AFH Transmissions From Marfa

Transmissions from Marfa: By Tommy Robbins

[Shortly after that last Marfa entry, I stopped working on the Marfa stuff. I had this folder that Paul left me and I think I uploaded everything in it to this blog. If I left anything out, I’ll get to it later.

Why’d a quit the Marfa gig? I got fed up with art. What a fricking racket. It seems to get worse every minute. I enjoyed sitting at the table with the panel and all, but it was better for me to leave it behind the second I walked out the cafe door and into the brown LA sunlight.

I switched to fiction. The pulpy kind. Here’s one I revised sometime in 2007. I wrote the original draft I think in 96 or so.]

the comet’s shadow

By Tommy Robbins

The pale streetlight shone through the windows, casting icy luminous reflections and a weird assemblage of angular shadows on the oil-stained, veined and cracked concrete floor of the shuttered 2^nd Street warehouse. The night air was brisk and foul with filthy chemistry from nearby pulp plants, perfuming a thick fog arising from the wretched brown Anders River cloaked the city.

NaMu is an ancient wholesalers’ mercantile neighborhood. Where National Blvd. and Murtha Avenue converge, the streets were known to be unsafe after dark. The footsteps of the rare passerby were muffled, and the direction of their origin veiled by the mist. During the day, thousands of trucks invaded NaMu. Within an hour of sunset, they were gone til early the next morning.

The staccato riff of semi-automatic weapons fire punctuated the district’s nighttime exhalations, the shoooshhhhh of cars on the shiny pavement.  Sirens tore through the night, and alarms honked and whistled irregularly, but they were blocks away, then fading. The cops only showed up when the tripped alarms rang out, usually when a drunk tried to strong-arm his way under a roof to squat, or to get out of the near-constant rains.

Shrieking, raging voices rose and faded in a crazy anguished song of pain, echoing against concrete facades, the rusting abandoned autos, the chain link fences glittering with razor wire. The cacophony dissolved. Mongrel dogs howled and barked in the distance, then stopped.

The moon was full tonight but hidden beyond the dense fog. Still, a body sensed its presence, its monoptical performance as invisible witness, behind the veil of gloomy smoke. The dark settled upon the metropolis, like a huge blue-black raven with neon   in its plumage, perched over its glowing strange halogen eggs, flickering in a nest of ooze and bricked steel.

Dark in the district was a thin, strange, finely drawn mask, whose purpose might have been to disguise. Behind it Jax could envision the fearsome and massive glowering skin of the alien monstrous Mysterious.  An intricate weaving of Dreamings made manifest, some threads horrible, some glorious.  This one was one of the horrid ones, a nightmare of lust and murder.

In a pool of thickening blood, he sat with his back to the wall.  He was conscious of the sticky warmth of his leaking life-fluids, feeling oddly fine, even comfortable, as he meandered in and out of the present, not jarred by the chill of the cement on the backs of his quivering legs, or the jagged, labored breaths, dwindling in his chest.  The brace of pistols in his relaxed hands, a Colt Combat and a Browning .45 1911 Model, both empty, seemed weightless.  His lids were heavy, and he fought to stay conscious.  His mouth worked spasmodically, the tongue coated with a sulfurous mixture of fear, blood and gunpowder.

His senses were keener than they had ever been, it seemed.  He could clearly hear the claws of a rat scratching across the concrete on the far end of the cavernous warehouse, to his right.  He tried to will his neck to lift his head and swivel it so he could face the sound, maybe catch a glimpse of the rodent, but his muscles would not respond.  He chuckled, but it sounded more like a soggy rumble deep in his chest.

—i dont wanna die here. dont wanna die here. i wanna die in my own bed. after a burger fries and milk shake. i dont wanna die here man. fuck. fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. He thought.

Four bodies were sprawled across the loading dock at the rear of the building, which had once been a factory where silk was turned into lingerie, pantyhose, garters, the works.  Jax had blown the cocksuckers away, but not before one of the bastards had hit him with a load of double ought in his belly.

There would be no ambulance coming, no high-speed race to the E/R, no blood infusions, no surgery, no painful recovery, no orange pajamas at the county jail. No judge, no jury, no prison time, no yard, no shitty food, no pumping iron or pushups, no shiv wars, no needle.

Jax was a goner, and he knew it, sure as the sun would rise tomorrow.

He tried to control his wheezing breath, slow it down, conserve it.  He had read once in Tai Chi magazine about a chi gung master who could reduce his heart rate to almost nothing, by going deep within himself, focusing on the emptiness, the void, becoming one with it.

