RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

About a year ago I borrowed my ex-girlfriend’s car and went on vacation by myself. Actually I split the time half and half, first with a friend in Portland Maine and then alone in Acadia… sort of. My parents were in Acadia and I met up with them a couple times in my few days there, but other than that I was on vacation alone. Either way, saying I went on vacation alone sounds much more dramatic and serves the purpose of this story better.

But anyway, I wanted to be alone so I rented out 3 beds in the Bar Harbor Hostel. I had the whole room to myself. Some people love traveling by hostel, but fuck that. I enjoy the communal common space, but I can’t stand the dorm style sleeping arrangements. People stumble in and out at all hours. They’re loud. German couples start whining in German about stupid shit at 4:30 in the morning. Your bag is never safe. People smell bad and they snore.

I like having my own room where I can make my mess and not think about it. I like reading until I want to turn my light out. I like writing or going through photos or leaving my camera on my bed without worrying about it being there when I get out of the shower. I like going to bed and waking up on my own schedule.

Also it was in the center of town and 3 beds there were still cheaper than a Motel in Ellsworth.

But none of this is the point of the story. My inspiration for this post is a conversation I had with another traveler. Both of us were waiting to check in. The hostel wasn’t open yet and we met each other while waiting for the owner to get there. She was in her 40’s, reading a book alone on the front stoop.

We exchanged hellos and talked for a minute. I remember she said something about visiting Philadelphia once. I think she said she was from the northwest. She wore thin-rimmed glasses, khaki shorts and carried a well-worn backpack. She’d gotten to town on a bus. She seemed low on energy, like she was running on fumes. She wanted to talk to me, but her words took effort. She craved interaction but could hardly muster the energy it needed.

I asked how long she’d been traveling and she said “years.”

I asked what made her start. She told me that her job was killing her. It was too much work for too little appreciation. When she had a job, she worked in advertising. A relationship ended at the same time she came into a little bit of money. She’d been traveling ever since. I asked if she regretted her decision.

She brushed her hair away from her face and stared off into space. After a moment she said:

“I wish I’d taken a long vacation instead.”

She was in the hostel as long as I was. I didn’t talk to her again.

Well, quitting the internet didn’t work. And if you happened to visit yesterday only to see that this site was gone completely, that was an accident. I don’t know what happened, but it’s better now. For my triumphant return, please enjoy this deeply bitter and miserable rant:

Until a couple months ago, there was a dirty, dingy old Laundromat near 20th and Spruce. Even though most of the machines were broken and the place smelled like death, (mice behind machines) it was the closest Laundromat to my apartment and I’d wash my clothes there anyway.

The only employee I ever saw was an old man who never seemed to leave. He wasn’t very friendly, but he was pushing 80 and working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week in depressing dump of a business. Who would be friendly?

The Laundromat closed in March. The owners are renovating the space into a nail salon. I do my laundry at 15th and Spruce now. It’s much farther away, but it’s cleaner and friendlier.

On Tuesday I was walking by the old Laundromat. Sitting on its stoop was the old man who used to work inside. He was filthy, unshaven, wearing dirty clothes and obviously homeless. The Laundromat left, but he didn’t.

I was in a bitter fucking terrible mood, so to be honest, this sad sight barely touched my conscience. I wondered for a second if I should give him the address of the Social Security office, or the number of a social worker. But I didn’t. I don’t know where those offices are, and I don’t have the numbers to any social workers.

And what good would it have done? I assume that his life is over. What kind of help can anyone possibly give him? He’d have moved on if he wanted to. That shitty fucking place was his life. That’s what touched my conscience and made me sad. Miserable people and their shitty fucking lives.

If anyone out there is a more hopeful person than I am, you know where to find him.

Yes I’m really saying that I judge my own shots from the pre-”debate” rally at the same standard as the New York Times. Actually Times photographer Béatrice de Géa has a slightly nicer Canon camera and a much wider lens… but in my own defense, I was told by a cop to get back on the curb before I could get the wider shot myself.

Here’s mine:

And here’s hers:

And acting as judge and editor, I like just like my Obama shot better than theirs. Mine:

Times:

And since this is my site, here are a few more of mine:

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A few months ago, I noticed a box put out to trash on my neighbor’s curb. I don’t pick through the garbage as much as I used to, but this box was full of books and I couldn’t resist. It was mostly college texts and crappy novels, but mixed in with them I found a high school yearbook.

