OVO

Kate Mather, The Oregonian:

Daniel Rafatpanah thought he was going to die. A jittery gunman was marching the 29-year-old and two of his Southeast Portland housemates upstairs to the attic, a handgun aimed at their backs. None of them knew the man, who demanded Popsicles and alcohol before taking them hostage Monday afternoon. But when he placed the gun under his foot to change into a new pair of pants, they knew it was their only chance. “Everything’s in slow-mo, and I’m like, ‘It’s go time.’ It’s time to fight this guy,” Rafatpanah said.

Jonathan Mooney, 26, bearhugged the gunman from behind. Robert Steinfeld, 21, broke a beer bottle over his head. And Rafatpanah started throwing punches, his hands bloodied by the shattered glass. Everyone reached for the gun as the man fell. The man fired a shot as the struggle continued. Rafatpanah’s right hand got sliced open by the gun’s mechanism, and blood poured everywhere.

A neck hold wasn’t working. Not knowing what else to do, Rafatpanah bit the man’s ear. “Let go of the gun, let go of the gun!” he yelled through clamped teeth. “Let go of my ear!” the gunman responded. The two tore apart, and Rafatpanah spat out a bean-sized piece of ear.

“I tasted the blood of my enemy in my mouth,” he said. “And so at that point you realize the stakes have gone so much higher because blood is being drawn – my blood, his blood.”

Rafatpanah lunged toward the gun and wrestled it away.

Article continues, with video.

Previously at OVO:

Trevor Blake: Time Machine (after The Invisibles by Grant Morrison). June 2011. Model: Danny Chaoflux.

Portland writer Trevor Blake’s book, Portland Memorials, is a compilation of historical markers to be found by walking through the downtown area. Sound simple? Consider that the author must at some points have practically crawled on his hands and knees to transcribe dates and names from the thousands of “plaques, buildings, statues, benches and fountains” that were grist for his investigations. He even discovered that a few memorials touching on Black history were likely thrown into the Willamette River. The Skanner News traded electronic letters with Blake to get his story on how, and why, Portland has chosen to remember its past.

The Skanner News: Trevor what made you want to put this book together?

Trevor Blake: I wrote Portland Memorials for three reasons. The first reason is an echo of one of the memorials found in the book. The Shemanski Fountain is located at the north end of the South Park Blocks. It was a gift to the city by Portland shopkeeper Joseph Shemanski (1869-1951) in 1926. Shemanski gave the fountain to the city “to express in small measure gratitude for what the city has done for me.” And that is exactly the reason I have written Portland Memorials. I moved to Portland in 1992 and the city has given me as many opportunities, experiences and challenges as anyone could ask for. The second reason is writing a book is a good way to learn a subject, and I wanted to learn more about the architecture and history of Portland. The third reason is it provided some good exercise for the legs and the brain.

TSN: How did you research it, how many memorials are contained in it, and how long did it take?

Blake: I researched Portland Memorials the old fashioned way: I used my feet and my eyes. Over a three year period I walked around every block in downtown Portland, usually two or three times, and whenever I found a memorial I wrote down what it said and where it was using a pencil and paper. No special training or equipment was needed. There are a few websites and books that might have helped but I decided to see for myself what was there, and in doing so I’ve documented many thousands of memorials that are found in no other resource. I thought it would be a fine project for a Summer and include a few hundred items. It is a fine project, but it took three years and includes thousands of names. The best way to find a particular memorial is to look in the index, then find that page, then go to that memorial.

TSN: Can you talk a little bit about the Portland memorials that touch on the African American experience here?

BLAKE: I’m glad you asked this question. One of the most lively memorials downtown is for the Golden West Hotel at 707 NW Everett. This hotel was owned and frequented by African Americans from the early 1900s onward. Of all the memorials I found, this is the only one that includes photographs, text and a recording – the blind can enjoy and learn from this memorial, making it accessible to even more Portland citizens. The Walk of the Heroines on the campus of Portland State University includes the name of nearly thirty Black women civil rights pioneers. Strangely enough, there are three civil war cannons in downtown Portland. Two are in Lownsdale Square and were taken from Fort Sumter, the third was melted down and made into the church bell of First Presbyterian Church. There are some sidewalk plaques in the Old Town area that honor how the Chinese community has interacted with other communities, and one of them (on NW Flanders between 3 and 4) talks about how the Chinese and African American community mingled at the Royal Palm Hotel. There used to be a memorial park downtown dedicated to the Liberty Ships built by many African American workers in Portland during World War Two, but when that property was converted to condominiums most of what was in the park was thrown into the Willamette River.

TSN: What do you want to come from this book?

BLAKE: I want people to read about a memorial and go see it for themselves.  Not to read about it and forget it, not look it up online, but to go see it for themselves. It’s a reminder that each of us will just be a memory some day and that we’d best make hay while the sun shines.

TSN: What’s the most important thing about this town that you hope people take away from reading Portland Memorials?

BLAKE: Portland has preserved much of its history, and that can’t be said about many cities. Sometimes the preservation was by design of the city leaders, but often it was the efforts of individuals. In the 1950s many older buildings were torn down for being old fashioned.  The decorative iron work on the sides of some of these buildings was, shall we say, ‘privately preserved’ by individuals who couldn’t stand to see the art destroyed. Decades later, when Portland again appreciated its history, these works were returned to the city and can be seen in the Saturday Market area. I hope Portland Memorials is read for years to come by those who care about our city’s history.

TSN: Is there a website or other place people can access your book, or any other of your writings?

BLAKE: My book can be purchased in print or for Kindle at this address http://ovo127.com/ovo/ , where there is also a free sample chapter to download.

Originally published by The Skanner News on 19 December 2011.  Many thanks to Lisa and The Skanner.

Image c/o Retronaut.

Thanks to the following for linking to OVO.

Eithin links to Liberating Wednesday.
Monday Vatican links to The Concordant Story.
Financial Advices Blog links to The Bonus Army.
Rambone at Indiana Gun Owners links to The Bonus Army.
The American Book of the Dead links to Unspeakable Horrors.

Today, 25 November, was a special day in the life of Yukio Mishima.  May you have a special day as well.  I don’t want to do what Mishima did, I want to do what I do as fully as he did what he did.

“Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they’re just repeating what others before them have done.” – Yukio Mishima, After the Banquet.

OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2010.
OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2009.
OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2008.

… and more.

This review of OVO 20: JUVEN(a/i)LIA by Trevor Blake was written by Ferdinand Bardamu, and appeared at his blog In Mala Fide in November 2011.

This is a best-of collection of articles and artwork from OVO, a zine founded and edited by friend of the blog Trevor Blake, “a public record of [his] interests and inquiries.” It’s interesting, it’s weird, and I don’t entirely know what to make of it. I guess it’s because I’m too young to appreciate it – I was barely out of diapers when Trevor was printing up the early editions of OVO on his pal’s company’s copiers in the eighties. To someone of the Internet Era, where narcissistic self-expression is just a couple of mouse clicks away, the effort and dedication involved in compiling an entire magazine, from writing and gathering the material to binding the physical copies and mailing them out, is difficult to relate to.

Still, this is a great little collection of oddities, ranging from poetry to short stories to investigative journalism on offbeat subjects. They include “Holding Games for Ransom,” about how one tabletop game creator found a way to keep online piracy from cutting into his profits; “A Pit Stop Along the Inward Journey,” a stream-of-consciousness tale beginning with white guilt and ending with madness; and “23 Sperm Stories 23,” the longest article in the book, on just about every aspect of sperm, from its discovery, its function, and its future. Of particular interest to us in the manosphere are “Warbucks Intra-Family Communique” and “Becoming More Free” by Ernest Mann. The former is a satirical article on the emptiness and mindlessness of American consumerism; the latter is on how Mann unplugged himself from the Matrix of American culture:

I am wasting less of my time (LIFE) watching, listening to and reading THOUGHT LEADERS, ie, TV, movies, radio, music, newspapers, magazines and novels. These are like spectator sports. They cause me to live life vicariously, ie, second-hand, not real, only in fantasy. These mind conditioners are subtly designed to create not only fear and anger emotions but also create feelings of guilt and inadequacy. These feeling stifle growth and keep one securely in one’s rut. And of course the more visible purpose of the media is to create the desire to acquire (BUY! BUY! BUY!) and keep up with the Joneses. ‘Buying’ uses up my savings. I spent 22 years of my TIME (life) working as a Wage Slave. I helped perpetuate the status quo, ie a world of 98.6% Slaves and less than 1% Elite (Billionaires). I don’t wish to do that any more.

But the real prize is Trevor’s own writings, comprising the second half of the book. They include book reviews (including an exhaustive review of one of my favorites, L.A. Rollins’ Myth of Natural Rights), interviews with such diverse individuals as a bulimia sufferer and an expert on out-of-body experiences/bilocation, and my favorite, “Trajectory Through Anarchism,” in which Trevor tracks the evolution of his political beliefs:

1996: Feeling free of anarchism and a little burned by what I now see was my own hooded thinking, I call up the imp of the perverse to see what other forbidden ideas might be out there. Ayn Rand is suggested, and I read her works. Having already shed one hood I’m less inclined to put another one on, and I do not become an Objectivist. But moving through Objectivism brings libertarian thinking to my attention. It’s something about the sovereignty of the individual… but I’ve walked down that path already and don’t sign on as a libertarian either.

Like The eXile, OVO 20 comes in a 8 1/2 by 11 inch size, to fit artwork and cartoons on the pages – I was particularly amused by “Attack of the Giant Killer Sperm.” One minor issue I have with the design is that all paragraphs in OVO 20 are punctuated with bullet points. I suppose they’re there to make the book look distinctive, but I found them mildly distracting, fooling my eyes into thinking I was reading a series of lists instead of articles.

Still, if you want to take an excursion into the bizarre and come back a little more enlightened, OV0 20 is a fun and informative read. If you’re still not convinced, Trevor maintains a free online archive of all OVO articles here. He also has some words of wisdom for aspiring writers and publishers:

…First and most important, get busy. Your time is already diminished by work and mortality, and neither of those situations is going to improve. Keep a printed copy of what you make and write down the date of when you made it. Large bodies of work and the pleasure they bring are made a few small pieces at a time. Learn about the history of what interests you. Novelty is rare and not always of value for being novel. Your friends are not being documented right now and you are the one who can do a good job with that. Read with regularity outside your area of interests. Nothing will point out your own ignorance and error better than attentiveness to those who disagree with you, nothing makes what you know make sense like learning something unrelated to what you know. Take as many chances as you are willing to take the lumps for.

But most of all, get busy.

Followup to my 20 February 2003 post What Happens When a Public Hysteria Dies Out?

What happens when a public hysteria dies out? It seems that everyone agrees to simply not talk about it any more. Y2K created a huge stink – I confess I thought something would ‘happen’ – and now Y2K is all but forgotten. But what about Kelly Michaels, Gerald Amirault, Bernard Baran and Patrick Figured? All of them are currently in prison as a result of the public hysteria of the 90s, ‘ritual abuse.’ The satanic panic has subsided but they remain in prison, for things that they did not do and in fact no one did. Dozens of other people were ‘lucky’ enough to only serve extended prison sentences and lose their homes, friends, family and jobs – they are now out of prison and free to be ‘registered sex offenders’ in their community for the rest of their lives. With so much genuine misery in the world, it is criminal that some people are punished for crimes never committed and other people are made ‘survivors’ who were never victims.

Kelly Michaels spent five years in prison for crimes neither she nor anyone else committed. She was released in 1994.
Gerald Amirault spent eighteen years in prison for crimes neither he nor anyone else committed. He was released in 2004.
Bernard Baran spent twenty-one years in prison for crimes neither he nor anyone else committed. He was released in 2006.
Patrick Figured has spent nineteen years in prison for crimes neither he nor anyone else committed.  He is serving a life sentence, reduced in 1996 from three consecutive life sentences. He was denied an appeal in 1994. “I have learned one thing in here; they can’t do anymore to me than they have… I have lost everything as it is.”

It’s not easy to find up-to-date information on these men and women. The circus has passed and nobody wants to clean up after the elephants and the horses and the clowns. But here are the names I could find of those in prison for crimes neither they nor anyone else committed, all victims of the satanic panic of the 1980s.  What is a convincing argument that this could never happen to you?  That’s right.

Cheryl Amirault
Jason Baldwin
Jack Barnes
Linda Barnes
Damien Echols
Jesse Friedman
Frank Fuster
Robert Halsey
Danny Keller
Fran Keller
Jeanette Martin
Kristie Mayhugh
Jessie Misskelley, Jr.
Elsie Oscarson
Michael Parker
Bruce Perkins
Elizabeth Ramirez
Cassandra Rivera
Ryan Smith
Anna Vasquez
James Watt

Violet Amirault died in prison.
Earl Barnes died in prison.

Further reading
False Memory Syndrome Foundation
National Center for Reason and Justice
Wikipedia, File 18
Wikipedia, Day Care Sex Abuse Hysteria

Melissa is a friend who spoke with OVO about her eating disorder on 12 July 1991.

OVO: When did you first realize there was something wrong about the way you were eating?

Melissa: Last Fall. I was dating somebody and I started doing it a lot. I’ve noticed I tend to do it more when I’m in a relationship. I used to drink a beer every day because it would help me throw up. I came home from work and drank a beer really quick. I was in the bathroom doing my business behind the closed door and the person walked in on me. They suggested to me that l have a problem. I had thought so before but when somebody else confronted me with it I had to confront myself with it. That’s when I realized there was something really wrong with what was doing.

OVO: How long had you been doing it?

Melissa: It’s an on-again off-again thing with me, depending on how you define it. I define my eating disorder not by how long I’ve thrown up or how long ago I starved myself. I think I’ve always had an unhealthy relationship with food. It’s taken on different forms over the years. I can remember when l was young I was deprived of certain foods that my friends could eat because my mother was really into health foods. I would go over to my friends’ house or trade lunches at school, and horde junk food because I was fascinated by it and it was something that was forbidden to me. That’s the first example of it. Over the years it’s been bulimia, it’s been anorexia, there have been points where I’ve been a compulsive exerciser, but the most recurring and the problem I have now is bulimia.

OVO: What is that?

Melissa: It’s called binge-and-purge syndrome. When l start eating I don’t feel like I can stop, then I feel guilty, so to make me feel better about eating all that food I’ll make myself throw up. Or I’ll not eat for a couple days or I’ll exercise for a long time. Some people use laxative but I’ve never done that.

OVO: Was throwing up something you figured out on your own?

Melissa: Yes, it was really easy for me. I’ve always had a nervous stomach. I figured out I could do it and use it as a way of maintaining my weight.

