Showing posts with label Jake's Word. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jake's Word. Show all posts

Thursday, April 12, 2018

A REFLECTION ON JAKE'S ROOMS

Note:  Those who have followed my work at all know that I am a great fan of the Alabama artist Jake Berry.  In my seminal work Wasichu: The Killing Spirit, I named the lead male Jake partially in tribute to Jake Berry.  He is a man for all seasons in the world of art and his latest works add immeasurably to his legacy.  What follows is a reflection as well as a review of ROOMS IN WHICH WE EXISTED by Jake Berry and Peter Ganick.  Readers are encouraged to look it up online and purchase a copy.  While art should be free, artists need to survive. 

ROOMS IN WHICH WE EXISTED
By Jake Berry and Peter Ganick
Argotist Books

A REFLECTION BY JACK RANDOM

To believe that abstract drawings can speak in words is a form of madness that goes to the heart of artistic expression.  Of course drawings speak.  Of course there are words to be heard.  It requires a willingness to listen and interpret and a defiance of normative values that disallow such a process. 

Jake Berry is uniquely qualified to the task of interpreting abstract images.  He creates in both forms – verbal and visual.  In fact, he creates in all sensual forms.  If it were possible to create in other forms – smell and taste and touch and forms beyond the senses – he would do that as well. 

From the chaotic dream imagery of scribbled lines over lines he finds mystery and pulls at themes that touch the soul.  The artist struggles to express essential truths.  Sounds emerge from the cacophony.  Images find meaning.  Madness finds a home in the quietude of daily life.  Everything has meaning and everything lies.  Everything changes from form to form, from substance to substance, and finds itself reborn. 

A strip of light suddenly rips across the eye, revealing far too much of who we are in what we see.  The brazen light of twisted figures we’d rather not welcome into our field of play.  We drown in the sea of infinite change.  We have always drowned.  We are drowning still and falling through time as if we had weight and exist in the finitude of space. 

Dead limbs rise toward … the gloaming…

Forces greater than our imaginations can behold propel us forward, tearing us apart before allowing us to be whole and rest once again.  We dream.  The beauty pulls at our senses.  We stumble and fall without resistance.  The rapture awaits.  We seek pleasure in the simplest notions. 

Hear the music and see the order in delightful colors.  Let it beckon us into the raging winds of fire and fury.  There can be no relief.  Memories exist in layers and layers over the symphony of thought and feeling, pain and sorrow, joy and forgiving. 

Drink long and deep.  The geography is bleeding. 

The unending search for order and harmony.  The chorus is missing.  The dream emerges and plants itself just beyond our world of structure.  A ballerina descends a winding staircase, nude and unashamed.  The joy she brings is beyond word and imagery.  The sorrow must follow.  It is the way.  Like life follows death.

The promise of a life to come. 

We know by raw intuition it can never make sense.  It can only offer a vision to ease our walk along the path.  It is the way. 

The heart has a manner of cognition the mind can never anticipate. 

The explosion of the senses is inevitable.  We cannot endure.  There are far too much and too many stimuli.  We cannot assimilate.  We sleep.  We dream and often we wish never to awaken.  But we do awake and endure for the beauty and the wonder pull us to consciousness. 

coffee is all that matters…

We have secrets.  Secret lives and secret histories.  Buried children and stolen dreams.  We own nothing and claim everything.  We speak loudly to protect the silence.  We are lost once again in the implosion of stimuli. 

There is order here.  There is an algorithm that describes it precisely.  If we are to find our way home it is the key.  But do we want to go home?  Or do we want to fly in random order like a murder of crows? 

Are we done with reckless supposition? 

No.  We are never done.  Not while we still breathe the shifting winds and curse the closing darkness.  Let’s get drunk and do it again! 

Sleep has become a construction from which the debris of such violence hangs in a tattering wind.  Who would ever want to sleep again? 

We awaken and find comfort in the arms of a lover, in the smile of a child, in the warmth of a rising sun.  Sing me a song, old woman.  Make me alive again. 

There is something greater than ourselves.  There is a reason to rise and reach and journey to the sea.  There is hope.  There is love.  There is hardship.  There is trouble.  There is always trouble.  Death shadows behind the rocks and screeching harlots of horror.  Can we escape?  No but we can survive.  Drink the water.  We have almost reached our destiny.  There is hope. 

Decipher it and lose all traces of destiny. 

We must suffer and we must endure. 

Why are there barricades in the desert where there is nothing to protect? 

It goes beyond the reach of my madness.  And yet I have been here before.  I have drunk from the well.  I have tasted the seed.  I have reached for promises that were never there.  I will reach again if I am able.  This much I know. 

a horse designed by Dali… 

We are humans.  We strive to make sense of it all.  It is our nature.  We take scattered events in the vacuum of time and create patterns.  And from those patterns we create history and logic and structure.  In the end it all makes sense. 

But what is rational is convex and playful. 

The child is born in writhing pain that becomes penultimate joy.  The propagation of life is a tragic comedy.  The dissolution of life is a comic tragedy.  Time unfolds to push and pull at our cords.  The books are empty, devoid of wisdom, and the worms inhabit our bloodlines.  Pour me a drink and buy me some time. 

You will know that compassion has found your veins. 

We approach the answer though the question evades.  It is there in the darkness.  It is there in chorus of cicada.  It is there beyond the bushes where the wild things lie. 

Where the crows take them to see and be seen. 

There is wisdom there but it has no words, no sight nor sound.  There is truth but it has no name.  If you see the Buddha kill him for she is not the Buddha. 

But it was nothing a good fire couldn’t fix. 

I don’t know what this is but this is important.  It is the birth of religion.  It is the ancient and singular truth.  It is the Eye and the Bee and the Know and the Say.  It is the all that is nothing.  It is. 

With every bright new species religion is born and the naïve eye explodes against itself. 

We are rising and we have risen.  We are falling and we have crashed into the depths of a dark an unknown sea.  We have seen all there is to see and we have learned to crave more.  It is the way. 

The archaeologists will never understand the smell of gunpowder year after year and the deep carnality of an uncertain god. 

The play’s the thing and only the children understand.  We grow old and we lose our sense of play.  We mold our worries and fears onto objects as if to give them meaning.  The only meaning they have is the meaning we give to them.  God bless the children.  Never sacrifice your youth. 

Let him sleep.  Leave the poison by his bed.  It is no longer necessary. 

Jake Berry and Peter Ganick have given us an opus, the death and birth of a new religion as old as the barren sea.  This is the ultimate message of a master who has visited many dreams and dove into infinite mysteries with the will to be lost.  I don’t know about Peter but as for Jake:  It is a wonder and a miracle that he has survived these great adventures to the deepest depths of knowledge and mystery to climb out of the void and bestow upon us, his readers and consumers, the meaning and the message. 

This is yet another work of great genius.  May he live forever. 

Jack Random – Author of the Chess Series.  

Thursday, June 29, 2017

CLUELESS DEMOCRATS: Rotten Apples & Rusty Nails

--> A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE WITH A COMMENT BY JAKE BERRY




LOSING IS LOSING

Why the Democrats are Clueless


On June 20th in the 6th Congressional District runoff election, Democrat Jon Ossoff lost to Republican Karen Handel by an approximate four percentage points – 51.9 to 48.1.  Ossoff set records by raising an estimated $24 million – six times his Republican opponent.  It was the fourth special election since the inauguration of Donald Trump and the Democrats have lost all of them. 

In the Ossoff campaign the Democrat was ahead by five points as late as June 11th, suggesting that the more attention the election received and the more money the Democrats poured in the more the electorate turned to the Republican [1].  

For the fourth consecutive election in the age of Trump the Democrats tried to proclaim moral victory but few could keep a straight face.  Losing is losing and when it costs $24 million to accomplish it, it is clear the Democratic message is the problem.  

What is that message?  In the case of Ossoff it seemed to be:  We can be conservative without the Trump insanity.  Ossoff stood for lower taxes, deregulation, second amendment sanctity, free trade and devotion to Israel.  Even more telling is where Ossoff dared not tread:  He stood neutral on single payer healthcare (Medicare for All), social security and Medicaid.  He refused to criticize the escalating wars in the Middle East.  He could not even bring himself to advocate a living wage.  [2] 

There is literally nothing today’s Republican Party or Donald Trump could find objectionable about Jon Ossoff except the capital D by his name.  