Its front cover was embossed with the owner’s name. The inside pages were filled with messages from her acquaintances. While I don’t find much good in excessive attachment to the past – especially the high school past – I still had a hard time understanding why someone would throw away their yearbook. Even an embittered sentiment-less bastard keeps their yearbook stashed somewhere in the back of their closet. Even if you never look at it, open it, read it or think about it, you keep it.

I could only think of 2 reasons to throw it away, death or a willful attempt to forget. Since I like mysteries, I stuffed it in my bag and took it home for review.

When I got home and opened it up to investigate, the yearbook felt vaguely familiar. It was exactly as old as my own and from the same general place. The students were all my age. They had the same hairstyles and listened to the same crappy 90’s bands that my own classmates listened to.

What I found out about the owner was remarkable only in its banality. There was nothing extraordinary or particularly interesting about it or her. She had immigrated to the United States at some point during childhood. Judging by her name, I decided that she was born in a Scandinavian country to a locally born mother and British or American father. By the time she was in high school, they’d moved to the Philadelphia suburbs.

The messages were dull, even by high school yearbook standards. People called her brave for moving to the United States and most of them repeated things like “even though you were so quiet” or “we didn’t get to know each other too well, but…” The only unusual thing was the dearth of male signatures. It was a co-ed school, but only girls signed her yearbook. There were no exceptions.

Was her time in high school lonely? She had no apparent close friends and she had no boy, friends or boyfriends at all. Was there nothing in her memory valuable enough to keep the yearbook packed away in some box?

Or did no boys sign because she didn’t like them to begin with? Was high school a time spent locked up in some self-imposed shell? Had her life since high school blossomed into something that made those years expendable? Did she look back on them as wasted or worthless time unworthy of a place on her bookshelf?

Had something happened in her life that made her want to abandon her old life completely? Was she moving on with a clean slate? Was this book in the trash part of some much larger purge?

Or maybe it wasn’t her yearbook at all. Maybe it belonged to an old roommate, who moved out in a rush or on bad terms. Maybe it just got lost in the shuffle and eventually, tossed out completely.

In the end, I actually don’t actually care. Mostly I like telling stories and imagining scenarios.

Dear Alix,

While I can’t say that I’m glad that you’ve found happiness – because you haven’t – I can say honestly and without malice that I’m happy that you’re finally getting the help that you need. As I’m sure you’re aware, admitting your addictions, dysfunctions and fears is the first step towards recovery.

With a little hard work, focused determination, a change in diet, plenty of exercise, weekly therapy, a few plants, a cat, the support of friends, a temporary leave of absence, a hobby or two, installation of Chromalux lights, a conservative regimen of pharmaceuticals and a little luck, you might pull yourself out of this depression.

You might want to consider volunteering your time at a homeless shelter. There’s nothing wrong with finding your center this way. You’re not a starving child in Africa, so don’t feel bad about throwing away your leftovers! Go see a movie. There’s no shame in going alone. Spring is right around the corner. Get out and enjoy life.

On a personal note, I’m deeply sorry that your book hasn’t been published. To be completely honest – and this is something you need to hear – the editors are right. You’re not a good writer. Your characters fail to develop in any meaningful or interesting way, the writing is clumsy beyond repair and it’s clear that you’re reaching far beyond your base of experience. I don’t mean to completely discourage you because it’s not all bad. The plot is structured well and obviously has a lot of thought invested in it. In capable hands, who knows how effectively it could be developed?

But anyway, I hope this note finds you well. Things with me are busy, but good. To be honest, sometimes I envy you. Travel is tiring and the tedium of 80-hour weeks is excruciating. You know how I hate the bullshit and small talk that goes along with stroking every dick attached to a name. If you never have to swallow the crap of some asshole with your life in his hands, you’re better off. My life is like a political campaign, except that I’m always running and there’s never an election. It can be an exhilarating ride, but I’m not sure you’re cut out for it. Sometimes I don’t even know if I am. Just believe me that you’re better off.

It’s getting late and I should wrap this up. I hope you’re glad to hear from me, I’d just been thinking that I should reconnect. Deb told me about your brother and about the rehab and I realized how long it’s been. I can’t believe that Terminal Unrest was 6 months ago. What an awful night. I’m sorry I never called.

May success never find you.

Quinn

As I walked into work today, I realized that hippies rarely if ever suffer through an existential crisis. Maybe I’m just stereotyping, but I think I’m right. I can’t imagine some hippie rolling off his dirty futon some early afternoon, drawing deep off some heady nugs that he packed the night before, turning on some jamming tunes, cooking up some scrambled eggs and then collapsing into a ball of anxiety, struggling for breath as he ponders the meaninglessness of life.