OVO: What is the source of your concern about your eating? Why isn’t it a natural process?

Melissa: I hate to sound like “I have this horrible childhood” but I think that’s where a lot of it came from. We had a rule in our house my sister and l joke about now called the Clean Plate Club (my sister, by the way, is anorexic). We weren’t allowed to leave the kitchen table until we’d finished everything that we had been given to eat. From there I started associating food with reward and punishment instead of just what I needed, like sleeping. It became something else.

OVO: Do you think your mother has some kind of eating disorder?

Melissa: No. I think my mother getting into her health food kick was just something to occupy her because there were things going on in my family that were very stressful for her. It was a means of her being able to cope by being interested in something.

OVO: You go to a group where you talk about this with other women.

Melissa: Yes. Last spring I started group therapy and individual counseling for my eating disorder.

OVO: What are the other womens’ experiences like?

Melissa: Their experiences are very similar to mine. It‘s very interesting because a lot of the ways I react to other things, not just food, are very similar to the other women in the group as well. It’s like obsessive-compulsive behavior across the board, not just with eating. It’s a pattern that develops the way you deal with everything.

OVO: Do you or they see any kind of connection between your eating disorder and media portrayal of women?

Melissa: Yes, and that was what really invoked a lot of emotion in me because I’m very involved in feminism and the portrayal of women in our society. I think it has an enormous amount to do with that. I think that’s why it became such an obsessive thing for me as I got into my teenage years. I’m 21 now. I saw a commercial on TV the other day for a clinic for eating disorders where they called it “the national college womens’ plague.” It’s one of the biggest things that happens to women when they enter college. When l moved to Knoxville is when my eating disorder became the worst. I that has to do with being on my own and food being a focus, something that is a constant, that l could always depend on.

OVO: What is it that you’re the trying to achieve by going to group therapy and counseling?

Melissa: One thing I learned in group therapy is that we’re not there to find a cure. We’re there to give each other support and understand why we do it because that‘s more important. I’d like to think eventually I won’t have to do it. There are times now where I’ll go days or weeks or even months… there was a period not too long ago where I went a couple months without doing it and that felt good, like I had power over myself.

OVO: If it’s something that you’ve done for a long time and that a lot of women have done and do what’s bad about it?

Melissa: It’s dangerous to your health. I have medical problems now because of it. I have a stomach ulcer. You can damage your esophagus. I’ve been lucky enough not to. I’ve never had a cavity in my life and now I have seven because my stomach acid has corroded the enamel off my teeth in the back. It can cause heart problems The two effects it’s had in me have been my teeth, and I get heartburn a lot and I have upper intestinal problems now from stomach acid.

OVO: Why is this occurring in women more than men?

Melissa: I think there’s a stronger image for women to live up to. There is an image that men have to live up to but there’s more emphasis and pressure for women to look a certain way to be accepted our society. It’s contradictory because we offer women a double standard by showing her all these great things she’s supposed to eat and make in her lifestyle and then she’s still supposed to look that way, and it’s impossible.

OVO: Why is it offered if it’s obviously a double standard and impossible?

Melissa: I can’t answer that. I could say just another way for men to have control over women but I think that’s maybe not answering the question, maybe that’s just anger. I think its because women want to have a certain lifestyle that they’ve been given the opportunity to have now and yet they’re still supposed to look a certain way from the old world thinking, pre-feminist thought, and what men find appealing today in our society is thin women.

OVO: Is this a modem problem?

Melissa: The Romans and the Greeks had vomitoriums where they actually would purge on purpose, but I think that was a way of having a decadent lifestyle and there wasn’t any kind image put before them as a reason to do that. If you discount that that it is a modern problem.

OVO: A friend of mine said that anyone who has an eating disorder should have their television taken away.

Melissa: That’s a good point because that’s where the double standard comes from. Commercials. That’s where the image is the strongest, that’s where we see the women that we’re supposed to look like.

OVO: It‘s telling that if you look at an ideal for women (and I think having one is a bad idea in the first place) prior to television that ideal is very different. It‘s changed throughout history but I think there’s a strong connection between modem eating disorders and television. All the years of film before television didn’t inspire eating disorders but film is also a visual medium. The difference is commercials.

Melissa: The food industry has created a demand for the diet industry. It’s a vicious cycle. I notice when I watch MTV sometimes (I watch it when I’m getting ready to go to work to have some background none), that when I want to look a certain way the worst I know people who’ve told me that when they’re dieting that they watch MTV because it gives them inspiration to look like the women who probably have eating disorders themselves.

OVO: What would you want someone reading this who has an eating disorder to know?

Melissa: To know that they should want to get help because it’s not something you should want to do and that you can get help. And it’s dangerous. It doesn’t seem like it’s dangerous and it’s a really easy answer but I’m sure that I’ll be really regretting a lot of what I’m doing ten years from now. I’m sure I’ll have a lot worse problems. I don‘t have a problem discussing it with friends and that‘s where I get a lot of my support but maybe that’s because a lot of my friends have eating disorders. It’s a secret and we go into our rooms to talk about it. Everybody understands that what is said behind that door is not said anywhere else. That’s what defines an eating disorder, it’s something that happens behind closed doors.

OVO: Who defines the ideal image of a woman and the ideal image of a man?

Melissa: I think the media.

OVO: Who controls the media?

Melissa: Are we talking conspiracy theory here? I think a lot of media is self-perpetuating. I don’t know who controls the media, I think that’s a whole other issue, but I think that by media offering something to the public and by the public response to that, it recreates the demand for it, like the economic law of supply and demand. It’s something that perpetuates itself.

OVO: What can we do about it?

Melissa: It should start with the individual. I try not to be influenced by images of women to look a certain way. I don’t buy the magazines. That‘s a way to start. It’s a choice the individual tries to make. By doing this interview I hope I’m reaching out to someone else. I think it’s important for us to let other people know that it‘s wrong. Know that it’s wrong ourselves then try to let everybody else know why it’s wrong and maybe beyond that do something about it together.

OVO: Like what?

Melissa: Like a support network.

OVO: What about after a support network, or in addition to it?

Melissa: That‘s when you’re ready to step into things on a big scale. I’ve written letters to fashion magazines telling them that their magazine portray images that are unhealthy for women and I think maybe a group could do that. I noticed the other day that there’s a thing on MTV where you can submit a video and tell them what you don’t like about anything. People have the option to complain about something that is on MTV that they don’t like. I thought it would be a fun thing for me and some friends to do, to make one and submit it to MTV and see if there’s a response at all.

OVO: MTV has realized that it can present any criticism of itself without changing. A friend of mine did an Art Break for them. Their contract said you have to have the MTV logo in the Art Break, and even if your Art Break is one minute of you ripping the logo up or seeing it on a TV screen and shooting it or in any way criticizing it, you still have to show the MTV logo. That‘s showing how media perpetuates itself. The problem and the solution are coming from the same source and you can’t hold onto either one of them and pull them away from yourself.

Melissa: Like Coke commercials that don’t have anything to do with the product but show the image of the product.

OVO: That’s why it’s important to boycott that kind of media completely, without exception, and simultaneously to create an alternative that people would hopefully find interesting and stimulating and life-affirming. A lot of what we’ve been talking about is good commodities versus bad commodities but eventually we’re going to have to come up with something that isn’t a commodity at all and return to something like “art” and figure out some way to make art that isn’t a commodity. It’s going to be difficult. That effort started many decades ago and it still hasn’t been achieved.

Melissa: Another example of the double standard is that the commercial I saw for the eating disorder clinic came on MTV. It portrays women as this certain ideal, then offers a solution, then help for the solution later. Usually if you notice on TV diet commercials follow food commercials.

OVO: How does education figure into it?

Melissa: That’s what’s really scary. When you learn about health and nutrition in school, usually the little pamphlets and flyers you’re given are from the National Dairy Board, who say it’s good for you to drink milk. My mother was a teacher and she said it’s because its so hard for the schools to get funding from the State that they will accept funding from corporations. I don’t take it too seriously when McDonald’s gives me a nutrition guide.

OVO: What do you think is going to happen in the future regarding eating disorders?

Melissa: I hate to say it but I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any getter. Maybe it will get so bad and so rampant that it will explode and will be like everything else in this world that’s wrong. It’ll just keep happening until something really horrible happens.

OVO: Or something really wonderful.

Melissa: And then we’ll stop and go gee, sorry. When Gloria Steinem came to the University of Tennessee she said more women have died as a result of bulemia than it’s ever been reported of people dying of AIDS. AIDS gets more recognition and I agree its a problem that needs recognition but… Even with me, I know how wrong it is for me to have an eating disorder and I still do it. Even as wrong as I know it is and even as much as I don’t want to be a victim of it, of the media and everything else, I can’t help it. When l go out and l see other people who look good or go shopping and l want to a certain kind of clothes but they won’t look good on me unless l look a certain way… It’s hard for me when people I care about have also have been fed this image that people should look like that as well, like my family. I recently took a family vacation and my aunt is really thin, and her whole family is thin, and it made me feel like I should be thin.

OVO: Have you talked with your mother about this?

Melissa: Yes. My mother was a lot more informed on the subject than l thought she would be. I was thankful for that. She was very supportive. It was a surprise for me to get that support. She agreed that a lot of what she went through on the health food kick maybe contributed.

OVO: How much TV do you watch?

Melissa: When I watch television and pay attention l am very critical. I sit there and watch it and get angry and critique everything. I’m glad I’m to this point now where if it’s on and it’s really bothering me and it’s disgusting I’ll turn it off immediately and I won’t just change the channel. I don’t like to watch a whole lot of television because I think it’s bad in ways besides just image. Sometimes I watch it before I go to work, sometimes I have it on to have in the background when I’m in the shower if nobody’s home. I like to have noise.

OVO: Do you watch TV while you eat?

Melissa: Yes, and it’s scary to notice how many other people do that.

OVO: Television destroys community and that’s another reason to boycott it if you’re trying to to establish a community of support for anything, for any sort of political project or personal improvement art or thought. You can’t just have the TV on all the time.

Melissa: That’s one reason I’m really glad I got a job. Some days I’d wake up and there was only so much in a day that I could do before I’d done it all and I’d find myself watching television. Especially since we have cable. We’re moving soon and I don’t want to get cable when we do. We have a VCR and that’s different. Selective viewing is different. There are a lot films that are worth seeing and are good movies I enjoy watching. That’s what is nice about cable, watching HBO. The other day one of my favorite movies came on and that was nice to watch.

OVO: What movie was that?

Melissa: Pretty in Pink. My housemate bought a TV Guide so that I wouldn’t have to turn on the TV when I was bored and I wanted to see if anything was good on because than if nothing was good on I’d find myself watching anyway. Now I look for things I might want to watch and watch those things only.

OVO: What is it that makes you bored?

Melissa: When l didn’t have a job and everyone else in the house would be at work, I felt that for that period of the day should be… I would clean the house every day, I’d get up and clean, and I was getting tired of cleaning. You can only clean so much until everything is spotless. Then I would wait for everyone else to come home. I was turning into a housewife! I’d make dinner and clean the house and write letters, I did everything I needed to do and there wasn’t anything else I could do, I was looking for a job but you know how that is. Now I’ve got my job and that’s nice but a bad thing is that sometimes when l get off from work I’m so exhausted l can’t think, so l want something to think for me, so I watch a box that tells me how to think. That’s really dangerous. Lately I’ve stopped letting that control me and I’ve only been watching selective television again. I watch Star Trek on Saturdays and I like the show Alien Nation because it deals with racism. When I first moved to Knoxville I didn’t have a TV for the first few months but I still had the eating disorder. I think it’s beyond television. Television influences so many areas of our lives that you can influenced by television without watching it.

from OVO 11 CONTROL (September 1991)

[Postscript March 2011: Melissa is just fine now and has been for a long time.]

17 July 1990 interview with V. Vale, publisher of Search and Destroy, co-founder of Re/Search Publications.

OVO: What is the main source for the information that you publish?

VALE: We never tire of saying that our main influences were surrealism and situationism, and surrealism as you know placed a great deal of influence on objective chance and randomness and insanity and systems for deciphering the world that are a-logical systems We will admit that a lot of it is just purely chance. But of course through the years we have friends and our friends really help us. For example, the film book [Re/Search #10 Incredibly Strange Films] which was actually the first book that broke out of our small industrial music underground audience, that was done just because we got a letter from Jim Morton, who had been collecting these incredible films all his life but particularly since the advent of VCR. He wrote us, and then we went over to his house every Saturday night for years and watched two or three of four movies there and ate popcorn. It took four or five years he guest-edited the Incredibly Strange Films book and we put it out. We wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t known Jim Morton, let’s face it.

OVO: What is the purpose of Re/Search?

VALE: The surrealists had a slogan, something like “Matter Over Mind,” but what it meant was it is a mistake just to assume that one proceeds from the idea to the material reality. Very often its just the opposite. You might say the material reality suggests the theory, shall we say, and frankly I got started publishing back in ’77 because of punk rock. Of course it wasn’t called that then but it was very exciting, as undifferentiated and undefined and unlimited as it appeared to be because it was revolt, it was the youth revolt or revolution (if you dare to use that word) of the ’70s. And I was involved right from the very beginning before it had become codified and more or less set in amber. And so for me it was like a vehicle, it was an opportunity to… I don’t know, I just did it. My main motivation was kind of anger at the status quo. I’d always been angry at the status quo anyway, but, you know, what do you do? A lot of people just become criminals or whatever, or drug addicts, or they just can’t cope for a lot of good reasons. Society gives us all plenty of reasons but it also provides the narcotics in the form of television and actual narcotics so that we can “adapt,” shall we say.  And so yes, it’s definitely a struggle against mind control, against conditioning, against banal information.  We were born with the birthright of curiosity and there’s nothing more natural than to be curious, but of course this faculty is extinguished early in life.  It seems like society does everything it can to either extinguish this faculty or to channel it only along channels of consumption rather than you yourself doing something creative on your own, something creative and original and obsessive and unique on your own.  I don’t think society can really handle that, because it’s too destabilizing.  It’s like we’re in a vast consumption machine, we’re part of it, and society would function (it thinks) better if we would just go along with the programs.  And so obviously anyone who is a lover of freedom is going to go against that in all its manifestations.  And yet it’s not just enough to fight, whatever that means.  You have to eventually start doing something.  And in our case we more or less accidentally discovered that we could do something and sort of realize our own identities and destinies by becoming publishers.  Re/Search however is not the same as Search and Destroy.  Re/Search happened when I met Andrea [Juno] back in 1980, after we’d been very depressed for a year by what we thought was the death of punk rock.  It was certainly the death of punk rock as we knew it, that is as a viable underground, a microcosmos of society.  We were depressed for a year but then realized that this shouldn’t be the end of publishing.

