Original title on Indymedia report: X-country Crucial Arts Direct Actionist Blasts Grand Rapids three times
by Carlos rare bird, o.O.
intro:
With over 12 cities and towns under his belt, starting at a pow wow in Portland, Oregon, a lone x-country direct actionist has found a way to meaningfully blast coerced "reality" by daring past
his/others' fears and general feelings of powerlessness and apathy. Informally derailing and "depth charging" the public with a creative technique of reaching out, he made "a radical statement" beyond "The Same Old Again" of Generica and Mundania, outside the experience of the war-stuck imagination of strategic social controllers (and their formalized implimenters), and inside the private or partly-daring desires of suffering people everywhere!
intro to general method and style speakin and sharing (includes signs used) daring to be poetree the depth charge first action past fear memorable connections second action: GR Art Fest soldiers called cops someone i knew video crew third action: Three Fires Pow Wow intro to why i dared regalia the action sobriety march entrance first champion second champion, gifts, and dance into more depth teepee dweller second gifting someone i knew after notes
images of my masque and signs and general style:
Two more photos:
Another shot
and one of the day-glo signs (with a John Trudell quote)
Full Story:
Grand Rapids, a normally quite dismal Michigan city of maybe 300,000 where truly liberatory
ideas have long been driven underground, alternative media blocked, and public access to ideas
beyond the religious and corporate networks highly controlled (1).
So it was that a lone "crucial artist" dared beyond conditioned fears to hike *THREE different
times* in this city in order to seed, spread, and blaze a trail of the kind of creativity and
excellence that only a handful of radicals seem capable of comprehending the value of so far (outside of traditinal indigenous communities, anyways). In
the tradition of the African griot, the Native American cocapelli or Heyoka, the religious prophet
Johnny Appleseed, or even eccentric street interactors like Grandpa Woodstock, this half-crazed
"weirdo champion" art-doer has worked overtime, through more than twelve cities and towns and other
communities across the u.s.a. to get his quite provocative statements out!
The first action spanned more than six hours and a walking distance of at least 12 miles! The second, a few weeks later, for about 4 hours on the last day of the city's annual 3-day "Arts Festival" downtown. The third, a week after that, of a total distance of about 7 walking miles, with a main focus on the annual "Three Fires Pow Wow" held at Riverside Park.
"REALIZE THE VALUE OF BEING RADICALLY BEAUTIFUL WITH EACH OTHER"
"DARE TO ART YOUR HEART" (not shared at Pow Wow)
"DARE TO PRESERVE YOUR WILD DEPTH--Dare to see this as your very own ticket to Loving Living" (not shared at Pow Wow)
shared more privately, but not at Pow Wow:
"WAR AT HOME & ABROAD IS PERPETUATED BY WAR SYSTEMS INCULCATING ALL YOUNG INTO A PLETHORA OF WAR
MINDSETS"
Shared only before, during, and after Pow Wow action:
"OUR FEAR, OUR LIVES, IT ALL WORKS ON HOW WE BELIEVE"--quote by John Trudell
"DEACTIVATE THE EXTERNAL PREDATOR ENERGY THRU OUR PERCEPTION OF IT WITHIN OUR OWN MIND-SET"--another Trudell quote
And, under an art peice that was "all lines": "TO COLLABORATE WITH THOSE WHO DARE. TO INSPIRE EACH OTHER! ANYWAY, i WILL STILL LEARN FROM YOUR REFLECTION"
Finally: "THOUGHT CONTROL IS TO SOCIETY WHAT VIOLENCE IS TO TYRANNY" (basically a Chomsky quote, deepened)
Also strategically passed out at least twenty copies of an article about post-Left anarchy, by Jason McQuinn (didn't pass this out during the Pow Wow action tho).
Prancing and strolling, defying categorical-isms and expec-tations, passing out my depth charge flyers, jiu-jitsuing the spectacle to most --"What, you're really not selling anything?" --"What, you're REALLY not some religious fundamentalist?" --"What, you're really not representing some fishy organization?"Hot out, so my walk becomes like "a Sweat". A mobile *Sweat Lodge* of sorts; doing "The Sweat of Everyday Life" with indigenous imagination mixed together with the gist of Raoul Vaneigem's "Revolution of Everyday Life".
