Archive of the Covenant

Back when I was around 5, I started this project. The goal apparently was to document everything. This first took the form of tape recording, then writing, then video documentation. Each of these elements took turns, depending upon exactly what technology was available at any given moment.

I wasn't certain exactly what the purpose was until my mid-twenties. It seemed that there was simply an inside voice, a "muse" if you will, that said things like: "Turn on the tape recorder now and begin speaking". Or: "Just make things". It never occurred to me to question the voice, or to even consider the possibility that there was something very strange about it all. I really was in no position to ask such questions until I became an unofficial "adult", perhaps in my early thirties. By then, any inspiration had the horribly boring question to accompany it: "But what am I going to do with this when it's finished? Is it "marketable"? Will it further my "agenda" in some way? Is there an "audience" for it?"

I knew better than to ask such predictable, meaningless questions, but found it hard to resist the indoctrination that I had been inundated with for so many years. So there was a kind of dichotomy, constantly challenging myself with questions that, logically, were completely valid... but I knew deep inside that these questions had no real foundation and that they were an utter waste of time.

The pattern that seems to have emerged is that I simply forget about my legacy every so often, and am then reminded due to some seemingly insignificant revelation or a mundane task. One example: From 1995 or so until 2000, I worked diligently on a novel called "Consider Where This Joke Can Lead". I wrote often and it was, among other things, a primary artistic focus in my life. Yet, when I came across the old WordPerfect file while scanning an old hard drive a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that I had not even thought about it... not once... in almost three years.

This is why I embarked upon the recent archiving project. With my first slate of "free time" available since early last Fall, it seemed like the obvious thing to do.

And since then I've uncovered a veritable glut of forgotten items, all saved with a certain reverence, but uncatalogued and effectively buried. It's something like a hard drive filled with digital photographs, and the folder and files are all labeled "IMG3726485" and such, so that you know you have plenty of something there but no idea exactly what.

It's all been exponential. When I decided to consolidate all my old hard drives, I decided that I should also begin to make digital archival copies of all my old cassette tapes, all recordings of self and friends and relatives and many events I have taken part in since the age of 5. There are a good 350 of these tapes now, and countless hours on minidisc and on various old hard drives.

Then of course I remembered the old video tapes, which go back to 1987 and span 3 different formats. It is obvious that some kind of compilation is in order here. And when I started scanning notebooks, looking for a list I made some years back of videotaped contents, I was confronted with shelves of notebooks, all equally crammed with memories, equally disorganized, equally forgotten.

Archiving has always been the only activity requiring so much organization and tedium that I've enjoyed, and it has always baffled me. It seems clear to me lately, though, that it's a brutal and tender reminder of the legacy, something we all have and hold close. To combine all the old recording and writings with the scrapbook of the mind and heart is a very special kind of reunion.

Fable

There won't ever be any documents, any archive that will stand the test of time, biologically speaking. All that we have as any semblance of a legacy is our own species, the one thing we create that will last and biologically speaking we are working against horrible, horrible odds. This is why it's so sad when the last of a species dies, a one-in-a-million chance lost forever. It's sad when someone is forgotten.

It's amazing what an animal will do when it thinks nobody is watching... how an animal will behave with no one there to fuck with it.

Did you know:
Back when, man and animal were able to speak a common language.
Then man betrayed animal and the bond was broken.
Man was cursed not only to be stranded amongst his own hairless kind,
but to forget, and to someday believe himself humble,
mistaking his deficiency for superiority
as he scrutinized his own flawed mirror image.
And indeed, the animals weren't trying to punish man;
they felt no bitterness or anger;
it was simply that to look us in our eyes
would cause unbearable sorrow.
Now it is said that for each of us who has forgotten,
there is an animal that we will one day look in the eyes
who will remind us of everyone we have turned our backs on.

This story is a part of our common heritage, a shared memory that we all own but seldom recognize.
This is something I've always known but it took me this long to remember it.

Brooklyn Robot Parade, April 2006

This was a great day. It had been raining all morning and things were looking grim at first. The turnout was weak, but a few robots showed up. And so we marched. We marched to and fro in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Dumbo. Humans and robots, side by side.

I was there in my official capacity as conductor of the Robot Marching Band. Digital, that is....

Back when...

I used to be an artist. Remember them days? It all seemed so simple then. Initially there was the creation of a body of related work, there were the long days in the studio drilling holes and welding and making molds and pouring metal and scratching the head, there was the artist statement.

All along, though, I KNEW that it was really just about living it.

People agonize over their artist statements... the instructors indoctrinate us to do so, after all... but for me it was one of the easiest things, perhaps because I knew I wasn't trying to sell a product, but instead just wanted to say something about myself. In some ways writing always seemed easier because all you really needed was a pen and paper, maybe a typewriter. While it still involved sweating, cursing, and a certain amount of dirt, it wasn't like trying to reassemble a wax sprue system covered in silica that has just fallen apart halfway through the shelling process.
My artist statement followed the very simple format of a short biography, about five paragraphs, each relating a period in my life and how it was relevant to how I became an artist. But at the end, it is revealed that I didn't become an artist as such; rather, I had always been one and it had taken me more than twenty-five years to figure it out.

Then there was the inevitable process of development; this is what my work means, this is what I'm trying to do, this is what being an artist is all about. And several months later: no, it has evolved into this and that now. And then later: now it's this.