I guess it’s possible, but it’s definitely not common. Much more likely is the hippie staring at the eggs in his pan, when a ray of light that he confuses with the divine cuts through the glass and refracts into a rainbow vision of Jesus Christ. The rainbow Christ causes the hippie to explore a copy of the bible that he picked up for 50 cents at a yard sale 3 years before. The bible draws him in and he realizes that the movie, the Matrix was really just about Jesus. The hippie becomes born again on-the-spot and never looks back.

I’m not going to become a hippie and I haven’t collapsed into any balls of anxiety, but this morning as I walked into work, I wondered why I was doing it. I stood in Rittenhouse Square watching people in suits and people in hardhats and construction belts trudging thoughtlessly towards their respective livelihoods. I decided that I’d rather build something solid like a tall building that I could point to it and say “I installed the electrical system in that tower,” than put on a suit and make tedious documents, legal promises and enough money so that I could live in the tall building.

All in all, I’d rather not do either of those things. I decided that I didn’t want to continue on to work at all. I wanted to go to a bookstore and read for a while, then maybe have a cup of coffee and catch up on the news. After that I’d go for a walk. It would be late afternoon and the light, wind and cold temperatures would make for some great photos. I’d stand on a pleasing block and shoot men in suits as they clutched their hats and walked headfirst into the wind.

I thought of all of this as I walked into work.

Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine humans as you’d imagine any large, biologically driven teeming mass of life. Strike out the idea of the individual and see humans as ants, bees, or bacteria. Look at the macro patterns, the things that drive our populations, the behavior that we can’t break down into actions of singular personalities.

Even from 100 feet, we appear as strange little tumors with spindly protrusions for arms, legs and fingers. From farther out, we multiply like bacteria in an open wound. Cities grow and swell. Every day they hemorrhage trillions of tons of sludge and waste. In the past hundred years, earth lit up like a magnesium fire. A time-lapse view from space would see the planet flaring up as we consume the planet’s buried energy. As our civilizations rise and fall, that light will peak, flicker and diminish.

Or maybe I’m being pessimistic.

For now, look at earth at night. Those lights are made possible by petroleum. The power plants that make them, the people fed by the crops grown by it and the trade networks dependent on it. Looking at this map, ask yourself which countries have the most to lose? Which have the most to gain? Who is the most powerful and who doesn’t have a leg to stand on? A basic familiarity of world politics and a thoughtful study of this map are worth as much as a year of political science classes.

What will happen in the next 100 years? The petroleum fires will go out, but will anything replace them?

The only deserts that are full of light are in the Middle East and the American Southwest. Which one will stay lit or will they both go out? Really think about it. Can the United States really afford to light its deserts? What sacrifices have we made to ensure that we can? What foreign policy decisions? How far overextended are we? Is the war in Iraq motivated by a growing desperation? Are we really that weak? Aside from oil entirely, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno, don’t have enough water for the next 100 years. We’re living off of others’ credit. Outside of military power and the hegemony of the dollar, we produce almost nothing. The dollar is falling out of style and our military can be defeated.

I know I’m being pessimistic, but what will this map look like in 100 years?

This evening I had the pleasure of driving up to the 4400 block of Germantown Ave. to take a photo of a Nicetown mural. For some reason they painted the thing behind a tree, but other than that, the light and atmosphere were nice.

But that’s not what I’m here to write about. This evening, I’d like to get all bloggy and personal and let you know a little about myself. Why? Because today I learned something about myself. Something I never knew before. Actually that’s not true, but it does read with more drama.

But anyway, at the 4500 block of G-Town Ave. is Wayne Junction station and the unofficial border with Germantown. A few blocks on, on the 4900 block is the intersection of Germantown and Logan. Since I was in the neighborhood, I made a left and a quick right onto Royal Street. I drove slowly down the block-long street to a large white twin. The rest of the block was rowhomes. I’d only seen the house a couple times, but I’m pretty sure it was the right one. If it was the right one, it’s the house where I spent the first 6 months of my life.

At the tender age of half, a year my family moved 5 blocks farther Northwest to the 5400 block of Greene Street. I lived there for the next 11 years. I’d be lying if I didn’t say the Royal Street house was familiar. I’d also be lying if I said it had any reason to be familiar. I spent my infancy there and saw it briefly a couple of times after that. I’m not even sure I was looking at the right house… but at the same time, I’m as certain as I can be. All in all, this means little to you, me or anyone really.