This is what the Democrats had in mind.  They want us to believe that Donald Trump and the mean party is so morally repugnant that all they have to do is show up.  They have crunched the numbers and come to the conclusion that they can continue taking obscene amounts of Wall Street money and still pose as advocates of the working class.  They don’t need to revise policies; they need only repackage the message.  

This is the kind of delusional thinking that allowed Hillary Clinton to believe she could run out the clock while Donald Trump barnstormed Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin with a promise of good old middle class industrial wage jobs for all.  He was lying but it didn’t matter.  At least he cared enough to show up and say what they wanted to hear:  Bring back the good old days!  Kick some terrorist ass!  Make America great again!  

Democrats seem to believe that they lost the presidential election because of Russian hacking, James Comey and rightwing media.  They are only partially correct.  They made it possible to lose by having nothing to offer the working people of this nation.  After Bernie Sanders all but browbeat Clinton into taking a stand in favor of Fair Trade, she never mentioned it again on the campaign trail.  She never challenged Trump on trade policy though it was clear he had no clue.  They allowed Trump to charade as a labor candidate despite an extensive background in abusing labor as a businessman.  Did Clinton think we wouldn’t notice?  

The old Democratic line isn’t working any more.  They seem to be waiting for demographics to shift enough that they can win with a central platform:  At least we’re not racist!  If they keep this up they’ll lose minority votes as well.  No one likes an empty basket.  Put something, anything in there and stand up for it.  

Let me make this clear.  I am a registered Democrat because I wanted my vote for Bernie Sanders to count in the California primary.  I am not a Democrat by philosophy or conviction.  I despise the two-party system that has reduced political discourse to an all-time low.  I despise a system that made the Tea Party and a Trump presidency possible by offering a choice between a rotten apple and a rusty nail.  I despise a system where the only viable parties require their candidates to take a pledge of loyalty to international corporations, Wall Street and the same industrialists who sold us out for greater profits overseas.  

We need a party that believes in something.  We need a party that stands for something.  We need a party that does not suspend principle because the candidate is running in Georgia, Kansas, Carolina or Georgia.  

All working class people can agree:  We need jobs that pay the bills and we need representatives at all levels of government who can deliver them. 

If any candidate wants my support it begins with trade policy and the rights of labor.  It begins with Fair Trade – a policy that conditions preferred trade status on mutual protection of a worker’s right to a living wage, decent working conditions, the right to form and join a union and minimal standards of health and retirement benefits.  It begins with protecting the rights of labor in our own country and that means striking down anti-union laws that block unions from the workplace and proclaim the right of individuals to refuse paying union fees though they benefit from union representation. 

The GOP is the party of the wealthy, the party of tax cuts, and the party that stands against environmental protection, financial regulation, social security and Medicare.  It is the party of indifference to discrimination in all its forms and the party of endless military misadventures.  We need a party that strikes a contrast and holds to it like a toddler to his mother’s hand.  

A candidate that wants my support must stand up for alternative energy sources – solar, wind and water – and pledge to expand them at the expense of fossil fuels.  We need to support research knowing that it will ultimately save money, resources and lives.  

We need a party that remembers what happens when we allow Wall Street financiers and industrialists to operate without oversight and regulation.  We cannot afford a repeat of the financial meltdown we experienced at the end of the George W. Bush administration and we are heading for an encore at record speed.  We need representatives who will call out office holders who claim that the meltdown was caused by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae or any other government entity.  It was caused by corporate greed and a license to do as they pleased.  If you allow Wall Street to create cash out of toxic waste, they will do so.  It is their nature to discard the public interest every time if it improves the bottom line.  

We need a party that is pledged to protect and defend Social Security and universal Medicare.  No more half measures.  When we compromised with Obamacare we compromised with a fundamental right to healthcare.  The net result is that we will soon have a healthcare system that is even crueler and more negligent than it was before Obamacare.  Even if the current healthcare proposal fails, our government is plotting actions and inactions that will ensure the system collapses.  What will we do then?  

We need a party that upholds equal pay for equal work, that is sensitive to the needs of minority communities, and that fights against discrimination wherever it occurs.  We need a party that addresses mass incarceration and the disproportionate incrimination of racial minorities.  We need a party that defends a woman’s right to reproductive care, including abortion, and opposes reckless military interventions.  We need a party that ends the perpetual increase in military expenditures and uses that money to improve the lives of our people.  

There are many other issues that could be addressed but these I consider fundamental.  If the Democrats wish to become that party so be it.  If not, we desperately need a new party – one that addresses the needs of the people and one that will not back down to a billionaire pretender. 

A party that gives us Jon Ossoff and channels $24 million dollars to his pandering campaign is not a party that deserves anyone’s support. 

Jazz.

COMMENT BY WRITER-POET-ARTIST JAKE BERRY

Nothing I can add will improve your argument. You hit the (rusty) nail on the head. The Democratic party is over. It’s decline began the day Bill Clinton won the presidency as a “centrist” when he was in fact a Republican calling himself a Democrat. Bernie Sanders calls himself a Social Democrat and the mainstream call him a Socialist. Even he is conceding ground. He is in fact a Roosevelt Democrat - which is what a Democrat was between at least the late 1920s and 1992. In that period we saw an expansion of the middle class (especially after WW2), an increase in wages for almost everyone and much less income disparity than we now have. The shocks of the oil embargo in the 1970s opened the door for a new type of conservative, which is essentially a libertarianism skewed to the rich and pandering to bigotry masquerading as evangelical religion (it is in fact neither genuinely evangelical nor religious).

For now, yessir, losing is losing. 

Love and peace,
Jake

1.  “Georgia 6th District Run-off Election – Handel vs. Ossoff.”  Real Clear Politics, June 20, 2017. 

2.  “Democrats in the Dead Zone” by Jeffrey St. Clair.  Counterpunch, June 23, 2017. 


JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES, THE GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION, WASICHU: THE KILLING SPIRIT, NUMBER NINE, A PATRIOT DIRGE, PAWNS TO PLAYERS AND OTHER WORKS. 

JAKE BERRY IS THE AUTHOR OF BRAMBU DREZI, SPECIES OF ABANDONED LIGHT AND COUNTLESS OTHER WORKS OF GENIUS.  HE HAS ALSO WRITTEN AND RECORDED NUMEROUS ALBUMS INCLUDING LIMINAL BLUE AND THE SAINTS ARE CRYING.

Monday, January 16, 2017

JAKE'S WORD: The Accidental President

As always. Right on the mark.

While Democrats and some Republicans rant and rage and cannot seem to come to terms with reality (nothing new there), the rest of the U.S. has accepted the outcome of the election and tries to find some reason to be optimistic.

We tell ourselves that he has thrown the stagnant and unresponsive political establishment into disarray. Can this be a bad thing?

We hope that Trump’s narcissism will at least occasionally intersect with the interests of the American people.

But it is indeed a crapshoot. We will see. But we will have to see it, if we are to see it clearly, outside the domain of the media establishment that created this monstrosity.

The facts will be there plain enough - in the policies, in the executive actions, in the appointments.

Perhaps the two parties will reconstruct themselves into actual representatives of the the people and sponsor candidates for the presidency in four years that are both qualified and connected to our concerns.

Considering the abject blindness that has given us the accidental president, all of this may be wishful thinking.

Very soon we shall see where this strange and impulsive experiment leads.

Thank you for your words, your wisdom and your concern. You are a true citizen.


RANDOM'S RESPONSE:

I thank you for your analysis. It appears neither of us have a great deal of confidence in the coming presidency. They say god works in mysterious ways; maybe random fluctuations in the political sphere will in the end produce some benefit to humankind. We can never know. I suspect the president-elect won't last too long. The game is afoot and the stench of betrayal surrounds this pretender. My hypothesis is the Russians had the goods on FBI Director Comey. My hope is it all comes to light. I suspect that Putin was the player in this drama and Trump was merely a piece on the board -- albeit a King....

