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The Theme of Mimesis
in
Representational and Symbolic Art






Part Five
Faux Banner
(i reflect my world)


by
j jackson




I have to admit that I write "faux postmod." There's a difference between what I do and the real stuff. Although my work style and my life are thoroughly postmodern, my art is not. Online journals, written spontaneously, are postmodern art. Kathy Acker's novels, no matter how much they may mimic it, are not. They are constructions, albeit so loosely formed as to be essentially mere collections of spontaneous writing. But they are/have been rewritten, polished to some degree, if only by editors, and thus they are what I am calling faux postmodern--postmodern, yes, but a degree removed from the real stuff, less local than universally appealing, less cultural than literary, yet nevertheless indicative of those aspects of postmodern literature (if that is not a contradiction in terms). [Postmodernism is being gobbled up by academics, so this statement may one day become obsolete, if it is not already. Movements become labeled and then ritualized. But the whole point of postmodernism--originally--was its eclectic nature. How can it become a movement? Well, by moving, of course. It's all the eggheads' fault.]


1

With Jamie in Afghanistan

I met Jamie in Afghanistan. We knew each other in America and ended up in the same place for different reasons. I don't know why I was there exactly, ostensibly as some sort of an attaché to some local leader who wanted to write a ghosted autobiography. (I was not in my best state of mind when I got the assignment.) But I began to suspect, after weeks of false starts that were hardly starts at all, that there was some other, more sinister purpose to which I was not privy. Jamie was having an affair with this local dignitary. (Maybe we weren't there for such different reasons after all.)
The day I first saw her there, the two of them were trying to work things out in their relationship, carrying on brief conversations between his preoccupations with local political matters while she, meanwhile, stood around. I intentionally avoided making eye contact with her. We both intentionally pretended we didn't know each other, but then, we often did this, even in ordinary situations. While they talked, I napped, on a "bed" that was not much more than a flat, hard surface. I was exhausted and could have slept anywhere.
At one point, the guy was sitting there beside me while I half-slept. Jamie found her way over to the "bed" and, at first, she sat, then she lounged, half-lying beside me as she continued to talk to the guy, who was off across the room. We made physical contact, our bodies touching in places. I enjoyed the feeling. This was her way of communicating with me since I was holding myself in a sort of state of incommunicado, which I had begun days earlier when I began to realize that, not only was my presence in this place superfluous, but that I was being reserved for something special that I was not going to appreciate.
[Both the leader and I are, in a sense, incommunicado. I literally; he as a function of his distraction. In other words, he and I function in my mind as similarities: I keep people away from me by pretending to be distracted (I'm an artist) or distant. But I am more literally like I am, lying on the bed, asleep part of the time (not paying attention to people) or pretending to be (holding myself apart, not communicating.)]
Finally, Jamie gives up on trying to talk to the guy [and to that part of me too who will not listen; maybe to that part of me who used to do self-analysis, but now would rather not be bothered], who is constantly being interrupted [as I am, by my dedication to my "work"], and she starts to talk to "me" [my more "hurt," moping self].
[I have this agenda, which doesn't become activated very much any more, but which was prevalent throughout my childhood and as a young adult, where I withdraw in a funk from people, even as I am thoroughly integrated into the group's presence. I feel "hurt," not from any specific incident, not even from anything that should be a cause of hurt, but rather from an outpouring of genuine attention and affection that I feel (if I would feel it, which I don't, I repress it probably because it) is so overwhelming. This is not to be confused with my more "normal" withdrawal where I will, without conscious affect, hold myself apart in a non-communicative manner. This is a far more profound state, wherein I pout, but only to myself, I would never let anyone realize the true nature of my feelings in so intimate a way as to be outwardly observable.]
I know Jamie is paying attention to me, even though her attention seems to be on the local leader. He is my proxy here. (Or I am his.) She wants to communicate with me, just as she wants to communicate with him, but she can't, because he won't let her, and she knows me, only too well. She's afraid that if she will approach me, I might stonewall her. But being the outgoing kind of woman she is, she in fact does approach, when she is finally convinced that her macho man is not about, or able, to give her the time she wants.
She asks me why I'm here. Rousing myself, I start to try to explain, and she suggests that we go and get some coffee. I say, good, I need some. She says something like "Don't you sleep?" and I respond that I get three or four hours here and there, usually in some corner on a hard pallet or someplace equally inconvenient. We go into an outer room, where a hot pan of coffee with milk in it sits steaming on a table.
Again, she wants to know what I'm doing there. I tell her I just ended up here. There is the idea, maybe mine, maybe hers, but unexpressed, that I followed her here, or that I knew that she'd be here so I came ahead of her so as not to make it obvious that I was following her around, but this is not true, so maybe it was her idea, which I perceive psychically or intuitively and immediately reject.
She begins to take a pointed interest in me, perhaps as a function of the fact that she thinks I'm following her. Meanwhile the guy, seeing her leave the room with me, has followed us and stands in a darkened hallway watching to see what we are all about, what she is up to. As I explain to her what I am doing here, telling her I go where I seem to be led, she makes the comment that it's like I am blown by the wind. I correct her, telling her it's more like I am drawn, as if by a magnet.
"It's like fate," she says.
"No. It's more like a lightweight destiny. You can resist it if you really want to."
"But you don't believe in resisting." She knows this about me.
"No. But I do resist. As an ideal I think you should not resist. But as a practical matter. . . You should determine your own fate in an intelligent way, when you're experienced enough to see what's coming ahead of time--without resisting, so much. You should steer yourself out of harm's way."
"And yet you always end up in dangerous places."
"Yeah," I laugh. "But usually after the fact."
"But not so long after. It's not so safe here now."
"No. It's not. But it's easy to stay out of the way."
"But you never know what you'll run into."
"But that same thing is true no matter where you are."
"I guess so. I'll bet you went to New York after nine eleven."
I laugh again. "Yeah. I did."
She laughs. "That happened where you used to live."
"Yeah. A few blocks away."
Did you move in with your old friends?"
"Yeah."