— Bet the gook fucker hadn’t got sawed in two by a fuckin shotgun though, when he done it. He said aloud.

Jax’s voice ricocheted off everything, then died. The wall behind him shed chips of light green lead paint.

— Don’t have to worry bout the cancer no more.

He laughed, little more than a gurgle. Yet in his ears, the noise was odd and loud. The bigness of the sound frightened him, making his body tense for a couple of seconds, which in turn sent shockwaves of wrenching agony shooting from his screaming nerves to his brain.  He passed out for a little while.

When he came to, he suppressed a groan.  Jax was afraid that somebody would come looking for the mules he’d blown away on the loading dock.  God, he wanted a cigarette.  A Marlboro would be perfect. Twenty would be better. More.

—they shoulda just gimme the shit n all this crap coulda been avoided. fuck. they didnt have a fuckin chance. shoulda just give it up. now we all r fucked. He thought.

The coke and crystal would wear off soon, and then the pain would crash in, a train wreck, he thought.

Jax heard the car door slam shut.  Behind the warehouse.  By the loading dock.  Another car door.  Another.  Another.

—oh shit.

He could just barely make out a furious verbal tirade, a chorus really, four or five voices, babbling musically in spanglish:  “Ay carajo”, “madre de puta”, “pinche fucking cabron”, “chingadera dick motherfucker”…and such, for what seemed to Jax like an eternity, voices fading in and out, louder, softer.  Once or twice a wailing cry of grief rose above the other voices, probably when one of them found a cousin.

Jax managed to eject the spent clip from the Browning, set the Colt in his damp crotch, and reach into the inside breast pocket of his Overland Sheepskin black leather jacket (—fuckin ruined, the fuckin bean heads), and pull out a fresh clip, insert it, and put a bullet in the chamber, quietly.  Jax then placed the Browning in his crotch, took a speed loader off his belt—he gasped and almost cried out when he twisted around to unsnap the clasp, to extract the cylinder and bullets from his webbing—and expertly loaded the snub-nose .38.  He transferred the short-barreled pistol to his left hand, and picked up the semi-auto with his right.

—cocked n locked motherfuckers, he whispered.

Adrenaline was taking the edge off his agony.  Jax blinked his eyes open and shut quickly a couple of dozen times, to clear them of sweat and fear. …Like a kid when he’s trying to make an old movie out of the world.

It was quiet now below.  It wouldn’t be long before they discovered the military issue duffel bag filled with heroin and half-million dollars on the stairs leading to this floor of the warehouse.  He’d had to dump the bag.  Too heavy, when you got lead in your guts.  Jax figured they’d spot his blood trail, which would lead them to the package, and then to him.  They would torture him, if they could.  It was Family with them.

—fuck m, he croaked.

Jax recalled a time on his Uncle Quint’s farm near Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Jax was sent out to check the traps, and in one, set along a bank of the little crick that wound through Quint’s land, under a big oak, it was fall, and the ground was soft with mulch made by the huge leaves, it was damp and you could see your breath, the mist hung in the nooks and crannies of the hollers…the birds had stopped and the woods were still, and Jax paid attention to where he was stepping…There was a wildcat in the trap, a big steel-jaw job that Quint had set to catch a big black bear that’d been gettin too close to the house.  The cat’s leg had been broken, was twisted all wrong, the white bone stickin out of the soft beautiful pelt.  It was breathin hard, watchin Jax, muscles all bunched, barin its fangs.  Jax crouched on a low mound and watched him right back.  He remembered thinking nothing, just watching, relaxed, the shotgun laid across his knees.  After a while that wildcat lay down, painfully, still watching Jax, and waited.  When Jax knew it was ready, he took up the shotgun and blew it away.

Jax heard the rasp of canvas on concrete in the stairwell, and low whispers.  “…Sangre…”

He took aim at the top of the stairs with both guns.  His pain had faded from a roaring in his skull, to an ache.

—cmon. cmon. here i am.

His breathing had steadied.  Jax was taking air in through his nostrils, holding it in his lungs, and slowly exhaling out of his mouth, like Quint and his daddy had taught him, and then later, the D.I. on the firing range where he’d earned his marksman’s badge.  Steady…Steady…

Jax sensed more than saw the movement in the stairwell, the head dart around the corner and back.  He heard a light tap of metal on concrete, probably a barrel.  Jax knew it was inky black in the warehouse, except in the blocks of filtered fluorescent artificial light from outside.  He could feel their eyes (ojo) scanning the fields of fire (fiero), straining against the night’s (noche) power.  He imagined their hearts (corazon) beating faster, the palms of their hands (mano) sweating, their fingers tensing (contraction) and relaxing (expansion) against the hard plastic or wood of their gun butts.