Saturday, November 12, 2016

ELECTION POSTMORTEM DIALOGUE

JACK RANDOM, JAKE BERRY, CHRIS MANSEL & JIM WIZ.

On Nov 9, 2016, at 2:15 AM, Jack wrote:

Jake:

Well, my friend, it seems we are all living in Alabama now. I look forward to seeing your take on this event.

It's late & I've had a bit to drink.

Peace & Good Morning in the new America!

Jack,

Good to hear from you on this darkest of November evenings. Like everyone else I believed the polls. They are just another example of how the media created this problem then failed to address it as anything more than spectacle. People responded to the spectacle, now we all have to deal with the reality of Donald Trump as President.

I want to hope that the bigoted rhetoric of the campaign was only to bring people into the system. I want to hope that he really does rebuild the infrastructure and put millions of Americans to work at decent wages doing it. I want to hope, but I see no reason to do so.

As someone who has lived in a state largely run by people like hose who so passionately supported Trump, I want to assure you that you can survive, even thrive, in an adversarial environment. Arlo Guthrie once said that if we lived in a perfect world we wouldn’t have anything to write about. It appears we’re going to have a flood of resources from which to draw inspiration.

And hey, pot is legal in California!

It may be a new America, but we’re still part of it, and we will continue to exercise the full freedoms of our birthrights as Americans and our occupations as children of boundless imagination.

Take your rest my brother. Tomorrow, like every other day, we have work to do.

Jack:

I went to breakfast at my usual redneck diner at 6 am, everyone was glum, then to the grocery store and stood in line with half a dozen old farts buying lotto tickets, then to the auto parts store followed by the lumber store. It was not until I got back to my studio where the Uzbekistan woman working for me announced the news. Amazing. I guessed wrong and I have to admit my heart sank for a while and the embarrassment for our [electoral] system has risen to a level that should not exist.

Hope you are well.

J:

I encountered a similar response at the local Raley's. Not that I didn't know. I did. We all did. But no one wanted to acknowledge what had happened. We still don't. The people on the streets have broken the silence. I don't know what happens next but I have a sense it ain't good. As Jake says, at least we have food for the creative appetite. Peace be with you brother.
Jack:
It could be that this is the turning point, the kick that finally sends the moderates out? The last man on the skyscraper to jump finally realizes there is a way and he was wrong all the time. Maybe we can realize that the focus needs to be not on the single mindedness of the campaign and realize that what Bernie Sanders grassroots idea was the way to go or like Francis Crick said, "It is the molecule that has the glamour, not the scientists."
Chris
Jack,

Thank you for yet another thoughtful, reasonable response to the debacle in which we live - the American empire. I hope others will read what you have to say and take it into consideration. It is a valuable addition to a conversation that is unfortunately as polarized as the election itself.

Hilary Clinton is a very capable leader, a canny politician and would have brought a wealth of experience to the job. What she apparently could not bring was any new ideas. We were likely to have four more years like the last eight - mostly stalemate. Though Clinton’s version would have been even more acrimonious on both sides. Roughly half of those that chose to vote (which was roughly half of those that could have voted) decided they’d had enough of that particular show and thought they’d give the clown a chance. Unsurprisingly, three days after the election he’s still acting the clown.

It occurred to me today that since 1992 the Democratic candidate has received the most votes in every presidential election except one (2004). More Americans prefer a Democratic president. The problem is that most of them live in the population centers. Obviously people who live in and near cities and those that live in small towns and rural areas have a different idea of what civilization is and how it should be governed.

Now we are left to observe Trump choosing a cabinet. Since no choices have been announced yet I am hopeful that he will choose people that do not have strong loyalties to either political party establishment. If he governed as an independent and forced both parties to restructure according to something closer to a reflection of the actual populace we might at least see some change in the way the work gets done in D.C. If he draws from the usual gang of supply-siders and neo-conservatives no one will gain anything - including the people who voted for him.

As you say, we will survive. Yes. And so will America the empire, unfortunately.

Have you seen the new Adam Curtis documentary, HyperNormalisation? Like his other docs, worth watching: https://youtu.be/-fny99f8amM

See you round the edges,
Jake

Monday, April 18, 2016

REVIEWS OF JACK RANDOM'S WASICHU

DARK NARRATIVE OF A GREAT WRITER

A Review of Jack Random’s WASICHU: THE KILLING SPIRIT
By Jake Berry

[The] opening pages of The Killing Spirit read and sound like an amalgam of Dashiell Hammett and Bob Dylan. The clipped sentences flow like measures of music singing off the page. After the first paragraph the reader feels thrown into a cold rushing stream – the stream of a man’s life and heritage, of history, myth and inevitability.

Dark times will produce a dark narrative and its singer. Jack Random is perfectly suited for those times. Though this does not mean the writing lacks tenderness. In the character of Jerico Whitehorse he has distilled the ages to bring the process full circle. Evan as Jerico is a dreamer of profound insight and reader of those dreams, Random is the teller of the tale, the reader of the auguries now so abundant in the air around us. Ishmael leads us to Ahab and his cursed destiny to destroy the beast that maimed him. Jerico follows the depths of collective memory to meet Tohocua who would be damned in his attempt to repel the European invasions. Tohocua’s hatred is certainly more justified but he is equally fated, even by the elements, to disappear.

The question before us and before Jerico is how to live with this knowledge. Does the key lie at the terminus of the great river and the mysteries of New Orleans – a city that has died and been reborn many times? Only Jack Random can tell us, and he will, in a voice that carries the gift of all great writers – it awakens us to the full presence of what it means to be human.


ANCIENT WISDOM

A Comment on Jack Random’s WASICHU: THE KILLING SPIRIT
By Chris Mansel

The writing of Jack Random is at once effortless, mysterious and utterly powerful. When I was eighteen I spent some time in New Mexico and I can tell you the solitude and eerie silence is captured in Random’s writing as well as the feeling I get when I visit the end of the Trail of Tears in Waterloo, Alabama. The feeling of ancient wisdom and modern warnings.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

A REVIEW: MYSTERY SONGS BY JAKE BERRY

MYSTERY SONGS BY JAKE BERRY


The first thing that comes to mind upon listening to Mystery Songs is the profound underlying presence of spirits in the house of poetry. There be ghosts here and shadows rising from the earth, inhabiting the air and swimming in the water, haunting the blood and the bloodline of all sentient beings. There is sentiment and memories and depth of feeling beyond the reach of mere mortals.

So many of these spirits are women with the strength to endure and thrive and rise like blooming flowers. We feel the decay, the heartfelt mourning, the long decline before the rising. Let your ghosts shine through. Let the water be your blood. The land, the Jimson Hollow, is who you are. You cannot escape. You can only drink and find the poet within your soul. After a while you begin to glimpse the truth, the longing and the love.

Master poet Jake Berry has been working his chops, polishing his licks and it shows on this new solo work. I love the down home feel and naked emotion of this work. I believe it is a work of love, a tribute to the female seed of his soul, to the loves of his life, no doubt his mother, his grandmother and the woman who stands by his side through the ages, his loving wife.

Mystery Songs can never be solved but they give me hope that we can survive and thrive and grow despite the darkest days and the most haunting nights.

Thank you, once again, Mr. Berry, for yet another masterwork.


