October 13, 2014

The gift economy exists in the on-line coding community where people give eachother help with coding at no charge. this works very successfully with no debts.

 

Now the other thing is the AVATAR Congressman. What I am thinking is that there could be a kind of virtual congressman with speech coming from a plurality of voices. 

 

Sept. 7, 2014

Well, I am thinking of my talk at Beyond Baroque, comments so far have been around making sure I generalize the talk rather than make it my own own personal  rant. That makes a lot of sense, and I have to watch out for that.

 

I am exploring more about third party politics. The Constitution Party is first then the Greens and then the Libertarians.

I think third parties are growing and court cases are generally going in their favor per Ballot Access News.

 

Grover Norquist supports Burning Man. That's kind of interesting. Otherwise have nothing in common with the man. 

 

Interesting article my sister sent link to by Mira Sucharov: "Which side of the Israel-Palestine conflict are you on? A dictionary playbook." Goes in to how analytical thinking can lead to moral absolutes which are dysfunctional and lead to justification of violence rather than negotiation. That's my point - although even farther i.e. with cultural exhange to enhance understanding.

 

 

 

Aug. 18, 2014

Ginzberg from Howl:

 

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 

 

- So he may have been talking about drugs here but he is also creating a pun with the word "fix" and I am taking the second meaning. An angry fix to society.

 

and: 

 

"A Materialistic consciousness is attempting to preserve itself from Dissolution by restriction & persecution of Experience of the Transcendental. One day perhaps the Earth will be dominated by the illusion of Separate consciousness, the Bureaucrats having triumphed in seizing control of all roads of communication with the Divine, & restricting traffic. But Sleep & Death cannot evade the Great Dream of Being, and the victory of the Bureaucrats of Illusion is only an Illusion of their separate world of consciousness." - Allen Ginsberg, quoted in the introduction to the Yage letters by Oliver Harris

 

and Freud: "wherever i go the poet has come before me."

 

I am interested in changing the dialogue, 

 

I think there could be Green-AMI_CI alliance like a concert in the garden.

 and drummers poundng in front of city hall calling for more support for the arts and choirs of singers where there are riots and violence.

 

 

Then the story of that woman held with a knife at her neck - who began to sing and and the assailant dropped his knife and listened.

That is a metaphor. That is the secret weapon of art.

 

The pen is mightier than the sword is not a hollow maxim but a powerful truth.

 

Aug. 14, 2014

So the problem with pop entertainment is that there are many things valuable outside the pop aesthetic and there tends to be this hyperdarwinized situation for developing artists. I am always looking for levers and keys to change that as it is the source of too much misery.  There is constantly this feeling of having the foundations knocked out from under one.  Pema Chodrun describes groundlessnes, and detachment and yet when groundlessness is a matter of wondering about food and shelter, I think one must look at a flawed society. 

 

 I'm trying to catch this ephemeral thought: political campaigns are all about who owns the aesthetic vision for the future. But how about if you frame the creation of the aesthetic vision as the primary issue and the power struggle as a largely secondary and meaningless by product. For example, If two movies comes out at the same time, you can go to either one. How it turns out, which one gains a bigger box office, in common parlance, is critical to the backers, but not critical in the making of the thing and over time perhaps you can see both. With an emphasis and political will focused on the making of the thing, the struggle is turned upside down.  so the goal is to put the aesthetic vision first and as something that is constantly evolving and then see what happens. 

 

The problem is always centralized power.  The Greens grok this well but seem to largely fail at making change. How can we change that? 

 

 

 

Aug. 13, 2014

I think an agenda would be to clarify party values and  platform statements.

 

Aug. 11, 2014

People don't have time. Ok. I get that. But people do have time to do what they are inspired to do. That's what this is about and what senselabs is saying. The core group may change (again Senselabs) but the spirit remains. 

 

Bob says I have to think about finding models showing how this is already happening. This would help bring it back from the edge and easy dismissal. That's a good point and I have to think about that.

I think the model is the street of OWS. He also mentions publicity.  This feels overwhelming I am not sure how to keep this manageable.  But then it is not really supposed to be. That implies direct control and this is more about floating a meme. 

 

Bob also mentioned Burning Man. I have to learn more about the social structures there. 

 

Yet I am also breaking new ground: this is placing art directly in to politics, as a meaningful political force to be reckoned with and in the existing political arena.

 

We are the 10%.  

 

It goes without saying that the AMI_CI party is very concerned about preserving cultural heritage in the mid-east as elsewhere. 

