“You’re a bit too… big picture.” a professor once told me.

With little access to the viral world and little time to proof read, here is my grandiose, crass, passion driven assessment of our current state.

 

I have currently been on the road for a little over a month. I’ve been frequenting collectives and squats with passionately conscious individuals bumbling around the randomness of each day. Being the “visitor” in these environments often leads to us venturing around the entire town, outside of radical spaces into dominant venues. One stark difference from one world to the other is how meaningful the vocabulary is.
For example, in Portland there is a giant installation of a tripod industrial structure holding a gigantic dandelion seed appearing as though the structure is ready to plant the seed for rebirth. It says on a plaque something along the lines of the structure representing the ingenuity of the city to become “more green”. Now many would probably pass the structure and feel warmth and pride for their city… Maybe… I mean from my perspective hopefully not, but in reality it probably most often goes unnoticed if only the slight residue of subconscious imprinting. But it represents to me the epitome of mixed messages. How could a giant metal structure in the middle of a concrete jungle ever represent any sort of ecological advancement towards harmoniously coexisting with our surrounding land bases? It does do one thing though, which may more so be the objective of the creator, if not the fundraiser of the installation. It convoluted and blurs the lines between industrialization and permaculture or any sort of sustainable reality. It creates false solutions and imprints images of man-made bullshit as progress. There is another giant metal dandelion seed in the middle of the metropolitan atrocity that is San Francisco. Perhaps on a satyric level it represents the detachment of civilization… :cough: Let’s be optimistic. Either way, in all of these collective houses I’ve visited from Detroit to San Diego, compost means compost. It actually means rebirth. From the kitchen to the back yard to the fruits of our labor back to the kitchen.
We see this everywhere though don’t we? These mixed messages often passed off as clever marketing or “morale building”. We also market interpersonal. A lot of times when I am introduced to someone through someone else because we share the title “artist” I am actually introduced to a graphic designer who knows very little or cares very little about the sensual elements of a brush stroke but a ton about the cold calculated technology of computer code.  Artists used to discuss the practical romance of this earth’s elements crushed down to mind-blowing pigments from many of the same plants and minerals that heal us Now we hear about the latest program available to make an individual the most competitive image creator. If were lucky the best we hear is how to pirate these programs to make the accessible to a smidge more people than those with continuously new macs and very dead souls. But it’s marketable!
We exist in a symphony of robotics.
(que anti-primitivist dialogue)
No. This is not the feeble ramblings of a primitivist. This is a set up to show how we are a society of buzz words and it all pans out to “occupy wall street”.
The “royal we”(as many I love would say) is fed up officially(apparently), so many articles profess it. LA declares it wants to ” wake up in the city that never sleeps”. San Francisco demonstrates the magnitude of their concern by actually burning 20 dollar bills on a corner where no one can see but the participants. We scream at each other in all of the sound bite ways we’ve learned resistance.
“It’s just like the google image I pulled up of the 60’s on my iPhone!”
We consume this revolutionary energy with a matching handbag and some fries. Hell, throw in a kombucha from whole foods, it’ll be refreshing as we sit in our non-confrontational tents.
Now, although I often relish in criticism, making art of the snarky critique. I don’t find comfort here. I just want to point out how this co opting of our fury could and in many ways is dismantling us. One can not even google the word occupy and get reference to a legitimate occupation where participants are actually placing themselves on the line and not demonstrating resistance with tokenized arrests and viral clips of conflict that is a theatrical representation of a very small portion of what is actually happening. We, the domesticated we, the hyped up suburbanite, have no giants shoulders to reference even though there are currently thousands of breath-taking giants all over this world resisting in ways we here in the united states can not even dream.

The police state wont allow it.
“How do we get the masses to listen… To wake up?!”
To which I cackle, ” Fuck you masses. I’m sick of your half hearted bullshit.”

Sitting by the side of the train tracks drinking malt liquor with another group of random traveling folks with only a sleeping bag and crusted socks to show for ourselves, words hold meaning sometimes. As the Amtrak passenger train rolls by with only people who can afford a ticket and prefer a quick exchange of paper for comfort, the a hand full of strangers scream, “because fuck them that’s why!” causing me to choke on my tequila a bit. I am in Santa Barbara for goodness sake. Perhaps these people know the song, perhaps the song came from the thoughts we’re all tapping into. The familiarity of the sentiment proved to be comforting either way.
There is no get-conscious-quick scheme here. You do not get your revolution with a 401k on the side. Occupy is not another word for party or party line so get your fucking politics out of any possible insurrection that may manifest. Wall street is not a group of individuals to target. Wall street is a facet of a system we created that is sucking the blood from our veins and dumping it into our rivers next to our corporate smog and our slaughtered wildlife. Let these words not be misconstrued. This country will know the definition of occupy one day, but for the love of any minuscule thing we have left to call sacred this is not it. Reference Greece! Where the cops are held to the bullshit dialogue they preach by the non remorseful hands of the plenty! Where networks pop up and are executed through word of mouth because there is finally a group of people who won’t trust the malicious puppet strings of media! Reference Egypt! Reference Georgia( The country, come on now)! Reference Palestine! And get off of this “We could be the 60’s” bullshit. We don’t want to be the 60’s. I don’t want to be the 60’s. That tide broke prematurely if the wave made impact at all and it was a wave of colonizers not occupiers. “Occupy” has a definition to be lived up to. It is not only the tainted slaughter of this land and the beings who occupied it before us. It is our reclamation!
We don’t want to be co-opted! I don’t want to be co opts! I will not play charades with this inaccurate verbiage. There is no compromise here! I will not bargain my son’s or my own future with a government and society of selfish crooks. Fuck your college, masses and fuck your careers! Fuck dialogue with wall street!

Dialogue with the damn earth and humans who surround you. It is stylishly profound, ha.
Occupy means redefining the use of a space for purposes holistic to those who frequent it. So occupy those ridiculous homes we’ve built that are empty 40 to 60 hours a week because acquiring capital has become more important than experiencing. NOT because wall street bamboozled you! We have only bamboozled ourselves. Occupy the innumerable foreclosed homes and abandoned high rises, apartment homes and strip malls. Occupy these bullshit colleges full of professors who masturbate on the prospects of the hierarchies they bring to reality. There are levels of people affected here and the levels that have been affected on levels more intense than this ideological blubbering are already creating alternate realities. Listen to that. Educate yourselves and stop pre-“occupy”ing yourself with illusionary comforts like pensions and investments and resumes and careers. Actually learn how to survive.

If any of these demonstrators actually meant to occupy or cause unrest amongst this mockery of human interaction we call society, we all would’ve quit our jobs too and only put our energy towards endeavors that actually support and rebuild each other.  We would take time to actually care for ourselves and not waste away being the leaders or spokes-peoples of “movements”. We would be making common dialogue we can all understand rather than manipulative phrases… and we are. “We” in a more personal sense. There are networks everywhere already. This group of individuals that inhabit this chunk of land are creating alternatives. There are venues that allow people to experience the radical reality that is wilderness or what we have left that resembles such a notion. I travel this land finding solace in homes of people who barely know me or don’t know me at all, but realize that the risk of “getting to know me” is more important than the safety of choosing not to. Stick to our networks. Stick to resistance that isn’t co-opted through a catch phrase. Acknowledge that what we are currently seeing as “occupy this or that” is constructed and packaged and we need to dumpster this energy.

 

Occupy your fucking life and live it. Trust me, “wall street” will be pissed.

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