Jack Random

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Grand Canyon Zen Golf Tour: A review by Jake Berry

THE GRAND CANYON ZEN GOLF TOUR - A Memoir by Jack Random – Featuring the Handbook of Zen Golf (Crow Dog Press) $13.95 available at http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Random/e/…/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1…


Lest you think this a light new age collection of clichés wrapped around zen and golf, think again. Jack Random (aka Ray Miller) brings to both subjects, and their inevitable coalescence, the gravity of experience and the music of a master story teller. This is a road story, and is not out of place among the ancient tales from Gilgamesh's search for the plant of immortality to the Odyssey or Twain and Kerouac. Written in a voice that sounds like a cool concoction of Dashiell Hammett and Hunter S. Thompson, yet never imitative of them, Random's odyssey is born of a time when he lived on the sweet edge always barely one step ahead of the courting allies of death, madness and the ultimate ecstasy from which no one returns. Despite the dangers he never abandons his brooding wit. One feels that no matter how difficult the circumstance he retains enough detachment to laugh at himself and Wiz, his traveling companion (and better known to some as James Wisniewski – musician, visual artist and designer), as they wander from golf course to canyon to locations so stark and abandoned it chills the bones. Random does not take his zen sitting down or his golf along carefully manicured greens – though he's no stranger to either – he makes demands of himself and the world he encounters in the manner of a sorcerer and seer. The two wandering bodhisattvas might tee off anywhere, and nowhere, and transform the entire landscape before them into a rough that will deliver enlightenment or else. The book is appended by a revised version of the Handbook of Zen Golf composed by Miller and Wisniewski and published under other nom de plumes. The original was small enough to fit in a pocket and designed to be carried on the course. The wisdom it contains is certainly as valid as it was then for a round of golf, or for a lifetime. Even if you don't golf or care anything for the sport you'll find yourself caught in the pleasure of following the journey through one adventure to the next. This is a fine example of Miller's style – awake to the harsh realities of the world and forever seeking the spiritual in confident, unflinching prose loaded with no small amount of poetry.

The Grand Canyon Zen Golf Tour is only one of many volumes by Jack Random now available online at amazon.com in both print and digital versions. There are novels, screeds and collections of the political writings that frequently appear on the Random Jack blog. Random is that rare combination of a writer of genuine substance that is always a pleasure to read.

Editor's Note: From Chapter 12: "Jake Berry is a poet’s poet, a master craftsman of words, an inventor of language and an architect of letters and imagery. His name in the underground circle of poets is legendary. Poet, musician, songwriter and graphic artist, his seminal work Brambu Drezi as well as Species of Abandoned Light have found a noted publisher in San Francisco."

The Pocketbook of Zen Golf was designed to fit in a pocket; the Handbook was a little large for the average pocket.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Jake's Word: Shut it Down!

[Editor's Note: This is Jake Berry's response to the latest Jazzman Chronicle: Shut it Down! The Irrational Rage of Willful Ignorance - reprinted below.]

One of your best screeds ever. Right on target. You sound like you've been living in the South all your life.

That is what all of this hogwash passing for politics is - old school Southern politics. It basically comes down to a simple equation: If you have a problem it is someone else's fault. The solution is to destroy this fantasy chimera even if it kills you and your children and their children in the process. Someone else is always to blame.

Freedom means liberty and responsibility. Everyone wants freedom. Freedom to get rich or die trying. Freedom to curse your neighbor one minute and pray for him the next. Freedom to do whatever you damn well please and blame someone else for the damage you do.

I agree with you. Let it crash and burn. It seems to be the only way we'll ever recover from subservience to the golden calf of Wall Street and the loud and proud stupidity of those who are so desperate to vote against their own best interests.

Too bad. While it may be true that all empires eventually crumble, the U.S. doesn't have to shut down just yet. But if that is what the people want, then give them what they want. They'll find someone to blame.

Rave on brother. We listen and learn.

Jake


A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE. DISSEMINATE FREELY.


SHUT IT DOWN!


THE IRRATIONAL RAGE OF WILLFUL IGNORANCE


By Jack Random




“Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you? Go ahead, make my day.”

Harry Callahan, Sudden Impact (1983)




Late Friday night the word came down that congress made a deal with the White House to avert a government shutdown. Too bad. If history teaches us anything it is that the American electorate does not believe in close calls.

In the last hour of the Bush administration, when congress was compelled to hand over billions to Wall Street in order to avoid a global economic meltdown, you would have thought we learned a lesson. We did not. We watched as the government reinstated the same catastrophic policies that placed us at the brink of catastrophic implosion.

We learned nothing. We continue to vent our rage at anyone but the criminal party. We continue to vote for pandering politicians who claim that government is the problem. We continue to support policies that favor the corporate elite.

I am reminded of the man who shot himself in the foot to cure a bunion. Seeing the damage the doctor said: Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t have a headache.

At some point we have to come to terms with the fact that we are a republic, a representative democracy, and therefore we are ultimately responsible for the actions of our elected officials. We enable them. We instruct them to get right back on that runaway train and point it straight over the cliff.

Feeling lucky, punk? Go ahead, make my day!

We all lived through the Bush years yet we are still listening to the same foreign policy geniuses that blundered their way into two losing wars in the Middle East. (If you thought we won in Iraq, check back in five years: Iran won the war and we were the biggest losers outside of the Iraqis.)

We all watched the free trade, free enterprise, free market economic purists drive us to the precipice of a great depression yet here we are doubling down on the same policies that created the crisis.

Like a compulsive gambler who’s been days too long at the tables, we’ve decided gambling is not the problem. It’s all a matter of timing. This time it will all work out. We’ll draw the lucky ace of spades and break the bank running.

Why shouldn’t it work out? Last time around it worked just fine for the CEO’s and the wealthy shareholders. They got to keep our money while we got our homes foreclosed, our jobs shipped out, our unions busted, our rights nullified and our wages cut to the bone.

Voices on the left who are not afraid of summoning phrases like social good and income inequality must be growing tired to death reminding people who work for a living that the parties in power do not represent our interests, the Tea Party least of all. They must grow tired defending the ineffectual Democrats over the offensive Republicans on the ever-diminishing grounds of least harm.

It’s like turning to the Don’s accountant to resolve the problems of the Don.

I know I’ve grown tired, damned tired, and I feel I’m down to two choices: Vent or walk away.

So go ahead, fellow voters, make my day: Shut it down! Let’s get a good look at life without the government. Let’s go back to square one. Let’s get back to the days of America’s greatness! Let’s have an industrial age without industry! Let’s work for lower pay! Let there be no safety standards, no inspectors, no regulation or oversight. If people die, so be it. It’s the cost of doing business. We have too many people anyway. Let a few thousand or million perish at the hands of the industrial machine. There will be more for the rest of us!

Why half measures? Let’s give all the money and all the resources to the elite. They’re better educated and nicer looking. They know how to behave themselves at dinner parties. Let them have it all and let the rest of us live in accordance with their wishes. What’s good for Wall Street is good for Pennsylvania Avenue!

Let them dig for oil in the national parks. Let them burn coal until the skies block the sun! Let them mark the way to the next mass extinction. Let them fight wars for oil and water and uranium with the blood of our working sons and daughters!

Go ahead, decimate social security, scrap Medicare and bring back a time where child labor is not only possible but necessary! Bring back squalor and recklessness in the workplace! Bring back segregated schools and reserve higher learning for the wealthiest elite.

Go ahead, let them have it all but don’t you dare say you did it for your children. You sold the children out along with the rest of us so at least have the courage to say so: You did it because you didn’t want to pay your fair share.

At least have the foresight to know your children and grandchildren will curse you for your selfish folly.

Go ahead, shut it down, let it crash and burn! But then, when it’s all done and the destruction has moved across the land like waves of a tsunami, have the decency to stand aside and let those who saw it coming and sounded a warning in vain, build a new world from the ashes of a fallen empire.

Let that be your final legacy.


Jazz.


JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Hunter S. Thompson: Ignorance & Morality

RE: HUNTER S THOMPSON

BY JAKE BERRY

An except from an email to my brother Jon regarding Hunter Thompson and morality:

Thanks for the latest HST info. I know about Steadman's book, but I didn't know about Breakfast with Hunter. I think you're right on target about him. He was not only a visionary in his approach to the art, an innovator in it's practice, but also he was at heart a moralist. Many, even the elite and literati, refuse to acknowledge this because to do so would be to cede ground to someone that was definitely not one of them. It would also expose their hypocrisy. Western culture, the U.S. especially, is incredibly puritanical and doctrinaire. They talk about freedom and liberal democracy and thump their chests while they spout their "values" just like fundamentalists thump their Bibles or Korans. They make more interesting conversation and are less likely to justify their violence in the name of God, but they're just as narrow minded, intolerant and dangerous. Hunter saw straight through all kinds of hypocrisy because it was so alien to him. When he lied he lied straight in your face, did it well and laughed at you when you fell for it. He was aware that he was lying and knew the advantages of a well made lie over a steaming pile of facts that pass for truth. He gets knocked from all sides for his drug abuse, but look at the people who are criticizing him. How many of them are or are long dead as a result of bad diet and / or officially sanctioned drug abuse (i.e. their doctor was their pusher). Like all puritans they hide anything that doesn't conform to the doctrine. Hunter called their bluff. He openly confessed and enjoyed his sins. In other words he admitted to being a flawed human, just like every other human and made it an integral part of his work. So with HST you get the full creature, not the primed and coifed human ready for his or her moment - playing out the charade of progressivism. We make progress in technology. That makes sense. You keep trying to improve your tools for more efficiency, a quicker route to a better result. But we're just plain lying to ourselves if we think we've made moral progress. We've just learned how to hide the beast behind a cloak of civility. We have that leisure because we're at the top of the heap. Most humans have to get what they can get any way they can get it or die. Those are the people we hire to do the dirty work of keeping the gears turning. They take the risks and we buy the product of that risk. The only difference between cold blooded murder and murder by proxy is that the latter doesn't have to hide the corpse and clean the blood out of his clothes. We're all guilty of almost every form of atrocity - even if we don't know we're doing it. Ignorance is no excuse. Hunter refused to be ignorant, but he didn't go soft either. He knew that survival for one often meant death for another, freedom for a few meant slavery for most. That's why people like him and William Burroughs will remain relevant long after the majority of the pulitzer prize winner class have become quaint curiosities.

We do what we must to survive. If we can be kind enough to treat one another the way we want to be treated we're far ahead of the devouring pack. That's the most you can expect from humans and that's the most any truly wise human and / or savior ever asked of us. We all fail even to reach that low mark, but the least we can do is admit it and keep trying. Things like religion, politics and what we consume are mere side effects of what is actually happening. Why get tangled up in the side show when you can walk right into the full light of reality and drink your fill - and then some?

Thursday, November 04, 2010

Election Day 2010 (A Voter's Guide)

By Jake Berry



Choose a thick cut - 


preferably a fat ham. 




Drill a small hole through it. 


Insert a spark plug into the wound.


Wrap a live wire around its tip. 




Insert a tube

into the opposite end of the wound.

Pour gasoline down the tube. 




Observe how the flesh leaps.


Keep the gasoline coming.



The flesh is twitching now,

moving across the floor.

Call it a meat engine.



Clothe the entire apparatus

in a large flag.



Toss it out into the yard.



Keep the gasoline coming.



When it rains

observe how the convulsions surrender

and reignite

and thick smoke rises.




Inhale the stench. 




Keep the gasoline coming.

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Jake's Word: In Response to "The Long View of American History" by Jack Random.

In response to "The Long View of American History: The Fall before the Rise" by Jack Random (reprinted below).

"But we do know that the laws of economics will not be suspended by public sentiment."

Yes! Why does the public not understand this? Do we have to be reduced to a third world economic structure before people realize they've been had?

It does seem that real change can only be realized in the wake of great catastrophe - usually catastrophes that could have been avoided. Is rationality so alien to the majority of humans most of the time?

To add to the confusion, the 10:10 campaign releases a video in which people that disagree with them are blown up. This was supposed to be funny. It isn't. When the the result was overwhelmingly negative, they pulled the video, but too late. It has gone viral. Is this really the work of an environmental group concerned about the future, or right-wing propaganda out of left field?

Obviously the polemic is out of control from all sides. Before the U.S. presidential election of 2004 people were asking if a nation of people could collectively lose their minds. It seems that they can. Germany in the 1930s leaps to mind. Worse yet, the problem has gone global as corporatism, under the name of austerity campaigns, deprives people of the services their taxes pay for while the rich get tax breaks and corporations are allowed to do as they please beyond any real legal restraint.

Does it all have to fall apart before we wake up? I hope not. Waking up in a new dark ages would be like waking up in a cave. How many centuries, how many generations, would have to pass before we recovered?

Sadly, no matter what we say, or how we vote, and I will be voting, it seems to be out of our hands.

Take care,
Jake


JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

THE LONG VIEW OF AMERICAN HISTORY: THE FALL BEFORE THE RISE


By Jack Random


It seems to me that anyone who has a vision of real and systemic change in government must inevitably come to terms with the reality that change is a long-term proposition. It is improbable that we are the change we’ve been looking for or that the change we seek will come in our lifetimes.

Historic change requires a convergence of events far beyond our collective ability to control or create it.

History instructs us that change often requires a catalyst in the form of a catastrophe, a disaster or a tragedy so profound it touches the heart and invades the psyche of every man, woman and child who bears witness.

At a time when news was carried primarily by word of mouth from tavern to tavern, from church to public hall, on the wings of an emerging independent press, the Boston Massacre was such an event. Analogous in some ways to Kent State and Jackson State in 1970 it was widely perceived as the first occasion where those charged with protecting us, turned on us and killed our fellow beings for merely asserting their rights of citizenship. It struck a deep chord with the American colonists and propelled us forward toward the war for independence.

The great upheaval of the Civil War ended the scourge of state sanctioned slavery in America.

The Great Depression of the 1930’s combined with the rise of unions and the rights of the working class gave rise to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, ending forever this nation’s philosophic indifference to the poor, the infirm and the elderly under the guise of “rugged individualism.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 hurled us into global politics and the great upheaval of World War II. It unleashed America’s industrial might (now all but vanished) and eventually altered the balance of powers, setting the stage for over four decades of the Cold War.

The change from cataclysmic events is not always positive. In our own lifetimes we experienced such an event with the attack on the towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and an unknown third target. It precipitated a policy of aggressive war and a bold attempt by a brash and all too eager administration to dominate the world by capturing its key supply of oil. We can only imagine how many lives and how much damage to the economy, to civil liberties and to the nation’s reputation in world politics resulted from the Neocon reign of terror.

We have not even begun to glimpse the end of the costs attributable to the Bush administration and foreign policy is only half the story. We very nearly experienced a second cataclysmic event during our lifetime and it came to fruition only seven years after the September 11 attack.

As a direct result of the Bush administration policies (an overextended military, a burgeoning debt, tax cuts favoring the wealthy, deregulation, job exportation, on and on), an out of control financial system pushed us to the brink of global economic collapse.

Owing largely to a massive injection of capital from the public coffers to the private sector we narrowly escaped the cataclysm of an implosion that would surely have led to a second Great Depression. We were left with the lingering effects of a great recession: long-term unemployment, depressed wages, diminished home values, depreciating benefits and an ever-increasing gap between the elite and the working class. But we were spared the cataclysm that would have triggered systemic change.

As one who believes in change, who believes that the democratic form of government requires constant change to curtail the growing power of international corporations, I am reluctant to conclude that total economic collapse might have been the better long-term option but that is the possibility that now presents itself.

For it appears that we as a people have learned little to nothing of the hard lessons delivered by a near collapse. Indeed, those who seem to dominate our political discourse today either refuse to believe it happened or refuse to connect the dots between the economic pain we are currently suffering and the policies that created it.

As we continue down this path of blind denial it seems probable that we will soon elect a sufficient number of unknowing, irresponsible, corporate sponsored politicians, so blind to our economic realities that they will paralyze government indefinitely.

We are asking for trouble.

We will continue marching like lemmings to the sea toward the next economic breakdown only this time congress will be sworn against a government bailout and the chief executive will be disinclined to ask.

There will be no comfort in being among those who warned the general public of pending disaster.

Will there be another Great Depression? No one knows. But we do know that the laws of economics will not be suspended by public sentiment.

We are living in times when historical events are accelerating and the government’s ability to keep pace is dramatically diminished. With the power of corporations growing like the weeds of an untended garden it is hardly the time to rip the heart out of the only counterforce that can hold it in check.

In the long term, perhaps a second Great Depression is inevitable and maybe it is needed to deliver the lessons that should have been learned from lesser disasters.

If this is our destiny, it is my hope that like the Phoenix we will rise from the ruins greater, wiser, more democratic and more humane.


Jazz.


JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

CHRIS MANSEL & JAKE BERRY: A DIALOGUE

A Dialogue with Jake Berry by Chris Mansel (2008).

[Editor's Note: This exchange features two of the most creative contemporary minds I’ve encountered. No one rejects convention more thoroughly than Mansel and no one of the unconventional creative bent is better read or more informed than Berry. Both are writers and artists of singular character – in the uniqueness of their pluralities. If there is a better source on the creative process, I am not aware of it. Jazz.]

[Chris Mansel: Any conversation for me with my friend Jake Berry is a learning experience and a gift I do not take lightly. I was again fortunate to ask Jake questions for the third time and the answers speak for themselves.]


Chris Mansel: If the Buddha were standing out in the rain would you invite him in, or go outside and stand with him?

Jake Berry: I'd invite him in to help me tear the roof off my house.

Chris Mansel: If your creativity is the medicine you are prescribed, then is the diagnosis running parallel or controlling the ship on troubled seas?

Jake Berry: You know how to load a question. I think of how they found Nietzsche mumbling to himself over his papers. He never said much after that though he lived many years in silence. Or Holderlin pacing in circles all night, jotting down notes, some of them brilliant fragments, and playing violin, or was it flute, that according to some who heard it was quite beautiful. Yet it is obvious from people who spent long periods in his company that he was suffering greatly, quite mad, relative to the times anyway. He lived another 40 years deteriorating.

I know that working more or less every day at one creative pursuit or another keeps me from going to Wal-Mart, buying a shotgun and shells and having a go at the place with both barrels until the cops and media arrive and spoil my fun. Some of us are afflicted with this thing. The nerves are calmed for a moment after you write or speak/sing a poem, write a song, play a musical instrument, paint, draw. It has been this way since I was a child. Artaud said no one ever did any of these things except to get out of hell. He would know. He spent enough time there.

At the same time it can be extremely hard work - grueling, obsessive day after day. Insomnia from dwelling on a piece so intensely it won't leave you rest. Knowing that even your most inspired effort is probably doomed to failure, even by, perhaps especially by, your own standards. I know you suffer from migraines, seizures and so forth that seem connected to your work. But then once you really commit to this thing everything is connected to it.

What I try to do, with actually a small degree of success, is keep my ego out of it. Out of my feelings about the work, out of how others react to it, and out of dominating the work as the central voice.

Most creation tales begin in chaos, the void, or some similar unknown. So it is. We stumble around in the dark. Those who practice any of the arts and believe they know what they are doing are utter fools. If I have learned anything, it's how to recognize a fool. I have a great deal of experience in the art of foolishness, where practice does not make perfect, but only makes one more foolish.

Chris Mansel: If destructiveness is in the chemical makeup, does it come from the same component as creativity, or do they operate individually off of one another further down the line?

Jake Berry: I don't see how they cannot be interwoven. Creation and destruction seem to be part of the same process of change. Since nothing is permanent we can see the change as either the destruction of what has disappeared or the creation of something new. When we bring intent into consideration we can discuss whether creation is the result of intention to make something new or destroy something previously present. Further than this we can discuss particular instances of creation and destruction.

Let me answer then with a question to you. Are your films a destruction of the images from which they originally drive or are [they] pure creations in which the original image is merely the ore, the raw substance to be shaped in a particular way? To what extent is the end result predetermined or left to chance?

Chris Mansel: The images are deconstructed in such a way as to bring out the image beneath the surface. What you refer to as pure creations is left to modifying or using the software in such a way as to bring about a new surface of the canvas, a painting over if you will. Everything was left to chance until I saw the image and I would then go back and correct it or take the muddy approach and let the muck fly where it lay. When I started working with your Brambu recording I began a whole new process of working towards the text and an evolution began that as you often say, “Developed delightfully stranger and newer life forms.” In other words I did things that I didn’t know I could do until I did them. My latest film The Dead Illume is a perfect example of this.

Your blog Notes, Quotes, Ideas, Speculations hasn’t been posted on in three years and this is a fascinating piece of work. I wonder if you have any plans to expand it into a book length project in the future.

Jake Berry: There was a train of thought I was working with there and I still want to develop it, but I have been distracted by other projects. I intended the site as a place to post more or less random philosophical bits and pieces. So perhaps I will return to it that way then pursue the longer piece by weaving it in and out of the rest.

You say above, "I did things I didn't know I could do until I did them." That seems to be the most appropriate way to work. In my experience if I understand where a piece of whatever kind is going before I start it doesn't remain interesting for very long. The whole point of this kind of practice is discovery. The thing that surprised me the most was the quality of the work you were doing with a computer camera and free software. There are directors working with budgets of millions of dollars who devour hours of our time and do not give us anything. You on the other hand open entire worlds of imagination with no budget and asking only two-five minutes of our time. Do you intend to continue working with this approach or would you like to eventually use professional cameras and software?

Chris Mansel: Of course I would like to use more sophisticated equipment and turn it on its side in the same manner. But I don’t foresee it happening. One reason is funding. I just don’t see any way I would have access to the kind of equipment you are talking about. Another reason I don’t think it will happen is because it would be the natural progression of things and that just hasn’t been the way my life has worked out.

In Arthur Janov's book, Primal Scream, he writes, "E. H. Hess, investigating pupillary contraction and dilation in response to certain stimuli, found that the pupil dilates when the stimulus is pleasant and contracts when it is unpleasant." If this is true would not a nation be so seized in its view to generally accept any thing that was thrown at them?

Jake Berry: I suppose that's true if what was thrown at them was pleasant. At least that portion that was paying attention. I think the manipulation of a populace has to go further than the autonomic response. It has to strike at that level, but it also must engage the intellect in some way. And of course pleasure is only one response that can be manipulated. We have seen how populations respond to fear, and how fear can be used to coerce populations into believing things that would otherwise seem unreasonable. It's part of the way those in power convince the majority to conform. The real power always lies with the majority. If the great majority of a population truly does not wish to do something, then it does not have to, but this requires a kind of solidarity we rarely see in large populations. Usually the struggle for resources and other divisions like ethnicity, religion, race, and so forth prevent solidarity, and that is exactly the way the most powerful individuals in any society would like to keep it. Only a few can be rich, otherwise having wealth would be pointless. In a capitalist society, wealth is power and those in power do not wish to lose it. So the manipulation begins.

Where does art fall in all of this? We know that it can be used as a tool for manipulation, but we also see that people with no power at all the world over make art. If the populace in general becomes more concerned with aesthetics than with consumption, the facsimile of wealth, will that populace become less subject to manipulation?

What I mean is concerned with making art, not just passively observing or consuming art products.

Chris Mansel: Art becomes the transparency that can be lifted up and placed anywhere at will. Commercial art has taken upon itself to balance out the scales of madness to borrow a song title from you. Having no power you can still make commercial art, anything feeds the eye, it’s the pineal blues these days. The false Buddha is everywhere. It is more important now to be the bug than the botanist, to be the moth than the flame; to be seen is the new orgasm, the new sexual technique. Cesare Lombroso wrote in 1899, “The atavism of the criminal when he lacks absolutely every trace of shame and pity, may go back beyond the savage even to the brutes themselves.”

I would like to ask you about a song entitled “So Many Birds.” This is a very dramatic recording. Could you talk about the song and the writing and why you placed it as the last track on your new album Liminal Blue?

Jake Berry: "So Many Birds" was I think the last song I wrote for the set. I think I wrote 15 songs during the period, 11 ended up on the album. I was about to change the tuning on the guitar when I hit a chord that felt like a door opening - one of those moments when you hear a whole song unfolding out of a single chord. The tuning is one I use often because it has so many possibilities. I never seem to fall into a rut with it. The low E string is tuned down to B and it goes on from there to F sharp, B, E, A, E. I found it a few years ago fooling around, looking for new tunings, then discovered later that Joni Mitchell had used it on several albums, including Turbulent Indigo, one of my favorites.