 

This is all a very old and very large gorilla in the living room that has been ignored for ages. 

 

 

Aug 10, 2014

I have got to figure out how to create a database. That will be important in order to develop the constituency.

 

Something I discovered long ago* was that though I supported Peace and Freedom/Socialists I did not self-identify as a worker. Rather I identified as an artist. This distinction is negligible in many ways. Certainly I am supportive of most if not all of their values, except in the way art is expressed, produced and applied, and particularly in a political landscape. Would I draw socialist art in praise of the worker? Even allowing for the fact that there would probably be the freedom to go beyond bland government art in the style of the Soviet era factory or farm worker, if a P & F utopia prevailed. I had a more radical conception. This conception is that I am a critic or fan of all and none. I am pointing at a certain radical independence of thought here that I believe all artists hold dear. And politically I am very interested in what outcomes there may be with art (in all forms, the term is just to abbreviate listing the hundreds of potential art forms) as a poltical tool and means to divert energy in the face of the crises that is the ground of our human condition.  

 

*In college actually, when I was visited by a lovely and intelligent woman who came to my door and tried to get me to register socialist. In retrospect I think she was well ahead of me in terms of political awareness, but I maintain that this particular point was correct on my part.

 

Aug. 9, 2014

There's this mysterious thought that came to me while visiting a local mission church and staring at a an old Mexican painting of St. Aloysius placed fifteen feet up on the wall. (I am not religious, spiritual perhaps): 'You have come in to this world with a specific burden. And you will accomplish specific things because of this burden. Your being, your form, your viewpoint changes qualities in the environment that impact other people in unique ways as a result of these burdens. The experiences you suffer lead to unique expressions of your consciousness that leave an imprint in the environment. Your experience enables, enobles, entitles and gives you the authority to convey these thoughts to others with empathy and understanding as you have gone through these things yourself. There's a present moment and an eternal impact of your energy in so much as all things interplay.'

 

I walked out of that church with my eyes still trained fifteen feet above horizontal. This lasted some time till self-consciousness got the better of me.

It is things like this that covince me of other dimensions for consciousness - both their reality and importance. I don't believe these things are a part of other political parties. The fact is, there is no Department of Ontology I can go to in academia or government to address these issues that are very real to me and I think many others.

 

 Another thought, more grounded: I should contact Adbusters at some point.

 

Aug. 8, 2014

I feel so beaten.  Still reading Graeber's book, He's got a lot of good things to say, but I question his own privilege. All this doubt, but perhaps I am right. Direct action is not always so successful, nor is acting within the current two party system. This will take a long time.  I sound like the rest.

 

What ever happened to that law suit to ensure third party participation in national presidential debates?

 

Part of my beef with the hyper-technologicalization of society: I go to a bathroom at a hotel to brush my teeth. I put the toothbrush under the faucet and it won't work. I need to put my hand under it in a way the toothbrush doesn't get wet because apparently the sensors only read heat.

 

A memory comes back of when I went to visit Microsoft for a job interview. I was told that the elevators are being designed to do face recognition so that when you enter the elevator it takes you to the floor that you usually go to.  It's just not necessary and that is just one extreme case. The schizophrenisization lies, deeper. I did not fit in there. I was, as they say, cutting the foot to fit the shoe.

 

Pharma companies want chronic illness. I have heard a spokesman say as much. This needs to be looked in to.  I feel fear as I write this. Quite Orwellian as saint Snowden pointed out.

 

AUG. 2, 2014

What are my feelings about people like Katy Perry, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Lady Gaga? Would I want them to be involved? By so doing would I be denying the very reality of the economic disparity in which they are situated and which they tacitly condone? Aren't they just superb actors, all down with the bros' but in reality far, far removed from the reality of the many?  I'd like feedback on that. I respect them as artists but am conflicted when so many others, equally or more talented suffer terribly.  Still, I would not deny them welcome at the door of the party if they knocked. Sinead O'Connor. She's different. I believe reading she once gave a house away to the red cross. I'd like to see her become Emporess of the AMI_CI party. At least for a few days.  Her blessed rage, her blessed rage, her blessed rage...

 

July 26, 2014

The question becomes can we get the numbers

Can we find people who are both artists and politicians?

 

So I think we might be able to get the numbers with Facebook and Twitter, but I don't like these corporate modes of communication.  Perhaps there are other mean of exploiting the capabilities of the net, or lower means. Talking for instance, meeting people face to face, holding meetings.