Not seeking mediated mention in mainscream war "News" ("the revolution will not be televised"); i make it a point to avoid and not cooperate with professional mediators seeking to reduce depth to a set of value assumptions called "a story", if i can help it, preferring to escape that paradigm as much as i feel possible, and let it ferment independently, either completely informally or in the IMC project (i.e. chicago.indymedia.org).
Not merely creating yet "new" empty spectacle for "consumer" "entertainment" addictions, but a spontaneous form of *crucial arting* and *seeding* with depth articulation processing and excellence rarely experienced by the heavily mediated Public imagi-nation! Beyond the commodified pastures of Art Gallerydom and Sales Pitch Land or gimmick routines up the yin-yang! Beyond such Everyday War, into something i call
*Everyday Or* towards at least erstwhile soar and to the core of bore and poor and doing ju-jitsu! WILDLY arting oneself as a way to Love Living on this planet!!!!
As a way to seed or facilitate our desperately impoverished DESIRES and waning visions, beyond the death-grip of death cult-ure and perpetual "Us vs. Them-isms"!
Arting oneself as a way towards fear-mindset EVOLVING, not revolving; as a way to even inspiring to even inspiring possible spiritual figures--like the alleged christ(s)--to allegedly return, and dare their alleged greatness again!!
i, dis charisma who avoids followers, the mainscream media, and formalities, preferring fellow champions, and learning from the lessons history can teach; not cooperating, not seeking "fame" on the same old war beachheads, nor reducing myself to identities and ideology
yet still remaining hue-man/human--daring towards excellent beautifulness --what would that be like????
dressed untamedly, so S T R A N G E L Y, doin my art(e) babe-ee! Reflecting the depth reflected in my daring to mix a broad magix of depth cultures--American indigenous, African, maybe Euro, and Eolithic (a time being realized as yOu dare beyondGiven/spoonfed coercions of 'Is' cult-ure and into a truly becoming process of perfectly imperfect iz)!Below the flyer are the reports of the three separate actions!
Depth charge flyer passed out to hundreds (feel free to pass this on, or edit it with your own excellence) :
Note: All info herein has been compiled, over years, by an anonymous independent getting no payment except the joy of helping his fellow people. Get online, free, at your local public university or suburban municipal library! (best outfitted)
General Topics
Find a possibly trustworthy auto mechanic: //cartalk.cars.com/About/Garage/mechan-x/find.html How
to be your own lawyer (pro se): www.pro-selaw.org www.ncsconline.org
www.raggededgemagazine.com/archive/pro-se.htm self-helplaw.com (see also: "coaching") Groups for
the Chemically Injured (while working): www.rtk.net/ncci www.ncchem.com Two possible cures for
cancer: Hoxsey Treatment: www.ripsawnews.com/2001.07.18/feature.html and Essiac: essiac-info.org
General alternative medical remedies: members.tripod.com/~AspenIsle/kitchen1.html Fraudulent
'diagnoses': ADHD/ADD: www.adhdfraud.org and www.thomasarmstrong.com/myth_add_adhd.htm Psychiatric
fraud: www.szasz.com Antipsychiatric Reading Room:
www.stopshrinks.org/reading_room/frame_docs/1st_idx_4th.html Non-industry peer/survivor crisis line
(Mental Patient's Liberation Alliance): 1-800-654-7227 Gifted Kids Foundation: www.nfgcc.org Fraud
in juvenile 'justice': www.szasz.com/boostrom.html and
www.ucimc.org/newswire/di.../index.php (on politics of child 'protection') Youth Liberation info:
www.oblivion.net/youthspeak and www.geocities.com/artme4phun/fpsbak.html (a history) (see also book
about escaping dumbing-down process in school:
www.lowryhousepublishers.com/TeenageLiberationHandbook.htm ) Student Press Law Center (defending
youth since 1975): www.splc.org Know your 'rights': You have the right to say NO to a search by
police: www.aclu.org/issues/criminal/bustcardtext.html Juries have the right to judge laws:
1-800-TEL-JURY (Fully Informed Jury Assoc.) US Supreme Court says: Artists have 1st Amendment
'right' to SELL their art in public without a permit:
www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyrej.html (background: sacredlight.to/pages/decision.htm) Musicians:
defend yourself from industry exploitation: www.thebaffler.com/albiniexcerpt.html and
www.recordingartistscoalition.com/suggested_reading.html Genetically-altered food warnings:
www.truefoodnow.org A cure for eczema that worked for me: Vitamin B-Complex Cheap adventuring:
www.airhitch.org Third world traveler info:
www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Travel/Travel_Info.html Find a map: www.mapquest.com Translate text:
babelfish.altavista.digital.com/translate.dyn
Meta Issues (strategy war games of elites which you're not supposed to comprehend)
Propaganda: "Propaganda is perhaps the most serious threat in the modern world."—Jacques Ellul (see
excerpts from his book at www.intheheart.net/propag.html ) and
www.buildfreedom.com/ft/propaganda.htm and 'psy war' studies: www.Africa2000.com/PNDX/pndx.htm
General: The National Security Archive (bringing FOIA documents like "The Pentagon Papers" to the
Net): www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ Noam Chomsky on 'crisis of democracy' and Trilateralists, menace of
liberal scholarship, Watergate as 'small potatoes': www.monkeyfist.com/Chomsky/Archive/essays
(excellent) See also: www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni How elites deal with idealists:
www.radio4all.org/anarchy/sabot.html
"[The public asks] 'how is this possible?'—I get that all the time. [They ask] 'Are you telling us that the people in Washington are evil?'…[Stockwell responds:] And I kind of flared up; Americans are decent people; they are nice people, and they're insulated in the world that we live in, and we don't read our history…"—John Stockwell, 13-year Top Level CIA official, Vietnam vet (as CO), West Point Graduate with honors, awarded Medal of Merit (very charismatic) www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stockwell/John_Stockwell.html
General critical thinking and info:
The Price of Dissent by Bud and Ruth Schultz, 2001 Love Canal: The Story Continues by Lois M.
Gibbs, 1998 Public Secrets by Ken Knabb (www.bopsecrets.org ) War At Home by Brian Glick (crucial
for organizers), 1990 Rare or not-well-known dissent, with possible solutions: www.intheheart.net
(i.e. John Trudell, Aldous Huxley, Lev Chernyi) A 'totality' of critique:
www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/vb/wd4-2go.html Get together with other critical thinkers:
www.infoshop.org (see "interactive") Rainbow Gathering: www.welcomehome.org
Media alternatives:
www.cbc.ca/radioguide/ and Indy Media Centers (self-publish your news and images worldwide!!!):
la.indymedia.org boston.indymedia.org www.indymedia.org chicago.indymedia.org (and so on; see left
margin or bottom of pages for
links); www.gnn.org emperors_clothes.com
Biked through Latin neighborhood (full of good vibe) via Grandville Av over to John Ball Zoo on the NW side, parked bike there, then hiked in full ceremonial regalia down Fulton into downtown, over to Michigan Street, up the hill past Butterworth Hospital to Coit, through that neighborhood over to Bradford and then Lafeyette, to Leonard, up the hill to Fuller, over to near Knapp, back down Fuller to Fulton, and back to the Zoo, at least 12 miles of walking, speaking with people, and being wildly real in all!
Messing with the mindsets in mid of a typical work day, tripping people out ("Is this an acid flashback?"), derailing these seemingly obedient so-called "citizen" peasants from their highly propagandized tunnel vision ("What the hell is that?"), in yet another creamy heart of American Whitebread Conditioning Central.
Past Fear
Soldiers called cops didn't know What/How To Think, and just stared. Didn't have no mandate, no
idea put into their heads from their "superiors". Conditioned sheeple had voiced their fears that
i'd be arrested or worse, a reflection of the grip of the Cops/Fear In Their Heads, when in fact,
there was no real need to fear! Carrying signs and voicing ideas promoting *mutual* liberation and
general beautifulness can do that!
All in all i'd learned, via such self-inquiry luminaries as don Miguel Ruiz, not to take such highly-tooled dreamers of hell personally (2). What *would* one expect given the context of this suiciety (suicidal society)? It was as if they were giving *themselves* a kind of *permission* (a radical notion in itself!) to vent a little bit of their suffering in the only ways they'd learned--from the standpoint of a war-rior! Seemingly negative and worthy of suppression (to the standardized educated mind), yet crucially *symptomatic* as Aldous Huxley and Erich Fromm would point out (see: www.intheheart.net/huxley.html ) and beckoning me to think of the one who had engaged me directly as an off-shoot of a kind of "Little John" in the story of Robin Hood.