That's probably why it made sense to me. It's easy to get 13th and 11th chords in this tuning, so the harmonics are fairly broad. The first part of the song works out of an F sharp minor 13, so the melody is a minor modality, a darker, more dramatic feel. The second section of the song moves to A major, and F sharp minor is the relative minor to A, so you get what Leonard Cohen calls, in "Hallelujah", the "major lift." But it eventually resolves back to the minor. This was a case where the words flowed out of the music. They came to me as I was working out the chords and melody.

It happened fairly quickly. When I went to record it, all the parts seemed to come quickly as well. There is one idea that I got from listening to the first Portishead album. I noticed in one of the songs the way they used vibrato on a guitar strumming the chord at the beginning of each measure. I liked the atmosphere that created, so I tried it with "So Many Birds" and it was very effective. The song doesn't sound anything like Portishead, but that's another reason to listen to all kinds of music, you get ideas you can bring into your own work to create something new. Duke Ellington and Miles Davis were influenced by Ravel and Debussy, and Ravel was influenced by early blues. The reason it's the last song on the album is because it feels like a good way to finish it. It often happens that the album sequence is very close to the order in which the songs were written. There's also the last line - "ride on, until you disappear, even from yourself."

After that it felt like the story had been told.

As your film/video style develops I see how you move from very recognizable images of nature to pure abstraction, which is just as organic since it is derived from the original images. This movement takes me in two directions. It seems to make the film more spiritual, intuitive, more open to the imagination. It also makes me think of the films of Stan Brakhage. This is not because it looks like Brakhage but because you seem to allow the work to take its own course and move into those open areas. How does this work from the inside as you are working on the piece?

Are you trying various techniques or experiments then going with what seems to work best or is it even more organic than that, does it seem to guide itself completely?

Chris Mansel: The difference in Brakhage and me is his images would rush by you and constantly you found yourself inside a community reflecting off one another. In my defense I am alone without the benefit of community and working in a limited medium and without editable film. The software I use is limited to its creation. Film is strength in a society of weakened eyes searching for anything. Brakhage was a genius but then again so was Greg Toland and he never directed one picture but you can’t mention Citizen Kane without discussing his work.

As I am working on each piece the image, the initial image suggests everything and until I add any abstraction, for lack of a better term, it says nothing at all unless you count the surface or what light has down to it in the original photograph. Nietzsche’s last words were, “More light.” He also suggested we listen to music with our muscles. If that is true then perhaps we look at film with our brain, each individual eye developing or editing the image separate from one another. Burroughs was right; life is a cut-up. The process is organic. Short of literally showing you how I make a film I can explain that separate filters in the software capture and distort light in different ways. It is back dated software to the year 2000 so there are more advanced processes out there on the market but I have been successful with what I have at hand. It is organic and it is a process of selecting the recipe per each individual image. There is no way to fully explore the depths of it because there are innumerable ways to take photographs and countless recipes.

Aaron Copland wrote, “When I speak of the gifted listener I am thinking of the non-musician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.”

Do you happen to agree with Copland or do you compose for whoever listens?

Jake Berry: My definition of a listener might be different from Copland. I probably don't draw as clear a distinction between amateur and professional. We live in very different times. In Copland's day professional musicians played classical music, with club or cabaret musicians considered a distant cousin, even though Copland based much of his music on very unprofessional American folk music. I do think that a trained musician or a musician who makes a living by performing and recording music will hear very differently from the music fan who does not play, or the casual listener who enjoys whatever is on the radio. However, I wouldn't say I have a particular type of listener in mind.

Writing a song is more intuitive than intellectual. I am following the feel of the music, contributing to it, toward something that seems real, something that connects with my experience of the world, and something that remains interesting as I develop the progression and melodies and so forth. I hope that if a song is true to my experience, has an authentic feel, and remains interesting over the process of writing and recording, it will also connect with other people, though on their own terms. Most of the time when someone responds to me about one song or another they discover things I never imagined. That's an affirmation as far as I'm concerned because it means that person found something of their own in the song. As a fan, my favorite music always has that quality, so that's a measure of success for me.

Wayne Sides pointed out the obvious to me one day when he said photography is light writing, writing with light. The great photographers, from Steiglietz to Weston to Minor White or Robert Frank all seem to have that in common. Just as drawing is a moving point, so photography is moving light. This is even more so with moving images with people like Toland or Sven Nykvist. You are a poet, novelist, songwriter, painter and sculptor/assemblage artist as well as a film maker. Do you see all these things as part of a whole, points along a continuum or do the demands of each discipline make them completely distinct from one another? If they are part of a whole how does each of the mediums in which you work inform your film and video work?

Chris Mansel: It's a continuum of course but then again it's not. To make a mistake in a film is like making a mistake in any of the other fields you named. You simply have to start over or have to rethink the process. I can't reedit because the software is unable to do so. If I had to pick a discipline I would pick assemblage to mirror film making. I walk along the shore or though the woods or anywhere really and stop and look at a piece and wonder if I could make it work with something else. That takes a lot of thought. But as The Marquis De Sade wrote, "Any enjoyment is weakened when shared."

But the Marquis was insane.

Your writing has always been visual, now that I have given video to the audio recordings of your text, where do you go now with your written word? Is there a way to transcend the traditional form of delivering to the reader or listener?

Jake Berry: Doing Brambu Drezi Book 4 with a moving image component has been my intention for two years or so and the opening section of Brambu Book 4 was finished and posted at You Tube and the IFC Media Lab last fall.

Since then I've done the video and some of the audio for the second section of Book 4, but I'm still working on the words and the visuals on the page. There is a tendency to want to put the words in the video, and I will do some of that (you've done that beautifully with some of your own poetry in video by the way), but the ideal situation is to have the book in hand at the same time the DVD will be playing. The book itself is both a score for performance and visual art. The video as you have added to excerpts from Books 1-3, and as I will continue with Book 4 is just another element. I don't think there is any need to transcend the traditional forms of poetry, just add to them. There are many films that I think are poetry based purely on the visual alone. We spoke about Brakhage before, and I think your work does this. Also, a little closer to the feature film, directors like Godard, Antonioni, Terrence Malick, et. al. create a kind of visual poetry. Godard also drops words into his films sometimes, right in the middle of scenes, at first inexplicably, but gradually you recognize it as a kind of cut-up poetry.

Most of your film/video work so far has drawn from landscape, do you envision a time where you'll want to work with the human form?

Chris Mansel: Yes I have thought of this but I would have to have a model who wouldn't mind the painful prostrations I would put her through. The shots I have in mind would also be in nature and in a studio setting. They would be called Essays in the Passing Sciences. It would be a film about an hour long. I have already conceived some of it in my mind but I don't know if it will take place or not.

Jake Berry: I do what I can to support the work of others, but I never feel like I have done nearly enough. It would be nice to have the resources to start a publishing and recording company so that I could promote and distribute the work of all the artists of whatever kind who are now often ignored. I don't think it's a continuation of my art necessarily, but one wants to give something back, and give something to the world beyond your self. When you love the arts and you see great work not getting the recognition it deserves you want to do something about it. At the same time, whenever I get a few extra dollars I spend it getting my own work out there or buying instruments or equipment that will help me create and promote my own art as well as others. So I feel selfish as well.

Essays in [the] Passing Sciences sounds like a wonderful project. You might be surprised. There might be people willing to do the work because they are interested in being a part of a project beyond the ordinary film. Could you go into a little more detail about what you have in mind?

Chris Mansel: Specifically in nature, there would be those parts of the body I find interesting that would either coalesce with the environment or protrude. In a studio it would be more close-up. There are many things I find interesting about the human body. The idea is to photograph in both settings the form in a new and interesting way.

Say for instance the arm from the shoulder to the elbow against a broken limb both hanging from a tree and a broken limb on the ground. In a studio setting the arm would take on a different meaning when it was up against a light bulb that was turned off to signify the idea is there but it is nothing new.

Another idea is have the body submerged in leaves with only the hair emerging. These are essays and who is to say if is it science or not?

One thing your writing is known for, particularly your Brambu writings is the art. A book of your art, drawings, sculpture would be a monumental task but well worth the under taking. Do you think such a book would free you to create more art and distance you from what you have already created?

Jake Berry: I'm not sure what the result would be. But if there is a publisher willing to give me the opportunity I'd leap at it.

