Keep A Suitcase Under Your Bed, Just In Case They Come For You
Note: This short story is a portrayal of what area artists have told me, for when the commercializers arrive to cash-in on the ideas of people they aren't interested in, it's supposedly time to find somewhere else to create art: Remember, if you get started, comfortable enough to develop a secure communication between yourself and your medium, be careful: If you're subculture, I Heart Radio will serve as a wonderful filter all to keep "commie subculture" from flourishing anywhere in the United States. Amusing too. So many excellent art, letters, and popular music in Great Britain. Why? Because the British actually support independent arts and letters and popular music. Clearly the British government is far more sophisticated and understanding than "deemed necessary" in a conventional American culture that rarely produces anything groundbreaking. Social coercion--ostracism, ridicule, control, limitations--all that crap undermine the Bill of Rights.
No, Stan was OK. Like many in a discombobulated bob-job of a world, the once-almost-famous hiptster found himself transmogrified as if by magic. There, after all the complaints about wanting to be invisible and not part of some dumb game called commercialism, he found his watch cap up there in an Oregon town he privately and quietly renamed Frezona somehow had cache.
That's correct. Sam became, like Kafka, the embodiment of a 40-hour day job--with benefits for kind of being hip: a slacker professional who gigs 40+ hours five days a week but also drinks from a rad aluminium or steel thermos a special blend of cappuccino he designed by hand, otherwise known as a Breville Barista Touch Impress Stainless Steel at $999 with a special feature, a Puck System that, indeed, allowed Stan to compress coffee grounds "like a bitch".
In other words, the ex-hipster had seemingly died to the magic, and with that alternative way of perishing,had become your usual saint, alternatively, In a phrase.
Primordial, deep-yet-sardonically comical resurrection of Soupy Sales. Soupy. A comedian who inevitably ended his TV show with a 1950s era pie in the face. yeah, yeah. Lunch With Soupy Sales, the children's show.
Something Stan had never seen, but had heard all about from an oldie: some white dude, potentially hippiefied, then converted into yet another garden gnome, long beard and all. Yet somehow, Stan, even after that experience on the sidewalk, in a conversation with the aging hippie, where he learned "hippie" began as a derogatory label designed to laugh on and on about boring people all over poetry and jazz way back when Ginsberg and Corso inhabited the Beat world like jokers in a clown show. Hipster: Hippie. And then Garden Gnome, all serious-like and waiting for a train to arrive.
Behind the scenes, where hipsters-gone-bad slip into Web development, and thus end up as one- or two-man Halloween festivals of light banter over the possibilities of at home hallucinogenic bananas like in the Sixties, but updated: a mix and match reality he and a friend with chemical cred had designed to match rave reality in a beat-up tear-down-to-be where the good guys have mixed Gerber Banana Pudding baby food with ketamine and a dash of hash.
Banana Peel, as Stan termed the object of creation, didn't sell well. But as an avocation, it did amount to something to do.
Or his 'zine, The Cigarette--with bogus articles about the conduction of divination by listening to stray car alarms, counting the honks, and then deciding if the numerology thereof, combined with what's on Public Rado, could result in a choice: Which techno rave to crash on a Tuesday afternoon in the sun.
Or his feature article, issue 5, "Dose And Don'ts". Meanwhile, a little like Clark Kent becoming superhuman in a telephone booth, Stan did try to recover his past: an article documenting "Black Flight", an underground phenomenon that always seemed to occur when "The March of the MBAs" sent all sorts of realistic-but-poor individuals to the four winds in a "there goes the neighborhood" kind of way.
Or a big splash for a 'zine: "How To Become An Ionized Billionaire"or how to find permanent change by subtracting electrons from one's personality. Add to that this: a summary rejection of the negative ions known to kill airborne viruses and bacteria and also stabilize depressives from the horror of the quotidian mood swing.
"The Cigarette Premiers The Advent of Country Metal--Industrial Noise And Honky Tonk, All Of It Ready For TV".
Special feature: Stan's poetry. Another stone in a big puddle but still pretty good: several unearthly takes on haiku and broken sonnets (Stan's invention) titled this:
"My Life As A Neon Cow Pasture".