OVO: Are the Re/Search archives open to the public?

Vale: No, because we’re not public figures.  If all we were to do were to run a library we’d never get any work done, and obviously our work comes first.  It’s hard enough as it is right now just to deal with all the business aspects let alone function as some sort of archive.  It so happens that we’ve been attacked by Jesse Helms [R-NC] and Dana Rohrabacher [R-CA] and entered into the Congressional Record because they don’t like our book Modern Primitives, which is yet another Re/Search publication which is advocating a certain theory of self-liberation or exploration.  That’s all it was intended to do, provide theory for this kind of activity, but apparently the powers that be would like to have this kind of theory and information repressed.

OVO: What kind of trouble have they been giving you?

VALE: Actually we should context this in a much wider overview that obviously America right now is under (thanks to less than probably one-tenth of one percent of the population) which is these very organized fundamentalist Christian fascists who have nothing to do with their lives but write letters all day to their congressman and call up advertisers threatening to boycott things like The Simpsons.  In other words, a minority group trying to pretend and camouflaging themselves as some kind of vox populi majority, which they are not. They’re mostly these very ignorant people in the South, people who have long since shut off any creative potential in their lives.  They’re just consumed by envy and they want to control all the rest of the population, who might be having more fun than them in some way. The Reagan agenda was to turn the country back to the McCarthy ’50s, since he was an informer for McCarthy, and to take away all the gains of the ’60s.  That complex agenda is still being realized. Every day there’s some new article in the paper on page 40 how 160 stores in the deep South took away Playboy Magazine from their stands. Little things like that don’t even get reported here on the West Coast. Thing like that are happening all the time but the more you find out about it the scarier it gets.

OVO: Yesterday a group called AIDS Response Knoxville had their office fire bombed. I just found out about that this morning.

VALE: If you could send me the clipping… see, that was not in our paper today. It doesn’t surprise me. So what you have now is a great deal of information containment going on. We’re living in the illusion that all the information is available, that were living in a global village and all that, but most people get their information from TV news, which is of course extremely compressed and bowdlerized and operates by omission. We should all be subscribing to our own little clipping services I suppose to get the kind of news such as the incident you told me about just now.

OVO: I didn’t find out about it from the paper. I found out about it from a friend and he said there’s only a tiny article about it.

VALE: That’s perfect, that’s exactly the way things happen and are happening. The propaganda techniques which Hitler initiated in terms of mass media control of the population, they‘re real good now. Helms is a master of negative campaigning, in which life gets simplified down to whether you’re for child pornography and obscenity or… Helms’ voting record is incredible, he’s a madman, the total enemy of liberty. But even when Helms is gone there‘ll always be someone to take his place. This kind of control mentality will apparently always be with us but yet we’re trying to do a small campaign so that all the minority papers across the country will at least have a copy of his voting record and also start to get a larger overview of all these isolated little incidents that’ve been happening, which together paint an extremely depressing picture of the abridgment of our freedoms.

OVO: Have there been specific incidents of you having trouble with Modern Primitives?

VALE: Knock on wood, no. We had two art shows based on the book, and that‘s how it started. If you don’t have any information on this I’ll send it to you.

OVO: No, I don’t have any.

VALE: Okay, I’ll send you the whole little press packet on that, with all the articles that’ve come out. See, that’s what l mean, someone as relatively hip and aware as you don’t know. Multiply this by about a thousand for all the little environmental groups all over. Their little news things never get reported. I just found out today that all the searches that the FBI did of all these Earth First houses, the people involved with Earth First because of two people blown up by a bomb, the FBI keeps reporting to the news that they blew themselves up rather than what they should be doing which is trying to find out who really did it. I didn’t realize until I read the paper today that all the searches the FBI did of people who deal with Earth First were all warrantless. To me that is really frightening. Did you know that? Do you think that means anything? And we only found out because our good friend Jock Sturges, a photographer, got busted recently. We’ve known Jock for years. For the last twenty years he has specifically focused on, shall we say, beautiful adolescent girls who are developing. But they are not pornography, he’s not the head of a kiddie porn ring by any means. He’s got the most incredibly beautiful negatives you’ve ever seen, eight by ten inch view camera negatives blown up to twenty by twenty-four inch prints that have a million gray tones in them. And we only found out from him that basically the First and Fourth Amendments are dead. The Fourth Amendment is unreasonable searches and seizures. Because the FBI just busted into his house without a search warrant. And this was all done, as Burroughs has kept us appraised of and warned us against all these years, in the name of fighting the “drug problem.” Because here’s what they can say now: they can come in because (a) they have a reason to believe you are about to destroy evidence and (b) they have a right to watch you because they have reason to believe you might try to commit suicide or commit harm to yourself. Isn’t that nice?

OVO: They’ve certainly got our best interests in mind.

VALE: Yes, of course.

OVO: How do you prevent Re/Search from becoming a part of the process of -

VALE: – co-option and assimilation? You’re dealing with what McLuhan called a very cool medium (or is it hot, I can never get that straight), but you’re dealing with a medium that is a book, and do you realize how few people read anymore? The numbers are incredible, how much reading has declined even though the population has doubled. When people do read, what do they read? They mostly lead these airport kind of books. It’s really frightening. The reason most people avoid books is because, let’s face it, there’s only a minority that reads any more, almost everyone else watches television and gets their information from TV. And in order to read effectively I find that l must have complete silence, as much as possible, and this is not the modem way. A lot of people these days, it’s like a conspiracy to keep them from thinking. As soon as they get up in the morning they have their radio blaring or put on a tape or something. We’ve all known people who’ve had the TV on eight hours a day. Of course we don’t know people like that any more, but they’re out there, like zombies or something. And so I still think that if you’re putting something out in a book you have more of a chance of making it with some kind of integrity. Because books aren’t you, Re/Search is not me or Andrea; it’s on its own. And if it has some ideas that light up your brain and catalyze in some way, which is the best that one can hope for… the books really do have a life of their own. And we’re just putting out a combination of information, images and ideas, hopefully, as well as trying to direct people to other books, which continue the same kind of inspiration.

Re/Search
20 Romolo Street #B
San Franslsco CA 94133 USA
http://researchpubs.com/

from OVO 11 CONTROL (September 1991)

Update, February 2011
Jim Morton writes about films, pop culture, and advertising.
http://popvoid.blogspot.com/

Boyd Rice was formerly credited as guest editor for Re/Search #10 Incredibly Strange Films.
http://www.boydrice.com/

Andrea Juno founded Juno Books.
http://twitter.com/AnimaJuno

Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. died in 2008.

Dana Tyron Rohrabacher is the U.S. Representative for California’s 46th Congressional district.

AIDS Response Knoxville served at least between 1987 and 1999 and may still exist.

Jock Sturges’ studio was the subject of an FBI raid on 25 April 1990. Accused of child pornography, a Grand Jury did not bring an indictment against him.

Wikipedia, Judi Bari Car Bombing:

In 1990, a bomb exploded in Judi Bari’s car, shattering her pelvis and also injuring fellow activist Darryl Cherney. Bari and Cherney were later arrested after police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation suspected that they had been transporting the bomb when it accidentally exploded. The case against them was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. Bari died in 1997 of cancer, but her federal lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland, California police resulted in a 2002 jury verdict awarding her estate and Darryl Cherney a total of $4.4 million. Eighty percent of the damages were for violation of their First Amendment rights by the FBI and police trying to discredit them in the media as violent extremists despite ample evidence to the contrary. The bombing remains unsolved.

Kerry W. Thornley
The Idle Warriors
Atlanta: IllumiNet Press 1991

Written between 1959 and 1961, The Idle Warriors is the story of a troop of Marines in the Far East getting laid, pulling pranks, eating and talking about life. It’s a story similar to any number of films and books from that time both in style and content. But there are two significant qualities in this book that set it apart from, say a Bowery Boys film (which is what it reminds me of the most).

First, it is written by Kerry Thornley.  I’ve been reading Kerry’s work since 1979 and have always found him insightful and interesting.  I also consider him a friend and it’s always good to see a friend make it.

Second, one of the characters in the novel, Johnny Shelburn, is based on a friend Kerry had in the Marines named Lee Harvey Oswald.  In his introduction Kerry said he was trying to explain why Lee defected to the USSR.  In hindsight he said he failed, and I agree.  But the book is still a sort of eerie novelty, like the appearance of Fidel Castro as an extra in a Busby Berkeley film.  Kerry’s introduction by itself makes the book well worth reading.

from OVO 11 CONTROL (September 1991)
see also OVO 17 The Dreadlock Recollections (January 2007)

Sondra London is a publisher and author.  Her publication history has included original fiction, non-fiction and art by convicted serial killers.  A solicitation letter for OVO 10 MAYHEM received this reply. In this letter, Ms. London makes reference to having dated Gerard John Schaefer in high school. Schaefer went on to become a serial killer, and Ms. London published his book Beyond Killer Fiction. My first book credit was writing the back cover blurb for Beyond Killer Fiction.  Ms. London was also instrumental in my publication of The Dreadlock Recollections by Kerry Wendell Thornley.

“I’d like to know what you mean about supporting serial murder and glorifying crime.  I’m sorry if it appears that the work I publish implies in any way that I condone violence, and if so I must take steps to correct that impression.  If you only knew what pitiful lives these killers live, you’d realize there’s nothing attractive about it, nothing that deserves to be emulated.  The essence of my quest is to make sense out of a tragedy that fate has made a part of my life.  I need to study the whole broad topic of violence and it’s roots in order to bring this research to bear on the man whose tears of rage, frustration and fear have wet my face.  I’m learning to see the world through the tears of a serial killer, and I’m hoping that the original material I have obtained will be used as a significant part of the quest to understand this very dangerous pathology.

“As to your question about why I’m doing what I am, I will close with a reference I hope you will understand.

‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’  Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, and when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say unto you, as you did unto one of the least of these my bretheren, so you did it unto me.’  Matthew 25:34-40

“Regards,

“Sondra London”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sondra_London
http://www.sondralondon.com/

(from OVO 10 MAYHEM July 1991)

The cypher the Zodiac killer mailed in three parts to three San Fransisco area newspapers was solved within a month of being printed in August 1969. This is not an explanation of how the cypher was solved (that information can be found in Zodiac by Robert Graysmith) but instead how to use it.  This is the only time the means to use the Zodiac cypher has been published. I backwards-engineered the code from the description in Graysmith’s book. Since the letters J, Q and Z were not used in the initial Zodiac cypher, there is no symbol for them in this explanation.

1. Write the source message to be encyphered, using poor spelling occasionally.
2. Replace the letters of the source message with cypher symbols in an ordered rotation. For example, go through the source message until you find the first letter A. Replace the letter A with the first symbol for A. The second time the letter A appears, use the second symbol for A. After you have used all four symbols for the letter A, use the first symbol again. Proceed to the letters B, C, etc.
3. Very neatly copy the encrypted message into seventeen-character lines, omitting all punctuation and spaces. Add letters at the end or at random within the encrypted message to insure each line has seventeen characters. Divide into equal parts as desired.

(from OVO 10 MAYHEM July 1991)

Trevor Blake: The Residents. 1990.

Multiple name identities are co-incarnations, individuals who exist in more than one body at the same time.

A few multiple name identities can be found in academia. Nicholas Bourbaki has written several influential papers on mathematics since 1935.  A number of men were Nicholas Bourbaki.  The theologian Franz Bibfeldt was also a number of men.

Most multiple name identities are found in the arts. No one knows who is the author of the 1930 book The Little Engine That Could.  The story is attributed to Watty Piper, which was the house name of publisher Platt & Munk.  Many men and women wrote under the name Watty Piper.  

Kenneth Robeson was the creator and author of the Doc Savage character, who first appeared in 1933.  Lester Dent and a number of men wrote the stories, all of which were published under the Street & Smith house name Kenneth Robeson.

Three German men were Stefan Brockhoff, author of mystery novels from the 1930s to the 1950s.  

Kilgore Trout is a science fiction author who first appears in the 1965 book God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by science fiction author Kurt Vonnegut.  Trout is modeled after the science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who in turn was born with the name Edward Hamilton Waldo.  Philip J. Farmer wrote the 1974 science fiction novel Venus on the Half-Shell and attributed it to Trout.

Since 1968, films which the director wishes to distance themselves from are attributed to Alan Smithee. The Internet Movie Database lists more than seventy titles attributed to Alan Smithee.

David Agnew is a name used by the BBC as a shared scriptwriting credit since the 1970s.

Bruce Lee died during the production of the 1978 film Game of Death.  Two other actors took on the role of playing Bruce Lee playing the character Billy Lo and the film was released.

V. C. Andrews’ 1979 book Flowers in the Attic was so successful that authors have published dozens of books under her name since her death in 1986.

Between 1988 and 1994, the Dutch composer Van den Budenmayer wrote the score for Zbigniew Prisner’s films.  den Budenmayer was several men working under one name.

Nicholas Palmer wrote the 1990 book Fuck Yes! under the pseudonym Rev. Wing Fu Fing.  On a lark, author Tom Robbins signed a copy of Fuck Yes! when a Robbins fan handed it to him.  This started the rumor that Robbins was the secret author of Fuck Yes!, a rumor which helped Palmer sell 50,000 copies of the self-published book over the next four years.  Fuck Yes! tells the story of a man who says ‘yes’ to every circumstance that life presents him.  In 1996 Palmer sued Robbins, who agreed to never sign another copy of the book again.  Palmer said: “It’s not just Robbins, the book is good. It has allowed him to take advantage of my anonymity.”  In 2008 Jim Carry starred in the film Yes Man, which tells the story of a man who says ‘yes’ to every circumstance that life presents him.  Yes Man is based on the 2005 book of the same title by Danny Wallace.

Actor Heath Ledger died during the production of the 2009 film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.  Three other actors took on the role of playing Heath Ledger playing the character Tony Shepard and the film was released.

The author Wu Ming is several Italian men who have published books since 2000.

There is a species of human behavior that is not quite art, not quite politics, and not quite as presumptuous as all that sounds. I prefer the term pranks. I first learned of multiple name identities from pranksters. Rrose Sélavy was an an artist and model in the 1920s, associated with a number of dadaists.