[People who don't believe, or who have an intuitive sense, usually since very early in life, that there is no life after death, tend to be much more careful, timid people. They understand, at least subconsciously, that this is the only life they will ever have and so they act to take care of it and to live it as fully in the moment as they are capable of. And yet, their moments tend to be peaceful, as they avoid confrontation. People who go willingly to war, for example, or who place themselves in dangerous situations, tend to believe that they are acting to higher purposes that will be rewarded in another life. Society uses delusion (because no one really knows the truth about the afterlife, and so it's delusional thinking to believe in it, whether it exists or not--or, at best, it's faith, which is another word for the same thing) to "convince" (influence, manipulate, delude) people into carrying out a social agenda while minimizing concern for their own personal safety.]


2

This material has been deleted per the request of the person I quoted. She was not too nice about it, either. In fact, I wouldn't call it a request at all, but rather a demand. She doesn't even want me to link to her site. I choose to remove the material, even though I have no legal obligation to do so (fair use), because I don't want anyone becoming unnecessarily upset with me. Life's too short. I may, however, reinsert this material later on, after I think for while about what it is I'm doing. It is, after all, self-censorship, bowing to a manipulative demand. Anyway, I want to review the legal issues at stake. They are:
    Legal concerns for extensive pastiche quotes:
  • fair use
  • art: my responses to others' material (re fair use)
    • I am others, in that they are a part of me (a major theme in my art)
    • Satire: as I compare myself to others, via their own words.
  • "correspondence": they think things I am/have been thinking; I could restate these thoughts, in my own words, in fact, I already, usually, have stated them elsewhere, but then I lose the sense of correspondence.
  • links: it is not a violation of copyright to link to others' Websites (is it?)
    • *[if it is, then I won't link, if that's what they want, but I'll publish the link as text and explain that, for whatever reason, they don't want you (visitors) to go to their sites from mine. Why? That should prompt some bandwidth usage. And if they don't want me to use their material, I'll paraphrase it, as my own art, or attributed, and include a statement similar to this that demonstrates to visitors what kind of jerks these people are.]
  • Aren't newsletters public domain?
  • Isn't news itself, once published, public domain?
  • [There's a southern newspaper that's suing to prevent a freelance newsman from "deep linking" to it's site. They're trying to insist that he link to the front page, where visitors can be subjected to their advertisements. If they would set up their site like all of the major news outlets, where the content is pulled into the main page in includes and all ads are on every page, then there would be no problem. But I suspect that their real motivation is that they feel he's getting too popular and is usurping their more conventional position. Or else, some other kind of rivalry is going on. Otherwise, it just doesn't make sense.]
I should this research whole matter, but I don't feel like it. It's not a part of my motif at the moment. This piece has already extended beyond this motif. I've used my motive up re this. Maybe at some future time . . .