 

May 28, 2014

This is as much about my disillusionment with the Green Party as it is well, my strong disagreement,with the Republicans and my disenchantment with the Dems who supported the Iraq war and wire tapping and drone strikes and government secrecy (I am talking about party values here and not individuals, to be clear). Dominant parties, the Dems and Repubs. don't share my values, but nor do the Greens.

 

And so it may be my contrarian nature to look for opposites

 

So I was in the Green party for about a year and half on the Green Party county council and I kept making suggestions and they were constantly shot down and dismissed. For example, I was very much interested in the possibilities of direct democracy and creating venues where people could express their interests for the direction of the community via computer ports. So I suggested we take the money that’s being donated and create kiosks and put them on street corners in the city. And they have very nice ones these days. And I thought of huge electronic note boards where people could leave messages and there could be layers and layers of electronic sticky notes on a long monitor protected from the weather. Well these ideas were shot down.

 

And so they took the money they received, the 500 or so a month and they put it in to printing and mailing a newsletter- this at a time when they could have and did send things by e-mail- but they said that some people didn’t have computers. But I thought with a little effort, maybe they could have asked the people who did not have computers to ask their friends or let that become a way for more community and people interacting, but that just didn’thappen.

 

And I suggested cheaper things like buying used bicycles and painting them green-you know they had these white bicycles that anyone could use and drop off anywhere in Amsterdam and they said it was some liability issue- what if an old person rode one and got hurt and I said what about tricylcles whick are more stable and they said they couldn’t afford it and found other ways to shoot that idea down. Well now they have that in New York but people pay an arm and a leg to have access to a bike and that is not the kind of egalitarian ideal I have in mind.

 

And they said what I had in mind were physical things - well yes- but they said the party was more to promote the values of the party, which didn't involve this kind of purchasing of things. I thought what I was suggesting was doing something in a real and tangible and direct way, so that at the end of the day people could say there was a genuine improvement in their lives- and this was an actualization of those values with the cash that was donated. A lot of "Yes but".

 

So again I tried to adapt and I suggested using the internet to have speakers who had successfully won higher posts in government as Green officials to give talks. And there was this really lovely woman from New Mexico who was espousing restorative justice and I wanted a whole community program on that to get the word out and I was not given money to buy the 25  dollar camera that they used in those days before most computers had cameras. And I asked for help with technical matters to find which places in the library had ethernet cables and what the requirements were before Skype existed and nobody offered me the time to help figure this stuff out. Later I understand they did have a program on restorative justice. 

 

So these were people I thought were my friends and colleagues and peers and they were repressing my every action. The leaders of the group were polite but I believe often subtely dismissive of an economically limited/challenged/oppressed African American woman with an original quality to her, a kindred spirit in may ways, and I found myself advocating for some of the interesting things she had to say. 

 

Then another thing bugged me. I saw how the dominant parties were spending millions and millions on conventions and advertsing campaigns and I kept feeling that that money could be better spent.  But with the Greens a lot of effort and a lot of hours were spent debating the by-laws of the governing body, like week after week of arguing minutae and I brought that up, like:  "Why are we wasting so much time on this and not directly helping out our constituency?"  Well, that just became further discussion and debate - the rhetorical ledge -  and it wound up that they voted to balance institutional needs with constituent needs and I wasn’t happy with that because I thought it should be like 100 percent constituent needs.

 

And again, at the end of the day nothing got accomplished. There was no tangible or material advancement and the verbal and theoretical things got so watered down that they too had no meaning. And I got very disillusioned and quit.

 

And sure enough when I quit one of the party members said: "You kept coming up with these great ideas and I am so sorry you left and I want to thank you for trying." And I really liked this guy, but I kept thinking, well where the F was he when these things were coming up? Why wasn’t he backing me and helping me and it was just gone, gone, gone.  But here I am now, starting a party that better represents my reality. 

 

And I created a lot of art work for the Greens- anti-Bush stuff and posters about non-violence and I started to notice how I was also spending time on this art stuff that was focused on political issues (while at the same time I was always drawing the other members of the committee during the meetings because I am fascinated by people faces and l like drawing them.

 

And I kept feeling I was a different breed. 

 

So all along there has been this issue of severe economic oppression as an artist trying to get access to materials to make my work from expensive art supplies to expensive film supplies to expensive video equipment to now expensive labor and printing costs. And seeing so many of my exquisite friends sufffering terribly. And this has been going on decade after decade after decade. 

 

Ave AMI_CI  - Jai AMI_CI - Crevor Coer AMI_CI