They were his brothers at this moment, relatives, joined with him in a deathly dance.  Jax remembered what the I Ching said about the man who understands ceremony, dance, and music, that he would rule the world.  Jax understood.  In his heart he knew at that moment the significance.

It was all worth it, everything.  The Long Road, of suffering, fucking, eating, shitting, living and dying.  The friends he’d left on the side of the highway, dead or broken, the masks he’d donned and discarded, the heaviness of his memories, the loves, twisted or small.  It was nothing compared to this.

Jax, Sorley Gillian Jackson Donald, son of Angus, grandson of Iain, descended of the MacDonalds of Glencoe, thanked his God, the God of Loch Leven and Ballachulish,  Iona and Staffa and Fingal, whom he had never known to this day, and when the shadows of his stalkers emerged from the shadows in the stairwell, Jax paused for the most delicious of instants, and, from a place not in his body, he loosed a shattering battle-cry that momentarily froze the hard men across the hall.  Jax was illuminated by the flash from the muzzles of his pistols, which spewed yellow-white flames.  His bullets tore through their bodies, sending three of four lurching, jerking, spinning, falling backward, two clattering down the stairs, already dead.

The one on his feet, Filemonde Francisco Antonio Gonzalez y Reina y Romero y Gevrez y Perea, stood his ground and emptied the H&K into the body of the man that had killed his brother Juan, cousin Roberto, and crippled his brother-in-law Pasqual, and sent the others downstairs to God.

Through the blue smoke, Filemonde watched as Jax’s body gently slid to the floor, coming to rest in the light from the street lamps outside, leaving a descending crescent swoosh of blood on the wall behind where he had sat and waited.  Filemonde saw the wide-open eyes of the corpse glistening, and the smile, blissful, serene, that Jax wore into the next world.

Filemonde sighed, lowered his gun, and his body unwound.

—son of a bitch. dios mio. He said, shaking his head.

Filemonde reached with his left hand into the pocket of his London Fog trench coat, and took out his cell phone.  He used his thumb to dial a number, and nestled the phone between his cheek and shoulder.  While he waited for an answer he took a pack of unfiltered Camels out of the breast pocket of his black silk shirt, shook the pack until he could grab a cigarette with his mouth.  He lit it with a zippo he pulled out of the same pocket and took a deep drag, holding it in, and then slowly exhaling a thin line of blue smoke that langorously rose to blend with the gunsmoke lingering, floating dreamily in the noxious dead warehouse air.

—oyeme. esta muy malo hermano. no. yo tengo los chiles, pero mis hijos son enfiermos. muy enfiermos. salgan. si…

It was going to be a long night of tears for Filemonde and his family.

That year a comet streaked across the sky, over a period of four months.  It was most visible in the northwestern sky right after dusk.

SNAPSHOT

Somewhere

Beyond the concrete (scanning – the artist in mourning)

The sun will set over Malibu’s edge of the world Pacific horizon .Orange disc above the Equitable highrise, through my filth filmed windshield, tinting the interior of my vehicle, as I zip along a cross-town thruway toward Silverlake beyond Planet Hollywood (and the star of the slums of Beverly Hills’ fake breasts)

the sun descends into the sea

A scary monster in residence in the shell

Of a street drunk who used to be a minister

Flicks a bottle cap at my car making a face like an Inuit mask & I destroy him

Thunder

Missing the record by a few tenths of an inch

A couple of kids swept away by the runoff up on Baldy

Bob didn’t believe when it happened in Austin

Even when it burned up his car &

Shut off the lights along South Congress

…A naked nymph at Barton Springs believed, tho

Attended by two young bearded warriors

With fierce flashing eyes and a towel

In the twilight, perfect kids doing flips off

The diving board

Kata

Negotiating tight turns in stop/go traffic in the International 24-foot box truck weaving through the crazy daily Angeleno Oil fueled race for an image that means poon, millions, mansion, membership, access, instant recognition, More

Chain smoking American Spirit lights and drowning in Redeyes

From Starbucks (Basquiat knew the value of branding)

It was either the de Kooning rat shit or the George Washington portrait or it was Abraham Lincoln’s hat –

Who knows? Maybe it was that tenement apartment on La Brea where the 40 huffin dailies played with radio controlled cars, concocting their own entertainments, while we idled on the paved incline, waiting for the light to change.