    An attempt to approach my welfare dilemma in a more logical manner [click the above link for the background]:
  1. If you don't know what to do, do nothing.
  2. Take advantage of every opportunity to get an edge on survival.
  3. I deserve everything that I've been given (as contrasted with that which I "take.")
  4. Is not having included the savings bonds on the application a lie? No. The bonds are designated for my "retirement" (a self, as opposed to a legal, definition), and in any case, their interest is nothing I can live off of, but is rather savings. And anyway, if I had reported the income from them, it still wouldn't have been enough to disqualify me.
  5. [This is an arguable point.] I deserve to be compensated by society for what it has done to me, i.e., I was overly-taxed to the point of severe disability, unable to make rational and non-emotional choices, and the effects of this stress continues on today, as I have been chronically damaged, psychologically and physiologically. The psychological damage may not be directly attributable to the social/work issue (see point 6), but the physiological damage certainly is, and although it has to a great degree been "healed," nevertheless, I must keep myself well-rested and out of extended stressful situations so that my permanently damaged cortisol reserve system will not become depleted, as it will now, too quickly, tend to become. In other words, I am compromised re getting and holding a job. (This is not to deny my own responsibility, my "choice" in the matter, but I was only acting out of a sense of necessity and duty when I pushed myself way too hard. Our choices, especially those we make earlier in life, are not so conscious. But they are choices nonetheless.)
  6. It could be argued that I have been the way I am (extremely introverted and stressed when required to interact with people) all of my life, that I have been at a competitive disadvantage and only survived via overly taxing my psychology and physiology.
  7. In a strict conservative society, I would be allowed to suffer and even die [if it had come to that; as it were, my intelligence drove me to hedge my bets and save as much money as I could and invest it wisely so that when my inevitable breakdown (it wasn't that dramatic, more like an extended internal crisis) occurred, I was able to continue on without social dependence (which could have delayed or even eliminated an efficacious therapy that might have resulted from a publicly known disaster] according to the laws of natural selection--a rational, "scientific" way of life, or death, whereby each person survives or does not, according to his own merits and abilities. [On the other hand, it could be argued that the fact that I am alive and well and prospering is a result of having taken advantage of welfare-like "opportunities," pinching pennies, allowing others to endow me with benefits such as free meals (it seems, at one extended length of time in my life, everybody wanted to feed me, not from any requests I made of them, but because they actually enjoyed doing it. Maybe it was my gratitude, mostly unexpressed, but mutually felt, that made them so happy to thus oblige me), taking advantage of free services (in the business hopes that I would then become a customer, which I seldom ever did), etc. I have made good use of social and business freebies to pad my limited success. Taking advantage of these kinds of opportunities (or any kind) is as much a function of natural selection as working hard is. And in any case, I worked hard also, unlike many welfare recipients, who, seen from this same point of view, can also be said to be surviving according to the laws of natural selection. It doesn't matter how one survives, as long as one does. Welfare recipients manipulate the system in order to survive in the same way that animals in the wild manipulate their particular environments.]
  8. But I live in a relatively liberal social democracy, which provides people like me (human material somewhat damaged by society and life, however congenital the cause may be) with minimal aid. (And the energy assistance certainly is minimal.)
  9. Then there is the idea that I have the opportunity here to investigate the social welfare system first hand and examine my reaction to it. As a freelance reporter, can I pass this by?
  10. Finally, on the other foot [I've already used up two hands and a foot qualifying myself], I threaten my independence by taking their money. And yet, I've gotten to where I am today by having taken their money, mostly earned, but some of it was easily come by, gained more by wit than hard work. And anyway, independence is just another illusion.
  11. This all sounds like one big rationalization, and maybe it is. Why can't I just go along with the program like every other welfare recipient and take the free money and be done with it? Could it be that I actually do have a conscience, after all?


