A cœur vaillant, rien d'impossible!
(A valiant heart, nothing is impossible!)

LES JEUNES NOUVEAU

by Ian Rage

In the wee hours of a quiet summer morning in 1894, the fin-de-siècle movement, Les Jeunes (“The Young”), was born in the city of San Francisco. Artists Gelett Burgess and brothers Bruce and Robert Porter toppled the self-erected cast iron statue of teetotaling civic demagogue, Dr. Henry Cogswell, (from novelist Frank Norris’ McTeague infamy) off its pedestal on Market Street. Far from being some mindless, adolescent prank, this seminal act of iconoclasm became a harbinger for knocking hypocritical Victoriana square on its collective ass.

For masterminding the pre-dawn hi jinx, Burgess was summarily dismissed from his faculty post at the University of California, Berkeley. But, there was no time for tears. Instead, Burgess and Bruce Porter promptly launched the première edition of The Lark—a publication whose sole purpose was satiric anarchy. Contributors soon included architect Willis Polk, artists Florence Lundborg and Ernest Peixotto, poet Yone Noguchi and writings from the estate of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Despite a brief life of only two years, The Lark’s whimsical style and spirited attacks on pomposity swiftly won favor in the hearts and minds of literary San Franciscans. The popularity of The Lark was such that the always au courant Teddy Roosevelt shouted out recitations of Burgess’ pre-Dadaist/absurdest poem, The Purple Cow, between affairs of state (and otherwise) at the White House.

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one
~ Gelett Burgess

One hundred years have past since the days of Les Junes. On the eve of the millennium, The Lark’s two years or even Warhol’s “fifteen minutes of fame” manifesto seem to be undergoing a myopic compression of time and space. Such dimensions are now measured in non-linear, sub-microeconomic terms like nanoseconds and angstrom units. Our world is rapidly on the threshold of critical mass. Our infinite wisdom creates an information society and feeds it gigabytes of vacuous waste ad nauseam. Suddenly, “Who’s on first?” is completely inadequate. The real question is “Where is home?”

In this time of crusades to unholy lands and flag waving bravura, there are still some tiny bands of misguided malcontents naively adhering to the notion that minority voices can make real impacts. Perhaps, home is a non-nuclear family? Could there really have been tribal communalism a million years before frozen TV dinners and Floppy Pop? And if so, what is the connection between the wall paintings of Lescaux and MTV?

In relative terms, the recognition of global survival may perhaps steer human cultures to look at the future in less prosaic eyes and to realize today’s sacred cows are destined to be tomorrow’s USDA inspected, 100% all beef patties. For the Home of the Whopper® is the planet earth. It is not just a parallel world or fantasy dimension of some overpaid crazy, high on martinis and uppers in some Madison Avenue executive suite. Understanding that that media spawned reality is as much our reality somehow juxtaposes the past with the future and suffuses it into a present, where isolation and alienation are not mere tokens, but actual identity badges for everyday survival.

Our identities are being strip mined from us daily as we willingly submit to torturous rigors unknown by previous generations. Our barbarous past pales in comparison to what is becoming the new reality. And, guided by the push of a button, the prospect of an even more barbarous future looms through an uncertain haze of Capital Hill folly and Wall Street hubris - both fueled by the vapor trails of tax payer bought martini lunches.

We are rapidly losing our humanity. We will soon be less sentient creatures than the machines we create. And, why not? We are HAL. We are Commander Data. SONY is not just consumer electronic gadgets or a global corporation destined to rule the planet. It is you and I. After all, who plugs in whom? Who makes the choices?

So, pull up an easy chair in the glow of your fractal fire, find your drug of choice and hear the soothing voice of Guy Lombardo crooning into the dawn of a new millennium. After all, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s later than it seems and we’re already here. Welcome to the Brave New Order. And, have a nice day. ☻

Copyright © 1991 by Timothy Johnson. All rights reserved.

Dark Comforts

Are you not the poet who rages at heaven's hope to find a universe all in the name of truth and love? Do you not whisper tenderly to those who care when the sun rises? This is what I ask the waning moon and stars amid fading jet black skies. Perhaps it is you... for love is a mistress who only gives away her secrets to hearts unwavering and thirsts unquenched.

McRave: How Greed Killed the Techno-Acid Test

by Ian Rage

. . . For the man in the suit has just bought a new car from the profits he’s made on your dreams . .. from Low Spark of the High Heeled Boys, Traffic, Island Records © 1970.

It seemed innocent enough. When English kids headed outdoors dancing under the moon to the sounds of remixed American house music in the late 1980’s, it could be seen as a backlash against the repressive dullness of Thatcherism. Along the line, someone decided to throw in a little ecstasy and more kids started showing up. Before long, thousands made the scenes.

Eventually, the media created a tempest-in-a-teapot firestorm of middle class disapproval. In it's official response, Parliament and Thatcher had little choice but to crush the burgeoning movement by declaring it a public menace. Privately, they couldn't give a damn. But, by calling in the air cavalry to assist the local law enforcement and flushing these underground raves, as they came to be known, out of the wilds and into the hands of mainstream promoters, the government hedged its bets with an overblown show of conservative zeal. This was the death knell blow to the rave scene in the U.K.

