Author: wjacobr

Visual artist, poet, novelist, activist & Street Medic, living in North. Penn Name: Jacob Russell My blog is a confluence of art, writing, politics. my Art portfolio: Art-by-Willard.com

Staring at the Face of Our Collective Death Wish

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When the level of fear, zenophobia and thinly disguised blood lust exceeds all reasonable accounts of the perceived threats, it’s not about those threats, it’s about something else.
It’s time we paid close attention to that ‘something else,’ cause it’s already broken ground, it’s head and tentacles dripping with poison. What’s been let loose by the funders of the tea party, of climate denial–by those who have used racial hatred to gain political office and war for profit–it’s all come together. What was set loose by the bloodbath of the First WW, the collective madness that grew between the wars has been raised up in a new and more terrifying form and all signs indicate that it won’t end until the collective madness has exhausted itself over mountains of bodies, human and other, and a planet no longer able to support life above the molecular level.
I grieve for those with children… and for those children. We have broken the seal. What we buried has risen to devour us.

Think Your Conscious Brain Directs Your Actions? Think Again

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By Shelly Fan. READ HERE

I was thinking as I read this rather unremarkable piece, not of individuals, but of our collective actions. How whatever is governing national (and international) actions, it’s not those whose role it is to govern. What populist demagoguery and endless wars of exploitation have uncorked are forces that once again seem to have taken control. One may reasonably fear that we’ve reached a point where nothing will end this outbreak of the monsters of repression till it drowns in chaos and blood.

 

Drawing the thread, stitching the world together, a line at a time.

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Drawing calms me. It’s very physical; I don’t need the muscular strength of throwing pottery on a wheel (something I did full time for almost 10 years)–but requires every bit the control and coordination. There’s always an element of drawing in my painting–even in the most abstract pieces, and when I get away from that, something is lost in the finished work.
Even the trash assemblages are a form of drawing, not with marks on a flat surface–but in three dimensions, creating lines, geometric or chaotic forms, tonal variations.
My need for this–to return to drawing, day after day without breaks, has progressed–gradually at first, when I returned to making art in July of 2012, to the point now that if I go two or three days without drawing my level of physical anxiety increases and my thoughts spiral toward patterns of depression.
At the end of a day of shopping, cooking, preparing a canvas, taking care of this business or that–I may be exhausted, but I have to take the time–even if only a half an hour sketching figures from an anatomy book.
I didn’t realize until recently–how important this was for my emotional and physical health. It’s that integration of interior and exterior perception… stitching together the fabric of reality.
The metaphor calls to mind, my mother, who was deeply skilled at both drawing–and a seamstress/tailor. I stitch together those ancient bonds, as well, memories and the present. As with poetry. Word by word. Line by line.

Revolution: organizing for the long haul

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An interesting question: when all our ideas about how to maintain long term stability are modeled on capitalist institutions (the symbiotic relationship between non-profit and profit being the most obvious), how do we organize for the long term in ways that will break that mold? Put another way: how does a revolutionary movement remain revolutionary when the struggle is going to be multi-generational?

Do we assume they will be temporary but reoccurring, splintering off into more conventional affinity groups (like Occupy),

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or can we create forms of self-renewing continuity that are not dependent on existing institutions, but exist in the interstitial spaces abandoned or not yet occupied by the machinery of capitalism–and having the power to resist assimilation and occupation?

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Gabriel Josipovici Interview

I have great respect for Josipoici. I thought Whatever Happened to Modernism was brilliant… how commercial demand for retro-realist fiction derailed the unfinished Modernist experiment. His treatment by establishment critics in the British press tells you much of what you need to know about what’s wrong with so-called, literary fiction and it’s gatekeepers.

Thanks to Victoria Best (Litlove, of the venerable blog, Tales from the Reading Room), for this long interview–which serves as wonderful introduction to Josipovici’s writing.

Source: Gabriel Josipovici Interview

#400

#400

#400 25×33″ Acrylic, canvas strips, paper on Masonite. Photo misses the 3 dimensional–curving delineation is from pieces that were left stuck on the surface when I ripped off stuffed rolls of paper and fabric from an earlier piece (#134 “Late Capitalism”)–like fat bloody infected intestines. The ‘face’ is from those fragments.The “Chagalesque” character was not intentional, and definitely not something I’ll pursue in the future. But what the fuck, I like the colors.

View GALLERY HERE.

55 Days of Occupy Philly: 54, 55… The beginning is near

11/29/11 Day 54
Rain. CoCo, Friend’s Center

I’ve posted these for the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from the first day of OWS, the days of planning for OP, to the first day of our camp on October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click:  55 Days of Occupy Philly.

Still on Dilworth. Two more days before Social Security.

Sunday—four rows of 25, — people sitting on steps

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from 5 PM (time named in eviction order)… somewhere around 11:00, people disassembled. Crowd went from 500 or so (?) to about 100—OWS people from New York arrived—electric energizers! Plastic Pail drumbs—danced for hours. Straw vote to ignore Gwen-of-Labor’s warning that cops wanted drums to stop—unanimous. Congo line to Northwest corner, across to Thomas Paine—back down JFK & 15th –danced in the street past the cops.

About damn time we stoped letting the cops tell us what to do. Not to bed till after 3:00 AM. The damn orientation at 8:30 next morning—turned out to be about conditions of bail. Call in twice a week, don’t get arrested before trial or risk revoking bail and contempt of court.

Friday
12/2/2011
Day 55
The end came Wednesday. November 30. Up all night Sunday. Again eviction day. Bowled over by a horse. Last night—GA at the Friends Center… so, it goes on.

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…not with a bang, but a whimper

Soon they will come, the police. The city workers with their trucks. Our city of tents, our fights–all of it will disappear. Scrub away our presence, uproot the trees. Pile up the marble slabs we slept on.

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My mind drifts back in time. I am fishing on Lake Michigan with my father in his boat. This is shortly before he will die. My parents had bought a retirement cottage not far from Grand Rapids. The light on the water, that silvered turquoise water, the peaks of the waves glisten in the sun–even the Voice is lulled to somnambulant slumber. I think of my mother–of that last summer, the summer before her final illness, while she is still herself–sitting on the porch–martini hour–watching the sunset over the lake, the jet skiers droning and whining like gigantic mechanized insects, a moment I want to go on forever. A tableaux receding into the distance, like the light of stars that no longer exist.

I will always remember…

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