In 1960 the young Kerry Wendell Thornley worked as a desk clerk for the United States Marines.  As a prank, he entered a false name in the training lecture roster: Omar Kayyam Ravenhurst.  Over time Thornley and other Marines completed more paperwork for the non-existent Marine, giving him an IQ of 157 and fluency in 17 languages.  Ravenhurst then got the blame when Thornley or one of his friends made a mistake on base, making Private Ravenhurst a multiple name identity.

A free music festival was held near Stonehenge in 1974.  The audience decided to squat the location at the site after the performance.  Eviction laws required naming each of the squatters, and so the squatters all adopted the same name to make the job of the police more difficult.  Thus several dozen people became Wally.  One of the Wallies, Wally Hope, was sent to a psychiatric institution for possession of LSD in May 1975.  He was unable to detox from the forced drugging of the institution and died in September 1975.  His free-spirited life and oppressive death was a central inspiration for Penny Rimbaud to form CRASS.  Unrelated is the Stonehenge built by Wally Wallington.

David Zack has written about Monte Cantsin, who appeared in 1975:

Maris [Kundzins] and I were in Portland [Oregon]. We’d been working with a Xerox 3107 that makes big copies and reductions. We were making giant folios; monster folios and dinosaur folios we called them. And one night Maris started fooling around with the tape recorder, singing songs in Latuvian about toilets and traffic. Well, we decided to make a pop star out of Maris. But it had to be an open pop star, that is, anyone who wanted could assume the personality of the pop star. This open pop star would be the most talented in history, better than Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Sal Mineo and even Ry Cooder all rolled together in one. Pop stars have always been special to me, growing up the son of a symphony conductor the way I did. To me they stand for rebellion and acceptance, revolution and success and a whole lot of other things at the same time. We were mouthing Maris Kundzins’ name, and it came out Monty Cantsins. Then we got to saying can’t sin and can’t sing and quite a few other things to give the impression that this pop star could be a thief as well as a saint.

One thing I definitely did invent is “Monty Cantsin,” the open pop star. I did not do this alone, I did it in Portland, Oregon with the very first Monty Cantsin, an artist named Maris Kundzins. Maris and I sent a card to Kantor in Montreal, you are Monty Cantsin, the open pop star. Well Graf I have to assert what Kantor did with this simple postcard belongs in any history of art and also any history of the world. The idea that people can share their art power is a very good one I think. My own understanding of Neoism is that it is about sharing, about bash: cooperation between people, putting egos and tempers aside. Though not always seeming to. [1][2]

Stewart Home has written about Karen Elliot, who appeared in 1985:

Karen Eliot is a name that refers to an individual human being who can be anyone. The name is fixed, the people using it aren’t. Smile is a name that refers to an international magazine with multiple origins. The name is fixed, the types of magazines using it aren’t. The purpose of many different magazines and people using the same name is to create a situation for which no one in particular is responsible and to practically examine western philosophical notions of identity, individuality, originality, value and truth.

Anyone can become Karen Eliot simply by adopting the name, but they are only Karen Eliot for the period in which the name is used. Karen Eliot was materialised, rather than born, as an open context in the summer of ’85. When one becomes Karen Eliot one’s previous existence consists of the acts other people have undertaken using the name. When one becomes Karen Eliot one has no family, no parents, no birth. Karen Eliot was not born, s/he was materialised from social forces, constructed as a means of entering the shifting terrain that circumscribes the ‘individual’ and society.

The name Karen Eliot can be strategically adopted for a series of actions, interventions, exhibitions, texts, etc. When replying to letters generated by an action / text in which the context has been used then it makes sense to continue using the context, ie by replying as Karen Eliot. However in personal relationships, where one has a personal history other than the acts undertaken by a series of people using the name Karen Eliot, it does not make sense to use the context. If one uses the context in personal life there is a danger that the name Karen Eliot will become over-identified with individual beings. [3]

I published work by Karen Elliot in OVO 3 (1987)

Stewart Home, in turn, has seen publications under his own name that he did not write.  These include the books Stone Circle, Harry Potter and the Quantum Time Bomb, and essays including “Anarchism is Stupid: How Luther Blissett Hoaxed Bakunin’s Idiot Children,” “Communism or Masochism? An Appeal to All Revolutionaries Concerning the Rubber Slave Larry O’Hara,” and “An Open Letter to My Avant-Garde Chums by Stewart Home.”  Someone anonymously suggested the (then) anonymous blogger Belle de Jour was Stewart Home.  Not necessarily with his cooperation or consent, Stewart Home has become several people.

Luther Blissett (born 1958) is a professional footballer, manager and coach.  His name was adopted by the Luther Blissett Project as an open reputation in the 1990s.  Blissett the footballer is aware of the other Blissetts and has taken his open reputation in stride.

I enjoyed several people being me in the early 2000s.  A number of my friends in Portland were on a site called irreality.  They encouraged me to join, but I had enough internet time in my day and didn’t want to.  Some time back I’d heard that David Bowie had hired actors to play his press agents, and Bowie confirmed whatever exaggerated claim they made about him.  Inspired by this story I encouraged 2-3 of my friends to set up an irreality account for me and post to it as if they were me, promising I’d confirm anything they posted as my own.  For a year or two these friends would mix some of my own writing (from ovo127.com) with original writing of their own and post it at irreality.  When I’d meet up with those who thought I’d posted what they read at irreality attributed to me I’d confirm it.  Some of the friends I made on irreality are friends to this day, perhaps only now learning I wasn’t necessarily who they thought I was at the time.  Irreality closed shop in 2008.

The second-most influential multiple name identity is Anonymous.  Although Anonymous began as an internet meme around 2006, Anonymous is also the name of many individuals who have appeared in public.  Inspired by a scene in Allan Moore’s V for Vendetta, Anonymous appears in numbers wearing the mask of Guy Fawkes.  As of December 2010, Anonymous is conducting successful attacks on major credit card and communication companies around the world in retaliation for slights against wikileaks.

The most influential multiple name identity is St. Nicholas / Father Christmas / Kris Kringle /  Santa Claus.  Every December for over a century, Santa has appeared around the world, wearing the same clothes, carrying out the same actions, exhibiting the same demeanor, claiming the same home-base and promising to return at the same time next year.  A significant part of the world economy is shifted when Santa Claus comes to town.  In the late 1980s the Orange Alternative of Poland held a parade of seventy-seven Santas as part of their absurdist protests against Communism.  The SantaCon / Santarchy tactic appeared again in 1994, carried out by Suicide Club of San Francisco.

“You should never run out of people to be.” – Genesis P-Orridge.

Today (25 November) was a special day in the life of Yukio Mishima.  And it happens that today is also the US holiday of Thanksgiving.

No higher honour could have come to me than to have been permitted to partake of his stewed chicken.  Every morning, with profound gratitude in my heart, I ate the gizzard and the tough parts of the liver.  He ate only the soft parts, and I ate the rest. – Mishima, Five Modern Noh Plays

May you have gratitude in your heart as you eat the gizzard and the tough parts of the liver.

OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2009.
OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2008.

There is no context for the man whose name is tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE calls himself a mad scientist, a neoist, a SubGenius – Tim Ore, Karen Elliot, Monte Cantsin – a krononaut. One of the many publications by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE was titled DCC#040.0 – dewey decimal classification number 0 (generalities) 4 (not used) 0 (no subject) 0 (miscellany)… just as a book with this dewey decimal classification number would stand entirely apart from all the other books, so does tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE stand entirely apart from all other people.

Re/Search magazine requested a photograph of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s tattoos for their ‘Modern Primitive’ issue, but the photographs were not used. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE does not fit the profile for a modern primitive. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has not modified tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s body to attach it more firmly to a tribal past – tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has propelled it forward to a sixth-finger future. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s earlier tattoos consisted of a red and green brain over the greater part of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s head (creating the 3-D effect of actually seeing into his skull), crossed thigh bones over tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s chest and a DNA coil from navel to penis. Later, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE made a tattoo index of the various scars on tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s body. Using white ink, the scars were numbered according to when they were received and created a representational icon to go next to it (a tree on the forehead, razor on the right arm, window shade on the left thigh, etc.). tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has appeared in public wearing a shirt that reveals his chest. It is not a normal chest, but one with six small sow-like teats. Forbidden only by economic circumstance from actual advanced genetic engineering, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has advanced tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s evolution in other ways.

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE does not look like anyone else. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE fashioned a suit of clothes made from zippers, which can be unzipped into a single, long strip. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE made a frightening suit of long-hair wigs of many colors and fashions, and shoulder bags of giant globes with leather shoulder straps and hinged openings. With the understanding that ‘mustaches make a man,’ tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE shaved twelve mustaches onto tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s head to be twelve times a man (or twelve times more accessible to normals). At another point, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE shaved a ring of hair from the top of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s head, in front of one ear, under the chin, behind the other ear (by gluing hair behind the ear) and back up to the top of the head: the effect was someone with their face on sideways. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has worn displaced false eyelashes and adhesive stickers instead of ‘clothes,’ peanut butter instead of makeup.

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE does not live like anyone else. His home defies convention. For extended periods of time the majority of what would normally be open space in tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s room was occupied by eight-foot diameter weather balloons; to navigate, one had to work around them. I had the rare opportunity to visit his laboratory in 1987. The front door opened to the back of a metal shelf, forcing one to walk sideways along a wall to enter the room. And to enter the room, one had to walk across his bed which was lying on the floor. Inside the room were shelves and drawers and cabinets full of experiments, documentation and equipment, all cobbled together from the least expensive of sources.

The biological processes of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE do not appear to be fully human. For five months as a teenager tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE did not bathe, brush the hair or clean the teeth, urinated outside whenever possible and often refrained from wiping the anus after elimination. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has been a ‘professional asshole’ in medical schools, serving as a model in genital / rectal examinations, and taken untested drugs for pay during medical trials. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has been known to ingest toxins and receive profound physical injuries without apparent long-term damage. No child co-created by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is known to have survived.

Perhaps because tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is more, less or other than human, t tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has demonstrated on several well-documented occasions the ability to interact with animals to a degree suggesting a special affiliation with them. One film shows tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE in a dog mask, walking on the hands and knees through the streets of London serving as a guide dog for a blind companion. When the two board a bus, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is not charged a fee – tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has, in the context of the bus, become what tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE appears to be. A videotape from the same European expedition has a nude tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE wearing a ‘Donald Duck’ mask to increase the animal appearance as tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE communes with seals on the coast of Scotland. These otherwise timid animals appear entirely at ease near tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE; they are intimidated by the camera operator more than the animal / scientist.

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is a magician, but of no previous school. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has demonstrated, time and again, that with only an application of thought and effort the marvelous can erupt in the mundane. In December 1979 tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE and several collaborators took two boxes of live crabs to a shopping mall in Baltimore, Maryland, where Santa Claus was meeting children. Prior to arrival they had tied the arms and legs of plastic babies to the crabs’ backs. They released the crabs around Santa’s cottage and stood back, watching the reaction of the crowd that gathered around the confused and weak crabs. “I’m glad someone’s doing this,” a woman was heard to say. The introduction of a random / magical element into the mundane world of Santa’s cottage at a shopping mall brought forth an even more random, even more magical response. The wizard gave a public demonstration of powers, and spontaneously a member of the crowd found herself ‘understanding’ it more, perhaps, than the wizard himself.

Mathematics has been advanced by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE. Using stencils, tentatively a convenience initiated ‘folk math’ on the walls of public buildings in Baltimore. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE engineered a perpetual pataphysical calendar, and has performed music on synthesizers by reading the parameters of a patch created by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (the mathematical information holding more potential for the listener than its application). Grammar and diction have also been accelerated by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: here is an example of his own script:

i 1st met gayle at a halloween party in t he apt building turned commune
in wch she resided in wash d c wch was temporarily housing
a suggestion box i made t he ntrance 2 wch was made
from a simulated cunt made from rubber.
t he friend i’d given t he suggestion box 2
was wearing a dildo on his head like a unicorn horn
& gayle (wearing a black leotard) was sucking on it.
later t ha t nite i wsa playing w/ a computer connected keyboard & CRT
when gale came in2 t he room w/ an approximately 8″ in diameter
frozen wad of actual bulls’ eyes
& placed them next 2 t he keyboard at wch i was seated.
i was impressed.
t he computer room had a couch in it
& i later learned t ha t some1 had spent t he nite in t he room
w/out having noticed t he eyeballs
& upon awakening in t he morning 2 find them no longer frozen
& scattered about on t he floor of t he small room
ran screaming in terror thruout t he commune..

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE injects humor into his reports by revealing the hidden laughter in words – the becomes ‘tee hee,’ that becomes ‘tee ha (t).’ tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has transmitted information via telephone, television, radio, audio and video cassette, vinyl and computer – no medium is outside the parameter of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, but the use each medium is put it is always at the parameter of its abilities.

The most common mistake made by those attempting to classify tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is that he is an ‘artist.’ tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE understands art and has created art, but he is not an artist. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has used paint, film, video, sound and words in his research, but the process of the research and its results are science. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s attention to detail, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s willingness to carry out the research far beyond any hope of personal gain or safety, and the quality of his documentation, give credence to the title tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE gives tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: mad scientist.

Over the course of sixteen years, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE wrote down the word and phrases that appeared in the mind of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE while half-asleep. The resulting text was gathered into a book titled ‘telepathy receptivity training,’ and includes

blinkey modeling
i can’t see washing my hands in cake
something backwards, you have to have one of those things and two of everything
i call upon the rules and the grey moving sand…

For sixteen years work, the results are only ten pages of large-typeface text – not unlike the notebook of a botanist who searches for plants so exotic they are found only once in a lifetime. Few artists would be willing to present such a small return for so many years work, while any scientist would be proud of such dedication.

Another of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s projects is ‘mike film.’ In the late 1970s tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE conceived of a way to transmute a certain number of artifacts he had created into a context easier to transport and store and which lent itself readily to further research by others. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE made a Super-8 film of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s possessions, processed the film, gave away or destroyed tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s possessions, and proceeded to cut the cells of the film into individual photographs… approximately 46,800 photographs. The ‘mike film’ (mike as an abbreviation for microscopic and suggestive of microfilm) was then bundled in small packets and distributed to individuals and organizations all over the world. The recipients were then encouraged to distribute the film in the most creative way they knew, document the distribution and return the results to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE. Every few years tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE publishes a ‘mike film distribution form’ which serves as a scientific journal on the dissemination of mike film. Mike film has been deposited in art brut museums, launched from balloons, consumed, worn as pasties, hidden in national monuments, smuggled into prisons and dropped in the ocean. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE dreams (with advance knowledge of the future?) of an archaeologist discovering mike film and examining it under a microscope.