What it does do is touch on some bit of significance that humans tend hold dear. Memory and home are powerful things… I guess.

Generally, I think I was a whole lot smarter when I was 18. I was reading more interesting things, having more interesting thoughts and asking more interesting questions. My brain felt like it was firing faster, brighter and smarter than it does today.

Not that I’m a dullard or anything. I’m better now at just about everything I do than I was then. I have a clearer understanding of myself and the people around me. I’m more confident, skilled and experienced. But for the most part, I feel less… something.

Which brings me to today’s bit of aged wisdom. As I slowly creep up on the ripe old age of 30 (now before you all get all on me for being ‘young’ Jesus died 33 and Jimi Hendrix at 27) something has become clear to me.

I once thought I could live a life without regret. Somehow at age 18 I thought this was possible. Now I may have felt smarter then, but this notion is bananas. I regret everything. Anytime I make a decision, I regret the infinite number of decisions that I didn’t make because I made the one I made. This makes it very hard for me to make decisions. Maybe by the time I’m 40 I’ll have this all sorted out.

In the meantime I place my faith in a quantum universe, or in the idea that somewhere out there I’ve taken every path. That’s all for now.

I was scrounging through old files on the computer when I found something I wrote just before I quit smoking. The quitting was eventually successful, but the words still resonate:

I’ve given all that there is for me to give. Now I sit, smoke a nicotine-free cigarette and give this page whatever it is whatever’s left. For the first time, this cigarette tastes harsh.

Let’s start from the end. It all ended one day a couple months ago. I was elated. My classes were complete.

Actually let’s start with these nicotine free cigarettes. They’re on my mind recently. Mainly the part wherein I smoke one, suck the resin from the inside of my mouth, stare blankly at the room and light another – hoping that this time my mind will be tricked. By the third or fourth, I just hope that my lungs will begin to hurt. I hope that I’ll start coughing. I hope that breathing will become strained and nicotine or not, my body will be too damaged for the night to light another. I hope that if I repeat this for enough days in a row that I’ll forget all about the nicotine that used to be there. I’ll realize the abuse for abuse’s sake and give up the whole thing entirely.

So my problem, the bulk of my displeasure is work…

^ that’s an old statement. All of it. I continued on about some random shit, but eventually found a way to work in this line:

I feel that in the last few days, when I crack the door to enlightenment, enlightenment is sitting in the corner laughing at me.

And that’s all for then. Thanks for sharing this trip down memory lane with me. I hope that if you’re quitting smoking these words come as a comfort to you. I actually almost quit writing because the second I put a pen to paper I’d want a cigarette. Then I’d just write about that. Things are much better these days.

Seeing nuclear blasts makes me feel very ‘emo.’ Fortunately, while I am in healthy collaboration with my emotional life, not much else gives me that ‘emo’ reaction. Either way, I feel like there’s something very, very wrong with detonating nuclear weapons. By wrong I of course mean destructive. With the first ‘very’ I mean the destruction we know and can measure. With the other ‘very’ I’m talking about the destruction that we’re too ignorant to see or understand.

Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project became well known for quoting very significant passages from the Bhagavad-Gita after the successful test of the first atomic bomb. Like Lincoln at Gettysburg he solemnly proclaimed: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one…” and “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

He only actually thought of those quotes. According to his brother, he actually said:

“It worked.”

But anyway, the point of this entire post was to rerun a few images that I posted here before. Taken by Harold Edgerton at a distance of 7 miles using a lens with a focal length of 10 feet and a shutter speed of 100 microseconds, here are the first microseconds of an atomic bomb blast:

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OK, back to normal commentary. Today I take on war and public education. Here are a few things that will crush your will to care.

The whole thing is broken by design.

All wars, every single one that’s ever been fought has been fought over either land, resources or a combination of these two things. Leaders and power brokers of the time create wars by claiming that they’re about other things like God, ideology or the nation. This is true from from Egypt to Osama bin Laden. Anyone who says it isn’t true is wrong. Sure people fight and die for other reasons, but none of those dead people ever started a war.

Moving on, Public Education is under funded on purpose. An educated population is not in the best interest of the state. This is well understood across the third world. No one in the U.S. seems to notice or care. If you don’t believe me, then why are public schools funded by local property taxes? Why do private schools exist at all?

