many concerning social more than theatrical roles.

Some,”Back in the day…”, expressors emanate expressions so droll as to embrace condescending sympathies. Some point a terrible infant’s attitude toward hierarchies and embrace the caustic use of words and postures.

As it is, “back in the day ” theatricals will be here this winter. Now, posturing for character parts in the unwritten theatricals, anarchists try (to a degree) to be nonchalant and disinterested (cool).

To whit, attempting to influence discreetly; so as not to be stuck in a previously discarded drama from, “Back in the day…”

Next week we enjoy some thick stew…join us.

#41….considering a big rock rising…

Published on November 12, 2016November 9, 2016 by herbeaton

It is just a big rock, a really big rock, far away. Travelers have returned reporting that it is a bit shy of gravity (and has a dark side), its’ damaged by millions of insults (serendipitous smaller rocks wheeling in from space). It gets blamed for the behavior of were-wolves and other fugitive ideas, and ever repeating tides. Lovely just now, though just a big big rock, showing the attractive side. The romantic, the “dancing on moonlight” side.

100_0473-1 — Moonbeams and Fireflys Come To Town oil Herb Eaton

Most likely you, the digital reader, prefers time to be marked by a blinking multi-colored electronic device, you might consider the round clock face as ancient as an hour-glass. Here, we have found the moon, waxing, waning, gone and overwhelmingly brilliant, to be a chronological fit. This is a very un-midwestern idea, we like to be on-time in the digital clock sense.

But turbulence among the bigger and lesser enfant terribles attendees is such that gravitational waves, seismic waves, or the winds now arriving from the arctic; seem to emanate astronomically, in order to attest to the emotive’s fated importance. Certainly the stars and the moon would cease their influence if providence hadn’t decreed: that the attendees at our reunion of anarchists – must be – the heaven’s goal.

Could it be a celestial confluence that found this place on the prairie, so that the anachronistic could coexist with the temporal? We are close to the native homes of the singing poet of Illinois and the guy who named our practical capitol the “hog-butcher of the world”. And, nightly the moon still shines useful light into the cemetery on the nearby Spoon River. All are present, just over the rise from the Mother Road.

dcs_1694 — She Hangs The Moon oil H Eaton

And, to light this dance of the romantic absurd; up in the dome of the tent of the incomprehensible, She ( our docent ) has hung the moon, a bit of romance in our absurdity.

A decorative reminder that present times may be out-of-joint, but as long as the big rock keeps rising there will be anarchists and enfant terribles, and possibly a few artists.

And, as long as the sun keeps rising liberty will be dancing in the thickets..

Next Saturday, we shall consider “back-in-the-day”…join us.

#40…considering cannon-fodder and pundits….

Published on November 5, 2016November 2, 2016 by herbeaton

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Cannonfodder, alas, young men… punditfodder.

Fodder (horse food of the coarse variety) various leaves and stems some grains and grasses, digested. It’s the fuel to propel a horse ( and presumably an anarchistic unicorn). Its’ the sole ingredient of horse-puky, depositing nutrients back in the soil, and, an attractive home for flies and the attention of dung beetles.

Pundits, emotional fodder feeders, have been giddy servers of hysteria. The vulgar and the purists here at the tent have gobbled it up: diatribes to return the anarchistic emotives a greatness here at the reunion of enfant terribles. We thought that the anarchical enfant terribles would remain expressive individuals, unaffected by, and even resisting, nativists groupings. But deposits of the pundit’s fodder provide nutrients for young men and giddiness for old-school women, toady breeders for the bullys, remnants of the golden-age of clans, mother trolls of the shadow-world.

Once again the punditic heralds bluster calls for others to risk their valiantry (and lives and money) on the fields honor is unified by an incessant “drumming”. Rim-shot/rim-shot/rim-shot/rim-shot—those driving snaps on the edge! There, wap! wap! wap! the pundits coarse syntax obliterates personal melody and destroys by distraction any moving harmony. The reunion of anarchists promises individual artistics doing their own thinking, but alas, the narrow clan is more tempting in its’ call to belligerence and irresponsibility, and slow-moving coup d’tat.

If today we view military as missiles, microbes, drones, and hackers we still need the pundit’s fuel to commend our valiantry to actions (with costs no higher than a violent video game?).

Since art lost its’ nativity emotion (when artists freed artists), that nativist-will seems to return when the driving-drumming-staccato blares ever louder; obliterating artists in favor of emotives and dull forces, and pundits.

Yorick mocks the pundits speaking for the dead. Nonetheless marching re-commences among pundit-fodder, awaiting a bit of fame or infamy.

Up to the vultures, then gravity arcs spent shadows,

…with lots and lots and lots of blood on their boots.

Join us next Saturday…for a big rock rising.

#39…considering the end of a season…

Published on October 29, 2016October 23, 2016 by herbeaton

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Outside of the tent we are running out of color, at least the dramatically named ones. We are moving into the drawing, structural season. The surface is grids, roads and the limits of property. Grids, the gift of the ancients, are favored structures by most artists and farmers (satellite x and y’s coordinate their behemoths). All is moving toward tumbled carved blacks, dirty and dusty whites rubbed and overlaid, linear leggy weedy gray gestures; some dull, some sharp.

Our tent, close to the path of America’s Mother Road, is holding a gathering of venerable artistics. The gathering of artistic enfant terribles and the subsequent museum, is an new idea for the prairie and a type of hope for the artistics. Some may appear a bit weird or disconcerting, like our tent out on the cornland. But the prairie is not a strange or weird land, even stripped of its’ green, even with the behemoths (the combine harvesters) devouring endless acres of grain. This place is visually sensible, a continuity with subtle ornamentation; old and new grain elevators developed and discarded due to technical (financial) reasons, various outbuildings and houses, and winds that blow in and blow out. Things change.

Did you ever hear that 1920’s song, “How yeh goin’ to keep ’em down on the farm, once the’ve seen Paree?”

Bring in some art? Some dancing girls? Some champagne instead of beer? Paint the wind turbines rouge, add some blinking lights, reopen Rt.66?

Well, maybe, fewer people are now attached to harvesting (so no one in the houses), so Autumn Festivals are sponsored on social media to retrieve those who went to “Paree”, or even Peoria. Some steal stalks or ears for decoration (they are of paltry singular value but stealing less in town could get one shot). However the golden ears bring up primal agrarian memories.

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A few visitors may show up at the Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture for some color, but, than again, ” How yeh gonna get um ta pay for art, once the’ve seen for free?”

Getting corn and art for free is one thing, what about power…next Saturday.

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