No fringe group will accept tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE – neither will any reputable institution. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has petitioned the international museum of the extreme, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, to exhibit tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE. So far, they have refused. A very small amount of advance funding or sales has supported tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s research, but for the most part tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has invented (that is, created from discarded or stolen items) the majority of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s life support systems.

What evidence is there that tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE comes from the future? tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has in the past affiliated himself with the Krononautic Society, an international and informal society of time travelers. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE seems exceptionally unable to assimilate into normal society while being entirely familiar with its customs – and yet year after year, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE survives and continues the research without funding, a steady income, and sometimes without a home. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has exhibited the ability to change tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE and tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s environment in ways that appear magical but are in fact based on a superior technology of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE own creation.

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is outside normal definitions of benevolence and wickedness, although tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE does have a highly articulated definition of both as applied to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE. There have been reports of violent tantrums and theft by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, of indifference to others and cruelty. It is difficult to evaluate the behavior of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE by any but tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s own standards.

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE lived in Baltimore for many years: after an unsuccessful experiment in creating a book and record store (called NORMALS), tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has left Baltimore and is currently in perpetual transit in North America. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE has been spotted in several cities, each time sending out a progress report just before the circumstances of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s residence are suddenly altered (sometimes by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s design, other times by a host’s intolerance of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s experiments). While the rest of us advance backwards towards the future, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is simply returning from whence he came. What will happen when the present and the future intersect, and the world of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE and our world become one?

- 1997, previously unpublished.

See also:
OVO 12 Science (November 1991)
OVO 7 Information (October 1989)
OVO 2 (July 1987)

I was a used and rare bookseller in much of the 1990s. Selling books was a life-long goal and I am glad I was able do it. In January 1995 I had the chance to catalog a wonderful collection that disappeared soon after. This is that weird tale.

When I arrived at work that morning my boss said he had a project for me. Someone had brought in a major collection of works by and about Clark Ashton Smith, and I was to catalog what they were for sale. I spent several days doing nothing but that, each item more exciting than the last.

The day after I finished my catalog my boss said that the police had come asking about the collection. The seller, it seems, had stolen them from the rightful owner. The books disappeared back into the collection from whence they came. I have no record or memory of who the rightful owner was, I have no way to get in touch with him, and anyone who asks me to do so will be charged a five hundred dollar consultation fee.

What I do have is the catalog I prepared. This catalog has never been published, and I’m guessing that some of the items listed here have also never been published. Here is the catalog, errors and all, one of the many weird tales of my days as a bookseller.

- – -

I – ART

LOVECRAFT/GARCIA by MIKE GARCIA – OUT OF PRINT
Ken Krueger North Hollywood 1975, 1st thus 4to wraps np, fine condition. HPL-inspired artwork from The Library Lovecraftian, reissued & enlarged in an edition limited to 995 copies.

HALLOWEEN IN ARKHAM by HARRY O. MORRIS – SIGNED COLOR PRINTS
Portfolio of fifteen 11″ x 8.5″ color prints in glossy folder with numbered matching envelope. Small stain to cover, smudges to envelope. There is an ocean of bad collage; these are not among them. Good use of color and perspective, very high quality prints.

MAGIC LANTERN by CHRISTINE PASANEN & HARRY MORRIS – OUT OF PRINT
Esoteric Order of Dagon APA Albuquerque 1981, 1st edition 8vo oblong wraps np, fine condition. Story by Pasanen, collages by Morris, color cover, very dreamy.

ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY CLARK ASHTON SMITH
Eleven original drawings by Clark Ashton Smith, generally 4″ x 3″, individually mounted. Profiles of human heads, some Arabesque, some portraits, some grotesques, all signed. ‘A Slave,’ ‘The Gorgio,’ ‘A Gentleman of the Renaissance,’ ‘Leopardi,’ ‘Parisians,’ ‘Alastor’ and five untitled drawings.

THE FANTASTIC ART OF CLARK ASHTON SMITH by DENNIS RICKARD – OUT OF PRINT
Mirage Press Baltimore 1973, 1st edition 4to wraps @ 48 pp, fine condition. Published in a single edition of approximately 15,000 copies, this book concentrates on the weird sculpture of C.A.S.: tiny stone fetishes with names like ‘Tsathoggua’ and ‘Mysteriarch.’ Accomplished, wish I had one. Introduced by Gahan Wilson.

GROTESQUES AND FANTASTIQUES by CLARK ASHTON SMITH – OUT OF PRINT
Gerry de la Ree, Saddle River 1973. 1st edition, 8vo wraps 40 pp, very good condition. Previously unpublished drawings and poems by C.A.S. from the personal collection of Gerry de la Ree. Printed in a first edition of 600 copies, of which this is #241.

CLARK ASHTON SMITH – ARTIST by GERRY DE LA REE – OUT OF PRINT
Hyperborian League, nd. 4to wraps 12 pp, very good condition. An appreciation of Smith as an artist, commercial and not-so-commercial. Illustrated.

CLARK ASHTON SMITH DUST JACKETS
Dust jackets for Lost Worlds, The Abomination of Yondo, Genius Loci and Out of Space and Time from UK publisher Neville Spearman. Folded once along spine, light wear else very good.

II – MAGAZINES

THE ARKHAM COLLECTOR – COMPLETE RUN AND DUPLICATES
Announcements of present and coming publications, bibliographical notes, art, poetry, letters, photographs, reproduced manuscripts, recommended reading, etc. Each 16mo issue contains a great deal of uncollected Arkham lore. Duplicate copies of Numbers Seven through Ten.

Number One – Summer 1967 – 24 pp – some underlining.
Number Two – Winter 1968 – 52 pp – some underlining.
Number Three – Summer 1968 – 88 pp.
Number Four – Winter 1969 – 124 pp – light smudging.
Number Five – Summer 1969 – 156 pp – light smudging.
Number Six – Winter 1970 – 180 pp – light smudging.
Number Seven – Summer 1970 – 220 pp – light smudging.
Number Eight – Winter 1971 – 256 pp.
Number Nine – Spring 1971 – 300 pp – light smudging.
Number Ten – Summer 1971 – 348 pp – light smudging.

FROM BEYOND THE DARK GATEWAY ISSUE FOUR
Silver Scarab Albuquerque 1977, 4to wraps 36 pp. HLP-ish fanzine with contributions and reprints from Campbell, Bloch, Morris and others.

INSIDE ISSUE TWO
Jonathan White New York 1963, 16mo wraps 54 pp.
Science fiction magazine including Maya by Clark Ashton Smith.

NYCTALOPS
Edited & with art by Harry Morris, high quality printing and lots of color art. All issues 4to size. Cockcroft, Garcia, Lumley, Morris, Sidney-Fryer, Wilgus – und Lovecraft, Lovecraft, uber alles. Scholarly, not just cheerleading. Watch the gothic aesthetic being born in these nine issues.

#9 – 1974 49 pp – errata page, rear page detached.
#11/12 – 1976 122 pp – good condition.
#13 – 1977 45 pp – very good condition.
#14 – 1978 52 pp – very good condition.
#16 – 1981 52 pp – very good condition.
#17 – 1982 63 pp – fine condition, duplicate, promotional card.
#18 – 1983 68 pp – fine condition, duplicate.

WHISPERS
Bloch, Campbell, Drake, Garcia, Howard, King, Lieber, Lumley, Russell, Wilson and plenty of HPLphilia. All issues 16mo.

V1 #2 December 1973 64 pp – very good condition.
V2 #4 December 1975 68 pp – duplicate, errata sheet, color plates, very good condition.
V3 #1 December 1976 67 pp – very good condition.
V3 #3-4 October 1978 132 pp – square bound, color plates, very good condition.

III – BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS

FANTASY COLLECTOR’S ANNUAL 1974 – MAKES YOUR JAW DROP
Gerry de la Ree Saddle River 1971, 4to wraps 64 pp, very good condition. ‘In the 36 years I have been active as a reader and collector in the fantasy and science fiction fields, I have amassed a great quantity of rarities and unique material. These are, of course, part of the joys of collecting. But to let such things merely collect dust in file cabinets or on bookshelves seems rather pointless.’ So de la Ree published this volume of glimpses into his truly astounding collection: unpublished letters, poems and art by E. A. Poe, Mahlon Blaine, H. P. Lovecraft – get the idea? Number 232 of a limited first edition of 500 copies.

INDEX TO THE VERSE IN WEIRD TALES by THOMAS COCKCROFT – OUT OF PRINT
Thomas G. L. Cockcroft, Lower Hutt NZ 1960, 1st edition, 8vo sq. wraps 16 pp. Arranged by title, then by author, as well as verse included in fiction, Virgil Finlay’s poetry series, Oriental Magic, a magazine index and The Thrill book. Signed by the author, limited to 500 copies.

A HISTORY OF THE NECROMOMICON by H. P. LOVECRAFT – SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION
Necronomicon Press West Warwick 1977, 16mo wraps np, fine condition. The first edition of this title was limited to a printing of four hundred and fifty copies, fifty copies of the original five hundred being lost by the U. S. Postal Service. This edition, the second, consists of five hundred numbered copies, of which this is #113.

H. P. LOVECRAFT: A SYMPOSIUM – OUT OF PRINT
Riverside Quarterly Los Angeles, 1st edition, nd 16mo wraps 17 pp. Robert Block, Arthur Jean Cox, Fritz Leiber, Sam Russel and Leland Sapiro on HPL, transcribed from the 24 October 1963 meeting of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. Annotated by August Derleth.

THE OCCULT LOVECRAFT by H. P. LOVECRAFT
Gerry de la Ree Saddle River 1975, 1st edition 8vo wraps 40 pp, fine condition. First appearance anywhere of two essays on the occult by HPL, with stellar artwork by Stephen Fabian, introductions by Frank Belknap Long and Samuel Loveman, and occult commentary by Anthony Raven. Limited to an edition of 990, of which this is #182. Just try and find this one anywhere else. Buy it before I do, please.

THE LAST OF THE GREAT ROMANTIC POETS by DONALD SIDNEY-FRYER – OUT OF PRINT
Silver Scarab Press Albuquerque 1973, 1st edition 4to wraps @ 26 pp, very good condition. An attempt to define the romantic tradition from its beginnings in the Middle Ages to modern times, firmly placing the Smith / Lovecraft / Howard circles therein. Illustrated by Herb Arnold.

THE FANES OF DAWN by CLARK ASHTON SMITH – LIMITED EDITION
The Fugitive Poems / Second Series – Fourth Volume / Xiccarph Edition 1976, 8vo wraps with special envelope, np. Book in as new condition, envelope very good. A total of 303 copies of this edition were printed, of which this is #28. Eight poems. Errata sheet.

SEER OF THE CYCLES by CLARK ASHTON SMITH – LIMITED EDITION
The Fugitive Poems / Second Series – Fifth Volume / Xiccarph Edition 1976, 8vo wraps with special envelope np. Book in as new condition, envelope lightly smudged. A total of 325 copies of this edition were printed, of which this is #28. Eleven poems.

THE BURDEN OF THE SUNS by CLARK ASHTON SMITH – LIMITED EDITION
The Fugitive Poems / Second Series – Sixth Volume / The Burden of the Suns. Xiccarph Edition 1977, 8vo wraps with special envelope np. Book in as new condition, envelope very lightly smudged. A total of 295 copies of this edition were printed, of which this is #28. Eight poems.

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY PUBLISHED BY ARKHAM HOUSE AND MYCROFT & MORAN 1939 – 1976 by DICK SPELMAN – OUT OF PRINT
Institute for Specialized Literature, North Hollywood nd, 10 pp 4to wraps, very light wear. Indexed by author and title, date, pages, copies and original price of the two publishing houses listed, cross-indexed by title.

IV – MANUSCRIPTS

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS OF CLARK ASHTON SMITH
Predominantly poems, some translated prose and poetry; one page of English language text with date unless noted. Includes typed and mimeographed manuscripts, some with tape repairs. Dates range from 1915 to 1929.

ONE
Artemis – poem, signed, tape repairs.
Autumn Twilight – poem with corrections, signed.
Baillement – poem, signed, tape repairs.
The Barrier – poem with corrections, signed.
Beauty – poem with corrections, signed, tape repairs.
Beauty Implacable – poem, signed, notation at bottom, tape repairs.
Chance – poem with corrections, signed, tape repairs.
The Chimera – poem with corrections, signed.
Connaisance / Similitudes – two poems, signed, tape repairs.
Dead Love – poem with corrections, signed.
The Desert Garden – poem with corrections, signed.
Desolation – poem with corrections, signed.
Enigma – poem with corrections, signed.
En Sourdine – poem with corrections, tape repairs.
The Ennuye – poem with corrections, signed.
Exotic Perfume – poem, signed, tape repairs.
Faun-Lilies / Plum-Lovers – two poems, signed, tape repairs.
The Garden of Dreams – poem with corrections, signed.
Impression – poem with corrections, signed.
Incognita – poem, signed, tape repairs.
The Incubus of Time – poem with corrections, signed.
Inheritance – poem with corrections, signed.
Laus Mortis – poem, signed.
Le Mauvais Moine – poem with corrections, signed, tape repairs.
Les Aveugles – translation with corrections, signed.
Les Hiboux / Le Coucher d’un Soleil Romantique – two translations w/corr., signed.
Loss – poem, signed, tape repairs.
Maya – poem, signed, tape repairs.
Memorial – poem with corrections, signed.
Mirage – poem, signed.
Mirrors – poem with corrections, signed.
Mystery – poem, signed, tape repairs.
Necromancy – poem with corrections, signed, tape repairs.
Nocturne – poem with corrections, signed.
Moon-Dawn – poem with corrections, signed.
Nightfall – poem, signed.
A Prayer – poem with corrections, signed.
Psalm – poem with corrections, signed.
Query – poem with corrections, signed, tape repairs.
Reclamation – poem with corrections, signed.
The Refuge of Beauty – poem, signed.
The Remorse of the Dead – poem, signed, tape repairs.
Satiety / Song – two poems with corrections, signed, tape repairs.
Secret Love / Forgotten Sorrow – two poems, signed, tape repairs.
Solution – poem with corrections, signed.
Suggestion – poem with corrections, signed.
Vaticinations / The Autumn Lake / Harmony – three poems on a single page.
hall Meet / Brumal – two poems, signed.

This collection also includes envelope to Samuel Loveman from C.A.S. dated 5 March 1919 and 8 February 1980 letter from publisher / collector Gerry de la Ree to ‘John’ regarding the sale of C.A.S. poems.