Poem

Or maybe it was the turning leaves of Virginia, or the 25’ swells of Kauai off the ledge at Princeville with a certain

Conservator, a sparrow eating pastry crumbs from the palm

Of my hand, or the Night Marchers in what’s his name’s backyard, or Honu in the reef, amongst the dazzling fish bodies… I need to get back to Nashville to shoot some

Negatives. John G is on the River 500 wilderness water miles north of Minneapolis, Shane cuts loose in Hollywood, concocting scams for Fred Segal buyers, import/export connecting Tennessee with Cali & the world & my girl lost to Yale, my enemy forever, my boy in Santa Fe, my boy in Santa Fe.

CONCEPT: A PRAYER FOR CLEAN WATER

Water

“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” - “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Coleridge

Some Thoughts and Facts about Water

Human beings need water to survive. Each of us is constituted largely of the stuff. Our bodies at birth consist of nearly 80% water (although that percentage varies and diminishes over a lifetime). Water covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface. Yet only 2-3% of the Earth’s water is suitable for human consumption, and roughly two-thirds of that relatively small fraction of the planet’s water is contained in glaciers. The H20 molecule, as it is typically represented, functions as a formal foundation for the art in “A Prayer for Clean Water”: two like but separate elements bound by invisible forces to a third.

Subject: Torture

Object: As an example of change in socio-politics

Predicate: Since 9/11, my government has instituted a policy that allows for torture in defense of the Republic against terrorism. The Bush Administration continues to argue for torture as a necessary tool in “The War Against Terror”, in spite of the passage of new legislation meant to re-establish protocols preventing the practice of torture for any reason by agents of the United States. Article seven of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” According to Noah Leavitt, in a CNN column, “Currently, the Administration defines torture one way (and far too narrowly), wanting to protect its soldiers from being accused of it. Yet it defines torture another way when it wants to deport someone who seeks asylum on the ground that he reasonably fears being tortured if he is returned to his home country.” Photos of prisoner abuse circulated in a variety of media over the past several years, and the international criticism of the practices they revealed, have failed to force the President to alter his advocacy of torture as an interrogation tool. In fact, it can be argued that his torture policy has served as an important facet in the Bush’s movement to consolidate power in the Executive Branch of the government. Bush has, by making public the Administration’s views on the acceptable parameters for interrogation methods,  (perhaps inadvertently) “outed” forty years of secret American state-sanctioned torture practice.

Anecdote: When I was a young man, growing up in West Virginia, I heard a story from a friend, a preacher’s son. A man abducted a little girl and hid her away in a mountain cabin, where he abused her horribly. It took months for the State Police to discover the kidnapper and girl’s whereabouts – but they did. After subduing the kidnapper, the State Police handcuffed the man to a chair, took the girl outside and sent a car for the girl’s father. When he arrived, the father embraced his daughter, and after awhile, left her with the troopers and walked up the path to the cabin. He beat the kidnapper to death with his bare hands over the next few hours. When he was done, he walked back down the path to his daughter. Together, they climbed the path to the cabin, and the father took his daughter inside. He showed her the kidnapper’s horrible corpse, and told her, “He’ll never bother you again.” The State Troopers drove them home. I don’t know if this story is true or not.

Supporting Data: (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Manadel al-Jamadi was an Iraqi who was tortured to death during interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison. His name became known in 2004 when the Abu Ghraib scandal made news; his corpse, packed in ice, was the background for widely-reprinted pictures of grinning Specialists Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner, each offering a “thumbs-up” gesture. But the cause of his death was not generally known until February 17, 2005, when it was revealed that he died after a fruitless half-hour interrogation, during which he was suspended from a barred window by his wrists, which were bound behind his back. News reports introduced the term Palestinian Hanging, a coinage attributed to the alleged frequent use of this technique by Israeli troops on Palestinian prisoners. (See attached image 1)

Confusing data: On the same website (Wikipedia), the history of the torture technique, described in the narrative of the homicide of Manadel al-Jamadi as “Palestinian Hanging”, is chronicled further under the moniker “strappado”. During the time of the Inquisition, strappado was a commonly practiced torture method, most famously utilized in the case of Machiavelli’s torture at the behest of the Medicis. Also colorfully illustrated on the Wikipedia site is strappado-as-a-modern-BDSM-technique. (See attached image 2)

Comments: After much eye-blistering, brain-frying and soul-dirtying research online, I am convinced the practice of torture is common throughout documented history. It is a phenomenon that crosses cultural and technological barriers. Though contemporary practitioners of torture often draw on the expertise, methodologies, tools and techniques of modern medicine and social science (psychology, anthropology and sociology), today’s torturers are just as likely to recycle ancient ways of inflicting suffering on their victims. Torture, some posit, is a function of State and Law enforcement. However, the torturer’s gratification in the act must be acknowledged. Torture seems to be a realm where the “primitive” and “civilized” intersect. Only relatively recently have proclamations against torture been furthered on the international stage. The Enlightenment is often credited for this trend, which appears to be in jeopardy, after a century of vigorous resurgence in state-sanctioned torture.