Most were pleasantly surprised, even impressed, when i proved to not only be completely outside their classically-conditioned expectations (i.e. quotes above), but continued arting in a way that had undertones of magicking! Just the way in which i usually delivered "arted" *depth charges* spoke volumes to even the most basically streetwise!
Second action: GR Art Festival
soldiers called cops
The soldiers were waiting behind the corner of a building when i entered, and seemed to be standing
there as method, as a kind of surprise technique; but they let me pass unmolested, only to approach
me after following me for awhile, radios turned up. Four of them, tall, "wanting to know" what i
was doing, and being perhaps surprised by my style and method (i opted not to tell them i would
remain silent, tho i want to practice that sometime). This was when people began taking more notice
themselves (if he's getting hassled by the cops, then he might just be interesting)crowding around
and asking for my flyers, and acting to inadverdantly assist me in escaping the expected
authoritarian mindset of soldiers "with a job to do" (i.e. make sure that capitalist spectacles run
"smoothly" and keep all "political" dissent suppressed).
drunken acquaintance
One of a friend's new employees (whom i'd partied with once) found me more than once during the day
and hooped and hollered and let his permitted weekend wildness hang out. i started getting a bit
beleagured (what with he *and* the video crew below, constantly seeking my attention, but i did let
him don my masque for awhile while i danced to the Highland Pipes group.
video crew
i actually ran out of flyers (even tho i was giving them out only to people who asked, generally),
had much interesting interaction (more deep than all the other cities i've engaged combined!), and
near the end, began being followed by two young men carrying a video camera.
Three Fires Pow Wow, June 12, 2004
So where i'd only gone superficially in the original pow wow--which i'd been invited to by a native
(daring only into one main depth with an elder lady who spoke of my being "Trickster", and
retreating in fear by her warning, preferring supposedly more-safe spaces in non-Indian areas), i
dared after all my experiences across the country and in diverse communities, to go fully into my
fear of this Unknown.
But directly interacting while arting myself openly and this radically? Never truly! Even when i bicycled 15 miles into the Dineh Rez after riding about 20 from Flagstaff (4 days in all), wearing my masque, i declined from direct interaction (only auto drivers saw).
The action
Okay, so i biked maybe 7 miles to the corner of Leonard and Monroe NE, locked the bike up, and
walked 2-3 miles from there to Riverside Park where the Three Fires Pow Wow was being held. Along
the way, passed a Boy Scout troop out for a hike, found a birdfeather that i stuck in to a bandaid
on my index finger, interacted with a guy in a car who resembled a burly off-duty cop (and seemed
intent on provoking my emotion, but failed), reflected increasing audible response from passerby
(whoops and joyful cries) as i neared the pow wow grounds which was already teeming with activity.
sobriety march
Had earliest wanted to accompany the march for sobriety, but couldn't wake up after partyin until
at least 4AM the previous night. By the way, while i see the heavy problems/challenges with
drinking liquor/beer in native and other communities, i can't help but see the way that politics
hinders any serious solving of this (like so much else). i could go on at length about this, but
i'll save you that for now, and speak only a bit: if people articulated drinking and being drunk in
a sacred manner, together with *believing in themselves* enough, drinking/drunkenness could become
a ceremonial tool in a similar way that peyote and tobacco is used!
entrance
Entered into a balking silence. Wasn't at all sure how i'd be received, but didn't expect what i
got. i was doing, i claim, an angle on *spiritual nudity* and didn't need to think about "what
might happen" at length.
first champion
Almost immediately, a native guy (i'll call a champion) who'd been just parking his
bible-quote-decorated pickup truck when i first walked in through a parking lot, invited me to come
with him and go back and let him share some of his bible quotes from the truck (written quite
artistically, tho i couldn't make out some of the text). i intuited that he wanted to try to talk
to the "s t r a n g e" intruder via a language that i might be talked to with, thus acting as one
more excellent watcher for the community.
