Movement

So, I've been thinking. It's one job to schedule and plan D'Merde Salon, but I'm not sure I should let its actual purpose go unnoticed and unexamined.

I've said this more generally, but I believe there is a very singular movement occurring in PDX as a response to hedonistic 'eco'-culture, deadly war culture and sickening consumer culture.

Wrap all of that around a fabulously creative nouveau atmosphere of tech savy individuals who all just discovered that they speak a brand new language in common, ie. CMC, and there is really no denying the potential if not the actuality.

I talked about this with Shannon Mayorga yesterday morning (actually, totally babbled at him because it was sickeningly early, like 9:15).

Happily, he babbled at me as well, or at least, that was my perception which made me feel better. I still feel his babble was much much more cohesive than mine, but as my job is to raise impossible questions, I win, whatever.

Wow. I'm tanGential! That should be one of the status options on myspace and facebook. I'm feeling like, totally tangential. Maybe a subject for a tattoo?

But I digress, professionally.

The real question: If there is a movement going on in Portland linking art, music, and writing, what is the soul crunching mutual problem that we are all approaching from our individual viewpoints?

When I try and pin down this same question with regards to the beat poets or the Parisian salons I am influenced by, it seems to be a matter of Form, rather than content that they struggled against.

Am I wrong?

To require a movement in which it takes the bravery of a group of individuals to suggest a new path, the path must be pretty fucking scary, indeed. Otherwise, someone would have already nailed it and gotten on the Oprah book club list with a lil' discussion section at the end (nod to DSB).

Shannon and I seemed to identify more questions than answers, but that's a very good thing for me as I tend to think I absolutely 100% figure out a problem (with huge and complex significance) the first time I consider it. Wrong. Don't worry, I know. Thus more questions.

So what about this: What IF this is a movement of content (I will get to what kind of content later) AND of form? In this movement however, the form isn't the format of the pieces and images and MS's as it has been in the past, but instead of the altered manners of communication we have all recently developed and are now playing with - just as freely as the early modernists played with representation.

There were no pioneers. There were no rules.

Not sure if this is understandable (or if it should be! Without the vagaries of language here, I seriously risk excluding an important voice or ten).

In our post-modern era, where it seems every medium has been tried, I am gratified to see projects like the bands that are collaborating over the internet, all over the globe, track by track to create an album. This is absolutely and completely different than anything that has ever happened before. The poster (on myspace) created for the last D'Merde was a two day collaboration between two people on opposite coasts. Absolutely impossible before now.

Also, the effects of this sort of communication (I believe) are also influencing all my local dear hearts, as well. Not just the world at large.

That's theme number one.

Theme number two is content.

What the FUCK is happening these days in the world? I'm as happy to meet you at Stumptown and drink an 8 oz Chai and chat about promoting your band as anyone, but do you think Anyone out there can really be unaffected by the fact that our government actively supports, and finds new territory for torturing human beings?

That we are finding oil rich countries and planting shit on them (like one of those lame cops, sticking you with a bag of weed), except we fucking Kill hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds (I could continue for quite a well since the number is really thousands and thousands but, yaknow....)

We are an observant city in our own overly white and classist manner. My dear brother and sister creatives, I don't think most of you are murderously fucked up assholes.

In which case, necessarily, you are disturbed on some level and this Must be showing in your work.

Thanks to Cheyenne Glasgow for indulging this line of reasoning this evening and giving me a little focus.

What I see emerging, are pieces of scathing self-study. Horrified by the emotional narcissist escapism of a pseudo-medical industry that has perfected the granting of mental indolgences without the confession (think early Catholicism), but terrified by a complete lack of self examination allowing untold horrors to be visited upon our global neighbors, we are carefully, humorously, sickeningly, jubilantly (!) identifying our faults.

And thus, our humanity.