“If you don’t like the elections, go out and make your own” by Germy Folkywaze
“If you don’t like the elections, go out and make your own” by Germy Folkywaze
Wes “Scoop” Nisker declared “If you don’t like the news . . . go out and make some of your own.”
Gerry Fialka yelps, “If you don’t like the elections . . . go out and make your own.” The whole point of aphorisms is to reword them, and to be inspired to do something.
Here’s how a major American political and social activist reworded the maxim of a major media guru.
“Art is anything you can get away with.” — Marshall McLuhan inspired “The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.” — Abbie Hoffman
One could consider starting the Revolution People’s Party with the ticket of Angela Davis for President. What is your party’s name? What candidate do you suggest? Cancel culture this: “If god wanted us to vote, god would have created candidates.”
Let’s have our own election . . . WE CAN GET AWAY WITH IT . . .
Recall the resonating interval of McLuhan and Hoffman, during the Chicago Seven trial:
MR. SCHULTZ: Didn’t you state, Mr. Abbie Hoffman, that part of the myth that was being created to get people to come to Chicago was that “We will fuck on the beaches”?
THE WITNESS (Abbie): Yes, me and Marshall McLuhan. Half of that quote was from Marshall McLuhan.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/Hoffman.html and
Page 330 from the book The Times Were A Changin’: The Sixties Reader by D & I Unger -
Terrence M. Ripmaster wrote: To the “establishment” media, Abbie was a “yippie” radical. Abbie, who was deeply influenced by Marshall McLuhan, the media guru, realized that the media was little interested in content. For television, ala McLuhan, the media was the message. Thus Abbie realized that television was not concerned with what he and the 60s critics had to say, it was interested in only the symbols and colorful confrontations of the revolutionary counterculture. So, Abbie would dress up and conduct outrageous yippie festivals, burning Monopoly money on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and holding anti-war blow-outs in parks and on the streets. He would paint his face and wear silly uniforms when he was called before government agencies and the courts. He giggled and jokes at the officials investigating him and his activities.
“That Abbie Hoffman ain’t got no respect for authority,” they would say.
“What authority?” Abbie would reply. https://www.hourwolf.com/spr/spr0043.html
Gerry: “Question authority.” Phil Chamberlin: “Says who?”
Hear comes the sons. Abbie’s son, whose name is “america” Hoffman https://stompandstammer.com/feature-stories/america-hoffman-part-1/ said he admires McLuhan. Andrew McLuhan https://twitter.com/mclinstitute, grandson of Marshall, talks about players not sayers. The playground is the hidden environment. Let’s revamp Bucky Fuller’s “All crew, no passengers.” Let’s expand Frank Zappa’s “the big note” into “the big joke.” “Behind every joke is a grievance” — McLuhan.
Will a third party work? Will more jokes help? I am serious suggesting Angela Davis. Not a reality right now? Is being serious about being non-serious an approach that can help right now? Remember past candidates like W.C. Fields (1939), Dizzy Gillespie (1964), Pat Paulsen (1968), George Papoon — The Firesign Theatre (1972), and Frank Zappa (1991)? Who could imagine a token of our “tactical frivolity”? The Yippies nominated Pigasus J. Pig for President in 1968 with the slogan “if we can’t have him in the White House, we can have him for breakfast.”
Can the jester of voting tiktok the emperor’s clothing? I lay in my Zoom in a meta-catatonic state and dream of essays that will irritate Medium Dot Commies in their lonely Boomers-to-Zoomers rooms. Will dis one do the trick? If they could only read it, then half-a-dozen of them woulda smothered while they was streamin’ on each other’s twitch. This is only a bunch of imaginary words, just a little somnambulist needling to keep me goin’ from day to daze.
Thanks to Michael Simmons, who recently sent me these words from Abbie Hoffman, who said them in 1988:
“We’re headed towards the middle ages. This is the decline of the American empire. This is what decline looks like — middle class vanishes, plagues sweep the earth, droughts, locusts in Georgia, the dumbing of the country, lack of leadership at the top, unstuck youth at the bottom, high suicide rates, homeless people in the streets — I could go on and on… Maybe good riddance to bad rubbish… Somebody once asked Gandhi what he thought of Western Civilization — he said it was a good idea, somebody ought to try it someday.”
Artist Walter Alter writes:
We touched on “cultural conflict” briefly during a recent discussion group, and that was a hot topic among revolutionaries standing in the shadow of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist theoretician who, writing in the 1920’s, noted the chronic failure of Marxist revolution in Europe and concluded that no victory was possible until the surrounding culture that resisted Marxism was changed. This led to the Frankfurt School which led to Esalen and the beatnik/hippie revolution. Point being that the revolution was taken out of the hands of the revolutionaries and put in the hands of social engineers. Questions for us now: What sort of culture IS Internet culture? What is “selfie culture”? Is the acronymization of text in the various messaging shorthands our version of Orwellian Newspeak? What is the root of our mania for the approval of others?
“We must invent a new metaphor, restructure our thoughts and feelings.” — McLuhan, who was deeply influenced by Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939).
In 1966, Frank Zappa listed James Joyce as an influence in the album, Freak Out. The main character of Finnegans Wake is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, aka Here Comes Everybody (HCE). He is an ordinary everyman, and potentially a politician. Zappa was considering running for president in 1991. His questions still challenge us:
“Who are the brain police?”
“Shall we take ourselves seriously?”
“Who could imagine?”
In response to this last inquiry:
(All together now, as if we have hijacked The Wizard of Us): “WE CAN . . . YES WE CAN CAN . . . “
FRANK ZAPPA yelps: “You know we gotta stick together.” and “I’m not black, But there’s a whole lots a times I wish I could say I’m not white!” and “I will love the police, as they kick the shit out of me on the street.”
and “Nothing is what I want.”
What do you want? Likable elections? Peace? Love? Cosmic wisdom? Struggle? . . .
Paul Krassner, from ttps://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/398/in-the-jesters-court -
One of my spiritual influences was J. Krishnamurti, who rejected any opportunities to become a guru. I once saw him speak at Carnegie Hall to three thousand of his non-disciples. Somebody asked him why there was evil in the world, and he answered, “To thicken the plot.” That inspired me to perceive reality through a theatrical filter, and now I just admire how skillfully everybody plays themselves, including evil people. On the other hand, another influence, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, told me, “There are no evil people; there are only victims.” The last time I saw Ram Dass, he told me, “I’m trying really hard to love George Bush.” I laughed and said, “Thirty years ago you told me, ‘I’m trying really hard to love Richard Nixon.’ ” So the struggle goes on; only the names have changed.
Thank you, Gerry Fialka, Venice CA pfsuzy@aol.com
Gerry Fialka, artist, writer, and paramedium ecologist, lectures world-wide on experimental film, avant-garde art and subversive social media. He has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “the multi-media Renaissance man.” The LA Weekly proclaimed him “a cultural revolutionary.” Gerry has hosted the McLuhan — Finnegans Wake Reading Club since 1995 in Venice California, now in its 25th year. Laughtears Press is proud to announce the new book, Strange Questions: Experimental Film as Conversation by Gerry Fialka, Edited by Rachael Kerr, Foreword by David James. Laughtears.com
https://medium.com/@pfsuzy/cure-for-the-common-codebreaker-by-germy-folkyways-3167dbf9e83e