TWO
Alexandrins – poem, French, signed with notation.
Canticle – poem, signed.
Clair De Lune – poem, correction.
Cumuli – poem, signed.
The Denial of St. Peter – translation, signed.
En Sourdine – translation, signed.
February – poem, signed.
L’Amor et le Crane – translation with notation.
L’Amour Supreme – poem, signed.
Le Faune – poem.
L’Imprevu – translation, two pages, signed.
Madrigal of Evanscence – poem, signed.
Paiennerie – poem, French, signed.
Solvet Seclum – translation.
Sonnet Lunaire – poem, French, signed.
Spectral Life – poem.
Sufficiency – poem- signed.
Une Vie Spectrale – poem, French, signed.
The Vampire – translation, signed.
Vaticination – poem, signed.

If you pick up some crap book about the history of punk rock, chances are there will be about 90 pages dedicated to Joe Strummer’s jackets but only two sentences about Crass. This is despite them selling millions of records, singlehandedly creating the DIY punk blueprint, and maintaining their hard-line libertarian and anarchy principles even as they reach their mid-60s today. A lot of you reading this will be aware of their logo and the fact that they were a punk band, but not a lot of people know their actual story. Because it’s so inspirational and so “anti-music” (in the sense that it was a total revolt against the established music industry of the time) we feel that everybody with even a passing interest in punk rock should hear it.

And so we interviewed founding members Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant for a brief history of the group and to procure their ideas surrounding this issue’s theme. During the talks between myself and Penny that preceded this interview I discovered that the unthinkable has happened and that Crass, the most anti-authoritarian, anarchy-endorsing free spirits in the history of punk music, are on the verge of going to Crown Court to ask lawyers and judges to intervene in a huge row over some remastered CDs. Despite our efforts to include all sides of the story here, a couple of former members of Crass declined to participate. [...]

What was the reason the band folded?
We always all had the idea that ’84 was the mythical, Orwellian thing. And I think it largely folded because I was becoming interested in something broader than punk. Our interests were going out, and really it was after we’d done that last gig in Aberdare which was so disillusioning and so sad, which was the fucking result of Thatcher’s vicious Britain. And I think all of us felt that jumping up and down on a stage saying “No more war!” was a joke in light of the poverty and desperation we saw that night.

What happened?
It was a benefit gig for the sacked miners in Aberdare. We went down in the van as we usually did, loaded with bins of food because people were literally starving in those villages. It was inevitably raining, which it always does in those valleys, and it was just so sad, the sense of destruction and the sense of despair. There were lots of men who didn’t know what they were doing anymore. Lots of men who just didn’t know what had happened. It was horrible. And the gig was great and everyone enjoyed it, but it was still just so sad. It was the next morning that Andy came through and said, “I’m leaving the band, Pen,” and I didn’t react because I thought,“Fine, I completely understand.” So he sort of initiated what I think would’ve inevitably happened anyway. It was 1984 and we had said we were going to end then, which is what the countdown was all about in our catalog numbers. We’d said everything that was to be said in that context, fucking hell. The fact that it’s still just as pertinent today is indication that nothing’s changed. You can’t say more than what we’ve said, really, except possibly offering a few answers. But you know, I’m still looking for them. And they’re certainly not ones that will be found in the context of punk rock. I think within the context of punk rock we did everything we possibly could.

We’d been doing it since 1977. It had been all those years, nonstop. We lived at Dial House, the doors were always open, and who we were onstage wasn’t any different from who we were in life. It wasn’t like we could come off tour and have a week’s holiday. We were doing it all ourselves and running the other label, Corpus Christi. Pen was always in the studio; I was doing vocals with Conflict or something like that and writing songs for other people. And it wasn’t like a nine-to-five job. It went on and on forever. When Margaret Thatcher came in, it all went up a notch. It was endless. Looking at horrible images, living in a horrible time, dealing with things like the Falklands War, the miners’ strikes, unemployment. It was a horrible time. There was violence at gigs; I was wearing black clothes all the time. I got fed up. If I went out for a drink there was an unspoken responsibility I always felt that if I went and got drunk I couldn’t show it. If I fell over in the gutter it wasn’t just me falling over in the gutter, it was Crass. So there was this responsibility to not fuck it up.

A lot of “punk” was being proud of falling in the gutter. People would pretend to do it even if they weren’t drunk. What made Crass different?
Well, we thought that the message was important enough to make people come and listen and buy the records. We couldn’t shit all over that by being idiots in the pub afterward.

So it was anti everything that rock ’n’ roll stood for.
Yeah. I never got all that. I have been around people who should know better. I mean, throwing a TV out the window, nothing new. I have seen people throw food around, and that really annoys me. I mean, someone has taken the time to cook the stuff. I have seen people onstage giving it all large about “nonviolence,” and the next minute they are in the street fighting with someone who comes from Manchester because they are from down south. Complete and utter bullshit. I have never been into that rock ’n’ roll image. Yeah, you get a bit of adulation; fair enough, I can deal with that. But the limousines and paparazzi and all that? You can stick it! Stick it as far as it can go. Bullshit! I have seen musicians who have so many people around them telling them they are great that in the end the idiots actually think they are and that they can tell people what to do.

Did that ever happen to anyone in Crass?
No. But it happened to a couple of close friends of mine. So, in that sense, for us it was never about being a part of a rock ’n’ roll band, though sometimes I did want some of the things associated with it. I wanted the blonde girls and the free drinks, which I never got. The only people I spoke to at gigs were spotty blokes in anoraks asking me about anarchy.

Haha. But that’s what you signed up for. Do you regret that?
I suppose sometimes it’s a little thing, I don’t know. It would have been fun for it to happen now and again. Regret it? Not really, we did what we did. As you said, that’s what I signed up for. It was a commitment; and my own fault, really. [...]

And now you’ve remastered all the albums and Gee’s done new artwork and Southern is going to release it, but that’s all caused a bit of a hullabaloo, right?
Yes, well, in the remastering I’ve been doing of the Crass material, I’ve incorporated stuff which is otherwise only available as bootleg. And why is this stuff only available otherwise in bootleg? It’s because we never bothered to do it ourselves. We’re to blame, not the bootleggers. So what we’ve done now is to sort of reclaim that, give really good sound to it, as good as we can, and then put it out so that if people want our version of it they can buy it. The bootlegs will probably still be there.

I discussed the plan to remaster everything with John in the year that he was ill. I was visiting him once a week or so. We talked a lot, obviously, about the future and that. We fantasized about going in to remaster the entire catalog, remaster a lot of my own works like Acts of Love, do new material, but I have to say that most of the time I knew it was a fantasy because it was quite obvious he wasn’t going to survive. When he died, Southern had a lot of trouble coping with it all and during that time I spent a lot of time worrying about what the fuck was going to happen to our material because with John there’d never been any formalities, nothing had ever been signed, who owned what, what owned who. There was nothing to go by. What I was really worried about was the receivers being called in. I thought, “Well, if Southern goes down, they’re going to go in and all the fucking stuff’s going to get nicked. I want to know what’s ours so we can have it.” I sort of made halfhearted attempts, but really the place was such a fucking mess that I thought, “OK, I’ll back off and let them sort whatever they need to sort out, and then we’ll go from there.” That coincided with trying to stop the house being taken over by a lot of property investors, so I got very embroiled in a big legal battle.

Who has the house now?
We do.

You nearly didn’t?
Yeah, you know, several times over. During the era of the band, we could have sat down and said, “Look, we don’t own this house. Why don’t we buy it?” We could easily have done it, but it never even occurred to us. Every time we got any money we were like,“Oh, we’ve got a grand! Let’s go ask those people down the road if they want to put out a fanzine!”

It was the same when we did fucking gigs, actually, which I’m not so pleased about. Like we’d go and do a gig, pick out a place somewhere, hand all the money over to people in need or charities or whatever, and then realize we hadn’t left enough money to buy supper that evening. We were that stupid, seriously. We didn’t look after ourselves. If we had looked after ourselves, the house would’ve been ours and Gee and I wouldn’t be living in what’s close to poverty most of the time. We’d have looked after it, but we didn’t, and that’s because we weren’t interested and we’re still not interested, so I’m not complaining, it’s just that’s a fact. [...]

I was a 35-year-old man when a 17-year-old boy turned up and wanted to form a band, and the band that he and I formed together denied him everything he should’ve had. He should’ve been fucking the groupies, snorting coke, and having a laugh. He never had a laugh; he never had a fucking adolescence. It was denied him by our hard line. I realize that now, I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought we were having fun, but Jesus what fun it was. I mean, I suppose I could get more fun out of it because my fun has always been more cerebral and intellectual, so for me some of the conflict that we created with the state and that sort of stuff was fun. But Steve wanted to be having proper fun, and I can completely understand that now. And also I can’t actually believe that he is so underappreciated. I think the guy was brilliant, among the best of the punk voices.

Why do you think Pete is so opposed to the rereleases?
When the band broke up and we no longer had that common ground, it increasingly became obvious that there were distinct differences between the various members. That didn’t rest well, and so certain conflicts started developing in the house. Notably I would say between those who didn’t see the folding of the band as a collapse of security, the individuals who were secure in their own being and quite happily got on with whatever it was they might be doing or not doing, whereas another part of the band was worried, like: “Where’s the future now? Our security has suddenly been taken from beneath our feet.” I think that was the root of the conflict, but it became expressed in lifestyle arguments. I created this house as a center for anything anyone wanted to do with it, in a way. It wasn’t for me to define, it wasn’t for me to judge, it wasn’t… I’d found the house, I was quite happy to finance it, and everyone could do what they wanted within certain parameters. I’ve since been accused of standing back when I should’ve helped a situation. So the objection that Peter’s making, by his own admittance, is that I would not give support to his criticisms, some of which were probably just, but in large number were bloody infantile or impractical.

Such as?
Well, one infantile one was to not recognize a natural authority. A natural authority is one that produces 65 percent of the material that you’re making a living from. Not for their own ends, but for a genuine belief that there’s a shared purpose here, which is why I wrote all those Crass songs. I don’t take kindly to someone turning around and being critical of that authority when they’re not directly benefiting in the way they want to directly benefit, while at the same time benefiting in all sorts of ways in which they continue to benefit. I don’t think that’s graceful. I think it was infantile to feel that one could change a situation by stamping your foot and being rude. It’s not how to do it. I’m willing to sit and listen if someone is willing to sit and talk, but I’m not willing to be insulted by anyone. I don’t think it’s very graceful of people not to acknowledge that; to live somewhere for seven years, rent free, for fuck all, to use every little iota of space which could’ve been mine in a selfish way, and then to make a big cacophony about it all. [...]

There’s no question that during the period that we lived 15 people in the house with 25 cats there was unbelievable accord. Obviously there were occasional rows about something, but they were very, very rare and we managed somehow. We couldn’t have done what we’d done otherwise. However many albums, all of the stuff, it ran like a machine. We did it at the cost of our emotional lives, and we were very good at it. But when it all ended the emotional baggage wasn’t properly dug out from all the dark holes around the house and dealt with by us. We should have deprogrammed, but we didn’t. We deprogrammed in our own slow way and within that a lot of bitterness formed. [...]

No contracts were ever signed.
There’s no contract, there’s no written anything in the history of Crass and Southern, and there never was between any of the bands that Crass recorded. It was done on trust or it was not done at all. And in fairness to John, I think that was a principle he kept on Corpus Christi. If Pete wants to play the law, in the real sense of the word, it’s a very foolish line to take. If I were to play the law on a 65 percent ownership of the songs of Crass, I could be sitting with a swimming pool just close to us, rather than a cat bowl, and he would have to work a little bit harder at whatever part-time jobs he does now. That’s the truth of it. [...]

When was the last time you saw Pete?
I think it was the week John was dying. He knew he was going to die and I bumped into Pete at the studio, and I said, “Pete, we really need to talk,” so we went over to a café and sat down, and it was cordial enough. I said, “Look, John’s going to die, we need to sort out our material.” He said, “No we don’t, it’ll be all right.” He just wouldn’t even hear of it. [...]

To my mind, the dispute has its root in ideological differences that existed between the individual members of the band. In my understanding, Pete was fundamentally a socialist, and socialists like wagging their fingers at anyone except themselves. He claims to be an anarchist. Well, I claim to be an anarchist, but I’m fundamentally a libertarian and a fierce individualist. I think that does fit into an arena of anarchistic thought. I certainly draw a line at all this stupid anarchistic organization of industry and that sort of stuff, because I’m just not interested. If people want to do that, then I’m not going to criticize them. But frankly, it’s not my thing. My thing is rising with the angels and flying in the sky.

Article continues.

A true personal experience by Nabil Shaban. Nabil is about to embark on a full time postgraduate Masters degree in Psychology Research Methods, and upon hopefully successful completion, will move on to Ph.D research in Parapsychology.

During the winter of 95, I was on a theatrical tour of England and Scotland. I was starring as Volpone, a lecherous old con artist, in a new adaptation of Ben Johnson’s play. (You probably know Ben Johnson was a contemporary of Shakespeare). Our theatre company, Graeae, had created a radical version which was entitled FLESH FLY. The poster was a colour photo of me, semi-nude in kinky bondage gear and a gag-ball in my mouth, suspended from the ceiling. People who came to see the show often complained of being disappointed that I didn’t actually appear on stage as depicted in the poster. I guess it was just a cheap advertising gimmick… not my idea, I hasten to add… but I did enjoy going along with it.

All the actors in the production had a disability… Graeae, which I created with a friend in 1979, is a theatre company of disabled performers. Although I left the company in 1981, I occasionally return to do the odd production. FLESH FLY was the last show I did with them.

A production assistant on the show was a woman called Teresa… her boyfriend was acting in the play with me. After a week or so, I noticed that Teresa was paying a lot of attention towards me… I had a feeling she was somehow attracted to me. She was always making me coffee, sitting next to me in the bar… then when we stayed in hotels with indoor swimming pools, she would volunteer to teach me how to swim, she would ask to go in the sauna with me and often ask me to go shopping or to the cinema with her. All the time I was feeling a bit awkward because I could see that her boyfriend was getting quite stressed by our friendship. I was determined to keep the relationship platonic. I didn’t want to hurt my colleague and I didn’t want to jeopardise the play. I try to stick to my rule never mix business with pleasure… I try not to get sexually or emotionally involved with people I am currently working with. But… I still couldn’t help falling in love with Teresa and desiring her. However, I kept these feelings and yearnings to myself… except…

One day, when we were in Aberdeen, Scotland… it was now January 96…  I was driving through the city to the theatre. It was the afternoon and we had a performance that evening. I was thinking intently about Teresa… wanting her badly, wishing that I could have a relationship with her without having to hurt anyone… I wanted her to somehow “feel” my love, know that I was thinking about her. As I drove I kept thinking her name, pouring all my emotion into an mental image of her.