Then of course I reached the point where I couldn't make any sense of it all anymore, declared the entire concept of art officially "theoretical", and thus art can be/mean anything, or nothing at all. Which then lead to the conclusion: even to declare such a thing makes no sense, is fundamentally wrong, as if trying to speak in words in a world where language simply does not exist.

Then the notion that I am not an artist at all, and that in fact there are no artists.

But back when I used to be an artist, I used to write. Oh man, I used to do it, you couldn't stop me. Through all the drawing, sculpting, tape recording, the writing was always there, an integral backbone to the whole spiel. But it's been a few years now since I've had that flow. Blogging is a goofy reminder of that lack.

I suppose that this isn't that profound, but there seems to be a distinct pressure attached to blogging. I feel kind of bad if I let a lot of time go by without a new entry. As if there is an audience anxiously awaiting my new entry, and I'm letting them down, haw haw. Part of it, maybe, is also that nobody wants to give the impression that they started something whole-heartedly and then let it fizzle out. And then of course there is the fact that the blog is publicly available, thus the need to censor and critique...

Following along with the logic of the pressure, it occurred to me that maybe I ought to pick through my old material from the Glory Daze, and post excerpts of my favorites during those lean times...

Postcard from Trumansburg

There are no alligators.
Pickles, types of pickles.
Rainbow.

Spoken in sleep, August 6, 2006

We've been here for a week but it already seems like a month. I love it here. I've been dreaming every night, often hear only the breeze bugs and my own footsteps, and have been amongst more nature in one week than I have in the last two years.

We're living in the old Oddfellows Hall, est. 1906, in downtown Trumansburg. The space is, needless to say, amazing. Much of it is basically empty, as we moved out of a cramped NYC space 1/3 of the size, and just don't have enough stuff to fill the space. The move, incidentally, just about killed us. It made me feel old and flustered. Granted, we moved everything down three floors, loaded up a 16 foot truck, and moved it all back up three floors, in the midst of a 100+ degree heat wave. Not the easiest task even for a more athletic type; thankfully, we had some help getting it all packed up.

Unpacking has been a strangely slow process. It seemed like we spent months packing and getting set up for the move, and yet, in the final days we were still horribly unprepared and wound up slinging shit into random boxes. Trying to find simple things like tweezers, Sharpies, and drill bits has been maddening.

A few notable items:

BOB MOOG: I don't know how this one slipped by me, but I just found out Bob Moog's first manufacturing company, established in the early sixties, is just a block down the road. Thus, Trumansburg is basically the birthplace of the modular synthesizer. I can't believe that the village of Trumansburg hasn't exploited this more... I'd put up a plaque or something, sheesh... but this very special energy present here certainly means a lot to me anyhoo...



BUTTERFLIES: They're everywhere. I hadn't realized that I haven't really seen a butterfly in two years until I started seeing hundreds of them. And even the grasshoppers have crazy striped wings.

MY NEW STUDIO: Now we're talking. My New York "studio" was so crammed full of crap, I was paralyzed with a weird combination of fear, vertigo, alcoholism and the old fashioned Dread. My setup here is, for the first time since the establishment of Norman's Recording Studio in the early 80's, starting to look like a real studio. I even have a large closet that will make a perfect iso booth. Time to put the fun back into fundamental frequency.

The Professor

With exactly two weeks left until the move to Ithaca, there's no shortage of things to do and people to see in these last daze. I've been finishing up the database of videos here at TimesSquare.com, and found a gem I'd been looking for for months...

It's Professor Eduardo Alvarado, my favorite subway performer. I first saw him in Jackson Heights almost two years ago, and bought a tape of his music for a very reasonable price. It was my favorite tape for several weeks. I love his lo-fi style and from what I can tell he's been doing it for a very long time. Rumor has it that he is quite a smooth latin lover and that he gives dance lessons.

Bootleg from the East

Another goodie from the vault: This one is an exclusive, one of the only surviving videos of the Skratching Sheik in action. In this case, the Sheik took a quick detour from his very busy schedule that year to make a brief appearance in New York. Stopping off at The Tank for the "Comediarock" show, the Sheik paid respects to old stagemate Josh Grosvent with a ten minute set.

Personally, I like the "tape scratching" routine at the end...

An old man pushed me

And here we degenerate into one of the more petty discussions that seem more typical of the blog lifestyle...

An old man pushed me this morning.

I was coming up out of the subway next to City Hall... there was a decent little jam of people making their way up the stairwell... and right as I came out, I kind of squeezed between a couple of people. This was one of those awkward manoeuvers where everyone's walking up the stairs in a dense, almost gelatinous mass and immediately turning left, except for me; I was going straight ahead. My preferred method is to look for an opening and lunge through it as quickly and efficiently as possible, so as to prevent the disruption of traffic. The only other option, really, is to stop and wait until the crowd clears out, which is undeniably the worst thing to do as you'll only get trampled.

So I squeezed through my opening, and the guy I was walking directly in back of intentionally stuck out his elbow and whacked me. I got clear of the crowd, stopped, turned around and gave him the glare for about 15 seconds. He just went on along his way, making grumpy mumbles. One weird thing about it was that I hadn't even gotten in his way; I was, after all, walking behind him... and it made it all seem like he had done it out of spite.

At first glance, this shouldn't seem at all profound. It is, after all, New York. But it wasn't the guy pushing me that struck me as odd. It was that I realized this was the first time this has happened in the two years I've been in New York.