a recent correspondence

by matthewgagnonblair

#L

I don’t think I ever sent this to you…

I was just cleaning up my desktop -
had almost plumb forgot that I wrote
it at all…

It’s kind of a mess

Could you do something with it?

Chop it up?
Add-on to it?
(Sub)tract?

perhaps it would be nice thing for the magazine -
a collaborative piece of writing
in a collaborative construct

let me know

M\
———-
#M

I like this, I’ll look at this. And send you eventually, what I wrote sometime back.
I’ll try to remember to do this tonight. I want to show you Avant-Garde manifestos.
Manifestos are sort of played-out these days but the ones from back when are awesome. And besides, there was a lot of stuff like this, where a re-analyzation of art took place in essay/article/manifesto style like this.
As per the newsprint. I’ve been thinking of a provocative newsprint.
Something quite out of the ordinary, something that will stick out without a doubt.
Something perhaps calling for sabotage and sedition, the murder of artists,
Civil War even. But like I said, coding several parts that maybe give insurgent ideas.
Images like the kuffeyeh nudes of ski mask with a gun.
I’ve been thinking, can we incite sedition through art and side-step the constitution?
Can we add an ultimatum, an alternative element to enhance the discourse?
Can we demean socialists with neoliberals, and call them conservatives, orthodox, fundamentalists? Can we theory-fuck like gender-fuck?
I’m particularly thinking these days about parody to the point of insanity, 
something I picked up through Voina. I think, more than anything right now,
we need to go after the American psyche, challenge common notions,
disrupt those emotions with irrational clear-headedness, insane poignancy.
To provoke the reader. To capture the underbelly of the movement,
the psycho-sexual aspects of power, the pornography of power.
The way we talk about the streets, the tyranny of the automobile apparatus.
Tactical Aesthetics. What does this imply?
I also watched Gandhi again and I could watch it over and over.
A very good film that pretty much outlines his autobiography, which I really need to read. I like that Gandhi thought long term and was stubborn enough to endure his own conscience. His methods are profound, to day the least, and worth studying.
France is smaller than Texas, Greece is smaller than North Carolina.
What we need to think about is Russia, India, China, big countries like America.
Why did India gain independence but then fall into civil war and split in half in 1947?
These are questions worth accounting for.
Throw a man off the train and he might change the world’s heart forever:
L
————
#L,Yes, parody to the point of insanity.

You speak of the psycho-pornographia of power,
why we even talk about the open streets,
the unmanned barricade or the collapsed towers,
the strategies of the desperate, the tyranny of
the automobile apparatus,
the American psyche and it’s irrational clear-
headedness, it’s never ending thirst for blood.

These things that you speak of: sabotage and
sedition, the murder of artists, civil war even -
of course we support all of these things.  We do not support
the future.  We support the beginning of the end of the endless
present.  We support new beginnings by any means.  This is
Samizdat speaking to those who are joining us in the End of Days.
It is this beginning of the end we are celebrating.
the New before the fall of York

You say France is smaller than Texas, Greece is the size of Alabama,
etc.

You say what we need to be thinking about are Russia, India, China,
big countries like America.

You say throw a man off a train and he might change the world’s
heart forever.

I want to throw you off of a train.

I’ve been looking at pictures of Native American
masks and costumery, thinking of what this
means: the masking of the original inhabitants
of America and their subsequent (mostly) vanishing
- Edward Curtis, Hidden Faces – the vanishing line is
the present – the masking and unmasking of the present spectacular
state of affairs of the State

I am thinking about contamination and assassinations as by-products
of revolution – the stagnancy of the State seems the least of our
problems.  And justly, Obama legalizes eating horse meat almost hours
before another indefinite detention bill passes through Congress.

If this is the current form of what passes for consensus, then I can say
I am no longer interested in seeking consensus.

The events of 2011 have already been enough to show a lot of us a thing
or two about how things really are these days – not to even speak of what we’re
up against.  The point is we are duly fucked and duly freed at the same time to
finally have our way with the world – the schizo-sexual landscape is at long last
folding onto itself on front of our very eyes.  This is not to be an alarmist but we
are clearly barreling head-on into a future which howsoever we prepare ourselves,
will take on the most unlikely of appearances.

It is important to learn from your enemy.  I am starting to believe Debord even if
his eyes are filled with catastrophe.  And Debord, apparently, is thinking of Poe
as much as anyone else:

     It appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble, for the very reason
which should cause it to be regarded as easy of solution – I mean for the outré
character of it’s features… to investigations such as we are now pursuing, it
should not be so much asked ‘what has occurred,’ as ‘what has occured that
has never occurred before’.

Edgar Allen Poe
The Murders on the Rue Morgue

sxvx sxmxzdxt

yours in excess,

#M