I was convinced she would be aware of my sendings… because I had been successful before with another woman I had been madly in love with several years previously. I mean, I had managed to send a telepathic message to a fellow student when I was at university. At the time I was having a bad trip with a load of magic mushrooms I’d taken. I was feeling very sad, alone, depressed, paranoid and I was desperate for love of a woman. There was this Pakistani girl (her name was Bangla) I had fallen in love with. We were friends and she had told me she was psychic. She had once heard her father’s voice calling her name in her room when they were thousands of miles apart. Minutes afterwards the phone rang and it was her father asking if she was alright… he had had a feeling she was in deep trouble and she was. Since I knew she was psychic… .and I knew that certain hallucinogenic substances can enhance telepathic abilities because there had been successful ESP experiments with people on LSD and magic mushrooms… plus – it was well-attested that love as energy was a powerful booster to psychic transmission… I concluded that with all these conditions present, if I tried to communicate to Bangla, there was a high probability it would work. So, I kept calling “Bangla” in my mind, calling her name over and over again, pleading with her to come to me. It was 3 o’clock in the morning… well, she didn’t come when I mentally called for her… so I eventually went to my room and crashed out. Then at nine in the morning there was a knock on my door and in walked Bangla. She looked at me strangely… deep concern was etched across her face. She asked me if I was alright. I said “yeah, fine, thanks.” She sat down on my bed and kept staring at me. She asked again if I was okay because she thought I looked a complete mess. Had I been drinking heavily? Was I suffering from a hangover? I said No but I had spent the night tripping out on magic mushrooms and now I’m just coming down to earth, chilling out, man. Everything is fine, I feel cool.

She laughed and then frowned and shook her head. “Something weird happened last night” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah – well, actually it was this morning, early this morning. I was still up at my desk, trying to finish this essay which I have to hand in today” she said, still staring hard at me, but mainly out of the corner of her eye.

“Yeah, did you get the essay written?”

“No, because what happened really disturbed me… I haven’t been able to concentrate since.”

“What was it that freaked you out?” I asked, intrigued.

“As I said I was writing at the desk… when I heard a voice in the room… behind me.”

“You heard a voice?”

“Yes… right in the middle of my room, behind my back. It kept calling my name – Bangla, Bangla, Bangla… ” she said.

“That’s amazing,” I exclaimed “What time was this?”

“I don’t know exactly. Around three o’clock, I think.”

“That is fantastic!” I then proceeded to tell her of my attempts to psychically transmit a plea for help to her. “And that was about three this morning” I added.

“Yes, I thought it was you. The voice was like yours except it was more childlike… it sounded like you was a child in trouble. But it was definitely your voice. That’s why I thought I’d better come and see if you were alright.”

That was one of the most important experiences of my life. It was proof of paranormal abilities, of being able to use them at will. I realised it was totally possible to develop and exploit the latent skills of telepathic communication.

However, I chose never to try it again… until that day in Aberdeen, 7 or 8 years later. This time without the narcotic boost of magic mushrooms… just LOVE. I concentrated hard on Teresa.

Well, eventually I reached the theatre and went to the dressing room and got ready for the evening show. I saw Teresa before the show but she didn’t say much except that there was a party after the show in the bar. I’m a bit of an introvert and I don’t drink alcohol (I stopped back in ‘82 when I could see the writing on the wall warning me not to go the way of the likes of Richard Burton and Oliver Reed… not that as an actor I was in their league but I could have been as a drinker), so I don’t normally socialise after a performance. I usually prefer to go straight back to the hotel room and read a book. I’m so boring, aren’t I…

This night, however, I decided to be different. I like to be unpredictable. I surprised everyone by appearing at the party. Teresa was particularly pleased when someone told her I was around, hiding in a corner. She sought me out and asked if she could sit in the empty chair next to me. I was overjoyed. “Yeah, of course” I said.

“You save it for me, then?” she asked mischievously.

“Nah, you must be joking. There’s this tall leggy blond, I’ve got my eye on.” I lied. “Can’t you see… her name is carved on the back of the seat.”

“Well, I’d better not hang around, then. Don’t want to ruin your chances, eh?”, she said, grinning, giving me a sharp dig in the ribs.

“Nah, it’s alright… she won’t mind you having the seat for five minutes. She’s not the possessive type.”

Suddenly, there’s a serious expression on Teresa’s face. “Are you really reserving this chair for someone?”

“Nah, just joking.”

“Because I’ve got to tell you about something that happened this afternoon. Something really weird.”

“Oh? What was that, then?” I asked, intrigued.

“You don’t mind me telling you about it? I know you like to be left alone after a performance. I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

“No, of course not. What was the really weird thing that happened?”

“Well, I was in your dressing-room, gathering your costume together to put it in the washing machine and have it ironed before this evening’s show.”

“About what time this afternoon?” I asked.

“Hmm… something like two-thirty.”

“Oh right”, my mind was racing… I had a feeling I knew what was coming next.

“Well, you know on the back of the dressing room door, there’s this full length mirror?” Teresa says, watching me intently.

“Yeah… ”

“Well, as I picked up your washing, I turned and looked at my reflection in the mirror… and this bit is really weird… I swear it happened. It was as clear as I see you now.”

“What?”

“I saw my reflection and then suddenly, my head disappeared and was replaced by YOURS. Your head was on my body. You looked straight at me and smiled. Then your head disappeared and mine came back.”

“You are joking?”

“No…  I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” Teresa sounded depressed.

“No, I do. It’s just… I’m amazed. So… I mean… did you just imagine my head on your neck? Was it an image you superimposed in your mind’s eye?”

“No. I had nothing to do with it. It just happened. One minute I saw my face in the mirror… and the next I saw yours. It was a real reflection. It wasn’t like an hallucination.”

“How did you feel when you saw me in the mirror?”

“I was shocked at first. But I felt calm. Seeing you didn’t worry me… except… ”

“What?”

“Well, I’m just left wondering what did it mean? What do you think it happened?”

“Got no idea,” I lied. I was too embarrassed, too scared to tell her that I might have put the image in the mirror. It would have meant declaring my love for her. And I couldn’t possibly do that. I couldn’t rock her boat. “Its all very strange” I said quietly. I really wanted tell her that she saw me because we loved and wanted each other… that there was a special psychic connection between us… but I felt it would have been irresponsible of me to do so… and besides, I might have been mistaken. And I didn’t want to upset my fellow thespian, I didn’t want him to be heartbroken if I ended up taking his girl.

I couldn’t look at Teresa as I denied knowing why she saw me in the mirror. As she got up to rejoin her friends, she asked more emphatically “Why have you got into my head?”

“I don’t know. Do you know?”

“Perhaps it’s best not to know.” she said walking away.

“You could be right, there.” I said feeling both sad and elated. Sad because it was a cop out… an easy retreat… we were both aware of something extraordinary happening between us but neither were prepared to admit it, and take the consequences. Elated because I was privileged to witness another example of the paranormal power of love.

Love and Telepathy copyright © 2000 Nabil Shaban

The Skin Horse
1982
Written by Nigel Evans and Nabil Shaban
Featuring Nabil Shaban with Nick Finden, Tony Gerrard, Tina Leslie, Kathleen Venner

Documentaries on the disabled can be difficult to watch. Not in the sense of such films being ugly. Documentaries on the disabled can be difficult to watch because one simply can’t find them. Frederick Wiseman shot Titicut Follies in 1967. The film depicts the lives of inmates at the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Their lives were made up of being bullied, forced feed, sprayed with a high-pressure water hose and confined in unlit windowless rooms. In 1968 the film was removed from distribution and all copies were ordered destroyed by Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Harry Kalus.  Judge Kalus said he acted in the interest of the privacy of the inmates. The following year in that the film was allowed to be shown but only to health care professionals. Wiseman appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which declined to review the case. According to Wikipedia, “the dispute marked the first known instance in the history of the American film industry that a film was banned from general distribution for reasons other than obscenity, immorality or national security.” Superior Court Judge Andrew Meyer lifted the ban on the film in 1991, on the condition “a brief explanation shall be included in the film that changes and improvements have taken place at Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater since 1966.” Today you can buy a copy of Titicut Follies from Zipporah Films, Inc.

No such luck for The Skin Horse. Channel 4 (formerly Central Television) commissioned the 1982 film but does not sell it. No one sells it, not legally. Worldcat does not list it as existing in the interlibrary loan system.  Exactly one private library has it in their collection. If you are exceptionally fortunate you may have seen it one of the few times it has been broadcast on television. The documentary isn’t banned, it is merely unavailable.

The Skin Horse is a documentary by and about disabled people and their sex lives. Not their secret longing and private thoughts, although these are part of the film. This is a documentary about sex, sex among the disabled, sex between the disabled and the able.

Co-author and narrator Nabil Shaban does not skirt around the issue. The Skin Horse is an adult film, made by and for adults able to speak most clearly about themselves. Perhaps mere suggestiveness would not have succeeded in this film. Perhaps like the Last Poets or Valarie Solanas, the time for subtlty ended long ago for Shaban. When a person is just a little different from the norm, suggestiveness and being coy are more common. When we find a birthmark or personality quirk in a partner it stands out for a moment and then is gone. When one or one’s partner isn’t even considered fully human by some people, the time to beat around the bush ends. The average life span of the disabled is shorter than that of the non-disabled. The average screen time of the disabled is measured in minutes-per-decade compared to the screen time of the non-disabled. A wink and a nod just isn’t going to cut it. These are stories told once, and there’s no follow-up special presentation later on. The Skin Horse is honest in a way most sex documentaries only aspire to be honest.

The honesty begins with a discussion of beauty.  In antiquity philosophers claimed physical beauty was a virtue, like honesty or courage. Deviation from the form was either a punishment or a moral weakness. The etymology of the word monster is that of a beast sent by the gods as a warning. In the 21st Century other theories of beauty predominate. The Skin Horse speaks of four theories of beauty.  All quotes are from The Skin Horse.

Is beauty like the sun, radiating from a center and growing cold with distance? Some sections of The Skin Horse support this classic idea. Nabil: “Most disabled or deformed people I met at special school, sheltered workshop or crip college couldn’t wait to go to bed with an able-bodied person. I know that to be true of me.”

Is beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Perhaps disability does not matter. Those who are left handed tend towards mental illness, higher rates of suicide and imprisonment and shorter life spans. But being left handed is not seen as a disability. Nor are glasses on a person with a slight vision problem. Perhaps what we see as beauty or as a disability is arbitrary, a frame of reference we are free to modify or reject. This was the thinking behind the founding of the Outsiders in 1979. The Outsiders “is a vibrant social and peer support network of disabled people. We are many different things to our many members. [...] Whenever possible, Outsiders works together with other groups to campaign for the acceptance of disabled people as sexual partners.” The Skin Horse includes interviews with a founder of The Outsiders: “If I’d thought about it before I started I don’t think I would have ever dared to do it because I never really thought it would work.  Everyone said it wouldn’t work. But actually, however disabled you are you are still able to love somebody and be loved. So the most amazing marriages and… parings… have taken place. Dispite the fact that they might not only be disabled but also homosexual. Goodness knows, they’re just like anybody else.” The Skin Horse also includes interviews with a member of Outsiders, Jack: “Everyone’s got ability and disability.”

Is beauty a spiritual force? Is beauty to the body as the mind is to the brain? Perhaps beauty and disability are not part of us at all, but a shadow cast by an inner light. Most of the speakers in The Skin Horse hold this theory of beauty. Nabil is a keen researcher into the paranormal, psychic powers, UFOs and utopian politics. Open the gates to a single taboo and the rest come marching in. Nabil: “From childhood we learn that there is always more than meets the eye, that external appearances are misleading, that what exists within us all is always greater than the sum of the parts. [...] To admit love is to admit there is more to appearances. And to admit that we all have to work much harder at being human. We have to consider not only the body but also the soul.” Another man speaks of sex as a spiritual experience rather than a physical one: “I know the joy, the contentment, the feeling of spirituality, the utter relief from the limitations of my body which comes from sex. Just calling it sex is a very limiting word. It’s far more than people think with just one word. My body is very limiting but in sex I feel complete freedom.” Tina Leslie talks about the difference between her body and her self. “Sometimes I eat in front of a mirror to see the mask as other people see me. And try to see their feelings.  But this is what they see. It’s got nothing to do with me, the real me, a lover sees that, the real me. But I still never quite, quite believe it. But my god, I’d rather this than some celibate martyrdom. [...] Some people see me as an ugly thing. They can’t see me as a being, and as a sexual person, never. Christ, I don’t mind being seen like that. What’s the point of militant feminism? I like men. I don’t want to take refuge in something disabled women use as an excuse suppress their sexuality.”

Is beauty a fetish? Are some beautiful because they are different? Thousands of gigabytes of disability pornography are shuttled about the globe every day, lending some weight to this theory. Nearly thirty years earlier, The Skin Horse made the connection between acceptable fetishes (weight lifters and surgical beauty queens) and unacceptable fetishes (in a word, freaks). Nabil: “Perfection becomes an imperfection, a curiosity, a handicap, and the handicap when taken to its physical extremes becomes an end in itself. Hence, King Size [magazine]. Jonny the Wad. Chesty Morgan. King Dong. Big Bum. And all those freaks we have learned to love and loathe. And some people lust after.” Freaks have their place, but it is a well proscribed place. Nabil: “In the world of sexuality, there are three genders: female, male and disabled. And what is more, traditionally, in the disabled group, we are categorized into monsters or children. Children, eh? So we’re either monsters or children. We’re either abused or patronized. We’re either a fetish or sexless. Never in between. [...] It seem we need freaks not only to reassure ourselves of our own normality but more importantly to help us rediscover something. Perhaps that’s why we create our own freaks in myths, legends, fairy stories, literature and films. Perhaps that’s why we impart a certain humanity in them, and allow them to love and be loved. But of course only in fiction.” Here The Skin Horse shows some of the approved and fictional couplings between able bodied persons and freaks, such as Leda and swan, a maid and a minotaur, Kala and Charleton Heston.

