Live characters and 1000 gods & demons
Jul. 9th, 2005 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusOn Friday evening I hung out with Mischa Shoni, Mie, Mumbleboy and others in the agreeable "tunnel of twee" that is the Giant Robot New York store (437 East 9th Street). They were holding a party featuring "live characters and 1000 gods & demons!" This turned out to be an artist called Friends With You presenting a new range of comic, boxy wooden toys, The Good Wood Gang. The live character bit consisted of Mr Friends With You emerging from the back of the store dressed as a shaman in rainbow raiment, doing a sort of rain dance to the accompaniment of African ritual music as he squeezed along the narrow aisle, then taking his place at the door to sign T shirts and toys with red paint.
I spent a while browsing an excellent new book of photos of hip hop dandies from the 1980s, A Time Before Crack, by Jamel Shabazz (who also did the "Back In The Days" book). As I browsed, it occurred to me that the Friends With You guy, the back-in-the-days guys, Lord Whimsy and me all have something in common. We're all media-savvy, media-friendly self-creations, and we all seem to aspire to be cartoons. Whereas Hollywood stars and politicians tend to dress, act and speak with calculated moderation and timid vapidity, keen to hold onto their power and keep on the right side of the undemonstrative masses, we poorer, smaller media actors pull out all the stops. We have nothing to lose; there's really no reason for us not to embrace utter flamboyance.
It seems to me that New York is one of the cities that encourages precisely this sort of self-mediation. Downtown New York is dense and intense, concentrated and tolerant. People work on their look, people have a schtick, people quickly find that extremity is an excellent sales tool, it gets them remembered, noted, reported. I haven't yet seen the Klaus Nomi move, but I'd imagine it was exactly the same when he was in New York, or when Quentin Crisp came here to make himself the ultimate cartoon of the "great stately homo". I even think of the vogueing Latinos in the documentary "Paris is Burning". It's a common misconception that people who give themselves the license to flounce, to vogue, to make a splash, are somehow spoiled rich socialites. But I'd argue that it's the poor who really pour their heart and soul into making an impression, into self-mediation. The poor and the hungry. Few of us are rich, and it's unlikely that we'll ever be played in a Hollywood movie by Johnny Depp (though you never know). But we have a certain instinct, part-commercial, part-aesthetic, for dramatic self-editing and self-presentation. In some cases we make a living playing the larger-than-life characters we've devised, acting them out in real time on the catwalks, corridors, subway tunnels and runways of a city like New York.
Walking along Grand Street with Lord Whimsy, whose real name is Allen, I found myself asking what happens when people with an innate talent for editing and graphic design turn their skills on themselves, and make themselves their ultimate creation, their own Frankenstein's Monster. Do we always retain control of the resulting cartoon? Does the more complex picture in the attic become scary with neglect? Do we overwhelm people less adept at self-mediation? Do some find us unbearable, overbearing, absurd, inhuman? Are we mistaken for the rich and powerful? Do people find us self-obsessed, selfish?
As if to answer my question, the next day Whimsy—Allen—sent me some frames from the Flash piece he's been working on to illustrate my song Bantam Boys. They look completely gorgeous, and whet my appetite for the finished piece (which Whimsy says will be available soon). Above all, they show that not only are self-mediators not rich, they aren't selfish either: they're just as happy to put their talents for editing, presenting, highlighting and brainstorming at each other's disposal as their own. If you love one facade, you probably love them all.
I spent a while browsing an excellent new book of photos of hip hop dandies from the 1980s, A Time Before Crack, by Jamel Shabazz (who also did the "Back In The Days" book). As I browsed, it occurred to me that the Friends With You guy, the back-in-the-days guys, Lord Whimsy and me all have something in common. We're all media-savvy, media-friendly self-creations, and we all seem to aspire to be cartoons. Whereas Hollywood stars and politicians tend to dress, act and speak with calculated moderation and timid vapidity, keen to hold onto their power and keep on the right side of the undemonstrative masses, we poorer, smaller media actors pull out all the stops. We have nothing to lose; there's really no reason for us not to embrace utter flamboyance.