I was once in a class at Penn where all the students from countries across South America (the elite of their respective countries) made this point to us stupid Americans. “Why is it so hard for you to believe. You’re no different.” And we aren’t. I’ve mentioned these things before on this site, but they’re worth repeating.

With all that said, I endorse Michael Nutter for mayor of Philadelphia. Thank you and goodnight.

If posts dissipate and/or descend into bizarre confusing strings of prose, I apologize. I don’t believe in ‘blogs’ and still wonder why I have one. This site isn’t about my personal life. That would just be weird.

At the same time, my personal life finds ways to leech into my writing.

As a person who writes, I have a ‘voice.’ It’s that narrator that talks to you while you read this. Hopefully it connects with you and makes you want to know it better. That voice isn’t quite me, but it is a very real version of myself. It has my sense of humor and mode of observation. It’s honest, but guarded. It isn’t me; it’s a consciously constructed reflection. Sometimes - like now - that voice consumes all else, becoming overtly self-absorbed. The more self-centered it becomes, the closer this site approaches a legitimate personal weblog.

At the same time, as the division between objective and subjective begins to dim, details become scarce. I start writing intensely personal things about nothing. Like this. The result is a deeply inspired intellectual experiment. The fact of the inspiration makes this worthy to post for your (the reader’s) objective consumption. By the time you’re done reading it, you’ll have absolutely no idea what you just read, or know anything behind why I wrote it, but hopefully it was interesting.

In closing, here’s a song about waiting that’s been in my head for weeks. That’s all for now.

* Warning: self-reflective bloggy post.

Three years ago today was 7 days before the life I’m ending first began. I opened an old journal and turned back to three years ago today. Stuck between the pages was a 4-leaf clover and a bunch of words about leaving Rittenhouse Square.

“Well it’s been 10 years and I can finally say it,” I wrote. “Fuck Rittenhouse Square… I’ve been looking for something down this path for the last 10 years, I’ve filled these books with writing, I’ve met girls I’ve loved, girls I’ve lusted after, girls I never liked. I’ve drawn on the ground at 4 in the morning, listened to music, met friends, gotten drunk, high and watched 40 seasons come and go all from this bench.”

I went on to describe how I was sick of waiting. A month later I wrote, “I’ve felt sedate for a while now. My mind is keeping its inspiration to itself.”

A month after that I wrote, “I like to pay attention to my senses. Remain alert. I also enjoy dulling my senses. Numbing them. Numb hunger with food. Numb a day by relaxing on my porch with a beer. Numb desires with satiation. Eyes with sleep. Mind with dreams. Chaos with silence.

But tonight I have indigestion and a chill.”

A month later I wrote, “ Yesterday I touched the Atlantic Ocean, the sun setting behind me, turning the sea into a plain of silver.”

And finally, a month after that, on August 17, 2004 I wrote, “Why is the dude in the cowboy hat over there videotaping me?”

That’s all for now.

Just to kick things off on a pretentious note, a passage from Alexis de Tocqueville’s sprawling observation of our infant republic, Democracy in America has stood out in my mind since I read it many (5) years ago. In the passage Toqueville traveled by boat down the Mississippi River.

To one side was the Northern territory and to the other, the slave South. On the Northern side he saw the Jeffersonian ideal. The well-cultivated land was filled with neat and tidy small farms. Industrious workers carved out a very decent living, working independently, but in a larger sense working together to build a stable and progressive economy. There was no aristocracy or extreme poverty. The vision was almost utopian.

On the southern bank, he saw enormous farms being worked by slave labor. Land (and human) owners were wealthier, but far more rare. Owners were less capable and generally less resourceful. Landowners hadn’t developed the skills to make for themselves. Instead they learned the talents they needed to manage a workforce of slaves or indentured servants who made for them. In the south, Tocqueville saw the birth of an aristocracy ruling over a poor or enslaved majority through violence, fear and oppression.

It’s a powerful agent for thought and possibly for a call for change when economic disparity grows so extreme that it creates a clear visual contrast. Take a look at Lancaster Avenue as you leave the city. If you blink, you might think you just passed through a hole in the space-time continuum and ended up miles from where you just were.

But back to the North/South thing and on to the photography of Walker Evans.

The other day I was enjoying a very old pastime of mine, sitting in Borders browsing through the photography section. I took a new Walker Evans book down and settled into the corner by the window. In the same aisle, 2 very normal looking teenage girls searched through Magik texts in preparation for casting some spell later on that night. Eventually a third girl returned from Harry’s Occult and Spiritual Supply Shop with the final element and they were off. In the next aisle over an older man preached his bizarre brand of Christianity to a young man/old boy. I made myself comfortable and looked through the book. This is the new thing that I saw in the presentation of the images this author/editor selected.