In the past when I've been confronted with similar situations I tended to add it to the things I did rather than subtract it from the activities in which I was already engaged. So I would probably assemble a collection of work that had not been associated with any previous project and spend a period of time obsessed with creating new work.

Your written work, whether prose fiction, non-fiction political writing, or poetry is so diverse that it is almost impossible to imagine it as the product of a single mind. Do you have as many selves, as many souls, as you have approaches to work? Are we by nature singular or plural or both?

Chris Mansel: I have often wondered this myself. When I write, from start to finish, unless it is a long piece I usually finish it in just a few minutes. A poem will sometimes take two minutes or more. The words come out so quick I am lucky to get it down in a cohesive piece. Since I have seizures I can hardly write legible any more creatively. So like most these days I write at the computer.

As far as approaches to work I have a select library I pull from. I won’t try and list them but Dante plays a major role.

Non-fiction mostly, personal experience is where I glean. Pete Townshend quoted Elvis Costello once and said, “Each writer must be a thief and a magpie.” I adhere to that philosophy a great deal.

We are by nature singular though most might disagree. I have said many times your creativity is the medicine you are prescribed. You are prescribed not anyone else. You are the one writing even if someone else is editing. You are the one faced with the blank screen or piece of paper, you and you alone. I can’t think of a better place to be, though I have felt different many times. This evening alone I had a seizure and spent five hours in the emergency room. It was my seizure and it was my pain. I had my wife and daughter with me but it was my instance that brought me there. We are a singular being adrift in a tidal pool. Back and forth we go through life but you can never get away from the fact that we are alone.

Do you foresee a day when the writing of Charles Olson will be taught alongside Mark Twain and Washington Irving in our education system?

Jake Berry: The thought of Charles Olson being taught in our education system troubles my sleep.

I can foresee a time when Olson will be taught at various levels of secondary education and that time is now. He just isn't being taught very widely. There's also a backlash in some quarters against modernism right now. Part of this is justified because in some places modernism and post-modernism (whatever the fuck that is) eclipsed everything else for a while. It makes sense that we keep modernism in perspective. It's only a small part of the story. On the other hand there are those that want to toss it completely in favor of a return to some imagined period when poetry was held in high esteem and was relatively easy to understand. That was before audio recordings, certainly before audio recordings and films became so popular. Even without new formalism or other poetries that shun the apparent difficulties of modernism there are still forms of poetry that are easy to understand and are extremely popular. It just hides under the name 'popular music.' While much in that area is pure product, candy - there is still great poetry sneaking out as pop music because that's the medium in which it is performed. It's a long list and everyone that really loves popular music and devotes time to listening to it will know immediately what I'm talking about. When I use the term popular music, I mean all the music that has been popular in terms of a large audience (compared to other forms like classical, avant-garde, art song and so forth) over the last century as recording technology has made music available to everyone. There's no small amount of modernism in pop music either. But you rarely hear people complain about the difficulty of a Radiohead lyric for instance, or the obscurity of Beck's references. People talk about the words. They recognize them as being more abstract, but that isn't a problem. There are millions of people walking around singing lyrics that are open to as many interpretations as there are listeners and few have a problem with this.

Does the fact that you can sing an obscure bit of poetry make it better somehow than reading it in a book? Maybe it does. Maybe someone should set The Maximus Poems to a nice backbeat, mix in a heavy bass line and some nice guitar licks. I bet if a successful artist did that and didn't call any attention to the fact, beyond the essential permission notice buried in the credits, we'd have people all over the world singing Olson.

The troubled sleep was a paraphrasing of Ezra Pound who said the same thing about the classics being taught.

I have certainly had my share of troubled sleep, but I am as likely to have it troubled by something I am working on as anything else. I'll be so intensely focused on a poem or song that some part of me can't let it go long enough to rest. I wish I was romanticizing this, and I never used to have this problem, but it definitely happens now. Also, I have often found sleep to be a source of creativity. I was trying to catch up on missed sleep from last night with a nap this afternoon and woke up with the phrase along the lines of "the devil is going to get his." I don't know what this means, but for some reason I attached it to the current conflict between Russia and Georgia. Sleep can indeed be an escape.

In times of most intense stress from the world at large I seem to be able to sleep. I think perhaps my mind is trying to escape the stress.

I hope you don't mind if I keep hammering away at this idea of the singular. My experience is that we are in a state of constant change. My self, what "I" am seems to change to adapt constantly to circumstances. So, I find it difficult it locate a singular self. I have an ego of course, an inflated one too much of the time, but I think of that as something like a device for asserting one's presence in the world, and a very crude one at that. It's necessary, but temporal and shouldn't be taken too seriously. I think that one of the origins of our idea of self lies in monotheism.

When Moses asks who is speaking form the burning bush the voice comes back "I am." There's that singular I. As western culture developed around monotheism we also see popes, kings, and so on represent themselves as the presence of God on earth. The presence of the God. Your work seems so varied - you write poetry and songs of all kinds, you do all manner of visual art. Even your recent series of films seems the product of many selves, not a single individual. So I'm puzzled. Can you help me to understand how all of this happens from a singular identity?

Chris Mansel: I keep going back to Georges Bataille, he wrote, "Me, I exist." It is pounded into us that we are all good and evil, but we are all singular, just one man or woman. My story, The Savage Tale of Walter Seems tells the tale of a journalist who has multiple personalities. One is a journalist, one is a killer, and yet another is a holy man.

Perhaps that role of monotheism is in all of us and that is where it comes from. Perhaps the burning bush was talking back to Moses in his mind. Maybe we hear what we want to hear. It would account for the many readings of the same text and the many different versions of worship. We understand more about the chemicals in the brain now than we did then.

How this happens from a singular identity is in my opinion like The Neophyte by Durer. Maybe we are like the fresh young scholar surrounded by the more experienced and as we get older we learn to how to utilize them. But again we are all one mind. As I get older my writing and my films will become better and other artistic endeavors will become apparent.

I'd like to ask you a question I asked Neeli Cherkovski in my interview with him. I wonder if you have a favorite artist or painter and what brought about this opinion?

Jake Berry: It would be impossible to single out anything like a favorite artist. I'm reading, listening, learning all the time from new artists. There's a list at: http://www.myspace.com/jakeberry16.

If you mean painters only the list is just as long. The earliest art yet unearthed is every bit the equal to the "great masters," though I love DaVinci, all the Renaissance north and south, art from all the ancients, everything that isn't just pure commercial crap. I can't get enough of art of whatever kind. I feel the same way about philosophy, history and science. There's so much to see, hear and learn that it's frustrating knowing there will not be enough time to see it all.

Recent developments in the cognitive sciences reveal that our behavior, our emotions and thoughts, are associated with electrochemical activity in the brain. This leads back into the old debates about self-determination. To what extent are we able to make individual decisions? Or is everything we can feel or know or do the result of chemicals in the brain, their transmitters and receptors, responding to external stimulus and biological predispositions?

Chris Mansel: Any mapping of the human mind surely would include a descent into hell. As for individual decisions we must prey upon ourselves like rabid dogs and weigh the consequences but finally whether we receive council from others or not we are the Emperor in his new clothes draped in the blood of the designer and his minions. We are the final word unless we are someone without honor or purpose. A dog will follow a bone only as long as the scent or the desire allows unless you beat him to do so. As someone who suffers unimaginable headaches I can hereby say that the chemical imbalance is that descent into hell with no poet's way out, no guide to soften the rough waters. The transmitters click off and on I believe but in a situation of intense pain I believe that like a damaged nerve they simply shut down. I can only speak for myself and truthfully in the ways of science, just my belief but I tend towards the belief that hell and its torments are in the mind and its pain I feel on an occasional basis.

[Editor’s Note: Many thanks for this incredible journey through the creative mind, from the depths of Dante’s Inferno to the skies of liminal splendor. These artists are creating bridges to new worlds and new contexts that redefine the human experience and every journey they take reveals new portals, new roads or new ways of seeing and believing. Those of us who value the creative process envy and thank them, along with the adventurers who came before and will inevitably follow. Many returns. Jazz.]
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