Only in America could a problem such as this exist. Despite conservative opposition, opportunities of all kinds abound. (Conservatives would limit opportunity to those that are come upon through hard work--or inheritance.) Opportunity and patriotism have been the hallmarks of this country since it's inception. People come to the United States because they actually want to be here.

I'm happy to live in the United States. But it's an accident of birth.
I didn't ask to be born here. I didn't apply for citizenship, did I?
Demands for support placed upon me by patriots are misbegotten.
Anyway, whatever I owed to this country, I've already paid.
Being a good citizen, I can say, with an impunity that is only negated by ignorant minds, that my country, like the world, does many things wrongly.
It's my duty as a citizen to point these errors out.
Most people are cruel and coarse and downright proletariat.
Most people are animals with minds that tell them they're not.
A lot of things are wrong, like people's attitude toward that unfortunate soul Andrea Yates, or Bush's attitude toward...
Oh, what's the use?
The current administration, under the guise of fighting a war on terrorism, is bereaving us of our civil liberties. [I know I, and a lot of others, have said this a lot elsewhere, but I wanted to use the word 'bereave' in this less than ordinary way.]
You know that a society is broken when so many people must be incarcerated. There will always be miscreants, but a society's inability to rehabilitate the larger proportion of them is a sign of ineffectiveness.


The human race is in a sad state of affairs. How can we continually judge our progress by what the best of us have done when billions around the world still suffer? Is their role, then, only to support the best of us, to be the mass out of which the best arise and the tax base that sustains advanced research? That might be a good argument if the benefits of the research went to the unwashed masses. But they don't. You have to think globally to understand this. In America, maybe, to an extent anyway, it works that way. And also in Europe, to a slightly lesser extent. But the rest of the world is left out of the equation, or, at best, it works on a trickle-down basis (as it does in the U.S. also, but the trickle here runs a little faster).
So, is this the answer, to spread Americanism across the world so that a smaller percentage of the people suffer? Maybe. George Bush certainly thinks so. But even in America, people suffer, from a lack of care and attention. Drug addicts and the homeless, for example. It's easy to take the stance that they bring their situations on themselves. We all bring our situations on ourselves. This only takes us back to the original position: the elite v. the rest of us.
Maybe I'm better off than most people are, but I'd like to be even better off. But I'm not willing to work at it so much any more. I'm okay. I'm alive and well and surviving, and even prospering, to some extent. If it's a matter of the best v. the rest, I'm somewhere in the middle, far above the suffering masses. That should be enough for me, and it is, most of the time. But I suffer from the same malady as most people in the world, the why-can't-I-be-rich-too syndrome? I resent the rich; I resent capitalism, despite the advantage I take of it; I resent America for its arrogance toward the rest of the world; and, most of all, I resent the American power structure for its arrogance toward its own people. It's the best place in the world, America. And that says a whole lot about the human race.
The best social systems in the world exist in the United States. We have, for example, the best system of justice. And yet, thousands of innocent people are incarcerated every year, usually because some overzealous or prejudiced cop or D.A. lies or stretches the truth in his misguided attempt to see "justice" done. (A certain element of conservatism can't accept the fact that it's a justice system. They feel they have to help it along wherever they can, by whatever means available.)
Law enforcement agencies are very good at intimidating innocent people and very bad at catching guilty ones. This (Bush) government is filled with small-minded bullies who get their rocks off pushing innocent people around in the name of patriotism and fighting phantom terrorists. Even by merely making this statement, I am opening myself up to their bullying tactics. They can't seem to manage to do the job the citizens want them to do, i.e., make this country safe. So they opt for the next best thing, to make everyone feel paranoid together, fearing both external terrorist and internal government threats equally. The Stalinist regime comes to mind. We may not be quite there yet, but we're heading in that direction. Paranoia breeds paranoia. Georgie Jr., while seeking to redress the slights that Daddy had to withstand because of the world political climate of the time, acts to justify his father's presidency and to accomplish what daddy couldn't, attempting to prove the son better. It's a psychology thing (as is everything, ultimately). But the time is quickly coming when this will all be turned on its head. The American public is not going to stand for this misplaced terror-hunt much longer. I give it two more years at the most. Or maybe only until the election.