There’s not really much sense in explaining what I want to present visually, except to keep in mind that North/South divide. Walker Evans made both these photos. Both factories are steel mills. The top is a tremendously famous shot taken in 1935 in Bethlehem, PA. The second is a less famous shot. In it, Evans pays homage to his own work. It was taken in Alabama in 1936.

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Outlined herein is a terrible character flaw that I’m trying to work on. It’s completely unfair, unfounded and represents a personal prejudice. It causes me to judge by appearance, weighing my opinions of an individual based solely on a set of physical characteristics. I’m trying to work through this problem and hope that someday I can overcome it.

But until then, I have to admit that I have a distaste for straight but waify white boys in their 20’s who wear clean jeans and well kempt peacoats. Now for those that know me, you might be saying what the fuck are you talking about? You’re a 20 something white male and while you’re not waify and you don’t wear particularly clean clothes, but you do wear a peacoat. To you I say that there’s a difference. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s there. It’s something to do with class, literary appreciation and the amount of dirt on your clothing. If you have to condense the difference into a single descriptive word, that word would be comfort.

Maybe it’s that I see these types in used bookstores, produce shops and the box office line for “Children of Men” and I think to myself that had I grown up in a circumstance of greater comfort, in a place without sarcasm, or crackheads climbing through my window and stealing my Nintendo, then maybe I too would be one of them. My prejudice then is just a defense mechanism… some relic that triggers a primal response against my own being.

I once saw a crow battling its own reflection in a tinted glass window. It struck at the glass with increasing ferocity and confusion, seeing the fear in its opponent, but unable to hurt it. In turn the crow grew angrier and more frightened. Its opponent matched it at every turn, coordinating every strike with identical force and intent. I don’t know what ever happened with that crow, but I often think of it, imagining that to an alien race humanity appears to act in a similar capacity.

But then I think to myself, these are the assholes who hear the lead singer of the Decemberists and don’t feel like an icepick has suddenly been jabbed through their eardrums. Then I wonder if we really are that similar.

I really could go on and write another 50,000 words on this, but that would just be insane and nobody in their right mind would read it, so that’s as good as a conclusion as there’s going to be… for now.

So I’m in a mood tonight and my mind is attached wholly to ideas that I believe are clear and wide encompassing. This evening I discuss art or more specifically, the merits of photographing one’s own (if one is male) stream of ejaculate.

Why am I writing about this? I was reading Zoe Straus’s blog when I saw this post. Her photo of Mummer spewed silly string may have been unconsciously derived from photographer Andres Serrano’s ejaculation series.

Geoff Dyer wrote an entire book about street photographers influence on one another over the past 100 years. I strongly recommend buying and reading it. But that’s not my point.

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My point and my opinion is that Serrano’s work has reached a position of total and almost embarrassing obsolescence. The internet killed it. Photographs of blood and semen? Photographs of a semen stream?

Let me add here that at one time, the series wasn’t pointless. It roused all sorts of pretentious and important questions to do with freedom of expression and the limits of art. That time has long past.

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There was an argument in the Mexican muralist movement that muralism smashed the idea of easel painting. Painting in Mexico City (as it is in 2700 different ways in Philadelphia) was a public. It was not contained within a frame and exhibited in a prohibitive environment. It was vibrant, colorful and most importantly free and open to be witnessed and experienced by anyone at any time.

In contrast, museum art, or easel painting is restrictive. It’s selected and promoted by an elite class for an elite class. Even in the rare cases and selective times that they’re not cost prohibitive, museums are not inviting to proles. They’re constructed by upper and upper-uppers, mainly for the middles and above. (or to a lesser extent for the creative class itself)

That’s not to say there isn’t a place for museums. There absolutely is. But when a form or genre of artwork becomes so utterly separated between the world of the museum and the world of the world… that form or genre becomes wholly obsolete.

To come back to Serrano. Never again should a photo series of human semen find its way onto a museum wall. To illustrate this, turn your google safe search off and look for images of “cum.” Not extreme enough? Try “dog fucking” “dead bodies” “war dead” or “cock splitting.” Keep in mind that google image search is nowhere near comprehensive. The photo results you get barely skim the top layer off of a very deep and disturbing cesspool.

