Rt.66 – Anachronistic Anarchist by Herb Eaton

#57…Idle thoughts Illinois and Ballerinas…

Published on March 4, 2017February 28, 2017 by herbeaton

Our balletic prairie, The State of Illinois. Illinois, a graceful ballerina, balances; just look at the map. We are surrounded by a bunch of boxy, less lusciously graceful states, in the great fly-over land, the American midwest.

Illinois, as a ballerina, has a hefty derriere; bounded by, and fondled by, the Father of Waters (maybe a bit inappropriate). Illinois is somewhat flat-chested in outline and topography, but that aids the corn growing, which maintains many derriere’s.

Illinois has a most unfortunate abbreviation…Ill, nobody wants to be in “illness”. Ill is the correct description of its’ unbalanced budget and politics, but not Illinoisans. And while noise is the description of our wind in winter, traffic in the Windy City, and garbled logic from our capitol, we actually don’t pronounce the “s” at the end of Illinois. We prefer a more subtle uninflected, even artistic, spoken language (except for Chicago, where a lot of the people live),

The sound of “Illinois” is rather feminine and, considering the amount of feeding it does for the rest of the world, rather appropriate. It is also births the Mother Road, old Rt. 66, which crosses the prairie in a smooth dancer’s diagonal thrust.

High above our often stormy expanse of sky are many jet contrails, temporarily marking travelers from coastal metropolis to coastal metropolis. With no need of maps or electronic guiding voices few know what is below. Those who might wonder often confuse Illinois with Indiana, Iowa, Idaho, Ohio, Omaha, Oklahoma, Oahu, Ottawa, Ottumwa, and Ionia (which isn’t even in North America), but the sounds are similar.

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The vasty prairie of Illinois is where the reunion of the emotive anarchists takes place. Our “rivers gently flowing” have watered a number of artists, including ponderers and dancers of svelte, and even passionate, dimensions.

#57…Idle thoughts Illinois and Ballerinas…

Published on March 4, 2017March 3, 2017 by herbeaton

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#45…comic bubbles…

Published on December 10, 2016December 7, 2016 by herbeaton

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We have just had a mixed media poetry performance ( or endless vitriolic political rant with celebratory cliches ), here in the Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture. The poet just wanted to add some colorful beauty to surround and lift the words. Apparently not so elevated as to be pushed into awe, just some run-of-the-mill beauty. But the bubbles were destroyed; there was little hope, they wouldn’t quite stay in the air, sorta just crashed, unnumbered.

After the first thousand attempts, there should have been an outpouring of communal joy. The happiness of seeing the not-so-good get smashed, and then the succeeding attempts; watching a human ( poetic to be sure ) enclose words that resonate, sing and harmonize, and pulsate enlivening other words. That shoulda been a party, it would unite. It seems like a happy haptic public poetic sequence, but we missed it. There should have been a holiday marking the thousandth failure. But it is so long ago and didn’t seem then like a notable event, and now no ceremony is likely.

Yorick, who ponders both the comic and the tragic, would be happy to help the poet. He knows that first there is pain (more than a smashed finger), sometimes then, clawing; that inability to reach beauty, not to mention Awe ( the overwhelming). But anyhow, there is pain, then the reality, something has to be done, then the hope that something may improve the originating pain, then the effort (scribbling), money (if lucky ), then stuff, the manipulation, arriving at – the imperfections. Followed by maybe enclosing all in modern media bubbles, for safe keeping.

Yorick, being born of “olde”, doesn’t quite get the isolation, no matter the utility.

The bubble may be the modernist’s most significant enterprise. That ability to enclose things, quotes, economic plans, political slogans; separating deeds and words. Bubbles, bubbles make people happy, don’t they? But bubbles, real bubbles, happy bubbles don’t need utility: they just are – floating away in the breeze.

Some bubbles don’t even have air, they are built, big expletive markers helping the poetic anarchist emote.

They replace having a touchable community in completing the poets deeds.

Next Saturday we begin to celebrate something easier, the Season.

#43…conjuring a thicker stew…

Published on November 26, 2016November 25, 2016 by herbeaton

Ruminating rather than conjuring, searching for an opportune moment to bring forth well-kept emotions, the anarchists have spread out in the reunion. Tables, the folding kind, have been set up in order to facilitate the collections, garnered from the dropped-off miscellany, presumably to make found-object art.

Some of the mostly older emotive types (post-dead and before the days of “found-object art”) have pulled up chairs and apparently expecting a Thanksgiving feast.

As you might presume, anarchists of bygone times have a tendency of being “old” (post-living) and beyond the daily need for food. But, as they are old, the topic of comforting food is constantly on their mind. And with it a need to demand – thicker stews. Apparently the ghostly and skeletal varieties have some hope of the stew adhering and regenerating life – if it were less watery. Thicker stew also has a class character, the higher the class the thicker the stew; and as many of the ancient artistics came from the upper crust, a thicker stew seems a rightful demand.

However, we have not completed a suitable commissary, and so, as much as this early winter might provoke the taste for thick stew; we have none to offer. And we have no servers, except for some of the younger (pre-dead) artists; many on-leave from restaurant jobs (so as to be part of the Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture) and so they have serving skills. But probably they are “serving” for a moment, a socially acceptable moment, an opening, to push their emerging art, (as original as a fart from a shared pot of stew), into the milieu.

Social class of course is the determining factor of how one eats, more often than what one eats.

So if the post-dead anarchists want comfort food; conjuring superior thick contents in a soup bowl (empty to our eyes) – it works.

Thankfully conjured, by the condescension of being served…by their lessers.

Join us next Saturday to consider what is worth considering and deception.

#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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