And remembrances. That guy he knew as Hanger On, an eccentric and possible acid-casualty who liked to pretend--in bars, at clubs, even on the streets or holding office in the park--pretend that Fonzie from "Happy Days" is a real person who is currently in a drug rehabilitation center "designed for Vespa enthusiasts".
That one got five letters in reader responses. In 'zine culture, that's an avalanche. All seemed to be angry reactions, but Stan could tell: Many of the more insane verbiage pointed to a response equally pretense.
Pretense is what "it's all about" now, Stan told his buddies.
Articles such as a detailed and front-page feature about an emotionally dysfunctional rapid-cycling episode of a Bipolar consumer affairs officer who happened to have pawned his Furry costume at a spot near upper class suburban housing, but also the district of dope houses, door supplies, and auto parts sculpture.
Went over like the godhead on a roll.
The Cigarette. It's motto?
"Just Do It Became Just Buy It".
A hit. People bought that 'zine simply for its outrageousness--and verve.
A man (and woman) on the street interview series titled, "WhoaTube or WoeTube". Where everything is sacred in a "post-a-priori way".
Exactly. After the ethic of a priori or knowing about developments before anyone else is even aware of them had given way, according to the men (and women) on the streets, to something that comes after the a priori experience and braggadocio; something like, "That's old, buddy, and we're no sprng chickens!"
"The Female Brain: The Lyricism of a Feminine Brain Bouncing On A Bed In An Elite Hotel Room At Mid-Morning". Indeed! On-the-spot reportage. The veritable roar of the crowd.
The Cigarette did grow a while--a little like an expectant mother who then realizes her gig is up and simply leaves town, though, it did eventually crash like a malware-ridden PC without a security system.
But who cares, right? Even when Stan began to get an anxious feeling he had been circling back to the Beats, he'd tell the roaring crowd to eat nothing but starch and cotton candy "for as long as it takes" to convince the zombies, the wolves, the interruptors and interlocutors who always grab up the latest trends and commercialize the very Devil Himself out of them like Wonder Bread's wonder and what the wonder is told to have said.
COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTION: "Buy now our super whopper mismatched style straight outta Portland via Paris, London. Shirt and pants combos that do not match at all. Now only $95.99 Come and Get It!"
What could anyone say? The very instant it seemed that Stan had developed something new in terms of subculture--BLAMO! Right there on TV!
Stan, crestfallen, felt used. That's when the eviction notice arrived. What? Stan'd been paying his rent. And this?
The reasoning for the eviction amounted to this: The Gentry need new digs, and the Gentry are "so much" creative as to be mysteriously absent from subculture. Tear-down coming soon.
The typical question marks marked Stan's invisibility even more. Or so he felt. Any artistic-minded barista, clerk, cashier, grocery sacker has got to move on--even after he (or she) has settled into a close communication with a medium.
Don't worry...
COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! "Are you wishing you could become more creative? Try this new breakthru! CreataMed! May cause heads to explode, possible contusions on skin as manifest by broken bones, blood clots, expenses at our new and very private healthcare contact line!
Sounds good. Move on. The Lords of Commerce need to make room for STEM-dependence in order to promote productivity in a country with the highest productivity rate in the entire world. Wait. Why not just check out completely. The world is a motel. A breezy one. Pay by the night or by the week--every single individual has public choice! Ain't it grand?
No, socialism was out of the question. All that would happen would be some sort of skull-crushing competiton to shut out what amounted to only a different way of producing goods and services. Not happenin'. Not now, not ever.
COMMERCIAL BREAKTHRU! "It's Nite 'N You Got Nowhere. To go? Or special Uber Delivery? You have LIBERTY! Be stylish! Join today! The International Association of Anti-Collective Activity has a spot to fit anyone's size. Donate $47,000,000.89 now! Get you this trippin' groovy teeshirt to show your friends!
All right. Stan looked out the window of the ramshackle spot he'd called home, and looked around. Nothing but real estate. So many cars that at least the oil industry is gettin' paid nicely. Shiny buildings up everywhere. What to do?
If you can't beat them, join their campaign to destroy culture here, and everywhere. Stan decided to drop out of subculture, and some of his managers and bosses at the firm smiled, patted him on the back and one even said, "It's good to know you've decided to grow up!"
Last article on The Cigarette? "Please Under Stan!"
"Dr. Livingstone I presume..."
posted by Faceshaker at 8:19 AM
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