While muralists brought artwork outside the museum, technology and the ability to share and distribute any and all information, has given any individual with the access the means and the aptitude, the capacity to create and share a tremendous quantity of material with an unlimited audience.

This is the crux of the argument, so pay special attention here. I’m not saying that every citizen is now an artist or that every cumshot caught on camera makes every person who photographs semen an artist. I’m saying that any artist who takes a well balanced and aesthetically pleasing portrait of their own semen, isn’t really accomplishing anything.

So many photoblogs are filled with beautiful photos of apples, flower petals and housecats. There’s nothing wrong with them except that they’re boring. There’s nothing wrong with the photographers except that I see nothing truly significant in a perfectly composed still life.

New technology and the ability to share raw information freely and instantly has destroyed the significance of Serrano’s ejaculation series and the vast bulk of his other projects. There are millions of photos of semen. Nuns mastrubating, men drinking piss, blood, gore? It’s been done and published thousands of times.

Making a fine art portrait of one’s own semen is at this point about as edgy or artistically relevant as taking a really fine art portrait of the head of broccoli I’m about to eat. As muralists brought art out of the frame and into the public, the internet is storming the museums and tearing the frames apart.

As a person with a concern for the viability of freedom of expression, I can’t think of better news than the obsolescence or Andres Serrano’s art. Remember Jesse Helms damning Serrano’s Piss Christ on the Senate floor? The debate is over. People rightfully worry about so many of our rights being ceded and destroyed, but freedom of expression has never, in the history of the world been stronger. Serrano’s cumshot is now just a lonesome drop in a vast ocean of semen.

Last night I went to the Free Library to hear a lecture on post war Europe by super-scholar, Tony Judt. Educated at King’s College, Cambridge and the École Normale Supérieure, professor of history at Cambridge, Oxford, Berkley and NYU I knew Judt only by an article I read in the New York Review of Books way back in 2003. In that article, Judt argued the same points I have always argued myself about the state of Israel.

In cold historical terms, Israel was an anachronism. World War II ended with the Western World’s ultimate rejection of the ethno-religious nation state. Israel was founded on the very principles that WWII so horrendously purged. Many of Israel’s international problems of legitimacy stemmed from the fact that Western consensus ultimately rejected the most fundamental grounds on which Israel was established. In Judt’s words:

“The problem with Israel, in short, is not—as is sometimes suggested—that it is a European “enclave” in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The very idea of a “Jewish state”—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded— is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.”

This article was written in 2003. At the time it was regarded with widespread derision and even death threats.

But this is one hell of a watershed historical era. Things are happening very quickly. It can be argued (and Judt argued this last night) that Europe today is becoming much more like Israel than Israel has become like Europe.

The crucial question in Europe today – he argued – is Muslim immigration and the frightening reaction to it. If you think the backlash against immigrants in this country is ugly, you’ve seen nothing compared to the state of affairs in European politics.

Denmark’s recent election split the country between far right and far left. To put this in some kind of identifiable context, imagine the U.S. political landscape being split not between some amorphous centrist Congressional lump and a (now publicly regretted) far right executive branch, but instead between a passionate Green Party and an equally passionate Republican party led by Pat Buchanan. This comparison isn’t quite accurate, but it gives you a sense of things in Europe these days.

Judt argued that Europe is faced with its first real test since the Second World War. So far the signs are extremely discouraging.

Western Europe established the cherished welfare state in order to fend off the economic and political scenarios, which led to devastating war and the rise of fascism. Cultural homogeneity made a society based on a socialist ideal of trust much easier to establish and maintain.

What I mean by this is that, a terrible result of WWII was the near total ethnic cleansing of European nation states. The distastefully serendipitous result of that “cleansing” was the ethno-cultural homogenization of Europe. Now that these states are required to deal with visible minority populations, that trust is quickly evaporating. Old prejudices are returning as if they never left. Judt made the extremely important point that if you replace the word “Muslim” with the word “Jew” in any of the European right’s rhetoric, what you get is startlingly similar to what existed before the 20th century wars.

What we have then is a Europe increasingly based on ideas of ethnic and cultural majority identity. From state to state, these identities are based on shared myths of nationality. Muslim populations are marginalized and regarded as pariah groups different culturally, linguistically and racially.

To bring this back to my earlier point, Europe is slipping backward into the pre-war intellectual territory of the ethnically based nation state. The Israeli model, which just 3 years ago was regarded by Judt and myself as an anachronism is increasingly relevant in modern Europe.