Big bucks snuffed out the English rave.

Not coincidentally, the rave phenomenon washed upon the shores of America a little more than a year ago. Like a message in a bottle, disciples from the UK imported the rave to the greenest pasture of them all - California. If money rotted the rave scene out of England, American promoters, with their predatory instincts, should bastardize the concept beyond recognition in record time.

American youth are typically ripe for most “waves” or invasions of British pop culture. Sprinkle in a little West Coast hippie nostalgia, a few heaping doses of ecstasy, a couple of gigabytes of high tech nonsense suited for brains softened from too much exposure to MTV and a few years of George Bush’s “Son of Voodoo” economics and voila! The Second Coming of the Sixties is upon us! Or is it the Saturday Night Fever Seventies revisited? It’s difficult to sort out at times.

The Nineties’ Ravers’ styles are a television and pop culture inspired potpourri of the past three decades. The influences run the gamut from Dr. Seuss to The Monkees to Sesame Street to Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers. Specifically, it is this lack of its own original cultural identity, which makes less discerning ravers susceptible to commercial exploitation by certain promoters. This naive and unsuspecting target market are sacrificial lambs jumping for the proverbial knife as these eagle eyed hucksters, frauds, charlatans, con men, scammers, grifters, street hustlers and back alley boobies stop at nothing to scavenge the dumpsters of pop memorabilia knowing how to polish a turd, wrap a pretty bow on their slick package and call it a diamond. (See Rave Nader’s Rave Alert! piece.)

The rapid acceptance of raves into American culture has far transcended its humble roots. From the great outdoors and underground warehouses, promoters are now talking about “corporate policies” to “spread the faith.” In classic Nineties’ doublespeak, words like “communalism” are intermixed with plans to organize and replicate similar buku bucks multimedia extravaganzas in other cities. Given the recent explosion of news media coverage, the monster box office potential (SF’s Toon Town allegedly took down $175,000 on New Year’s Eve at $30.00 a pop) and the integration of Silicon Valley gimmicks, it seems obvious to some observers that this latest hybrid of the rave is to be expected.

But, just how can these cyber-lounge shows be viewed as anything less than mutant yuppieism in Haight Street drag? For in the land that spawned the Disney version of reality (VR, natch) and fast food chains, “new and improved” raves should not only be expected, but, are in fact the ideological conclusion of a society whose footprints have been long since washed away from the sandy beach of time at an alarming rate. And, the mind reels, with thoughts of the franchising premiums to be made in the Japanese after market which is hot, hot, hot for anything with America’s social imprimatur. Yes. Local rave promoters are already planning to open in Tokyo within months. Bonzai all the way to the bank, baby!

So, as perversely bizarre as this twisted type of logic would translate to most, corporate decisions to franchise hamburger stands and alternatively spawned underground social gatherings are apparently not a distinctly disparate process, but rather, prefabbed on the same assembly line. Or so, at least, thought Orwell and Huxley. Who knows? Perhaps, there even might be future Ray Krocs, Sir Jimmy Goldsmiths or Henry Fords in our midst. But, more than likely, these rising monopolistic titans of the scene will resemble the Boeskys’ and Milkens’ ilk. Judging from the bad vibes at their events, being pioneers in cyber/social experimentation is for them just another day at the office. More to the point, corporate America has a new look. Eschewing pin stripes and wingtips as Eighties’ anachronisms, Generation X can now proudly don its own uniform of funky hats, bad haircuts, tattoos by numbers, pierced noses and Doc Martin boots, while schlepping off to the vault.

One can only wonder, “What is really in those so-called smart drinks?”



Copyright © 1991 by Timothy Johnson. All rights reserved.

Category-5

The phone rings and it's Chuck. Come up for dinner? Sure, no problem. I'm on the way. The first storm of the year builds off shore. Category-5 typhoon just inundated the Philippines. Villages buried under mud. People swept away in floods. Upgraded to a Super Typhoon -- whatever the hell that is. Fisherman in the South China Sea call them daaih-fùng or big winds. But it doesn't sound good in any language. A nasty business these big winds. Anybody's guess what lies in store for us. But it's dark and ugly. That much I know.

Batching it is never quite as desperate as it sounds. Chuck turns out a respectable meal with a modicum of flair every time. We eat some spicy vegan concoction and wash it down with a fine red wine. It seems many of the local farmers are in a bit of a jam. By waiting for that one last week of sunshine to fatten up their pot gardens, they are now perilously close to being royally screwed and losing it all from a monsoon three weeks early and now only hours away. So the calls go out to friends and friends of friends to jump in with both feet and lend a hand in finishing the harvest.