If the disabled are (or would like to be) similar to anyone else in their sex lives, are they similar in their loneliness? One man in The Skin Horse says so: “The problem of exploring one’s own sexuality is a problem that everyone has.”  But no matter how we sees ourselves, the challenge in starting and maintaining a relationship (or getting laid) is in how others see us.  One woman in The Skin Horse describes her everyday life at the home for incurables for the past 34 years: “Washed, dressed, put in my chair. [...] Sometimes I ache for the human contact that I’ve been denied. For a new face that isn’t a nurse or another incurable. [...] It’s this sense of waste that I resent most of all. It’s as if people like me are somehow supposed to live our lives beyond frustration. As if part of accepting our lot should include the complete denial of any emotional life at all.” Hey! you’ve got to hide your love away…

Getting off for the disabled can mean breaking laws as well as breaking taboo. One man talks about when his personal assistant brought him to a prostitute: “She was really sort of a bit freaked out by the fact that this guy carried me up the stairs and plunked me on the bed and said ‘there he is.’ I stayed there for about three or four hours. One hears so many terrible things said about prostitutes and I believe it’s still illegal and all that but in that case in point the lady who I saw fulfilled a very useful purpose and I’m eternally grateful to her. [...] The events leading on from [hiring a prostitute] did make me much more relaxed and more self confident in myself as a sexy person, to meet other people, to make relationships, and I suppose over the last few years that has been growing and it’s still growing.”

The men and women in The Skin Horse are largely still with us.  Comedian Tony Gerrard continues to perform. The Outsiders still exists, and is the only place I’ve found that has The Skin Horse in its library. The Skin Horse was where I first learned of Nabil Shaban, and I hope that this review can draw more attention to this singular work. But Shaban has done much more, prior to and since The Skin Horse. He has many stage, film and television credits to his name, some of which are listed below. He was part of the CRASS Collective and in 1980 co-founded the Graeae Theater. Shaban is an artist, an author, an animator, a director, an actor and a musician. He is a father.  How uncomfortable he must feel to know he’s been such a positive influence on my life and the lives of so many others.  Sorry, friend, you’re a hero.

Shaban offers many of his works online at YouTube and elsewhere. If I Decide to Commit Suicide, You Need Hands and The Fifth Gospel include Tina Leslie, also seen in The Skin Horse. If I Decide to Commit Suicide is a video for Shaban’s poem of the same name. It quotes from Eraserhead by David Lynch, just as The Skin Horse quotes from Lynch’s Elephant Man. You Need Hands is a dark music video. The Fifth Gospel describes Christianity as ‘body fascist’ and shows Shaban and Leslie being patronized during a trip to the non-healing fountains of Lourdes. Morticia is available as a video on demand from amazon.com. Morticia is about a girl who wants to become a vampire. A third party has posted The Strangest Viking online. This is a documentary narrated by Shaban on Ivar the Boneless, a viking who conquered much of England. An excerpt from The Alien Who Lived in the Sheds is online. In The Alien Who Lived in the Sheds, Shaban shows that for all his fire and thunder he can make fun of himself. Shaban is a believer in the paranormal, but is aware of how such beliefs can look to non-believers. Shaban is an advocate of the outsider, but it not immune from gawking when he meets a fellow outsider. Shaban is his body, but his body is also a source of pain. Alien includes a film within a film, and this film is again one of his poems set to music and video. For all his success in the theater, Shaban has experienced one significant setback. He secured money for a production of his play The First to Go when England joined the war against Iraq. The First to Go is a play about the fate of the disabled under the T4 program in wartime Germany. Shaban returned the government’s ‘blood money’ in protest and the play has yet to find another backer.

Nabil Shaban has successfully scattered the ash circle that kept able and disabled actors apart. He is a man who can be judged on his talents.  Shaban recently turned fifty and has many years of innovation and experimentation ahead of him. Thank you to Nabil Shaban for opening many doors, taking many risks and thumbing your nose at heresy.

Nabil Shaban (selected works)

Stage:

• Godspell (1987)
• The Emperor (1987)
• Hamlet (1988)
• Iranian Nights (1989)
• Measure for Measure (1990)
• Imagine Drowning (1991)
• Fleshfly (1996)
• DARE (1997) [vimeo] [youtube 1][youtube 2][youtube 3]
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1998) [wikipedia]
• The Little Lamp (1999)
• Portadown Blues (2000)
• I am the Walrus (2001)
• Knocknashee (2002)
• Jasmine Road (2003)
• Threepenny Opera (2005) [youtube][dailymotion]
• One Hour Before Sunrise (2006)
• Endgame (2007) [youtube]
• The First to Go (2008)
• Marat/Sade (?)

Film:

• Born of Fire (1983) [imbd]
• If I Decide to Commit Suicide (1990) [vimeo] [youtube][dailymotion]
• City of Joy (1992) [imbd] [wikipedia]
• Wittgenstein (1993) [imbd] [wikipedia] [youtube]
• Skallagrigg (1994) [imbd][wikipedia][youtube]
• Another World (1995) [amazon]
• Gaias Born (1998) [imbd]
• Children of Men (2006) [imbd] [wikipedia][youtube]
• Crip Triptych (2006) [youtube 1][youtube 2][youtube 3][youtube 4][youtube 5]
• Trouble Sleeping (2008) [imbd]
• Morticia (2009) [imbd][youtube][amazon]

Television:

• Walter (1982) [imbd] [wikipedia] [channel 4]
• Walter and June (1983) [imbd] [wikipedia] [channel 4]
• The Skin Horse (1983) [imbd]
• Dr. Who, Vengeance on Varos (1985) [imbd] [wikipedia]
• Dr. Who, Trial of a Time Lord (1986) [imbd] [wikipedia]
• Blue Peter (1986) [imbd]
• Raspberry Ripple (1986) [imbd]
• Billy’s Christmas Angel (1986) [imbd]
• The Fifth Gospel (1990) [youtube][dailymotion]
• Deptford Graffiti (1991) [imbd] [youtube]
• Inmates (1992)
• Age of Treason (1993) [imbd]
• Slave of Dreams (1995) [imbd] [wikipedia]
• Sorry About Last Night (1995) [imbd]
• Supercrips and Rejects (1996)
• The Alien Who Lived in the Sheds (1997) [imbd][youtube 1] [youtube 2]
• The Strangest Viking (2003) [imbd] [wikipedia][youtube 1][youtube 2][youtube 3][youtube 4][youtube 5][channel 4] [guardian]
• The Story of Dr. Who (2003) [imbd]

Radio

• The Ramayana (1994)
• Treasure Island (1995)

Books:

• DARE (2002)
• Dreams My Father Sold Me (2005)[amazon]
• The First to Go (2007) [vimeo] [youtube 1][youtube 2][youtube 3][youtube 4][dailymotion 1][dailymotion 2][dailymotion 3][amazon]
• The Ripper Code (2008) [amazon][dailymotion]

Internet:

• itunes: From Little Acorns
• dailymotion: [ScabNabs]
• facebook: [Nabil Shaban]
• geocities: [archive]
• media muppet: [Nabil Shaban]
• twin vision: [Nabil Shaban]
• vimeo: [Nabil Shaban]
• webby talents: [ScabNabs]
• youtube: [ScabNabs][DoctorNabsTalkPSI]

Trevor Blake is a sign language interpreter who lives in Portland, Oregon USA.

Yael Ruth Dragwyla is a writer; a ceremonial magickian, and sometimes editor of various alternative press publications.

OVO: What are some of the varieties of non-physical travel?

YRD: The two principal kinds are the out of body (OBE) stuff, where you literally leave your body and go elsewhere, and bilocation, where your mind is in two places at the same time whether or not you manifest physically in two places at the same time. I’ve found by experience and I’ve seen this reported in the literature that sometimes you’re thinking very hard about a place, you’ll be sitting in your living room thinking about a place and people will see you walking down the street in he place that you’re drinking about. They’ll say ‘Hi’ and you just disappear. You’ve bilocated into that city because you were thinking so hard about something.  You my actually have a physical appearance if you don’t have a physical weight or anything there. Your mind is definitely there as well as in your own body, so you’re not unconscious. With out of the body stuff, you actually leave your body. I bilocate routinely when I’m doing a magickal ritual.

OVO: Is this something that anyone could experience?

YRD: Anybody can experience it and I think at least a few times in your life everybody experiences it. If you’ve ever had a dream where you’re walking along an you suddenly stumble and there’s a bad jolt as if you’ve fallen on your face and you wake up, usually that means you’ve fallen back into your body after an OBE dream. Everybody’s had at least a couple of those. Everybody’s had an experience where you’re sitting in a chair and thinking about a place and suddenly it seems almost as if you were there. Everyone almost bilocates all the time but to do it effectively an exactly the way you want to without any hitches (or come close to go anyway), special training of stuff that is already in everybody is needed. People who have been in bad accidents or who were seriously traumatized on a chronic basis as children, a lot of the filters in their brain that are normally present for the rest of us aren’t there and they will tend to have these experiences more often. Therefore they’re the ones most likely to need the training. But this is something we all do at some point.

OVO: What does the training involve?

YRD: One of the things you can do is get the traditional crystal ball or bowl of water, and you gaze into it long enough that your mind gets bored with thinking about things and gives it up while you continue to stare into this thing. You start seeing pictures, pictures in your mind’s eye. When that starts happening you can train the pictures into being where you want them to be. If you keep doing this for quite a while you’ll find yourself projecting your mind at least partially to this other place. If you’re projecting into this bowl of water and you’re in, say, Los Angeles, and you’re thinking about London, you’ll start to bilocate into London. How far you’ll get with that I don’t know. There are all sorts of books on the subject. Another technique is to get a poster of a place you’d very much like to visit and you keep it on your wall. Five minutes a day you meditate on it and pretty soon you’ll be going there in your dreams.

OVO: What is the relation between something like bilocation and modern electronic media, which has some of the same effects as those attributed to bilocation?

YRD: With modern electronic media you have to have all that junk, whereas with bilocation you can do that spontaneously and all you need is your own head. Bilocation can produce more real manifest effects and do it in a real world way than electronics. Electronics is always planted and less complex than real life is. You don’t get get to touch and smell things on TV, you just see them. With bilocation all sorts of real life things am come across. If you actually get an out of the body experience you can pick up everything from music to smells to the way something feels when you rub your hand over it.

OVO:: What about the difference between out of the body experiences and bilocation and the like and psychosis or madness? How can you tell the difference?

YRD: Psychosis is when you loose control. If you can’t stop doing it its madness. It’s as if your body were in full panic mode and everything was frightening whether it should have been or not or your thoughts endlessly drift. The person who is psychotic is in bad shape, because they’re not fully in control of themselves, their thoughts run on in ways they can’t control. They can’t maintain control over their emotions so they drift in a psychological wind. But with these properties of bilocation and OBEs, when you do them spontaneously, if you’re sound and sane you get back home again without any problems. If on top of that you have training in how to utilize these things you get there and come back and you’ve achieved something along the way, you have control over this process.

OVO: What is a way for someone to test the reality of it if someone thinks they can bilocate?

YRD: If you think you’re in a city and you’ve never been there before, try to go to a corner where there’s a street sign. Get the names of the streets, addresses, if possible names off mail boxes. When you’re awake again write all this down as quickly as possible so you don’t forget and go to a library and look it up on a map. If you can, stop and talk to somebody. Say ‘hello’ and engage them in a conversation, in which you ask them about their city. Say you’re a stranger. If they’re speaking in a foreign language that you don’t understand that’s a pretty good test of it.

OVO: Do you know of examples of that happening?

YRD: I’ve read of it in the literature. Beyond that it’s by guess and by god.

One of the things that is very hard to do in dreams and in astral projection is to look at your own hands. I’ve tried it. Raise your own hands in front of your face and look at them. If you can’t do that or if you have trouble even putting the thoughts together to do that, that may be something that tells you that you’re astral-traveling rather than in a normal waking state. If you can think about doing it you’re not in a normal dream. I’d like someday to found my own university of esoteric sciences – for real, such that eventually it would produce graduates who simultaneously have a degree in some esoteric field, like say alchemy, and at the same time in something that would get them a job, a top-level job, working, say, for the government, or cities, or environmental protection. In Kipling’s book Kim the main character says “I thank Allah for both sides of my head.” This culture does not educate both sides of the head as they did in medieval times when they had the Curriculum. The point of the Curriculum was the well-rounded man. We need to do that again but we can’t go back to the medieval way of looking at the world. We know better, so we have to go forward, to a spiritual literacy that is up-to-date with all our experiences, good and bad, in the Twentieth Century. That’s what I want to start some day, real education. Not new age bullshit but education for both sides of the head in a way that is appropriate to the late Twentieth Century and the early Twenty-First.

(from OVO 13 TRAVEL January 1992)

OVO: What was the day of your first car accident?

JM: It was Tuesday, August 5th, 1986.

OVO: What happened?

JM: I was in South Carolina, staying at Polly’s Island with my mother for a week. My boyfriend had gone down with me. We were going to Murtle Beach; he was going to go to a skateboard park. We’d taken his mother’s station wagon. I was driving because he was getting his skateboard ready or something. It was a highway like Alcoa Highway [Knoxville, Tennessee], with a lot of dangerous intersections. I was going about 50 miles an hour when we came upon an intersection where there was a big Bronco and an old Pontiac. The Bronco pulled out and cleared the intersection in front of us. The woman in the Pontiac pulled up to the intersection, did not stop, and pulled onto the highway right in front of us. We hit her. The front left of her car and the front right our car collided. We ended up in the median, in the ditch. I was wearing the lap part of my seat but not the shoulder harness, and my face flew into the steering wheel. I knocked out seven bottom teeth. My boyfriend was not wearing his seat belt. He hit the windshield with his head and cut his head up badly. When we impacted with her I hit my mouth and I slung my body against the door. I had glass in my face from the windshield. Her window was down and we could see her. We were conscious and she was conscious. My boyfriend rolled down his window and leaned his head out the window and said “you okay?” She said yes, that she was okay. We sat in the car for… seconds. A woman came up to his window and asked “Do you want me to call an ambulance?” We said yes. We went to the hospital. I stayed the night but I don’t think he did. I had surgery the next day. I’d sprained my arm, my back and my neck, and I’d knocked my teeth out.

OVO: How did that change you?

JM: It made me a much better driver. I don’t trust anybody anymore. I don’t think anybody knows what they’re doing. As far as when anybody gets behind the wheel I don’t think people have their right minds. This woman that hit us had been driving for five years. She was 65. She got her license when she was 60 and she didn’t know what she was doing. I don’t take for granted that people are going to stop at stop signs. I slow down all the time. The biggest change in me is that I’m a horrible passenger. I get antsy when I have to sit in the passenger seat and I tell people what to do. I tell people to slow down. I’ve learned not to feel bad about telling people when I’m uncomfortable. I’ve been in a car with people who were going to fast and I’ve said you’ve got to slow down or I‘m getting out of the car. Because I know that you can die and that’s changed my life completely. Facing what I thought was my own death. I thought I was going to die.

(from OVO 13 TRAVEL January 1992)