Also following the 20th century pattern, is the United States, which in it’s own unique way is right there with Europe. The world is beginning to split again. This time the fracture is between the West and the Muslim world. Of course you already knew that, but if you’ve read this far, I hope that now you have a greater understanding of what it is that’s actually going on. That’s all for now.

A few minutes ago I was standing in line at the local corner grocery, staring at the halva and fig bars and waiting to pay my 99 cents for a bottle of white vinegar, when the person in front of me said something that caught my ear.

“American Spirit Organic, please.”

American Spirit is a brand of cigarette. The company used to be owned by Native Americans, but recently went the way of Ben & Jerry’s. My first reaction to the organic blend cigarette was, holy crap that’s unbelievably stupid. My reaction has changed very little over the past few minutes.

I smoked for 10 years. At the end I even bought an additive free brand… I can see how, if I still smoked, if faced with the option and if there wasn’t a price difference, I might even go for the organic… but as an outsider looking in. Organic cigarettes? It’s like inflating the tires in your Hummer to get better gas mileage or voting for the Green Party.

Maybe I’m just becoming an asshole non-smoker. O’well. That’s all for now.

All things being equal, I’m a liberal. I believe in the idea of taxes and I believe that the point of paying them is to protect and enrich the citizenry of a society. I believe that monopolies are bad for a state’s economy and that the government should intervene when they develop. I believe that the rich should pay a significantly higher percentage of their earnings towards taxes than the poor. Civil Rights, (including of course gay rights) abortion, environmentalism, you can mark me down in the strongly ‘pro’ category for each of them.

With all this said, there are plenty of things about ‘liberals’ that piss off or embarrass me. These are usually things that a young and well meaning and ostensibly socially conscious person says in a well meaning and ostensibly socially conscious way. For weeks now, I can’t get a recent ‘slant’ (guest column) in the City Paper out of my head. Maybe sharing it with the anonymous masses will help me move on.

The article recounted an experience a young white person had when the subway broke down in North Philly and then their reaction to it. They questioned the cities preparedness for a disaster on the scale of Katrina or a terrorist attack. The well-meaning author (Temple student, John Paul Titlow) argued:

Most of the almost entirely black (except for me) sea of faces represent some of the most disadvantaged sectors of our society — working single mothers, students on their way to the most underfunded public schools in the region, and others. For most, SEPTA is the only conceivable way to get where they need to go — where, in most cases, they barely earn enough to survive…

…the hardest hit will be the primarily black low-income and homeless population, the people the report refers to as those with “special needs.” Among the lessons from Katrina were that neighborhoods without access to basic resources are the areas where attention is most needed. The committee’s report is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough.

I’m sorry, but that ^^^ is straight up fucking offensive. A good point - the cities lack of preparedness for a large scale disaster - was argued with the same condescending pity for the cities A.A. poor, which is usually held in reserve for a sick animal. Whatever the author’s intention, this came off as deeply condescending and impossible to read without feeling like John Mark Karr’s spindly fingers are crawling up your spine. Good god. I have a feeling that Titlow will look back on this in 5 years and feel a sense of deep and terrifying embarrassment. At least I hope so. Let me close with a letter written in response to the column.

I agree with John Paul Titlow that Philadelphia needs to take serious action based on the findings of the Emergency Preparedness Review Committee, but his analysis of the problem isunbelievably simplistic and sophomoric [Slant, “At a Disadvantage,” Aug. 3, 2006]. His argumentthat Philadelphia’s emergency preparedness planslights the poor and the blackis based on ridiculous evidence — his experience of a breakdown on Septa’s orange line:”Funny how the orange line is the first thing to break down in the city. The Market-Frankford, or as I sometimes call it, ‘the White Line,’ was running smoothly all day.” Funny how there are breakdowns and delays in public transportation all over the city, and in the suburbs! Has Titlow ever ridden the Market-Frankford line? As a person whose stop was 40th and Market for years, I must inform him that there is a wide range of people riding the blue line on any given train.His observations ofthe stranded passengers as poor black folk “barely earn[ing] enough to survive,” and the “few of them lucky enough to have cell phones” calling friends for rides, reminds me of early anthropological accounts of communities by outside observers. We don’t need uninformed paternalism, Mr. Titlow. We need to continue facilitating discussions among the city’s neighborhood spokespeople to determine how tobest go about preparing for the worst, and to begin enacting the agreed-upon solutions.

Lindsey Mears

Germantown