I heard yesterday that a company, I think it might have been Xerox, had been fined $10 million for perpetrating fraud. I don't know if anyone was arrested in this case, but other companies busted for illegalities often get punished in this same way without individuals being indicted. As if corporate fines are going to deter crime. It's all one big chess game. Government agents catch their corporate buddies and government courts fine them, thus perpetuating the American Injustice System by shifting operating funds to the government's side. The more funds the feds have, the more crime they can discover and fine. The more funds the private corporations have, the more crime the people running them can get away with. So long as no one actually gets busted, there is no incentive to reform the game. When people do get busted, often it's not because they did something wrong, but because they won't play the game, as, for example, when they won't turn stoolie and rat on their fellow players, or when they try to hide away the money instead of giving it up. All well and good so far. But, the problem is, corporations don't commit fraud. People do. Punishing corporations does nothing to deter crime; in fact, it encourages it, if the individuals who committed it are seen to get away with it. And now we have the case where the feds are driving a corporation out of business, in the name of "justice" and, at the same time, talking a deal with the perpetrators. Thousands of innocent employees will lose their jobs at Arthur Andersen while the few guilty criminals will go free. These machinations are a joke. Each year, more and more of our freedom and democracy slip away from us--if we ever had it in the first place.




It doesn't matter what you think of him or his Palestinian Authority, whether you agree with them or not, Yassar Arafat is a genius. He has managed to focus the entire attention of the world on the Palestinian problem, when the rest of the world, Arabs included, were perfectly willing to ignore it. He has jumped up on the back of the apocalyptic horse of terror and provoked Israel into directing attention away from Osama bin Laden. Yet his strategy is not an elaborately laid out plan, but a firm conviction of the righteousness of the Palestinian cause, to be autonomous and to have a homeland where they now exist, at least, not to be moved any farther, but to go back to where they were. He moves the cause from week to week, month to month. He responds to Israel and the world, waiting for them to make a serious mistake that he can exploit. He can get away with this because he has very little to lose. He risks his life and the lives of his supporters in this way. He always has. Life is his most valuable asset.
Every time Israel or the world thinks they've got Arafat in a tough place, he falls back on this basic anti-strategy, and he persists in his position. They cannot shake him. The only "solution" (from their point of view) will be to kill him. (Israel is bordering on that decision now.) But if they do this, they will be wrong. (Israel is bordering on this incorrectness now.) They will only make him a martyr and solidify even more the Palestinian position. [But they will continue to pursue their course of destruction, Israel and the world. They will drive the situation to an inevitable conclusion. It is written.]