One kid literally stepped out of his battered Toyota Forerunner 12-hours ago a complete stranger without any ties to the community or any reasons for local job prospects. For bailing out my farmer neighbor, he walked away with about three pounds of the exotically named Afghanigoo. The sweetly pungent, sticky buds will move at $20 per gram back in his hometown of Phoenix. The 453 grams in a pound will bring in a staggering nine grand on the street in Arizona. Multiply that little stash times three and it's not bad for a day's work. No wonder he's grinning from ear to ear as though he's just won the biggest lotto in history. But, I don't blink an eye. What's given away locally as a neighborly gesture is nothing short of a major crime where he comes from. All it takes is for some sad sack to have the misfortune of a run in with a redneck deputy in the Grand Canyon state and they might be staring at a ten-year stretch in a federal pen for interstate narcotics trafficking. Some may say, changes in latitudes - changes in attitudes. I say, pure and utter insanity.

The sky continues to darken over a night cap of aged single malt scotch. Thank god, neither Chuck nor I have a green thumb much less the inclination to ever consider driving across the desert and into the arms of trigger happy Arizona rangers. I'll take my chances with a northern California storm. As the first big drops splatter across my windshield, I pull into my driveway with yet another new appreciation for the sounds of a howling wind through the trees and the crackling roar of a fire waiting inside.

Doesn't it always feel good to be home?

Cheese Steak

I'll do better next time. I swear to God. I know I can. Sweetie, you know how I feel about you. You're the only one for me. Of course you are! What -- you don't believe me? How could you say those kinds of things? All right. Maybe I do come across a little like that sometimes. What's that? You really mean that? But, I thought -- wait a minute -- let me check this other call -- Hello. Oh, baby. Could you hold the line just for a minute, let me get rid of this other call. Right. I'll be back in a sec -- Hi sweetie. Oh, some telemarketers. Listen, fix yourself up 'cuz I'm comin' over right now to take you out to dinner. Of course, I mean it. Oh baby, you know your the only one for me. Gotta run if we're gonna make it to the restaurant on time. Hurry up! Love you, too! -- Hi baby...what's that you say. Of course, your the only girl for me!

Around the Next Bend

Dear true friend,

I feel your heart with my soul. I listen to your words with my eyes. I, too, hang on to those beliefs that others long to have abandoned before they realize never having discovered them to begin with...for it is the journey within the heart that one traces the path to the soul... and it is by far the longest, frequently most perilous and often loneliest journey of all.

Many years ago I re-entered the temple of my personal vision quest alone, hurt and bewildered by fate's course. I sought to absolve my past, live fully in my present and rekindle my future. Soon thereafter -- and to the astonished disbelief of many who feigned having known me -- I became a father, a husband, a provider and inherited a part of myself previously unexpected. It was a brilliantly perfect time for I shall always relish the unexpurgated simplicity of life on its own terms.

It was later I rediscovered that when we walk into the flames it only burns for an instant before we are released. Into what I cannot say with any degree of certaintly. I only know that in the moment of surrender, we are reborn with a new life --- free from the baggage and bondage that holds us back from ourselves -- and with no plans other than to be fully alive in the exact moment.

Living in real time is what it is all about and always has been for some.

It is precisely in that moment that we live our lives in a state of blissful elation. Without preconceptions or contrivances, there are no expectations or disappointments. We experience absolute freedom to become whatever it is we are in our dreams. It is only when we attempt to mark our time that we become aware of its passage. And, by crossing an imaginary line with that passage comes a sense of loss. Opportunities never seized. Dreams never realized. Promises never kept. Relationships never fulfilled. A life never lived. A shadow creeps from overhead ushering a sadness unlike any we have ever known. Life's joys are diminished. We are overwhelmed by darkness and despair. We feel anxiety. We experience depression. We become listless and lost. By the time we hit rock bottom, we are practically marking the days on the calendar like a death row inmate awaiting the executioner. Much like aboriginal "dream time", the concept of linear time is foreign to some and when imposed upon them, ultimately, fatal.

We are taught that lives without measure are failed in themselves. But, from whom or what do we view those virtuous examples of existences? And, for what purpose do we examine such trivialities -- other than to satisfy others? And, just who are these "others" that we sacrifice all that is precious in our own existences to appease?

I believe the answer is absolutely no one. For many, the moment of truth is to distort who they are by allowing external influences determine precisely whom they have actually become. They become trapped in a hall of mirrors which conceals their real identities from themselves. They have lost their perspective, balance and judgment. They are uncertain as to who they truly are for they have lost their sense of self.

What a paralyzing predicament. To be at the cross road of one's life, completely freeze in the middle of the intersection and be run down by an oncoming bus with anyone other than yourself behind the wheel is patently absurd. By taking your foot off the gas, tapping the brakes to supply air in the hydraulics and pulling to a stop along the side of the road, one can open the door, get off the fucking bus and walk away from the whole kit and kaboodle. Oh yeah. You're behind the wheel of your own bus. That person who looks like you in the cross walk is just the imposter that you've allowed others to convince you that you've become wandering aimlessly across a busy thoroughfare!

Of course, that person is no one that you or I actually know. It could be any one, including ourselves, but more than likely it never seems to be us. However, while the view of the road from a higher focal point might allow us to see further ahead, it doesn't change the outcome of the final destination. Sure, we ride in a little more comfort. But, the road doesn't really change on our way to where we are going. Only our perception of the ride itself.

And, in the end, all we usually do is readjust the rear view mirror and keep our eyes focused on the road ahead. Isn't our ultimate stop always just out of sight and around the next bend?