Conclusion: Torture is emblematic of humanity. In the absence of social conventions encouraging public torture, people may pursue a personal practice that involves sexual or psychological gratification.

Personal View: In some things, like torture, it’s better to be something other than typically human.

Attachments:

Images [NOT SHOWN]

Notes for Discussion:

1. “We are dealing with extrordinary (sic) people and that calls for extrordinary (sic) tactics if we want to protect our citizens.” – Jason Nelms, Libertarian Blogger (3/11/03)

2. “On Friday, Germany’s Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble set off a firestorm across party lines after saying in a newspaper interview that he wants information which may have been extracted from suspected terrorists through torture by a third party to be admissible in court.” – Deutsche Welle (12/20/05)

3. From Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes (no. 27; cf. VS 80): Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself…, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as… torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; …all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator. (Extracted from website “Catholics for President George W. Bush” 01/13/06

4: As reported by Wonkette.com, Limbaugh’s comments can be found on his website. From the May 4 Rush Limbaugh Show, titled “It’s Not About Us; This Is War!”

CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men —

LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

LIMBAUGH: And these American prisoners of war — have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.

LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at — if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it looks just like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I’m — yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City — the movie. I mean, I don’t — it’s just me.

ESSAY #1 [NOTES]

“CONTINENTAL THEORY”

POV & Tone

Anecdotal, conversation starter for discussion groups, expanding influences to include democratization of art.

Issues

§  The theorist/critic seeks to determine the artist’s role in the culture.

§  The Marxist critic opposes the canon, push socio-political agenda masquerading as human interest activism

§  50,000 art students graduate every year (Coagula)

§  Jurist for Kinetic Sculpture Race, Tattoo Convention, high school art fairs

§  Outsider Art

§  “The Art Business”, what qualifies as an “art gallery”, market forces that play out in the success of guys like Marc Kostabi & Thomas Kincaid

§  Bob Ross

§  The befuddling success of Cloaca, von Hagens’s “Body Worlds”, Marc Quinn, etc.

§  “Everything is art”

§  Hippie at RSAP who fingerpainted on Fredrix canvas

§  Rural arts organizations

§  The devaluation of the artist

§  Lack of respect for collections

§  Marginalizing of traditional artistic pursuits in favor of commercial “art”, the kind that is sold at Tower, Blockbuster or any Cineplex, for under $20.

§  “The Art of ….”

From www.importanceofphilosophy.com

The surest way to destroy a concept is to expand it to mean everything. Over the last century, art has been the victim of such a practice. The new belief is that anything intended to be “art” is art. Is this circular? Of course it is. It is also the only possible definition left, since toilets, blank canvasses, fire engine sirens, and people urinating on stage have been accepted as art.

Andy Warhol: “Everything is art,” he told Newsweek in 1964, “and nothing is art. Because I think everything is beautiful — if it’s right.”

Joseph Beuys Statement:

“Creativity isn’t the monopoly of artists. This is the crucial fact I’ve come to realise, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art. When I say everybody is an artist, I mean everybody can determine the content of life in his particular sphere, whether in painting, music, engineering, caring for the sick, the economy or whatever. All around us the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped or created. But our idea of culture is severely restricted because we’ve always applied it to art. The dilemma of museums and other cultural institutions stems from the fact that culture is such an isolated field, and that art is even more isolated: an ivory tower in the field of culture surrounded first by the whole complex of culture and education, and then by the media which are also part of culture. We have a restricted idea of culture which debases everything; and it is the debased concept of art that has forced museums into their present weak and isolated position. Our concept of art must be universal and have the interdisciplinary nature of a university, and there must be a university department with a new concept of art and science”.

1979, From an interview with Frans Hak

The art of living

…the mix

…unix programming

…communicating effectively

calculating with beads

eating

electronics

kissing

motion control

questioning

peace

driving

project management

insults,

fire

divination