The King of Jordan [it hardly seems appropriate to call him that, given the previous king's far more wise presence. But I guess that comes with age], in an interview with Christiane Amanpour, uses the term 'the final solution' in reference to the Palestinian problem. Now, you know, he isn't using that term accidentally. (I heard it said before, in another interview, by another dignitary, but I can't remember who said it.) It's code meant for the Arab audience. The king reveals to them his true stance while putting forward a good face for the western world.
"Oh, come on," you say? "You're grasping at straws." Oh yeah? You think he's not aware of every word he says? You think he's some lightweight who's talking off the top of his head? You think the regional pols would let him get away with that? They're using his youthful image, his apparent junior status, as a naive front. They know exactly what they're doing. And the message is out, broadcast around the world by CNN. What I can't understand, though, is why no one called him on it. Not one mention of it on any major newscast. I guess everyone's afraid of the above reaction: "Oh, come on now." I guess that means that the Arabs are politically smarter than the Israelis and the Americans. Wake up, world. The truth is all in code. What they say isn't what they mean, neither Arabs nor Israelis nor Americans. It's only the Christians who are naive enough to mean what they say.
[Mainstream Americans aren't really Christians. They just pretend to it. And lest you think Cousin Georgie is a Christian, think again. He may be so in name, but it's in name only. True Christians believe in turning the other cheek. But that's a ploy invented by Jesus to gain an equal footing with the Romans and the High Priests. And it worked, so much that they had to kill him. Nevertheless, it became the basis of a religion, which Paul and the Roman Empire set immediately about to transform into a more practical system of spiritual (Paul) and social (the Romans) control. We are the Roman Empire now, Amerika. We're not any more Christian than Sharon is. If we really want to be (original) Christians, we'll rebel against our cultural authority.]


When Bush, et al. prosecute a war in the name of preventing terrorism, we all want to applaud the effort, and, maybe, rightly so. But is anyone looking at the collateral effect? I'm not only talking about the backlash from Islamic fundamentalists across the world who feel they have to fight back. That's to be expected. More importantly, I refer to the copycat activities, such as those of the Israelis, or the violence in India. Are people feeling justified in executing ad hoc retaliatory campaigns against local terrorists because they are following the U.S. lead and doing what we do? Are we the perfect bad example? And, if we believe that they are justified, are we prepared for the global conflict that we are in the process of expanding?


I try and try to get myself noticed by the FBI. But they ignore me.
I don't want to do anything wrong, I just want to attract attention.
I post a lot of fucked up things, hoping they will pay me a call.
You hear about it all the time on tv, how they harass local artists.
They push their weight around because artists act in "poor taste."
They intimidate people because artists have the nerve not to be pc.
Well, hell, Mel. What about me? I want my opportunity to ask:
"Since when is the FBI the good taste and correctness police?"





Conclusion


I've been using quotes (mostly as epigraphs) more and more instead of appropriation and incorporation as a mean of rendering similarities and correspondences, so much so that I begin to worry that maybe I am violating copyrights It had been such a natural progression to expand the technique more and more that I hardly paid attention to it. But now, maybe it's time for a change. I'd been getting into appropriation pretty heavily ever since I'd read several interviews of and articles by Kathy Acker on the subject and a lot of examples of it in her extensive work. I was just beginning to master the technique when the epigraphic method began to flourish in my own work and I relinquished the former for the latter. Both are true postmod techniques, but epigraphs seem so much neater (and easier to render, requiring far less thought, and art.) And, they appear to be so much more, I don't know, what's the word? Epigraphic. They break the material apart, delimiting transition, fragmenting the world of experience into a sign-like landscape. A thoroughly postmod work like Similarities & Correspondences reminds me of New York City around 42nd Street in 1969 with all of the flashing neon and high-techery and multiple posters of Che Guevara hung on huge sheets of plywood that separated off construction projects from the street (memories of childhood). How much more postmod than that can you get? But appropriation is a far better method, for the above stated reasons, especially the artistic one. It's a lot more work, but it's more integral. And maybe I'll begin to do it again. And maybe I won't.




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