Then a van pulls up and a mainstream-dressed older lady (in 50s?) gets out and asks me if i was "trying to satirize" or otherwise defame "my people".
second champion and dance
When i returned to the main area, a second champion, a lady with eyes the same color as mine,
engaged me almost right away. She held a dagger-like seashell and held it out as a gift, which she
handed to me after we interacted awhile, i daring to give her what i call a *much more deep* gift
in return along with the story of how i found it (whose lessons, i realized, i had passed through,
and no longer really needed anyway). My gift to her: a horn i had pulled off the decomposing skull
of a White Mtn Goat back when i was driving my artcar through a backroad in Idaho and had wanted to
go hiking, innocently enough, only to come upon a mtn lion or bear cave and the decomposing carcass
of what i called the Scapegoat metaphor...that story, an amazing and mind-blowing experience, to share another time in more detail!
into more depth
Walked fully thru-out the modestly populated space, gave all of my 4 or 5 flyers to those who
wanted to speak, only (didn't bring many this time, since my intent this time around was not a
message doing with text as much as with vibe and dared speaking). Spoke with mostly white folks,
but a few native-looking folks as well (it was *all* good!). One whiteguy said he had been deeply
involved in the Big Mountain situation in AZ, so that was interesting for awhile.
teepee dweller
Then i was approached by a white elder in traditional native garb who said he lives in a Teepee
year-round up north near Mt.Pleasant. i still remember what he said about how he lives in it in the
winter! A real interesting fellow who volunteered, when i mentioned Trudell John, that he'd
actually read _Stickman_!!!! Wow! That's a rarity in my experience! Seems like too many only know
Trudell as an actor or via his recorded spokenword (which for some reason *never* seems to include
any text lyrics! Why?????). Me, i've been inspired by Trudell way before i knew about his hollywood
stuff!
second gifting
Ended up sitting down at a picnic table around a bunch of sobriety marchers (wearing t-shirts of)
and talked with them awhile. Then a young girl lady sat down and engaged me in questions; i ended
up talking with her about it and giving her my best copy of Richard Bach's _Jonathan Livingston
Seagull_ (yep, i brought a bunch of such depth to possibly give away), complete with various notes
of mine written while seeking spiritual insights. i had wanted to read those over first, but
decided to just let her (and her mom who would surely read it later) have it, clean. (wasn't sure
if i had anything "too radical" in there)
someone i knew
Later heard that a good acquaintance of mine had seen me at the pow wow when she was in the parking
lot with her native friend. The friend had wondered "what" i was, and my acquaintance knew *who* i
was right away, but declined to say anything other than engage the gossip grapevine, whereupon it
got back to me. Well, i find that excellent because to my part-native friends (who never get soon
involved in indian ways) will get to chew on something for awhile, knowing that i *do* in fact go
around doing stuff like this! Heh heh heee heee! (i'm always trying to move them to see reality
beyond the TV and devoutly normal 'working class' values!)
after the pow wow
Walked the long way back to my bike, over to Plainfield NE.
Note:
when composing this article the first time around, the public computer i was using "somehow" ceased
up (froze) right at a crucial point and didn't allow me to post this at any IMC sites. I had to
start all over again (because I didn't have a disk with me). I've seldom seen this type of thing in
my x-country travels and can only figure--based on the games that the political police have a
record of playing against persistent challengers (3)--that
someone was at work to block this info from reaching and possibly inspiring others. Luckily, I
persisted in getting the library staff to extend my day's allotment and *was* able to post it to
two IMCs, but still not the Michigan IMC...until now (hopefully).
notes:
(1) There are *no* alternative book/magazine/zine stores in Grand Rapids and
area. There is a recent try at starting some kind of local IMC project, but I missed that
conference. Public access to the Internet is more severely controlled than any place in the country
i've seen. None of GR's colleges allow free access (a Grand Valley State College employee told me
that while the college is publicly funded, its internet services are not, thus no access to the
public; and GRCC allows access for $10 a semester after and ID check and much personal info
gathering; Davenport and the other two private colleges are all "password protected" which is a
change apparently after 9-11). Lack of alloted time for my one-hour use of public computers at the
main library downtown prohibited me from going into more detail on these texts until I left the GR
area (i don't own a computer myself, yet), and then any website deemed "sexual" is rigidly filtered
from even adult viewing (i.e. reading an alternative gay magazine i like called www.guidemag.com ).
(2) i highly recommend don Miguel Ruiz's _The Four Agreements_ and _The Mastery of Love_.
(3) all serious challengers of the status quo would do well to educate themselves on the history of once-illegal, now legal, official covert action in order to take steps to avoid it as best they can, and deal more up front with "paranoia". See Brian Glick's book _War At Home_ (South End Press, Boston, 1990) for its exceptional run-down on the history and "what we can do about" this kind of warfare.
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