It seems to me that New York is one of the cities that encourages precisely this sort of self-mediation. Downtown New York is dense and intense, concentrated and tolerant. People work on their look, people have a schtick, people quickly find that extremity is an excellent sales tool, it gets them remembered, noted, reported. I haven't yet seen the Klaus Nomi move, but I'd imagine it was exactly the same when he was in New York, or when Quentin Crisp came here to make himself the ultimate cartoon of the "great stately homo". I even think of the vogueing Latinos in the documentary "Paris is Burning". It's a common misconception that people who give themselves the license to flounce, to vogue, to make a splash, are somehow spoiled rich socialites. But I'd argue that it's the poor who really pour their heart and soul into making an impression, into self-mediation. The poor and the hungry. Few of us are rich, and it's unlikely that we'll ever be played in a Hollywood movie by Johnny Depp (though you never know). But we have a certain instinct, part-commercial, part-aesthetic, for dramatic self-editing and self-presentation. In some cases we make a living playing the larger-than-life characters we've devised, acting them out in real time on the catwalks, corridors, subway tunnels and runways of a city like New York.Walking along Grand Street with Lord Whimsy, whose real name is Allen, I found myself asking what happens when people with an innate talent for editing and graphic design turn their skills on themselves, and make themselves their ultimate creation, their own Frankenstein's Monster. Do we always retain control of the resulting cartoon? Does the more complex picture in the attic become scary with neglect? Do we overwhelm people less adept at self-mediation? Do some find us unbearable, overbearing, absurd, inhuman? Are we mistaken for the rich and powerful? Do people find us self-obsessed, selfish?
As if to answer my question, the next day Whimsy—Allen—sent me some frames from the Flash piece he's been working on to illustrate my song Bantam Boys. They look completely gorgeous, and whet my appetite for the finished piece (which Whimsy says will be available soon). Above all, they show that not only are self-mediators not rich, they aren't selfish either: they're just as happy to put their talents for editing, presenting, highlighting and brainstorming at each other's disposal as their own. If you love one facade, you probably love them all.
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Re: Variations on a Theme
Date: 2005-07-16 02:58 pm (UTC)Alas, no university for me--just a small state college and some books in my house. Truth be told, I'm probably best described as being merely clever rather than truly intelligent, although I teach design classes at my alma mater on occasion. Apparently, I'm still fooling them.
W
Education and Generalism
Date: 2005-07-16 08:04 pm (UTC)Time passes and you have the history there documented, speculated upon by those who choose to obsess, spitting it out like watermelon seeds, leaving a trail meant to keep one from getting lost but poor foresight has left everything evenly dispersed across a vast unfathomable field, and so we gather up the seeds, replant them, observe the results, eat the fruit and spit the new seeds out the same way those did before us (or at least from a distance the randomness appears the same). Wandering watermelon children.
I’m of a school which loves the all-too-human desire to categorize things and to argue them, but my work excels on the level of commenting on these things abstractly rather than articulating them as a thesis. I wish direct references were easier for me, and I try to fill in the gaps of my education for those things that seem relevant to my case, but I always feel more comfortable in simply describing my philosophy without them (sometimes works), building theories intuitively (is that what you mean by "more clever than intelligent"? Just a different form, I'd say) and to me that is the future of intelligence, everything else is just a parlor trick preserving creaky institutions and old men fancying deification.
...
Or perhaps, I'm simply addle-brained. The jury's still deliberating?
Re: Education and Generalism
Date: 2005-07-17 02:28 am (UTC)I do think the nature of education should become more fluid and varied, perhaps even improvised, although this is a laughably impractical notion--although sometimes I wonder if people coming out of institutions today are more indoctrinated than educated. Then again, I can't sit here and recommend my path to others, anymore than Nick can. We often find ourselves on these paths by following our personal inclinations, and so these things occur organically if they happen at all.
It's perilous, exhilarating and somewhat foolhardy to be a 'gentleman amateur' in this day and age. I honestly have no idea what the next twenty years will bring.
W
Whimsy, Guide Us...
Date: 2005-07-17 03:55 am (UTC)I'll keep reading you eagerly. I was just thinking about your dandyism article, and shall reply there in the near future if I think of a good angle. I consider myself sympathetic to the 60s Mod culture-- the history of it is fascinating and parallels a lot of the things mentioned in your friend's thesis.
Thanks yous sirs.